Jamie Gates: The Lessons of South Africa: Apartheid, Justice, and Reconciliation

Send us a text

Dr. Jamie Gates offers a powerful, deeply personal exploration of growing up as a white American in apartheid South Africa, revealing striking parallels between South Africa's racial history and America's ongoing struggles with justice and reconciliation. As someone who straddled two worlds - attending all-white Afrikaner schools while his missionary parents ministered in Black communities - Gates provides unique insights into how segregation shapes society and how religious institutions either challenge or reinforce these divisions.

The conversation takes us through the theological underpinnings of apartheid, where religious language was weaponized to justify racial separation. Gates explains how certain churches provided spiritual backing for apartheid while others worked actively against it, creating multiple versions of Christianity within the same nation. This historical exploration feels urgently relevant as Gates connects it to contemporary American politics, particularly the dangers of "colorblind" approaches that ignore measurable disparities and the privilege inherent in claiming political neutrality when others are suffering under unjust systems.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is Gates' nuanced perspective on Christian engagement with divisive issues. He challenges the false dichotomy between maintaining relationships across political divides and speaking prophetically against injustice. Instead, he suggests Christians can and must do both - keeping "holy friendships" with those who disagree while still standing firmly with the marginalized. His personal journey through these tensions offers wisdom for anyone struggling with how faith intersects with politics in polarized times. Whether you're interested in international justice issues, theological responses to racism, or practical ways Christians can bridge divides while maintaining integrity, this conversation provides thoughtful pathways forward rooted in both scholarship and lived experience.

https://rawtools.org/

Episode Transcript

Chris Nafis (00:00):
Hey and welcome back to the Current.
This is Pastor Chris Nafis, andtoday I'm very grateful to have
joining us on the podcast DrJamie Gates, who is a professor
of cultural anthropology in theDepartment of Sociology, social
Work and Family Sciences atPoint Loma Nazarene University.
He is the founder and theformer director of the Center of
Justice and Reconciliation atPoint Loma and has been deeply

(00:21):
involved with issues of justiceand poverty, especially around
human trafficking.
But today we talk about hiswork in and around South Africa
someone who grew up in part ofhis childhood there and has been
deeply engaged with issuesaround apartheid and racial
justice kind of following andleading pilgrimages into that
space and we talk about howthose things connect to what has

(00:42):
happened and what is happeninghere in the United States.
I hope this conversation willspark you to deeper engagement
with issues of justice and giveyou some hope that there are
people doing good, peacebuilding work in the world In
the name of Christ.
Here it is All right.

(01:12):
Well, jamie, we've known eachother for a long time now.
You've been really helpful inme processing all the stuff
going on in the Nazarene Churchand just sort of trying to live
a faithful life here in SanDiego.
Thank you for all yourinvestment in my life and and
thanks for doing this with me.
I really appreciate it.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:28):
I love it.
I'm grateful for yourfriendship.
I'm grateful for the work youdo.
I really believe in what you'reup to.

Chris Nafis (01:33):
Well, thanks, and same for you.
That's why I want to hear moreabout what you have been up to
and what.
What you are up to, um, I knowyou fairly well, although I'm
still, like this week,discovering new parts of your
journey that I didn't reallyknow.
But not everybody knows you.
Could you kind of justintroduce yourself a little bit
for people listening?

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:50):
Sure, I'm currently a professor of
anthropology at Point LomaNazarene University.
Have been there since 2001.
Came here out of grad schooland I started the Center for
Justice and Reconciliation thereout of my calling and their
calling on my life.
I've done a lot of work in thecommunity here in San Diego,

(02:12):
border work in San Diego Tijuanaand work going back and forth
between here and South Africa.
I'm currently on sabbatical soI have time to do podcasts with
friends.
Um and uh, I'm in the middle ofwriting a book on the counter
human trafficking movement insan diego county.

(02:32):
Um, students drug me into thatmovement, uh, back in 2005, way
back then, and was, and god hadit such that we got immersed in
that as a, as as a university,with students and colleagues and
in such a way that there's abig story to tell about San
Diego and what transpired there.
So I'm working on a book rightthere.

(02:53):
So on that, right now I'm inthe middle, in the hard parts of
got to work on it and hardparts that it's also difficult
material.
It's also about a difficultsubject.
It's heavy stuff.

Chris Nafis (03:04):
Yeah, difficult material.
It's also about a difficultsubject.
It's heavy stuff, yeah, yeah,and I think like when I came
first came to san diego, thatwas mostly what I knew about
your work was that you werereally involved in all the human
trafficking stuff.
And even when we first weregoing to do this episode, I was
like, let's talk about humantrafficking.
Then we kind of shifted because, uh, I didn't know all about
your history with um, southafrica and south africa is like
around the news a lot these days.
You know we have a SouthAfrican who's, you know,

(03:27):
basically in charge of thegovernment at the moment.

Dr. Jamie Gates (03:29):
The shadow president.

Chris Nafis (03:30):
Yeah, and there's some other South prominent South
Africans, you know, I think ofTrevor Noah and some others.
There's a lot, and then there'sthese.
There's some political stuffhappening with South Africa.
So we kind of pivoted anddecided, well, let's dive deep
into that.
So we kind of pivoted anddecided, well, let's dive deep
into that.
Your PhD is actually instudying South Africa.
I just learned that today.
Can you tell us a little liketell us your story?
How did you get connected toSouth Africa?

Dr. Jamie Gates (03:50):
I wouldn't be who I am today had I not grown
up in South Africa.
So my parents took me therewhen I was eight years old as a
missionary kid, and my parentswere missionaries out away from
the cities and the rural partsof South Africa for most of my
life there.
I lived in Johannesburg acouple of years, but as a kid I
grew up as a white American, butthey immersed me in local

(04:11):
schools, so I grew up inAfrikaner schools in this
farming valley in northern SouthAfrica.
What was then called theTransvaal is now Limpopo and
Mpumalanga area.
That had lots of farmers andit's the Los Coptan Valley.
It's one of the most fruitfulfarming valleys in all of South
Africa.
So I grew up essentially in afarming town, riding horses and

(04:35):
motorcycles out of my friendsout in their farms and going to
school.
But remember, in those yearsSouth Africa was segregated,
heavily segregated, and so Igrew up in mostly an all white
community while my parents werebeing pastors in all-black
communities, and so movingbetween those worlds was like a
huge part of my upbringing yeah,yeah, I mean I think that was
probably a pretty uniqueperspective, being sort of

(04:56):
americans in their whitecommunity but like working in in
black churches in thatcommunity.

Chris Nafis (05:02):
I mean, maybe just backing up just a little bit,
could you tell us like I thinkmany of us have like some
general sense.
You know, we've heard of NelsonMandela, we know about the end
of apartheid somewhat.
I think some of us have atleast Americans have like a
fuzzy understanding of likeSouth American politics and sort
of all that happened there.
You came in from what Iunderstand.
You came in right in the thickof it.

Dr. Jamie Gates (05:22):
Sure, the latter years what we didn't know
then would be the latter yearsof apartheid.
So I left in 88, mandelabecomes president in 94.
And the whole transitionhappens in those years where I
go to college and of course, asa kid any big kid growing up in
a place, you just grow up in itand you don't know the full, you
don't have great perspective onwhat you're growing up in the
middle of.
But I go to college in thoseyears and I'm getting a lot of

(05:44):
perspective from the outside.
You know who knew about the asa kid.
They in South Africa, the media, carefully controlled the
message on a regular basis andeven in schools.
I can tell you a lot about howthe schools shaped a particular
kind of patriot and ways ofthinking about being both
Christian and patriot in SouthAfrican schools growing up.
But more generally, southAfrica is so right.

(06:07):
So South Africa is.
You know, in the United Stateswe like to tell the story of
1492, columbus sailed the oceanblue.
We kind of create this, youknow, hallowed history of the
way that Europeans discoveredthe United States, typically
writing out the people who arealready here.
But that's another longer storyIn South Africa, kind of
similar.

