January 18, 2024 • 57 mins
Embark on a transformative journey with Lisa Sharon Harper, a voice that rings with the harmony of shalom and the pulsing beat of hip-hop, as she unfolds a gospel that speaks to the very core of our shared human experience. In our thought-provoking conversation, Lisa, an esteemed theologian and author, sheds light on the complexities of identity, liberation theology, and the intersections of faith and politics. Her profound insights, drawn from her works "Very Good Gospel" and "Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican or Democrat," challenge us to examine the depth of our beliefs and the impact they have on the world around us.
Lisa Sharon Harper is a prolific speaker, writer and activist. Lisa is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group that’s dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in the United States by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and common action. A columnist at Sojourners and an Auburn Seminary senior fellow, Lisa writes widely on shalom and governance, racial and gender justice, and transformational civic engagement. She also hosts the Freedom Road podcast. Lisa’s books include Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right, and most recently, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World–And How To Repair It All.
Learn more about Lisa on LisaSharonHarper.com, or follow @LisaSharonHarper on Facebook, @LisaSHarper on Instagram, or @LisaSHarper on Twitter.
Life After Leaven is sponsored by Sub:Culture Incorporated, a 501c3 committed to eradicating cultural, social, spiritual, financial, and academic barriers for Black College Students. If you are interested in giving a tax deductible donation toward our work with black college students, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us ensure temporary roadblocks don't become permanent dead ends for students with marginalized identities. You can follow us on Instagram: @subc_incorporated, Facebook: facebook.com/subcultureinco, and Twitter: @subcultureinco1.
Our episodes are written and produced by Tamice Namae Speaks LLC.
Don’t miss out on what Tamice has planned next! Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to her Patreon page.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tamice (00:01):
Hey folks, before we jump into the episode just
wanted to let you know there's alittle bit of issues with the
audio here.
You'll hear a little bit of anecho when we get excited about
the things that we're talkingabout.
It shouldn't be too distracting, though.
I just wanted to hop on and letyou know that this episode does
have a little bit of audioissues and we are aware.
I did my best to edit it, butwithout further ado, here's my
(00:25):
interview with Lisa SharonHarper.
What's up everybody?
Welcome back to this episode ofLife.
After Levin, I'm your host,Denise Pinterhounds, and I'm
joined by the one and only LisaSharon Harper, who is, as you've
seen on my TikToks andInstagrams, the goat.
So Lisa Sharon Harper, forthose who don't know, is a
theologian and activist andauthor of several books, two of
(00:50):
which we're going to talk abouttoday, and her most recent book
is Fortune how Race Broke myFamily in the World and how to
Repair it All.
Lisa is the president andfounder of Freedom Road LLC, a
consulting group dedicated tocrafting experiences that bring
common understanding, commoncommitment and common action
toward a more just world.
(01:10):
So welcome, welcome, welcome.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Lisa.
It's good to have you.
Lisa (01:16):
Thank you, timmy.
It's really awesome to be withyou and also with your listeners
and audience.
It's an honor.
It's an honor, thank you.
Tamice (01:25):
Thank you.
I really just want to say how Icame into contact with you.
I read a very good gospel a fewyears back and the idea that
the gospel should be good newswas revolutionary for me, and
the idea that hope springs froma cesspool of despair really
(01:45):
helped me as I was trying tonavigate.
I wasn't really rocking withevangelicalism but didn't know
how to name that.
I had gotten back into hip hop,which I had given up because of
follow Jesus and evangelicalism, those two things clicking for
me, that hope can come from.
despair actually brought me backthrough hip hop, actually
(02:06):
listening to narratives aboutGod and coming back to God and
the intersections of just beingtwo things at once being
problematic and also very, veryjust at the same time, and
meeting a space where binarieswere blurred, and I felt like
hip hop did that for me.
Back then you talked about theconcept of shalom and completely
(02:29):
revolutionized the way I thinkabout what the point of the
gospel even is.
For those who don't know you,I'd love to hear a little bit
more about your journey, how yougot to that first book and what
you were hoping it would do forpeople like me.
Lisa (02:46):
Well, first, I mean, it really wasn't my first book.
I think it was actually myfifth book or something like
that.
My first book was calledEvangelical Does Not Equal
Republican or Democrat.
Yep, I didn't even know aboutthat.
Go get that book.
Hardly anybody read it becauseit was my first book and also
the publisher didn't do a wholelot of marketing and I didn't
(03:07):
know what I was doing back thenwhat.
But it really is a great book.
Here's the thing is what I andall of my books I've really just
been using this opportunity towrite and this opportunity to
process my own experience andunderstand it.
So Evangelical Does Not EqualRepublican or Democrat was that
space where I began to work outthis concept of shalom.
(03:30):
So one of the chapters was onshalom.
It was actually the second tolast chapter, and the rest of
the book was really tracing thehistory of evangelicalism and
asking the question if it's notRepublican or Democrat, then
what is it Right and who arethese crazy people?
(03:52):
And I just I do want to justsay very quickly I'm hearing.
I'm hearing some feedback.
I'm not sure why Feedback.
Tamice (04:02):
Okay, let me see Turned down my.
Is this better yeah?
Lisa (04:10):
I think so let's see One, two, three, one, two, three,
check, check, check.
That's better.
I hear you better.
Tamice (04:17):
Okay, Maybe I'll just sit right here on the mic, I
think my.
I'm wondering.
Let me see if the window's open.
Hold on Sure.
Lisa (04:25):
Thanks, lisa.
Oh no, it's okay Just.
Tamice (04:33):
So, yeah, I think it might just be the audience about
side.
I'm not sure what else I can do, because my headphones aren't
turning on right now.
Lisa (04:44):
Well, okay, I'm wondering if it would help for me to put
my headphones on, but I don'tthink so.
I don't think it's about, Idon't think it's on my side.
So, okay, one, two, three.
It's actually better now.
I don't hear it anymore.
Okay, and your voice sounds alot better.
Okay.
Tamice (05:03):
Yeah, so I can just jump back in.
So you so Very Good.
Gospel was the first book thatI read, but that's not your
first book, so tell us aboutyour first book.
Lisa (05:14):
So Evangelical does not equal Republican or Democrat Was
my first book.
It was published in 2008.
It was actually published.
That was the year that Obamawon the presidency, or one you
know.
Yeah, in November, it's 2008.
It was also only a few yearsafter I left Intervarsity
Christian Fellowship, which wasand is a college ministry that I
(05:39):
had been invested in for adecade.
Before that, I got involvedwith the university as a, as a
grad student at USC and thenwent on staff with them at UCLA,
which was traumatic in itself,which is funny.
That's a whole story, and I saythat laughingly.
It wasn't dramatic, but it'sjust a funny.
(06:01):
You know, to go from USC toUCLA is like going from the US
to the USSR and the 80s, but itwas actually in many ways part
of evangelicalism.
It was, for me, a trainingground.
(06:21):
It was a place where I gotleadership training and it was
also a place that had very, very, very few people of African
descent operating in the ranks,where I was located Very
different in the Southeast, butI wasn't in the Southeast, I was
in California, los Angeles, andwhere the city itself only had
(06:45):
6% African-American populationand within university when I
started, I think there were likefive black people maybe, maybe
6 or 7?
In the whole, university.
No, no, no, In the entirety of Lof university in Los Angeles,
oh goodness, okay, all campusesin LA, right?
(07:07):
So, and here I am, I'm on staffand so I'm the only black
person on my staff team.
There's five black students atour campus at UCLA and they were
absolutely my lifesaver, theywere my lifeline all time.
We still, you know, areconnected and friends and but I
(07:30):
have to say that there's a waythat I learned the scripture
that was both like a gift andalso not helpful.
It was a gift in that themethodology of, like how they
(07:50):
studied the scripture throughmanuscript study and inductive
study was amazing and actually ahuge gift.
I still, I still that's stillhow I studied the scripture
today, and the reverence for thetext right was amazing.
But it also inherited a lot of,a lot of the the conservative
(08:16):
evangelical movementsassumptions about that text and
about its origins and about whowrote it and what their, what
their circumstances was.
It failed to ask actuallycritical questions of context
and and tended, tended to fallalong the lines of, and only
(08:37):
that, but like prop up as, asquote, orthodox, the readings of
the text that come out ofEurope, which, when I came later
to understand, really in theprocess of writing these, like
several books before I got tothe very good gospel, and then
really with the very good gospel, that this text was not written
(08:59):
in Europe.
Shocker like no person in noperson.
No speaking role.
In the entirety of the wholeBible.
No speaking role is given.
No, I should say no significantspeaking role is given to
(09:21):
anybody of European origin.
I mean, I'd say the closestthat you get to that is pilot
and he killed Jesus.
Why are we privileging Europe?
Why are we privileging Empire,actually the social of Empire
(09:44):
that is interpreted a colonizedpeople's text.
Why are we doing that?
We did the absolute.
So you know, I don't, I did nothave language for that back then
, but what I began to see when Iwent on this pilgrimage about
literally 20 years ago in thesummer of 2003, was that what I
(10:08):
had, my understanding of thetext, my understanding of Jesus,
my understanding of of of Godgiven to me from the
socialization of white ChristianAmerica, had nothing to say.
It was mew in the face of theinjustice my own people had
(10:32):
experienced.
It did not know what it was,just drawing a duh like a blank,
and it hit me in the middle ofthis actually not the middle at
the end of the pilgrimage, whenI imagined, going up to my third
grade grandmother Leah Ballardwho, if anybody has heard me
speak for the last 20 years,you've heard me talk about her,
(10:52):
because this moment changed mylife and changed my face.
It changed how I read the text.
I imagined myself going up toher door and knocking on her
door.
This my third great grandmother,who was the last enslaved adult
in our family, who we believewas likely a breeder because she
(11:12):
had 17 children, although fiveof those children, actually they
came before, beforeemancipation, and all five of
those children are nowhere to befound after emancipation, so
likely they either died or theywere sold into the deeper south.
