April 3, 2025 • 55 mins
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Church historian Bradley Melle chats with Rev. Joash Thomas about Christian supremacy, colonialism, and trauma in the church. Brad and Joash dive into how Christianity's history—from Constantine to today's Christian nationalism—has often prioritized power, dominance, and control, leading to deep historical wounds and ongoing struggles.
Drawing from personal experiences, historical examples, and current events, they unpack how beliefs in Christian supremacy have shaped global Christianity, suppressed spiritual diversity, and contributed to injustice worldwide. They explore stories of colonial missions in India, Christianity's troubling alliance with political power, and how religious trauma continues to influence church communities today.
Listeners will discover how intergenerational trauma affects contemporary Christian life and gain practical insights into creating a healthier, more compassionate, and trauma-informed faith. This conversation is perfect for anyone curious about church history, religious trauma, Christian nationalism, and the journey toward a more authentic and humble Christianity.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
All right.
So it has been a while sinceI've been on here doing this
podcast, but I'm really excitedto be back at it and have big
plans for it.
(00:20):
And today I am joined by one ofmy new friends.
One of my new good friends.
Are we there yet?
I
SPEAKER_01 (00:28):
think we're there.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
This is Reverend Joash Thomas, and we discovered,
I had been following him onlinefor a while, and I discovered
that he lived about 10 minutesaway from me.
And it was, what a great daythat was.
Yeah, it's
SPEAKER_01 (00:46):
only gone uphill since then.
Yeah, in a good way.
SPEAKER_00 (00:49):
Yeah, and so it's just exciting to meet someone
that you respect and are alignedwith in a lot of ways just down
the road.
And so I am super pumped thatyou're here on the podcast with
me.
And yeah, just for my listeners,why don't you tell them a little
bit about just who you are?
SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
Yeah, thanks, Brad.
Great to be here.
Yeah, my name is Joe Ash Thomas.
I live in Hamilton, Ontario, asyou've already heard.
I feel like I'm from everywhereand nowhere at the same time.
So I was born and raised inMumbai, India, spent the first
18 years of my childhood there.
I then moved to the US, livedthere, worked as a political
(01:34):
consultant, lobbyist in a pastlife, and then Jesus saved me
again.
And And yeah, I've been workingin international human rights
over the past decade.
Worked in three countries overthe past 10 years for one of the
largest Christian human rightsorganizations.
I now work as a fundraisingleader.
(01:57):
And a big part of my work ismobilizing the church to
prioritize justice and offeringdifferent ways to do that.
So yeah, I'm an ordained deaconwith the Diocese of St.
Anthony.
Recently ordained, so wearing mycollar You probably can't see it
with the beard, but it is there.
It is there.
Believe it.
Especially for those of youlistening, the podcast version
(02:18):
of this.
But yeah, and so I'm an ordaineddeacon currently in discernment
for the priesthood.
And yeah, it's just really coolfor me going from the
evangelical world to thesacramental world over the last
few years.
Born and raised evangelical, butI'm a St.
Thomas Indian Christian.
So my ancestors have beenworshiping Jesus in sacramental
(02:39):
ways for about 2000 years now,about 50 years now.
1500 years before the colonizersshowed up.
So a lot of,
SPEAKER_00 (02:43):
a lot of fun trivia and facts there, but
SPEAKER_01 (02:45):
yeah, that's a
SPEAKER_00 (02:46):
bit about
SPEAKER_01 (02:46):
me.
SPEAKER_00 (02:47):
You know what, you know, you've got it.
Yeah.
You have a pretty fascinatingstory.
I would love to talk about thatmore.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for being here with me.
This is cool.
SPEAKER_01 (02:55):
Yeah, this is great.
This is great.
Yeah.
And I've admired your work for awhile and I was also pleasantly
surprised to discover that wewere neighbors.
So
SPEAKER_00 (03:03):
it's been great.
So cool.
Well, you know, things in theworld right now in the Western
world, you know, the Christianworld are pretty ugly.
It's not a pretty time.
Something that's important to meis, as a church historian, I
don't really shy away from thedark side of church history.
(03:26):
I think doing that is likeshying away from the dark side
of your own family's history.
It's not going anywhere.
It just gets pushed down.
And so...
You know, obviously this stuff'son my mind a lot.
And I think on yours too, theChristian nationalist movement
(03:46):
in the US, but also across theWestern world.
And sort of a, something I'venoticed about the like Christian
nationalist movements arethey're very like, on the one
hand, they claim to be reallyproud of a Christian heritage
SPEAKER_01 (04:06):
and
SPEAKER_00 (04:06):
yet totally unwilling to deal with the ugly
history of what I think we needto call what it is, which is
Christian supremacy.
And I think I just really wantedto talk to you today and get
some of your thoughts onChristian supremacy, what that
(04:27):
word, what that phrase mightmean to you, kind of where your
mind goes, and what the problemis and what there is to do about
it.
Do you have any initialthoughts?
When I say Christian supremacy,what comes to mind?
SPEAKER_01 (04:42):
Yeah, that's a really great question.
Yeah, so the term Christiansupremacy is a newer one for me.
But as I've been overlaying thatwith everything I've been
researching and writing on howcolonialism has shaped Western
Christianity, it actuallytracks.
So for the uninitiated, I'm...
(05:04):
I've written a book called TheJustice of Jesus, comes out this
September, pre-orders alive.
And one of the core arguments ofthe book is that injustice isn't
just bad for the oppressed, it'salso bad for the oppressor.
And we see this in the historyof colonization where
colonialism wasn't just bad forthe the Global South Church and
(05:25):
the colonizers, also bad for theWestern church and those of us
who've been shaped by it toresist justice for our
marginalized neighbors.
So pulling in Christiannationalism or really Christian
supremacy here, I think, youknow, so just historically If
you look at my ancestors, theywere worshiping Jesus in a very
(05:46):
ecumenical and pluralistic wayfor about 1500 years before the
Portuguese colonizer showed upand then the British colonizer
showed up.
And then both the Portuguese andthe British church tried to
change the St.
Thomas Indian Christian Churchfrom its pluralistic ways with
this mindset of, no,Christianity is supreme to every
(06:10):
other religion and Christ cannotbe revealed to these people from
other religions, to thesepagans, unless they put their
faith in Jesus.
And it was a very different wayof practicing Christianity than
what they'd been doing for about1,500 years before that.
So I think of Christiansupremacy with that historical
(06:33):
lens of what it was like for myancestors to be told that they
had it all wrong for about 1,500years.
And I think Yeah, there's muchwork to be done to unpack that
and see how it's shaped us andalso understand where it's come
from.
And you're a historian, Brad, soyou
SPEAKER_00 (06:52):
tell us about that.
Yeah, see, having thatperspective in this conversation
is so critical.
It's not every day that you meetsomeone whose ancestors were one
of the earliest Christian groupsin the world.
Like, I remember you saidsomething once, like, something
to the effect of, like, youknow, your ancestors have been
(07:13):
worshiping Jesus since, I thinkit says something like before
mine were worshiping Thor orsomething like that.
I was like, okay, that's reallycool.
Right.
But yeah, Christian supremacy isone of those things that, you
know, with, with obviously Istudied colonialism from a very
different perspective.
Right.
But studying some of the sameparadigms and movements and,
(07:37):
and, it gets all tangled up witha lot of different active
supremacies.
Because you had white supremacy.
You had Western civilizationsupremacy.
And sometimes Christian justgets tacked on.
Like, it was kind of like, itwas there.
It wasn't really the big badguy.
It wasn't the culprit.
(07:58):
It was just sort of like comingalong for the ride.
But I don't really think thatthat's fair.
Like, I, you know, while I am aChristian...
I think Christian supremacy is avery different posture to the
world, to society, to othersthan let's say Jesus would have
taken to the world, to society,to others.
(08:18):
I think its goal is to dominate.
SPEAKER_01 (08:21):
On
SPEAKER_00 (08:22):
the one hand, that might look like dominating by
like kind of converting otherpeople.
And so your kind of goal is toerase non-Christianity from
existence.
I don't think that allevangelistic efforts are that.
I think some genuinely are anattempt to communicate good
news.
Same way like if there was somedisease out there and there was
(08:44):
a cure that you'd want to becommunicating to people, like
there's a cure, right?
That's not what Christiansupremacy is.
It's built on this notion thatChristians have this God-given
right to...
occupy the center of culture andsociety and to kind of be at the
helm, to be the leaders and tocontrol legislation.
(09:06):
And it's the, I feel like thefruit that it bears is, is
bitter because what I'm learningas a, as a father, you know, is
just how, first of all, howimpossible controlling your
children or other people reallyis.
And secondly, like that, whenyou attempt to control other
people, they hate it.
(09:26):
They reject it.
It builds resentment.
It breeds division andbitterness.
So, I mean, we can talk aboutthis soon as well, but as you
know, I really believe that ifyou look at a family, a
dysfunctional family that has alot of control issues...
That is usually not from ahealthy place.
(09:48):
That is really rooted in somekind of dysfunction, some kind
of trauma, some kind of, it'srooted in something negative and
dysfunctional itself.
And then it manifests as anattempt to control, let's say
children or your spouse or yourfriends or something.
The fact that Christian circleshave a real control problem
(10:09):
means that we need to actuallyask like, what's like the pain
deep down?
that continues to drive thisbehavior that hurts other
people?
SPEAKER_01 (10:19):
Right.
Yeah, that's such a goodquestion.
And I love how you interweavetrauma into history in your
work.
And with all the research I'vebeen doing, I've also been
seeing how the way thePortuguese acted in India, the
way the Brits acted in India,was really a reaction to other
(10:44):
events in global Christianityhappening on their continent,
the European continent, right?
I mean, so these are folks in apost-Reformation world.
And with the PortugueseCatholics, they they were
vicious in their evangelismbecause they were being accused
as not being Christian enough,not being evangelistic enough,
(11:09):
you know, of being a dead faith.
That was kind of the accusationslevied against them, right, by
the reformers.
And so with PortugueseCatholics, you had, yeah, you
had them send the Jesuits, youknow, as their evangelistic arm.
And you see these Jesuit fathersacting in really weird ways I
mean I have a lot of Jesuits inmy life today they're some of my
(11:32):
closest friends and they're thegentlest sweetest people I come
across who have learned from thehistorical errors of their order
but the Jesuits back then whowere sent as missionaries to
India hand in hand with thePortuguese Empire were not
Jesuits like that and it'sbecause they were reacting they
were coming from a place oftrauma of other events happening
in Europe so that would just beone example of things that shape
(11:53):
us yeah what do you think?
shock troops
SPEAKER_00 (11:56):
right that's what the jesuits the church's shock
troops go anywhere do anythingat the drop of the pope's hat
right that's like what that'swhat they were known for
rigorous now it's interestingbecause like in in you know
today's canada around the greatlakes back in the early 1600s
the jesuits were very activethere too and compared with
(12:17):
later mission efforts at likesort of the high tide of
civilizationalist colonialism.
Compared with those missionarieslater on, these Jesuits seemed
really committed to, notnecessarily, I wouldn't call it
gentle, but like culturallystrategic.
Rather than like take the land,dehumanize the people, and kind
(12:39):
of erase them, which is thelater settler colonial way.
In the Great Lakes, at least,the Jesuits were always, they
were somewhat outliers, likethey were, there wasn't that
many of them.