(06:27):
But it was 1652 when the Dutchsettled and there had been some
Portuguese you know way stationsin the Cape and everyone at
that point was looking for traderoutes and efficient trade
routes.
So the Dutch settle in 1652.
The British come not long afterthat, you know, not even 100
years after that, and ofEuropean settlements they start

(06:48):
to put settlements in SouthAfrica and the European heritage
settlers become sort of Britishand Dutch, as you know.
I don't know if you know Mostpeople may not know this, but
they're in tension with oneanother.
Most of South Africa's history,all the way to the Boer Wars,
right another.
Most of south africa's history,all the way to the boer wars,
right the, the british are areestablished some of the first

(07:09):
concentration camps um thateuropeans use against one
another in in in the boer warsin 1899 against other europeans.

Chris Nafis (07:15):
Yeah right, so this was like this.

Dr. Jamie Gates (07:16):
This was like in some ways, the british and
the for connor's, who becomeknown as the offer connor's.
Later the british and the dutchsettlers are fighting one
another for territory and for,of course, what eventually
becomes the.
The real, the central reason isthe wealth in south africa.
So they discovered gold anddiamonds in the in 1860s, 1840s,

(07:36):
through the 60s they figure oh,there's tremendous mineral
wealth here and it causes this.
It's part of the scramble forafrica, this great rush to
colonize all of Africa.
But there are already deepEuropean settlements by the time
.
The scramble for Africa happensin all over the continent, right
, and that happens in the late1870s, 80s, 90s.

(07:58):
So South Africa becomes a.
South Africa by the beginningof the 20th century becomes an
end as quasi independent nation.
They become the union of southafrica, which takes four, two
british and two dutch heritageprovinces and unites them across
south africa.
Remember, this is all europeansmaking the decisions, or people

(08:21):
who used to be europeans atleast making these decisions.
It becomes the union of southafrica in 1910.
So that is really the firstmajor separation from britain,
from the, from the, thecolonizing aspects, and by that
time there's now generations ofeuropean south africans of

(08:43):
british heritage and dutchheritage, south africans living
there, you know, for hundreds ofyears, and africaners in
particular consider themselvesuh, african, not european.
Deep european roots, but itwould be like you know all the
people in america who thinkabout themselves as european,
but they really have irish oritalian, or you know british

(09:03):
roots, but, but they've losteven the memory of when those.
Or you know British roots, butbut they've lost even the memory
of when those roots started,you know.

Chris Nafis (09:08):
Right, I'm American , I live here in my peer I'm.
You know, I can't count thegenerations, right, yeah?

Dr. Jamie Gates (09:13):
And, like in both nations, the, the racial
divide has always been thereheavily and the, the Europeans,
built their nation on the backsof South black South Africans in
particular.
So South Africa has 11different languages now.
That tells you something aboutthe diversity of South Africa.
In the midst of all that, butfor you know, when apartheid

(09:36):
gets established in the early20th century, so apartheid
really becomes formally a systemof government in 1948.
But it's growing in the earlyyears of the 20th century and
into these laws that, like in1910, the Group Areas Act, these
land laws that begin tosegregate everybody by where
they live, by what jobs they canhave access to, by what

(10:00):
educations they can have accessto, by whether they can own
property or not own property,whether they will be allowed to
be managers or whether they haveto remain in low-paid and
entry-level positions.
All of South Africa getssegregated like that.

Chris Nafis (10:15):
And what are the lines Like?
Is it purely race?
Is it just white black?
Is it Dutch?

Dr. Jamie Gates (10:21):
The dominant line was white versus everything
else.
There was a time later in thecentury where they started to
create, in between, categorieslike indian, and colored is a
big category in south africathat's not used the way we use
it in the united states.
There's an entire subpopulationof south africans who own the
identity of being colored um,who speak afrikaans as their

(10:42):
primary language, afrikaans andenglish, who are of mixed race,
who come from their ancestors,come from many parts of the
world, but in South Africathere's this.
There's this texture, beauty ofof diversity, but the apartheid
system broken into five racesand you had to fit into one of
those five race categories.
You even created passports forfolks, internal passports where

(11:05):
you had to carry your identitydocuments and you couldn't like
when I was growing up in thisfarming valley, hrblersdal, the
little town, about a fewthousand people back when I was
growing up and it's now probablymore like 10,000 now.
But you couldn't stay overnightif you weren't white, unless
you had a pass.
You couldn't stay overnight ifyou weren't white, unless you
had a pass and unless your passwas signed recently by your

(11:27):
employer in whose dwelling youwere also staying for that night
.
So some like housekeepers andpersons working in the gardens
and so on would do that, andthat's how divided it was.
So literally had the nextclosest housing villages, towns,
cities that were black, like 45minute drive away from the town

(11:48):
.

Chris Nafis (11:48):
So people had to commute by bus if they were
working in town, if they, ifthey were not white yeah, so,
and this is like late 80s, early90s, it's just not that long
ago and you know some of us thatare getting old enough that I
can say I remember some of thedays, you know, like I remember
some of the things from my earlychildhood reading the news, and
so some, some people listeningto this may may remember some of

(12:11):
the actual history of this asit developed.

Dr. Jamie Gates (12:14):
So you know how , yeah, you can be in your
forties and remember andremember segregated beaches
right, I'm in my fifties now.
Beaches right, I'm in my 50snow, and it was you know we were
going to.
You know I remember thenon-white, the white, non-white
signs on benches and onentryways to, to buildings.
It was being heavily challengedin the 80s, for sure, and there
was a lot of pushback, um andprotest.

(12:37):
One of the things I remember isthe, the level of the ongoing
level of violence and fear thatwas in all communities, heavily
in the black community inparticular.
I mean it was militarized,right.
I can remember living through anumber of uh states of
emergency, they would call it,where the entire basically
martial law, where thegovernment declared things

(12:58):
unrest is happening too far andwide and they bring the military
into neighborhoods all over thecountry, in particular into
black neighborhoods.
And while I wasn't living inblack neighborhoods, the fear
that was there was in partstoked by all of this extra
state violence that was comingat the population and we were
supposedly protected.
But it didn't feel likeprotection, it felt like stoking

(13:20):
flames.
It felt like, you know, um,barely suppressed anger and and,
and it felt like it was causingthat anger as much as it was
sort of trying to somehowcontrol.

Chris Nafis (13:33):
You know the, the frustration yeah, so the state
crackdown just like escalateseverything and you felt like
that as a kid in particular.
Yeah yeah, and, and being inboth those communities, you
probably were hearing sides ofit that maybe some of your
schoolmates were not.

Dr. Jamie Gates (13:48):
Yeah, it's interesting because, like in the
evangelical world, in Nazarenechurches and others that we were
missionary friends with in thearea, it's almost like there was
like this don't talk aboutpolitics rule, and so apartheid
is happening all over the placeand as a kid, I'm being raised
like without much language orwithout much conversation
happening in the house about allof that.

(14:09):
It's almost like the peoplethat grew up in civil rights era
and said, well, I didn't knowthis was happening.
Well, we knew, but we didn'tknow.
It was this weird space of wesee this going on, we're talking
across, but even the pastorslike black pastors, nazarene

(14:30):
pastors wouldn't talk too muchabout the things that were
happening in their neighborhoodsbecause we needed to stick to
church conversations.
So I'm sure my parents hadlonger and deeper conversations
than we had.
And my parents did somebeautiful things, like the first
time the local farmers sat downwith a black man at the dinner
table was when the pastors wouldcome over and the farmer
friends would come over at thesame time, and that there was
that kind of interpersonalbreaking down of barriers that

(14:52):
was going on in our home but notmuch conversation about the big
picture.