She was located in SouthCarolina, so I imagined her and
(11:33):
saying great, great, greatgrandma Leah, I have good news
for you and I.
And then you know her goingokay, child, what, what is it?
And then I say God loves youand has a wonderful plan for
your life, but you are sinfuland therefore separated from God
(11:54):
.
Or maybe I would use you knowthat that's the, the gold
booklet.
You know that I use college andcampus crusade, right, but
maybe I would use the, the, thecloud diagram, or maybe I would
use some other diagram that thatwe were using around that time
the diagram about brokenness.
Oh, great, great, great.
(12:15):
God has a wonderful plan foryour life, but you are broken
and therefore, you know,separated from God.
I think she would literallylook at me like I was broken,
crack, because she'd be like doyou not?
Do you not see me?
And also, do you not see whatothers are doing to me, do you
(12:37):
not?
Source of my brokenness is thatI've been raped every day of my
life and I've not because, youknow, somebody got lustful.
I got raped because somebodygot greedy and put into the law
(12:59):
that there was no repercussionfor raping and having children
by your enslaved people, and sobreeding I might have breeding.
So you got about how I'm sinful.
So you know, it all crashed andI'm your depression.
(13:25):
Because, as an evangelical andalso not just an evangelical,
but as somebody who was amissionary to the college campus
, right, like my whole life hadbeen structured around the
gospel I gave up theater.
I was a theater person, right,my play and push the wind down
won a national award, theAmerican College Theater
(13:47):
Festival, and was produced atthe Kennedy Center.
And when I got the award, itwas given in the same breath,
literally the same ceremony,where an award was given to
August Wilson, right, yes, and Isaid no to that.
I walked away from that inorder to pursue this hollow
(14:13):
gospel, this thin gospel that myown third-grade grandmother
said child, are you smokingcrack?
Wow, whoa.
So I was depressed for a year.
Yes, okay, and that led me todig into the scripture even more
(14:33):
, because, you know, mirzla Bolflater wrote a book called
Public Faith and in that book hereferences theologians that
actually talk about thick faithand thin faith.
And I'm thankful that mydecision was not to leave the
faith just because I wasdisillusioned by this white,
whiteified faith that I hadinherited, that I had gleaned in
(14:57):
this whiteified, white context.
So instead, what I did was Ispent the next year, actually
the next 13 years, swimming inGenesis.
The text would not let me gothe script, the scripture would
not let me go.
The script, as theologian DavidZach says he's based out of
(15:20):
Fuller.
Interestingly, he's a Ugandantheologian who is a bishop that
has been excommunicated fromUganda because of his own
standing up and saying whatyou're saying is wrong, what
you're doing is wrong, and so hetalks about how the scripture
is not a text.
(15:41):
It is a script, in other words,it is stories about what the
Hebrew people believed was truein their relationship with them
and God.
And I began to look at this textand ask the question how has my
understanding been shaped fromthe halls of empire as opposed
(16:03):
to from the space where it camefrom, which was the social
location of the slave, thesocial location of the colonized
, the social location of thosewho were called not human by the
Roman and Greek empires?
And so that changed everything.
(16:28):
It changed my reason and itbrought me to write the very
good gospel and eventually,fortune and every book, every
book.
You know, it was the journey.
The writing journey began withevangelical does not equal
Republican or Democrat, and Iwrote that literally as I was
(16:49):
completing my masters in humanrights, and so a lot of it is
shaped by my thinking aroundhuman rights at that time and
putting up this evangelicalhistory against this question of
are we doing right by people inthe world and if not, why not?
(17:11):
And then my work took me intothe work of doing justice in New
York City and I met sojournersand through sojourners, met a
bunch of people in New York City, interestingly enough, who want
justice together.
But there was no evangelicalwork in New York City that was
(17:32):
actually dedicated to doingjustice.
So we started it.
We started New York Faith andJustice and we brought together
five streams of the church theevangelicals, mainstream,
catholic mainline, but I've saidmainline evangelicals Catholic
Orthodox and the black churchthe historic black church to
(17:53):
come together in New York Cityto end poverty.
Like, we made our focus endingpoverty and we found very
quickly that we couldn't saywe're ending poverty without
actually addressing the issuespoor people care about.
So that led us to focus onthree major issues over six
years, and those issues beganwith police brutality, expanded
(18:15):
from there to also includeclimate justice and
environmental justice, and thenfinally, immigration reform.
And then downturn happened andbecause of that it was not
sustainable and I ended up goingto DC and joining the
sojourners crew, which was doingmuch the same thing but on a
national level, and so my rolethere began to be the director
(18:39):
of mobilizing, which eventuallyturned into chief church
engagement officer.
In other words, it was my roleto engage the church to do
justice.
So in that work.
So you know, I've been doingthis theological work over here
since 2003, since thatpilgrimage to ruin ruin
everything for me, you know in agood way.
(19:00):
And now I'm actually on theground in spaces where the
powers are in confrontation.
So, ferguson and Charlottesville, baltimore, at the time when
Freddie Gray was murdered bypolice there and offering my
(19:21):
body as a living sacrifice, likethe scripture says, and then
also traveling around andspeaking on poverty and on why
we, as Christians, are mandatedmandated not just to care about
the poor, but to change theconditions of the poor, to
challenge the powers that arehell bent on crushing the image
(19:45):
of God on earth.
They are competing with thesupremacy of God on earth, right
?
So?
So what I kind of walked intowas a life that is living out
and working out a theologygrounded in Shalom, and I left
(20:14):
Sojourners in 2017 and justearned a call from God was to
jump.
And then God said I cannotcatch you until you jump.
No idea where I was going fromthere.
I had no idea I did.
Now, all I knew is that I was,I was supposed to jump, I was
(20:36):
supposed to move from the spacethat was comfortable, and so I
did.
I jumped and I had.
No, I told you know, gave them.
My last day had no idea where Iwas going and then freedom road
began to kind of come into mydreams and I began to realize I
want to take people onpilgrimages because that's what
changed me.
I want to give all the kinds ofexperiences that I had that
(20:57):
changed the way that I seeeverything Right Scripture,
myself, god, the other, the land, history.
I feel like I have given eyesto see and my goal in life is to
help others to grasp their eyesto see.
Tamice (21:21):
Wow.
First of all, I feel likesaying say love and doing some
praise and meditation.
Well, I am so curious about thestarting of freedom road Now,
like what I'm hearing even aswe're talking, it's this very
serendipitous intersection.
(21:42):
My grandmother's name was Leahand she called me while I was in
the prayer room at IHOP thenight of Obama's election, in
the middle of a solemn assemblyWow.
Lisa (21:54):
The first time A solemn assembly.
Tamice (21:58):
Morning, the election of the Antichrist, the first black
president.
So here you go, you've gotblack progress Like black
progress is Antichrist.
That's right, it was.
I didn't, and again, I can'teven say that even in that
moment I understood.
I just thought, as a Christian,this is bad, this is wrong, and
(22:21):
I can't put my blackness beforeJesus.
I can't put my blackness beforeJesus.
And so my grandmother calledwhat is your grandmother's name?
Lisa (22:28):
I want to hear what grandma said.
Tamice (22:31):
She just said well, she said hi, misi, and I said hi,
and she said it's a momentousnight and I was like yes, ma'am,
and I could hear my family.
It still brings me tears.
I could hear my family just inthe background, like the images
you had of Oprah and JesseJackson just screaming and
crying I was jumping on coucheswith my best friend at that time
(22:51):
on that night, literallyjumping on couches.
Yes, it's not the same as AugustWilson plays, but it felt like
I missed such a historic moment.
I mean, my uncle ran securityfor the entire DNC.
So it was like when, I mean,all of my family was so caught
(23:11):
up in the beauty of that momentand here I was at IHOP crying or
pretending to cry.
I mean I couldn't understandwhy these people were so sad.
And then my grandmother kind oflike sort of I talk about it
like she poked a hole in thatsilence for me.
So I stepped out of the room,talked to her a little bit and
(23:33):
she just said well, I justwanted to call and tell you I
love you and I love you too.
And I went back in and so Iguess maybe she planted the
dissonance a little bit.
Oh yeah, so that by the timeTrayvon died, watching the
people around me handlebrutality, I was like this is
not something.
There's something aboutanti-blackness in this.
(23:55):
So for me, that's where I kindof came into contact with you,
and so it's so funny to mebecause, like, what drove me to
getting your book was kind ofthe inner versity connection,
but then also this idea of likewhat, like this devastation of
like what have I been doing this, jesus?
(24:16):
I've been following and workingfor and doing ministry in the
name of is white.
Lisa (24:25):
I mean, it's not even just that he had white skin,
which he did not, but that hewas whiteified.
Yes, like he had a white mind,he had a Western mind, he had a
Western patriarchal mind.
Yes, yes, and that was notJesus.
(24:45):
It's not accurate.
Tamice (24:48):
Mm-mm, mm-mm.
And I don't know how we didn'tlearn that.
I mean, I don't.
It's so interesting to me tothink like how did we not, how
did?
Why didn't it tell me?
It's so interesting to thinkabout it now, thinking back, but
I do remember being like Idon't have to believe this is
not true and it was so freeing,it was extremely freeing for me.
Lisa (25:13):
Exactly.
Tamice (25:14):
And I'm like yeah, like that pushed me into my own work.
Lisa (25:18):
I love that.
I don't believe this is nottrue.
You know, that was actually forme for years, for years, I mean
, like in 2009,.
So I told you, you know,evangelical does not equal
Republican or Democrat waspublished in 2008.
And in that year, actually, Iworked with folks in New York
and also some other folks whowere national partners, to put
(25:39):
on a conference at PrincetonTheological Seminary called
Envision the Gospel, politicsand the Future, and it was an
election year, right.
So we're talking politics andwe're talking the future.
And you know, it was catalyzedby people who were the founders
of New York, faith and justice,where our goal was to unite the
(26:03):
church and poverty.
You know, follow Jesus, unitethe church and end poverty,
right.
