Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to Becoming church, the podcast where we discuss how the message and movement of Jesus is not just about becoming christians, but about becoming his church. I'm your host, Kristin Mockler Young, and my guest today is Doctor Jemar Tisby. He is an author, professor, and he studies and writes about race, religion, and social movements. He is super smart, but also very relatable and gracious. So I know you're going to enjoy this conversation. Maybe as you're listening, think of someone who is also trying to study and listen to learn and be sure to share this episode with them.
All right, Doctor Jamar Tisbee, welcome to becoming church. How are you today?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: I'm doing well. I'm talking to you. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Oh, well, that is so kind. That is so kind. Listen, I do have to check because at the time of recording, the presidential debate was last night. So how are we feeling? What are the vibes like? Did you get enough sleep? What's going on?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Definitely not enough sleep. That's the easy part. Why do they start them at 09:00 p.m. eastern is my question. That's what I would like to. We have a debate about that. Truly, truly.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I did tell my husband last night, I was like, I'm going to turn it on in bed and I'm going to fall asleep. And I made it all the way through. And then I was so hyped. I was like, now I need to watch something else. So I can't.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. It gets you amped up. I thought the debate was extremely well done from a logistical perspective. The moderators did an incredibly good job, especially with a few of the fact checking moments. And it wasn't just that they fact checked, it was how they did. It was quick, concise, matter of fact, let's move on. They did a good job keeping the candidates to the time. It was that format where, you know, there's no audience. They mute your microphone two minutes to respond. There were a couple of times when they let trump kind of have the last word and interject, which gave Harris a little less airtime.
But as for the substance of the debate, I mean, you saw the candidates for who they were, whether you are left or right, red or blue, I think it was an accurate representation. And all of the chatter during and after the debate said that Harris just did a, a masterful job in talking to someone who is hard to talk to, especially in a debate format. So I'm, you know, we could get into it and we can get more spicy if you want, but there's my, you know, national news level kind of response.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I think you're right. I'm not sure how much the debate changed anybody's mind. I think that people probably, at this point, are kind of leaning one way or the other, you know? But, yeah, I still think even in that sense, it's good for us to just kind of see. I don't think it's necessarily confirmation bias, but just to see, like, these is. This is who we think these people are and, you know, more confirmation of the two options that we have here, so.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. We won't sit on that for too long. We do want to talk about your. You have three books out now. I have read all of them.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: What?
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah, all of them. It's so funny. That's how I decided to reach out to you, because I was looking at my bookshelf, and I made a new, separate section of my bookshelf that is only authors that I've had on this show. And I was like, I gotta reach out to Jamar Tizzy and see if I can move his books from this shelf.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: I love that. I love that.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: So, yeah, you've got the color of compromise, how to fight racism, and then the spirit of justice, which just came out and I literally just saw that was turned into a kids version.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yes. So it's. It's. It's. It's got a whole all ages vibe to it. So there's a kids version. Young readers edition for kids eight and up. And then we're doing my very first picture book for the little. Little kids. So fun for the whole family.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Are they out already?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: The picture book and the young Readers edition will be out in January. The adult version is out now.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Okay. Yes. I have the adult version right here.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Ready for the special section of the bookshelf. But I'm going to get. My kids love reading books like this. They love reading books that actually teach them, like, I think, as we've been doing it their whole lives, you know, my girls are almost eleven and nine, so they actually gravitate toward picture books now that are teaching them something in a way that they can understand, in a way that they can relate to. So how cool.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: You did something right.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm trying to get people like you. I can now pass that on to them.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: No, I'm gonna. I'm gonna send my. My 14 year old son to you. For some training. And then maybe he'll give a darn that his dad is writing these books, because right now, no, not so.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Oh, he'll never want to read your books. I know. I'm trying to work on a book proposal, too. And my girls still will be like, cool, mom, but we want to read this one.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, kids, here we go. We were all like that, I suppose.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: For sure. So the color of compromise was your first one. And I would say this is probably more of a historical account, maybe of, like, how the evangelical church got to where it is. Is that how you would explain it?
