0017 - The Weight - Michael McBride - “Racism, Violence, Justice, and Faith”
Show Notes:
Two years ago, long before we launched The Weight, Chris and Eddie sat down with Pastor Michael McBride of LIVE FREE, a faith based movement dedicated to stopping gun violence and ending mass incarceration. In addition to this role, Pastor McBride has served on a number of local and national task forces with the White House and Department of Justice regarding gun violence prevention, boys and men of color and police-community relationships, most recently as an Advisor on President Barack Obama’s Faith Based Advisory Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Though recorded in 2018, this conversation is just as relevant as ever, engaging topics of racial justice, gun violence, and the Church’s need to consider and overcome the blockades that stop it from proactively addressing these issues. Recorded soon after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that took the lives of 17 students, McBride reflects on his experience as a pastor in communities that have faced significant levels of gun violence and how it informs his advocacy, pastoral care, and perspective on what “faith in action” must look like in the face of societal injustice. He also reflects on the racial injustices he has personally faced as a black man and has seen systemically embedded in society in a way that often goes overlooked or ignored.
Pastor McBride challenges the American church to do the “soul-searching” necessary to recognize the places in which we need to further let our values, both individually and collectively, be transformed by the message and power of Jesus Christ.
The Weight - Afterthoughts:
We've realized that a lot of great conversation actually happens AFTER we say goodbye to our guests and turn the microphones off. So, we decided to turn the mics back on (and a camera) and create a new segment called, Afterthoughts.
This will live on our new YouTube channel and you can find our Afterthoughts on this episode NOW!
Resources:
James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Lynching-Tree-James-Cone/dp/1626980055
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.
https://www.amazon.com/Testament-Hope-Essential-Writings-Speeches/dp/0060646918
Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination
Follow Pastor Mike McBride on the web: www.pastormikemcbride.com
Follow Pastor McBride’s organization LIVE FREE: livefreeusa.org
Find Pastor McBride on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.mcbride.3956
Full Transcript:
Eddie Rester : 0:00
My name is Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly : 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester : 0:02
Welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly : 0:04
We are excited that you're here today to listen to an episode that has been sitting on a hard drive
Eddie Rester : 0:11
In the vault.
Chris McAlilly : 0:12
in the vault. This is one that's coming to you from the ancient vault of 2018.
Eddie Rester : 0:18
When we started recording episodes, we didn't have a plan. We didn't have map. We didn't have a name. Nothing. And we recorded this episode in the wake of the the Parkland school shooting with a guy named Michael McBride. He's a pastor in San Francisco, California. And as we resurfaced it, we realize that
Chris McAlilly : 0:39
Cody found it for us. Don't make it sound any better
Eddie Rester : 0:41
Yeah, Cody found it for us. But what it does for us is, it's interesting that a conversation we had two years ago is just as relevant today as it was two years ago.
Chris McAlilly : 0:55
I find it depressing in some ways. But I also think that we haven't pushed. We're still kind of... it feels like we're in this perpetual moment in America where we're dealing with the same set of problems over and over again. And yet, what I think is interesting is that you see people of faith engaging the moment in different ways. I think what you'll hear in Michael is exuberance and a desire, a passionate desire, to not just pastor youth and young people in his church, people of color, all across the map, you know, agnostic, atheist, sinners, saints.
Eddie Rester : 1:37
Right.
Chris McAlilly : 1:37
But he wants to... he sees his advocacy as pastoral care. I think that's worth hearing today as we pay attention to what's happening and try to understand protests and riots around us. What gives rise to some of that? I think you'll hear a lot of interesting conversation about that.
Eddie Rester : 1:57
And hopefully it will call us to wrestle a little bit. He talks about that near the end of the episode. So it's a...
Chris McAlilly : 2:03
It's The Weight podcast,
Eddie Rester : 2:04
It's The Weight. If we're not...
Chris McAlilly : 2:06
We're gonna go to a weight...
Eddie Rester : 2:09
A weighty
Chris McAlilly : 2:09
A weighty conversation.
Eddie Rester : 2:11
So we hope you wrestle with it just like we're wrestling with it. [INTRO] Let's be honest, there's some topics that are too heavy for 20 minutes sermon. There are issues that need conversation, not just explanation.
Chris McAlilly : 2:24
We believe that the church is called to engage in a way that honors the weightiness and importance of these topics for how we live faithfully today. We'll cover everything from art to mental health, social injustice to the future of the church.
Eddie Rester : 2:36
If it's something that culture talks about, we need to be talking about it, too. [END INTRO] We got a new friend from San Francisco, California with us today. Pastor Mike McBride. Do you go by Mike or Michael?
Michael McBride : 2:50
Mike. People call me Pastor Mike and then when they don't call me pastor, they say Michael, so whichever one you want to use.
Eddie Rester : 2:56
Well then we'll just say Michael. Yeah, there you go. So Michael, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what you're doing right now.
Michael McBride : 3:04
Yeah, no great. Well it's great to be here. It's my first time in Oxford, Mississippi, and
Eddie Rester : 3:08
We're glad you're here. Yeah.
Michael McBride : 3:09
I'm told this is where Ole Miss is.
Chris McAlilly : 3:11
That's right.