So well, our goal at theconference was to begin to unite
the church by bringing togetherthe two factions of the church
that split almost a hundredyears before that, actually more
than a hundred years beforethat but the split between the
modernist and the fundamentalistedges of the church.
(26:25):
They split in New York City NewYork would be around zero for
that and New Jersey andPrinceton, right.
So Princeton had the greatwalkout of the 19, I think it
was 1923, 1920s, and that's whenthey went out and they started,
I believe, westminsterTheological Seminary in protest,
right.
So the fundamentalists.
(26:46):
So we brought togetherevangelicals and liberal
scholars to be in conversationin 2008 at this conference.
Well, the next thing, wegathered down at Sojourners
because we had this relationshipwith them and it was really
helpful and great.
And so we gathered atSojourners and several of us on
(27:06):
the evangelical side were likewe have never really had these
conversations, we're not readyto be in conversation with a
bunch of liberal scholars and wedon't even know how to talk
about the LGBTQ stuff we don'tknow how to talk about.
We don't know what we'retalking about, gender justice
and all this.
These are the things they weretalking about.
We had never even had theconversations.
(27:27):
So we, next year we started.
Actually, over the next year,we started something called
Evangelicals for Justice.
And it was a gathering ofevangelical scholars and
practitioners who were allworking out our these questions,
these critical questions, right, and we started to come
(27:49):
together and it's in thatcontext that I really did a lot
of my wrestling, logicalwrestling, and began to
understand.
Well, actually, I should say webegan, I began to wrestle and
many of us began to wrestle withand they're still wrestling,
quite honestly, many of us.
But do we call ourselvesevangelicals?
(28:09):
I mean, it's still calledevangelicals for justice, right,
Do I need to call myself anevangelical?
I thought evangelical was, youknow, basically meant Christian.
If you are evangelical, you areChristian.
If you are Christian, you'renot necessarily.
I mean no, if you are Christian, you are definitely evangelical
.
In other words, not everyperson who calls themselves a
(28:32):
Christian is a Christian.
Only if you're evangelical arethey a Christian.
It was really what I wasbrought to believe through my
evangelical context.
And then it hit me.
I mean, jesus wasn't anevangelical.
Nope, all wasn't an evangelical.
You, I mean not even CharlesFinney would have called himself
(28:55):
an evangelical.
The creator of the altar call?
He wouldn't have called himselfan evangelical.
None of them would have,because it was a movement of the
Holy Spirit that got calledevangelical in the 20th century
when they looked back on it andthey said this is what it means
to be evangelical by historians.
(29:17):
But, and it was located movement, if you go way back in the 16th
century, you know, in Europe.
It was a movement that had aprophetic word at its time for
its place in Europe.
Yes, yes, Right, like Calvinand Luther in terms of the
(29:38):
Reformation, like they hadactual good things to say, you
know, and prophetic words fortheir context.
Yes, but but their words arenot necessarily everybody's
words.
I mean, it's not.
Why do I, a person of Africandescent, need to identify?
(29:59):
I mean whole thought, as inlike swallow home, the identity
and a framework for the faiththat was responding to a context
for 500 years.
400 years.
You know what?
I mean, yes, I do, and, and on awhole other continent, in
(30:24):
another context.
Yes, I can appreciate it, I caneven say that's true, some of
these things are true.
But I can also say, but y'alldidn't get this.
Your context didn't give youthe ability to even ask these
questions that are salient rightnow.
Tamice (30:45):
Right.
So I do see, I mean I do see atrajectory, though, like, if I
think about it, I'm sitting on40.
So I feel like I know a littlebit but have so much to learn.
And in my time in Christianity,evangelicalism, reading
scripture because I too reallylove the scripture and seeing
(31:05):
this sort of trajectory of youknow, sort of rebuilding,
reframing, recapitulation, thatleads to an embrace of humanity,
less and less hierarchical,less and less controlling.
It's almost like the narrativeis kind of trending that way.
So for Luther and Calvin to saylike hey, you can read it
yourself and let's make a way toyou know, print this thing and
(31:28):
have it disseminated to folks,that's really a great thing.
Because now I got a text, yougot a text, you know, everybody
got a text, everybody got a textright.
So I do see that I think I'mwondering about how you know, as
you're thinking about how youlive and move in society, how
people who are coming to theserealizations about the scripture
(31:50):
.
I mean you've got basicallyTikTok, theology, theology
happening.
You've got, I mean there's somuch information that's
happening and you couple thatwith artificial intelligence,
like what does wisdom actuallylook like?
You know, as we think aboutwhere do we go from here?
If we grew up Christian, if wegrew up evangelical, if we still
(32:13):
want to keep Jesus and nothingelse like what would you say
from your vantage point is theway forward for people like that
?
For people like me, that's kindof like, if I'm Christian, it's
a light jacket.
At this point, it's not.
What will be your thoughts forthat?
I?
Lisa (32:31):
think.
I think that the call is notsimply deconstruction.
Tamice (32:40):
Yeah, okay.
Lisa (32:42):
And that's what I think what we're seeing mostly coming
out of, you know,post-evangelical theology, right
now ex-Fangelical.
I don't know about TikTok, I'mtoo afraid of that platform.
Tamice (32:56):
You said TikTok is the usual thing.
Lisa (33:00):
Lisa, you need to be on TikTok.
Like it will eat up my day.
I can't do it.
Tamice (33:04):
Maybe Jesus will tell you to jump on that too, because
we can use some wisdom onTikTok for sure.
Lisa (33:08):
Oh my gosh, oh Lord.
Okay, maybe that's 2024, y'allMaybe that's 2024.
But the practice, and actuallythe trend, has been deconstruct.
But let me just tell you thedifference between
deconstructing and decolonizing.
Okay, so deconstructing you,deconstruct you.
(33:31):
Your sensibility is centeredand you go into the text and you
go into the faith and thehistory and the traditions and
you determine what stays andwhat goes according to what you
think, regardless of how thin orthick your faith is.
(33:53):
You've made it.
You've seen something didn'tlike that.
You know, didn't like the factthat somebody is raped in the
scripture.
Sorry, trigger alert, my bad,can we go back on that?
And yeah, you, you might, youmight see something and don't
like that.
Women are subjugated in thescripture.
(34:14):
And because somebody told yousome time at some point in your
white, western patriarchal faiththat because women are
subjugated in the scripture,this is God's prescription for
the world, this is what Godwants for the world.
So now you go, you see that,you deconstruct it, you take it
out, you say I'm not going tobuy it by that the scripture is
(34:37):
bad and that's it.
Well, I just want to say thatis a white supremacist act.
Come on Talk to us, it is a anact of white supremacy.
What you have done is you havecentered still the white view of
the text in order to determineyour actions and relationship to
(35:00):
the text.
Woo Woo.
Tamice (35:04):
You might need another sentence, give us another
sentence.
So the Deacon colonizing.
Lisa (35:08):
On the other hand, Embraces the journey into a
thicker read of the text, thescript, zach would say.
And it recognizes and centersthe actual way of life.
(35:32):
And it recognizes and centersthe actual social location,
historical location of thepeople who wrote the text yeah,
and the people they wrote it to,mm hmm.
(35:53):
And it asks the question thepolitical location, mm hmm.
It asks all of those contextualquestions and when it does, it
must land on the reality thatthose who wrote this text, every
single person who put theirhand to the pen or the quill, mm
(36:17):
hmm, and wrote a scratch or ascribble in the book we call the
Bible, Mm, hmm.
And the text of the book waseither colonized or under
imminent threat of colonizationWow, every single one.
So that must change how we readit, mm hmm.
(36:43):
So, therefore, when we look forMm hmm In that context,
understanding that only about 30years before that moment, when
Jesus walks into the synagoguein his hometown, only about 30
years before the year he wasborn, mm hmm, there was a major
(37:11):
uprising, yeah, in Galilee.
That was put down, yeah, bywhite supremacist Rome, mm hmm,
mm hmm.
And the Josephus tells us that500 Galileans, 500 Jews, were
(37:33):
crucified every day, men andboys lining the roads, mm hmm,
every day, by a general who camethrough to squash the uprising.
So, when Jesus Goes into thatsynagogue and says I have come
to bring good news, trust, mmhmm.
(37:54):
To set the prisoners free, mmhmm, in his context he's talking
about political prisoners, yeah, yeah.
And the oppressed are hispeople, mm hmm.
Who, in the context of Rome,which embraced the philosophies
(38:14):
of Aristotle and Plato andSophocles, mm hmm, who did
believe that all of us werehuman, that only believe people
who were white, male, ablebodied were human, mm hmm, Mm
hmm.
And the throne was occupying.
Tamice (38:38):
Yeah, let's go there, palestine, Come on.
You said he was born, he wasborn in Bethlehem.
Lisa (38:44):
Let's talk about it In that moment.
Yeah, so when he stands up inthe synagogue and he says I have
come to proclaim release to thecaptives, to set the prisoners
free, that it's not as I wastaught in my whitefied campus
(39:06):
crusade and intervarsity context, that he was talking about
spiritual oppression, spiritualimprisonment so that they could
relate to it from Starbucks orborders, yeah, okay, no, that's
(39:30):
not what he was saying and it'shis first sermon and his last
sermon ever was Matthew five,right when he says.
He says the righteous will saywhen did we do these things?
(39:51):
When did we feed you?
When did we give you water whenyou were thirsty?
When did we visit when you werean immigrant in our land?
When did we care for you?
You were sick, when did we?
And Jesus says the righteous.
That word righteous in the textit's not.
It does not mean, as I wastaught in my white context,
(40:17):
evangelical context.
It does not mean spirituallyholy, oh hell, no, no.
What that word literally meansis the just ones, the one,
equitable action and character,not equal.
(40:38):
Equitable, which means fair.
You cannot talk about fairaction and fair character
without talking about policy,without talking about systems
and structures and the waythings work, which is why the
(40:59):
first, the original church, thefirst century church, the acts
church, they were not in ademocracy, they didn't vote.
So what did they do?
They created their own economyand alternative economy that had
a different system, a differentstructure.
