Anchors of Faith: Black Christianity in America with Walter Strickland

Episode Transcript
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>> Paul (00:07):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast, your
source for insights and ideas on how to lead your church in the
21st century. At the Future Christian
Podcast, we talk to pastors, authors
and other faith leaders for helpful advice and practical
wisdom to help you and your community of faith
walk boldly into the future. Whether

(00:27):
you're a pastor, church leader, or a passionate member
of your faith community, this podcast is
designed to challenge, inspire, and equip you
with the tools you need for impactful ministry.
And now for a little bit about the guest for this episode.

>> Martha Tatarnic (00:44):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. Today, Loren
Richmond Jr. Welcomes Walter Strickland II to
the program. Walter is associate
professor of systematic and contextual
Theology at, uh, Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary. He has co
authored or contributed to several books,
including For God so Love the A

(01:05):
Blueprint for Kingdom Diversity. He
is a host of the White Horse Inn
podcast and founder of Cultural
Engagement and Aptree Learning.
Today he is discussing his new book, Swing
Low, a history of Black Christianity in the
United States. A reminder, before we
start today's conversation, please take a moment to

(01:28):
subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and
share Future Christian with a friend. Connect with
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email@laurensonatemedia. Ah,
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or ideas for future episodes. We
appreciate your voice in how we faithfully discern

(01:50):
the future of, uh, the church.

>> Dr. Walter Strickland II (02:01):
All right.

>> Loren (02:02):
Welcome to the Future Christian Podcast. This is Loren Richmond
Jr. And today I am pleased to be welcoming
Dr. Walter Strickland to the podcast. Thanks so
much for being here.

Yeah, it's such a great opportunity to be with you today.

>> Loren (02:15):
Well, thanks for, uh, as I mentioned to
Walter here for our guests, I'm recording
at home. It's a snow day, so if there's some extra
ambient noise, we'll say, uh, for our
guests, please. Or for our listeners, please be patient,
understanding. But again, thanks for being here. Share, if you would, just a
little bit, anything else you want to share about yourself and then we'll,

(02:35):
we'll get into your. Your background and faith journey.

Awesome. Yeah. So, uh, I currently teach,
uh, theology at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, North
Carolina. Also Judson College is the
undergraduate institution there. Uh, I'm a pastor at a
mongode church. I'm one of our elders there.
Um, and I've been doing, um, I've been in
the classroom for over a decade now, which I can't believe. How
fast time flies. And then also, uh,

(03:01):
I went to seminary to be a pastor. So pastoring, uh,
alongside of doing Academic work is a joy.

>> Loren (03:08):
Yeah. Uh share if you would then
talk about your journey of faith. What that looked like in the past and what
that looks like today.

So I was born into a family with
parents who love Jesus. So I
uh. That was such a blessing and I didn't really
understand what that meant uh until I
began to see, to uh be in friends
households uh where their parents were, you know just they
just treated them differently than my parents were. My parents were just so loving and

(03:36):
warm and forgiving and uh, just putting on
Christ in so many ways. Uh they were not perfect
by any means but they were just so um
uh just transparent with their
own journey of faith uh that it just really seemed
intriguing to me. So as I, as my sister and
I had grown up a little bit we were

(03:57):
driving to my grandparents house uh in
California. I grew up in Bakersfield primarily
uh but we were driving up Interstate 5 going to
Oakland so right up the middle of the state
and uh, my father begins to share the story
of salvation with us. You know uh, Christ
died for our sin, you know I'm a sinner, you're a
sinner, uh we're all in need of grace.

(04:20):
And uh, he wanted to extend that grace
to me on behalf of Christ. And
um, my sister, my older sister and I
prayed to receive Christ in the, in our
van going to our grandparents house in
Northern California. So uh, as
my world grew my God grew
bigger than it still. Um and so it was childlike

(04:42):
faith but it didn't stay like childlike faith
uh as I interacted with the world and as I
saw evil in the world, as I saw difficulty and faced
hardship, God uh still
remained uh Lord over all those things.
And uh, I know I'm condensing it down very quickly
but um. Yeah as I grew up
the Lord became uh very specific with me

(05:05):
as far as my own personal calling to ministry
and um, through a basketball uh
injury and uh just directing my steps along
the way. And so uh, I'm a kid who couldn't read until
I was nine and didn't read a book cover to
cover until I was 18. Now I uh, by
God's grace and by his empowerment I'm you know

(05:25):
teaching and writing things that people are actually
reading. So um, my faith uh
now in contrast Even with
about 15 years ago is that I, I
saw faith became a very bookish
journey when uh I was in seminary.
It was very intellectually driven, very cognitive.

(05:46):
Uh I, I miss, I misconstrued
intimacy and abiding with Christ as we see in
John 8 with information acquisition,
um, but now I truly see that to get to know
somebody, it's more than just facts and
details. It's really being
relational with the Lord.
Um, and so I tell folks all the time,

(06:08):
I can give you a bunch of details about my
wife, but I can still have no relationship with
her. But um, I know those things about
her and those things are now a catalyst into relationship
with her. So I uh, think that in the
last couple of years I've really grown in that way,
being able to abide in Christ in a way that's more, uh,

(06:28):
deep and abiding than just informational.

>> Loren (06:31):
Mhm. That's great. I appreciate you sharing that.
I also want to say, like, as a pastor and a
professor, I feel like you have my dream job there, but
nice, um, share if you would, kind of just anything about
spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines that are meaningful
or important to you.

For sure. Um,
I have a. I'll just go out and share them.
I might be weird, but hey, we're all messed up
and in need of grace. And so, uh,
I read a lot of books for my vocation.
And um, because of that, um,
I find reading scripture

(07:09):
devotionally, uh, became more of
that academic sort of heady enterprise as
opposed to a just abiding and being
with the Lord and just saturating myself in the
words of Christ. And so, uh, what I often do
is I listen to Scripture being read to me, which
interestingly enough, that's how you know, the original readers heard it or

(07:30):
the original audience heard it anyway.
So, uh, uh, I listen to
scripture, um, I walk, uh, in the
mornings every day and pray because I
can't really pray sitting still. Um, there's something
about being in creation, enjoying
general revelation as I'm communing with the Lord that
I found very, very, uh, abiding and

(07:52):
special. Um, even watching the seasons
change. I was just describing that right now in North Carolina,
where I am, it's in the 70s. And the reason why I'm frustrated with
that is because the seasons should be changing and
the Lord is revealing Himself even through,
um, the seasons changing. And so I long
for that. So all to say, I think prayer

(08:13):
and reading, uh, and reading Scripture or
engaging with Scripture are two practices that
I think are very helpful. But I've had to learn how
to do that in such a way that was
um, most beneficial for me. And sometimes I feel like
an odd duck saying that I listen more than I read
scripture, although I still read it because I, I prepare to preach
and Things like that. But if I'm just, you

(08:35):
know, wanting to just commune with the Lord, I
usually end up, um, uh,
listening. So I'm thinking those
are some of the nuggets that I, I picked up along the way.

