13: Steve Bynum

Steve grew up on the Westside of Chicago. He received a football scholarship to Notre Dame and has a stellar journalistic record. A small intimate storefront church was central to his formation and, in more recent years, he has engaged the gifts of the Orthodox Church that, of course, has deep roots in African and the Levant long before it migrated to Europe. Our conversation begins with his family of blessed memory in Memphis, Tennessee, and their migration to Chicago. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles were all laid to rest in a small town cemetery, a pilgrimage site for Steve. They are his most intimate saints and martyrs.  

We recorded our conversation in the late fall of 2019 prior to the crisis shaking both our countries. In listening to it to prepare this podcast I was struck at how it has enlarged what I hear in the voices of Steve’s brothers and sisters (and mine) and of our First Peoples in Canada. Moving through the prism of slavery and freed of the luxury of hatred, the last bonds that hold all victims, it speaks to the salvation offered to those of us who are privileged. Are we ready to receive it, ready to step out of the prison of privilege, the precincts we are blind to?     

Welcome to our conversation.