(41:23):
Right, we leave that, we go.
Aren't those Christians?
Nice, the Holy Spirit is sonice.
See what the Holy Spirit did.
The Holy Spirit, the HolySpirit, gave to the poor.
No, no, no.
The Holy Spirit took from therich to give to the poor and
make that the system of the veryfirst church.
Tamice (41:47):
Oh my goodness.
I'm like, oh my gosh, you haveto teach us.
You got to teach.
I mean seriously, I think I'mlike so being so unprofessional
right now.
But I'm thinking about these 18, 19, 20 year olds who are so
far removed from that kind of astory about Jesus, like there is
no world in which they wouldhear something like that.
(42:11):
Oh my gosh, they're kind ofthey're in the midst of fog and
they know what they don't wantand they've not been presented
with the Jesus or a take onscripture that speaks to that
fairness that they care about.
We know they care aboutfairness I'm thinking about
March for Our Lives and you knowGreta Thunberg and they care
(42:34):
about equity apart fromevangelicalism.
They did not give that to them.
No, I think a way to navigatewhat Jesus gives us is a way to
navigate these times and to haveperspective and wisdom and a
bit of resilience in these times, not because pie in the sky and
(42:55):
it'll go away, but becausesomeone else has been there,
done that, seen that here is away through that.
So to me it feels like whatwe're missing is this we're
missing hope.
Lisa (43:10):
With teeth right, we're missing a deep lens, a
decolonizing lens.
Tamice (43:16):
Yeah, we don't have that Like honestly, anyway, shoot, I
will run your TikTok, you justdo sermons, I'll split them up.
People need to just know thatthis is an option.
I think that people are feelinglike myself included that there
aren't any other options.
I don't want any parts of this.
You know like, and I thinkabout whiteness, I think about
(43:38):
decolonization, but never beforehave I thought about the way
I'm thinking about it now,because what you're making me
picture is Palestine and what'shappening there.
Lisa (43:52):
Let me let you know this that when you decolonize, you
center the actual people whowrote the text, yes, center
their intentions in writing thewords.
Yes, you center how the peoplewho heard it would have heard it
and how they would haveresponded, and you move from
(44:13):
that place.
They become the authority onthe, on the text, not you in
your 21st century sensibilities,your whiteified, centric
sensibilities.
And so you bow.
You bow to the oppressed, totheir their, to the ones who
wrote the text, to theintentions behind the text and
(44:35):
to the reality, but, honestly,that they too were human, that
they were not God.
The text itself is not God.
The text is a text about God,reflecting what the people
understood of God humanfrailness, right.
(44:57):
So yeah, so you know what Imight just be on this next year.
Tamice (45:04):
I mean I know that I'm like it's not tongue and cheek
at all for me, like I'm thereand I'm seeing what's happening
and what's being said and it'sall very jostling.
I mean, yeah, like people arekind of tapping these houses of
cards.
What we don't have is thatthing that's going to carry us,
and they don't have the thingthat's going to carry them in 15
(45:25):
years.
Lisa (45:26):
Right, that's right Through this craziness that
we're experiencing.
Tamice (45:30):
Because everybody knows it's bad and it's maddening.
But I haven't even been able tobe on social media long term
because of the weight of thefact that hundreds of people are
being bombed by a country.
Yeah, we can talk about that,let's have a part of like I
don't even know how to.
I am at a loss.
Lisa (45:54):
Don't get a loss.
Take action, don't get a loss.
Move your body, move yourfingers, speak into that social
media space.
Your voice is necessary.
I've been listening to you.
Your voice is necessary Justtoday.
I mean, I think we all feel at aloss, but I've been actually
(46:14):
thinking, and I think a lot ofpeople are starting to catch on.
This thing is run by money.
Oh yeah, people are beingsilent on Capitol Hill because
they're afraid of losing money.
What if we revoke our money?
What if we actually say I'm notdonating one more penny until
you say two words, threetechnically, but become this,
(46:35):
become two words.
These are now.
When you say to these fire now,my donations will flow again,
but until that time, I boycottyou.
That's what I'm on.
I boycott you, senator Schumer.
I boycott you, joe Biden.
(46:55):
I boycott you, kamala Harris,for allowing yourself and your
brown body to be used by thepowers of whiteness and maleness
to put down Palestinian people.
And it's not.
And look, jewish people are madein the image of God.
They too are worthy ofprotection of the law, but not
(47:20):
on the equal protection of thelaw, and so we are doing
everything we can to get thosehostages back, but we will not
and shall not and cannot crushthe image of God in Brown or any
people in order to get anybodyback.
We must do it in ways thatprotect the image of God
(47:43):
Absolutely.
And in fact, when we crush theimage of God over here, we make
ourselves more vulnerable tobeing crushed over here, so that
and Yahoo isn't doing theJewish people one bit of a favor
.
In fact, what he's doing ishe's he's upping, he's.
He's upping the timestamp.
Yes, the state of Israel, yes,whereas it had and still might
(48:10):
have the ability to live inperpetuity and a flourishing
state, but only only if theJewish people abide by the shema
.
If the Jewish people actuallylove their neighbors, to be
(48:30):
feared by your neighbors.
Love your neighbors.
Love, love extravagantly, yes.
Love freeze Love.
Love sets free, love sets up asystem where all people made in
(48:57):
the image of God your text, oh,israel, your text, you are the
ones who told us all that we areall made in the image of God,
that we are all worthy, allhumanity, what it means to be
human is to be made in the imageof God and therefore called by
God to exercise dominion in theworld.
(49:17):
So then, why are you crushingthe capacity of Palestinians to
exercise dominion over their owndamn selves?
Tamice (49:26):
Where does it come from?
I'm white supremacy yeah,that's, and money it's it's so
clearly empire in a way that Ican't.
It feels like we've.
I mean, I can go to the textand I can look at it and go, oh
(49:48):
my gosh, like this is whatEmpire looks like.
Yes, yes, and yet being done inmy name, right?
Joe Biden is going on TV andsaying America stands with
Israel.
No, I do not.
I do not stand for this.
Lisa (50:04):
This is not humanity.
Tamice (50:06):
Absolutely.
Lisa (50:06):
Absolutely, america must stand with humanity.
Israel is our human, jewishpeople are human, palestinian
people are human, arab peopleare human, all people are human.
And until, until America standswith humanity, than America,
(50:32):
america is complicit in genocide.
Tamice (50:35):
I'm wondering about how.
I've been wondering about thefear of you know, like once you,
the idea that once you tell alie, you keep telling the lie.
I'm wondering about Americabeing afraid of all her
skeletons.
Oh, that's so it's.
It's too late to do what'sright, because you'll have to
now start to name all the thingsthat you did wrong, which to me
(50:57):
feels like what is the hope?
And then I mean I see, I knowwe're running out of our time,
but I see brother West Coming tothe forefront.
Do you have thoughts about that?
Or like what?
How we're?
How can we navigate an electionyear?
What are the things that we canbe thinking about?
Lisa (51:19):
I can't say I'm in deep prayer about this election year.
I am not.
I'm committed right now.
Until Kamala and Joe sayceasefire, I will not vote for
them.
I just won't.
I can't, not in good conscience.
That said, you know I have to.
(51:41):
I have to find a candidate thatcan win, and I do not believe
brother West can win.
And because we cannot have we Imean literally, it is, it is
existential we cannot have Trumpback in the White House.
Yeah, that's just.
It cannot happen.
And it would happen wouldhappen if, if brother West, I
(52:03):
love him, I have marched withhim several times, we have
laughed and hugged and criedtogether, both in Ferguson and
in Charlotte.
I believe that brother West ismore valuable outside of,
outside of the halls of power,than he is inside.
(52:26):
I believe is a profit, and itis incredibly easy for profits
to be co-opted once they enterthe halls of power.
And so I don't want brotherWest inside the halls of power,
I want to free, to fully push,because once he goes inside, it
will be another story.
And so we need him out.
(52:48):
And I'm still looking for whothat person is, who needs to
rise up and who will respond toWest outside.
Yeah, you can actually win.
That is my priority.
And I don't know.
I'm looking for God.
I'm looking for God to part thewaters.
I really am.
I'm literally praying for Godto part the waters, to move the
(53:11):
mountains, to move this courseof streams, because that's what
God does, that's what our Goddoes, and so I believe, I
believe that that is possible,but I also believe I do not need
to sell my soul in order to, inorder to get Shalom, in order
to get any hint from God's peace, because God's peace comes in
God's way and you cannot getGod's peace by going against the
(53:34):
ethics of God.
You just can't.
Tamice (53:39):
I'm just unbelievably grateful for this conversation
and feel kind of like there's acomma for me on this
conversation.
It's true, in the midst of thisconversation, and I guess one
(54:01):
thing that I ask everyone thatcomes on the show is kind of
know what are some words we canlive by?
And so, if you don't mindthinking about kind of the way I
describe my listeners, if youdon't mind maybe leaving us with
some words to live by in thishour, yeah, really helpful.
Lisa (54:22):
Connect, connect.
It has become my core beliefthat Shalom, that thing I talk
about in the very good gospeland that thing I write about,
was broken in my family and hasa possibility of being restored
in fortune.
It is ultimately really, trulyabout connection.
(54:47):
God considers very goodConnectedness to self, to the
story of yourself, To the storyof your people, to the land that
(55:07):
you live on, to the land ofyour people Radical
connectedness.
Radical connectedness to youAcross all the Genders, radical
connectedness with the rest ofcreation, radical connectedness
(55:29):
with the systems that govern us.
So we are in the conversation.
We do not leave them, leave thesystem, to do what they will.
We are in conversation, we arepushing, we are shaping, we are
(55:49):
connected to the systems andstructures that govern us and
shaping those systems andstructures, especially in the
context of a democracy which wehave the blessing to be a part
of, and understanding that nodemocracy is perfect.