>> Loren (08:46):
Yeah, I'm thinking of. I don't know if you're familiar with J. Kim. He's
an author and pastor out in California. I
think M He's written in his book
about like something kind of radical and
analog about like, just as a church, just like listening
to scripture being read. Because like, that's
how, you know so many of the. The epistles would have just

(09:06):
been read to an early church.

Oh yeah.

>> Loren (09:09):
M. It's counterintuitive, but makes
sense.

Yeah. I mean, even. Even when Josiah found the law, I
mean they just read it to the people and
they repented, um, and they began to
change their ways. So it's kind of a
special thing to sort of revisit that ancient practice,
um, but in a contemporary setting.

>> Loren (09:30):
And ah, perhaps it's a good
segue into your book. Uh, Walter is the
author of Swing Low, two volume series
here. We're going to be talking primarily about volume
one, Swing Low, A history of Black
Christianity in the United States. But
in this story you talk about the
early formative years of

(09:52):
African American faith in the early church,
or, excuse me, early in American church.
And you know, one of the, as I remember at least,
was the ways of
sharing the gospel. Since, if
I'm understanding correctly, so many were oppressed and not
allowed to, to read or receive an education was

(10:13):
through storytelling and verbally sharing the scripture,
right?

Oh, certainly, yeah. So it uh, was illegal
for African Americans, uh, to learn how to
read, to uh, be taught how to read. And so even if somebody was
teaching them, they would be, um, vulnerable
to penalty under the law. So, uh,
really what was going on was this ancient practice of
orality that was,
uh, very popular in Africa. Uh, they were an

(10:39):
oral society. And so a lot of the stories and
fables and uh, religious sort of realities
were passed down via, uh, storytelling. And it
was amazingly accurate
as far as passing a story from one generation to the
next. So, uh, that same way of
storytelling began to manifest in the early years of

(10:59):
African American Christianity because
there was many times when, uh, either missionaries
or slave owners would communicate, they
would read the scripture to slaves.
But what would happen is that the application
of that reading was one of remain
subservient, remain docile.
Your body, uh, belongs to me, but now

(11:22):
your soul is free in Christ. And those sort of
dichotomizing what God has made whole.
Um, but what they would do is that because
I believe that the Holy Spirit was working through the reading
of Scripture, despite the,
I believe, unbiblical implications drawn out
by the slave masters, they would, uh, be
able to sort of hear the stories and retell

(11:45):
them. And then what would happen is that they would
retell them and apply them in such a way that
where they were applying the riches of Scripture to their
own sort of spiritual context and so enlivened, uh,
context. And that would often happen at what we call the
invisible institution.

>> Loren (12:03):
Yeah, well, we've kind of jumped into it. Do you want to
take a moment here to describe sort of what
brought the book about your kind of drive to write it and
inspired to write it?

Yeah, certainly. So, um, as I was,
uh, writing my dissertation as a PhD
student, I began to
offer an introduction, like a historical
and contextual introduction to the theology I'd be talking
about for the lion's share of my
writing my dissertation. So, uh, and
that, um, historical context

(12:37):
became so intriguing to me that I just kept writing
and writing and writing. And, uh, the
reality is that I was finding
figures, um, and information and people that I never heard
about. I mean, I have a bachelor's degree in
Biblical Theological Studies. I have two master's degrees, an M.
Div. And a THM and it wasn't

(12:57):
until my doctoral research that I really
began to uncover a lot of these gems. And I was
just heartbroken. I said, where have these people been?
Where have. Where has Charles Octavius Booth been? Why
haven't I heard of, you know, really Daddy King in the way that he
would have been engaging? And, um, given
that sort of prominence in his time, where was,

(13:18):
um, you know, uh, uh,
Betsy Stockton? Where were these people that are just, you
know, uh, M. Maria Stewart, these giants of the faith?
And why were they not in the, uh,
primary tellings of American Christian history?
Um, and I think we know the answer to those questions, but,
uh, we can engage those later. But suffice it to

(13:38):
say that there was a whole register
of the American Christian tradition that was
missing. And I thought it would be helpful to
offer a telling of that story from a theological
perspective. So that's why I wrote Swing Low, Volume one.
And what I wanted to also do is offer
the resources, those primary sources that drove the

(13:58):
narrative in volume two. So that's why there's two
volumes. They're kind of cousins. They speak to each other a little
bit. And so if you're reading volume one, I'LL say, hey,
check this out in volume two. Because if you're reading through
volume one, you're reading about Frederick Douglass,
and there's actually Frederick Douglass's primary source
in volume two. And that just kind of repeats itself

(14:18):
with, uh, all kinds of sermons and theological
treaties, oratory, autobiography, correspondence and so
on. And so really I wanted to,
uh, understand the American Christian story like a
choir. And as I was reading
about this tradition, let's call
them the Baritones. The Baritones were missing

(14:39):
from the choir. And so what I wanted to do
is offer the story of the baritones,
which will then therefore fill out the fullness of the choir
so we can have a better telling of the story, a more whole
sound, uh, a more robustly
perspectival understanding of the Christian faith as it
manifested in America. Uh, that gives us a better

(14:59):
and more accurate telling of the story as well. So that was
really the motivation behind it.

>> Loren (15:04):
Yeah, I think one of the things that I found really interesting about volume
one is you talk about anchors
of black Christianity. Would you kind of talk through what those
are and then share how you came to those
anchors?

So these anchors are, uh, are
helping sort of tell the story from a theological
perspective. So just to zoom out real quick, and then I'll come back
into answering, uh, exactly what those anchors are.
Um, there's. There's several books that tell
this particular story from a social, uh,
change perspective, a sort of a political theology

(15:37):
perspective, uh, seeing how the African American
Christian faith has interfaced with
social movements. There's people who have told the
story based upon denominational development. You know, you
had the. The AME Church, which is the African Methodist Episcopal
Church. Then you had the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Then you had the
National Baptist Convention, the Progressive National Baptist Commission.

