June 13, 2025 • 56 mins
I sat down with William H. Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington DC, for a profound conversation about history, faith, justice, and American democracy.
Learn more about Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church: https://www.metropolitaname.org/
Watch this video to learn more about the landmark legal victory we discussed in this episode.
Please give us a five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and tell your friends and family about the show. If you'd like to support the Hangout Podcast with a donation, there's a link in the show notes. Thank you for your generosity.
We are thrilled about the global reach of this podcast; we currently have listeners in more than 650 cities across over 50 countries! We would be delighted to hear from our listeners, wherever you may be in the world. Send us a message on our dedicated Telegram channel:
https://t.me/+23EKRv8eAWVlZDFh
We are always looking for new guests to interview, so please pitch us your suggestions. If we end up interviewing them, we will recognize you on the show and send you some show swag.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and making a donation. Your generosity helps support our limited budget, enabling us to continue producing high-quality content. Click here to donate.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast.
I'm your host, david Sharetta,and on this show we have
conversations with interestingand inspiring people.
For this episode, I wasprivileged to have a
conversation with William HLamar IV, who is pastor of
Metropolitan African MethodistEpiscopal Church, located in
(00:25):
Washington DC.
Formerly, he was managingdirector of leadership education
at Duke University DivinitySchool.
He's also served congregationsin Hyattsville, maryland,
monticello, florida, orlandoFlorida Monticello Florida,
(00:46):
orlando Florida and Jacksonville, florida.
Reverend Lamar and I had awide-ranging conversation that
included his inspiring andpowerful story of his family's
history, his views on theintersection of faith and
politics as expressed inscripture, and we also discussed
(01:09):
at some length the fact thatnow his church owns the
trademark for the extremistracist group Proud Boys.
I was deeply moved by ourconversation.
I hope you find it interestingand engaging, just as I did.
(01:29):
Welcome, pastor Lamar.
It's a real honor and aprivilege to have you on today
for this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I am deeply honored and I really appreciate the
opportunity to share with you.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I thought we could start with your origin story.
You know where you come from,where you grew up, what are the
currents in your life that ledyou to the present moment, and
then we'll get more deeply intothe work that you do.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Sure.
So I have written about myorigin and I think about it
often, and what I tell people isthe best way to think about my
early life and the lives ofthose who made my life is that
(02:28):
we lived in a West Africanvillage, transplanted to Macon,
georgia, transplanted to centralGeorgia, the multiple
generations living in closephysical proximity.
I knew great grandparents, soat one point there were five
generations of us livingtogether, loving together,
(02:52):
caring for one another.
And Georgia, for my people, wasnot a hospitable place, because
we are persons of Africandescent and because the state of
Georgia was brutal in itsslavocracy and in its political
(03:13):
repression.
But our people lived lives oflove and joy and my parents have
been together since 1966,married in 1973.
I'm the oldest of three and whatI tell people is that I was
surrounded by a kind of love.
I was surrounded, my twosiblings were surrounded by a
(03:38):
love that caressed us andcorrected us, by a love that
demanded excellence from us butprovided us rich empathy.
It was a joy to be in thepresence of elders, now
ancestors.
We delighted to be withgrandparents, with aunts, with
(04:00):
uncles, with cousins, and theblood family situated us in a
real way.
But there was a larger realityof the communal family that we
knew in church and neighborhood.
And I cannot speak well enoughI don't have the vocabulary to
(04:23):
express the profound gratitudefor the ways that our parents,
our ancestors, our elderssacrificed, loved and modeled
for us what it means to be humanin a place that does not always
treat all of us humanly doesnot always treat all of us
(04:47):
humanly.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Thank you for sharing that, especially in the context
of a nation now where it seemsthat families are so fragmented.
It's very rare to hear of twogenerations in close physical
proximity, let alone five.
Walk us through from that veryrich background to where we are
(05:18):
today.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I was again born in Macon, georgia.
My father's family, frommultiple generations, from as
far as we can trace back throughslavocracy and the armed labor
camps that Americaeuphemistically calls
plantations.
They were not plantations, theywere armed labor camps.
My people were forced to workand they would have been killed
(05:45):
had they not worked, and theyworked without wages.
So, as far as we know, myfather's family worked on those
Georgia armed labor camps in andaround Bibb and Jones County.
My mother's family worked onthose armed labor camps in South
(06:05):
Georgia and around Sylvester,georgia and Brunswick, georgia,
glynn County, georgia, coastalGeorgia.
My mother's family eventuallyleft coastal Georgia, south
Georgia, and came to what wecall Middle Georgia, which is
(06:25):
Macon.
Both of my parents, they werehigh school sweethearts.
They graduated from high school.
My father went to college inone place, my mother in another.
They married after theygraduated from college.
I was born first and my brother,my sister, was educated at a
Catholic school, st Peter ClaverCatholic School.
Until the sixth grade my fatherworked in the insurance
(06:46):
industry.
We moved first to Jacksonville,florida, then to Tallahassee,
florida, where during thosetimes my bibliophilia, love of
books and knowledge, wasnurtured and nourished by my
parents.
They exposed us to the world.
(07:07):
They exposed us to ideas.
I am doing what I'm doing.
My brother and sister, part ofme, are educators.
So we are just being committedto service, not to extraction in
the world, but to service inthe world, not to oppression,
not to exploitation, but serviceand forming human beings into
(07:30):
beautiful, joyful,justice-loving creatures, which
is possible for us all.
And so during those times afterhigh school I went to Florida
Agricultural and MechanicalUniversity and I must say that
the HBCU tradition, theHistorically Black College and
University tradition, is thetradition that changed America,
(07:52):
that if we just had people whowent to Harvard and Yale and UC
Berkeley and University of Texasand University of Michigan,
those students did notfundamentally challenge
America's injustice.
Students at North Carolina A&T,students at Florida A&M,
(08:12):
students at Morehouse Spelmanfundamentally challenged the
American system, fundamentallysaid that this nation claims to
be democratic but it is not.
There's an apartheid system.
One thing to remember is that myfamily lived in American
apartheid until my generation.
I am the first generation and Ioften am sickened by the way
(08:39):
America congratulates itself.
I am 50 years old and I am inthe first generation of my
family that did not grow up inAmerican apartheid.
We must remember that SouthAfrica came to the United States
to learn how to do their racistprogram.
The Nazis came to America andstudied.
(09:01):
And what's very important for meis, in the midst of all of
those swirls, my family, myancestors, my faith, tradition
produced not people of violenceor hatred, but people of love,
people of sacrifice, but alsopeople who will confront.
(09:22):
Also, people who will not speakeuphemistically about this
nation's past, nor will we speakin a Pollyannish way about its
future, but we will deallovingly with all who will come
together to make the world whatit ought be.
And so I leave college, I go toDuke Divinity School where I
(09:43):
earned my Master's of Divinitydegree, come back and begin my
pastoral ministry in the AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church,
which began in 1999.
So I'm on my 26th year of thepastoral life and thankful to
pastor the Metropolitan AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church in
Washington DC, which is thenational church of our
(10:04):
denomination.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
When we spoke prior, you talked about this inflection
point where you wereconsidering the law and the
ministry or divinity studies.
Can you talk us through whatthat was like for you, oh yes.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So in my mind, the ancestors live and dance and
thrive and argue and smile andcajole.
And so my reading brought meinto proximity with Thurgood
Marshall and Pauli Murray andMartin King and Malcolm X and
(10:46):
Frederick Douglas, elijahMuhammad and Henry McNeil,
turner and Jarena Lee, all ofthese divines and lawyers, these
visionaries, these artists ofthe possible, of the possible.
(11:12):
And I decided, as I waspreparing to determine what
would be next after myundergraduate studies were
completed, that either I wouldfollow the path of the law in
the tradition of CharlesHamilton Houston, thurgood
Marshall, pauli Murray,constance Baker, motley, that is
, applying America's less thanperfect legal system in the
(11:36):
interest of the liberation andfreedom of all people,
especially those in the Americandemocracy who are erased or
excluded.
That was one half of mystruggle.
The other half was I'd grown upin the church and while I still
, even as one who has given mylife to the church vocationally,
(11:58):
have lover's quarrels with thechurch, deep quarrels with the
church, with the church, deepquarrels with the church, I
thought of the tradition of Kingand of James Cone and of Pauli
Murray, and of Prathia Hall andof Fannie Lou Hamer.
Those who had been formed inthe church called of spirit to
(12:24):
not just do church stuff but tojoin the revolution unleashed in
the ministry of Christ.
It was a revolution ofliberation, of justice, of love,
of compassion, of abundancefeeding the hungry, clothing the
naked, healing the sick andproviding for those who were
(12:46):
oppressed and turning over thetables of oppression that
created their poverty, theirchallenges.