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah. The kind of joking way I do it is it's white christians behaving badly about race.
But, you know, it's. It stems from the idea that there's the. That quote, 11:00 a.m. sunday morning's the most segregated hour in America. Well, there's a history to that. There's a reason why that is. So I wanted to explore that from a historical perspective. I'm a historian. And so starting in roughly the colonial era, on up to the present day, to talk about how when white people had a chance to really live out the gospel while race based child slavery is becoming a thing, Jim Crow segregation is happening, lynching ongoing forms of racialization. In so many cases, they chose compromise and complicity rather than courage and confrontation.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Do you think that they knew they were actively choosing the opposite?
[00:06:20] Speaker B: That is such an interesting question. Question. Because I think, you know, to a certain extent, we can ask that about certain issues today. Right.
What I've come to think is there is often a difference between the grass tops and the grassroots. So the grass tops being this so called elite, the wealthy people, the politically powerful and connected, and then the grassroots being everyday folks. So if we talk about white folks and race, white christians and race, I think the grass tops kind of knew what they were doing because they were protecting, namely, their financial interests.
Race based childhood slavery, for sure. But what a lot of people don't realize is, even beyond that, segregation wasn't just about you, icky. I don't want to be around black people. No. It was about, I don't want competition in these opportunities. I don't want competition for promotions. I don't want competitions for job opportunities. I don't want people moving into, quote unquote, my neighborhood, all of those kinds of things. So I think at a grass tops level, they're much more aware of what's happening at a grassroots level.
What's happening, I believe, is this very homogenous environment of all people who sort of look the same way, speak the same way. And so what ends up happening is people start thinking, well, this is just Christianity, because it's the only form of faith they've ever been exposed to, one that happens to, you know, promote racism and white supremacy. But if you've never been exposed to other people, other ways of thinking, then what you're in seems normal. And then when somebody else comes along and says, no, there's another way to do it that seems aberrant, unorthodox, divisive, all those things.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Scary, because.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Scary for sure.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: It's unknown, right? Yes, but it's that whole idea of, okay, well, this is all I've known my whole life. And so if I let go of this, it's almost like deconstruction. I'm saying, like, if I let go of this, I'm gonna have to let go of what? Everything.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Like, that's right.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: You know, I think that I was gonna say, do you think there are still people? But I do think there are still people who would say that racism isn't a problem in America.
And so before we can even have the conversation of, like, how do we confront racial injustices, what would you say to someone who, again, maybe quote unquote, doesn't know better? They've never been presented with another way, but they genuinely believe it is not a problem today, besides being like, read all my books, please.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. By the way, I've got a book for you.
Well, it's.
It's tough because it's so patently false. Right. So where do you even start?
I think my general approach is to put the onus on them to explain it, to prove it really. Right. So instead of me kind of downloading a bunch of factual information, it's asking questions. It's like, huh.
Why do you say that?
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Here's the thing. It's almost universal when you find people who are making statements that are patently false, but they seem to be sincere believers. All you need is two or three good questions to uncover the lack of detail, the lack of information, and what is actually at bottom is some sort of ideological adherence rather than this, like, really reasoned intellectual case for what they believe. And so ask questions would be my first thing. And then, you know, what folks probably are wondering is, well, what if they ask you to prove it?
I mean, one thing is, you know, a majority of black people say race is still affecting them in negative ways on a daily basis. How would you respond to that?
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Oh, well, they're just indoctrinated. They're just listening to. That's interesting. That's interesting.
What sources of information do you use so I can kind of understand your perspective a little bit better? Oh, I listen to. And it's always going to be the same thing. Predict it. Right. So again, it's still turning it around because I'll shut up. But here's the bottom line.
This isn't about facts and data. This is about identity and belonging.
When someone says, racism isn't a problem anymore, one, they're probably trying to absolve themselves of some sort of responsibility, you know, culpability in the racial morass that we're in today, a complicity. And then, number two, it's also about, well, this is what my group says.