Michael McBride : 3:12
I'm honored to be here. Certainly the home of James Meredith and all of the comrades and ancestors that have really set the pace in our fight for self-determination, liberation. I'm from San Francisco, born and raised in San Francisco. I live now in Oakland, California. My church, The Way Church, is in Berkeley, California. And so I'm a Bay Area kid. We touch all points of the Bay Area. I'm a fourth-generation Holiness Pentecostal, which means that we do speak in tongues and swing from the chandeliers. On a good Sunday, we levitate.
Eddie Rester : 3:49
There you go. You'll have to teach us about that. As good Methodists, we don't do much levitation.
Michael McBride : 3:53
Well, you know what's fascinating, we actually come out of a brand of Methodist holiness.
Chris McAlilly : 3:59
Yeah, you do.
Eddie Rester : 4:00
Absolutely
Michael McBride : 4:01
So, you know, when the hearts of the Wesleys were strangely warmed, I think we just took that to the umpteenth degree. [LAUGHTER]
Chris McAlilly : 4:10
That's right.
Michael McBride : 4:12
Yeah, so I love Methodism. I love the kind of theological construction of just what it means to be on a lifelong journey towards sanctification and transformation to the image and the likeness of Christ. And that is, I think, what discipleship has to be about, particularly in this moment. And so our church is a historically Pentecostal congregation, which has increasingly become multiracial, filled with a lot of folks from different backgrounds--activists, agnostics, tongue talkers, seekers, sinners, touch on everyone--we got it all in there. It's been a joy to serve as the pastor there for the last 13 years or so. Then I also lead the the national network, the Live Free Campaign, which is a campaign of the Pico National Network, which is the largest faith-based organizing network across the country. It was started by a Catholic Jesuit, back in 1972. And very committed to the Catholic social teachings, which quite honestly run very similarly to some of the social holiness teachings of John Wesley. Been doing the work of Live Free and urban strategies for the last six or seven years. And our campaign is simple: we want to end the criminalization of people of color in this country and end violence, particularly gun violence, whether it's by Pookie or to police, as we say. So our hope is that we can really activate and mobilize and inspire faith congregations and clergy to join in this fight, because I do believe if there are any institutions or leaders of institutions who should be actively trying to reduce the loss of lives, they should be followers of Jesus and the church that we are all joined in together. So glad to be here and look forward to this this great, rich conversation.
Eddie Rester : 6:20
Well, before we dive into some questions you left out one very important part of your biography.
Michael McBride : 6:25
My family.
Eddie Rester : 6:26
Well, yes. I wasn't talking about that, but you should tell us about your family.
Michael McBride : 6:29
I'm married, this is going... I celebrate 10 years of marriage to Cherise Martinez McBride and have two baby girls, Sarai Hope and Nylah Joy, and they are so gracious. They share their dad with the world, and so I miss them dearly. But yeah, that's an important part of my life. And then what's the part that I'm missing?
Eddie Rester : 6:56
Duke!
Michael McBride : 6:56
Oh
Eddie Rester : 6:56
You went to Duke.
Michael McBride : 6:57
Yes, I did. I did go to Duke. That's a little bit of a... what do you call that? A footnote. No, I'm just playing [LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester : 7:04
Oh, the other folks in the room are loving that.
Michael McBride : 7:07
No, I went to Duke. I did go to Duke, 2002 to 2005 I graduated...
Eddie Rester : 7:13
More than a decade after I went. Thanks.
Michael McBride : 7:15
Yes, yes, it's fascinating how fast that decade goes, because now I've been gone from Duke more than a decade, and it doesn't feel like it was even that far away. So, yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 7:27
So you've you traveled across the country today and you, I understand, do a fair amount of work here in the South, particularly around violence, race. What we want to talk to you a little bit about today is the role of the faith community in the conversation around gun violence. My first question really is just what gives rise to your passion for that work? Where does that come from? Why are you so far away from your family today? What drives you to be at work, not only in your local context, but in the larger national conversation?
Michael McBride : 8:13
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I grew up in the era of the crack epidemic in San Francisco. And so although my family, my father, my mother, we were part of a very strong Holiness community, Pentecostal community, we were still very much surrounded by, very aware of, gangs, crack, the violence that was associated and came along with that. And for much of our lives growing up, I think it was always considered just the result of people's personal bad decisions. You know? It's just like, well, if you use drugs, then you're just gonna eventually get shot and killed, so just don't use drugs. But my experience as a teenager was that I had a lot of friends who were in school with me who weren't using drugs that were ending up being killed. And I didn't have the words or the language to put to that what I have now, but I think when I found myself as a victim of police brutality. I was a Bible college student at an Assemblies of God College in Scotts Valley, Bethany College. And two white police officers pulled me over one night and physically and sexually assaulted me. And actually, one of them said, you know, with a gun to my head, "You better be glad we're not in Mississippi, or I'd blow your brains out and throw you in an empty field." That was, like, March 9, 1999. That was my only Mississippi connection. I was like, "Well, I'm never going to Mississippi," you know. I think it's been my experience, right, just growing up, that when I got beat up by the cops, it was kind of like... I was saying to people, "as a good Pentecostal, I was on my way to heaven to and oh, so glad." Then I was like, but I don't want to go tonight, like, I think I have a little bit more living and ministry and work to do. And so it really hit me when we were doing the immediate advocacy for my particular case with my church. Our church was a pretty large African American church in the city of San Jose. At the time, a lot of my young people--we grew our youth group to over 100 young people, mostly black, brown kids, a lot of some poor Asian, a lot of Asian kids. And I'm talking to the young people like, "thank you all for your support," because the kids are turning up. They're like, "We can't believe they did this to, you know, our youth pastor." And in our Bible study one night, they said, "You know, this happens to us all the time." And I was stunned by that. I was like, "Really"? I was like, "How come you guys never say anything to us?" It was like, "We didn't think this part of our life was something to bring to church." And I really felt the Spirit speak to me and just say, "What kind of ministry are you building where they're willing to trust you with their soul but not their body?"