And so those two streams whichare alive in the Black prophetic
tradition which produced me,tradition which produced me,
that those are the waters inwhich I swam and I determined,
(13:14):
really I said, okay, I'll go toget a seminary degree, then I'll
go back and get a law degree.
What is interesting is in thebeauty of the way life unfolds.
I'm really still doing a littlebit of both.
I am doing the pastoral work,but a lot of my work is policy
work.
A lot of my work is organizing.
I will be on Capitol Hill thisweek advocating for laws and
(13:43):
policies that I think to be justthat, I think to be fair.
I was on a call yesterday withthe board that I chair, and I'm
chairing a board of folks whoare doing the work of fair and
just policy in Milwaukee, inVirginia, in Washington, in
(14:04):
Connecticut, so that work of thegospel of Christ, which is also
justice, joy and abundance.
I have stayed in the riverwhere both of those realities
swirl.
Those realities swirl and I'mthankful that, although I didn't
(14:26):
get a law degree and I'm nottrying to be a lawyer, the work
that I saw, that the law did,that was positive.
I get to participate thatparticipate in that as well, so
for that I'm thankful.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
The.
As I hear you speak, it soundsas if the for you scripture, and
activism and policy, and youknow being rooted in the real
world, those are all integratedtogether, right, so that
scripture is not just anabstraction?
(14:59):
Can you talk to us more aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh sure, I think that the biggest identity theft in
the nation over time has beenperpetrated upon Jesus.
His identity was stolen fromhim for the purposes of building
an American church that would,by and large large, ignore the
(15:24):
gospel.
So Jesus says the spirit of theLord is upon me, for he's
anointed me to preach good newsto the poor, to release the
captives, to preach theacceptable year of the Lord,
which harkens back to theJubilee year, which was an
economic vision that peoplewould not be oppressed, that
(15:47):
land would be returned to itsrightful owners, that those in
debt would be forgiven, those inbondage would be set free.
And so the gospel of JesusChrist is a gospel that
challenges the systems, theauthorities, the powers.
He says to preach good news tothe poor, and that Greek word
(16:10):
there means those who have beenmade poor.
Poverty is the result not ofimmorality, it is the result of
injustice, and Jesus camefighting those things.
And it becomes incumbent uponthose of us who say we follow
(16:32):
him, that our worship and thatour spiritual lives thrust us
into the arenas of the world, todo that same liberative work.
And so for me there is nodifference, there is no cleaving
(16:53):
, there is no separation betweenthe work of being a disciple
and the work of disrupting aworld of injustice and building
a world of love and peace for usall.
What's interesting is PopeFrancis talked about the fact
(17:20):
that right now we are fightingWorld War III in pieces because
of all of the violence anddestruction in the world.
Martin King talked about thetriple E's in America of racism,
militarism and materialism.
Slash capitalism and we buildand love the kind of world that
(17:42):
we believe that God intends andthe kind of world that we see
being made in the life and theministry of Jesus.
But we also are clear thatthere are powers arrayed against
the work of God At the end ofJesus's earthly ministry.
He was not given a Nobel PeacePrize, he wasn't brought to the
(18:04):
White House and given a Medal ofFreedom.
He was lynched and we must notforget that.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
How do you see the role of your congregation, your
work, your leadership, yourfacilitation in the context of a
generation pardon me, that maybe skeptical about religious
traditions, especially youngerpeople, connecting them to not
(18:38):
only traditions but then makingthose be alive and relevant in
the activism that you reference?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Well, sir, you've got an advantage on me because you
are the father of apparently avery bright and energetic young
lady, and congratulations on hergraduation.
Thank you To you and yourfamily and to her, especially
one of the things that that I'venoticed as a pastor in a place
like Washington DC Now you willyou and your listeners, I think,
(19:07):
will resonate with this.
Washington DC curates aninteresting aggregation of
people.
The young people who come toWashington want to change the
world.
They want to work in Congress,they want to work in the social
sector, they want to make theworld a better place.
(19:28):
I run into a lot of those youngpeople in my work and I'm just
going to be very clear.
They don't care about doctrine,they don't care about the
esoterica of theology, theesoterics of theology.
(19:49):
They want to see faith embodied.
They want to see an ethicaltradition that loves mercy, that
does justice and that walkskindly.
And at our best, metropolitanAfrican Methodist Episcopal
(20:16):
Church, the church I'mprivileged to serve at our best,
that African MethodistEpiscopal Church, the church I'm
privileged to serve at our best.
That's what we do.
And so the young people.
Let me give you a very tangibleexample.
Every second Sunday of the monthwe have what we call Talk Back,
where we gather in a room inthe church and we have a
conversation about the sermon,about the world, whatever people
(20:37):
want to talk about.
We talk for an hour and wefellowship.
Most of the people in that roomare younger than I.
I'm 50 years old.
Most of the people in the roomare younger than I and they are
completely ecstatic about havinga place in the context of
church where people aren't justtalking at them but also
listening to them and theyquestion, they question me, they
(21:01):
question the tradition, theydisagree with me, they disagree
with the tradition, but we holda space for joy, for laughter
and for seeking to embody,however imperfectly, the best of
the tradition.
So, from where I sit, youngpeople want a space for rich
(21:25):
spiritual depth.
We began that conversation thismonth and every month with two
or three minutes of stillnessand silence so that spirit can
speak in the midst of the humancacophony all around us.
We can hear from spirit, thenwe hear from one another and
then we have a conversation andwe stretch one another and push
(21:49):
one another and press oneanother, laughing together,
praying together, loving andholding people, because
Washington right now is a citythat is experiencing a certain
kind of trauma.
Those who are currently leadingthe government said they wanted
to inflict trauma on governmentworkers, and those people are
(22:10):
my parishioners.
I mean, this is what the leaderof the Office of Management and
Budget said.
And so we do the pastoral workbecause we believe those human
beings should not be traumatized, but all human beings should be
loved, regarded and respected,and so that's the work that we
do sounds as if there's thisbalance between your church
(22:42):
being a sanctuary, a spiritualsanctuary, as you talk about
that quiet space, and also aplace of activism, resistance,
hope, all of those mixedtogether.
And what I would say is whatsome would call activism and
resistance.
I call following Jesus.
Yeah, because that's exactlywhat he was doing, when you
(23:08):
strip away all of the stuffAmerica has done to make Jesus a
good American citizen citizen,as a matter of fact, what I have
shared is, under currentAmerican policy, jesus could not
have found sanctuary here, likehe and his family found
(23:29):
sanctuary in Egypt.
We need to be very clear aboutwho we are, where we are, where
we are going, and the people whochallenged our system met the
same fate that Jesus met bychallenging his system.
These systems have a way ofmimicking and mirroring one
(23:55):
another, and so it is anactivism, a resistance, born of
what it means to read thegospels and to seek to live them
and to follow a tradition, thatof being human and connected
with God that stretches evenbeyond Christian knowledge and
(24:16):
Christian history, becausehumans did not come to know the
divine 2,000 years ago.
Human beings have danced withGod and God has danced with us
from the beginning of time.
Every human being, whether theygo to church or not, is a child
of God, because I believe thatin each of us is the breath of
God.
So all human beings, whereverthey are, whomever they are, are
(24:38):
holy, beautiful, made in God'simage and likeness, and it is
for us to build the kind ofcommunity where I mean when I
hear you talk about yourdaughter.
The way that you love yourdaughter is the way that the
divine loves each and every oneof us, each and every one of us,
(24:59):
no exceptions, no matter whatpeople believe or don't believe,
who they love, where they live,what they have, what language
they speak.
And a taxonomy of people sayingChristians are this and these
people are that, americans arethis.
(25:20):
God is not an American, jesusis not.
When I tell people Jesus wasnot a Christian.
Jesus lived and died a faithfulJew.
So all of our categories, if wescrutinize them, don't hold up
to the vast and rich humanloving anger, producing love
(25:41):
that characterizes God.
Because I think the thing thatmakes us most angry about God is
that God didn't hate the peoplewe hate.
God loves everybody.
The thing that ticks off Jonahis that God has mercy and God
(26:01):
has to say over and over I amGod, I will have mercy.
On whom I will have mercy?
What we want is we want God toobliterate our enemies, because
they're our enemies.
They're not God's enemies,they're God's children.
And if we could get that in ourheads in a place as stubborn as
America and other places aroundthe world we might be able to
(26:24):
live in ways that honor Godtogether.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
As you were mentioning that, I flashed on
this idea, this concept that Iface very often in the school
leadership world, wheresomething will happen and a
student will commit someinfraction, they'll get in
trouble for something.
They're, you know, adolescents,and so that's part of the
journey.
And then other parents wantthis public.