And by adhering to the same ideas that my group espouses, I get a sense of belonging. I get a sense of identity, and that's what we're really dealing with here.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah. When I know that our conversation is really going to focus on racial justice, injustice. But even just as you're talking, Jamar, even talking about, you know, that slavery back then was, like competition, and people didn't want competition for jobs and whatever, I'm just, like, sitting here going, huh? There's some modern day parallels to absolutely some of these same arguments. And I was just having some DM's in my instagram conversations last night with people about how this is. It was really about immigration and migrants, but it was. I'm like, this is such a bigger conversation, and you can have it there. You can have it, you know, when it comes to race, you can have it, I think, in a lot of different arenas. But it's the same idea, the same big idea of, like, are we going to acknowledge the humanity of every single person, or are we not? And are we going to say that, you know, God only made certain people, or he made some kind of weird, messed up hierarchy? There's actually nowhere in scripture or right. You know, and once we start to do the work in one area, then I think God can open our eyes to this is actually changing our worldview. And we can see all different kinds of people that we didn't even try to, quote, unquote, do the work for.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: In a completely different light, 100%. And there's so much of this mentality with race, with immigration, with whatever issue you want to name, that this whatever this is, is ours, and they are threatening it or trying to take it away. And that's a mentality that that has to go first. Of all, this land is none of ours. Unless you're indigenous american. Right.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: I mean, let's start there.
But then, you know, in a modern day, you know, sort of microcosmic sense, we can think of neighborhoods, jobs, schools. Right? And if there is this sense of territorialism, this rightfully belongs to me and my people.
Anyone else here is here at our permission and in our good graces, and that can be snatched away at any moment. Oh, and now if you're here without my approval, what are you doing here? Yeah, and you shouldn't be here. And that's, like I said, that can be the country and immigration, or that could be a school, a job, a neighborhood, those kinds of things. So those are, you know, some of the ideas behind the manifestations that we're seeing.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Well, and it's a false sense of control. Right. It's like we have this control over people, over our situations, over our environments that no one's actually given us. We've just kind of assumed on ourselves.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: So I'm not supposed to do this, as your guess, but I'm curious of, like, you seem to be informed on these issues, particularly around, you know, race and justice. Was there a light bulb moment for you? Was there a certain context or realization that made you want to go down this path?
[00:14:35] Speaker A: You know, I was a kindergarten teacher for a long time, and I lived in a little white bubble, and it just was what it was, and it was fine.
And then I came into ministry. God was like, I want you to be a pastor. And I said, absolutely not. Like, who do you think you're talking to?
And I've always been a part, a part of a very, very diverse church. Like, we're incredibly diverse.
But I remember having to sit down with my husband after my girls were born, which was, you know, that I got the call into ministry not long after that. And I remember telling him, like, we go to this church mosaic that we love. We love it, but then the rest of our lives are very much in, like, white bubbles. And so I just took this really hard look at our lives, and I was like, we are not living out like, it feels performative. And I didn't mean it to be performative, but I'm like, I genuinely love the diversity of this church. I genuinely love these people. Why is this not reflected in my life? And I just started reading, and I just started going, okay, like, God, show me. Give me your eyes to see people differently. And give me your eyes to show me, you know, where I am. Stuck in this white bubble that I grew up in, and it just kind of snowballed. I started diversifying. My feed really was the easiest thing. And following different people online and then reading different books and then reading the books that those people were reading, you know?
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: And God's just really given me a heart for the other. I would say I, like, say that I have a heart for the misfits, the overlooked, the people groups that I just feel like. Not that they don't have a voice, but let me use mine to try to elevate theirs, if that makes sense.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: I don't know if I answered your question with a.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'm always curious because, you know, in the color of compromise I write about, I would say there. There's extremes that are, you know, these. The Ku Klux Klanners, the people.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: You know, lynch. Right. But that's actually a very small group. The majority of people would be the people who were complicit.
So I start the color of compromise with a guy named Charles Morgan Juniore, asking.