Chris Nafis (14:56):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, that sounds that feels
very familiar to me, because Ifeel like that that we kind of
feel that way now, where youknow we have the rise of Donald
Trump and all it's just verycontentious, where, like, all
the news is about these bigdramatic things that are
happening around the Trumpadministration, part one and now

(15:16):
part two.
Um, and you know, and I feellike in right-wing circles like
there was lots of drama aboutObama, biden, those things going
on, but like it feels like inchurch we're really not supposed
to talk about it, like we'resupposed to be like somehow
neutral.
And I think we have this bigculture of like churches they
have politics and in some waysthat can be helpful to maintain

(15:39):
community community.
But then when there's like trueinjustice going on, like it
just you know, when you, when noone speaks anything, you end up
siding with the oppressor,usually, right, what did that
look like for you going?

Dr. Jamie Gates (15:52):
no, I I had the privilege of in 15, of doing a
uh, a tedx for point loma and uh, it was on this very issue of
how deadly silence is, inparticular and particularly the
church, it's silence on issuesof justice.
And having sort of reflectedback on my experience and

(16:14):
looking at South Africa and thechurch was many things in South
Africa all during the apartheidyears and in the post apartheid
years.
But I'll say that in thoseearlier, since we're talking
about that you know the churchwas apolitical, like the
evangelical or the Nazarene sortof trying to I'm not sure
that's possible, but we were atleast claiming to be apolitical,
which means nobody challengedthe status quo you couldn't

(16:35):
speak to.
And you know the church wasunder threat if it had spoken to
give the leaders somecredibility here.
They were under threat that ifthey spoke against the
government they would lose theirability to be in south africa,
so they would kick the church innazarene out, for example.
That at least was the, thestated fear at the time and
likely the the, the truth right,um.
But then there was, you know,then there was a dutch reform

(16:57):
church which was an arm orfueling the apartheid structure.
You know the hendrik vervoet,the founder of the apartheid
system.
One of the first prime ministerswas a sociologist, theologian,
so a sort of graduate trained,you know, theologian and
sociologist, who was thearchitect of apartheid.

(17:18):
And so apartheid was preachedfrom the pulpits in some ways,
well before it was woven intolaw in South Africa, and so
there was a theologically drivensense of God's purpose in the
world, a sense of God's missionin the world, a sense of who we
are is God's blessing to Africa,to all of what's happening in

(17:40):
South Africa.
I mean, I'll give you a quickexample of a holiday that is
revered in South Africa.
That was revered and still it'sa complicated relation to the
past, but the they called it inAfrikaans the day of the promise
or the day of the covenant.
I think the day of the covenantwhen in on December I hope I
get this right December 16, onDecember I hope I get this right

(18:02):
December 16, there is acelebration of when God
delivered the Afrikanerfour-trekkers or the pioneers
you would think about in theUnited States, the people in the
covered wagons right the OregonTrail, kind of people in South
Africa.
The Dutch, the Dutch and thosethat inherited the land they
think from God were in this bigbattle against the Zulu nation.

(18:26):
Maybe people have heard ofShaka Zulu and others, but this
was relatives and on this day,with a small circle of wagons
relatively small circle wagons,but superior firepower, you know
, guns and such they were ableto expel.
It's called the Battle of BloodRiver.
They were able to expelthousands of Zulu impis or

(18:46):
fighters, and they had famouslyprayed to God that if God were
to give them this day, theywould forever be a Christian
nation and they would foreverhonor that particular day as a
national holiday.

(19:09):
Um, that story was grown intowhat it has become in the 1930s
and 40s as the, as theyestablished the four trekker
monument just outside ofpretoria, as a, as the nation
was, as apartheid was gainingsteam, as a as a structure and
as the, as those with dutchheritage.
Um built that system.
That was one of the storiesthat sat at the center many
stories like this, but thatstory sat at the center of god's
call to this.
You know, I, I think when inthe united states we use the

(19:32):
phrase manifest destiny, right,and that's the, that's one of
their versions, that one of thestories.
That is the pillar, a pillarstory in building of their
notion of manifest destiny sokind of like we have in the
united States.

Chris Nafis (19:44):
We have these stories of like you know, like
the Thanksgiving story of youknow, like this it's not a
violent story, but I mean it isa violent story, but it's not
told as a violent story of likethis great feast with everybody
involved in the hospitality ofthe native people, or maybe the
story of Custer.
Okay.

Dr. Jamie Gates (20:04):
Custer is told as some kind of victory.

Chris Nafis (20:06):
Yeah.

Dr. Jamie Gates (20:06):
But for Native Americans it's told as a raping
village and he lost Right.
Right.

Chris Nafis (20:11):
We beat him in that space we have cowboys and
Indian stories and those kindsof things.
Yeah, so there's a lot ofparallels and I mean they're not
even that far apart.
So it seems like for me, Ithink, because I was born in the
80s, like the 80s, 90s doesn'tfeel that long ago, but like for
us the civil rights stuff waswhen we had segregation in the

(20:32):
60s, it wasn't out, yeah, like20 years prior, you know.
So, yeah, okay, so so we havethis like really religiously
driven sense of, like racialsuperiority or like giftedness
that the dutch feel like they'rethey didn't offer to this land.

Dr. Jamie Gates (20:43):
This is odd blend of religious ideology, but
it also was 19th century racialtheory, you know, coming out of
the united states, coming outof europe.
You know, these ideas of, of,of, um, uh, social, evolutionary
ideas that there is acivilization at the top of all
society and clearly the onesthat have been most successful,

(21:03):
you know, economically,materially, technologically, are
, are, the, are the winners ofall society and clearly the ones
that have been most successful,you know, economically,
materially, technologically, are, are, the, are the winners of
this social evolutionarytrajectory, right, um and uh.
So it was this, it was this umpastiche, or this blend, or this
um, this odd recipe of sometheology, some 19th century

(21:26):
racist ideas, you know, eveneven the anthropologists, like
in my profession, who came tosee race is one of the really
important markers we need to, weneed to measure and see how
this is influencing society.
But, yeah, they're, they're,they're looking for skulls and
how the.
The term Caucasian, right, youknow it comes from from their
research on finding a largerskull in the Caucasoid mountains
.

(21:49):
And it was, you know, it wasbleached, it was whiter.
So in the theory of thehierarchy of human populations,
you know, whites and whiteEuropeans in particular, thought
of as the highest peak, butsometimes really nonsense.
Science like makes its way intoeven the language you use today
.
Science like makes its way intoeven the language you use today
, like this notion thatcaucasoids and australoids and
negroids and those, that kind ofhierarchical thinking from the

(22:09):
19th century, it's still around.
Yeah, it hasn't.

Chris Nafis (22:13):
It hasn't been washed out or cleansed out of
our language yet yeah, I mean, Iknow what we're saying, but
we're kind of using theselanguages that that uh kind of
are built on.
I mean, in some ways, that'show language works.
Right, like we evolve, we pickup words a long way, but, like
there's definitely some of thesethings are, are definitely
there, I think, still in ourculture below the surface and
obviously, as we've seen aresurgence of like just overt

(22:36):
white supremacy in our countryand, I think, in South Africa,
right, like there's, thesethings are still out there One
of the great dangers that existsin both countries.

Dr. Jamie Gates (22:45):
both as a kid and growing up and studying this
later, there's this thoughtfloating around right now even
especially, it's becoming likein law right now that in order
to not be racist, you need tostop measuring race.
Right, you need to stop sayingthat it's a thing and somehow
that will erase or that willmake things more equal.
It'll be colorblind.

(23:06):
Oh, such a dangerous concept.
Right, it was growing up and itis now Like the sense.
It's only when you started tolook at the disparities that
existed by racial division thatyou're like oh wait, there's
something real that's happeninghere.
There's something measurably,you know, people are being
treated different.
I forgot.
There's complex reasons whythat exists to some degree, but

(23:27):
we at least got to start withthe basic social facts that
they're disparities.
Why do those disparities existand how do we then correct those
disparities?

Chris Nafis (23:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I mean I don't know if wecan talk about that at length,
for a very long time and thishas been something that I've
been studying recently in thelast several years some of the
history of race and theseparation of racial identity
from ethnic identity andseparation of people, like the

(24:04):
places that they come from andthe time that they come from,
and all that kind of stuff,which is all all mixed up and
you know, like I think here andsounds like also in south africa
, it's really complex because wehave these, um, kind of outward
markers of like our heritageand where we come from, but they
they're so they've been passeddown for so long that, like you

(24:27):
said, you feel you know there'safricaners that feel like they
are native africans they've beenthere for hundreds of years.