You know shaming and justiceand punishment, and so we have
(26:55):
this term that gets thrownaround a lot of restorative
justice, restorative practice,but what people really mean is I
want restorative justice for myown kid, but can you have, can
you please impose some publicretribution for someone else's
child?
And so I was.
(27:15):
I can't quote scripture when Ilead in the public sector, but
in my heart I'm going to bethinking about what you just
said, because that's that's whathappens, right?
People want to see someoneelse's kid in the town square
being punished, but we need togive their own kid a second
chance.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
And let me ask you this, because you're on the
front line, so let's think aboutthis.
Well, I mean, I have an idea,but I'm really good.
I don't know why we can'tpractice seeing ourselves as the
other and the other asourselves.
It's really the only way thatwe can live together.
(27:54):
It's the only way way that wecan live together.
It's the only way.
So, to quote King, we livetogether, as what I would say
today siblings, he said, asbrothers, or we die together as
fools.
And I just was listening to apodcast.
There's a new book out calledKing of the North about King and
(28:16):
his family, and most of us kindof keep his ministry in the
South, but he spent a whole lotof time in the North and spent a
lot of time in Europe and a lotof time in Africa and the
Caribbean.
Very young man, 39 at the timeof his execution.
But one of the things that thisscholar has unearthed about
(28:41):
King is that when he was a cargo, he loved the gang members.
He lived in vice lord territoryand the vice lords would come
to his home.
He would listen to them.
They would laugh together.
He would listen to them, theywould laugh together.
He did not judge them.
(29:01):
They worked together.
I just wish, like today, ourpolitics is based largely on you
see those people over there.
They're the wrong people.
They're taking this, they'redoing this and I just I don't
know.
I guess I have to admit thatthat othering exists in all of
(29:25):
us.
But I think that we cancontinue to exercise the kinds
of love and ethics that willdiminish that proclivity.
And the good thing for me is I,I have generations on my side,
because the generations thatcame before me, as I said, I can
(29:48):
stretch back one, two, three,four, five generations and they
practiced an unbridled love.
And I just, I quite honestlyand I'll stop here what you have
said about how parents wanttheir children protected and
(30:10):
regarded but they want a publicspectacle to be made out of the
offender.
Really there is very littlespace between that and violence.
Yeah, very little space.
As a matter of fact, there's nospace.
The only space that existsbetween that and violence is
(30:31):
because you and others have theauthority to make sure that
whatever is done is doneaccording to policy and law.
But if that weren't the case,how quickly human beings devolve
and it's so sad, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, that's why I don't have much hair left.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
That's why I shave mine every other day.
It just makes life easier.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
That's right.
That's right.
This kind of landmark caseinvolving your church and and
the, the defacing and defamationthat occurred at the hands of
(31:30):
proud boys or some extension ofthat group, Can you, can you
talk our listeners through whathappened, what your experience
of it was, and then leadingthrough the policy, the legal
struggle and all of those pieces?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Sure.
So we've got to go back to theend of 2020.
An election had taken place.
There were many who disagreedwith the outcome.
This is Washington DC, andthose people were hanging around
(32:09):
here for many reasons, becausethis was, as many call it, the
interregnum between oneadministration that had not been
voted in and a newadministration coming in at the
beginning of 2021.
So those groups, principallythe Proud Boys there were others
(32:32):
were hanging in and aroundWashington rallying, involved in
some criminality, someintimidation.
Our church is only five or sixblocks from the White House.
One evening, while we and Ialso have to say in that period
(32:57):
of time we were in COVIDprotocol, so we could not
worship in the sanctuary safelywithout spreading COVID, so we
were worshiping virtually.
I was leading worship viaFacebook from the basement of
our home, from the basement ofour home.
(33:24):
I got up that Sunday morning inDecember of 2020, my phone was
dancing and jumping becausepeople were texting and offering
their regards, offering theirsympathy, offering their support
, and I had no idea what wasgoing on until a friend of mine,
a fellow pastor, sent me a link, which was a link to the Proud
(33:48):
Boys Twitter feed.
There's a picture of them inthe front yard of our church,
front yard of our church.
They were happily, joyfully,gleefully, exuberantly recording
trespassing into the yard ofour church, chanting vitriolic,
(34:09):
racist statements, tearing downour property, and also they were
recording tearing down theproperty of other congregations.
They burned the sign of one ofthose congregations, and so
that's what I woke up to thatSunday morning when I saw what
(34:33):
had happened.
I had to figure out what I woulddo, because I still had to
preach, I still had to lead theservice.
So I sat down on my steps, verymuch like I said to you at our
talk back, I steeled myself andquiet, which is the way that I
(34:53):
pray.
I pray by listening and nottalking.
So I listen for the voice ofthe divine, I listen for the
voices of ancestors.
I did what I do as a pastor andafterwards we began to get
communications from, first theformer president of the NAACP
(35:15):
and others, the LawyersCommittee for Civil Rights, and
what they wanted to do was tosue.
They were already thinking andthey wanted to know if we would
join a suit against them and myanswer was yes, but I am not the
church, I am the pastor of thechurch.
(35:36):
So I called together ourleaders about 40 of them and
they unanimously decided that wewould sue the Proud Boys.
Now, suing the Proud Boys cameat a cost.
They sought to intimidate us.
They threatened us.
One month our security cost was$18,000.
(35:58):
We sued them for $2.8 million.
We won that suit.
They refused to pay, not justto make a spectacle, but we
meant to get money.
We meant for them to have aneconomic punishment for what
(36:24):
they did to us, to deter themfrom thinking this is a wise
course in the future.
And so our lawyer's strategywas to attach ourselves to
something they owned of value.
What they owned of value wastheir trademark.
We sued for their trademark andnow we own the Proud Boys
(36:46):
trademark.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
So ostensibly.
That then means that anyrevenue that comes in attached
to that trademark goes to yourchurch.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
What it means is something a little how shall I
say that there's a little morelegalese to it, should not?
They legally cannot sellanything with their logo because
(37:21):
we own it and they do not.
They are not able to profitfrom it, but, just like if you
have ever been in any downtownin the United States, there are
people who are selling knockoffbrands, right.
So, of course, that stillhappens, but it is illegal.
What we have done because, ofcourse, you can possibly never
(37:44):
stop all of that is that we havegone to online platforms that
they would use To get the wordout and to sell stuff, and we
have had them deplatformed.
So I want you to think aboutthe major online and digital
(38:09):
platforms.
We have gone to them and theywill, at the request of our
lawyers, deplatform any ProudBoys activity.
So we are getting them reallyin the virtual and digital
marketplace, which is where theymake their money and where they
amplify their message.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
It's like a sounds like a cease and desist type of
a thing that you'd see betweencompanies.
Yes, this has the layer of thesocial element to it too.
Right, it's a community that'ssaying, hey, cease and desist,
(38:55):
we own your trademark.
It's just such an intriguing,interesting and and um,
groundbreaking, at least in mymind.
I mean, I don't know theremight have been other cases like
this, but but oh, yes, and Iwill tell you there have been.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
for example, we stand in the line of our ancestor,
beulah donald, who, a wonderfulwoman of African descent whose
son was lynched by the Klan, shesued the Klan and won Klan
property and resources.
There are a number of othercases where Black women
(39:31):
especially went to great lengthsto sue white supremacist
organizations and own latertheir property, got their
resources.
So yes, it is not a legalinnovation.
We stand on the shoulders ofthose who did similarly.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Well, and as I mentioned to you when we spoke
prior, I didn't want to have ourconversation defined nor
bookended by this, because Iknow your work is so much
greater than that attack andyour church's response to it.
I wanted to, in light of thepolarization that you've spoken
(40:18):
about, the national stance,national policies coming from
the White House around using theword attack or suffer, you know
, having groups of employeessuffer, where do you find hope?
Where do you find hope inAmerica right now?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I find hope in America, in communities of
people who say no to injusticeand hatred and who are doing the
hard work of building, withinthis nation, democracy.
(41:05):
My argument is that democracyhas never lived here.
I tell people that I was bornin 1974, I tell people that I
was born in 1974 and I'm thefirst generation in my family to
have full citizenship rights atbirth.
(41:25):
But here's the kicker mysister's children, their voting
rights, are now less protectedthan my parents' voting rights
were in the early 80s because ofthe decisions that have come
from the court, the SupremeCourt and others.
(41:45):
So this nation has never, evercommitted itself, never really
committed itself to democracyfor all of us.
It has committed itself todemocracy for all of us.
It has committed itself todemocracy for some and
exploitation for others.
In the instance of indigenousfolk, folks of African descent,
(42:09):
very okay with that.
In the present moment.
Not only are those people stillput upon, but we're okay with
democracy for some, butexploiting the immigrant
laborers.