(15:58):
So that's, you know, which is a story that needs to be told.
But what I would like to do, or what I try to do in Swing
Low is, yes, offer the historical
accuracy of denominational development about,
um, sort of social and political
engagement. But what I wanted to do
is to root that in the theology

(16:18):
that drove all of that activity. And
so what I. What I tried to do was, is as I
surveyed all those primary sources, many of which
are in volume two, I said, you know what? There's. There's
going to be folks who have not really
engaged with this tradition before. So I want to
give them, like, some places to put their feet, some footing,

(16:38):
to be able to understand some major
themes that I think appear in the story
that if you have these themes, you'll be able to understand
what's going on a little bit easier. So, uh, the first
anchor is Big God. And by the way, the
nomenclature, like what I've called these anchors is
uh, indigenous to the story. So big
God is the first one, which really gets us

(17:00):
at an understanding of a God who is,
um, who is able, uh, who is
sovereign, uh, who can do what he
wants to do and do what he sets out to do. Uh, the
second anchor is Jesus, um, and this
is Jesus as savior, deliverer,
liberator, uh, he's the Jesus.
There's an emphasis in the conversation

(17:23):
about Jesus with his identification with
people through their sufferings. In particular
with African Americans. This is important because
there's a lot of, uh,
you know, historically and even in the current moment, there's a lot
of sufferings, um, there.
And oftentimes Jesus is told

(17:44):
through this, uh, a motif of victory, which
is fantastic because Christ was ultimately
victorious. However, um, you
know, as we look at the creeds, as we look
at the hymnity of the church, um, we
skipped from Good Friday to Sunday,
not really spending a lot of time on the
grief of Saturday, or what do we do

(18:07):
on Saturday. Uh, and so, uh, Martin
Luther King Jr. Would say, no, we're a Saturday people.
We have endured, uh, difficulty, but
we have hope for Sunday. So
although there is trouble in the moment,
we're not going to stay here forever. And so, but so the blood
of Jesus is an identifying

(18:27):
sort of marker that says, you know what,
there's been a lot of African American blood that
was unjustly shed. If you, you know, we were talking about the antebellum
period a moment ago, talking about, uh, slaves
being strapped to fence posts and barrels
whipped. But there's another one whose blood is
redeeming blood and his blood is going to
uh, beget that victory that we're hoping for. So

(18:50):
that's the second anchor. The third anchor I'll move more quickly now
is conversion and then walking in the spirit,
uh, sort of two sides of the same coin. And then the
third, the fourth one is the Good Book, which is the Bible. There's been
a, uh, long standing affirmation of the authority
of scripture, uh, in the tradition.
Um, and then the final one, the fifth one

(19:10):
is deliverance. And so, uh, that God
is able to deliver his people from
any sort of spiritual, uh, social, political
oppression. And that's those five
anchors. So if you understand those,
they appear with different emphases throughout the
story. Uh, they appear with different sort of

(19:31):
intensity. Um, and then they are Sometimes
reordered in some senses. But if you get
those five major categories, then you have a
pretty good footing to then understand the story in that
way.

>> Loren (19:44):
Yeah, I thought it was interesting how you continually weave
those five anchors throughout the book, you know,
and draw those parallels and connections to the
various historical journey.
I want to move to what I thought was
interesting in reading about how
these different social and cultural trends

(20:05):
helped or I don't know, maybe help is not the right word,
but they shaped or influenced the black church.
So three that stood out to me.
Um, and we can, we can go through these individual.
Here is the Great Migration, how that
impacted the church, uh, the separation
or maybe that's not the right word, but the distinction
between you, uh, say black intelligentsia and then

(20:27):
the growing black middle class looking for alternative
institutions. And then during the civil rights
movement, the tension between engaging social
ills and then verbally proclaiming the gospel.
So let's go through these one at a time if
we can, because I think there's very. Again, I read
this as historically speaking, but I also

(20:47):
was interested in how that history
can inform the American church today.
So talk about uh, the Great Migration maybe
historically and if you see any parallels again
to. We're in the time of great cultural change
now.

Yeah, so the Great Migration was uh, sort of
a two wave movement in the early part of
the 19, uh, hundreds. And so you have
a primary wave and then a secondary wave. Uh,
1914 is kind of the zenith of the first,
like 1920, early
1920s is like the emphasis of the second one.
And what you have there is that you have a demographic

(21:26):
sort of reshuffling of the deck. Um, a lot of
African Americans were in the rural south at that point.
There was uh, many who were in the Northeast.
Um, but the rural south is really where a lot of the
shifting took place. And there was a,
um, lot of African Americans in the south were sharecroppers.
Um, there was a massive boll weevil,

(21:46):
um, sort of epidemic or it's not an epidemic, it's just an
infestation where they're essentially
uh, eating up all the crops. And so if you're a
sharecropper, often not even getting the wages
promised for your work, and then you have
these bugs coming and eating away at the
crop. You're not making ends meet.
So there was a real need to do something

(22:09):
with that. Uh, another sort of factor in
this was is that as folks were leaving for,
ah, as people, soldiers were leaving for
World War I, it left a lot of jobs Open
in major cities in the south, but really sort of in the
Midwest where it was very industrialized. And so
uh, the um, people call the Rust Belt now
unfortunately, but, uh, the steel belt there then.

(22:31):
And so, um, there's a lot of manufacturing there.
Uh, and actually the law was such
that African Americans were uh, uh,
equal by the law in the Midwest. And
so what you have because of this conflation of
issues, you have a lot of African
Americans moving up to. Up north,

(22:51):
uh, to places like Gary, Indiana,
Chicago, which is where I was born. Uh, you
have people in Detroit, uh,
Indianapolis, in places like that. And so a
lot of these, uh, cities, you'll see a
large African American presence because people were
flooding there from the Great Migration. So one of the
implications of that is that there was this

(23:14):
pretty vast, uh, sort of ecclesiological
sort of safety net that was sort of spanning the
South. So the church is a place where you would
go for your needs to be met. Because again, at that
time you couldn't go to government as an African American
to be that safety net.
Um, there wasn't other social programs
that were sort of aimed at helping you in that

(23:36):
way. It was the church. So that was the.
That was the most central institution of the
black community. So then when you have this reshuffling
of the deck. There were African American churches in the
Midwest and up north, but they were a lot smaller.
Um, there. They weren't as. They weren't ready
for that sort of influx of people. Uh,

(23:56):
and then, you know, soon after, you know, around
the um, the Great Depression, you begin
to see the emergence of a lot of social
programs that be, you know, which African Americans can. The
beneficiary. What beneficiaries of as they're now
settling into these, uh, urban centers in,
uh, up North. So it was a very rural,
uh, community that became very urban

(24:19):
as a part of the Great Migration. And so, uh.
And a lot of that shifting can still see
the implications of it today as far as how the demographics
of the African American community are shaken out.

>> Loren (24:31):
Yeah, that's interesting. Uh, talk more
about this quote. Uh, this. This part of your book too.

We.

>> Loren (24:36):
When you read about the black intelligentsia and growing black middle
class, began looking for alternative
institutions. I mean, again, I think that's kind of a trend
we're seeing broadly speaking in our culture today, across
American culture of this mistrust
distrust of like traditional institutions. And
there's kind of these. This. Almost
this kind of uh, creation of these new. Again, they

(24:58):
wouldn't use the word Institutions, but these kind of new,
uh, power centers, cultural centers.