Dr. Jamie Gates (24:33):
I think that's fair right.

Chris Nafis (24:35):
It's a fair argument and and so when you
have those like two differentgroups that are divided in these
visible ways by um, but bothclaiming like heritage and slant
, I mean that's where a lot ofthe big conflicts in the world
come.
This is israel, palestine too,right, and and you know a lot of
rights access yeah, so I mean,I guess what we wanted to get to

(24:55):
today was talking about, like,what does it mean to be a
christian in the midst of all ofthat?
Yeah, you know what I mean,especially when your church is
kind of driving you to be silent.
Remember, I was saying thereare many.

Dr. Jamie Gates (25:08):
There are different kinds of churches,
different kinds of Christianchurches, happening all at the
same time.
Sure, sure, yeah, you knowthere's.
There's evangelical Nazareneswho are like let's get them in
the rowboat, let's get themsaved and off to heaven.
Right, issues in the aresecondary if it's.
Yeah, we don't want peoplekilled and we don't want evil in
the world, but the world'sgonna end and we'll move on,
right.
So there's the millenarians,and not nazarenes, weren't all

(25:29):
that.
But that's kind of thetrajectory.
They, they fell in um.
And then there's the.
You know the, the dutch reformfolks, you know as kai pairing
good, kai pairing calvinists.
They were like you know, um,all the world is gods and it
needs to all be sanctified andall the systems sanctified.
But they had a very weird sortof twist on what sanctified
systems looked like.

(25:49):
It was sanctified for a subcategory of the nation more than
anybody else, right?
So it was boundaries around whocould fit into that.
The kingdom in the world, right?
And then you had, I would say,like represented in Desmond Tutu
, for example, the Anglicans,who were thinking about the
church and the Catholics.
In many ways, the Catholicchurches and parishes were the

(26:13):
quickest to indigenize, to haveblack priests to have, you know,
black languages in theirservices and so on.
And the Anglicans followed anddid that as well.
The Evangelicals and DutchReformed separate systems.
Even the Nazarenes had separatedistricts for separate language
, followed the politics of theland, the language politics of
the land, right, until well,after apartheid, unfortunately,

(26:35):
even for the Nazarenes.
But the Catholics and theEpiscopalians, and what we know
of as Episcopalians here in theStates, or the Anglicans Church
of England, folks in SouthAfrica had started to build
Christians who were AfricanChristians right, in this case
black African Christians morethan most, right.
And so those Christianitieswere going on all at the same

(26:57):
time.
South African English speakers,white English speakers, tended
to be the more on the quote,liberal end of things, so they
would tend to have churches thatwere blended before other
denominations, methodists fellacross the spectrum, structures
that were in South Africa, yeah,so what does it mean to be

(27:37):
Christian in that space?
Well, unfortunately, you have amenu of options, right?
So if this one doesn't fit howyou think about the world, you
go over to this one, right,right, and now what we got going
on here?

Chris Nafis (27:48):
Yeah, that is what we got.
We have a big churchmarketplace, right?
And if you don't like what'sgoing on in this church, you
just hop to another one, andthat could be anything from
politics to music, to you knowthe carpet.

Dr. Jamie Gates (28:01):
But here's what's interesting.
What drove you know the carpet,but here's what's interesting.
What's what?
What drove me, what reallyopened my eyes a lot.
Let me say it that way, as I'mstarting to study these things
now as a young adult and movinginto a career with studying,
I've spent my life trying tostudy this very issue we're
talking about today, and so andI feel like I've learned a
couple of grains along the wayabout, about it, but that's it.
Um, but it, while hendrik, forvowoerd, is creating it with

(28:26):
good, in good conscience, likeas a good upstanding Christian
political leader, is creatingthe apartheid system that
destroys millions of black SouthAfrican lives.
He goes to sleep fine at night.
He's, his family are singing inworship, you know like he has

(28:48):
no self-awareness about the harmthat he's causing.

Chris Nafis (28:50):
You think, or you think he's, I don't know about
that.

Dr. Jamie Gates (28:52):
Yeah, okay, I don't know about that yeah, but
I think there's a higher likehe's, he and others like him,
and maybe not him in particular,but I'm thinking theologically.
There's a space where youjustify all kinds of ugly things
if there's this higher goal inmind and you're moving towards
that higher goal and thatsomehow excludes that many

(29:12):
people right yeah, or somehow iseven on the backs of, whereas
you know you're, you're, you'remissionizing to them, you're not
in the kingdom with them?
yeah, I think, and so.
But at the same time you've gotum the praise songs of the
church morphing into protestsongs on the streets of South

(29:36):
Africa.
And I mean, the clearestexample is what becomes
eventually the national anthemin South Africa, or the blended
national anthem, because theytake the old white south african
national anthem.
You know, I can even sing thatin afrikaans, still like right.

(30:00):
But now they take that one andthey blend it, so it's it's.
You first sing and then youmove into the old south af.
So so the transition in SouthAfrica, we can talk about that
and I'll have a Mandela and allthat kind of stuff.
But the point here is thatthere's a Christian hymn that

(30:20):
unites South Africa that becomesits national anthem.
That is both beautiful and it'sa little bit scary in that
theology at the in the hands ofpoliticians, always, always
dangerous.
But yeah but so I'm.
I'm intrigued by this nexusbetween power and theology,

(30:41):
power and the church.
Because, I don't know,protestants are really
frustrated historically andexist historically because of
their critique of aligning,aligning the church and the
state too closely.
Right, yeah, what wereindulgences?
What were, what were the 95theses all about?

(31:01):
If they weren't about, you know, saying Rome controls every
piece of our lives in ways thatthat's not scripture or
something else.
That's not scripture orsomething else, but that's not
scripture.
Yeah.
So let's move to sola scriptura, sola fide, right, yeah, to
distance ourselves from thestructures that are clearly evil

(31:22):
.

Chris Nafis (31:23):
Yeah, but then, like at the same time, kind of
as you expressed earlier and now, I feel like there's this
pressure.
I feel it as as a pastor evenin a church like ours that is
pretty open about like at leastlocal politics around
homelessness and stuff, you feelthis pressure to just be
apolitical all the time and andI think that kind of comes as
like a swing away from thatright, like we have this hard

(31:45):
separation of church and state.
Pastors shouldn't be tellingyou who to vote for and those
kinds of things which.
And then sometimes I'm likeamen, yeah, we shouldn't be.
But uh, but at the same time,like when there's like actually
tremendous injustice happeningand maybe we need to be more
involved even than that.
But you know like we're, Idon't know how you've been
studying this.

Dr. Jamie Gates (32:05):
What do we do?
I mean my, I had, I had, um,let's call it guilt.
I was feeling the guilt of thechurch, the shame of the church,
for the longest time for notbeing a part of the apartheid
resistance, and I think weshould own that.
I think we have to confess thatand live with that.

(32:27):
But, to be honest, the positionof being apolitical is a
privileged position.
When you're the one who, wherethe boot is on your neck,
there's no neutral place tostand yeah and if we had seen
ourselves as the one on whom theboot on, on whose neck the boot

(32:48):
is, we probably would have hadto speak it differently, preach
it differently.
So I think you can still be,you know, as grace-filled and as
gentle as Jesus and still saybasta, no mas, like.
It's not okay when families arebeing deported, it's not okay

(33:10):
when neighborhoods are beingbombed right, apartheid, south
africa.
When the, when the big trucksare going in and shooting kids.
Right, the whole world saw in76, you know the famous, the
famous shooting of kids insoweto.
Right, uh, the, the hindupictures.
The memorial is still there.
We can go there and I'll take,I'll take friends and family and
students to go.
Say this happens when we're notpaying attention, like we

(33:33):
militarize, and you startshooting kids.
Yeah, that happens when youreally see people as wholly
other, right, um, and so youknow the neutral position, the,
the I don't see color position.
Yeah, is, is, is a, is a spacethat we've allowed our, our
privilege to not have to dealwith that, to act as if we

(33:57):
shouldn't deal with that, and Idon't think that's a fair place
to be, and I think the onlything that drives us to a
different place, though, is justto think of Jesus as somebody
who was incarnate in the spacewhere people suffer most, in our
lives and in other people'slives, and so like.
If the church isn't aimed atthose who suffer most, if it
isn't calling us to be presentwith those who suffer most, it's

(34:19):
hard to see the boot on theneck.