My argument is that until wecan first look in a mirror to
see what America really has been, to confess that and to say we
(42:33):
do not want to bequeath this toour children, and the same way
that during hot Philadelphiasummers, the so-called founders
decided to create a system wherethey would use democratic
language yet extract and exploit.
(42:55):
We need to come up with asystem of democratic language
and democratic practice for allof us, and I know it is possible
.
My argument is that it'llprobably take.
It's going to take more timethan you or I have.
It took 250 years to get here.
(43:15):
It could take us 250 years toget there, and all along the way
as we make progress, there willbe people who will do
everything they can to destroythe progress.
But what we do and what we mustdo is what I saw my ancestors
do, is what I saw my ancestorsdo.
When people huff and puff andblow your house down, you
(43:41):
rebuild your house.
You rebuild your house untilthey realize that this huffing
and puffing is an exercise infutility, because I cannot keep
these people from being human,from loving one another and from
building something different.
So the great poet Sterling Brownof Howard University put it
this way strong men and womenkeep coming, and so we got to
(44:05):
keep coming.
We have to keep coming, andthat's the only hope I have.
The hope I have is not aboutsinging Kumbaya songs and you
know Black people having dinnerwith white people and Jewish
people having dinner withMuslims.
Oh, that's good, but thatdoesn't change systemically what
(44:26):
we see.
The hope I have is in peoplewho are willing to risk who they
are and what we have to buildand protect something different.
I'll put it this way you are aparent.
New life is fragile.
Your daughter was born.
(44:47):
If you took your daughter asprecious as she is to you, as
precious as she is to the Godwho gave her to you and to your
wife and your broader family andcommunity If you took her and
sat her in the middle of MainStreet and walked away, she
would have died.
Democracy is as fragile as anewborn and what we do is we
(45:13):
take democracy for the newbornthat it is umbilical cord, just
cut after birth, just scoopedout of the mouth, and lie the
child down in oncoming trafficand say do the best you can.
It'll never grow that way,it'll die.
It'll keep dying.
Democracy never existed for thegenerations of my family, but
(45:36):
they built something akin to thekind of system, even though
they were locked out of it.
It can be done, but together wehave decided that we want to do
it.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Thank you for that.
I'm facing some challengingsituations at work right now
with you.
Know, as a leader, you facecurrents and sometimes
oppositions within a community,so your words around keep
rebuilding and going forward,ring, ring, especially
(46:11):
appropriate and apropos for meat this time.
You've been extremely generouswith your time and I wanted to.
I have one last question foryou, but before I get there, is
there anything that we haven'ttouched on, that has been kind
of rattling around for you, thatyou'd like to share about your
work?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Well, I'll tell you what might be helpful to me to
share, and it's similar to thethinking about how fragile new
life is.
We worship in a building thathas been where it is since 1887.
We are always having to dosomething to care for that
(46:53):
building, always.
And I think what we need tounderstand is this nation is
older than that building.
If you think of the nation asan edifice and there are
portions of the nation.
We don't have the same paint onthe walls we had in 1887.
We don't have the same floorcovering.
(47:13):
We don't have the same plumbingsystem.
We don't have the same floorcovering.
We don't have the same plumbingsystem.
We don't have the same climatesystem.
You cannot build a building,walk away from it and say it is
habitable for eternity.
The structures of this nation,the constitution itself, laws
(47:38):
how we elect, whom we elect, forhow long we elect, whom we
appoint, how we appoint.
We cannot keep doing 250 yearsnigh what we were doing 250
years ago.
It is.
(47:59):
It makes the same sense asbuilding a building, building in
1887 and saying, okay, this isthe roof we're going to have in
2025.
Right now, we're having toreplace the roof of the church,
so we want to build in the labs.
Right now, we have issues inthe basement around moisture.
It's going to cost us tens ofthousands of dollars that we
didn't plan for, but that's thecost of living in an old
building and we'll find a way.
(48:21):
We live in an old building thatwas not designed for all of us,
that we must redesign andrepair at the same time If we're
serious about living together,loving one another and being who
we can be at our best.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
As you mentioned, that a friend of mine, a dear
friend of mine, runs a Buddhisttemple in San Diego and I'm on
the board of his temple.
Oh wow, it seems like everytime we have a board meeting
we're talking about the roof,the windows, the drainage.
I'm going to have to send thema text and say hey, man, this is
(49:06):
houses of worship that are over50 years or so.
This is what you get.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
This is how God loves us all equally.
Let me add to the plumbingissues and we have.
We have storied stained glasswindows, probably irreplaceable,
Though we have a milliondollars worth of stained glass
work we need to do.
So we just, we just keep doingwhat we got to do.
(49:32):
Keep doing what we got to do.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, I'd imagine the I don't know what it is lead or
whatever that's between thepanes of glass that does that
has a certain shelf life.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
And yes yes, yes, but just like you and I can laugh
about this and you keep going tothe meetings, I have a meeting
tonight and we're going to betalking about toilets and
plumbing and roof.
That's how I'm going to spendmy evening tonight.
But we do it because you as aneducator, and you making sure
(50:05):
that temple thrives and memaking sure the church thrives.
Here's the thing the temple andthe church in this nation ought
to thrive together.
I have no investment in thetemple not existing, and the
temple has no investment in menot existing.
(50:26):
I don't want the temple to jointhe AME church and the AME
church doesn't want theBuddhists to become.
Let's allow one another to bewho we are.
We're not in competition.
Your thriving does not hurt me.
This idea of a pie where youget a slice and I don't get a
(50:48):
slice, this zero-sum mentalitymy thriving does not hurt you.
Our entire politics today,based on this group, is taking
something from you.
No, they are not.
It is enough for all of us tothrive.
They can grow and you can growalongside them.
Think about how stupid this is.
(51:09):
How trees in the forest don'tsay you're taking my sword,
you're taking my sunlight.
Only foolish human beings dothat, and we do that not in the
service of anything or anyoneother than self-aggrandizement
and building up our own power,which has nothing to do with the
community.
No tree.
(51:30):
I'm at home.
I'm looking out.
We got a lot of trees in a parkbehind us.
These trees don't spend theirevenings arguing about you
taking my soil.
It's raining right now.
I don't see the trees fightingover who's getting the rainwater
.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I was listening to someone talk about how, as human
beings, we're the onlycreatures on earth who have this
concept of accumulating andhoarding, uh even thinking about
passing it on, passing that onto future generations.
Squirrels hoard nuts onlybecause they have this
(52:12):
imperative for one winter, butthey're not thinking, oh, three
generations from now, theselittle baby squirrels are going
to be out there.
So I'm going to hoard now andaccumulate and take it away from
the squirrel who lives in thenext tree so that my grandchild
squirrels can have a little more.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Oh my God, I love it.
I love it.
But let me tell you I meanwe're laughing at it, but really
we're laughing to keep fromcrying.
Both of us, that's right.
We literally.
I mean I mean your humanity isso rich and beautiful.
I mean I just I'm connectingdeeply and literally I could
weep right now because you knowyou have given your life to
(52:53):
educating our children.
You know what that foolishnesscosts us.
You know what it costs us.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yeah, thank you.
The last question is ahypothetical.
Let's say you have theopportunity to create a
billboard.
Every time I ask this, peoplesay, well, I don't believe in
billboards because it pollutesthe view.
But just stay with me on thisthought experiment.
(53:23):
I will.
It could be written in smoketoo, by one of those, the sky
writers or whatever, but yourbillboard is the opportunity for
you to send your message oryour beliefs or what you think
the world needs, as people arerushing by on the freeway,
(53:46):
distracted in a million ways.
What does Pastor Lamar'sbillboard, or skywriting, say?
Speaker 2 (53:55):
One word love.
I just wrote a book and I'mreading through the editor's
last proofs and my lastparagraph is really what you
asked.
I'm like what do we do?
(54:15):
And I say, essentially I havenothing other to offer than to
say we have to love each other.
And I say in the book I mean Igot a pretty good vocabulary and
I feel like I'm missingsomething or I'm not being
(54:37):
strong enough or thoughtfulenough.
But the only thing that canmake us who we ought be,
individually, collectively andsystemically, as we build the
systems that take care of us ourpolitical system, our economic
(54:57):
system, our theological systemsif based on love, everything
changes.
And the last thing I'll say isthis People blame God.
I mean, you know you're talkingto a pastor about what we said.
I said God did not do this.
We have done this to ourselves.
(55:18):
God is not responsible.
God is the cheerleader sayingyou all don't have to live like
this and I've given youeverything.
You need to live differently.
So my billboard says L-O-V-E.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Thank you for joining us on the Hangout.
I hope you enjoyed thisconversation with Pastor Lamar.
Please be sure to give us afive-star rating wherever you
listen to your podcasts and tellyour friends and family about
this show.