It's the day after the 16th Street Baptist church bombing and those four little girls being killed. And he goes to this group of all white businessmen and says, who did it? Who threw that bomb? And he says, the answer should be, we all did it. And he's getting at this idea that by that time, September 1963, Birmingham had already gained a nickname bombing him. So this wasn't the first bombing, church bombing or anything. And he's saying that our lack of action, it's not that we planted the sticks of dynamite, but our lack of action led to this even more horrific act of racial terrorism. And so I say that because so many people pat themselves on the back for nothing, actively advancing racism, not using the n word. You know, I don't keep people out of my church or my business because of what they look like, but so many people also don't recognize their complicity in the system.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: And so I'm always curious about how people sort of, you know, remove themselves from the matrix and wake up from. From that.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Well, and for me, that was like my. I don't want to say private. I wasn't intentionally doing it, like, in secret, but it was after the murder of George. George Floyd that I was like, okay, now I have to take this to the next level. I have to. That was when I really started to, like, find my voice on social media, even.
And I was like, I've got to start sharing with people what I am learning. And.
And this can be really tricky to do sometimes, jamar, but I'm like, as a white woman, I need to figure out how to speak to the other white women who are where I used to be.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: So I'm like, I can't just come in here, like, you know, charging with all these things. I'm like, I have to approach them in a way that I needed to be approached so that I can, like, ease them in, not because I want to coddle them, but because I know I've got to. I'm only going to get their attention and I'm only going to bend their ear by doing it a certain way.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Mm hmm. You don't want to scare them off at the beginning. Absolutely.
That's why I appreciate the metaphor. I usually call, I usually call it the racial justice journey.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: And that metaphor of a journey tells us there are people ahead of us. People right beside us.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: People behind us on the path. Right. Some people aren't even on the path. And we got it. We got to hopefully, you know, persuade them to get at least on the path. But, you know, to your point about approaching folks a certain way, it's remembering that, you know, you were there just a few steps ago.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: And you didn't know what you didn't know. And people often ask me, you know, something along the lines of, like, you know, what do you do with people who, like, don't get it? Are you, are you still talking to them? And I say, there's a lot of work that I personally have to do, and I honestly don't have time or energy to work with extensively with people who don't want to learn. But I go back to that old motel commercial that says, we'll leave the light on for you. And my attitude is basically, listen. If anyone at any stage in their journey is willing to sort of humbly listen and at least be open minded, whether I personally can persuade them or not, I'll absolutely have the conversation. I'll absolutely spend the time, and I still do. Um, but there, that's, that's different from the people who are openly, like, just rejecting and stiff arming any concept that racial justice is still needed today.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's. What, what are you going to do? We're just banging our heads against the wall at that point. Like, I'm here. You know where to find me, you know?
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Well, in the effort of trying to teach people, right. Hopefully they're still listening. They're still with us.
What are. I know there are some very obvious blatant signs of racism. Like you said, that people can go, well, I don't do that, and I don't do this and I don't do that. But what are some of the more subtle ones that people might not recognize, maybe even specifically within the context of, like, the church or Christianity?
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So I really appreciate Michael Emerson and Christian Smith. Their book divided by faith. They talk about the phase we're living in now is we're in a racialized society. Racialized. And so what that means is every important quality of life factor falls predictably along racial lines. So I shouldn't be able to look at someone and statistically tell what their level of education might be, what their wealth might be, whether they are more likely to die in maternity related deaths as black women are, whether they are more likely to be incarcerated. All of those things fall still predictably along racial lines. And that's an important fact because we think, well, with, you know, 1954, Brown v. Board desegregation, 1964 Civil Rights act, all that stuff is over. It's in the past. We won. There's no more racism. No, it doesn't work like that.
Another way of conceptualizing this era that we're living in is the colorblind age, which for a lot of people, especially white people, that seems like a good thing. Well, the. You know, if. If looking at race and discriminating based on it was the problem, then the solution is we just won't look at race anymore, like it just doesn't exist.