Yeah. So. So what. What was happening at that
point is, uh, when this really began to emerge.
Someone, uh, like a WEB Du Bois is kind of a central
figure who embodies a lot of this, grew up in the
Congregationalist church, but as he began to go to
Fisk University for his bachelor's degree and then
later to Harvard, and then he did, you know, he studied in
Germany and uh, then came back to America. He. He

(25:27):
was, uh. He was somebody that was one of these
first generations born free. So they
looked back at the faith of those who came out of
slavery, who didn't have the access to education, and they
sort of frowned upon some of the sort of feism,
like this sort of, like, faith that they had that they thought
was, you know, faith upon faith, uh, and

(25:47):
not on anything substantive. And so, uh, people like
Du Bois really became this generation of folks who
really began to try to look, uh, to
other institutions, like institutions of higher education
theories, uh, that came from sociological
engagement for, uh, the sake of healing and
engaging social problems, whereas before people

(26:07):
would do so primarily through the church and that. And that's
a major shift at that time, which is really sort of
indicative of what's continuing to happen now.
And I think that what happened was, is
that those who were leading the church,
uh, weren't really, um.
They had the Bible in one hand, and they

(26:28):
really sort of lost track of the new
issues that were emerging for young
people as they were growing up in an age where they
were born free. But they were still feeling the
sting of, uh. The residue of,
you know, racial oppression. And so there was
questions that I think Du Bois had. There was issues

(26:48):
that he was facing and others like him were facing,
um, who were now literate. And they had these
pastors who were illiterate, um, you know,
uh, their inability to engage with the
issues and the conversations that were happening in the academy
with folks who are thinking at that kind of a level, and
they just saw the faith as being irrelevant. And so I
think to sort of your point and desire to make this

(27:11):
more contemporary, uh, I think this teaches us
a lot. I think, um. There's a
tendency that I've seen and, you know, of course,
throughout the country and different denominations and faith traditions,
this is. This is. It differs. But one thing that
I've seen enough of, at least to.
For it to be a point in my mind, is

(27:31):
that pastors,
Christian leaders, have to be very much attuned
to what's emerging in the, uh. In the
ivory towers. And the reason why I say that is because
whatever's in the academy is going to be public, you know,
made public, uh, and just more pedestrian.
Uh, what used to be 20 years down the line,

(27:52):
but then was 15 years down the line. And what's now because of social
media in the way that, you know, gurus and
professors, they have YouTube channels and they're getting information like
that and because, you know. Oh,
yeah, certainly like we're doing now. Right.
Um, uh, and then. And then not. Not even to
mention the millions of American young people who are
in, you know, university, um, right

(28:14):
now, those ideas are things that they're going to
have to grapple with. So
as those who are, uh,
Christian leaders, we can't just be
Christian leaders in a very sort of
abstracted sense from the
cultural and intellectual issues of the day.
And so, uh, you know, whatever's coming out, we have to read those

(28:36):
things, we have to understand how to grapple with those things,
and we have to bring the Christian scripture to bear on those
things or else our faith becomes irrelevant.
Even though I think it's relevant, but it seems irrelevant
for the person whose questions are not answered.

>> Loren (28:50):
Yeah, let's stay with that. Because you write later in the
book about the contrast between
black academics and ministers in urban
centers. And again, I'm thinking of my conversation
with Dr. Ah, Elesha Coffman,
who. I asked her about
Wheaton. I can't remember if she was a graduate. I think she.
Anyway, um, and the disconnect between,

(29:12):
like Wheaton as sort of a
leading evangelical academic
school, and the disconnect between
the thinkers at, uh, Wheaton versus what's actually
taking place amongst pastors
in evangelical churches. I'm thinking also just
in my own context, in a mainline context,

(29:33):
how. I mean, I think the clergy are
often very well educated from seminary, but there's
often a big disconnect from the
clergy and the ideas in academia
versus, like the folks in the pews. Um, so
talk more. I don't know, what
are your thoughts and how to bridging that gap
there?

Yeah, I think that's a great question and a challenge that the church has
faced since the time of Du Bois, uh, I
mean, even prior to that. But as far as this narrative, you really
see it materializing in that generation because
that's when the Harlem Renaissance began to,
uh, take root, uh, and then sort of produce a bunch
of, um, literature for
the African American community and beyond. So,

(30:16):
um, I do think that,
um, there has to be the work of
the academy. There's an
Integrity to that work that
um, then instructs people,
clergy, how to think carefully
to give them the lay of the land, uh, in a
specific area of thought to which they can

(30:38):
then draw from for years down the line.
So just to give you my own
perspective on this, I don't teach my students
what to think, but I try to teach them how to
think. Mhm. Because if I offer them
a robust and rich tradition
and way, uh, of viewing the world that
I think is based upon Scripture, no matter what

(31:01):
comes along, they'll be able to engage with
it as a Christian as opposed to
saying, you know what? I have no idea because my professor didn't teach me that or didn't.
Didn't tell me that. So. And the way that the world is
changing so rapidly, I think that's one of the
fundamental um, uh,
distinctions that we ought to
um, engage uh, as we're thinking

(31:23):
about translating what goes on in the integrity of the
academy to clergy so then they can interact
with laity. So um, especially
with the, with the quick speed of change
and the way uh, that information is disseminated is
so much more rapid these days.
I do think that uh,
majoring on like someone like me as a

(31:45):
professor offering foundational
theological ideas and categories for them to then
engage problems that don't even
exist yet is so important. So
I think the, and this is going from like the
indoctrination sort of model to the sort of
like thinking Christianly sort of idea,
for lack of a better way to say it. So uh, those

(32:08):
sort of simplistic indoctrination sort of
um, sort of realities are not going to help
us long term as we're translating what
goes on the academy to clergy, then to laity.
So I think that's a, that's a big part of it that
I think we've um,
uh, tried to make
the academy so relevant immediately that

(32:30):
we skipped a step. And now clergy are
not able to uh. As much as I think,
you know, some clergy perhaps aren't able to sort of
um, interact with AI because they weren't given the
categories to do so. To do so. Yeah, because AI
wasn't even in existence when they were in seminary. Or people
can engage with the newest sort of
scientific reproductive technologies and those conversations. To think

(32:53):
carefully about that there's, there's really poor
thought about that. That's being publicized all the time. But how
do we think with, with nuance, uh, about those things?
And I think um, you know that. I think that this is one way
that we can do that by really acknowledging that
integrity of the academy, offering strong
footing for people to begin to sort of place their

(33:13):
feet then, uh, that clergy going out into
the world and being able to articulate a biblical
theological, uh, sort of articulation about
those ideas to people who are facing real problems on a day to day basis.
And so I think that's probably part of at least part of
the solution. Uh, and we can leave it there for now. Unless you have some
more questions about that.