Chris Nafis (34:22):
It's hard to see a theology that has to respond to
the boot on the neck right,right, and I mean, and maybe
this is, you know, I'm thinkingabout like contemporary time,
like what we're dealing with now, yeah, and maybe it's because
we're in it and it's easier tosee things when you're 20 years,
30 years, 50 years removed andyou can kind of see the bigger

(34:43):
trends.
But it feels a lot of the timeslike the there are, there are
varied priorities that are kindof at odds with one another.
You, you know, so like in someways, so, for example, using the
Trump stuff, right, likethere's a whole group of working
class people that are veryfrustrated with, you know, low
wages and you know strugglingindustry and wanting to see, you

(35:05):
know, a resurgence of Americanmanufacturing and all those
kinds of things and that kind of, and they want, and they're
frustrated about immigration,feeling like people are taking
their jobs.
And on the other side, you canlook and you can say these are
the people who are struggling,right, and the church needs to
be there for those folks.
On the other side, you havepeople who are immigrants, who

(35:27):
are fleeing violence or whateverpoverty whatever from their
homelands, and the church wouldbe like, well, we need to
support them.
And then you have, you know,like the black community has
been loud in recent years aboutthe significant injustice that
they face, and that's what's up.

Dr. Jamie Gates (35:41):
Yeah, Trayvon Martin and everybody else Right,
right In the thousands actually.

Chris Nafis (35:45):
Yeah.

Dr. Jamie Gates (35:46):
In the interim.

Chris Nafis (35:47):
And there's I mean there's.
So there's all these differentpeople that are vulnerable and,
of course, in our context, we'retalking a lot about housing and
homelessness and there's justnot enough housing and housing
too expensive.
And you know, there's this huge, you know wealthy class of
people that seem to own every,all the property everywhere and
they're raising rents and allstuff, and those, you know, in
some ways those partiesinterests align really well, you

(36:07):
know, and it would be nice ifwe could find some coalitions to
say like, hey, we got torestructure some of the things
in our society because it's not,it's not working.
Like we got people gettingreally, really rich and a lot of
people increasingly becomingimpoverished and even, even
people that are sort of middleclass, like really struggling
even to afford a place to live.
On the other hand, like a lot ofthose people are, they're set

(36:28):
against each other by the powersthat be, and so you know they
would say, well, uh, we got todeport everybody or we got to
close the borders because that'swhat's going to bring back jobs
.
And you know, maybe it'sbecause we're in it, like, it
feels harder to like take sides.
I don't know.
Does that?
You can see where I'm gettingthat like sure, I've been
thinking a lot about that.

Dr. Jamie Gates (36:47):
In that I would ask the question for those of
us that study the civil rightsmovement or have studied
apartheid, south africa orsecond world war, the rise of uh
hitler, the rise of the naziregime, right, what?
Where would you have stood ifyou were there then?
right and, if that doesn't hauntyou a bit, right like what is
happening in the united states,I'm seeing signs of apartheid,

(37:08):
and apartheid laws start to beimplemented, start start to roll
out, you know, in presidentiallanguage, and then being backed
up by, you know, people who'vebeen wanting this to go that
direction for quite some timeand it's scary.
So you know who's going to be.
Are we going to be?

(37:29):
Are we going to be theBonhoeffers?
Are we going to be the Corrieten booms?

(37:51):
Are we going to allow thepolitics and the fear of losing
federal funding and you knowthat really kind of undergirds
students' ability to go tocollege, getting federal loans,
for example, if they take thoseaway?
Are we going to be able tocontinue to have a center for
justice and reconciliation?
And I think this is a momentwhere we have to be able to say
what is core to who we are asChristians, like if we're

(38:15):
willing to take our religiousexemption that I think this
administration wants to standstrong behind religious
exemption for lots of theirreasons, but can we use
religious exemption for a churchor for a church-based
university to say no, actuallywe're not going to do away with
the diversity of our studentpopulation, because we think
that reflects the diversity ofGod's work in the world.

(38:36):
Right Now.
We have particular theologicalreasons.
It's not the sociological orthe or the, the, the.
You know, I actually love thelanguage, diversity, equity,
inclusion in general, you know,but that's become like this
political buzzword.
I think why I like thatlanguage is because I think it
works well outside of a churchcontext.
But it's not our language.

(38:56):
So if we do away with that kindof language in the midst, it
doesn't bother me as much.
What bothers me is if we doaway with the practices of
creating space for people whohave been underrepresented, if
we don't create a campus or achurch community, that that,
that that reaches across the,the social lines that we've

(39:17):
created, that are hard to reachacross.

Chris Nafis (39:20):
Yeah, when we begin closing out like resegregating
on on, you know whether it'sracially or or social,
socioeconomically or whateverwe're getting into into trouble.
And there's, it'ssocioeconomically or whatever
we're getting into trouble andthere's, it's no secret.

Dr. Jamie Gates (39:33):
You can predict .
You can predict if we do awaywith measuring the racial
differences in schools, you canpredict schools will resegregate
and it's in part because otherparts of society are still
pretty heavily segregated, likeneighborhoods.
If your neighborhoods are basedon, if your schools are based
on neighborhoods right andyou're not able to introduce or
transfer kids, right.

(39:54):
Or maybe even a harsher commenthere might be if you privatize
all of schooling Right Then youhave no incentives for people to
formally move across thoselines and interact with one
another and the polarizationwill grow even larger.

Chris Nafis (40:12):
Yeah, yeah, it's like well, the in the big part
of the sort of the colorblindstuff is like, well, let's just,
we'll just start, we're all oneven surfaces but we're not
right like it's.
Like it's ignoring all thehistory that's put different
people at different levels indifferent places and in it,
instead of trying to addressthose things, which is always
imperfect and address trying toaddress those things, ignoring

(40:34):
them, just kind of favors thepeople who already have the
biggest advantage.

Dr. Jamie Gates (40:39):
If you have capacity, if you've got
advantage, you can take moreadvantage.

Chris Nafis (40:41):
So I guess where this connects to South Africa
for me, at least in the moment,is I feel like South Africa has
been lifted up at times becauseof some of the reconciliation
work that happened afterapartheid, right, and there are
people that were kind of comingand confessing and there was
forgiveness and there was allthis.
There was this whole process oflike peacemaking,
reconciliation and you know,like some of the big names

(41:04):
nelson mandela, desmond tututhey're a big part of like this
whole process and now it seemslike that those did it work.
I guess is my question, andwhat, what fell short in South
Africa is South Africa hasplenty of its own troubles at
the moment.