But the issue is, history has a momentum, and you don't undo hundreds of years of discrimination just by saying you don't see race anymore. And as a matter of fact, as a black person, I don't actually want you not to see me as black. Right. Like, that's been.
It's developed into something that is more than about skin color, but it's about an experience, a culture, a history that I'm proud of and is part of who I am. So when people adopt that colorblind mentality, then, number one, not only are we not seeing the fullness of who a person is, but number two, it also lulls us into believing it actually tricks us into believing that if we do talk about race, we're perpetuating the problem, when the reality is we need to talk about it because we haven't talked about it nearly enough.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and God created us all this way. You know, it kind of hit home for me when I thought, now, being a female in America is not the same as being a black person in America, but it kind of hit home for me, where I was like, I love being a female. Like, I am the girliest of girlies, and I love it. And I just kind of hit home once, I was like, what if somebody looked at me and couldn't see that at all? Like, they didn't even acknowledge my femininity or my love of, like, pink and who I am and all of this stuff, and they're just like, you're just a person. Like, that guy. Like, ew, I don't want that.
So, yes, we don't want to remove the blackness from you. Like, how. First of all, how boring, how disrespectful. Like, no, that's how. That's how God made you. And so we need to. Yeah. Talk about it, acknowledge it, celebrate it, learn from it.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: And this is where history is so vital.
Like, people think, I don't know. I don't know. People think different things about me and my work, but some people think I'm radical, and I'm not. First of all, there's real radicals who are calling for deeper, deeper, bigger, bigger stuff.
Many of my views that are deemed extreme are actually very well in line with the historic black christian tradition or with. Or very well justified based on history. Right? So this idea. One of the more controversial ideas for some people that I talk about are the unintended downsides of desegregation.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Unintended downsides of desegregation. So, you know, we kind of universally celebrate, uh, the desegregation as a positive good. And it is. I'm certainly not saying we need to go back to racial segregation.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: We're not going.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: But what I am saying is, um, when black people sort of had no other places to go, we developed our own institutions and a level of self sufficiency.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: And now a lot of that is dispersed. And so we actually have to be far more intentional as. As black people to. To come together.
This is, I think, really well demonstrated in college students. So when you have black students going to institutions of higher ed that are what they call pwis, predominantly white institutions can be really difficult for black students. I'm one of them. When I went to University of Notre Dame, black people were 3% of the undergrad student body. That's really hard to adjust culturally and relationally and all that stuff. So there's this push in the past several years for HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities where, you know, Simmons College of Kentucky, where I teach, is an HBCU faith based one founded by black baptist ministers in 1879. And there's a function and a purpose to that. That's not, quote unquote, segregation. It's about empowerment. It's about identity formation, and it's about support and safety. And so.
But that is a very, you know, longstanding tradition. If you look at history and race in this country.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And see, again, these are things that I'm like, I would have never even thought about this. So without talking to you, without learning other people's stories and experiences, like, that would have never even crossed my mind. I'm sitting here nodding along and also going like, oh, I probably need to learn about this a little bit more.
Can better understand, you know, your lived experience that will never be mine.
Okay, now, I know he wouldn't say this because as you can hear, Doctor Jamar Tisbee is incredibly humble and down to earth. But his work has been really influential in helping people to better understand the connection between faith and justice. He is certainly one of the leading voices in my life, as you just heard. And I highly encourage you to read or listen to any of his books. They're all linked up on the becoming church resource list on Amazon. Now let's get into his latest book, the Spirit of Justice.
Well, I want to get to the spirit of justice for the last little bit while I have you here. You know, I think it's easy sometimes to lean into cynicism and to sell, to tell the stories of people who have perpetuated racism. And it is important to tell those stories so that we can learn from them. But this book highlights people who resisted those stories. Why was it important to you to tell these stories of hope?
[00:27:57] Speaker B: A lot of people ask, you know, is Christianity the white man's religion?