And so maybe that was why, butthey certainly acted with more
respect, learning locallanguages, doing the
translating.
especially into the Wendat orHuron language.
(13:00):
So it's just interesting.
They're a strange group ofextremists.
And sometimes that extremism wasreally incredible.
And sometimes it was reallybrutal.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (13:09):
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm thinking ofspecific accounts of Jesuit
fathers in southern India whostarted sending communication
back home.
So we still have their letterswhere they're telling the king
of Portugal and the pope, looklike, you know, we need to
understand the local religionsbetter if we're going to attack
(13:33):
it and if we're going to presentChristianity as supreme.
And so some of these Jesuitfathers, you know, then go on to
study the local religions,various sects of Hinduism.
And for that, they actually endup studying the languages,
right?
And they come up with theselanguage studies and they go
(13:54):
deep into religious literatureof these religions.
And the next thing you know,they're seeing things in there
that...
the rest of the Catholic Churchisn't seeing.
So then they're writing backhome saying, look, we're seeing
evidences of Christ beingrevealed possibly to these
cultures.
They have things, they havevirtues in common with us.
(14:16):
These are very sophisticatedadvanced religions.
These aren't primitive religionsthat we assume they were.
And then they get letters backfrom Portugal and the Vatican
saying, you weren't sent thereto study the culture.
Just stick to your job.
You weren't sent there to, youknow, to be an apologist for
their religion.
(14:36):
You were sent there to representChrist.
So, you know, be a Christian inall the supreme ways possible,
right?
So I think historical accountslike that also explain so much
about how we may have gottenhere with Christian supremacy.
SPEAKER_00 (14:49):
And isn't that just so, like the irony is so thick,
right?
You were sent, like the way youjust worded it, you're sent
there to be a actualconnections, relational
connections with these people inSouth India, of course your
perspective starts to shift.
It's like when you know someone,to love your neighbor, to love
(15:12):
another person, you must becurious about them and know
them, right?
There's no other.
And so it's just funny becauseto me that sounds like they were
actually in that momentrepresenting Christ to these
people.
and respecting not just thethings in the various, because
right, there's no Hinduism.
(15:32):
That's kind of a Westernconstruct, right?
So you have to be regional.
and competing sometimes, right?
Different schools ofspirituality and philosophy,
right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:42):
Right, yeah.
I mean, if anything, in manyways, many Hindu scholars today,
many Indian historians todayargue that modern day Hinduism
was a reaction to colonialismand the attacks on the
indigenous faith from thisforeign colonizer faith that was
coming in.
And it's interesting because atthe same time, you have Indian
(16:04):
Christians who have lived therepeacefully for 15 centuries And
they're not engaging in this.
They've learned to live inpeaceful pluralism with everyone
else.
But then you've got this Westernversion of Christianity that,
yeah, is acting in Christiansupremacist ways.
SPEAKER_00 (16:18):
So, yeah, see, that's the word, right?
The word is, and you said it,the word is supreme.
And I just think I'd like totake a second to just take to
contrast how different sayingthe gospel is good news is
saying Christianity is supreme.
Those don't technically have tohave anything in common with
(16:40):
each other.
We usually kind of think of themas almost synonymous.
Maybe saying ChristianitySupreme is a little extreme, but
the sentiment is still there.
You could just say it's thetruest religion or something
like that.
No, sorry, it's the one truereligion.
I don't know.
When I say that, Christian...
(17:03):
Christianity as the supremereligion or supreme truth versus
the good news.
Like what kind of things come toyour mind?
SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
Wow.
Wow.
That's so good.
Yeah.
I think we also have to read thegood news part in context,
right?
Otherwise we kind of get lost inthe weeds.
So for example, where we getthat from, you know, the reason
why the gospel is called thegospel is because it's the good
news of Jesus that he proclaimsin Luke chapter four, verse 18,
where Jesus says, the spirit ofthe Lord is upon me to preach
good news and to the poor and tothe oppressed, to the captive,
(17:34):
right?
We've over-spiritualized thesetexts in a very Gnostic way, in
a very disembodied way becauseof colonialism and slavery and
our support for it as theWestern church.
And then today, you have a veryreduced, amputated version of
this good news that's justspiritual in nature, that
(17:56):
doesn't have room for physicalliberation for people in poverty
and oppression.
And so then you have the Westernchurch participating in poverty
and oppression and enablingfurther poverty and oppression
in the global South because, oreven here with indigenous
communities here, becausethey've lost the good news.
So that's what I think of.
SPEAKER_00 (18:16):
You know, when you bring up, I like how you said
that.
You said it's an amputated, whatwas the other word?
Gnostic, amputated, disembodied,right?
All of those things are veryvisceral, embodied images that
helps us realize exactly what isis missing um but but something
(18:37):
i like to to bring up is youknow that kind of idea that or
that posture that like thegospel is kind of over
spiritualized and what it'sreally about is spiritual
realities um after death likewhat is the good news is really
and this is not what i thinkthis is the evangelical sort of
way is you don't have to go tohell everyone else has to go to
(18:58):
hell but you don't have to andthat's sort of the good news If
you really want to get down tobrass tacks in evangelical
circles.
And I'm like, that sounds like acompletely different story in
every way than what Jesus wastalking about.
It doesn't sound even related.
(19:20):
You said, I'm here to proclaimgood news to the poor, to the
oppressed, right?
Yeah.
And the thing is, if the goodnews is really just about like,
we can't really, there's no goodnews in this life.
It's just the next.
Then that's what that is, isnihilism.
Yes.
Nihilism claims that there'ssort of no meaning to life.
(19:44):
And what I have found is, isChristians are often some of the
most nihilistic people I know.
SPEAKER_01 (19:50):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (19:51):
To have that perspective that like the
environment doesn't reallymatter is nihilism.
To have that perspective thatlike God will one day fix
everything, that can be hope.
But in some people's, when itcomes out of some people's
mouth, it's profoundlydisempowering.
And it's like what it's reallysaying is we can't really do
anything.
(20:11):
So hopefully God will magicallydo it when we die.
And you start to, again, startto think that really doesn't
sound anything like the gospelthat came out of Jesus' mouth
and his life and action.
SPEAKER_01 (20:25):
It
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
doesn't even seem related.
SPEAKER_01 (20:27):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't sound like good news,especially to people in poverty
and oppression.
Right.
And so one of my favorite thingsthat liberation theologians, one
of my favorite things that I'velearned from liberation
theologians, rather, is that ifit's not good news to people in
poverty and oppression.
that it's not the good news ofJesus.
(20:49):
And that's a biblical statement.
That's not just a theologicalstatement.
That's straight out of Luke 4,18.
Jesus's words, Jesus'sdefinition of the gospel, right?
I sometimes ask people, hey,whose definition of the gospel
would you rather buy into?
Jesus's or John MacArthur's,right?
And I often have people tell me,well, you know, I prefer Paul's
definition of the gospel overJesus' definition of the gospel,
(21:11):
to which I'm just like, well,congratulations, you've played
to yourself.
SPEAKER_00 (21:16):
Right.
Just if I can put you on thespot.
Yeah, yeah.
If someone asks you, what is itabout what Jesus said and did
that was good news to the poorand oppressed?
What was it about him that wouldhave made the poor feel a sense
of relief, of energy, ofexcitement, of hope wash over
(21:39):
them?
SPEAKER_01 (21:40):
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's so good.
Such a great question.
And, you know, I have a lot ofthoughts since I just wrote a
whole book about it.
But I would say, like, hestarted at the very beginning of
his life and ministry and art.
Like, just his life, right?
His incarnation.
He could have chosen to...
(22:02):
come as a Kardashian if hewanted to.
He could have chosen to come asa Bay Street billionaire if he
wanted to.
Instead, he showed up in thatera of time in a very colonized,
occupied society.
And even within that society, hecould have chosen to be born in
Herod's family as God.
He could have been chosen to gowherever he wanted to.
(22:24):
But he chose to be born in amanger to a family dealing with
a teenage pregnancy, honor-shameculture.
And he chose to be born at atime of genocide and violence.
And then he chose to...
live as a homeless, unhousedperson his entire life on earth,
(22:47):
his entire ministry on earth,and a poor carpenter's son, and
ultimately chose the cross.
He chose to be murdered by thestate innocently.
He chose to be put to death on across and tortured and murdered.
And so that Jesus, who is asuffering savior, is good news
(23:07):
to people in poverty andoppression.
Because that Jesus knows whatit's like to suffer.
That Jesus knows what it's liketo be betrayed.
That Jesus knows what it's liketo die as an innocent victim of
state violence.
And so Jesus is good news.
Jesus himself is good news tothe poor and the oppressed.
(23:28):
But so often the church hasfailed to communicate that to
the poor and the oppressed byjust...
oppressing people who are poorand oppressed instead of meeting
their physical needs, instead ofcaring for them.
And what's funny is you don'tsee this in the early church.
In the early church, youactually see them caring for
people's physical needs.
They were known in Roman societyfor that, right?
(23:49):
And they weren't perfect, butthey got that right.
But then over time, you see withpower coming in, and I mean,
you're a historian, you knowthis better than me, and you can
speak to this better than I can.
But my sense is that with powercoming in, And, you know, the
crusades and colonization andthings like that, you have that
(24:11):
shaping us to be very resistantto justice, to only preaching a
spiritual gospel when the gospelis both spiritual and physical.
But yeah, I'd love to get yourthoughts in on all this.
Weyen, what are you thinking asI say all that?
SPEAKER_00 (24:28):
Yeah, I think what we have to talk about, grapple
with, arguably more thananything, is empire is a hell of
a drug.
And when Christians got a tasteof empire, it forever changed
everything.
And I think it's important.
It's easy for us to say, oh, thechurch got corrupt when it had
(24:48):
power and money.
It's not the power and themoney.
That's the real problem.
That's not the real drug ofempire.
UNKNOWN (24:57):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00 (24:57):
The real drug of empire is control and dominance
over others.
That's the real hit.
Power and money, especiallywealth.
I think sometimes we do that inthe church.
We can like sort of practicelike a form of self-shaming
where we're like, we have thisrandom number in our head where
it's like too much for people tohave.
And everyone who has more is,you know, bad in some way.
(25:20):
I don't think it's about money.
Money is just a tool thatamplifies like what you're
about.
That's what I think.
I think you can get caught up inthe pursuit of wealth and forget
yourself, forget what you'reabout.
But I think the real problem forthe church started when it got
that taste for control.
Like when Constantine has thisweird conversion, like whatever
(25:43):
it was that happened there,there's just different
interpretations.
We'll never know for sure,right?
Yeah.
But, you know, he welcomesChristians into the halls of
power.
And really, the question is likehe wants he wants them to help
him reform his empire, make itstronger, make it more.
Yeah, because it had been inthis state of decay.
(26:04):
And so he saw in Christianitywith its one God, with its like
highly structured systemsalready, he saw a real
opportunity.
Right.
And I believe he really did havethe experience he had.
where he had this vision of theChristian God giving him
victory.
I believe he had thatexperience.
I don't know what thatexperience means.
I don't know if that experiencewas from God, but I believe he
(26:27):
had it and believed that theChristian God had given him
victory and had given him favorto see Constantine make Rome
great again.
Because that had been, for thelast 50 to 60 years before
Constantine, that was kind ofthe emperor's goal, was reviving
Rome.
Very nostalgic, very similar tothe American MAGA movement and
(26:52):
stuff like that.