The reality is that for peopleof color around the world, for
(56:12):
marginalized people, not evenjust people of color, all
marginalized people the kind ofdemocracy that has been
structured here in the US is thebest possible system that we
currently have to protect theleast of these, because it
offers the capacity to exercisedominion, to exercise
(56:33):
stewardship in the form of thevote, and so connect with the
structures and systems and callthem to account and protect the
capacity to vote.
Connect, don't disengage.
Connect, and when you do, whenyou become more connected to
(56:55):
yourself, to your body, to yourspirit, to your soul, to your
story, to your family, to thosewho've been estranged, you'll
find that that it's in thatspace, that in between these,
where you are connected, that iswhere heaven is.
(57:19):
Yes, that is where Shalom lives, mm-hmm.
Tamice (57:27):
Ache, ache.
Thank you so much.
I'm hoping to have you back.
Lisa (57:36):
I would love that.
Thank you.
Tamice (57:39):
Thank you for listening To pick your money and your
heart is donate to SubquatcherInc and clear the path for black
students today.
Hey folks, before we jump into the episode just
wanted to let you know there's alittle bit of issues with the
audio here.
You'll hear a little bit of anecho when we get excited about
the things that we're talkingabout.
It shouldn't be too distracting, though.
I just wanted to hop on and letyou know that this episode does
have a little bit of audioissues and we are aware.
I did my best to edit it, butwithout further ado, here's my
(00:25):
interview with Lisa SharonHarper.
What's up everybody?
Welcome back to this episode ofLife.
After Levin, I'm your host,Denise Pinterhounds, and I'm
joined by the one and only LisaSharon Harper, who is, as you've
seen on my TikToks andInstagrams, the goat.
So Lisa Sharon Harper, forthose who don't know, is a
theologian and activist andauthor of several books, two of
(00:50):
which we're going to talk abouttoday, and her most recent book
is Fortune how Race Broke myFamily in the World and how to
Repair it All.
Lisa is the president andfounder of Freedom Road LLC, a
consulting group dedicated tocrafting experiences that bring
common understanding, commoncommitment and common action
toward a more just world.
(01:10):
So welcome, welcome, welcome.
Thank you so much for beinghere, Lisa.
It's good to have you.
Lisa (01:16):
Thank you, timmy.
It's really awesome to be withyou and also with your listeners
and audience.
It's an honor.
It's an honor, thank you.
Tamice (01:25):
Thank you.
I really just want to say how Icame into contact with you.
I read a very good gospel a fewyears back and the idea that
the gospel should be good newswas revolutionary for me, and
the idea that hope springs froma cesspool of despair really
(01:45):
helped me as I was trying tonavigate.
I wasn't really rocking withevangelicalism but didn't know
how to name that.
I had gotten back into hip hop,which I had given up because of
follow Jesus and evangelicalism, those two things clicking for
me, that hope can come from.
despair actually brought me backthrough hip hop, actually
(02:06):
listening to narratives aboutGod and coming back to God and
the intersections of just beingtwo things at once being
problematic and also very, veryjust at the same time, and
meeting a space where binarieswere blurred, and I felt like
hip hop did that for me.
Back then you talked about theconcept of shalom and completely
(02:29):
revolutionized the way I thinkabout what the point of the
gospel even is.
For those who don't know you,I'd love to hear a little bit
more about your journey, how yougot to that first book and what
you were hoping it would do forpeople like me.
Lisa (02:46):
Well, first, I mean, it really wasn't my first book.
I think it was actually myfifth book or something like
that.
My first book was calledEvangelical Does Not Equal
Republican or Democrat.
Yep, I didn't even know aboutthat.
Go get that book.
Hardly anybody read it becauseit was my first book and also
the publisher didn't do a wholelot of marketing and I didn't
(03:07):
know what I was doing back thenwhat.
But it really is a great book.
Here's the thing is what I andall of my books I've really just
been using this opportunity towrite and this opportunity to
process my own experience andunderstand it.
So Evangelical Does Not EqualRepublican or Democrat was that
space where I began to work outthis concept of shalom.
(03:30):
So one of the chapters was onshalom.
It was actually the second tolast chapter, and the rest of
the book was really tracing thehistory of evangelicalism and
asking the question if it's notRepublican or Democrat, then
what is it Right and who arethese crazy people?
(03:52):
And I just I do want to justsay very quickly I'm hearing.
I'm hearing some feedback.
I'm not sure why Feedback.
Tamice (04:02):
Okay, let me see Turned down my.
Is this better yeah?
Lisa (04:10):
I think so let's see One, two, three, one, two, three,
check, check, check.
That's better.
I hear you better.
Tamice (04:17):
Okay, Maybe I'll just sit right here on the mic, I
think my.
I'm wondering.
Let me see if the window's open.
Hold on Sure.
Lisa (04:25):
Thanks, lisa.
Oh no, it's okay Just.
Tamice (04:33):
So, yeah, I think it might just be the audience about
side.
I'm not sure what else I can do, because my headphones aren't
turning on right now.
Lisa (04:44):
Well, okay, I'm wondering if it would help for me to put
my headphones on, but I don'tthink so.
I don't think it's about, Idon't think it's on my side.
So, okay, one, two, three.
It's actually better now.
I don't hear it anymore.
Okay, and your voice sounds alot better.
Okay.
Tamice (05:03):
Yeah, so I can just jump back in.
So you so Very Good.
Gospel was the first book thatI read, but that's not your
first book, so tell us aboutyour first book.
Lisa (05:14):
So Evangelical does not equal Republican or Democrat Was
my first book.
It was published in 2008.
It was actually published.
That was the year that Obamawon the presidency, or one you
know.
Yeah, in November, it's 2008.
It was also only a few yearsafter I left Intervarsity
Christian Fellowship, which wasand is a college ministry that I
(05:39):
had been invested in for adecade.
Before that, I got involvedwith the university as a, as a
grad student at USC and thenwent on staff with them at UCLA,
which was traumatic in itself,which is funny.
That's a whole story, and I saythat laughingly.
It wasn't dramatic, but it'sjust a funny.
(06:01):
You know, to go from USC toUCLA is like going from the US
to the USSR and the 80s, but itwas actually in many ways part
of evangelicalism.
It was, for me, a trainingground.
(06:21):
It was a place where I gotleadership training and it was
also a place that had very, very, very few people of African
descent operating in the ranks,where I was located Very
different in the Southeast, butI wasn't in the Southeast, I was
in California, los Angeles, andwhere the city itself only had
(06:45):
6% African-American populationand within university when I
started, I think there were likefive black people maybe, maybe
6 or 7?
In the whole, university.
No, no, no, In the entirety of Lof university in Los Angeles,
oh goodness, okay, all campusesin LA, right?
(07:07):
So, and here I am, I'm on staffand so I'm the only black
person on my staff team.
There's five black students atour campus at UCLA and they were
absolutely my lifesaver, theywere my lifeline all time.
We still, you know, areconnected and friends and but I
(07:30):
have to say that there's a waythat I learned the scripture
that was both like a gift andalso not helpful.
It was a gift in that themethodology of, like how they
(07:50):
studied the scripture throughmanuscript study and inductive
study was amazing and actually ahuge gift.
I still, I still that's stillhow I studied the scripture
today, and the reverence for thetext right was amazing.
But it also inherited a lot of,a lot of the the conservative
(08:16):
evangelical movementsassumptions about that text and
about its origins and about whowrote it and what their, what
their circumstances was.
It failed to ask actuallycritical questions of context
and and tended, tended to fallalong the lines of, and only
(08:37):
that, but like prop up as, asquote, orthodox, the readings of
the text that come out ofEurope, which, when I came later
to understand, really in theprocess of writing these, like
several books before I got tothe very good gospel, and then
really with the very good gospel, that this text was not written
(08:59):
in Europe.
Shocker like no person in noperson.
No speaking role.
In the entirety of the wholeBible.
No speaking role is given.
No, I should say no significantspeaking role is given to
(09:21):
anybody of European origin.
I mean, I'd say the closestthat you get to that is pilot
and he killed Jesus.
Why are we privileging Europe?
Why are we privileging Empire,actually the social of Empire
(09:44):
that is interpreted a colonizedpeople's text.
Why are we doing that?
We did the absolute.
So you know, I don't, I did nothave language for that back then
, but what I began to see when Iwent on this pilgrimage about
literally 20 years ago in thesummer of 2003, was that what I
(10:08):
had, my understanding of thetext, my understanding of Jesus,
my understanding of of of Godgiven to me from the
socialization of white ChristianAmerica, had nothing to say.
It was mew in the face of theinjustice my own people had
(10:32):
experienced.
It did not know what it was,just drawing a duh like a blank,
and it hit me in the middle ofthis actually not the middle at
the end of the pilgrimage, whenI imagined, going up to my third
grade grandmother Leah Ballardwho, if anybody has heard me
speak for the last 20 years,you've heard me talk about her,
(10:52):
because this moment changed mylife and changed my face.
It changed how I read the text.
I imagined myself going up toher door and knocking on her
door.
This my third great grandmother,who was the last enslaved adult
in our family, who we believewas likely a breeder because she
(11:12):
had 17 children, although fiveof those children, actually they
came before, beforeemancipation, and all five of
those children are nowhere to befound after emancipation, so
likely they either died or theywere sold into the deeper south.
She was located in SouthCarolina, so I imagined her and
(11:33):
saying great, great, greatgrandma Leah, I have good news
for you and I.
And then you know her goingokay, child, what, what is it?
And then I say God loves youand has a wonderful plan for
your life, but you are sinfuland therefore separated from God
(11:54):
.
Or maybe I would use you knowthat that's the, the gold
booklet.
You know that I use college andcampus crusade, right, but
maybe I would use the, the, thecloud diagram, or maybe I would
use some other diagram that thatwe were using around that time
the diagram about brokenness.
Oh, great, great, great.
(12:15):
God has a wonderful plan foryour life, but you are broken
and therefore, you know,separated from God.
I think she would literallylook at me like I was broken,
crack, because she'd be like doyou not?
Do you not see me?
And also, do you not see whatothers are doing to me, do you
(12:37):
not?
Source of my brokenness is thatI've been raped every day of my
life and I've not because, youknow, somebody got lustful.