Dr. Jamie Gates (41:22):
Right, its economy is one of the strongest
in all of Africa, but it's it's,it's um shaky, you know it.
Uh, its politicalinfrastructure has too much
corruption in it.
There's too much um people whoare um bilking the system for

(41:43):
personal gain.
Um, it has to.
Its crime rates are too highacross the nation.
Its murder rates are too high.
It's carjackings, in a veryvisceral kind of sense it's, you
know, it's kidnappings andcarjackings are too high across
the nation.
Its murder rates are too high.
Its carjackings, in a veryvisceral kind of sense, its
kidnappings and carjackings aretoo high, higher than a lot of
countries, right, yeah, some ofthe very personal kind of crimes
.
It still has, though, thestrongest education system in

(42:06):
all of Africa.
Right, it still has more wealththan than nations, has a
stronger military than thannations across the rest of the
continent.
You know there's a few thatcould compete, you know could
argue that are that are that areclose.
It still has the strongestmiddle class and upper class,
you know, in terms ofsocioeconomically.
So South Africa is so muchgoing for it and I think,

(42:29):
everyday people there's so much.
The racial integration acrossSouth Africa is so much more
than it has ever been in history.
You can look at like the riseof interracial marriages is like
pretty is stronger in some waysthan it is in the United States
.
You can look at the culturalblending that's going on and new
things that are being createdculturally in South Africa.
It's just fascinating.
Jazz is a great example.
You've got phenomenal globalmusicians coming out of South

(42:50):
Africa is just fascinating.
Jazz is a great example.
You've got phenomenal globalmusicians coming out of South
Africa.
So you know, when the world,when a political entity like the
United States wants to use orat least the administration
wants to use South Africa as awhipping person right as to say
how terrible it is, how grossthe things are, they use terms
like genocide, like there's awhite genocide going on of

(43:12):
Afrikaner farmers is what thepresident is declaring.

Chris Nafis (43:15):
And the shadow president.
People might not be payingattention.
Oh my gosh, Some of this ishappening.

Dr. Jamie Gates (43:20):
That is like Rwanda 800,000 people being
murdered in 90 days, 100 daysthat's a genocide Right.
What happened to Jews in theHolocaust?
That's a genocide right.
And and and to others, the.
The percentage of the, the farmmurders, the murder of farmers
in south africa, or the murderof lots of people in south

(43:42):
africa, is a grotesque injustice.
And it is happening.
The scale of murders of farmersis not much higher than the
general population and in factblack young men are the
population that are murderedmore by far, even percentage
wise, numbers wise, by far morethan anyone else in South Africa

(44:04):
.
And we should be deeplyconcerned about the murders of
the farmers, the white farmers,and we should be deeply
concerned about the murders ofthe farmers, the white farmers,
and we should be deeplyconcerned about the murders of
the young black men.
To lift up Afrikaner farmers asif there's a genocide in South
Africa, just pours ugly fuel onflames that for decades now

(44:25):
South Africa has been trying tohelp massage into a better set
of relationships.
And for our political gain, theUS's political gain, this
administration's political gain,for them to do that, it really
just benefits a very narrowrange of people in South Africa.
And I think here I will say,you know, the farmer's fear is

(44:46):
real, like they're out in themiddle of their farms, far away
from towns and policeinfrastructure and so on.
They're by themselves a lotright and they're vulnerable in
that sense.
So the fact that their fear ofmurder is higher than the
incidence of murder isunderstandable, right.
I would also say that you knowthere african very prominent

(45:10):
politicians like julius malema,who literally regularly threaten
boers like like one boer, onebullet kind of language, like
like like murderous kind oflanguage.
Yeah, sorry, boers is a is a isa slang term for afrikaner, was
also a historic term for farmer, but boer being really a code
word for afrikaner, white and,in this case, farmer, right.

Chris Nafis (45:32):
So there's people kind of that are opposing the,
that are kind of going back tocolonialism and and frustrated
with the fact that you know somany people who are native
people lost their land.
You know, now, hundreds ofyears ago, right, stoking those
racial tensions also, but then,like some French figures doing
that, uh, what's what's happened, from my understanding, is that

(45:55):
trump has kind of picked up onthat and, likely with the
influence of, you know, hissouth african doge guy, elon
musk, uh, stoked some of thoseracial tensions to kind of
escalate those tensions.
Well, those tensions are there,yeah, no doubt those tensions
are there.

Dr. Jamie Gates (46:10):
They didn't create them, but they're
definitely fanning.
Fanning those flames.
And you know, the government insouth africa recently passed a
law that is some say 30 yearstoo late, some say should never
have been passed, but it's aland reclamation law that, uh,
the government can use it's.
It's like in the united states.
We have the uh um, eminentdomain laws in the United States

(46:32):
and if they want to put abridge through a neighborhood,
they will.
And the eminent domain lawshave done real damage in the
United States.
They've ripped through blackcommunities, they've ripped
through communities and you caneven look at Barrio Logan and
the bridge here in San Diegothat was built in the history
and the people that resisted.
They're finally done.
And so we've got Chicano Park,because they were eminent
domained out and needed to atleast have some semblance of

(46:54):
life left in that neighborhood.
Right, this is a little biggerthan that.
South Africans fear whathappened.
People of means in South Africafear the collapse of the
economy like what happened inZimbabwe.
Zimbabwe implemented landreclamation and they just, and
in a very short amount of timeand at a fairly large scale, not

(47:15):
not the whole economy, but theytook a lot of farms that were
being farmed by white farmersfor a generation or so or more,
um, who had the expertise infarming, and they turned them
over to folks who were new tofarming and the farms collapsed,
infrastructure, the foodinfrastructure collapsed, and
Zimbabwe's economy over decadesof some of this happening.

(47:35):
So they're looking at that aslike if you do anything like
that in South Africa.
So South Africa hasn't andwon't, I don't think, do that at
any kind of scale.
They put a law in place thatwill help transition land faster
, because it's been 30 years andbarely any land, percentage
wise and quality wise, hastransitioned from white farmer

(47:58):
hands to black farmer hands.
Black South Africans are 83% ofthe country, white families I
forget the percentage of thewealth, but off the top of my
head but are significantly lesslikely to be the poorest South

(48:21):
Africans.
It's not that there are no dirtpoor white South Africans, but
all of that history, all of thatyou know, connectedness, all of
what has been in place in SouthAfrica, even you know 40 years
beyond the or 30 years now,beyond the establishment of the
new South Africa, has a momentumto it that protects most white

(48:43):
South Africans way more than itprotects most black South.

Chris Nafis (48:46):
Africans, so we can see the kind of some of the
injustices, some ways, that arethe any mean.
I feel like we feel this heretoo, like any attempt that
that's made to bring you knowsome equity back to the
situation around race andhistory is met with such
resistance and such fear frompeople that actually have money

(49:08):
and power, which, from peoplethat actually have money and
power, which, and again, likemaybe not again, but you can,
you can understand like if youfeel like someone's going to
come and take your land, yourpossessions or do violence to
you and you can see how peoplecan really easily and
legitimately become scared bythose kinds of things.

(49:28):
Um, but there's, you know that'snot necessarily happening.
You know, like people talkabout, um, uh, people talk about
stuff happening here, but likethere's like little to no chance
.
You know that they're thegovernment's going to come and,
you know, raid the bank accountsof white americans and then
give big payouts to the blackcommunity.

(49:49):
Like I just don't, it's notlike a realistic thing that's
happening but I think people are.

Dr. Jamie Gates (49:53):
We're more sophisticated than that yeah.
We can go down that path alittle if you want, but I think
we do.
We do have ways of of ofgutting wealth out of black
communities, for example, thatthat aren't exactly the
government coming in andstealing it.

Chris Nafis (50:09):
But Well, so it's been happening in the reverse
way.
But I think what people, Ithink what some of what you know
, some of the, the right-wingpeople, have been stoking fears
about, is the is the reverse ofit right, that that there's
going to be this um, thatsomehow we're going to go back
in history and that people, youknow, white people now are going
to be punished for the thingsthat white people did 100 years

(50:30):
ago and that wasn't me, that wasgreat, great grandpa.
I didn't even know, and I thinkthere's, you know, like those
things need to be handledcarefully, like, if we're going
to try to make, you know, buildtowards a more equitable society
, it can't just be, you know,because you're going to create
more harms, if you're just liketaking from one people and just
giving up, but no one's reallyno one has any like realistic

(50:53):
plans to do anything like that.
But I think people can use thefear of that kind of thing to
drive political ambitions and todrive, you know, policies that
that that have the oppositeeffect, that continue to, uh,
like, establish wealth andestablish privilege for groups
that already have it.
I think what we're seeing, youknow, is some of those fears
being stoked in South Africa.
Some of those things are beingstoked here.