>> Loren (33:33):
I mean I do, but I appreciate your
response and I know we're.

Yeah, feel free, feel free.

>> Loren (33:38):
And there's more I want to get to. But let's,
let's, let's go to this for right now.
Um, one of the other things that stood out to me was
you write about during the civil rights movement this tension
between uh, amongst some of
engaging social ills and verbally proclaiming the gospel.
I know that's still a tension that
um, exists in our world today, especially over the

(34:01):
last several years. So can you give some again some historical
context to that and some thoughts broadly speaking
for uh, today?

Yeah, and a lot of this has to do with what we think the
gospel is doing. The good news of Jesus, what is it for,
what it's going, what is it supposed to accomplish?
What did Jesus die and rise for? Um, you
know, so uh, for some they would
say, well Jesus is here, you know, to
save me, to save my soul, so that one

(34:30):
day I won't be in this place where there is
sin and brokenness and suffering
of various kinds. And so for that person they would
say the best thing I can do for somebody is to tell
them uh, about Jesus. Because there will come a day in the sweet by
and by where there's going to be no more sin,
sorrow, death, dying and those sorts of things. To
quote the uh, summarizes that scripture passage,

(34:53):
uh, others would say, well you know what the good news of
Jesus is that Christ died and rose from the dead to
restore all things to himself, which
encompassed in that is the souls of people.
But they're saying as those who are
supposed to be uh, carrying the aroma of Christ
with us. Jesus was definitely socially

(35:13):
active. Uh, Jesus is the one who did preach
the Sermon on the Mount. So Jesus wasn't
leaving social ills
undone. And so he was doing those
things as a demonstration of the fact
that the kingdom is upon us. And
so, uh, during that time with
African, uh, American Protestants, there was

(35:36):
this dialogue about okay, so
should we engage in the social
struggle for black freedom which would
then sort of Complicate our lives in the moment because there
would be backlash against that.
Um, or should we be content to share the Gospel of
Jesus Christ? People accept that
message. They would be then those who are looking

(35:58):
for, uh, that salvation in the sweet by and by
as well. So, uh, that's
definitely the context in which we have that
tension. But, um, m. Most. I would
say most African American Christians did lean in towards the
fact that, you know, what the God of the Bible is, the
God of the Exodus. So it was, you

(36:19):
know, um, let my people go free.
Yes, that's part one. So they can do
what. So they can worship Me, which is a spiritual reality.
So God is the God who created
us. Good, even very good.
And he created us sort of, uh, holistic
beings who are spiritual beings, but also
embodied beings as well. And so the

(36:41):
idea of him freeing them from their
servitude to worship him is
addressing that reality which the Exodus
became a paradigm for, uh, African Americans
to understand the totality of the scriptures and
also how God works then and
works now. So, uh, participating
in that as agents of the Lord Jesus,

(37:04):
uh, drove many African Americans to say, you know what,
There has to be that proclamation of the Gospel, but there also
has to be us living out that
deliverance in the moment as a testimony
to what's going to happen in full later. And
so I think that's where we see that tension within the community of
verbal proclamation of the gospel. Uh, or is it
a more holistic endeavor

(37:27):
to free people from, yes,
their. Their sinfulness, but also their.
Their social brokenness also?

>> Loren (37:36):
You know, I'm appreciating you using the word tension that. The
word that I've. I've heard
throughout my kind of ministry and academic career
of the importance of holding things in tension.
And that's certainly a lot easier said
than done. Right? And it sounds like, uh,
the black church has really done a pretty good job of
doing that. Is it a fair assessment?

You know, I think that is a pretty fair
assessment. And I think that,
um, it was by sort of contextual and
historical necessity, um, that
was sort of forged in the fire, if you
will. It was because
if God didn't answer to the
evils, I mean, going back to the antebellum period, if

(38:21):
God had no answer to the
fact that wives and daughters were
being raped and then children were being sold
away from their parents, families were being broken up, uh, that
men were being whipped and emasculated and all
these. If the Gospel had nothing to say to
that, then

(38:42):
it just seems like it's going to fall on deaf ears.
But the gospel does have something to say to
that. And it also upholds
people, uh, inwardly
as they're standing in the midst of that
situation where that brokenness and sinfulness and
hatred is, uh, they're enduring that.
So it really is that sort of both. And like

(39:04):
God has to uphold his people in their
spirits, but he also is
doing that for the sake of them being his hands and
his feet in a world that is dying and
broken. And when Jesus was here, he was doing the work of
helping to address those things both spiritually and
physically. And so I think what the
context that African American Christianity was forged

(39:27):
in resist that sort of agnostic
lean to make us assume that
Christianity was primarily a
spiritual thing, freeing, uh, us from this body
of death, uh, in this body that
carries our sinfulness. Well, no, no, no.
We're sinful because we live in a post
Genesis 3 world, uh, and

(39:49):
things like that. But that doesn't mean that
the world in which we live in, in the bodies that
we inhabit in it are unredeemable. Which is why I believe that we're going to
have. This world's going to be restored and our
bodies are going to be raised and we are going to be in the
kingdom embodied as God intended it, and not some
spirits abstracted from the world that God

(40:09):
created. Good. And the bodies that God created. Very good.

>> Loren (40:13):
Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you for sharing that.
So I ask this question often
to leaders of color and I'm curious if
you're willing to share here too,
what are some lessons, I'm curious, that the white
American church might learn, again just from
broadly speaking,
these historical lessons and how they could

(40:36):
be, uh,
impactful for again, today's
broadly white American church.

Yeah, that's, that's a fantastic question. I think one
of the, one of the major
points of um, uh, or
an aha moment could be after reading a book like
Swing Low is, you know what, uh, as
the number of professing Christians in
America dwindles proportionally,

(41:04):
there's still the opportunity to make
change, to interact and interface with the world around
us. Um, and because,
you know, African American Christians did that from the margins of
society.

>> Loren (41:16):
Mhm.