Make it great again, based insome kind of fantasizing about
the past.
So Christians get ushered in,and it's not like, here's a
bunch of money and a bunch ofpower, and they go like, oh,
we're slowly becoming corrupted.
It's like, hey, I want youguys...
to kind of reform my societymorally and culturally and
(27:13):
religiously.
And it's that part, to me,that's the most dangerous
moment.
Because the Christians said, andyou can't blame people for
rising to a challenge.
I don't think they should havejust been like, we're out of
here.
Well, some of them did do that,right?
Literally, the monastic movementkind of starts because they say,
(27:34):
we're out of here.
Yeah.
But I'm not saying you shirk allresponsibility.
It's just that very quicklyChristians turned around and
became the persecutor.
They did not love their enemiesin the way that they would have
wanted to be treated.
They didn't after they gainedaccess to state, like to the
(27:56):
project, the machinery of thestate.
And that makes me like reallysad and enraged and go into like
a what if kind of mode.
Why do we have to turn soquickly and be like, Okay, now,
you know, because within 50,half a century after
Constantine, which was thatwhole period after him was very
much like theologicalinfighting, like which group is
(28:17):
going to be the officialChristianity?
Is it going to be Nicene or isit going to be Arian?
Back and forth, back and forth,back and forth.
Mutual exiles of, you know, butwhen they settle finally on
Nicene Christianity in the year380, it's like within a couple
years, this new persecutionmovement begins, right?
Paganism, you can't be a paganand hold public office.
(28:38):
You can't be a heretic and yourwritings can be taken and burned
just like they did under likeSeverus and Decius and stuff
like that earlier.
SPEAKER_01 (28:48):
That
SPEAKER_00 (28:49):
taste of like, hey, we're at the center now.
We've got the backing.
We can remake society.
That is a moment to be verynervous when a group is like
remake society quickly.
and through legislation.
Be on guard when that starts tohappen because that's probably
not going to go well for anyonewho isn't aligned.
(29:13):
Yeah, I think its origin is inthe church as a persecuted
group, an oppressed group whothen gains access to power over
their enemies.
SPEAKER_01 (29:22):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (29:23):
I just think that it was overwhelming.
And I think in that moment, thechurch kind of lost sight of
itself and its vision.
And unfortunately, its visiondid change then.
It quickly, the Christian visionmutated into an empire.
We can conquer.
Now that didn't have to meanmilitarily, but it did come to
mean that.
(29:43):
But it was like, we can conquerspiritually.
We can defeat paganismlegislatively.
All of that is a very differentproject than the project the
early church was involved in.
SPEAKER_01 (29:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, I've been chewing on itthrough the lens of the Lord of
the Rings lately, where I thinkof Frodo getting the Ring of
Power and how that transformedhim completely from the inside
and on the outsidesignificantly, right?
Yeah.
But it reminds me so much ofwell-meaning Christians that
(30:20):
I've seen both in the politicalworld, and I thought I was
leaving this in the politicalworld when I left that world,
but I continue to see it in theChristian ministry world today
where people who are seriousabout their faith, want to do
good in the world, like youtalked about intent, want to
make the world a better place,restructure society, do all
this.
They come in with thoseaspirations, and the next thing
(30:43):
you know, They get their tasteof power and control and
dominance and wealth and empire.
And it changes them.
It transforms them.
The best of people.
My whole time in the politicalworld, I can think of one
elected official friend of minewho stayed true to his original
(31:03):
conscience and paid the pricefor it.
greatly.
He's the former lieutenantgovernor of Georgia, Jeff
Duncan.
He spoke out on some stuff andwas crucified for it by his
party and is a pariah today.
Could never run for office, cannever run for office again, at
least not as a Republican, theparty left.
But yeah, I mean, I've just seenit transform the best of people
(31:29):
in the worst ways possible.
And it's just, It'sheartbreaking.
It can happen to the best of us.
I'd be foolish to think that...
I mean, it did happen to me too,to a degree, which is why I had
to get out.
And now I'm discerning my futurein the Christian nonprofit space
(31:49):
because I see it here too.
And so I'm thinking, how do I befaithful to the opportunities
I've been entrusted with whileat the same time not losing
myself to the allures of empireand power?
control and dominance.
SPEAKER_00 (32:05):
Yeah.
I feel like that really, that'sexactly like what I'm trying to
get at.
And the fact that you've kind ofseen it firsthand in the world
of political power is superhelpful for us.
It makes me think, you know, Ibrought this up already, but I'm
learning a lot about control,having kids, what is possible
(32:28):
and what isn't.
And when my daughter...
I have two daughters, 10 and 7.
But when my first daughter was,you know, her first couple years
of life, I was operatingdefinitely out of a like
controlling kind of paradigmwhere, you know, it was nothing
extreme, but it was just like myposture towards her was one of
(32:50):
like, you're going to go likewayward and I need to keep you
in check kind of all the time.
And While yes, that's necessaryfor sticking a fork in an
outlet, sticking a fork in anoutlet is different than the
kind of things that you'reexploring or you're interested
in.
If we're always feeling likeeveryone's in existential danger
(33:14):
at all times, then you're goingto always react with emergency
measures.
And that's another big part ofchurch history that I try to
explore is there were times whenthe church did initiate
emergency measures because theywere necessary.
Society was sticking a fork inan outlet with the fall collapse
of the Western Roman Empire.
And the church stepped up anddid the hard thing and took
(33:36):
responsibility.
But it's like, you don't want tolet go of it.
You don't want to let go of it.
And that's the part that'sreally intriguing me is like,
you know, with billionaires, wetalk about how, you know, like,
what do they care if they get atax break?
Like, what does money even meanto them?
And I've been thinking aboutthat a lot in the last few
weeks, obviously, with all thebillionaires having their
(33:57):
heyday.
And I think we got to just comeclean about it, that it's not
about money anymore at thatpoint.
Power is the drug that drivesour desire for money anyways,
right?
Money is power.
And so I feel like that appetitewe have is almost like an
infinite void, craving more andmore control over others and
(34:17):
situations until we can controllife and death itself.
But There's some emptinessinside us, a vacuum.
And I am not a person who thinkspower is evil.
To be empowered, to be full ofenergy and capability, to be
well-connected and being able toenact and do things is amazing.
(34:42):
I think everybody should look intheir life and figure out where
they're being disempowered andwhy, what beliefs are driving
that.
But I feel like once you get ataste for, hey, it's a taste for
victory almost.
The Constantinian churchexperienced what we could call
victory.
SPEAKER_01 (34:59):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (34:59):
Like you never want to go back.
You never want to lose thatagain, especially when you're a
traumatized people.
You know, I think there'ssomething big to the church when
it finally gained Constantine'sfavor saying like, we're not
going back.
God brought us through that timeof persecution and we are not
going back to that again.
SPEAKER_01 (35:19):
You know, you're so right, Brad.
I mean, I think of Christians,not just in North America, who
feel persecuted right now.
I'm also talking about thepersecuted church because I've
interacted with persecutedchurch leaders over the last few
months.
So I was just in Sri Lanka for aglobal church conference on
justice and freedom and got tosit with so many persecuted
(35:41):
church leaders who don't mindpersecution.
and who don't mind Christiannationalism in the States
because they have the trauma ofbeing shaped by their persecuted
context.
And so I was actually thinkingabout your work a lot when I was
in Sri Lanka because we'dconnected right before and
(36:03):
thinking about trauma andthinking of persecuted church
trauma even today and wonderinghow is this going to play out in
the future?
Because, you know, I know GlobalSouth Christians who fled to
North America and are now votingin North American elections, and
they don't seem to mindChristian nationalism, even
(36:23):
though there are racist elementsto it, even though there are
religious nationalisticinfluences to it that could hurt
them and their relatives andtheir home country.
So for example, I had a relativein my family recently who voted
for Christian nationalism in thelast American election.
basically reach out and say,wait a second, this person's
(36:45):
supporting all the extremists inmy country now and all the
authoritarians in my country.
And that's concerning to me.
That's not what I signed up for.
And it's almost like thiscognitive dissonance of...
You know, what's bad for onecategory of neighbors?
Like, you wanted to go after onecategory of neighbors, so you
voted for Christian nationalism.
But it's going to be bad for allof us long term, including the
(37:08):
oppressors.
And I think that's something wehave to reckon with.
And I'm curious to see how itplays out in the years to come.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
Yeah, it seems like a critical part of, you know, if
Jesus is actually our modeland...
lord and all those words we usethen the one of the most
critical question is like whatdoes he what if what what is his
posture towards power towardsdominance what does it look like
(37:38):
in practice and i feel like weneed to really like re take
another look at the cross andresurrection maybe for a while
put aside our theological normsand become a little bit more
disoriented with it and be like,what is really going on here?
What is, why is this good news?
(37:59):
And try to like forgeteverything that we've known
because he's confronting, he'scoming up against, like this is
God in flesh coming up againstthe greatest power of his day,
right?
And like what is done in thatencounter, right?
(38:20):
I just think we need to slow waydown.
Maybe, I mean, this is Lentright now.
It's kind of the time to dothat, right?
The Passion will be coming upand Holy Week and all that.
And you're a sacramental guynow, so you're probably got your
schedule booked for that.
But just take a moment to belike, to see the arch dominating
power of his time, coming intocontact with him directly, Jesus
(38:44):
being the actual ultimate powerof all time.
And to see what he does and whathis actions are there, I feel
like there might be somethingthere worth really meditating on
if we want to dismantle andstart to loosen ourselves from
this legacy, especially for me,this legacy of Christian
(39:04):
supremacy, which really livesinside me, my body.
My ancestors have been thosepeople around the world, you
know?
They weren't the Portuguese, butthey were the British and they
were the Germans, right?
So it's like Christian supremacyis in some ways like a lot of my
(39:25):
ancestry.
And I don't know, I just, Idon't fully know what to do with
that.
SPEAKER_01 (39:32):
Yeah, yeah.
You know, quite honestly, Brad,it may not seem like it on the
surface, but as a St.
Thomas Indian Christian, it'salso part of my legacy.
It's part of what I've inheritedtoo, because...
My ancestors were not withoutfault.
They participated in the casteoppression of their neighbors.
(39:52):
And I haven't done enoughhistory to see what theology may
have motivated that.
But there is a good chance thatit was also motivated by a
different flavor of Christiansupremacy, right?
And just this need to be on topof the pecking order and
control.
And that's actually one of thereasons why My family has our
(40:16):
lineages preserved so well.
It's because we needed it todefend ourselves in the caste
system and hence participate inthe caste oppression of our
lower caste neighbors.
So all of us have our blindspots.
All of us need each other topoint out our blind spots.
So for example, the BritishAnglican CMS missionaries showed
(40:39):
up a few centuries after thePortuguese you know, to convert
the heathens and discover thatthere have been, again, the same
thing that Portuguese discoveredSt.
Thomas Indian Christians.
And then start to have dialoguewith lower caste Christian
converts, lower caste Hindus,and realize that St.
(40:59):
Thomas Indian Christians hadparticipated in the caste
oppression of their lower casteneighbors.
So, you know, we give...
the British the credit for theirliberation, but it's really
these lower caste Christianconverts who brought their
plight to the attention of theseBritish missionaries who
explained the caste system,because they didn't understand
(41:21):
this as foreigners coming in,who explained their plight,
sought their own liberation, andthen we were able to see some
reform in the St.