(51:14):
You know again, like how do welike what do we do?
Like what should, where shouldthe church be in all of this?
You know what I mean, like howdo we respond to the things that
we see, because sometimesthey're so subtle that you're
like, well, I don't know, Ican't, you know, I don't know
what to say about this or thatand how involved to get, but

(51:34):
like, well, where's, what do wedo?

Dr. Jamie Gates (51:37):
Oh well, there's a long got another hour
we can sit here.
I think there are actually alot of things that we can do,
but I think maybe the firstthing is to remain Christian in
contact with other Christianswho actually don't agree with
you very much.
There's a lot of Nazarenes that.

Chris Nafis (52:00):
I don't agree with.

Dr. Jamie Gates (52:01):
And that think, probably think some of the ways
that I think, and I know thinkbecause they've written about it
publicly that they think someof the ways I think are heresy,
right, and I might think some ofthe ways they think are heresy,
but can we remain inrelationship with one another?
Can we?
Can we, um, maintain holyfriendships across these lines

(52:24):
and can we model in the church,um, uh, pushing back against the
polarization, not, not notaccepting injustices as we see
it, because I think there's a,there's a bottom level.
If we're going to be christianin the world, we gotta first
care about a world that caresfor the widow and the orphan and
the stranger in our midst.
And if the widow and the orphan, stranger in our midst, uh,

(52:45):
people in the margins, immigrantfamilies, who are the, the most
vulnerable people, the goodright in the hebrew um, or or or
the poorest in our midst, thosewho are left without social
supports, like widows in the in,in both the script, in both our
testaments, right, um, that'sthat's sort of baseline.
If we can't do that together aschristians, we're not being
particularly christian.

(53:05):
So let's, let's focus on thatand the and, and let's come to
some terms about when that isand where that is happening best
.
Beyond that being thenon-negotiable, where are the
spaces we can intersect with mydutch reform brothers and
sisters who are calvinists andwho you know, or you know even
the?
The kind of christiannationalism that's in the united

(53:27):
states is a lot like thechristian nationalism I grew up
with in south africa, and it wasa lot.
It continued to exist becausethere weren't.
They were allowed to isolatethemselves from everybody else.
And so can I stomach notunfriending my white nationalist

(53:49):
, christian nationalist friendsand fellow church people so that
, where my small sphere ofinfluence, I might be able to
bring somebody into a slightlybetter place?
That said, I also find myselfwhere I need to keep doing that.
But I also need to probablyhave my feet on the streets
sometimes, especially where themost vulnerable are being

(54:10):
threatened around the policies,around the unhoused in San Diego
County.
If MAGA interests or ifleft-wing Democratic interests
or if you know left wingDemocratic interests are somehow
, or centrist interests are morecorporate than they are, you
know, for the sake of theunhoused in San Diego, we got to
speak against it.

Chris Nafis (54:30):
Right yeah.

Dr. Jamie Gates (54:31):
You see what I mean.
I mean I know you live this,but I think that's a hard like.
This is like sitting down withChristians say what are the most
important?
Who are the are the mostimportant people to protect in
the midst of this chaos that isflying around?

Chris Nafis (54:47):
I don't think our 401ks are the most important
thing to protect, right, exceptas they trickle down into the
families that can't affordanything Right, and so that's
where I would start, I guess,like I feel like I and I think I
this really came through myChristian education and stuff
that like there's thissignificant call to like
maintain those relationshipswith people that disagree, you

(55:10):
know, and I think even in someof the Nazarene drama that's
happened, like that's been thecall of our church, even has put
things out there like can't wecontinue to be with one another
even if we disagree on issues?
And I really feel that reallystrongly.
But I also feel this pull um andthis, this kind of like growing
need to like take a stand atsome point on some of this stuff

(55:33):
, you know, and to kind of saylike yeah, we are brothers and
sisters, but like this is, thisis not of God, and I don't know
how to do that really, like Idon't feel like I've been, I
don't feel like my all thatChristian education and all the
things that I've grown up in thechurch, I don't feel like I've
really.
I feel like I'm kind of tryingto give myself a bit of a crash

(55:55):
course on like getting ready,cause I feel like there's going
to be a time coming where, like,we need to be prepared to like
to protest and be prepared tospeak out and confront even
people that we've loved for along time about the ways that
you know things are going.
You know where do you, how doyou draw those lines and how do
you?
Is it possible to do both thosethings at the same time?

(56:16):
You know what I mean to stayconnected and stay in good
relationship with people who areon very different sides of
political lines, but also notjust be silent and be complicit
in, like the, the oppressionthat is so rampant in so many
places.

Dr. Jamie Gates (56:31):
I mean I've tried to model that over the
last.
I was trying to, let's say, notmodel it.
I've tried to live into that atleast the last 20 years being at
point Loma with the center'swork, but also my own church
work, thinking about, okay,there's a, there's a few ways in
which I can tackle with myexpertise and my my own life and
the way I see it, where I'msituated geographic.
I'm sitting here in San Diego,tijuana, and that's where I live

(56:53):
, and so issues related to theborder and where we're being
Christian, related to the border, versus where we're being
idolatrous and nation statefocused relation to in relation
to a border, we can speak intothat very clearly and from this
perch where we sit right here.
Um, when you know, I have theserelations in South Africa, deep
friendships, and it can go backand forth and we can unpack

(57:14):
these things and I maintainfriendships across very
different lines in that spaceand then I bring other students
and other colleagues into thosefriendships and we try and
figure it out from there.
Same with keeping deepcross-racial friendships and
cross-class friendships in SanDiego Through where we go to
church, where you go to church,for example, how do people come

(57:38):
into contact with people who areunhoused on a regular basis?
You go to church, for example.
You know how do people comeinto contact with people who are
unhoused on a regular basis.
You don't, unless you'reshooing them out of your way or
handing them something, asyou're at an intersection.
But if you go to churchtogether they're.
Now you have to calculate theminto your life decisions and
into your politics and into yourway of being red or blue in the

(57:58):
United States, or suddenly redand blue doesn't make as clear a
sense, right, and it's not justa purple space you're looking
for, but it's a different.
It's a different solutionyou're looking to because you're
, you're in the midst of thoseconnections, right.
So I want to be careful not tocome across as saying, oh, you
know what is it, rodney King?
Can't we just all get along,right, in the midst of really

(58:19):
deep scars and wounds anddivisions?
I don't think we're called tokumbaya moments with people who
are doing even unintentionally,doing even evil things in the
world.
That's got to get called out.
That's the prophetic nature ofthe church.
That's Jesus turning over thetables.
But Jesus wasn't a zealot,wasn't killing people in order

(58:41):
for the message to get across.
Jesus is still nonviolent.
So how do we discern in contextthose nonviolent spaces?
So for me it's been aroundimmigrant justice and
particularly care for theundocumented in our midst.
For me I'll come alongside.
I haven't done a lot of work inthe area of on how for the

(59:02):
unhoused, but for me it's alsobeen in worker justice, where
people are wage theft and allthe way into human trafficking
like this theft of freedomitself.
That's been my space and so Ithink we have to pick a couple
of spaces, even as acongregation, like where, where
can we lean?
Into some mid city where I goto church heavily in the French
speaking Creole, uh communitythat's here.

(59:24):
Into the into food justice?
There's a few aspects where Ithink we lean in and then we
invite others to become part ofit with us.

Chris Nafis (59:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I think like diving deeper into
like a couple of issues canreally help you to dive into the
complexity of it.
Because I think one of thethings that you know the the
polarized politics tends to tryto do on both sides is just to
flatten issues and make themblack and white, and it's almost
never that right, and so ifyou're in those spaces more
deeply, you can understand andthen you can maybe explain and

(59:56):
help people that aren't in thosespaces to understand a little
bit better.
But yeah, I don't know it'shard, it's hard to to I mean, it
is hard to maintain those goodfriendships.
I think everybody these days,in the United States at least,
is feeling the difficulty oftrying to maintain good
relationships with people whothink very differently.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:00:14):
And I would say if, if, if.
If some of your friendships aretoxic and hurting and literally
causing you like depressivestate, then you know you don't
stay with an abuser.