Um, so if you're looking at a people, as
Howard Thurman says, with their back against the wall, those people have
made a lot of change in the American cultural
landscape. But from a position of
powerlessness, so, uh, are seeming sort
of social power powerlessness. They were
empowered by the Holy Spirit for sure. And so I
think that's a major point that we can say, hey, you know

(41:39):
what? Um, all is not
lost. God is still working
through his church. Um, and that's lesson number one.
I think a second lesson, uh, is that
if you look at African American Christianity,
um, versus sort of, ah, like white Christianity or
Anglo Christianity, however you want to say that there usually is

(42:00):
this sort of theological conservatism
and then like theological liberalism sort of
spectrum, uh, or
that maps right on top of, you know, political
conservatism and political progressivism
amongst African American Christians. We see that
that's not an appropriate way to assess
the tradition because, um,

(42:22):
historically speaking, the lion's share
of African American Christians have been able to, you know,
sign on the dotted line of any of the sort of
historic confessions of the faith. Nica ah,
um, you know, uh, is one that just jumps to mind.
You know, these are the, uh,
theological statements of the major African American
conventions. So, uh, but you

(42:44):
have these historically orthodox
Christians, but they were socially progressive.
That. Because if we thought about, you know, okay, you
had these orthodox African American Christians, if they were
conservative in the antebellum period, uh,
political or socially speaking, if they were conservative,
uh, amongst. During Jim Crow, that mean they would have
tried to maintain Jim Crow, segregation

(43:07):
or the status quo, but their faith
was actually driving them to do something other than that.
And so does that mean that every African
American is with, uh, every sort of
progressive sort of idea in the moment today?
No, not necessarily. Uh, but what that
does mean is that that same sort of, uh,

(43:28):
parallel of political and theological
conservatism and then political and theological
progressivism as a spectrum, the two spectrums
paralleling each other, that usually works
fairly well amongst, um,
uh, white Christian does not work amongst black
Christians. So there's a lot of times when
you'll have an African American Christian

(43:50):
who is, um, up in arms about
something socially, uh,
and many sort of, especially in my
spaces, uh, where I traverse evangelical Christians would
say, oh, that person must be theologically liberal. But that's
not the case at all. They're actually theologically
conservative or theologically orthodox, I should

(44:11):
say historic Christians is what I
would want to say, uh, who would affirm the anchors, as
I'm saying, of the African American tradition.
But that's driving them to engage
in such a way that is calling out
things that are, uh, antithetical to African American
flourishing.

>> Loren (44:30):
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that because something that
I noted from the book, you talk about the mistake of
conflating black Christians as theological
liberals and you know, as we're
recording this, when it's November 8th, certainly the
election just took place and I think there was,
I mean again, broadly speaking, some.

(44:50):
The sort of, kind of the usual.
I don't want to get too much into this, but uh, it seems like this
election has been like the sort of like expected.
Um, what am I thinking? Collaborations
or partnerships among
um, political
parties, like those kind of collaborations are falling by the wayside and

(45:11):
those kind of normal norms don't usually
apply. Uh. So yeah, I'm intrigued by
this, this idea of this M. What you're right about
this, this conflation. I mean,
let me say this. Like it feels. Maybe this
is, maybe this is unfair, but I guess
I'm speaking from my perspective. Like it feels like unfair

(45:33):
that it seems like it's almost like white people who are like
telling black Christians, like how they have to be.
I don't know if that's too strong, but
what, what are your, what more do you have on this, this
topic? Thought.

Yeah. So, I mean I, I've been in, I've been in
churches that are. Love
Jesus, that are, you know, for
me I'm, I'm predominant. I'm in a Baptist context.
So they're, they're baptizing people, uh,
because. To make a public profession of a faith that they believe
is an inward change. Again, that's Baptist polity. But

(46:06):
all I'm trying to say is that I've been in a variety of Baptist churches that
are doing those historic Baptist practices,
celebrating, uh, salvation, sending missionaries all over the
world and doing great work in their communities.
Um, and depending on which church I'm in,
one church would say you are not a Christian if
you vote Republican. The other one would say

(46:27):
you're not a Christian if you vote Democratic. So,
um, you know, so it's. And I, and
I, and I think that what we're seeing
is that uh, Neither political
party 100%
affirms all of
the uh, ethic of
Jesus.

>> Loren (46:48):
Mhm.

So what we're doing is that we are, you
know, for. On both sides of that equation.
For those who are saying you can't be a Christian and vote Democratic
or Republican or whatever it is, I think both have
their particular emphases
that they're choosing to raise to the top
and saying, you know what? I'm going to vote for a party who

(47:08):
affirms these things. And on both
sides there's uh, things that I'm just going to have to choke
on for the sake of those things that I'm
prioritizing and because they're
prioritizing two different kinds of things,
they end up saying that about each other. And I think it's
just, um, you know, we have to understand that
this, the, the two party political system in

(47:29):
America is not one that is based
upon sort of any sort of uh,
biblical theological sort of principles, uh,
that are, um, that make it
very clear this party is the party of
Jesus and this party is discernibly not.
And so I think that's, that's, that's one thing that

(47:50):
I think Swing Low has kind of helped me to. Or the story that
swing. It captures, uh, writing. It has helped me
really begin to see how um, you know,
there's, there's, it's, there's um.
Like, you know, I'll say this. On the
whole, um, in many African
American households, the issue of,
you know, like um,

(48:12):
um, abortion, let's say that's
a issue that's taken care of in the
house. You know, like, that's a, that's an issue
that's engaged, but it's engaged at the
dinner table, it's engaged within
the household. So it's not necessarily that,
hey, we need to have legislation that then

(48:32):
guards against that. It's like, hey, that's taken care of in this
context and the political context is to take care of other
issues. And so African American Christians
have made that calculus and some
have been voting Democratic for that reason, which some,
uh, um, evangelicals would say, how can you be
Christian, uh, and vote for a party that doesn't

(48:52):
affirm, uh, is not, is not um, inherently
pro life. So anyway, I'm trying to
stand back from the whole discussion and offer some
feedback and sort of diagnostic. But
um, then for the evangelical
who, um, you know, and by evangelicals I mean just because
statistically we know that many have voted for the

(49:12):
Republican Party. Uh, they would say
because their primary issue that they are looking at
is life and primarily life in the
womb. They would say that, well, that
that issue is central.
Therefore this is the only party I can vote for
with good conscience. And so I think
that, you know, the understanding those historical

(49:34):
developments really uh, allows us to
understand how we've gotten to this point. And that's
really all I'm trying to articulate in this moment.

>> Loren (49:42):
Yeah, yeah, you mentioned when we were talking
offline about kind of how historically, uh, African
American Christians have utilized voting in the voting box.
Can you share more about uh, that kind of tradition and history
there too?

Yeah, and so, and I was just kind of getting at that. The
Calculus for going into the voting booth is just
a little bit different in different communities. M.
Okay. The way the issues
that. So, uh, certain communities go into the
voting booth with the mindset that the
government takes care of certain issues.

>> Loren (50:15):
Uh-huh.