If you are interested insupporting the show with a
(55:56):
donation, there is a link in theshow notes to do so.
Thank you in advance for yourgenerosity.
No amount is too small and ithelps us keep the show going
with quality and engagingcontent.
I also once again want tounderline the fact that this
show is entirely independentfrom my day job and, as such,
(56:20):
all views and opinions expressedherein are mine and mine alone.
Thanks for coming on in to hangout.
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast.
I'm your host, david Sharetta,and on this show we have
conversations with interestingand inspiring people.
For this episode, I wasprivileged to have a
conversation with William HLamar IV, who is pastor of
Metropolitan African MethodistEpiscopal Church, located in
(00:25):
Washington DC.
Formerly, he was managingdirector of leadership education
at Duke University DivinitySchool.
He's also served congregationsin Hyattsville, maryland,
monticello, florida, orlandoFlorida Monticello Florida,
(00:46):
orlando Florida and Jacksonville, florida.
Reverend Lamar and I had awide-ranging conversation that
included his inspiring andpowerful story of his family's
history, his views on theintersection of faith and
politics as expressed inscripture, and we also discussed
(01:09):
at some length the fact thatnow his church owns the
trademark for the extremistracist group Proud Boys.
I was deeply moved by ourconversation.
I hope you find it interestingand engaging, just as I did.
(01:29):
Welcome, pastor Lamar.
It's a real honor and aprivilege to have you on today
for this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
I am deeply honored and I really appreciate the
opportunity to share with you.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I thought we could start with your origin story.
You know where you come from,where you grew up, what are the
currents in your life that ledyou to the present moment, and
then we'll get more deeply intothe work that you do.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Sure.
So I have written about myorigin and I think about it
often, and what I tell people isthe best way to think about my
early life and the lives ofthose who made my life is that
(02:28):
we lived in a West Africanvillage, transplanted to Macon,
georgia, transplanted to centralGeorgia, the multiple
generations living in closephysical proximity.
I knew great grandparents, soat one point there were five
generations of us livingtogether, loving together,
(02:52):
caring for one another.
And Georgia, for my people, wasnot a hospitable place, because
we are persons of Africandescent and because the state of
Georgia was brutal in itsslavocracy and in its political
(03:13):
repression.
But our people lived lives oflove and joy and my parents have
been together since 1966,married in 1973.
I'm the oldest of three and whatI tell people is that I was
surrounded by a kind of love.
I was surrounded, my twosiblings were surrounded by a
(03:38):
love that caressed us andcorrected us, by a love that
demanded excellence from us butprovided us rich empathy.
It was a joy to be in thepresence of elders, now
ancestors.
We delighted to be withgrandparents, with aunts, with
(04:00):
uncles, with cousins, and theblood family situated us in a
real way.
But there was a larger realityof the communal family that we
knew in church and neighborhood.
And I cannot speak well enoughI don't have the vocabulary to
(04:23):
express the profound gratitudefor the ways that our parents,
our ancestors, our elderssacrificed, loved and modeled
for us what it means to be humanin a place that does not always
treat all of us humanly doesnot always treat all of us
(04:47):
humanly.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Thank you for sharing that, especially in the context
of a nation now where it seemsthat families are so fragmented.
It's very rare to hear of twogenerations in close physical
proximity, let alone five.
Walk us through from that veryrich background to where we are
(05:18):
today.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I was again born in Macon, georgia.
My father's family, frommultiple generations, from as
far as we can trace back throughslavocracy and the armed labor
camps that Americaeuphemistically calls
plantations.
They were not plantations, theywere armed labor camps.
My people were forced to workand they would have been killed
(05:45):
had they not worked, and theyworked without wages.
So, as far as we know, myfather's family worked on those
Georgia armed labor camps in andaround Bibb and Jones County.
My mother's family worked onthose armed labor camps in South
(06:05):
Georgia and around Sylvester,georgia and Brunswick, georgia,
glynn County, georgia, coastalGeorgia.
My mother's family eventuallyleft coastal Georgia, south
Georgia, and came to what wecall Middle Georgia, which is
(06:25):
Macon.
Both of my parents, they werehigh school sweethearts.
They graduated from high school.
My father went to college inone place, my mother in another.
They married after theygraduated from college.
I was born first and my brother,my sister, was educated at a
Catholic school, st Peter ClaverCatholic School.
Until the sixth grade my fatherworked in the insurance
(06:46):
industry.
We moved first to Jacksonville,florida, then to Tallahassee,
florida, where during thosetimes my bibliophilia, love of
books and knowledge, wasnurtured and nourished by my
parents.
They exposed us to the world.
(07:07):
They exposed us to ideas.
I am doing what I'm doing.
My brother and sister, part ofme, are educators.
So we are just being committedto service, not to extraction in
the world, but to service inthe world, not to oppression,
not to exploitation, but serviceand forming human beings into
(07:30):
beautiful, joyful,justice-loving creatures, which
is possible for us all.
And so during those times afterhigh school I went to Florida
Agricultural and MechanicalUniversity and I must say that
the HBCU tradition, theHistorically Black College and
University tradition, is thetradition that changed America,
(07:52):
that if we just had people whowent to Harvard and Yale and UC
Berkeley and University of Texasand University of Michigan,
those students did notfundamentally challenge
America's injustice.
Students at North Carolina A&T,students at Florida A&M,
(08:12):
students at Morehouse Spelmanfundamentally challenged the
American system, fundamentallysaid that this nation claims to
be democratic but it is not.
There's an apartheid system.
One thing to remember is that myfamily lived in American
apartheid until my generation.
I am the first generation and Ioften am sickened by the way
(08:39):
America congratulates itself.
I am 50 years old and I am inthe first generation of my
family that did not grow up inAmerican apartheid.
We must remember that SouthAfrica came to the United States
to learn how to do their racistprogram.
The Nazis came to America andstudied.
(09:01):
And what's very important for meis, in the midst of all of
those swirls, my family, myancestors, my faith, tradition
produced not people of violenceor hatred, but people of love,
people of sacrifice, but alsopeople who will confront.
(09:22):
Also, people who will not speakeuphemistically about this
nation's past, nor will we speakin a Pollyannish way about its
future, but we will deallovingly with all who will come
together to make the world whatit ought be.
And so I leave college, I go toDuke Divinity School where I
(09:43):
earned my Master's of Divinitydegree, come back and begin my
pastoral ministry in the AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church,
which began in 1999.
So I'm on my 26th year of thepastoral life and thankful to
pastor the Metropolitan AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church in
Washington DC, which is thenational church of our
(10:04):
denomination.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
When we spoke prior, you talked about this inflection
point where you wereconsidering the law and the
ministry or divinity studies.
Can you talk us through whatthat was like for you, oh yes.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So in my mind, the ancestors live and dance and
thrive and argue and smile andcajole.
And so my reading brought meinto proximity with Thurgood
Marshall and Pauli Murray andMartin King and Malcolm X and
(10:46):
Frederick Douglas, elijahMuhammad and Henry McNeil,
turner and Jarena Lee, all ofthese divines and lawyers, these
visionaries, these artists ofthe possible, of the possible.
(11:12):
And I decided, as I waspreparing to determine what
would be next after myundergraduate studies were
completed, that either I wouldfollow the path of the law in
the tradition of CharlesHamilton Houston, thurgood
Marshall, pauli Murray,constance Baker, motley, that is
, applying America's less thanperfect legal system in the
(11:36):
interest of the liberation andfreedom of all people,
especially those in the Americandemocracy who are erased or
excluded.
That was one half of mystruggle.
The other half was I'd grown upin the church and while I still
, even as one who has given mylife to the church vocationally,
(11:58):
have lover's quarrels with thechurch, deep quarrels with the
church, with the church, deepquarrels with the church, I
thought of the tradition of Kingand of James Cone and of Pauli
Murray, and of Prathia Hall andof Fannie Lou Hamer.
Those who had been formed inthe church called of spirit to
(12:24):
not just do church stuff but tojoin the revolution unleashed in
the ministry of Christ.
It was a revolution ofliberation, of justice, of love,
of compassion, of abundancefeeding the hungry, clothing the
naked, healing the sick andproviding for those who were
(12:46):
oppressed and turning over thetables of oppression that
created their poverty, theirchallenges.
And so those two streams whichare alive in the Black prophetic
tradition which produced me,tradition which produced me,
that those are the waters inwhich I swam and I determined,
(13:14):
really I said, okay, I'll go toget a seminary degree, then I'll
go back and get a law degree.
What is interesting is in thebeauty of the way life unfolds.
I'm really still doing a littlebit of both.
I am doing the pastoral work,but a lot of my work is policy
work.
A lot of my work is organizing.