Can Christian? Is Christianity only always, ever a problem when it comes to race? And I'm just like, no, like, there's a story of white Christianity in the US and its relationship to race, but there's also the story of the black church. And I wanted to tell that story, too, because really what I want to do is help people understand there's another way. There's another way to pursue Jesus. There's another way to think about race from a christian perspective. And I think the story of the black christian tradition is not the only other way, but it's a really important one, particularly in the context of the United States.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: So how could I love that? You said another. There's, you know, there's another way through the black christian tradition.
How would someone pursue that without going into, like, appropriation? Like, what's the tension of, okay, like, let me try out your way. But as a white lady, without appropriating.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Your culture, I really appreciate that question. There's a section in the introduction called beware of historical appropriation. So. So one of the things that I think white need to be careful of is reading these stories and sort of patting themselves on the back for the actions of people who weren't in their tradition. So you can't claim the anti racist actions of some christians without acknowledging the racist actions of other christians, probably ones who are most, much closer to you in terms of a tradition and a history and a trajectory. One of the things that I saw, for example, is people claiming the legacy of John Newton. Of course, he wrote the hymn amazing Grace. He was a white slave ship captain, had this conversion, which, by the way, still took him about a decade from his conversion to stop being a slave ship captain. It didn't happen right away.
But then he becomes an outspoken abolitionist, and people want to say, well, what about John Newton? And more broadly, what about the abolitionists? Like, cool. But do you know that John Newton wrote a public pamphlet calling for the abolition of slavery? So if you want to claim John Newton, you have to claim him and his actions. Right? So what are you publicly standing against? How are you publicly calling for an end to racism or changes to certain policies more specifically? So I think that's really important. The other thing I think is I think a lot of white people are afraid to learn from black people because they don't want to mess up black spaces. In particular, I'm talking about going to black churches. So I was talking about this to a black pastor recently and saying that I frequently get comments from white people asking, is it okay for me as a white person to go to a black church? And I'm like, right. Do they want me? But I'm like, you're precisely the kind of white person who it would be okay for because you're. You're cognizant of it, right? You're not coming in to change something. You're coming in to learn, right? And that is the key. So, you know, I do think that one way to learn and in a humble way, a way that appreciates and doesn't appropriate, is to, you know, go to black churches. I mean, you can even go online these days, but there's nothing like the embodied experience at a congregation. And they will welcome you with open arms. They'll look at you funny, like, you sure you're in the right place? Did you get the right address? But okay, come on in. Welcome. And as long as you're going in with a posture of, you know, being led and learning from people who are different from you, not only is it okay, I think it's helpful.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Posture of humility really is where all of this starts. Any learning, listening, any of that.
Jamar, how can people, because this book is full of stories of people who persevered, some really hard and terrible and, you know, situations that were against them, but they kept going. How can people who are listening, who maybe have faced demoralization of their own, be it racism or sexism or other prejudice, how can they find the resolve to, like, hang on and keep going to work for change when it's got to be easier to just, like, throw your hands in the air and go, like, I can't.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: We have these historical cheerleaders.
I profile, you know, over 50 of them. And in this book, I didn't want to just, like, go directly at it and be didactic. I wanted to encourage you through stories. And so I talk about Murlee Evers Williams, whose husband, medgar Evers, was shot and killed in 1963 in front of their home in Jackson, Mississippi.
What doesn't often get told is she was pregnant at the time and miscarried for a season after her husband's murder. She contemplated taking her own life. And she's reflecting on that, and she says it was divine intervention that prevented her from doing it. She never lost her faith in God. She moved her family to California. She opened up herself to love again and got remarried. She ran for office. She led the board for the NAACP, the same organization her husband was working for, that got him killed. And even to this day, as we record this, she's still alive. She's still in her nineties, and she's still about that just as life. So for me, it's like a lot of people ask me, well, how do you keep going? How do you not lose, you know, hope, whatever?