Um, and so we're not basing, you know, the African
Americans have historically said, you know, or even other groups have said,
we're not basing our engagement in the ballot box on
those issues that are taken care of in the house or at church.
It's more. There's. There's a way. There's an area
where, you know, where politics engages and we're going to vote
on primarily those things, and everyone really does that. It's just a

(50:36):
matter of where you draw those lines. And that really
sort of, uh, elevates and de. Elevate
certain issues as we go to the voting booth. Um, and
so I think that's a very, very important thing for us to learn
because, um, as
Christians who are on different sides of the political aisle,
look at each other, I think there's a

(50:57):
very quick, uh, tendency to
broad brush each other as, oh, they
voted for here, they voted for there. They must, uh, hate
these people and love this, or they must hate this
and don't have any, you know, care for life in the womb. And.
And so, uh, interestingly, you know, and this is
another historical fact, um, if

(51:18):
you go back to California in
2008, and Mary, uh, Beth Swetnam
Matthews tells this whole story in the introduction
to her book Doctrine and Race. Very, very helpful.
So she says that,
um, African, uh, Americans
disproportionately voted for Barack Obama in the
presidential election. So there was

(51:40):
a. There was a vote to sort of legalize same, uh,
sex marriage in California. Uh,
and so, uh, proponents for that, um,
for that change in the law went to African American
voters and said, or churches and said,
hey, pastors, get on board with this. But
because that's not a historic Christian position,

(52:00):
they said, no, we're not going to do that. But they said, but you
voted for a Democratic candidate. And so
therein lies that sort of, hey,
so I guess we can't assume things about people
on different sides of the political aisle. It just revealed
how they prioritize different issues in the
ballot box in different ways. And so. And again, I'm

(52:21):
just trying to give some historical
texture to how the lines are drawn and
where they're drawn, um, not only with the political
party, but how people prioritize different
conversations within their being in parties, which is. Which
allows them to elevate certain issues and then like,
choke on issues in their party that they don't agree with.
But because they've elevated other issues, they just, you

(52:44):
know, they just are laying the bed that they made for themselves.
Uh, and on those other issues that they don't
like how their party engages with them.

>> Loren (52:52):
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that context,
uh, and nuance. Let's do one more question here before
we take a break. I thought one thing that was really interesting
about the book was how you kind of, uh, develop
and lay out the development of black
theology from, at least, if I'm remembering correctly, kind
of post 1970s on. And I think also

(53:12):
what I was especially intrigued to learn more about
was, you know, you certainly go through, like,
the black liberation theology, uh, leaders
like Cohn, uh, and Katie Cannon
and Weems and, you know, many more.
Uh, I was intrigued to learn more about also some
more conservative evangelical scholars from that
context, talk more about that

(53:34):
broader, uh, development of the black
theology.

Yeah, this is a very exciting,
uh, area because, um, as you said
post 1970s, if you're in
seminary or if you're a person
who's a very curious layperson who says,
I want a theology book written by an African American,
what you would usually be given is James cone or

(53:59):
Katie Cannon or, um.
Uh, Gayrod Wilmore or. I mean, just
people who are, uh, classic liberationists,
Black liberationists or womanists, which are women, uh,
black female, uh, scholars,
uh, of a liberationist sort of perspective.
So one thing that I did
in the book is that part, like

(54:22):
before the interlude, there was a continuous sort
of, uh, chronological sort of development
of the African American church. But then I have an
interlude that sort of theologizes black
consciousness and says there's two sort of
movements that emerge off of that. Uh, one is black
liberation theology. And so James cone is, you know,
always said in the literature to be the, uh.

(54:45):
Um, father of that movement. Which, I mean, by all accounts he
is, because he just was so prolific. Meaning that he just wrote a
lot. Uh, he has several doctoral
students who have also written a lot. And so his
influence in 20th century African American theology is
undeniable. And so, uh. And not. Not
only that, to say he. A lot of his students
are, uh, deans and presidents of

(55:07):
HBCUs and other institutions of higher education
today or to this day. So, um. So
that's like one trajectory. Um,
the other trajectory is, um, black
evangelicalism. As I noted in the book, which
in my own studies, my academic studies, I was completely
unaware of this. Um, even

(55:27):
though that's where I
would probably. If you looked at the book and you looked at me and you
hear my sermons and stuff like that, you probably say that's where Walter
lands. But the reality is
this. When, um, William H.
Bentley and uh, William
Pennell and Columbus, uh,
Sally and others said black evangelicalism,

(55:49):
it's probably not what we're thinking when, uh, we think
of evangelical today. They weren't just parodying,
you know, uh, um, Carl F.H.
henry. They weren't just parroting, you know,
Harold Akengay. Um, they
were trying to intentionally have a
historically orthodox faith that was
evangelical, this good news. But what was the

(56:12):
utility of that good news? They were trying to sort of articulate that for
the black community. So one thing that I
saw is that,
uh, Black Liberation theology, which is a sort of
James cone sort of path and all of his sort of
descendants that was very much, uh, anchored in
the academy. So, um, you know,
even. Even somebody like,

(56:34):
um. Well, I'll just keep
it. I don't want to mix it up and get people in trouble.
Uh, so it's very
well documented.
Uh, there's a lot of
critique amongst black liberationists in the
academy of the black church. So there was almost

(56:54):
this belittling of the church is kind of the
disposition and uh. I'll just say it. So Jeremiah
Wright, uh, you know, he. When he was in
seminary and so he was. He was a pastor in Chicago for a long
time when, when it was said, hey,
I want to be a pastor. Even for Raphael Warnock,
who's now in Atlanta, he said, I want to be a pastor, right? Because, uh,
Raphael Warnock study under James cone, he said, I'm going to be a

(57:17):
pastor. And so I'm staying connected to the local church.
And he was sort of ostracized in liberationist
circles for that. Um, there's a Cambridge Campaign
to Black Theology, uh, that
where um. Um.
Um. Jeremiah Wright was
basically articulating all of this. So this is
not new to me or this is not original to me. This is

(57:40):
Jeremiah Wright saying because he wanted to be tethered to the
church thinking in liberationist circles, that was
sort of, uh, seen as a knock against him. And he was sort
of ridiculed for that. Not like persecuted, but just kind
of ridiculed for that. On the other hand, with black
evangelicalism, the reason why
the written literature is so sort of
obscured and very little is because these were

(58:02):
primarily pastors, uh, and they were
primarily working in the streets. They were
leading their communities. They were not writing books in the
Academy, like the black liberationists were.
So you have this, I think,
um, a group that is
more representative of the average black Christian
amongst, you know, as a black evangelical, and again, in the sort of

(58:25):
William Bentley sort of way, not in the sort
of what we would assume as like a. Just politically sort of today.
But, um, so they.
They are less published, but they represent the lion's
share of African American Christians. So if we
can sort of step back and say, well, the majority of the
scholarship written by African Americans is

(58:45):
sort of settled and engaging in a
context that was other than what the
average sort of African American Christian was
engaging. But the folks who were doing that, they were
not as prolific and their writings weren't as
publicized, uh, and published as much
because they were primarily pastors. And so that's definitely a
dichotomy that I think is sort of at work in a lot of this.