I will be on Capitol Hill thisweek advocating for laws and
(13:43):
policies that I think to be justthat, I think to be fair.
I was on a call yesterday withthe board that I chair, and I'm
chairing a board of folks whoare doing the work of fair and
just policy in Milwaukee, inVirginia, in Washington, in
(14:04):
Connecticut, so that work of thegospel of Christ, which is also
justice, joy and abundance.
I have stayed in the riverwhere both of those realities
swirl.
Those realities swirl and I'mthankful that, although I didn't
(14:26):
get a law degree and I'm nottrying to be a lawyer, the work
that I saw, that the law did,that was positive.
I get to participate thatparticipate in that as well, so
for that I'm thankful.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
The.
As I hear you speak, it soundsas if the for you scripture, and
activism and policy, and youknow being rooted in the real
world, those are all integratedtogether, right, so that
scripture is not just anabstraction?
(14:59):
Can you talk to us more aboutthat?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh sure, I think that the biggest identity theft in
the nation over time has beenperpetrated upon Jesus.
His identity was stolen fromhim for the purposes of building
an American church that would,by and large large, ignore the
(15:24):
gospel.
So Jesus says the spirit of theLord is upon me, for he's
anointed me to preach good newsto the poor, to release the
captives, to preach theacceptable year of the Lord,
which harkens back to theJubilee year, which was an
economic vision that peoplewould not be oppressed, that
(15:47):
land would be returned to itsrightful owners, that those in
debt would be forgiven, those inbondage would be set free.
And so the gospel of JesusChrist is a gospel that
challenges the systems, theauthorities, the powers.
He says to preach good news tothe poor, and that Greek word
(16:10):
there means those who have beenmade poor.
Poverty is the result not ofimmorality, it is the result of
injustice, and Jesus camefighting those things.
And it becomes incumbent uponthose of us who say we follow
(16:32):
him, that our worship and thatour spiritual lives thrust us
into the arenas of the world, todo that same liberative work.
And so for me there is nodifference, there is no cleaving
(16:53):
, there is no separation betweenthe work of being a disciple
and the work of disrupting aworld of injustice and building
a world of love and peace for usall.
What's interesting is PopeFrancis talked about the fact
(17:20):
that right now we are fightingWorld War III in pieces because
of all of the violence anddestruction in the world.
Martin King talked about thetriple E's in America of racism,
militarism and materialism.
Slash capitalism and we buildand love the kind of world that
(17:42):
we believe that God intends andthe kind of world that we see
being made in the life and theministry of Jesus.
But we also are clear thatthere are powers arrayed against
the work of God At the end ofJesus's earthly ministry.
He was not given a Nobel PeacePrize, he wasn't brought to the
(18:04):
White House and given a Medal ofFreedom.
He was lynched and we must notforget that.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
How do you see the role of your congregation, your
work, your leadership, yourfacilitation in the context of a
generation pardon me, that maybe skeptical about religious
traditions, especially youngerpeople, connecting them to not
(18:38):
only traditions but then makingthose be alive and relevant in
the activism that you reference?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Well, sir, you've got an advantage on me because you
are the father of apparently avery bright and energetic young
lady, and congratulations on hergraduation.
Thank you To you and yourfamily and to her, especially
one of the things that that I'venoticed as a pastor in a place
like Washington DC Now you willyou and your listeners, I think,
(19:07):
will resonate with this.
Washington DC curates aninteresting aggregation of
people.
The young people who come toWashington want to change the
world.
They want to work in Congress,they want to work in the social
sector, they want to make theworld a better place.
(19:28):
I run into a lot of those youngpeople in my work and I'm just
going to be very clear.
They don't care about doctrine,they don't care about the
esoterica of theology, theesoterics of theology.
(19:49):
They want to see faith embodied.
They want to see an ethicaltradition that loves mercy, that
does justice and that walkskindly.
And at our best, metropolitanAfrican Methodist Episcopal
(20:16):
Church, the church I'mprivileged to serve at our best,
that African MethodistEpiscopal Church, the church I'm
privileged to serve at our best.
That's what we do.
And so the young people.
Let me give you a very tangibleexample.
Every second Sunday of the monthwe have what we call Talk Back,
where we gather in a room inthe church and we have a
conversation about the sermon,about the world, whatever people
(20:37):
want to talk about.
We talk for an hour and wefellowship.
Most of the people in that roomare younger than I.
I'm 50 years old.
Most of the people in the roomare younger than I and they are
completely ecstatic about havinga place in the context of
church where people aren't justtalking at them but also
listening to them and theyquestion, they question me, they
(21:01):
question the tradition, theydisagree with me, they disagree
with the tradition, but we holda space for joy, for laughter
and for seeking to embody,however imperfectly, the best of
the tradition.
So, from where I sit, youngpeople want a space for rich
(21:25):
spiritual depth.
We began that conversation thismonth and every month with two
or three minutes of stillnessand silence so that spirit can
speak in the midst of the humancacophony all around us.
We can hear from spirit, thenwe hear from one another and
then we have a conversation andwe stretch one another and push
(21:49):
one another and press oneanother, laughing together,
praying together, loving andholding people, because
Washington right now is a citythat is experiencing a certain
kind of trauma.
Those who are currently leadingthe government said they wanted
to inflict trauma on governmentworkers, and those people are
(22:10):
my parishioners.
I mean, this is what the leaderof the Office of Management and
Budget said.
And so we do the pastoral workbecause we believe those human
beings should not be traumatized, but all human beings should be
loved, regarded and respected,and so that's the work that we
do sounds as if there's thisbalance between your church
(22:42):
being a sanctuary, a spiritualsanctuary, as you talk about
that quiet space, and also aplace of activism, resistance,
hope, all of those mixedtogether.
And what I would say is whatsome would call activism and
resistance.
I call following Jesus.
Yeah, because that's exactlywhat he was doing, when you
(23:08):
strip away all of the stuffAmerica has done to make Jesus a
good American citizen citizen,as a matter of fact, what I have
shared is, under currentAmerican policy, jesus could not
have found sanctuary here, likehe and his family found
(23:29):
sanctuary in Egypt.
We need to be very clear aboutwho we are, where we are, where
we are going, and the people whochallenged our system met the
same fate that Jesus met bychallenging his system.
These systems have a way ofmimicking and mirroring one
(23:55):
another, and so it is anactivism, a resistance, born of
what it means to read thegospels and to seek to live them
and to follow a tradition, thatof being human and connected
with God that stretches evenbeyond Christian knowledge and
(24:16):
Christian history, becausehumans did not come to know the
divine 2,000 years ago.
Human beings have danced withGod and God has danced with us
from the beginning of time.
Every human being, whether theygo to church or not, is a child
of God, because I believe thatin each of us is the breath of
God.
So all human beings, whereverthey are, whomever they are, are
(24:38):
holy, beautiful, made in God'simage and likeness, and it is
for us to build the kind ofcommunity where I mean when I
hear you talk about yourdaughter.
The way that you love yourdaughter is the way that the
divine loves each and every oneof us, each and every one of us,
(24:59):
no exceptions, no matter whatpeople believe or don't believe,
who they love, where they live,what they have, what language
they speak.
And a taxonomy of people sayingChristians are this and these
people are that, americans arethis.
(25:20):
God is not an American, jesusis not.
When I tell people Jesus wasnot a Christian.
Jesus lived and died a faithfulJew.
So all of our categories, if wescrutinize them, don't hold up
to the vast and rich humanloving anger, producing love
(25:41):
that characterizes God.
Because I think the thing thatmakes us most angry about God is
that God didn't hate the peoplewe hate.
God loves everybody.
The thing that ticks off Jonahis that God has mercy and God
(26:01):
has to say over and over I amGod, I will have mercy.
On whom I will have mercy?
What we want is we want God toobliterate our enemies, because
they're our enemies.
They're not God's enemies,they're God's children.
And if we could get that in ourheads in a place as stubborn as
America and other places aroundthe world we might be able to
(26:24):
live in ways that honor Godtogether.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
As you were mentioning that, I flashed on
this idea, this concept that Iface very often in the school
leadership world, wheresomething will happen and a
student will commit someinfraction, they'll get in
trouble for something.
They're, you know, adolescents,and so that's part of the
journey.
And then other parents wantthis public.
You know shaming and justiceand punishment, and so we have
(26:55):
this term that gets thrownaround a lot of restorative
justice, restorative practice,but what people really mean is I
want restorative justice for myown kid, but can you have, can
you please impose some publicretribution for someone else's
child?
And so I was.
(27:15):
I can't quote scripture when Ilead in the public sector, but
in my heart I'm going to bethinking about what you just
said, because that's that's whathappens, right?