Eddie Rester : 11:15
Right.
Michael McBride : 11:15
And I really... that conversation turned out to be almost as traumatic as my own personal interaction with the police. And so I say, and I can give you, like, 10 other kind of experiences like that, but just the cumulative impact of having to see friends being killed, who were not out here doing things that deserve the loss of their life. To see me and all the things I had to go through, to hear my young people, who are literally coming to church, but were saying, "we're being harassed and violated by police on a regular basis," and then as a pastor having to bury teenagers in my first several years, who were all parts of our campus ministries and things. I think I see it now as an extension of my pastoral care. That's kind of how I was imagining it very early on in my ministry. And I think now, I see it just as an act of faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Eddie Rester : 12:17
When you talk about the students saying, "we didn't think that we could bring this or it's worth bringing up," there's a lot of powerlessness.
Michael McBride : 12:26
Yeah
Eddie Rester : 12:26
that I hear in that.
Michael McBride : 12:27
Yeah.
Eddie Rester : 12:28
How do you speak back to that? When there's that kind of... well, there's just nothing to do.
Michael McBride : 12:34
Well, at the moment, I realized how inadequate I was as a minister because I didn't have an answer. You know, I was very much trying to just get my kids to not have sex and not fight, get A's in school. And most people were doing a pretty good job of that and yet they were still... when they're not in church, their lives were very precarious. And so that is really what drove me to go to seminary. Because I felt like I didn't have the theological or kind of ministry framework to do the kind of work that I felt I was being called to do. And I'm glad I went, because now I feel like I have lots more information and tools to give.
Chris McAlilly : 13:27
Can you talk about that? It sounds like the heart of your work. I mean, you're known as Pastor Mike.
Michael McBride : 13:33
Mm hmm.
Chris McAlilly : 13:34
I can sense, just the brief time we spent together, the sense of the heart of the pastor that you clearly have. But what was it about seminary? How did that help you reframe conversations about about life, faith, theological ethics, public policy? You mentioned kind of lacking language.
Michael McBride : 13:58
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 13:58
Did you get what you were looking for?
Michael McBride : 14:01
Yeah, yeah. So you know what's so fascinating about seminary--and I hope I would have received this at any seminary--it just gave me space to think and reflect and to read. You know, sometimes you can be doing ministry or even be a follower of Jesus on everyday basis, and you're just not aware of how the world is having an overdetermined impact on how you're following Jesus. I mean, we want to think that we're following Jesus in a way that's most faithful, but when you look around at all the things in the world that are totally opposed to the life of Jesus, and we are complicit or participating in that, or at least not actively resisting it... Your scripture says, "resist the devil and he will flee from you," and we ain't resisting much. It's like the devil riding shotgun with us in the car. I really got a chance to just kind of unpack that both intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. And so, as a Pentecostal, I hadn't done a lot of interrogating of our own tradition of social justice. I was always aware of Dr. King but only Dr. King through, say, the "I Have a Dream" speech.
Chris McAlilly : 15:09
Mm hmm.
Michael McBride : 15:09
So when I went to Duke, I got an opportunity just to read a lot of Dr. King's work. And it's for me, Dr. King, I think, his gift of being able to preach and talk and exegete and extort... not extort but exhort, like exhortation.
Chris McAlilly : 15:34
We'll pull that off the record, man.
Michael McBride : 15:37
Yeah, no man, I don't want the King family mad at me. [LAUGHTER] His ability to just really make plain and accessible for everyday people, whether they agree with it or not, because you gotta remember, when King was assassinated, he was the most hated man in America.
Eddie Rester : 15:53
I was reading something recently about how all these folks that on Martin Luther King Day
Michael McBride : 15:59
Yeah
Eddie Rester : 15:59
posting quotes, don't know that 40 years ago, if they'd been out spouting Martin Luther King, people would have been wondering what you know,
Michael McBride : 16:11
I say it two ways to my clergy--African American clergy at that--I say, many of you who say you marched for King you have two benefits: First is he's dead, and he's not around to say who's lying and who's telling the truth. And certainly the second one is that no one else is really courageous enough to hold you accountable as well. You know, Dr. King, I think had less than 10%, 20% of support from Black churches even back then--Letter from Birmingham Jail. And I mean, people forget that Dr. King was very much--he was a Black Lives Matter of our day. And we see how polarizing Black Lives Matter is for a lot of folks, not just in the white community, but in the Black community as well. You know, "You're doing too much." "It's not palatable." "Moving too fast." "We've made progress." So, Dr. King, if you read his work today, you would think he wrote it last night. So I got a chance to really spend time there. I got to spend time with people like Dr. William Turner, who was the old Holiness pastor there. And he really helped me do a lot of theological construction and opened up the Methodism and the Baptist roots of Pentecostal theology that were very helpful, helped me make a lot of connections. Of course, I had Hauerwas, but I learned Hawerwas through Emmanuel Katongole,
Chris McAlilly : 17:35
Mm hmm
Michael McBride : 17:35
who was...