I got raped because somebodygot greedy and put into the law
(12:59):
that there was no repercussionfor raping and having children
by your enslaved people, and sobreeding I might have breeding.
So you got about how I'm sinful.
So you know, it all crashed andI'm your depression.
(13:25):
Because, as an evangelical andalso not just an evangelical,
but as somebody who was amissionary to the college campus
, right, like my whole life hadbeen structured around the
gospel I gave up theater.
I was a theater person, right,my play and push the wind down
won a national award, theAmerican College Theater
(13:47):
Festival, and was produced atthe Kennedy Center.
And when I got the award, itwas given in the same breath,
literally the same ceremony,where an award was given to
August Wilson, right, yes, and Isaid no to that.
I walked away from that inorder to pursue this hollow
(14:13):
gospel, this thin gospel that myown third-grade grandmother
said child, are you smokingcrack?
Wow, whoa.
So I was depressed for a year.
Yes, okay, and that led me todig into the scripture even more
(14:33):
, because, you know, mirzla Bolflater wrote a book called
Public Faith and in that book hereferences theologians that
actually talk about thick faithand thin faith.
And I'm thankful that mydecision was not to leave the
faith just because I wasdisillusioned by this white,
whiteified faith that I hadinherited, that I had gleaned in
(14:57):
this whiteified, white context.
So instead, what I did was Ispent the next year, actually
the next 13 years, swimming inGenesis.
The text would not let me gothe script, the scripture would
not let me go.
The script, as theologian DavidZach says he's based out of
(15:20):
Fuller.
Interestingly, he's a Ugandantheologian who is a bishop that
has been excommunicated fromUganda because of his own
standing up and saying whatyou're saying is wrong, what
you're doing is wrong, and so hetalks about how the scripture
is not a text.
(15:41):
It is a script, in other words,it is stories about what the
Hebrew people believed was truein their relationship with them
and God.
And I began to look at this textand ask the question how has my
understanding been shaped fromthe halls of empire as opposed
(16:03):
to from the space where it camefrom, which was the social
location of the slave, thesocial location of the colonized
, the social location of thosewho were called not human by the
Roman and Greek empires?
And so that changed everything.
(16:28):
It changed my reason and itbrought me to write the very
good gospel and eventually,fortune and every book, every
book.
You know, it was the journey.
The writing journey began withevangelical does not equal
Republican or Democrat, and Iwrote that literally as I was
(16:49):
completing my masters in humanrights, and so a lot of it is
shaped by my thinking aroundhuman rights at that time and
putting up this evangelicalhistory against this question of
are we doing right by people inthe world and if not, why not?
(17:11):
And then my work took me intothe work of doing justice in New
York City and I met sojournersand through sojourners, met a
bunch of people in New York City, interestingly enough, who want
justice together.
But there was no evangelicalwork in New York City that was
(17:32):
actually dedicated to doingjustice.
So we started it.
We started New York Faith andJustice and we brought together
five streams of the church theevangelicals, mainstream,
catholic mainline, but I've saidmainline evangelicals Catholic
Orthodox and the black churchthe historic black church to
(17:53):
come together in New York Cityto end poverty.
Like, we made our focus endingpoverty and we found very
quickly that we couldn't saywe're ending poverty without
actually addressing the issuespoor people care about.
So that led us to focus onthree major issues over six
years, and those issues beganwith police brutality, expanded
(18:15):
from there to also includeclimate justice and
environmental justice, and thenfinally, immigration reform.
And then downturn happened andbecause of that it was not
sustainable and I ended up goingto DC and joining the
sojourners crew, which was doingmuch the same thing but on a
national level, and so my rolethere began to be the director
(18:39):
of mobilizing, which eventuallyturned into chief church
engagement officer.
In other words, it was my roleto engage the church to do
justice.
So in that work.
So you know, I've been doingthis theological work over here
since 2003, since thatpilgrimage to ruin ruin
everything for me, you know in agood way.
(19:00):
And now I'm actually on theground in spaces where the
powers are in confrontation.
So, ferguson and Charlottesville, baltimore, at the time when
Freddie Gray was murdered bypolice there and offering my
(19:21):
body as a living sacrifice, likethe scripture says, and then
also traveling around andspeaking on poverty and on why
we, as Christians, are mandatedmandated not just to care about
the poor, but to change theconditions of the poor, to
challenge the powers that arehell bent on crushing the image
(19:45):
of God on earth.
They are competing with thesupremacy of God on earth, right
?
So?
So what I kind of walked intowas a life that is living out
and working out a theologygrounded in Shalom, and I left
(20:14):
Sojourners in 2017 and justearned a call from God was to
jump.
And then God said I cannotcatch you until you jump.
No idea where I was going fromthere.
I had no idea I did.
Now, all I knew is that I was,I was supposed to jump, I was
(20:36):
supposed to move from the spacethat was comfortable, and so I
did.
I jumped and I had.
No, I told you know, gave them.
My last day had no idea where Iwas going and then freedom road
began to kind of come into mydreams and I began to realize I
want to take people onpilgrimages because that's what
changed me.
I want to give all the kinds ofexperiences that I had that
(20:57):
changed the way that I seeeverything Right Scripture,
myself, god, the other, the land, history.
I feel like I have given eyesto see and my goal in life is to
help others to grasp their eyesto see.
Tamice (21:21):
Wow.
First of all, I feel likesaying say love and doing some
praise and meditation.
Well, I am so curious about thestarting of freedom road Now,
like what I'm hearing even aswe're talking, it's this very
serendipitous intersection.
(21:42):
My grandmother's name was Leahand she called me while I was in
the prayer room at IHOP thenight of Obama's election, in
the middle of a solemn assemblyWow.
Lisa (21:54):
The first time A solemn assembly.
Tamice (21:58):
Morning, the election of the Antichrist, the first black
president.
So here you go, you've gotblack progress Like black
progress is Antichrist.
That's right, it was.
I didn't, and again, I can'teven say that even in that
moment I understood.
I just thought, as a Christian,this is bad, this is wrong, and
(22:21):
I can't put my blackness beforeJesus.
I can't put my blackness beforeJesus.
And so my grandmother calledwhat is your grandmother's name?
Lisa (22:28):
I want to hear what grandma said.
Tamice (22:31):
She just said well, she said hi, misi, and I said hi,
and she said it's a momentousnight and I was like yes, ma'am,
and I could hear my family.
It still brings me tears.
I could hear my family just inthe background, like the images
you had of Oprah and JesseJackson just screaming and
crying I was jumping on coucheswith my best friend at that time
(22:51):
on that night, literallyjumping on couches.
Yes, it's not the same as AugustWilson plays, but it felt like
I missed such a historic moment.
I mean, my uncle ran securityfor the entire DNC.
So it was like when, I mean,all of my family was so caught
(23:11):
up in the beauty of that momentand here I was at IHOP crying or
pretending to cry.
I mean I couldn't understandwhy these people were so sad.
And then my grandmother kind oflike sort of I talk about it
like she poked a hole in thatsilence for me.
So I stepped out of the room,talked to her a little bit and
(23:33):
she just said well, I justwanted to call and tell you I
love you and I love you too.
And I went back in and so Iguess maybe she planted the
dissonance a little bit.
Oh yeah, so that by the timeTrayvon died, watching the
people around me handlebrutality, I was like this is
not something.
There's something aboutanti-blackness in this.
(23:55):
So for me, that's where I kindof came into contact with you,
and so it's so funny to mebecause, like, what drove me to
getting your book was kind ofthe inner versity connection,
but then also this idea of likewhat, like this devastation of
like what have I been doing this, jesus?
(24:16):
I've been following and workingfor and doing ministry in the
name of is white.
Lisa (24:25):
I mean, it's not even just that he had white skin,
which he did not, but that hewas whiteified.
Yes, like he had a white mind,he had a Western mind, he had a
Western patriarchal mind.
Yes, yes, and that was notJesus.
(24:45):
It's not accurate.
Tamice (24:48):
Mm-mm, mm-mm.
And I don't know how we didn'tlearn that.
I mean, I don't.
It's so interesting to me tothink like how did we not, how
did?
Why didn't it tell me?
It's so interesting to thinkabout it now, thinking back, but
I do remember being like Idon't have to believe this is
not true and it was so freeing,it was extremely freeing for me.
Lisa (25:13):
Exactly.
Tamice (25:14):
And I'm like yeah, like that pushed me into my own work.
Lisa (25:18):
I love that.
I don't believe this is nottrue.
You know, that was actually forme for years, for years, I mean
, like in 2009,.
So I told you, you know,evangelical does not equal
Republican or Democrat waspublished in 2008.
And in that year, actually, Iworked with folks in New York
and also some other folks whowere national partners, to put
(25:39):
on a conference at PrincetonTheological Seminary called
Envision the Gospel, politicsand the Future, and it was an
election year, right.
So we're talking politics andwe're talking the future.
And you know, it was catalyzedby people who were the founders
of New York, faith and justice,where our goal was to unite the
(26:03):
church and poverty.
You know, follow Jesus, unitethe church and end poverty,
right.
So well, our goal at theconference was to begin to unite
the church by bringing togetherthe two factions of the church
that split almost a hundredyears before that, actually more
than a hundred years beforethat but the split between the
modernist and the fundamentalistedges of the church.
(26:25):
They split in New York City NewYork would be around zero for
that and New Jersey andPrinceton, right.
So Princeton had the greatwalkout of the 19, I think it
was 1923, 1920s, and that's whenthey went out and they started,
I believe, westminsterTheological Seminary in protest,
right.
So the fundamentalists.
(26:46):
So we brought togetherevangelicals and liberal
scholars to be in conversationin 2008 at this conference.
Well, the next thing, wegathered down at Sojourners
because we had this relationshipwith them and it was really
helpful and great.
And so we gathered atSojourners and several of us on
(27:06):
the evangelical side were likewe have never really had these
conversations, we're not readyto be in conversation with a
bunch of liberal scholars and wedon't even know how to talk
about the LGBTQ stuff we don'tknow how to talk about.