People want to see someoneelse's kid in the town square
being punished, but we need togive their own kid a second
chance.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
And let me ask you this, because you're on the
front line, so let's think aboutthis.
Well, I mean, I have an idea,but I'm really good.
I don't know why we can'tpractice seeing ourselves as the
other and the other asourselves.
It's really the only way thatwe can live together.
(27:54):
It's the only way way that wecan live together.
It's the only way.
So, to quote King, we livetogether, as what I would say
today siblings, he said, asbrothers, or we die together as
fools.
And I just was listening to apodcast.
There's a new book out calledKing of the North about King and
(28:16):
his family, and most of us kindof keep his ministry in the
South, but he spent a whole lotof time in the North and spent a
lot of time in Europe and a lotof time in Africa and the
Caribbean.
Very young man, 39 at the timeof his execution.
But one of the things that thisscholar has unearthed about
(28:41):
King is that when he was a cargo, he loved the gang members.
He lived in vice lord territoryand the vice lords would come
to his home.
He would listen to them.
They would laugh together.
He would listen to them, theywould laugh together.
He did not judge them.
(29:01):
They worked together.
I just wish, like today, ourpolitics is based largely on you
see those people over there.
They're the wrong people.
They're taking this, they'redoing this and I just I don't
know.
I guess I have to admit thatthat othering exists in all of
(29:25):
us.
But I think that we cancontinue to exercise the kinds
of love and ethics that willdiminish that proclivity.
And the good thing for me is I,I have generations on my side,
because the generations thatcame before me, as I said, I can
(29:48):
stretch back one, two, three,four, five generations and they
practiced an unbridled love.
And I just, I quite honestlyand I'll stop here what you have
said about how parents wanttheir children protected and
(30:10):
regarded but they want a publicspectacle to be made out of the
offender.
Really there is very littlespace between that and violence.
Yeah, very little space.
As a matter of fact, there's nospace.
The only space that existsbetween that and violence is
(30:31):
because you and others have theauthority to make sure that
whatever is done is doneaccording to policy and law.
But if that weren't the case,how quickly human beings devolve
and it's so sad, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, that's why I don't have much hair left.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
That's why I shave mine every other day.
It just makes life easier.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
That's right.
That's right.
This kind of landmark caseinvolving your church and and
the, the defacing and defamationthat occurred at the hands of
(31:30):
proud boys or some extension ofthat group, Can you, can you
talk our listeners through whathappened, what your experience
of it was, and then leadingthrough the policy, the legal
struggle and all of those pieces?
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Sure.
So we've got to go back to theend of 2020.
An election had taken place.
There were many who disagreedwith the outcome.
This is Washington DC, andthose people were hanging around
(32:09):
here for many reasons, becausethis was, as many call it, the
interregnum between oneadministration that had not been
voted in and a newadministration coming in at the
beginning of 2021.
So those groups, principallythe Proud Boys there were others
(32:32):
were hanging in and aroundWashington rallying, involved in
some criminality, someintimidation.
Our church is only five or sixblocks from the White House.
One evening, while we and Ialso have to say in that period
(32:57):
of time we were in COVIDprotocol, so we could not
worship in the sanctuary safelywithout spreading COVID, so we
were worshiping virtually.
I was leading worship viaFacebook from the basement of
our home, from the basement ofour home.
(33:24):
I got up that Sunday morning inDecember of 2020, my phone was
dancing and jumping becausepeople were texting and offering
their regards, offering theirsympathy, offering their support
, and I had no idea what wasgoing on until a friend of mine,
a fellow pastor, sent me a link, which was a link to the Proud
(33:48):
Boys Twitter feed.
There's a picture of them inthe front yard of our church,
front yard of our church.
They were happily, joyfully,gleefully, exuberantly recording
trespassing into the yard ofour church, chanting vitriolic,
(34:09):
racist statements, tearing downour property, and also they were
recording tearing down theproperty of other congregations.
They burned the sign of one ofthose congregations, and so
that's what I woke up to thatSunday morning when I saw what
(34:33):
had happened.
I had to figure out what I woulddo, because I still had to
preach, I still had to lead theservice.
So I sat down on my steps, verymuch like I said to you at our
talk back, I steeled myself andquiet, which is the way that I
(34:53):
pray.
I pray by listening and nottalking.
So I listen for the voice ofthe divine, I listen for the
voices of ancestors.
I did what I do as a pastor andafterwards we began to get
communications from, first theformer president of the NAACP
(35:15):
and others, the LawyersCommittee for Civil Rights, and
what they wanted to do was tosue.
They were already thinking andthey wanted to know if we would
join a suit against them and myanswer was yes, but I am not the
church, I am the pastor of thechurch.
(35:36):
So I called together ourleaders about 40 of them and
they unanimously decided that wewould sue the Proud Boys.
Now, suing the Proud Boys cameat a cost.
They sought to intimidate us.
They threatened us.
One month our security cost was$18,000.
(35:58):
We sued them for $2.8 million.
We won that suit.
They refused to pay, not justto make a spectacle, but we
meant to get money.
We meant for them to have aneconomic punishment for what
(36:24):
they did to us, to deter themfrom thinking this is a wise
course in the future.
And so our lawyer's strategywas to attach ourselves to
something they owned of value.
What they owned of value wastheir trademark.
We sued for their trademark andnow we own the Proud Boys
(36:46):
trademark.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
So ostensibly.
That then means that anyrevenue that comes in attached
to that trademark goes to yourchurch.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
What it means is something a little how shall I
say that there's a little morelegalese to it, should not?
They legally cannot sellanything with their logo because
(37:21):
we own it and they do not.
They are not able to profitfrom it, but, just like if you
have ever been in any downtownin the United States, there are
people who are selling knockoffbrands, right.
So, of course, that stillhappens, but it is illegal.
What we have done because, ofcourse, you can possibly never
(37:44):
stop all of that is that we havegone to online platforms that
they would use To get the wordout and to sell stuff, and we
have had them deplatformed.
So I want you to think aboutthe major online and digital
(38:09):
platforms.
We have gone to them and theywill, at the request of our
lawyers, deplatform any ProudBoys activity.
So we are getting them reallyin the virtual and digital
marketplace, which is where theymake their money and where they
amplify their message.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
It's like a sounds like a cease and desist type of
a thing that you'd see betweencompanies.
Yes, this has the layer of thesocial element to it too.
Right, it's a community that'ssaying, hey, cease and desist,
(38:55):
we own your trademark.
It's just such an intriguing,interesting and and um,
groundbreaking, at least in mymind.
I mean, I don't know theremight have been other cases like
this, but but oh, yes, and Iwill tell you there have been.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
for example, we stand in the line of our ancestor,
beulah donald, who, a wonderfulwoman of African descent whose
son was lynched by the Klan, shesued the Klan and won Klan
property and resources.
There are a number of othercases where Black women
(39:31):
especially went to great lengthsto sue white supremacist
organizations and own latertheir property, got their
resources.
So yes, it is not a legalinnovation.
We stand on the shoulders ofthose who did similarly.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Well, and as I mentioned to you when we spoke
prior, I didn't want to have ourconversation defined nor
bookended by this, because Iknow your work is so much
greater than that attack andyour church's response to it.
I wanted to, in light of thepolarization that you've spoken
(40:18):
about, the national stance,national policies coming from
the White House around using theword attack or suffer, you know
, having groups of employeessuffer, where do you find hope?
Where do you find hope inAmerica right now?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I find hope in America, in communities of
people who say no to injusticeand hatred and who are doing the
hard work of building, withinthis nation, democracy.
(41:05):
My argument is that democracyhas never lived here.
I tell people that I was bornin 1974, I tell people that I
was born in 1974 and I'm thefirst generation in my family to
have full citizenship rights atbirth.
(41:25):
But here's the kicker mysister's children, their voting
rights, are now less protectedthan my parents' voting rights
were in the early 80s because ofthe decisions that have come
from the court, the SupremeCourt and others.
(41:45):
So this nation has never, evercommitted itself, never really
committed itself to democracyfor all of us.
It has committed itself todemocracy for all of us.
It has committed itself todemocracy for some and
exploitation for others.
In the instance of indigenousfolk, folks of African descent,
(42:09):
very okay with that.
In the present moment.
Not only are those people stillput upon, but we're okay with
democracy for some, butexploiting the immigrant
laborers.
My argument is that until wecan first look in a mirror to
see what America really has been, to confess that and to say we
(42:33):
do not want to bequeath this toour children, and the same way
that during hot Philadelphiasummers, the so-called founders
decided to create a system wherethey would use democratic
language yet extract and exploit.
(42:55):
We need to come up with asystem of democratic language
and democratic practice for allof us, and I know it is possible
.
My argument is that it'llprobably take.
It's going to take more timethan you or I have.
It took 250 years to get here.