Chris McAlilly : 17:36
I was gonna ask you about Hauerwas.
Michael McBride : 17:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I wasn't a big Hauerwas fan.
Chris McAlilly : 17:40
I can see that.
Michael McBride : 17:42
I was suspicious of him, mostly because he was so popular and I was just kind of thinking, "what's up, what's up with all this?" But Katongole, Emmanuel Katongole, God bless my good friend and mentor. He's a Ugandan Catholic priest. And he was there at Duke pretty much as a student and expositor of a lot of Hauerwas's ideas around social imagination. And I really became enamored with this idea around, "How has our imagination been formed by issues of race, racial hierarchy, issues of social identities? And how have those social identities made more of a claim on our lives as Christ followers, then our identity as being Christians?" Right? And so then I started to appreciate Hauerwas's claims around how war and how patriotism and how American identity are actually more determinative for the average Western or American Christian than actually being a Christ follower. So I found lots of good material that allowed me to begin a langauge and preach and think and pray through a different kind of Christian formation that I still believe today is the engine for the work that we do.
Chris McAlilly : 19:09
I, for several years now, have been so fascinated with the difference between... the question why has Hauerwas not written more on Martin Luther King Jr.? Because in some ways they're... And I wonder, I've had this question of whether or not the underlying factor is that he's a Texan. He's a Southerner,
Michael McBride : 19:31
That's what he says, yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 19:32
And, and he's really resisted that, but there's this sense of Hauerwas is critiquing the American project, the democratic project for a particular kind of Christian identity and Christian angle and wants to kind of separate the church and our identity as followers of Jesus Christ from our identity as American citizens. It seems to me the difference is Hauerwas, especially the way he gets critiqued by Willie Jennings and some of the other guys around, is that he ends up with this kind of colonization of Christian identity, where you're over here and not engaging the world. I think he's probably come back around a little bit. But King is over here, from a different place. I mean, he always considered himself, I think, a preacher. So even as he moved beyond the church and engaged in this project of trying to make America more just more holy,
Michael McBride : 20:34
or maybe make the African American more free.
Chris McAlilly : 20:39
Right, right.
Michael McBride : 20:41
Which would make you know, the US more
Chris McAlilly : 20:43
Yeah, well, I mean, I think like he's critiquing the American experience, from the perspective of its original sin of racism, particularly from his personal experience. But I've been fascinated, I mean... that still plays out at Duke, it seems to me, today.
Michael McBride : 21:01
Yeah, I mean, I just think quite frankly, it's theology and theology in general done from kind of a Western Eurocentric male perspective, would of course, have huge gaps around race. You have to do a lot of work even as a Black person to really understand race. And we live it every day. We're being defined by it. We have internalized the worst parts of racial theory. Mostly because it's imposed upon us with such violence and persistence from the day we're born that we're always told we're a problem. And so we have do our own work just to kind of tease that out. And thankfully, the Black church has been a place where at least the redemption of Black bodies through a communal and certainly a spiritual engagement has for several hundred years been, one could argue, the actual material of say, Hauerwas's claims, right? That you don't have to look for a more faithful church in the United States. You can look at the Black church, because the Black church has been a place where that holistic expression of body and soul have been held in tension. And of course it doesn't mean it's not without its its growing edges or even deficiencies, when you start thinking of all the many ways that still women and other identities, LGBTQ folks and other folks, are still struggling to find their full humanity in some of these spaces. But you know, Hauerwas, as he would say, he would say, "I'm a Texan," you know,
Eddie Rester : 22:39
A bricklayer
Michael McBride : 22:40
Yeah, "I'm a bricklayer." I just felt like that was just too easy of a cop-out. It's like,
Eddie Rester : 22:47
Right
Michael McBride : 22:48
you're also the theologian of the year, like multiple times over.
Eddie Rester : 22:52
You're on Oprah Winfrey.
Michael McBride : 22:54
Yeah, you could do a little bit more work if you wanted to. I just think the times didn't require him to do it. And this is where I think the the moment is different. And the opportunity for us as the Church is so robust that we could do more with the faith that has been handed to us.
Eddie Rester : 23:13
Well, let's push a little bit into that. We're in the shadow of the Parkland shooting, Parkland, Florida shootings. And so I've read some of your work after that. And as you laugh a little bit, tell me when you saw that, in the days afterwards, these students rising up to really begin to push back against gun violence and the ability to get guns so easily and really leading the conversation in some ways. What for you has been hopeful about that? But also what other threads have been thrown out in the conversation that we need to hear from you?
Michael McBride : 23:44
Yeah, you know, what I saw in the young people in Parkland is what I see from most young people everywhere. Young people have a fearlessness around speaking their mind.
Eddie Rester : 24:12
Yeah.