Chris Nafis (01:00:27):
Yeah.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:00:27):
You know, a divorce is not a bad thing if
there's an abuse happening inthat family and that's, I think,
justifiable theologically andsocially.

Chris Nafis (01:00:37):
Yeah, Well, so you know I don't want to take too
much of your time here, so wewe've probably, you know, geared
towards like some finalconclusions, like what you know
from all the things that you'vewitnessed and seen, especially
in your years of south africa,kind of a lot, because you you
were there during apartheid andyou've kind of, uh, been a deep

(01:00:57):
part of it.
For many years you've been inand out and engaged in issues,
paying attention to what's goingon there all the way through
the end of, you know, throughthe end of apartheid and all,
and the reconciliation, and thenall the way to today's politics
.
Like you know, what do we?
What can the American churchlearn from that?
The wisdom that you've gleanedover the years?

(01:01:18):
And that is a big question.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:01:20):
Yeah, let me let me redirect your question,
okay.

Chris Nafis (01:01:23):
Yeah, redirect it.
I'm just in this way.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:01:25):
Um, I don't know about the church as a whole
, what I, what I, what I can.
What I can say is I have hope.
Uh, I have.
I have so much hope in the bodyof Christ that I'm going to,
I'm in this search, I'm insabbatical, I'm in this search
for the next chapter ofrelationship between me and my
work and my life, my family andSouth Africa and our friend, my

(01:01:53):
friendships there, the work ofthe church there.
I'm looking at starting a newstudy abroad there.
I'm looking at startingpilgrimages to South Africa to
unpack these very things thatwe've been talking about by
going and comparing what'shappening there to what's
happening here, Cause I think itjust illuminates so much more
and there are so many goodfaithful Christian communities
in South Africa just also tryingto struggle with these very
things and trying to be aprophetic and a faithful witness
, in particular in solidaritywith those that are suffering,

(01:02:16):
that I want people from here togo meet and build a friendship
with.
And then there's a lot they canlearn from each other along the
way.
And so I guess I'm in a spacewhere I once had this great
obsession with ecclesiology andthe structure of the church, big
C I'm at this point I'm like Ithink, if we can do faithful,

(01:02:37):
faithfully engaged work withsort of a discipleship dozen and
engage it and then let itwitness.
As you know, a congregationlike your congregation, Mid-City
we do things together that arefor the unhoused both of our
congregations, and then wecollaborate together, you know,

(01:02:58):
with St Mark's Episcopal downthe road.
We create an interfaithgathering of people who care and
we figure out well, we alltogether we better get into the
streets because they're about tomake homelessness illegal in
San Diego and criminalize all ofour friends just for not being
able to find a house.
That's when we stand uptogether and we protest that,
Well, that very thing ishappening in Cape Town as well,

(01:03:18):
or in Johannesburg, in a fashion, and I want us to learn from
one another as the body ofChrist in those different spaces
.
So I definitely have not losthope, but it's complicated to
practically engage.

Chris Nafis (01:03:34):
It is, yeah, and so you know, again, like kind of
what you're saying is that it'sthose connections that are
important and learning from oneanother and the collective work
and and meeting our meeting oneother in those spaces of caring
for the poor.
And you know, that's kind ofwhat you were saying earlier and
I think that's, I think that'sreally that's been where it has
been so far.
For me in life is like findingthose places where we can

(01:03:54):
actually live out our calling inChrist together in ways that
are meaningful, live out ourcalling in Christ together in
ways that are meaningful.
And you know, maybe that is thehope, because you know, I want
to start up a whole newconversation, but there's, it's
hard to imagine some of themovements that we've seen in the
past kind of coalescing todaywith the way that everybody and

(01:04:18):
even the church and everything,just seems so fractured into
these little pieces.
You know, and I don't think so,like I've been reading a book
about the Dr King and theMontgomery bus boycotts and just
thinking like I don't thinkthat's possible today because
they had such a strong networkof people that they could
quickly organize into a bigboycott and they, you know, they

(01:04:39):
arranged carpools and you knowthose things, and I just don't
think on a large scale there'sany coalition of Christians that
can can kind of organize thatway, maybe.
So maybe one of the some of thework that we need to do is some
of that connection, connection,community building and and kind
of doing the groundwork forthat Because I think we've been
given groundwork for that andbuilding congregations of people

(01:05:00):
that are discipled this way.
Yeah, exactly the marketpressures, the political
pressures.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:05:06):
Squeezing out the gathering of people who
don't think that way or intomarket niches that don't talk to
each other because they can't.
So I think, actually building acongregation of people who have
this kind of deeper Teflon skin, who have this prophetic
calling, if we're not doing that, if we're not infusing that

(01:05:28):
into the larger bodies of thosethat gather around the communion
table, yeah, you'll never havea movement like King King's Day,
where the church was much moreprominent in society, much more
prominent of a third space, muchmore prominent of a, of a
social entity.
I think.
I think we just have less ofthat now.
But that doesn't mean I mean,if it's like what's happened in

(01:05:50):
Nazi Germany, right, you know,the, the confessing church was a
, was a small outgrowth ofLutheran and some other
ecumenical groups gettingtogether in very small spaces,
but their voice became louderthan anything that the Catholic
church was doing or that theLutheran church was doing.
The dominant culture churchesat the time.
We're doing Right, yeah, yeah.

(01:06:12):
So we gotta, we gotta do theright thing, sometimes loudly.

Chris Nafis (01:06:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Well, I'll kind of let thatclose us out.
Any final thoughts?
Anything you want to lead usout with?

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:06:23):
and it's, it's really been therapeutic even to
think about these things and toand to think back over the
parallels with south africa andwhat's happening right now.

Chris Nafis (01:06:32):
They're just so real yeah, there's a lot of
connection and, as I've kind ofdived into, you sent me some
stuff last night to look throughand everything just feels so
familiar.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:06:43):
You know it's different, but it's like oh yeah
, everybody should read theletter that the clergy and a
really core group of clergy insouth africa put out a letter in
response to trump's declarationthat white opera connor, um,
south africans are should berefugees, um.
And in response to Trump'sbelittling of South Africa.

(01:07:04):
It's this really beautifulletter.
Where can people find it?
Google, yeah, google.
South African clergy's responseto Trump.
Okay, that will get you there.
It'll be the top find, unlessthe tech people hide it somehow.

Chris Nafis (01:07:20):
Yeah Well, check that out and pay attention to
the things going like.
Hide it somehow.
Yeah Well, check that out andpay attention to the things
going on in South Africa.
Like I said, a lot of parallelsin their journey and the
journey of the United States and, I think, some intentional
connections, both in positiveand negative ways, across those
space, even though we're like asfar away in the world as we can
get Pretty much.
There's lots of connections.
Jamie, hopefully we'll have youback on.

(01:07:40):
So our plan is when, uh when,jamie gets his book finished or
close to finish, we'll come backon, we'll talk about human
trafficking but I reallyappreciate this has been really
good.
it's really been fun to learn abit about um south africa
connection and just to thinkabout politics and and how the
church can be faithful in themidst of just of everything.
So yeah, thank you for yourtime, you bet.

Dr. Jamie Gates (01:08:02):
People can reach me jgates at pointlomaedu,
Happy to talk about thesethings.

Chris Nafis (01:08:06):
All right and get ready to buy that book when it
comes out, and hit subscribe onthis podcast and share it with a
friend, because we need morepeople that are in these spaces
listening to the wisdom ofpeople like Dr Gates and Rebecca
Laird and Isaac Villegas andall the people that we've had on
here.
Let's continue the conversation.
Send us a message or send me anemail, let me know what's been

(01:08:31):
meaningful, let me know if youhave questions, if you have
thoughts, if you want to havepeople that we need to talk to,
and we'll hopefully keep thisconversation going.
Thanks for joining us andthanks again, dr Gates.
Good to be with you, chris.