(43:15):
It could take us 250 years toget there, and all along the way
as we make progress, there willbe people who will do
everything they can to destroythe progress.
But what we do and what we mustdo is what I saw my ancestors
do, is what I saw my ancestorsdo.
When people huff and puff andblow your house down, you
(43:41):
rebuild your house.
You rebuild your house untilthey realize that this huffing
and puffing is an exercise infutility, because I cannot keep
these people from being human,from loving one another and from
building something different.
So the great poet Sterling Brownof Howard University put it
this way strong men and womenkeep coming, and so we got to
(44:05):
keep coming.
We have to keep coming, andthat's the only hope I have.
The hope I have is not aboutsinging Kumbaya songs and you
know Black people having dinnerwith white people and Jewish
people having dinner withMuslims.
Oh, that's good, but thatdoesn't change systemically what
(44:26):
we see.
The hope I have is in peoplewho are willing to risk who they
are and what we have to buildand protect something different.
I'll put it this way you are aparent.
New life is fragile.
Your daughter was born.
(44:47):
If you took your daughter asprecious as she is to you, as
precious as she is to the Godwho gave her to you and to your
wife and your broader family andcommunity If you took her and
sat her in the middle of MainStreet and walked away, she
would have died.
Democracy is as fragile as anewborn and what we do is we
(45:13):
take democracy for the newbornthat it is umbilical cord, just
cut after birth, just scoopedout of the mouth, and lie the
child down in oncoming trafficand say do the best you can.
It'll never grow that way,it'll die.
It'll keep dying.
Democracy never existed for thegenerations of my family, but
(45:36):
they built something akin to thekind of system, even though
they were locked out of it.
It can be done, but together wehave decided that we want to do
it.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Thank you for that.
I'm facing some challengingsituations at work right now
with you.
Know, as a leader, you facecurrents and sometimes
oppositions within a community,so your words around keep
rebuilding and going forward,ring, ring, especially
(46:11):
appropriate and apropos for meat this time.
You've been extremely generouswith your time and I wanted to.
I have one last question foryou, but before I get there, is
there anything that we haven'ttouched on, that has been kind
of rattling around for you, thatyou'd like to share about your
work?
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Well, I'll tell you what might be helpful to me to
share, and it's similar to thethinking about how fragile new
life is.
We worship in a building thathas been where it is since 1887.
We are always having to dosomething to care for that
(46:53):
building, always.
And I think what we need tounderstand is this nation is
older than that building.
If you think of the nation asan edifice and there are
portions of the nation.
We don't have the same paint onthe walls we had in 1887.
We don't have the same floorcovering.
(47:13):
We don't have the same plumbingsystem.
We don't have the same floorcovering.
We don't have the same plumbingsystem.
We don't have the same climatesystem.
You cannot build a building,walk away from it and say it is
habitable for eternity.
The structures of this nation,the constitution itself, laws
(47:38):
how we elect, whom we elect, forhow long we elect, whom we
appoint, how we appoint.
We cannot keep doing 250 yearsnigh what we were doing 250
years ago.
It is.
(47:59):
It makes the same sense asbuilding a building, building in
1887 and saying, okay, this isthe roof we're going to have in
2025.
Right now, we're having toreplace the roof of the church,
so we want to build in the labs.
Right now, we have issues inthe basement around moisture.
It's going to cost us tens ofthousands of dollars that we
didn't plan for, but that's thecost of living in an old
building and we'll find a way.
(48:21):
We live in an old building thatwas not designed for all of us,
that we must redesign andrepair at the same time If we're
serious about living together,loving one another and being who
we can be at our best.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
As you mentioned, that a friend of mine, a dear
friend of mine, runs a Buddhisttemple in San Diego and I'm on
the board of his temple.
Oh wow, it seems like everytime we have a board meeting
we're talking about the roof,the windows, the drainage.
I'm going to have to send thema text and say hey, man, this is
(49:06):
houses of worship that are over50 years or so.
This is what you get.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
This is how God loves us all equally.
Let me add to the plumbingissues and we have.
We have storied stained glasswindows, probably irreplaceable,
Though we have a milliondollars worth of stained glass
work we need to do.
So we just, we just keep doingwhat we got to do.
(49:32):
Keep doing what we got to do.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, I'd imagine the I don't know what it is lead or
whatever that's between thepanes of glass that does that
has a certain shelf life.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
And yes yes, yes, but just like you and I can laugh
about this and you keep going tothe meetings, I have a meeting
tonight and we're going to betalking about toilets and
plumbing and roof.
That's how I'm going to spendmy evening tonight.
But we do it because you as aneducator, and you making sure
(50:05):
that temple thrives and memaking sure the church thrives.
Here's the thing the temple andthe church in this nation ought
to thrive together.
I have no investment in thetemple not existing, and the
temple has no investment in menot existing.
(50:26):
I don't want the temple to jointhe AME church and the AME
church doesn't want theBuddhists to become.
Let's allow one another to bewho we are.
We're not in competition.
Your thriving does not hurt me.
This idea of a pie where youget a slice and I don't get a
(50:48):
slice, this zero-sum mentalitymy thriving does not hurt you.
Our entire politics today,based on this group, is taking
something from you.
No, they are not.
It is enough for all of us tothrive.
They can grow and you can growalongside them.
Think about how stupid this is.
(51:09):
How trees in the forest don'tsay you're taking my sword,
you're taking my sunlight.
Only foolish human beings dothat, and we do that not in the
service of anything or anyoneother than self-aggrandizement
and building up our own power,which has nothing to do with the
community.
No tree.
(51:30):
I'm at home.
I'm looking out.
We got a lot of trees in a parkbehind us.
These trees don't spend theirevenings arguing about you
taking my soil.
It's raining right now.
I don't see the trees fightingover who's getting the rainwater
.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
I was listening to someone talk about how, as human
beings, we're the onlycreatures on earth who have this
concept of accumulating andhoarding, uh even thinking about
passing it on, passing that onto future generations.
Squirrels hoard nuts onlybecause they have this
(52:12):
imperative for one winter, butthey're not thinking, oh, three
generations from now, theselittle baby squirrels are going
to be out there.
So I'm going to hoard now andaccumulate and take it away from
the squirrel who lives in thenext tree so that my grandchild
squirrels can have a little more.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
Oh my God, I love it.
I love it.
But let me tell you I meanwe're laughing at it, but really
we're laughing to keep fromcrying.
Both of us, that's right.
We literally.
I mean I mean your humanity isso rich and beautiful.
I mean I just I'm connectingdeeply and literally I could
weep right now because you knowyou have given your life to
(52:53):
educating our children.
You know what that foolishnesscosts us.
You know what it costs us.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yeah, thank you.
The last question is ahypothetical.
Let's say you have theopportunity to create a
billboard.
Every time I ask this, peoplesay, well, I don't believe in
billboards because it pollutesthe view.
But just stay with me on thisthought experiment.
(53:23):
I will.
It could be written in smoketoo, by one of those, the sky
writers or whatever, but yourbillboard is the opportunity for
you to send your message oryour beliefs or what you think
the world needs, as people arerushing by on the freeway,
(53:46):
distracted in a million ways.
What does Pastor Lamar'sbillboard, or skywriting, say?
Speaker 2 (53:55):
One word love.
I just wrote a book and I'mreading through the editor's
last proofs and my lastparagraph is really what you
asked.
I'm like what do we do?
(54:15):
And I say, essentially I havenothing other to offer than to
say we have to love each other.
And I say in the book I mean Igot a pretty good vocabulary and
I feel like I'm missingsomething or I'm not being
(54:37):
strong enough or thoughtfulenough.
But the only thing that canmake us who we ought be,
individually, collectively andsystemically, as we build the
systems that take care of us ourpolitical system, our economic
(54:57):
system, our theological systemsif based on love, everything
changes.
And the last thing I'll say isthis People blame God.
I mean, you know you're talkingto a pastor about what we said.
I said God did not do this.
We have done this to ourselves.
(55:18):
God is not responsible.
God is the cheerleader sayingyou all don't have to live like
this and I've given youeverything.
You need to live differently.
So my billboard says L-O-V-E.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Thank you for joining us on the Hangout.
I hope you enjoyed thisconversation with Pastor Lamar.
Please be sure to give us afive-star rating wherever you
listen to your podcasts and tellyour friends and family about
this show.
If you are interested insupporting the show with a
(55:56):
donation, there is a link in theshow notes to do so.
Thank you in advance for yourgenerosity.
No amount is too small and ithelps us keep the show going
with quality and engagingcontent.
I also once again want tounderline the fact that this
show is entirely independentfrom my day job and, as such,
(56:20):
all views and opinions expressedherein are mine and mine alone.
Thanks for coming on in to hangout.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.