Michael McBride : 24:12
You know. And if you if you touch a nerve with young people... I've been a youth pastor for 20, 20-something years or doing youth ministry for over 20-something years. Young people don't ask permission to speak their mind when something gets close to them. And so I do feel a sense of pride and gratitude that the young people in Parkland so quickly grabbed the narrative and wouldn't let it go away, because that was not the first mass shooting since Newtown when this was very much in more spaces. You know, I was at the White House, leading a prayer vigil during the holiday party when Newtown happened. I was in the White House--I don't tell the story very often--but I was in the White House a couple days before Newtown, asking the Obama administration what was their plan around urban gun violence and mass incarceration for their second term. And they said they didn't have one. And I was kind of being dissuaded to not be so... what's the word? uncompromising in our advocacy in this way. So long story short, when Newtown happened, I was with some of the mothers who had survived school shootings, at Virginia Tech. There was some Columbine mothers that were there. And so I was the only faith leader in the room of about 25 people. The mothers fell on the ground and started to weep when the Newtown footage started to come across the news. It was like they were reliving it. And I was... the wail that I heard from these white mothers that I'd never really met before was the same wail I heard from the Black mothers whose children I've had to bury. And so my compassion was on overdrive. And they said, "Reverend, can you lead a march or prayer vigil?" So we did a prayer vigil. And we didn't know that hundreds of media folks would turn out right outside the White House to chronicle this whole thing. So several days before this, we were asking what was the agenda; they didn't have one. Then all of a sudden Newtown happens, and now it's on the agenda. But all of the recommendations, as we got involved, were still very much devoid of any conversation around urban gun violence. This was 2013, or 12, rather. So I've been involved in these conversations ongoing for five years, because we've literally had a mass shooting every couple weeks in this country, if you really wanted to just look at the numbers. And so I've seen how urban gun violence or the daily violence in black and brown communities across the country just fall off the conversation's radar, if it ever makes it on the radar at all nationally. I actually had one progressive law maker tell me that if we talk about urban gun violence, we'll lose the country. Because the appetite of the country is not about urban gun violence. It's about mass shootings. To see the Parkland students be able to grab that narrative and really not cede it to these big gun violence prevention groups that I think have over-influenced the conversation too often was great expression. But my challenge was more with the adults and with our larger social response than with the kids, because, to me, the kids were responding the same way the young people responded in Ferguson, responded to Baltimore, Oakland after the shootings and the killings of loved ones, by the police or by Pookie. I mean, again, I see young people, black and brown young folks, every day speaking with great precision and great clarity, similar to the young people in Parkland, but they're just received differently. When some of the young people call Marco Rubio... you know what, they gave him a name... pretty much saying he was a sellout. You know?
Eddie Rester : 28:21
Right.
Michael McBride : 28:21
I just imagine if that person were Black on CNN calling an elected official a sellout. Would the response be cheering, or would people be like, "Man, you were very disrespectful." Right? It's the way that the society hears and receives the very truthful, uncompromising critique and/or rage--rightful rage, righteous indignation--of poor black and brown young people over and against those who are affluent and who could pass or have very light skin for being white. That is the big problem, and it's not a problem for the Parkland youth. It's a problem for us as adults. And that's where I think we have to really nuance this conversation. No one should be disparaging the young people for being and doing what they should do. But we, as adults, I think, have to be careful that we don't expect young people to do things that adults are being asked to do. We are the stewards, as adults, according to the Scriptures. We are the ones to be stewarding creation. Young people are supposed to be learning and certainly enjoying their life. I think it's a bit unfair to put that burden on them. I want adults to wrestle with this critique and not young people.
Chris McAlilly : 29:41
I heard DeRay Mckesson, one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter movement, talking a little bit about the impact of Ferguson on him personally. He's been writing a book that he's about to release. And he recently was talking about a sermon that he heard, and the pastor was talking about how you can tell your story too soon. And the pain has to be turned into purpose. I think it's interesting. I mean, I think you're dead on. I think you're right that the Parkland youth have been heard by the culture in a way that maybe youth in Ferguson or in Baltimore or some other places haven't been heard. He talked about the trauma of protests for him personally, in Ferguson. Had to have a little room to breathe before he was ready to process it and then put it out into into the world. I wonder, do you think that's one of the reasons why you see protests at this particular moment, rising up in Ferguson and Baltimore and in Baton Rouge and other places? What do you think is the role of protests within the larger conversation around community organizing, around trying to get a hold of the national conversation around gun violence? And then what do you think are the limits of protest? You know what I mean?
Michael McBride : 31:11
Yeah, man, this is some profound questions now. I know I'm in Mississippi, so I'm not trying to be too radical. But this country was founded on a protest.
Eddie Rester : 31:21
Right, right.
Michael McBride : 31:21
And so is it appropriate to suggest that a country founded on violent protests should then try to set the limits for how protest happens in the face of similar, if not even more lethal, state repression or oppression than the British rule over the thirteen colonies? Now I'm a student of Dr. King. I'm a follower of Jesus, of course. So my line is, "I believe in nonviolence. Just don't push me." [CHUCKLES] So I want to be a particularly principled and fully committed follower of Jesus and the teachings of nonviolence, because I think when you engage in violence, you actually begin to deface the image of God, and you turn yourself into something that is less holy. But that is a ideal that flows from Jesus. It can't flow from the United States. Because the United States is the most violent empire. We export more violence in the world. According to Dr. King, he says "United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world." So I feel like often we want it both ways, right? We want to be able to limit the protests and the violence that is a seed or that has been seeded in the soil of our country. But yet, we don't practice that same kind of foreign policy or certainly even that kind of policy towards our own citizens, when they are poor, when they are dark skinned, etc. I would just say, number one: people who can come in and out of protests are very privileged. Right? Because I feel like our work is an ongoing act of protest. I believe that Ferguson is a long line of Black rage bubbling up in the underclass, Black underclass, of this country. This is the fiftieth year of the Kerner Commission. I don't know if you all are familiar with the Kerner Commission.