It's reading stories like Murray Evers Williams and understanding, like, this is not some, like, fictional character, right, with superheroic qualities. This is an everyday person who got thrust into a really difficult situation and found a way to take one step and then another step and another step. And if she can do it, not only can I do it, too, but I feel also like I owe it to them.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: I owe it to our ancestors as we've inherited this legacy of liberation, to keep it going.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, and I think, too, it helps us feel connected to them. You know, even just saying she was still alive blows my mind and then I have to remember, like, oh, yeah, Doctor Martin Luther King is. Would be the same age as my grandmother who's still with us.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: That just, like, this is not.
It's not fiction. It's also not, like, so far removed that there's nothing that we can learn from or be connected to or still, like, do the work. The people. The people that have done this hard. Like, it wasn't that long ago.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Not at all.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: And I think that's a way that people can remove themselves. It's just like, oh, history, history. Because I learned it in high school, you know.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: But, yeah, I really appreciate that. You know, I teach college students, 18, 1920 year olds, and they're like, what does this have to do with me? I don't care about history. And then I think about people like Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 became the first black woman to run for the democratic presidential nomination. Now, she didn't earn it mainly because she was black and she was a woman. And people just didn't think the nation was ready for her. But people like her paved the way for someone like Kamala Harris, who went on to become a district attorney, attorney general, senator, vice president, and now the first woman and woman of color nominee for a major presidential party. And that's the seventies. It's not that long ago at all.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, I loved. I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name right, but. Jerina Lee.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: I loved her story. She was the first black woman authorized as a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. And this quote, I wrote it down because I loved it so much when she was basically, people were telling her, like, you don't have the gift. You can't speak here. You can't do this. She said, if only men can preach, then Jesus is only half a savior because he only died for the full inclusion of half the people in this plan for salvation. I was like, come on, Doreen, Alaska.
That's so good.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: It was so powerful. Yes. He's talking about half a saber versus whole savior. Yeah, yeah. I appreciated that, too.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Well, and that just made me think. And so here's, you know, as we're starting to wrap up here, a question for you is she was able to take scripture, take her experience and go, wait a minute, these things are not lining up right. And I think, especially today, people like to throw Bible bombs. People like to pull verses out of context, and we really can use scripture to support anything. Like, if you work hard enough, you can do it. Including slavery. You know, is there anything in particular in the Bible that you, like continually go back to that teaches people about human dignity and equality?
[00:37:10] Speaker B: Yes, and so glad you bring this up, because honestly, I think that. But we just still haven't done enough discipleship on what the Bible has to say about race. The Bible doesn't mention race explicitly because race is a social construct that really didn't come into being until about the 14 hundreds and onwards. So it doesn't address it in the same categories. But what the Bible does do all over scripture is address categories of human difference and how to come together. So it begins in the very first book of the very first chapter of the very first book. You know, the doctrine of the Imago Dei, all people being created in God's image, which is a baseline of dignity for people. But also God has this incredible plan throughout scripture that says the nations are going to stream to the mountain of the Lord. I just love how God dignifies diversity because God doesn't mash up people into this one uniformity blob. God preserves our differences and redeems them such that in the eschaton, as they say in the book of Revelation, where it says people of every tribe and tongue and nation are going to gather around the throne, there's no hint that it's, a, going to be all people from one area, or b, that all those differences are erased in heaven. Right? So that's there. But even more specifically, I think in terms of justice, because what we're dealing with is a bunch of stuff that's gone wrong that we got to make right.
One of the things that I often look at is the beatitudes. And I just love this part where it says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. I mean, to me, that just speaks to the whole journey of racial justice. It's this desire that is yet unsatisfied. It is yet unfulfilled. We are hungering. That rumble in your stomach that says you want to eat, but you haven't yet. We are thirsty. Our throats are dry, our mouths are dry. We can barely form the words. In the midst of that, you know, God says, you're going to be satisfied. You're going to be full, you're going to drink. And the last thing I'll say in terms of, like, the scripture that we need for this journey, when I sign books, I'll often sign it, be strong and courageous.