We don't know what we'retalking about, gender justice
and all this.
These are the things they weretalking about.
We had never even had theconversations.
(27:27):
So we, next year we started.
Actually, over the next year,we started something called
Evangelicals for Justice.
And it was a gathering ofevangelical scholars and
practitioners who were allworking out our these questions,
these critical questions, right, and we started to come
(27:49):
together and it's in thatcontext that I really did a lot
of my wrestling, logicalwrestling, and began to
understand.
Well, actually, I should say webegan, I began to wrestle and
many of us began to wrestle withand they're still wrestling,
quite honestly, many of us.
But do we call ourselvesevangelicals?
(28:09):
I mean, it's still calledevangelicals for justice, right,
Do I need to call myself anevangelical?
I thought evangelical was, youknow, basically meant Christian.
If you are evangelical, you areChristian.
If you are Christian, you'renot necessarily.
I mean no, if you are Christian, you are definitely evangelical
.
In other words, not everyperson who calls themselves a
(28:32):
Christian is a Christian.
Only if you're evangelical arethey a Christian.
It was really what I wasbrought to believe through my
evangelical context.
And then it hit me.
I mean, jesus wasn't anevangelical.
Nope, all wasn't an evangelical.
You, I mean not even CharlesFinney would have called himself
(28:55):
an evangelical.
The creator of the altar call?
He wouldn't have called himselfan evangelical.
None of them would have,because it was a movement of the
Holy Spirit that got calledevangelical in the 20th century
when they looked back on it andthey said this is what it means
to be evangelical by historians.
(29:17):
But, and it was located movement, if you go way back in the 16th
century, you know, in Europe.
It was a movement that had aprophetic word at its time for
its place in Europe.
Yes, yes, Right, like Calvinand Luther in terms of the
(29:38):
Reformation, like they hadactual good things to say, you
know, and prophetic words fortheir context.
Yes, but but their words arenot necessarily everybody's
words.
I mean, it's not.
Why do I, a person of Africandescent, need to identify?
(29:59):
I mean whole thought, as inlike swallow home, the identity
and a framework for the faiththat was responding to a context
for 500 years.
400 years.
You know what?
I mean, yes, I do, and, and on awhole other continent, in
(30:24):
another context.
Yes, I can appreciate it, I caneven say that's true, some of
these things are true.
But I can also say, but y'alldidn't get this.
Your context didn't give youthe ability to even ask these
questions that are salient rightnow.
Tamice (30:45):
Right.
So I do see, I mean I do see atrajectory, though, like, if I
think about it, I'm sitting on40.
So I feel like I know a littlebit but have so much to learn.
And in my time in Christianity,evangelicalism, reading
scripture because I too reallylove the scripture and seeing
(31:05):
this sort of trajectory of youknow, sort of rebuilding,
reframing, recapitulation, thatleads to an embrace of humanity,
less and less hierarchical,less and less controlling.
It's almost like the narrativeis kind of trending that way.
So for Luther and Calvin to saylike hey, you can read it
yourself and let's make a way toyou know, print this thing and
(31:28):
have it disseminated to folks,that's really a great thing.
Because now I got a text, yougot a text, you know, everybody
got a text, everybody got a textright.
So I do see that I think I'mwondering about how you know, as
you're thinking about how youlive and move in society, how
people who are coming to theserealizations about the scripture
(31:50):
.
I mean you've got basicallyTikTok, theology, theology
happening.
You've got, I mean there's somuch information that's
happening and you couple thatwith artificial intelligence,
like what does wisdom actuallylook like?
You know, as we think aboutwhere do we go from here?
If we grew up Christian, if wegrew up evangelical, if we still
(32:13):
want to keep Jesus and nothingelse like what would you say
from your vantage point is theway forward for people like that
?
For people like me, that's kindof like, if I'm Christian, it's
a light jacket.
At this point, it's not.
What will be your thoughts forthat?
I?
Lisa (32:31):
think.
I think that the call is notsimply deconstruction.
Tamice (32:40):
Yeah, okay.
Lisa (32:42):
And that's what I think what we're seeing mostly coming
out of, you know,post-evangelical theology, right
now ex-Fangelical.
I don't know about TikTok, I'mtoo afraid of that platform.
Tamice (32:56):
You said TikTok is the usual thing.
Lisa (33:00):
Lisa, you need to be on TikTok.
Like it will eat up my day.
I can't do it.
Tamice (33:04):
Maybe Jesus will tell you to jump on that too, because
we can use some wisdom onTikTok for sure.
Lisa (33:08):
Oh my gosh, oh Lord.
Okay, maybe that's 2024, y'allMaybe that's 2024.
But the practice, and actuallythe trend, has been deconstruct.
But let me just tell you thedifference between
deconstructing and decolonizing.
Okay, so deconstructing you,deconstruct you.
(33:31):
Your sensibility is centeredand you go into the text and you
go into the faith and thehistory and the traditions and
you determine what stays andwhat goes according to what you
think, regardless of how thin orthick your faith is.
(33:53):
You've made it.
You've seen something didn'tlike that.
You know, didn't like the factthat somebody is raped in the
scripture.
Sorry, trigger alert, my bad,can we go back on that?
And yeah, you, you might, youmight see something and don't
like that.
Women are subjugated in thescripture.
(34:14):
And because somebody told yousome time at some point in your
white, western patriarchal faiththat because women are
subjugated in the scripture,this is God's prescription for
the world, this is what Godwants for the world.
So now you go, you see that,you deconstruct it, you take it
out, you say I'm not going tobuy it by that the scripture is
(34:37):
bad and that's it.
Well, I just want to say thatis a white supremacist act.
Come on Talk to us, it is a anact of white supremacy.
What you have done is you havecentered still the white view of
the text in order to determineyour actions and relationship to
(35:00):
the text.
Woo Woo.
Tamice (35:04):
You might need another sentence, give us another
sentence.
So the Deacon colonizing.
Lisa (35:08):
On the other hand, Embraces the journey into a
thicker read of the text, thescript, zach would say.
And it recognizes and centersthe actual way of life.
(35:32):
And it recognizes and centersthe actual social location,
historical location of thepeople who wrote the text yeah,
and the people they wrote it to,mm hmm.
(35:53):
And it asks the question thepolitical location, mm hmm.
It asks all of those contextualquestions and when it does, it
must land on the reality thatthose who wrote this text, every
single person who put theirhand to the pen or the quill, mm
(36:17):
hmm, and wrote a scratch or ascribble in the book we call the
Bible, Mm, hmm.
And the text of the book waseither colonized or under
imminent threat of colonizationWow, every single one.
So that must change how we readit, mm hmm.
(36:43):
So, therefore, when we look forMm hmm In that context,
understanding that only about 30years before that moment, when
Jesus walks into the synagoguein his hometown, only about 30
years before the year he wasborn, mm hmm, there was a major
(37:11):
uprising, yeah, in Galilee.
That was put down, yeah, bywhite supremacist Rome, mm hmm,
mm hmm.
And the Josephus tells us that500 Galileans, 500 Jews, were
(37:33):
crucified every day, men andboys lining the roads, mm hmm,
every day, by a general who camethrough to squash the uprising.
So, when Jesus Goes into thatsynagogue and says I have come
to bring good news, trust, mmhmm.
(37:54):
To set the prisoners free, mmhmm, in his context he's talking
about political prisoners, yeah, yeah.
And the oppressed are hispeople, mm hmm.
Who, in the context of Rome,which embraced the philosophies
(38:14):
of Aristotle and Plato andSophocles, mm hmm, who did
believe that all of us werehuman, that only believe people
who were white, male, ablebodied were human, mm hmm, Mm
hmm.
And the throne was occupying.
Tamice (38:38):
Yeah, let's go there, palestine, Come on.
You said he was born, he wasborn in Bethlehem.
Lisa (38:44):
Let's talk about it In that moment.
Yeah, so when he stands up inthe synagogue and he says I have
come to proclaim release to thecaptives, to set the prisoners
free, that it's not as I wastaught in my whitefied campus
(39:06):
crusade and intervarsity context, that he was talking about
spiritual oppression, spiritualimprisonment so that they could
relate to it from Starbucks orborders, yeah, okay, no, that's
(39:30):
not what he was saying and it'shis first sermon and his last
sermon ever was Matthew five,right when he says.
He says the righteous will saywhen did we do these things?
(39:51):
When did we feed you?
When did we give you water whenyou were thirsty?
When did we visit when you werean immigrant in our land?
When did we care for you?
You were sick, when did we?
And Jesus says the righteous.
That word righteous in the textit's not.
It does not mean, as I wastaught in my white context,
(40:17):
evangelical context.
It does not mean spirituallyholy, oh hell, no, no.
What that word literally meansis the just ones, the one,
equitable action and character,not equal.
(40:38):
Equitable, which means fair.
You cannot talk about fairaction and fair character
without talking about policy,without talking about systems
and structures and the waythings work, which is why the
(40:59):
first, the original church, thefirst century church, the acts
church, they were not in ademocracy, they didn't vote.
So what did they do?
They created their own economyand alternative economy that had
a different system, a differentstructure.
(41:23):
Right, we leave that, we go.
Aren't those Christians?
Nice, the Holy Spirit is sonice.
See what the Holy Spirit did.
The Holy Spirit, the HolySpirit, gave to the poor.
No, no, no.
The Holy Spirit took from therich to give to the poor and
make that the system of the veryfirst church.
Tamice (41:47):
Oh my goodness.
I'm like, oh my gosh, you haveto teach us.
You got to teach.
I mean seriously, I think I'mlike so being so unprofessional
right now.
But I'm thinking about these 18, 19, 20 year olds who are so
far removed from that kind of astory about Jesus, like there is
no world in which they wouldhear something like that.
(42:11):
Oh my gosh, they're kind ofthey're in the midst of fog and
they know what they don't wantand they've not been presented
with the Jesus or a take onscripture that speaks to that
fairness that they care about.