Eddie Rester : 33:40
Tell us a little about that.
Michael McBride : 33:41
The Kerner Commission was a commission by LBJ right after the race riots, after King's assassination. And he put out a Kerner Commission. He compiled some folks and asked them to find out what was it about the rage and the circumstances and social conditions that would even give rise to a protest. Dr. King said that a riot is the language of the unheard, right? So LBJ was trying to figure this out. They pulled together this commission, and they pulled this fascinating report. And you should Google it or Wikipedia or whatever, and just read through what they say. Pretty much, the Kerner Commission, commissioned by the president of the United States in 1968, says that the reason why we have such rage and violence in inner cities is because of white racism. Right? LBJ said, I am going to ignore all these accusations. I'm not going to deal with that, you know,
Eddie Rester : 34:40
50 years ago.
Michael McBride : 34:41
50 years ago, right? And so when we have a Ferguson, when we have a Baltimore, etc, etc. and we start talking about the rage or the frustration of Black Americans or poor folk in this country... How come they can't be much more reserved and respectable? I have to tell folks, "Well, we've been having this conversation for centuries." And the respectable conversation gets ignored by those on the Democrat and Republican side of the aisle. This is a very bipartisan, you know what I'm talking about, the only place where both of them
Eddie Rester : 35:19
Something's bringing them together.
Michael McBride : 35:20
is ignoring the plight of poor people who are suffering under state violence. And so I do think that... I don't know what DeRay is going to write, but I would just caution all of us to not make respectability, or this idea around how you protest, what's a good protest. I think that we need multiple tactics out here to try and dismantle this state violence that is becoming an increasingly lethal problem, not just for the poor and Black folks, but now we see these mass shootings and we see suicide. We see all kinds of violence that are just drowning our country. Rather than trying to address the source of that violence, we're talking in circles about things that would actually create more violence. It's a very problematic and despairing moment in the discourse.
Eddie Rester : 36:19
A couple of weeks ago report came out about looking at gun violence in in the states. And what was surprising, I think, as a Mississippian, about that report is that Mississippi is fourth in the nation for per capita gun violence.
Michael McBride : 36:34
Yes.
Eddie Rester : 36:34
And that gun violence includes murder, mass shooting, suicides, kind of every bit of gun violence. But when you really look at the top four or five states in that, Alaska, strangely, is number one, which is an affluent state in a lot of ways. But the other states right after that are Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, very poor states where gun violence is a massive problem that nobody in the South wants to talk about.
Michael McBride : 37:05
And as Christians, we should continue to add: some of it is the Bible belt of the country as well, right? So I often ask this question: what is it about our Christian formation that we can't make peace? How is it we can go to church and spend so much time doing worship and reading scripture and Bible studies, and we feel like we still need to own weapons and take live and put ourselves in positions that make our lives much more vulnerable? Whether it's the presence of guns in suicide or domestic violence. I think the American church has to really do some soul searching, because it is often folks inside our congregations that are actually staunch advocates for holding on to these weapons of war. And Jesus said, "If you live by the sword, you're gonna die by the sword." But that's a little bit of an inconvenience.
Chris McAlilly : 38:03
I think that's... when I was in seminary in Atlanta, when Obama was elected, I was serving a church out in the country. So it was mostly, you know, folks that drove pickups, white folks, rural middle class, lower class folks, white folks. "W" stickers on the back of the pickup truck. I was going into Atlanta, going to school with a lot of Morehouse grads. Got to know people kind of across the spectrum. In general at Emory and Candler, it was everybody supported Obama. And then I went out to my church and everybody supported McCain. It was this kind of weird cultural whiplash that I...
Michael McBride : 38:49
Still recovering, huh?
Chris McAlilly : 38:50
Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah. But part of it was, you know, really struggling with the way in which the white church particularly... that our identity in Christ is not determinative for the way in which we live. That we're determined by our political affiliation or our citizenship or some other kind of allegiance trumps our allegiance to Christ. And then we end up wondering why? You know, my friends who grew up in the church in Mississippi are no longer Christian, that talk to me. They asked me: why if it was true that Christ was the Lord Savior, and Mississippi is overwhelmingly evangelical--overwhelmingly Christian--wouldn't you think we would have some better health outcomes, some better outcomes in general?
Michael McBride : 39:48
Yeah. It seems like being a Christian doesn't translate to the transformation of the material conditions of people,
Eddie Rester : 39:57
Right.
Michael McBride : 39:58
at least in America. And I think again, I know it's a hard thing to wrestle with because the way American Christian faith has really unfolded has been, I think, a hyper obsession with the soul and a negation of the body. It's almost like a gnostic kind of take on on faith.
Eddie Rester : 40:20
Somehow we should get enough knowledge or wisdom that suddenly we escape.
Michael McBride : 40:25
Yes.
Eddie Rester : 40:26
Instead of
Michael McBride : 40:26
Yes.
Eddie Rester : 40:27
what the Bible really is, what Jesus is.
Michael McBride : 40:30
It's incarnate.
Eddie Rester : 40:31
Look, "I'm sending you into the world."