Thomas Indian Church because ofthe influence of British
missionaries who acted becausemarginalized people spoke up for
their own liberation.
So I have to reckon with thattoo and see how that shapes me
(41:42):
today in Christian supremacistways.
SPEAKER_00 (41:45):
Yeah, so acting more as mediators.
So rather than seeing...
That would be in some wayssimilar to the abolitionists.
Right.
Like abolitionists were moremediators between the stories of
people like Equiano, right?
But I think that can bring usfull circle because there's
something about...
(42:07):
There's some necessary actionneeded to like, how do we loosen
our grip?
You know, I'm a person, I have alot of respect for other
traditions too.
And it's not some like, thisisn't something I'm trying to
say.
It's just, it's kind of how Iwas raised, which is I'm really
grateful for.
Like I was raised in a home thatwas not controlling.
(42:29):
I was raised in a home where wegathered regularly and discussed
kind of what we were into atthat moment.
There's a lot of curiosity in myfamily.
And this is a rare thing.
This is a very rare gift tohave.
What I'm just thinking about inthis moment is like one of the
most central aspects of theBuddhist way is that, you know,
(42:50):
like the famous first nobletruth.
the buddha taught was that likelife is suffering and suffering
is caused by desire i alwayshated that line because i
thought no desire is what makesus alive and i've recently
learned that a better a bettertranslation for that is
suffering comes not from desirebut from clinging from grip wow
(43:12):
from being unable to likerelinquish that grip and so that
that has been really helpful tome in a my life with my children
I am their like protector andprovider and all that, but I'm
not their like controller.
I'm not their like master.
I'm their dad.
(43:32):
And so that's, it's made methink about that.
And it's also made me look atsort of Jesus's life in a way
of, and I start to see, I don'tsee him as someone going around
like dominating.
He seems to hold people somewhatloosely, give them the choice to
come or not.
I don't know.
There's something about Jesus'slike lack of like grip not a
(43:54):
strangling figure while a lot ofthe church's history it's been
even if it's done good it's alsobeen a strangled cultures and
people
SPEAKER_01 (44:04):
yeah yeah i mean you're so right about jesus
though i've been chewing latelyon uh jesus's interaction with
our our disabled neighbors rightlike um Jesus doesn't go up to
them and presume they want to behealed.
He asks them every single time,do you want to be healed?
Right?
He gives them agency.
He gives them power, gives themcontrol as the son of God,
(44:30):
right?
In his full divinity and hisfull humanity, he gives us
agency, not just in putting ourfaith in him, but also in, hey,
do you want me to heal you?
Do you want to be healed?
Kind of a thing.
And I think it's beautiful.
I think, you know, and the moreI've study disability theology,
the more I've appreciated theirappreciation for this agency
(44:51):
too, because the reality is thatmany of our disabled neighbors
If you ask them, hey, in the newcreation, do you want to be
fully healed?
They say, no.
I love my body.
I've come to love my body.
I've come to love itsquirkiness.
And I feel at home in my body.
It'd be really weird for me tobe healed.
(45:13):
And then there are some who say,no, I would love to be healed.
And I long for that kind of athing.
But Regardless, Jesus gives usagency.
And I have to think that thesame Jesus on this side of
eternity who gave that agencywill also give us agency on the
other side of eternity.
SPEAKER_00 (45:32):
So like empowering people to sort of, it's so
essential.
You know, this word has beendemonized in some Christian
circles, but the word autonomy.
We want to talk about how likeautonomy is evil.
It's like us against God.
And I'm kind of like a littlebit done with that.
Because again, I keep drawingfrom this, but it's pretty
(45:53):
essential, right?
Like Jesus, one of the mostrevolutionary things he does is
he, theologically, is he changesour orientation towards God as
one of child and parent.
That is critical to hisunderstanding of who God is.
And I think we continue to goback into, and there's nothing
wrong with this, but like God asking, us as subject.
(46:15):
I don't think that's, I thinkthat actually in some ways,
that's one metaphor.
it's not the primary metaphorand yet in a lot of western
christian history it definitelyis the primary metaphor king
subject but if the primary if ifthe main way that jesus is
teaching us how to relate to godis as loving parent and child
(46:36):
then that means what we learnabout parenting and what makes
for healthy parent-childrelationships is of critical
theological importance for us.
But I know again, from being,from seeing my kids, when they,
if they were like thesecompliant, shut down, quiet
kids, I would be worried.
I'd be taking them to thedoctor.
(46:57):
I'd be like, where's theirenergy?
Where's their autonomy?
I think Jesus, the way you'redescribing it, empowered each
person to kind of, you know, getin the driver's seat of their
life and make like, come back tolife.
And, you know, can I touch you?
Can I heal you?
Do you want to follow me?
And no one was forced to doanything.
(47:19):
And Jesus didn't line people upin a line to make sure none of
them, or as few as possible,didn't go to hell.
I just think we're wrong aboutthe whole project.
I think the goal is to becomefully human, and a fully healthy
human is autonomous.
And I don't mean that in anatomistic way, like isolated.
They are part of an ecosystem,but they are a critical
(47:42):
component in that ecosystem.
of relational web of relations,right?
With other people, withcreation.
I think we have a lot to learn.
Yeah.
In a time when there is thisnew, and we have been here many,
many, many times before.
This is not where it's like,Hey, Christians, we need to like
(48:02):
take control of society, grabthe legislature by the horns and
like what's best.
Cause that's what God wants.
Like, Oh, we're back here again.
Haven't we done that enough andtried it and it didn't produce
the society we wanted?
SPEAKER_01 (48:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
100%.
I mean, without taking anynames, I recently came across a
very influential,ex-evangelical, progressive
Christian influencer and had aconversation with this person.
(48:40):
And this person kept talkingtalking about how, you know,
we're the good guys here.
We need to take, this is rightafter the presidential election
in the U.S., but this person istelling me, you know, I feel
like we progressives, not that Iidentify as a progressive, but
he's talking for his own tribe,he's like, I feel like we
progressives need to takecontrol of things and, you know,
(49:02):
We need to use the tools ofempire better than empire does.
We need to take control of thosetools of empire.
And I just remember feelingreally weirded out at that
moment and being like, thatfeels a little weird.
I don't know if I can go thatfar.
I think we need to decolonizethat perspective a little bit.
And then sure enough...
Just a tiny bit.
(49:23):
We just need to decolonize thata little.
Yeah, exactly.
And sure enough, a few weekslater...
huge scandal breaks out aboutthis person for abuse of power.
Wow.
And to me, all I could think ofwhen those allegations came out,
(49:44):
those confirmed allegations fromsurvivor accounts came out, was,
my goodness, this person in ourconversation kept saying how he
wanted control of the tools ofEmpire.
And I kept getting weirded outby that.
But there's something there.
There's something there.
Like, Just the whole longing forthat should be examined and
(50:04):
should be deconstructed anddecolonized because that is not
from Christ.
That is not of Christ, thatdesire to control the outcome.
And even in that conversation,my challenge to this brother
was, I don't think we're calledto be successful.
I think we're called to befaithful.
And I think...
That's the outcome we shouldstrive towards, us being
faithful regardless of theoutcome.
(50:26):
But I hope and pray the best forthis friend.
But I think we need to watch outfor things like that too.
SPEAKER_00 (50:34):
Yeah, you keep saying that phrase, keeps
jumping out at me, the tools ofempire.
Because what is the main tool,physical tool of empire in
Scripture?
The sword.
UNKNOWN (50:48):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (50:49):
The sword is the main tool, the implement, right?
The physical implement of empireis the sword.
Whether that's cutting flesh orpointing it with the threat,
it's all, that's what the tooldoes.
It uses fear of pain to enforcecontrol.
And it's the sword that isturned into the pruning hook,
(51:13):
right?
That's what's beaten into theplowshare.
I want to keep that phrase frontand center if we have future
conversations.
Because I think when we talkabout empire, it can get a
little bit abstract.
But once you bring it back downto the gritty, metallic, bloody
(51:33):
tool of empire, it's the swordor the gun.
And that's cut apart, bent,hammered into something new.
Something that is for fruit,right?
UNKNOWN (51:44):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (51:44):
So good.
So good.
I think we should end thisconversation on that note.
I don't have anything better toadd to
SPEAKER_00 (51:50):
that.
That's
SPEAKER_01 (51:51):
just gold right there.
SPEAKER_00 (51:53):
Well, yeah, this has been really, really awesome,
Josh.
Thank you for being here.
I hope we can talk again soon.
What I'm kind of drawn to is I'dlike to dive into some Indian
stuff more.
I'd love to think about a littlebit more.
Maybe you can share at somepoint with You talked about how
the St.
Thomas Christians lived in kindof a peaceful, pluralistic
world, even though theyparticipated in the caste
(52:14):
system.
I'd love to know all I can abouthow they engaged with the
various philosophies andspiritual traditions around
them, what Christians might beable to learn from some of those
traditions.
But that's just one thing.
I feel like we've got a lot totalk about.
Just scratch the
SPEAKER_01 (52:32):
surface.
Yeah, yeah.
No, totally.
And as we close here, Brad, Iwant to give you an opportunity
to update us on the differentcourses that you offer.
I know last I heard there was await list for one.
What can we expect with theincredible course offerings that
you have?
SPEAKER_00 (52:51):
Well, right now, the best thing you can do if you
want to learn more about thistrauma and church history, I
created a free course calledIt's a quick one.
You can get through it in, whatis it, like an hour and a half
or something like that.
If you go to my website,bradleymela.com slash free, you
(53:12):
can sign up for the course,which is called Ancestral Trauma
in the Church.
And you'll start to dig intothis, like how deep this rabbit
hole goes of the pain that liesat the heart of church history
or at the beginning thatcontinues to affect us now.
So If you want to check thatout, yes, bradleymala.com slash
free, and you can sign up there.
(53:33):
And I also wouldn't mind if youcould talk briefly, just give
us, you have a book coming out.
Can you give us some moredetails?
Yeah, I
SPEAKER_01 (53:43):
mean, I would just say, you know, the book is
available for pre-orders.
The response in Canada has beenoverwhelming.
I mean, even in the U.S., onAmazon U.S., it was in the top
30 for a few categories likeChristian ethics and
discipleship and pastoralresources.
But in Canada, it was number onefor like the first week of
pre-orders, which is justhumbling as a first-time author,
(54:04):
especially as one from anunderrepresented community in
Christian publishing.
So, yes, so, you know, dosupport that, you know, go sign
up for Brad's course.
Yeah, I mean, the fact that it'sfree is phenomenal.
I mean, take full advantage ofthat by all means.
And then, yeah, do pre-order mybook as well.
(54:24):
It's called The Justice ofJesus.
And it comes out this September,but pre-order is alive.
And honestly...
If you wanted to do a deep diveinto everything we've talked
about, because we've done morelong-form work there, I think
this is the place for folks togo and get more information.
If we've even piqued theircuriosity with this
(54:45):
conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (54:46):
Beauty.
I love it.
And for those who want to buypre-order, but buy Canadian,
what do you suggest?
SPEAKER_01 (54:53):
Yeah, yeah.
So still working on it.
You can go to Indigo and getlike a e-reader version.
You can also call your locallibrary or your local bookstore
and ask them to order theJustice of Jesus copies.
So I have folks in Winnipegwho've done that with local
bookstores there.