We know they care aboutfairness I'm thinking about
March for Our Lives and you knowGreta Thunberg and they care
(42:34):
about equity apart fromevangelicalism.
They did not give that to them.
No, I think a way to navigatewhat Jesus gives us is a way to
navigate these times and to haveperspective and wisdom and a
bit of resilience in these times, not because pie in the sky and
(42:55):
it'll go away, but becausesomeone else has been there,
done that, seen that here is away through that.
So to me it feels like whatwe're missing is this we're
missing hope.
Lisa (43:10):
With teeth right, we're missing a deep lens, a
decolonizing lens.
Tamice (43:16):
Yeah, we don't have that Like honestly, anyway, shoot, I
will run your TikTok, you justdo sermons, I'll split them up.
People need to just know thatthis is an option.
I think that people are feelinglike myself included that there
aren't any other options.
I don't want any parts of this.
You know like, and I thinkabout whiteness, I think about
(43:38):
decolonization, but never beforehave I thought about the way
I'm thinking about it now,because what you're making me
picture is Palestine and what'shappening there.
Lisa (43:52):
Let me let you know this that when you decolonize, you
center the actual people whowrote the text, yes, center
their intentions in writing thewords.
Yes, you center how the peoplewho heard it would have heard it
and how they would haveresponded, and you move from
(44:13):
that place.
They become the authority onthe, on the text, not you in
your 21st century sensibilities,your whiteified, centric
sensibilities.
And so you bow.
You bow to the oppressed, totheir their, to the ones who
wrote the text, to theintentions behind the text and
(44:35):
to the reality, but, honestly,that they too were human, that
they were not God.
The text itself is not God.
The text is a text about God,reflecting what the people
understood of God humanfrailness, right.
(44:57):
So yeah, so you know what Imight just be on this next year.
Tamice (45:04):
I mean I know that I'm like it's not tongue and cheek
at all for me, like I'm thereand I'm seeing what's happening
and what's being said and it'sall very jostling.
I mean, yeah, like people arekind of tapping these houses of
cards.
What we don't have is thatthing that's going to carry us,
and they don't have the thingthat's going to carry them in 15
(45:25):
years.
Lisa (45:26):
Right, that's right Through this craziness that
we're experiencing.
Tamice (45:30):
Because everybody knows it's bad and it's maddening.
But I haven't even been able tobe on social media long term
because of the weight of thefact that hundreds of people are
being bombed by a country.
Yeah, we can talk about that,let's have a part of like I
don't even know how to.
I am at a loss.
Lisa (45:54):
Don't get a loss.
Take action, don't get a loss.
Move your body, move yourfingers, speak into that social
media space.
Your voice is necessary.
I've been listening to you.
Your voice is necessary Justtoday.
I mean, I think we all feel at aloss, but I've been actually
(46:14):
thinking, and I think a lot ofpeople are starting to catch on.
This thing is run by money.
Oh yeah, people are beingsilent on Capitol Hill because
they're afraid of losing money.
What if we revoke our money?
What if we actually say I'm notdonating one more penny until
you say two words, threetechnically, but become this,
(46:35):
become two words.
These are now.
When you say to these fire now,my donations will flow again,
but until that time, I boycottyou.
That's what I'm on.
I boycott you, senator Schumer.
I boycott you, joe Biden.
(46:55):
I boycott you, kamala Harris,for allowing yourself and your
brown body to be used by thepowers of whiteness and maleness
to put down Palestinian people.
And it's not.
And look, jewish people are madein the image of God.
They too are worthy ofprotection of the law, but not
(47:20):
on the equal protection of thelaw, and so we are doing
everything we can to get thosehostages back, but we will not
and shall not and cannot crushthe image of God in Brown or any
people in order to get anybodyback.
We must do it in ways thatprotect the image of God
(47:43):
Absolutely.
And in fact, when we crush theimage of God over here, we make
ourselves more vulnerable tobeing crushed over here, so that
and Yahoo isn't doing theJewish people one bit of a favor
.
In fact, what he's doing ishe's he's upping, he's.
He's upping the timestamp.
Yes, the state of Israel, yes,whereas it had and still might
(48:10):
have the ability to live inperpetuity and a flourishing
state, but only only if theJewish people abide by the shema
.
If the Jewish people actuallylove their neighbors, to be
(48:30):
feared by your neighbors.
Love your neighbors.
Love, love extravagantly, yes.
Love freeze Love.
Love sets free, love sets up asystem where all people made in
(48:57):
the image of God your text, oh,israel, your text, you are the
ones who told us all that we areall made in the image of God,
that we are all worthy, allhumanity, what it means to be
human is to be made in the imageof God and therefore called by
God to exercise dominion in theworld.
(49:17):
So then, why are you crushingthe capacity of Palestinians to
exercise dominion over their owndamn selves?
Tamice (49:26):
Where does it come from?
I'm white supremacy yeah,that's, and money it's it's so
clearly empire in a way that Ican't.
It feels like we've.
I mean, I can go to the textand I can look at it and go, oh
(49:48):
my gosh, like this is whatEmpire looks like.
Yes, yes, and yet being done inmy name, right?
Joe Biden is going on TV andsaying America stands with
Israel.
No, I do not.
I do not stand for this.
Lisa (50:04):
This is not humanity.
Tamice (50:06):
Absolutely.
Lisa (50:06):
Absolutely, america must stand with humanity.
Israel is our human, jewishpeople are human, palestinian
people are human, arab peopleare human, all people are human.
And until, until America standswith humanity, than America,
(50:32):
america is complicit in genocide.
Tamice (50:35):
I'm wondering about how.
I've been wondering about thefear of you know, like once you,
the idea that once you tell alie, you keep telling the lie.
I'm wondering about Americabeing afraid of all her
skeletons.
Oh, that's so it's.
It's too late to do what'sright, because you'll have to
now start to name all the thingsthat you did wrong, which to me
(50:57):
feels like what is the hope?
And then I mean I see, I knowwe're running out of our time,
but I see brother West Coming tothe forefront.
Do you have thoughts about that?
Or like what?
How we're?
How can we navigate an electionyear?
What are the things that we canbe thinking about?
Lisa (51:19):
I can't say I'm in deep prayer about this election year.
I am not.
I'm committed right now.
Until Kamala and Joe sayceasefire, I will not vote for
them.
I just won't.
I can't, not in good conscience.
That said, you know I have to.
(51:41):
I have to find a candidate thatcan win, and I do not believe
brother West can win.
And because we cannot have we Imean literally, it is, it is
existential we cannot have Trumpback in the White House.
Yeah, that's just.
It cannot happen.
And it would happen wouldhappen if, if brother West, I
(52:03):
love him, I have marched withhim several times, we have
laughed and hugged and criedtogether, both in Ferguson and
in Charlotte.
I believe that brother West ismore valuable outside of,
outside of the halls of power,than he is inside.
(52:26):
I believe is a profit, and itis incredibly easy for profits
to be co-opted once they enterthe halls of power.
And so I don't want brotherWest inside the halls of power,
I want to free, to fully push,because once he goes inside, it
will be another story.
And so we need him out.
(52:48):
And I'm still looking for whothat person is, who needs to
rise up and who will respond toWest outside.
Yeah, you can actually win.
That is my priority.
And I don't know.
I'm looking for God.
I'm looking for God to part thewaters.
I really am.
I'm literally praying for Godto part the waters, to move the
(53:11):
mountains, to move this courseof streams, because that's what
God does, that's what our Goddoes, and so I believe, I
believe that that is possible,but I also believe I do not need
to sell my soul in order to, inorder to get Shalom, in order
to get any hint from God's peace, because God's peace comes in
God's way and you cannot getGod's peace by going against the
(53:34):
ethics of God.
You just can't.
Tamice (53:39):
I'm just unbelievably grateful for this conversation
and feel kind of like there's acomma for me on this
conversation.
It's true, in the midst of thisconversation, and I guess one
(54:01):
thing that I ask everyone thatcomes on the show is kind of
know what are some words we canlive by?
And so, if you don't mindthinking about kind of the way I
describe my listeners, if youdon't mind maybe leaving us with
some words to live by in thishour, yeah, really helpful.
Lisa (54:22):
Connect, connect.
It has become my core beliefthat Shalom, that thing I talk
about in the very good gospeland that thing I write about,
was broken in my family and hasa possibility of being restored
in fortune.
It is ultimately really, trulyabout connection.
(54:47):
God considers very goodConnectedness to self, to the
story of yourself, To the storyof your people, to the land that
(55:07):
you live on, to the land ofyour people Radical
connectedness.
Radical connectedness to youAcross all the Genders, radical
connectedness with the rest ofcreation, radical connectedness
(55:29):
with the systems that govern us.
So we are in the conversation.
We do not leave them, leave thesystem, to do what they will.
We are in conversation, we arepushing, we are shaping, we are
(55:49):
connected to the systems andstructures that govern us and
shaping those systems andstructures, especially in the
context of a democracy which wehave the blessing to be a part
of, and understanding that nodemocracy is perfect.
The reality is that for peopleof color around the world, for
(56:12):
marginalized people, not evenjust people of color, all
marginalized people the kind ofdemocracy that has been
structured here in the US is thebest possible system that we
currently have to protect theleast of these, because it
offers the capacity to exercisedominion, to exercise
(56:33):
stewardship in the form of thevote, and so connect with the
structures and systems and callthem to account and protect the
capacity to vote.
Connect, don't disengage.
Connect, and when you do, whenyou become more connected to
(56:55):
yourself, to your body, to yourspirit, to your soul, to your
story, to your family, to thosewho've been estranged, you'll
find that that it's in thatspace, that in between these,
where you are connected, that iswhere heaven is.
(57:19):
Yes, that is where Shalom lives, mm-hmm.
Tamice (57:27):
Ache, ache.
Thank you so much.
I'm hoping to have you back.
Lisa (57:36):
I would love that.
Thank you.
Tamice (57:39):
Thank you for listening To pick your money and your
heart is donate to SubquatcherInc and clear the path for black
students today.
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