Michael McBride : 40:32
Yeah,
Eddie Rester : 40:32
"They didn't like me. They're not gonna like you, but you know what..."
Michael McBride : 40:35
You got to go.
Eddie Rester : 40:36
"There you go."
Michael McBride : 40:36
It's very incarnational. It's the Word being made flesh, and the flesh is a serious part of this Christian engagement. I think, at the end of the day, it's really about formation. Now the question for the church is, "will we be able to survive in our current form?" I think not. I think the church is gonna have to go through another great awakening of sorts. I'm excited for that because I think our public witness is quite fractured and discredited. And it's not just about Trump. These problems existed before Trump. I think our hyper-commitment to capitalism and economic exploitation is a problem. Certainly militarism is a problem. And racism is a problem. These are triplets of evil that King talked about. And so I do think the church has to start asking ourselves different questions. And it's a hard conversation, but it's a necessary one if we're going to be faithful.
Eddie Rester : 41:31
So what is one question or two--what are two questions, maybe, that churches regardless of if they're primarily white, or they're Holiness or they're Methodist or they're whoever... What are some questions in your mind that the church in this day and age has to begin asking?
Michael McBride : 41:48
Well, I think the church has to ask itself how close can you get to the suffering of others without making the suffering not your problem. When Jesus was here, Jesus figured out a way to hang out with everyone who was not allowed in the temple. But Jesus still went to the temple himself. So it wasn't like it was either/or. Jesus figured out a way to have and be faithful in his faithfulness to his spiritual and religious practices and still be with the adulterers, the homeless, the exploited, etc. So that: I think the proximity--how do we close the proximity to suffering? And realize that suffering shows up in the white community just as much as it shows up in all these other places. Although mass incarceration disproportionately impacts black or brown folks, the largest demographic of folks incarcerated this country are white folks, poor white folks. And then I think the second thing we certainly should wrestle with is how does our faith as Christians liberate other Christians. This is one thing I love of Hauerwas, his proposal for world peace is for every Christian to commit not to kill another Christian.
Chris McAlilly : 43:16
I love that too.
Eddie Rester : 43:17
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 43:18
It's a modest proposal for world peace.
Eddie Rester : 43:20
Did he still have that poster on his door?
Michael McBride : 43:22
I think so, yeah. I remember that thing stuck with me so tough. I remember watching... Spike Lee did this thing on the Civil War, and I can't remember the name of this film, but he was showing how the Union troops and the Confederate troops were saying the Lord's Prayer. And it was so powerful, because as they were saying the Lord's Prayer, he would go back and forth to each side. And they're using the same prayer, asking God to bless them killing each other. And so I do think there's something very powerful about what does it mean for the church to really become peacemakers. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Now of course, that means that power and whiteness and violence and all these different things that all of us are reaching for? It means that we all have to trust that God's power is greater than all these other powers, if you will. But I think it's high time for us to really wrestle with that.
Chris McAlilly : 44:19
I think that that's one of the things to me that is striking. You're talking about that God's power is more powerful than the other powers and principalities of this world, that
Michael McBride : 44:31
That's what we say.
Chris McAlilly : 44:32
Yeah, we say that--that God is the subject of active verbs in this conversation. I think the thing that, as you continue to do this work, as I'm sure it wears on you emotionally, physically, the travel, your family, being back home as you're out on the road and those kind of things. What is Christian about Christian organizing for you? How do you think about that? And then what is it that keeps you going? What is it that gives rise to hope in a time where so much of the country is apathetic or in despair, frankly, or doubling down on their convictions?
Michael McBride : 45:23
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly : 45:24
What keeps you hopeful? What keeps you motivated?
Michael McBride : 45:30
Christian-based organizing, or justice-based organizing, faith-based organizing... I tell my congregation, "doing justice makes your heart less wicked." I think that it is, for me, a project-based discipleship for Christians. If you can learn how to get analysis of systems... The scripture says, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but principalities, powers, wickedness, evil in high places," etc. And not allow that to be about the devil you can't see while you ignore the devil you see every day. Like, just helping people to make those connections, I think, is really the unique role of faith-based organizing. It's helping to unmask the invisibility of the wickedness and the powers that, again, are over-determining us. And the reason why we must unmask these powers is because they are literally killing us. They are robbing our families of life. They are destroying the world, this world that God has given to us. Now, I know some folks' eschatology makes a lot of space for the destruction of the world. But that's not what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus does not say, "Let the world fall apart. And I will come back and rescue you." Jesus says, "No, you occupy. You be good stewards. I'm going to prepare a place for you. Let me deal with the place I'm going to prepare for you, and you got to keep doing this work that I've placed you here to do." So, I think that is why we do the organizing work. Certainly we have a deep love. As a pastor, I can't see my congregation members bury children, being swept into jails, dying in mass shootings, losing health care, while the wealthiest folks in this country who don't need more continue to get more. That's totally against everything in Scripture. And so I have to respond to that. I can't just keep telling my folks as Karl Marx called it, "the opiate of the masses," just keep giving them some drug and wait till you get to heaven and God's gonna make it all right. I think God intends for it to be all right here. And then I get hope because I'm filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. And I think the Holy Spirit is a source of hope and power and strength and clarity. Of course, there are days where I feel defeated and down, but those places are, like, rest stops. You pull into that place, but then you got to get back on the road because you're going somewhere.