(55:14):
So yeah, by all means, buyCanadian and support an
underrepresented voice inpublishing.
SPEAKER_00 (55:20):
All right, Joash.
Hopefully we can get you onagain soon.
Thank you so much for being hereand sharing some of your story
with us and your brilliantinsights.
SPEAKER_01 (55:29):
Too kind.
Yeah.
Lovely to be here.
And thanks for having me, Brad.
Great conversation.
All right.
So it has been a while sinceI've been on here doing this
podcast, but I'm really excitedto be back at it and have big
plans for it.
(00:20):
And today I am joined by one ofmy new friends.
One of my new good friends.
Are we there yet?
I
SPEAKER_01 (00:28):
think we're there.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
This is Reverend Joash Thomas, and we discovered,
I had been following him onlinefor a while, and I discovered
that he lived about 10 minutesaway from me.
And it was, what a great daythat was.
Yeah, it's
SPEAKER_01 (00:46):
only gone uphill since then.
Yeah, in a good way.
SPEAKER_00 (00:49):
Yeah, and so it's just exciting to meet someone
that you respect and are alignedwith in a lot of ways just down
the road.
And so I am super pumped thatyou're here on the podcast with
me.
And yeah, just for my listeners,why don't you tell them a little
bit about just who you are?
SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
Yeah, thanks, Brad.
Great to be here.
Yeah, my name is Joe Ash Thomas.
I live in Hamilton, Ontario, asyou've already heard.
I feel like I'm from everywhereand nowhere at the same time.
So I was born and raised inMumbai, India, spent the first
18 years of my childhood there.
I then moved to the US, livedthere, worked as a political
(01:34):
consultant, lobbyist in a pastlife, and then Jesus saved me
again.
And And yeah, I've been workingin international human rights
over the past decade.
Worked in three countries overthe past 10 years for one of the
largest Christian human rightsorganizations.
I now work as a fundraisingleader.
(01:57):
And a big part of my work ismobilizing the church to
prioritize justice and offeringdifferent ways to do that.
So yeah, I'm an ordained deaconwith the Diocese of St.
Anthony.
Recently ordained, so wearing mycollar You probably can't see it
with the beard, but it is there.
It is there.
Believe it.
Especially for those of youlistening, the podcast version
(02:18):
of this.
But yeah, and so I'm an ordaineddeacon currently in discernment
for the priesthood.
And yeah, it's just really coolfor me going from the
evangelical world to thesacramental world over the last
few years.
Born and raised evangelical, butI'm a St.
Thomas Indian Christian.
So my ancestors have beenworshiping Jesus in sacramental
(02:39):
ways for about 2000 years now,about 50 years now.
1500 years before the colonizersshowed up.
So a lot of,
SPEAKER_00 (02:43):
a lot of fun trivia and facts there, but
SPEAKER_01 (02:45):
yeah, that's a
SPEAKER_00 (02:46):
bit about
SPEAKER_01 (02:46):
me.
SPEAKER_00 (02:47):
You know what, you know, you've got it.
Yeah.
You have a pretty fascinatingstory.
I would love to talk about thatmore.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks for being here with me.
This is cool.
SPEAKER_01 (02:55):
Yeah, this is great.
This is great.
Yeah.
And I've admired your work for awhile and I was also pleasantly
surprised to discover that wewere neighbors.
So
SPEAKER_00 (03:03):
it's been great.
So cool.
Well, you know, things in theworld right now in the Western
world, you know, the Christianworld are pretty ugly.
It's not a pretty time.
Something that's important to meis, as a church historian, I
don't really shy away from thedark side of church history.
(03:26):
I think doing that is likeshying away from the dark side
of your own family's history.
It's not going anywhere.
It just gets pushed down.
And so...
You know, obviously this stuff'son my mind a lot.
And I think on yours too, theChristian nationalist movement
(03:46):
in the US, but also across theWestern world.
And sort of a, something I'venoticed about the like Christian
nationalist movements arethey're very like, on the one
hand, they claim to be reallyproud of a Christian heritage
SPEAKER_01 (04:06):
and
SPEAKER_00 (04:06):
yet totally unwilling to deal with the ugly
history of what I think we needto call what it is, which is
Christian supremacy.
And I think I just really wantedto talk to you today and get
some of your thoughts onChristian supremacy, what that
(04:27):
word, what that phrase mightmean to you, kind of where your
mind goes, and what the problemis and what there is to do about
it.
Do you have any initialthoughts?
When I say Christian supremacy,what comes to mind?
SPEAKER_01 (04:42):
Yeah, that's a really great question.
Yeah, so the term Christiansupremacy is a newer one for me.
But as I've been overlaying thatwith everything I've been
researching and writing on howcolonialism has shaped Western
Christianity, it actuallytracks.
So for the uninitiated, I'm...
(05:04):
I've written a book called TheJustice of Jesus, comes out this
September, pre-orders alive.
And one of the core arguments ofthe book is that injustice isn't
just bad for the oppressed, it'salso bad for the oppressor.
And we see this in the historyof colonization where
colonialism wasn't just bad forthe the Global South Church and
(05:25):
the colonizers, also bad for theWestern church and those of us
who've been shaped by it toresist justice for our
marginalized neighbors.
So pulling in Christiannationalism or really Christian
supremacy here, I think, youknow, so just historically If
you look at my ancestors, theywere worshiping Jesus in a very
(05:46):
ecumenical and pluralistic wayfor about 1500 years before the
Portuguese colonizer showed upand then the British colonizer
showed up.
And then both the Portuguese andthe British church tried to
change the St.
Thomas Indian Christian Churchfrom its pluralistic ways with
this mindset of, no,Christianity is supreme to every
(06:10):
other religion and Christ cannotbe revealed to these people from
other religions, to thesepagans, unless they put their
faith in Jesus.
And it was a very different wayof practicing Christianity than
what they'd been doing for about1,500 years before that.
So I think of Christiansupremacy with that historical
(06:33):
lens of what it was like for myancestors to be told that they
had it all wrong for about 1,500years.
And I think Yeah, there's muchwork to be done to unpack that
and see how it's shaped us andalso understand where it's come
from.
And you're a historian, Brad, soyou
SPEAKER_00 (06:52):
tell us about that.
Yeah, see, having thatperspective in this conversation
is so critical.
It's not every day that you meetsomeone whose ancestors were one
of the earliest Christian groupsin the world.
Like, I remember you saidsomething once, like, something
to the effect of, like, youknow, your ancestors have been
(07:13):
worshiping Jesus since, I thinkit says something like before
mine were worshiping Thor orsomething like that.
I was like, okay, that's reallycool.
Right.
But yeah, Christian supremacy isone of those things that, you
know, with, with obviously Istudied colonialism from a very
different perspective.
Right.
But studying some of the sameparadigms and movements and,
(07:37):
and, it gets all tangled up witha lot of different active
supremacies.
Because you had white supremacy.
You had Western civilizationsupremacy.
And sometimes Christian justgets tacked on.
Like, it was kind of like, itwas there.
It wasn't really the big badguy.
It wasn't the culprit.
(07:58):
It was just sort of like comingalong for the ride.
But I don't really think thatthat's fair.
Like, I, you know, while I am aChristian...
I think Christian supremacy is avery different posture to the
world, to society, to othersthan let's say Jesus would have
taken to the world, to society,to others.
(08:18):
I think its goal is to dominate.
SPEAKER_01 (08:21):
On
SPEAKER_00 (08:22):
the one hand, that might look like dominating by
like kind of converting otherpeople.
And so your kind of goal is toerase non-Christianity from
existence.
I don't think that allevangelistic efforts are that.
I think some genuinely are anattempt to communicate good
news.
Same way like if there was somedisease out there and there was
(08:44):
a cure that you'd want to becommunicating to people, like
there's a cure, right?
That's not what Christiansupremacy is.
It's built on this notion thatChristians have this God-given
right to...
occupy the center of culture andsociety and to kind of be at the
helm, to be the leaders and tocontrol legislation.
(09:06):
And it's the, I feel like thefruit that it bears is, is
bitter because what I'm learningas a, as a father, you know, is
just how, first of all, howimpossible controlling your
children or other people reallyis.
And secondly, like that, whenyou attempt to control other
people, they hate it.
(09:26):
They reject it.
It builds resentment.
It breeds division andbitterness.
So, I mean, we can talk aboutthis soon as well, but as you
know, I really believe that ifyou look at a family, a
dysfunctional family that has alot of control issues...
That is usually not from ahealthy place.
(09:48):
That is really rooted in somekind of dysfunction, some kind
of trauma, some kind of, it'srooted in something negative and
dysfunctional itself.
And then it manifests as anattempt to control, let's say
children or your spouse or yourfriends or something.
The fact that Christian circleshave a real control problem
(10:09):
means that we need to actuallyask like, what's like the pain
deep down?
that continues to drive thisbehavior that hurts other
people?
SPEAKER_01 (10:19):
Right.
Yeah, that's such a goodquestion.
And I love how you interweavetrauma into history in your
work.
And with all the research I'vebeen doing, I've also been
seeing how the way thePortuguese acted in India, the
way the Brits acted in India,was really a reaction to other
(10:44):
events in global Christianityhappening on their continent,
the European continent, right?
I mean, so these are folks in apost-Reformation world.
And with the PortugueseCatholics, they they were
vicious in their evangelismbecause they were being accused
as not being Christian enough,not being evangelistic enough,
(11:09):
you know, of being a dead faith.
That was kind of the accusationslevied against them, right, by
the reformers.
And so with PortugueseCatholics, you had, yeah, you
had them send the Jesuits, youknow, as their evangelistic arm.
And you see these Jesuit fathersacting in really weird ways I
mean I have a lot of Jesuits inmy life today they're some of my
(11:32):
closest friends and they're thegentlest sweetest people I come
across who have learned from thehistorical errors of their order
but the Jesuits back then whowere sent as missionaries to
India hand in hand with thePortuguese Empire were not
Jesuits like that and it'sbecause they were reacting they
were coming from a place oftrauma of other events happening
in Europe so that would just beone example of things that shape
(11:53):
us yeah what do you think?
shock troops
SPEAKER_00 (11:56):
right that's what the jesuits the church's shock
troops go anywhere do anythingat the drop of the pope's hat
right that's like what that'swhat they were known for
rigorous now it's interestingbecause like in in you know
today's canada around the greatlakes back in the early 1600s
the jesuits were very activethere too and compared with
(12:17):
later mission efforts at likesort of the high tide of
civilizationalist colonialism.
Compared with those missionarieslater on, these Jesuits seemed
really committed to, notnecessarily, I wouldn't call it
gentle, but like culturallystrategic.
Rather than like take the land,dehumanize the people, and kind
(12:39):
of erase them, which is thelater settler colonial way.
In the Great Lakes, at least,the Jesuits were always, they
were somewhat outliers, likethey were, there wasn't that
many of them.
And so maybe that was why, butthey certainly acted with more
respect, learning locallanguages, doing the
translating.
especially into the Wendat orHuron language.
(13:00):
So it's just interesting.
They're a strange group ofextremists.
And sometimes that extremism wasreally incredible.
And sometimes it was reallybrutal.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (13:09):
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm thinking ofspecific accounts of Jesuit
fathers in southern India whostarted sending communication
back home.