(59:07):
And I. And I'm seeing, uh, a
lot more written on African American evangelicals. There's three chapters
in Swing Low. Um, there's a dissertation
by Seungchon Ra, who's at Northern Seminary or North Park Seminary
in Chicago. He wrote his dissertation at Duke
on this phenomenon as well. Uh,
there's, uh, Vince, uh, Baycote,

(59:27):
who's at Wheaton right now. He's doing a documentary that's coming
out on black evangelical leaders like Bentley and
Pinnell and Tom Skinner and uh, others like that.
So, uh, there's some more coming out about that.
But that's a very interesting sort
of development as you look at those two contemporaneous
streams of thought emerging. Um, and,

(59:48):
like, in the post sort of 1970s
moment.

>> Loren (59:52):
Yeah, and I, I appreciate you engaging with that
with me, because I think that's something interesting that I'm
seeing broadly speaking, in, like, white
mainline church and maybe
even, you know, white church,
American church, broadly speaking. Is this kind of like.
I don't. I don't know if I'd, you know, I'm not sure what

(01:00:12):
even word to use, but there's this kind of, like, elevation, it seems
like, of academia and this. Like,
it. You know, I feel like I certainly,
like, I love reading your book and, uh, other academic
books, but, like, I. I feel like I'm a pastor and
like, I know a lot of pastors on the ground who I really appreciate and
respect, and there is this kind of, like, divide between, like,

(01:00:33):
you know, between. I feel like this. The academia
and, you know, this like, oh, why would you want
to be in a local church type thing? So it is really
interesting to hear that that's something
a, uh, disconnect or, uh, I'm not sure that's the right word,
but divide or a challenge that, again, these
African American leaders have been navigating for a while

(01:00:53):
and important to learn from.

>> Dr. Walter Strickland II (01:00:55):
Yeah. And interestingly, uh, if you look at
the, uh, you know, the, uh, pulpit versus
lectern sort of divide in the American
church, if you go to, uh,
most like, white Christian context,
the lectern is elevated over the
pulpit in that the best and the brightest,

(01:01:15):
uh, are professors. And then the other ones who
are good, they certainly
do well. But they're
not the professors. They're the pastors and the clergy and so
forth. Uh, but in the African American
tradition, because the church
was the center of the African American community
for so long. And I think despite the

(01:01:38):
sort of waning influence of the African American church in
the community, I think it still remains a central
institution because there's just so much diversification in that.
But, um, because of the centrality
of the pastoral office in the African
American community at large, the best and the brightest
didn't aspire to the. To the pew or to the, uh,
lectern. They aspired to the pulpit.

(01:02:00):
So. So, I mean, if you look at Martin Luther King Jr.
That's. That was. It wasn't his aspiration to go and
be a professor at Morehouse, where he graduated from his bachelor's
degree. It was to go be a pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
and later at Ebony, uh, Baptist Church. And so he
led that movement from a local church seat, not from
a. Some uh, sort of auxiliary parachurch
institution.

>> Loren (01:02:22):
Yeah. Uh, that's interesting. Well, we're. We're
an hour into this, so I don't want to keep you any
longer. Um, let's just take a
quick break and we'll come back with some closing questions.

All right.

>> Loren (01:02:36):
We're back with Dr. Walter Strickland. I really appreciate your
time. Thank you for engaging with me, uh, over the
course of that conversation. Uh, let's do
this. I, um, want to start
with this. I'm going to go out of order here. I'm thinking
if there's someone in the book you
could have. That you described in the book who you would want to

(01:02:56):
meet or bring back to life. Like, who would it
be? And
maybe I'm being too imposing here, but I want like a. I
want like a deep pull here. Maybe, uh, you know, like,
who is a deep. What's the word they use in music? A deep cut of the
album.

A deep cut. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Uh,
you know, um, so Fanny
Jackson Coppen is a woman I
think I would want to hang out with. She
is, um, she is somebody
who is one of the first African American women to
graduate from college. She, um,
then was an educator, started an all black female

(01:03:34):
school. Later the
influence of that school became for men as well.
Uh, she then created an institution
of uh, sort of like a finishing school
that actually preceded, um, this sort
of,
um, services, um, services
training that um, Booker T. Washington

(01:03:55):
established at the Tuskegee Institute. So she basically
was, she basically established the Tuskegee
Institute before Booker T. Washington did. But
because Booker T. Washington was Booker T. Washington, it was like,
oh, this new thing, vocational training,
uh, is here now. But really, Fannie,
Ms. M. Fannie, as they called her, she was doing that a long time before
that. And so, um, all I have to say, so she, she is

(01:04:18):
a, an educator as I
aspire to be. She's an entrepreneur that
I aspire to be that as well. And she was really
one doing things that were revolutionary for her
time. Uh, just, you
know, as a woman, African American woman,
uh, in that time period that is mind boggling. I
would just want to, I want to have coffee with her, I want to have dinner and

(01:04:40):
just hang out.

>> Loren (01:04:41):
Pick her brain. Pick her brain.

Yeah. So that's, that's a pretty, that's a pretty deep cut.

>> Loren (01:04:46):
I hate to do this, but I have to like get onto another podcast here in
like seven minutes. So I have to cut this short, I'm afraid. Uh, share
if you would, how people can connect with you, get a copy of the book, all
that stuff.

Wonderful. Uh, Walter Strickland is my name and so you can go to Walter
Strickland.com to sort of follow some of the latest with
me. Uh, I'm on X, formerly known as Twitter
at W Underscore Strickland.
And um, those are probably the best ways to stay, um,
abreast of what I'm doing. Also LinkedIn, Walter R.
Strickland the second. Uh, and then if you,

(01:05:17):
uh, was your question, oh, Swing Low. You can get it on
Amazon at Barnes and Noble, uh, through
the IVP University Press website. You can
get it through all those mediums, uh, and pretty much
anywhere where books are sold. There's
also, um, an audio, uh, book on Audible
as well.

>> Loren (01:05:35):
Okay. Okay, good. Well, uh, I really appreciate
your time again. I've kept you super long, so thanks,
thanks so much for engaging me again. The book is
Swing Low, A History of Black Christianity in the United
States, Volume one. And two recommend those from
ivp. Again, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate
your perspectives and insights. Um, and I always leave

(01:05:56):
folks with a word of peace. So may God's peace be with you.

And also with you.

>> Loren Richmond (01:06:07):
Thanks for joining us on the Future Christian Podcast.
The Future Christian Podcast is produced by Resonate
Media. We love to hear from our listeners with
questions, comments and ideas for future
episodes. Visit our website@uh,
future-christian.com and find the Connect with Us
form at the bottom of the page to get in touch with Martha
or Loren. But before you go, do us a

(01:06:30):
favor, subscribe to the POD to leave a review.
It really helps us get this out to more people.
Thanks and go in peace.

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