Chris McAlilly : 48:06
You sound like a Methodist.
Michael McBride : 48:07
Well, I, I...
Eddie Rester : 48:08
You do sound like a Methodist. Do we need to have a conversation later?
Michael McBride : 48:10
Well, they, you know, they tried to make me join the Methodists or be ordained a Methodist after Duke, but I told them I have to go suffer with the righteous and
Chris McAlilly : 48:18
That's right.
Michael McBride : 48:18
and go back to my holy tradition without a salary and dig out a church like my ancestors did.
Chris McAlilly : 48:23
I admire the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions. Because I think it's interesting, holding together the depth of spirit, that God is at work in the world. That God's not done.
Michael McBride : 48:33
Right.
Eddie Rester : 48:34
Right.
Chris McAlilly : 48:34
That's a powerful, motivating... you go out into the world, but it's not just you going alone.
Michael McBride : 48:41
And again what was one of my greatest gifts of seminary is the Black Pentecostal Holiness tradition that produced me necessarily required that kind of engagement in social issues. If you're Black living in the late the 1800s, early 1900s, you're not talking about lynchings and you're not talking about access to jobs and equality and police brutality. You all should go to the AME mother church, Mother Bethel in Philadelphia, just look at their museum. You will find African Methodist Episcopal bishops who were abolitionists who were... Pastor Mark Tyler, big shout out to him, he will host y'all anytime you want. And you would just learn how it necessarily forced you to bring those two things together, because your experience was just, it was so overwhelming that you had to make sense of this Jesus. And I will also say that many African slaves came to the United States as slaves with a different Gospel of Jesus. There are so many people who think that the US brought Christianity to Africa. But we have to remember that much of Africa had pockets of Christian faith. Augustine was African; Athanasius, African. Martin Luther is thought to been deeply informed by Ethiopian Coptic Christians years before he nailed the thesis on the church there. So Africans had a different understanding of Christian faith that allowed them to see, as Frederick Douglass says, "I love the Christianity of Jesus, but this American Christianity, y'all keep that." Right? So we have to keep wrestling as the American church. Why is it that we produce such bad Christians? And when we wrestle with that, then I think we can actually begin to have a more faithful expression of the Gospel, this good news that has been entrusted to us.
Eddie Rester : 50:54
I want to thank you for your time today. Last question real, real brief.
Michael McBride : 50:59
Okay. I'm long-winded. I'm a Black preacher. [LAUGHTER] It's easy to get intoxicated with the exuberance of my own verbosity. [MORE LAUGHTER]
Eddie Rester : 51:08
"Verbosity," now you're teaching people a new word. Is there a book or website, if people are listening to this, and the're like, "Man, I'd love to push a little bit deeper in that or connect somehow," where would you send them?
Michael McBride : 51:21
Wow, um I... yeah, James Cone is probably a good person to start with, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" is probably an excellent text. Now, of course, you know James Cone is the father Black theology, so that may be a little bridge too far for folks. I tell you, man, just go pick up King. Read Martin Luther King. This is 50 years of his death. Just read Dr. King beyond "I Have a Dream." I'm telling you, what he says there could deeply disrupt you. I would also... Keri Day, Dr. Keri Day who's a phenomenal, phenomenal woman who's written a lot on the role of white supremacy and other dangerous ideologies embedded in Christian faith. She would be good. Of course, you know, Willie Jennings, "The Christian Imagination," a seminal text, if you want to want to get through that. There's lots of great, great stuff out there. And I'll just humbly say, I think the church needs to commit ourselves to doing anti-racism trainings inside our congregations. Because we've all been, to use Willie Jennings's language, been contaminated by the soil of racism. We've all been produced out of that soil. And I think there are too many of us who just want not to be racist, rather than do the work to make sure we aren't racist, that we aren't holding racial hierarchy and bias--and this is for Black folks, too. A lot of Black folks have a lot of internalized bias against dark skin, against cultural ideas and identities that aren't grounded in a Western, Eurocentric framework. This isn't an attack on white folks, I always tell folks, this is really an expansion and an extension of what it means to be created the image of God. If God is not white, and God is not a man, and God is not American, that means that we gotta believe that all of us are created in the image of God, then. And so what does it mean to expand our imagination to create space for that? I think the problem is, in our background, many of us do think God is white, God is a male, and God is American. And that's why it's so easy to oppress people who are not white, males, and Americans. And I think we have to continue to be explicit and vocal about what we are saying we're about, and I think that may help hold us a little bit more accountable.
Eddie Rester : 53:52
Amen. Pastor Mike, thank you for your time. Good to be in the room with a Dukie. And I hope you'll enjoy your time in Mississippi.
Michael McBride : 53:59
Yeah, man, I'm definitely gonna drive around a little bit and soak in some of this Mississippi love.
Chris McAlilly : 54:05
It's great to talk with you, man.
Michael McBride : 54:06
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we'll do it again!
Chris McAlilly : 54:08
Let's do it.
Michael McBride : 54:08
All right.
Eddie Rester : 54:10
Thank you for listening today. Go ahead and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And go ahead and hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you use to listen to podcasts.
Chris McAlilly : 54:20
This wouldn't be possible without our partner General Board of Higher Education in Ministry. We want to thank also our producer, Cody Hickman. Follow us next week. We'll be back with another episode of The Weight.