So we still have their letterswhere they're telling the king
of Portugal and the pope, looklike, you know, we need to
understand the local religionsbetter if we're going to attack
(13:33):
it and if we're going to presentChristianity as supreme.
And so some of these Jesuitfathers, you know, then go on to
study the local religions,various sects of Hinduism.
And for that, they actually endup studying the languages,
right?
And they come up with theselanguage studies and they go
(13:54):
deep into religious literatureof these religions.
And the next thing you know,they're seeing things in there
that...
the rest of the Catholic Churchisn't seeing.
So then they're writing backhome saying, look, we're seeing
evidences of Christ beingrevealed possibly to these
cultures.
They have things, they havevirtues in common with us.
(14:16):
These are very sophisticatedadvanced religions.
These aren't primitive religionsthat we assume they were.
And then they get letters backfrom Portugal and the Vatican
saying, you weren't sent thereto study the culture.
Just stick to your job.
You weren't sent there to, youknow, to be an apologist for
their religion.
(14:36):
You were sent there to representChrist.
So, you know, be a Christian inall the supreme ways possible,
right?
So I think historical accountslike that also explain so much
about how we may have gottenhere with Christian supremacy.
SPEAKER_00 (14:49):
And isn't that just so, like the irony is so thick,
right?
You were sent, like the way youjust worded it, you're sent
there to be a actualconnections, relational
connections with these people inSouth India, of course your
perspective starts to shift.
It's like when you know someone,to love your neighbor, to love
(15:12):
another person, you must becurious about them and know
them, right?
There's no other.
And so it's just funny becauseto me that sounds like they were
actually in that momentrepresenting Christ to these
people.
and respecting not just thethings in the various, because
right, there's no Hinduism.
(15:32):
That's kind of a Westernconstruct, right?
So you have to be regional.
and competing sometimes, right?
Different schools ofspirituality and philosophy,
right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:42):
Right, yeah.
I mean, if anything, in manyways, many Hindu scholars today,
many Indian historians todayargue that modern day Hinduism
was a reaction to colonialismand the attacks on the
indigenous faith from thisforeign colonizer faith that was
coming in.
And it's interesting because atthe same time, you have Indian
(16:04):
Christians who have lived therepeacefully for 15 centuries And
they're not engaging in this.
They've learned to live inpeaceful pluralism with everyone
else.
But then you've got this Westernversion of Christianity that,
yeah, is acting in Christiansupremacist ways.
SPEAKER_00 (16:18):
So, yeah, see, that's the word, right?
The word is, and you said it,the word is supreme.
And I just think I'd like totake a second to just take to
contrast how different sayingthe gospel is good news is
saying Christianity is supreme.
Those don't technically have tohave anything in common with
(16:40):
each other.
We usually kind of think of themas almost synonymous.
Maybe saying ChristianitySupreme is a little extreme, but
the sentiment is still there.
You could just say it's thetruest religion or something
like that.
No, sorry, it's the one truereligion.
I don't know.
When I say that, Christian...
(17:03):
Christianity as the supremereligion or supreme truth versus
the good news.
Like what kind of things come toyour mind?
SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
Wow.
Wow.
That's so good.
Yeah.
I think we also have to read thegood news part in context,
right?
Otherwise we kind of get lost inthe weeds.
So for example, where we getthat from, you know, the reason
why the gospel is called thegospel is because it's the good
news of Jesus that he proclaimsin Luke chapter four, verse 18,
where Jesus says, the spirit ofthe Lord is upon me to preach
good news and to the poor and tothe oppressed, to the captive,
(17:34):
right?
We've over-spiritualized thesetexts in a very Gnostic way, in
a very disembodied way becauseof colonialism and slavery and
our support for it as theWestern church.
And then today, you have a veryreduced, amputated version of
this good news that's justspiritual in nature, that
(17:56):
doesn't have room for physicalliberation for people in poverty
and oppression.
And so then you have the Westernchurch participating in poverty
and oppression and enablingfurther poverty and oppression
in the global South because, oreven here with indigenous
communities here, becausethey've lost the good news.
So that's what I think of.
SPEAKER_00 (18:16):
You know, when you bring up, I like how you said
that.
You said it's an amputated, whatwas the other word?
Gnostic, amputated, disembodied,right?
All of those things are veryvisceral, embodied images that
helps us realize exactly what isis missing um but but something
(18:37):
i like to to bring up is youknow that kind of idea that or
that posture that like thegospel is kind of over
spiritualized and what it'sreally about is spiritual
realities um after death likewhat is the good news is really
and this is not what i thinkthis is the evangelical sort of
way is you don't have to go tohell everyone else has to go to
(18:58):
hell but you don't have to andthat's sort of the good news If
you really want to get down tobrass tacks in evangelical
circles.
And I'm like, that sounds like acompletely different story in
every way than what Jesus wastalking about.
It doesn't sound even related.
(19:20):
You said, I'm here to proclaimgood news to the poor, to the
oppressed, right?
Yeah.
And the thing is, if the goodnews is really just about like,
we can't really, there's no goodnews in this life.
It's just the next.
Then that's what that is, isnihilism.
Yes.
Nihilism claims that there'ssort of no meaning to life.
(19:44):
And what I have found is, isChristians are often some of the
most nihilistic people I know.
SPEAKER_01 (19:50):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (19:51):
To have that perspective that like the
environment doesn't reallymatter is nihilism.
To have that perspective thatlike God will one day fix
everything, that can be hope.
But in some people's, when itcomes out of some people's
mouth, it's profoundlydisempowering.
And it's like what it's reallysaying is we can't really do
anything.
(20:11):
So hopefully God will magicallydo it when we die.
And you start to, again, startto think that really doesn't
sound anything like the gospelthat came out of Jesus' mouth
and his life and action.
SPEAKER_01 (20:25):
It
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
doesn't even seem related.
SPEAKER_01 (20:27):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't sound like good news,especially to people in poverty
and oppression.
Right.
And so one of my favorite thingsthat liberation theologians, one
of my favorite things that I'velearned from liberation
theologians, rather, is that ifit's not good news to people in
poverty and oppression.
that it's not the good news ofJesus.
(20:49):
And that's a biblical statement.
That's not just a theologicalstatement.
That's straight out of Luke 4,18.
Jesus's words, Jesus'sdefinition of the gospel, right?
I sometimes ask people, hey,whose definition of the gospel
would you rather buy into?
Jesus's or John MacArthur's,right?
And I often have people tell me,well, you know, I prefer Paul's
definition of the gospel overJesus' definition of the gospel,
(21:11):
to which I'm just like, well,congratulations, you've played
to yourself.
SPEAKER_00 (21:16):
Right.
Just if I can put you on thespot.
Yeah, yeah.
If someone asks you, what is itabout what Jesus said and did
that was good news to the poorand oppressed?
What was it about him that wouldhave made the poor feel a sense
of relief, of energy, ofexcitement, of hope wash over
(21:39):
them?
SPEAKER_01 (21:40):
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's so good.
Such a great question.
And, you know, I have a lot ofthoughts since I just wrote a
whole book about it.
But I would say, like, hestarted at the very beginning of
his life and ministry and art.
Like, just his life, right?
His incarnation.
He could have chosen to...
(22:02):
come as a Kardashian if hewanted to.
He could have chosen to come asa Bay Street billionaire if he
wanted to.
Instead, he showed up in thatera of time in a very colonized,
occupied society.
And even within that society, hecould have chosen to be born in
Herod's family as God.
He could have been chosen to gowherever he wanted to.
(22:24):
But he chose to be born in amanger to a family dealing with
a teenage pregnancy, honor-shameculture.
And he chose to be born at atime of genocide and violence.
And then he chose to...
live as a homeless, unhousedperson his entire life on earth,
(22:47):
his entire ministry on earth,and a poor carpenter's son, and
ultimately chose the cross.
He chose to be murdered by thestate innocently.
He chose to be put to death on across and tortured and murdered.
And so that Jesus, who is asuffering savior, is good news
(23:07):
to people in poverty andoppression.
Because that Jesus knows whatit's like to suffer.
That Jesus knows what it's liketo be betrayed.
That Jesus knows what it's liketo die as an innocent victim of
state violence.
And so Jesus is good news.
Jesus himself is good news tothe poor and the oppressed.
(23:28):
But so often the church hasfailed to communicate that to
the poor and the oppressed byjust...
oppressing people who are poorand oppressed instead of meeting
their physical needs, instead ofcaring for them.
And what's funny is you don'tsee this in the early church.
In the early church, youactually see them caring for
people's physical needs.
They were known in Roman societyfor that, right?
(23:49):
And they weren't perfect, butthey got that right.
But then over time, you see withpower coming in, and I mean,
you're a historian, you knowthis better than me, and you can
speak to this better than I can.
But my sense is that with powercoming in, And, you know, the
crusades and colonization andthings like that, you have that
(24:11):
shaping us to be very resistantto justice, to only preaching a
spiritual gospel when the gospelis both spiritual and physical.
But yeah, I'd love to get yourthoughts in on all this.
Weyen, what are you thinking asI say all that?
SPEAKER_00 (24:28):
Yeah, I think what we have to talk about, grapple
with, arguably more thananything, is empire is a hell of
a drug.
And when Christians got a tasteof empire, it forever changed
everything.
And I think it's important.
It's easy for us to say, oh, thechurch got corrupt when it had
(24:48):
power and money.
It's not the power and themoney.
That's the real problem.
That's not the real drug ofempire.
UNKNOWN (24:57):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00 (24:57):
The real drug of empire is control and dominance
over others.
That's the real hit.
Power and money, especiallywealth.
I think sometimes we do that inthe church.
We can like sort of practicelike a form of self-shaming
where we're like, we have thisrandom number in our head where
it's like too much for people tohave.
And everyone who has more is,you know, bad in some way.
(25:20):
I don't think it's about money.
Money is just a tool thatamplifies like what you're
about.
That's what I think.
I think you can get caught up inthe pursuit of wealth and forget
yourself, forget what you'reabout.
But I think the real problem forthe church started when it got
that taste for control.
Like when Constantine has thisweird conversion, like whatever
(25:43):
it was that happened there,there's just different
interpretations.
We'll never know for sure,right?
Yeah.
But, you know, he welcomesChristians into the halls of
power.
And really, the question is likehe wants he wants them to help
him reform his empire, make itstronger, make it more.
Yeah, because it had been inthis state of decay.
(26:04):
And so he saw in Christianitywith its one God, with its like
highly structured systemsalready, he saw a real
opportunity.
Right.
And I believe he really did havethe experience he had.
where he had this vision of theChristian God giving him
victory.
I believe he had thatexperience.
I don't know what thatexperience means.
I don't know if that experiencewas from God, but I believe he
(26:27):
had it and believed that theChristian God had given him
victory and had given him favorto see Constantine make Rome
great again.
Because that had been, for thelast 50 to 60 years before
Constantine, that was kind ofthe emperor's goal, was reviving
Rome.
Very nostalgic, very similar tothe American MAGA movement and
(26:52):
stuff like that.
Make it great again, based insome kind of fantasizing about
the past.
So Christians get ushered in,and it's not like, here's a
bunch of money and a bunch ofpower, and they go like, oh,
we're slowly becoming corrupted.
It's like, hey, I want youguys...
to kind of reform my societymorally and culturally and
(27:13):
religiously.
And it's that part, to me,that's the most dangerous
moment.
Because the Christians said, andyou can't blame people for
rising to a challenge.