From Joshua, chapter one and three times in the first nine verses, God encourages Joshua is about to take on this huge task of leading the people of Israel into the promised land. After Moses, God says to Joshua, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. And courage, I believe, is the virtue that undergirds all of our pursuits for justice.
And the beautiful thing about the 9th verse in Joshua one is that God has this command.
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. But also there's this promise, for I will be with you wherever you go.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: And y'all, that's ball game.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Whenever we think about justice and we're doing it right, we're gonna be afraid.
There's gonna be a group, a conversation, a confrontation that is going to make us absolutely tremble. And we actually can't just say, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. What really comforts us is in those moments of fear, we know I'm not alone.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: There's someone right beside me. And actually closer than that. Because when God said that promise in the Old Testament, I'll be with you wherever you go. That was words. But in the New Testament, the word becomes flesh.
Emmanuel. God with us. So Jesus is the confirmation of that promise given so long ago. Don't be afraid. Be strong and courageous. And not only God with us, God in us. Through the Holy Spirit, which I say in the spirit of justice, we can think of the spirit of justice as people of faith, as the Holy Spirit, encouraging us, strengthening us, saying, be strong and courageous. I'll be with you on this journey of justice.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: That's so good. Well, it's that grittiness of hope, too, right? Like, we are choosing to believe that those words, that that word made flesh, is all true and real. And so we can. We can move forward in courage with this hope that it's all true. It's all true. And I think we can look around, too. And if we were to open our eyes, we would see that not only are we not alone, because the spirit is with us, there are actually other people nearby trying to do the same work. We may not see it, and the enemy might try to isolate and make us believe that we're alone, but there are people around that are also ready to lock arms with us and, you know, do the same thing.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: You better preach, preacher.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: All right, last question for you, really quick, Jamar.
For people that are listening, this is the last question that I always ask everyone because the podcast is called becoming church. I want to know what people can do that are people that are listening can do to become the church around them specifically for you? Maybe if they are in spaces where reconciliation work hasn't really happened yet, but they would like for it, too. What can they do?
[00:42:56] Speaker B: You know, it's going to sound self aggrandizing, but study history. I really think it's empowering.
First, there's going to be the shock and surprise. I didn't know this. Why didn't anybody teach me this? Why didn't anybody tell me this? Then there's gonna be.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: Shame's gonna try to creep in.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
And then there's gonna be a certain level of I shock and outrage, which I think is actually righteous anger. Yeah. That things were so bad that honestly, while they've changed in some ways and improved in some, we still got a really long way to go. I think that actually lights a fire under you to be even more passionate and more determined in your pursuits and then find other people, like you said, like. Like we. We cannot do this alone. I think loneliness and isolation are the greatest enemies on this journey of justice. And find your people. And it can even be online.
Yeah.
As long as you know that you're not the lone voice in the wilderness and that God has other people for you along this journey, then I think we can persevere together.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: That's awesome. I love it. Well, we will link up all of your books in the show notes. Also, where. Where can people find you if they want to? I've already storied you. I've already tagged you. I'm like, everybody follow him.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: I love writing books, but it's a long process, two, three years at least. So I would love for people to keep up with my more frequent writing at my substat, which I call it, you know, it's a newsletter on steroids. But you can go to jamartisbe dot substack.com. you can subscribe for free, or you can support my work by becoming a paid subscriber.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. So grateful for your voice online, on Instagram, on different phone calls, Zoom calls that I've heard you on recently in your books. All of the things. Thank you so much.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: Thank you. We're getting in good trouble together.
[00:45:00] Speaker A: You are really not alone. Follow doctor Tisbee and subscribe to his sub stack. The great thing about that platform is that you can engage in a genuine, meaningful way with other people who are also trying to listen, learn, reflect, and do the work that God has put before them to see the humanity of other people. Even if it seems like you're surrounded by people who aren't as invested as you are, start online and make those connections. First. Ask God to show you people that you can connect with. And in the meantime, you're always welcome to come and chat with me on Instagram. Rstanmachler Young thanks as always, for listening. And until next time, keep becoming the church to the people around.