I don't think they should havejust been like, we're out of
here.
Well, some of them did do that,right?
Literally, the monastic movementkind of starts because they say,
(27:34):
we're out of here.
Yeah.
But I'm not saying you shirk allresponsibility.
It's just that very quicklyChristians turned around and
became the persecutor.
They did not love their enemiesin the way that they would have
wanted to be treated.
They didn't after they gainedaccess to state, like to the
(27:56):
project, the machinery of thestate.
And that makes me like reallysad and enraged and go into like
a what if kind of mode.
Why do we have to turn soquickly and be like, Okay, now,
you know, because within 50,half a century after
Constantine, which was thatwhole period after him was very
much like theologicalinfighting, like which group is
(28:17):
going to be the officialChristianity?
Is it going to be Nicene or isit going to be Arian?
Back and forth, back and forth,back and forth.
Mutual exiles of, you know, butwhen they settle finally on
Nicene Christianity in the year380, it's like within a couple
years, this new persecutionmovement begins, right?
Paganism, you can't be a paganand hold public office.
(28:38):
You can't be a heretic and yourwritings can be taken and burned
just like they did under likeSeverus and Decius and stuff
like that earlier.
SPEAKER_01 (28:48):
That
SPEAKER_00 (28:49):
taste of like, hey, we're at the center now.
We've got the backing.
We can remake society.
That is a moment to be verynervous when a group is like
remake society quickly.
and through legislation.
Be on guard when that starts tohappen because that's probably
not going to go well for anyonewho isn't aligned.
(29:13):
Yeah, I think its origin is inthe church as a persecuted
group, an oppressed group whothen gains access to power over
their enemies.
SPEAKER_01 (29:22):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (29:23):
I just think that it was overwhelming.
And I think in that moment, thechurch kind of lost sight of
itself and its vision.
And unfortunately, its visiondid change then.
It quickly, the Christian visionmutated into an empire.
We can conquer.
Now that didn't have to meanmilitarily, but it did come to
mean that.
(29:43):
But it was like, we can conquerspiritually.
We can defeat paganismlegislatively.
All of that is a very differentproject than the project the
early church was involved in.
SPEAKER_01 (29:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, I've been chewing on itthrough the lens of the Lord of
the Rings lately, where I thinkof Frodo getting the Ring of
Power and how that transformedhim completely from the inside
and on the outsidesignificantly, right?
Yeah.
But it reminds me so much ofwell-meaning Christians that
(30:20):
I've seen both in the politicalworld, and I thought I was
leaving this in the politicalworld when I left that world,
but I continue to see it in theChristian ministry world today
where people who are seriousabout their faith, want to do
good in the world, like youtalked about intent, want to
make the world a better place,restructure society, do all
this.
They come in with thoseaspirations, and the next thing
(30:43):
you know, They get their tasteof power and control and
dominance and wealth and empire.
And it changes them.
It transforms them.
The best of people.
My whole time in the politicalworld, I can think of one
elected official friend of minewho stayed true to his original
(31:03):
conscience and paid the pricefor it.
greatly.
He's the former lieutenantgovernor of Georgia, Jeff
Duncan.
He spoke out on some stuff andwas crucified for it by his
party and is a pariah today.
Could never run for office, cannever run for office again, at
least not as a Republican, theparty left.
But yeah, I mean, I've just seenit transform the best of people
(31:29):
in the worst ways possible.
And it's just, It'sheartbreaking.
It can happen to the best of us.
I'd be foolish to think that...
I mean, it did happen to me too,to a degree, which is why I had
to get out.
And now I'm discerning my futurein the Christian nonprofit space
(31:49):
because I see it here too.
And so I'm thinking, how do I befaithful to the opportunities
I've been entrusted with whileat the same time not losing
myself to the allures of empireand power?
control and dominance.
SPEAKER_00 (32:05):
Yeah.
I feel like that really, that'sexactly like what I'm trying to
get at.
And the fact that you've kind ofseen it firsthand in the world
of political power is superhelpful for us.
It makes me think, you know, Ibrought this up already, but I'm
learning a lot about control,having kids, what is possible
(32:28):
and what isn't.
And when my daughter...
I have two daughters, 10 and 7.
But when my first daughter was,you know, her first couple years
of life, I was operatingdefinitely out of a like
controlling kind of paradigmwhere, you know, it was nothing
extreme, but it was just like myposture towards her was one of
(32:50):
like, you're going to go likewayward and I need to keep you
in check kind of all the time.
And While yes, that's necessaryfor sticking a fork in an
outlet, sticking a fork in anoutlet is different than the
kind of things that you'reexploring or you're interested
in.
If we're always feeling likeeveryone's in existential danger
(33:14):
at all times, then you're goingto always react with emergency
measures.
And that's another big part ofchurch history that I try to
explore is there were times whenthe church did initiate
emergency measures because theywere necessary.
Society was sticking a fork inan outlet with the fall collapse
of the Western Roman Empire.
And the church stepped up anddid the hard thing and took
(33:36):
responsibility.
But it's like, you don't want tolet go of it.
You don't want to let go of it.
And that's the part that'sreally intriguing me is like,
you know, with billionaires, wetalk about how, you know, like,
what do they care if they get atax break?
Like, what does money even meanto them?
And I've been thinking aboutthat a lot in the last few
weeks, obviously, with all thebillionaires having their
(33:57):
heyday.
And I think we got to just comeclean about it, that it's not
about money anymore at thatpoint.
Power is the drug that drivesour desire for money anyways,
right?
Money is power.
And so I feel like that appetitewe have is almost like an
infinite void, craving more andmore control over others and
(34:17):
situations until we can controllife and death itself.
But There's some emptinessinside us, a vacuum.
And I am not a person who thinkspower is evil.
To be empowered, to be full ofenergy and capability, to be
well-connected and being able toenact and do things is amazing.
(34:42):
I think everybody should look intheir life and figure out where
they're being disempowered andwhy, what beliefs are driving
that.
But I feel like once you get ataste for, hey, it's a taste for
victory almost.
The Constantinian churchexperienced what we could call
victory.
SPEAKER_01 (34:59):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (34:59):
Like you never want to go back.
You never want to lose thatagain, especially when you're a
traumatized people.
You know, I think there'ssomething big to the church when
it finally gained Constantine'sfavor saying like, we're not
going back.
God brought us through that timeof persecution and we are not
going back to that again.
SPEAKER_01 (35:19):
You know, you're so right, Brad.
I mean, I think of Christians,not just in North America, who
feel persecuted right now.
I'm also talking about thepersecuted church because I've
interacted with persecutedchurch leaders over the last few
months.
So I was just in Sri Lanka for aglobal church conference on
justice and freedom and got tosit with so many persecuted
(35:41):
church leaders who don't mindpersecution.
and who don't mind Christiannationalism in the States
because they have the trauma ofbeing shaped by their persecuted
context.
And so I was actually thinkingabout your work a lot when I was
in Sri Lanka because we'dconnected right before and
(36:03):
thinking about trauma andthinking of persecuted church
trauma even today and wonderinghow is this going to play out in
the future?
Because, you know, I know GlobalSouth Christians who fled to
North America and are now votingin North American elections, and
they don't seem to mindChristian nationalism, even
(36:23):
though there are racist elementsto it, even though there are
religious nationalisticinfluences to it that could hurt
them and their relatives andtheir home country.
So for example, I had a relativein my family recently who voted
for Christian nationalism in thelast American election.
basically reach out and say,wait a second, this person's
(36:45):
supporting all the extremists inmy country now and all the
authoritarians in my country.
And that's concerning to me.
That's not what I signed up for.
And it's almost like thiscognitive dissonance of...
You know, what's bad for onecategory of neighbors?
Like, you wanted to go after onecategory of neighbors, so you
voted for Christian nationalism.
But it's going to be bad for allof us long term, including the
(37:08):
oppressors.
And I think that's something wehave to reckon with.
And I'm curious to see how itplays out in the years to come.
SPEAKER_00 (37:16):
Yeah, it seems like a critical part of, you know, if
Jesus is actually our modeland...
lord and all those words we usethen the one of the most
critical question is like whatdoes he what if what what is his
posture towards power towardsdominance what does it look like
(37:38):
in practice and i feel like weneed to really like re take
another look at the cross andresurrection maybe for a while
put aside our theological normsand become a little bit more
disoriented with it and be like,what is really going on here?
What is, why is this good news?
(37:59):
And try to like forgeteverything that we've known
because he's confronting, he'scoming up against, like this is
God in flesh coming up againstthe greatest power of his day,
right?
And like what is done in thatencounter, right?
(38:20):
I just think we need to slow waydown.
Maybe, I mean, this is Lentright now.
It's kind of the time to dothat, right?
The Passion will be coming upand Holy Week and all that.
And you're a sacramental guynow, so you're probably got your
schedule booked for that.
But just take a moment to belike, to see the arch dominating
power of his time, coming intocontact with him directly, Jesus
(38:44):
being the actual ultimate powerof all time.
And to see what he does and whathis actions are there, I feel
like there might be somethingthere worth really meditating on
if we want to dismantle andstart to loosen ourselves from
this legacy, especially for me,this legacy of Christian
(39:04):
supremacy, which really livesinside me, my body.
My ancestors have been thosepeople around the world, you
know?
They weren't the Portuguese, butthey were the British and they
were the Germans, right?
So it's like Christian supremacyis in some ways like a lot of my
(39:25):
ancestry.
And I don't know, I just, Idon't fully know what to do with
that.
SPEAKER_01 (39:32):
Yeah, yeah.
You know, quite honestly, Brad,it may not seem like it on the
surface, but as a St.
Thomas Indian Christian, it'salso part of my legacy.
It's part of what I've inheritedtoo, because...
My ancestors were not withoutfault.
They participated in the casteoppression of their neighbors.
(39:52):
And I haven't done enoughhistory to see what theology may
have motivated that.
But there is a good chance thatit was also motivated by a
different flavor of Christiansupremacy, right?
And just this need to be on topof the pecking order and
control.
And that's actually one of thereasons why My family has our
(40:16):
lineages preserved so well.
It's because we needed it todefend ourselves in the caste
system and hence participate inthe caste oppression of our
lower caste neighbors.
So all of us have our blindspots.
All of us need each other topoint out our blind spots.
So for example, the BritishAnglican CMS missionaries showed
(40:39):
up a few centuries after thePortuguese you know, to convert
the heathens and discover thatthere have been, again, the same
thing that Portuguese discoveredSt.
Thomas Indian Christians.
And then start to have dialoguewith lower caste Christian
converts, lower caste Hindus,and realize that St.
(40:59):
Thomas Indian Christians hadparticipated in the caste
oppression of their lower casteneighbors.
So, you know, we give...
the British the credit for theirliberation, but it's really
these lower caste Christianconverts who brought their
plight to the attention of theseBritish missionaries who
explained the caste system,because they didn't understand
(41:21):
this as foreigners coming in,who explained their plight,
sought their own liberation, andthen we were able to see some
reform in the St.
Thomas Indian Church because ofthe influence of British
missionaries who acted becausemarginalized people spoke up for
their own liberation.
So I have to reckon with thattoo and see how that shapes me
(41:42):
today in Christian supremacistways.
SPEAKER_00 (41:45):
Yeah, so acting more as mediators.
So rather than seeing...
That would be in some wayssimilar to the abolitionists.
Right.
Like abolitionists were moremediators between the stories of
people like Equiano, right?
But I think that can bring usfull circle because there's
something about...
(42:07):
There's some necessary actionneeded to like, how do we loosen
our grip?
You know, I'm a person, I have alot of respect for other
traditions too.
And it's not some like, thisisn't something I'm trying to
say.
It's just, it's kind of how Iwas raised, which is I'm really
grateful for.
Like I was raised in a home thatwas not controlling.
(42:29):
I was raised in a home where wegathered regularly and discussed
kind of what we were into atthat moment.
There's a lot of curiosity in myfamily.
And this is a rare thing.
This is a very rare gift tohave.
What I'm just thinking about inthis moment is like one of the
most central aspects of theBuddhist way is that, you know,
(42:50):
like the famous first nobletruth.
the buddha taught was that likelife is suffering and suffering
is caused by desire i alwayshated that line because i
thought no desire is what makesus alive and i've recently
learned that a better a bettertranslation for that is
suffering comes not from desirebut from clinging from grip wow
(43:12):
from being unable to likerelinquish that grip and so that
that has been really helpful tome in a my life with my children
I am their like protector andprovider and all that, but I'm
not their like controller.
I'm not their like master.
I'm their dad.
(43:32):
And so that's, it's made methink about that.
And it's also made me look atsort of Jesus's life in a way
of, and I start to see, I don'tsee him as someone going around
like dominating.
He seems to hold people somewhatloosely, give them the choice to
come or not.
I don't know.
There's something about Jesus'slike lack of like grip not a
(43:54):
strangling figure while a lot ofthe church's history it's been
even if it's done good it's alsobeen a strangled cultures and
people
SPEAKER_01 (44:04):
yeah yeah i mean you're so right about jesus
though i've been chewing latelyon uh jesus's interaction with
our our disabled neighbors rightlike um Jesus doesn't go up to
them and presume they want to behealed.
He asks them every single time,do you want to be healed?
Right?
He gives them agency.
He gives them power, gives themcontrol as the son of God,
(44:30):
right?
In his full divinity and hisfull humanity, he gives us
agency, not just in putting ourfaith in him, but also in, hey,
do you want me to heal you?
Do you want to be healed?
Kind of a thing.
And I think it's beautiful.
I think, you know, and the moreI've study disability theology,
the more I've appreciated theirappreciation for this agency
(44:51):
too, because the reality is thatmany of our disabled neighbors
If you ask them, hey, in the newcreation, do you want to be
fully healed?
They say, no.
I love my body.
I've come to love my body.
I've come to love itsquirkiness.
And I feel at home in my body.
It'd be really weird for me tobe healed.
(45:13):
And then there are some who say,no, I would love to be healed.
And I long for that kind of athing.
But Regardless, Jesus gives usagency.
And I have to think that thesame Jesus on this side of
eternity who gave that agencywill also give us agency on the
other side of eternity.
SPEAKER_00 (45:32):
So like empowering people to sort of, it's so
essential.
You know, this word has beendemonized in some Christian
circles, but the word autonomy.
We want to talk about how likeautonomy is evil.
It's like us against God.
And I'm kind of like a littlebit done with that.
Because again, I keep drawingfrom this, but it's pretty
(45:53):
essential, right?
Like Jesus, one of the mostrevolutionary things he does is
he, theologically, is he changesour orientation towards God as
one of child and parent.
That is critical to hisunderstanding of who God is.
And I think we continue to goback into, and there's nothing
wrong with this, but like God asking, us as subject.
(46:15):
I don't think that's, I thinkthat actually in some ways,
that's one metaphor.
it's not the primary metaphorand yet in a lot of western
christian history it definitelyis the primary metaphor king
subject but if the primary if ifthe main way that jesus is
teaching us how to relate to godis as loving parent and child
(46:36):
then that means what we learnabout parenting and what makes
for healthy parent-childrelationships is of critical
theological importance for us.
But I know again, from being,from seeing my kids, when they,
if they were like thesecompliant, shut down, quiet
kids, I would be worried.
I'd be taking them to thedoctor.
(46:57):
I'd be like, where's theirenergy?
Where's their autonomy?
I think Jesus, the way you'redescribing it, empowered each
person to kind of, you know, getin the driver's seat of their
life and make like, come back tolife.
And, you know, can I touch you?
Can I heal you?
Do you want to follow me?
And no one was forced to doanything.
(47:19):
And Jesus didn't line people upin a line to make sure none of
them, or as few as possible,didn't go to hell.
I just think we're wrong aboutthe whole project.
I think the goal is to becomefully human, and a fully healthy
human is autonomous.
And I don't mean that in anatomistic way, like isolated.
They are part of an ecosystem,but they are a critical
(47:42):
component in that ecosystem.
of relational web of relations,right?
With other people, withcreation.
I think we have a lot to learn.
Yeah.
In a time when there is thisnew, and we have been here many,
many, many times before.
This is not where it's like,Hey, Christians, we need to like
(48:02):
take control of society, grabthe legislature by the horns and
like what's best.
Cause that's what God wants.
Like, Oh, we're back here again.
Haven't we done that enough andtried it and it didn't produce
the society we wanted?
SPEAKER_01 (48:19):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
100%.
I mean, without taking anynames, I recently came across a
very influential,ex-evangelical, progressive
Christian influencer and had aconversation with this person.
(48:40):
And this person kept talkingtalking about how, you know,
we're the good guys here.
We need to take, this is rightafter the presidential election
in the U.S., but this person istelling me, you know, I feel
like we progressives, not that Iidentify as a progressive, but
he's talking for his own tribe,he's like, I feel like we
progressives need to takecontrol of things and, you know,
(49:02):
We need to use the tools ofempire better than empire does.
We need to take control of thosetools of empire.
And I just remember feelingreally weirded out at that
moment and being like, thatfeels a little weird.
I don't know if I can go thatfar.
I think we need to decolonizethat perspective a little bit.
And then sure enough...
Just a tiny bit.
(49:23):
We just need to decolonize thata little.
Yeah, exactly.
And sure enough, a few weekslater...
huge scandal breaks out aboutthis person for abuse of power.
Wow.
And to me, all I could think ofwhen those allegations came out,
(49:44):
those confirmed allegations fromsurvivor accounts came out, was,
my goodness, this person in ourconversation kept saying how he
wanted control of the tools ofEmpire.
And I kept getting weirded outby that.
But there's something there.
There's something there.
Like, Just the whole longing forthat should be examined and
(50:04):
should be deconstructed anddecolonized because that is not
from Christ.
That is not of Christ, thatdesire to control the outcome.
And even in that conversation,my challenge to this brother
was, I don't think we're calledto be successful.
I think we're called to befaithful.
And I think...
That's the outcome we shouldstrive towards, us being
faithful regardless of theoutcome.
(50:26):
But I hope and pray the best forthis friend.
But I think we need to watch outfor things like that too.
SPEAKER_00 (50:34):
Yeah, you keep saying that phrase, keeps
jumping out at me, the tools ofempire.
Because what is the main tool,physical tool of empire in
Scripture?
The sword.
UNKNOWN (50:48):
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (50:49):
The sword is the main tool, the implement, right?
The physical implement of empireis the sword.
Whether that's cutting flesh orpointing it with the threat,
it's all, that's what the tooldoes.
It uses fear of pain to enforcecontrol.
And it's the sword that isturned into the pruning hook,
(51:13):
right?
That's what's beaten into theplowshare.
I want to keep that phrase frontand center if we have future
conversations.
Because I think when we talkabout empire, it can get a
little bit abstract.
But once you bring it back downto the gritty, metallic, bloody
(51:33):
tool of empire, it's the swordor the gun.
And that's cut apart, bent,hammered into something new.
Something that is for fruit,right?
UNKNOWN (51:44):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (51:44):
So good.
So good.
I think we should end thisconversation on that note.
I don't have anything better toadd to
SPEAKER_00 (51:50):
that.
That's
SPEAKER_01 (51:51):
just gold right there.
SPEAKER_00 (51:53):
Well, yeah, this has been really, really awesome,
Josh.
Thank you for being here.
I hope we can talk again soon.
What I'm kind of drawn to is I'dlike to dive into some Indian
stuff more.
I'd love to think about a littlebit more.
Maybe you can share at somepoint with You talked about how
the St.
Thomas Christians lived in kindof a peaceful, pluralistic
world, even though theyparticipated in the caste
(52:14):
system.
I'd love to know all I can abouthow they engaged with the
various philosophies andspiritual traditions around
them, what Christians might beable to learn from some of those
traditions.
But that's just one thing.
I feel like we've got a lot totalk about.
Just scratch the
SPEAKER_01 (52:32):
surface.
Yeah, yeah.
No, totally.
And as we close here, Brad, Iwant to give you an opportunity
to update us on the differentcourses that you offer.
I know last I heard there was await list for one.
What can we expect with theincredible course offerings that
you have?
SPEAKER_00 (52:51):
Well, right now, the best thing you can do if you
want to learn more about thistrauma and church history, I
created a free course calledIt's a quick one.
You can get through it in, whatis it, like an hour and a half
or something like that.
If you go to my website,bradleymela.com slash free, you
(53:12):
can sign up for the course,which is called Ancestral Trauma
in the Church.
And you'll start to dig intothis, like how deep this rabbit
hole goes of the pain that liesat the heart of church history
or at the beginning thatcontinues to affect us now.
So If you want to check thatout, yes, bradleymala.com slash
free, and you can sign up there.
(53:33):
And I also wouldn't mind if youcould talk briefly, just give
us, you have a book coming out.
Can you give us some moredetails?
Yeah, I
SPEAKER_01 (53:43):
mean, I would just say, you know, the book is
available for pre-orders.
The response in Canada has beenoverwhelming.
I mean, even in the U.S., onAmazon U.S., it was in the top
30 for a few categories likeChristian ethics and
discipleship and pastoralresources.
But in Canada, it was number onefor like the first week of
pre-orders, which is justhumbling as a first-time author,
(54:04):
especially as one from anunderrepresented community in
Christian publishing.
So, yes, so, you know, dosupport that, you know, go sign
up for Brad's course.
Yeah, I mean, the fact that it'sfree is phenomenal.
I mean, take full advantage ofthat by all means.
And then, yeah, do pre-order mybook as well.
(54:24):
It's called The Justice ofJesus.
And it comes out this September,but pre-order is alive.
And honestly...
If you wanted to do a deep diveinto everything we've talked
about, because we've done morelong-form work there, I think
this is the place for folks togo and get more information.
If we've even piqued theircuriosity with this
(54:45):
conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (54:46):
Beauty.
I love it.
And for those who want to buypre-order, but buy Canadian,
what do you suggest?
SPEAKER_01 (54:53):
Yeah, yeah.
So still working on it.
You can go to Indigo and getlike a e-reader version.
You can also call your locallibrary or your local bookstore
and ask them to order theJustice of Jesus copies.
So I have folks in Winnipegwho've done that with local
bookstores there.
(55:14):
So yeah, by all means, buyCanadian and support an
underrepresented voice inpublishing.
SPEAKER_00 (55:20):
All right, Joash.
Hopefully we can get you onagain soon.
Thank you so much for being hereand sharing some of your story
with us and your brilliantinsights.
SPEAKER_01 (55:29):
Too kind.
Yeah.
Lovely to be here.
And thanks for having me, Brad.
Great conversation.
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