How To Fight Racism - "Truth Telling And Confession" with Jemar Tisby
Full Transcript:
The year 2020 was a strong reminder that racism is not a simple problem of the past, and it cannot be met with simple solutions. At its core, racism diminishes the image of God in people of color, keeping them from living in the fullness that was God’s vision for humanity. How can we bring about true equity in our communities, churches, and in our nation? What are the practical steps that we can take now to bring about flourishing and reconciliation?
Jemar Tisby, bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, believes that racial reconciliation must be a relational effort grounded in self-awareness, and it must move beyond knowledge and ideas. In the fight against racism, Tisby sees the need for three essential components: awareness, relationships, and commitment. In his new book, How to Fight Racism, Tisby equips Christians with the tools needed to dismantle the systems and structures that keep people of color from flourishing.
He joins Eddie and Chris to talk about his hope for the church to mobilize to action instead of complicity and passivity, the ways that we can use our money wisely to help bridge economic disparities, and the power of truth-telling and confession. He calls Christians to foster welcoming communities where people of color are not just offered a seat at the white table, but honored, respected, and uplifted as leaders made in the image of God.
Resources:
Check out Jemar’s book How to Fight Racism here
Order Jemar’s book The Color of Compromise here
Learn more about The Witness - A Black Christian Collective here:
Check out Jemar’s podcast “Pass the Mic” here:
https://thewitnessbcc.com/pass-the-mic/
Sign up for Jemar’s newsletter here:
https://jemartisby.substack.com
Follow Jemar on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/JemarTisby1
Full Transcript:
Eddie Rester 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:03
Welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 0:04
Today we're talking to Jemar Tisby. Jemar is the leader, the CEO of The Witness, which is a Black Christian collective. And he's the author of a couple books, "Color of Compromise," and also a new book that's coming out in 2021 in January called
Eddie Rester 0:21
"How to Fight Racism."
Chris McAlilly 0:22
Thank you, Eddie.
Eddie Rester 0:23
I get it wrong in the podcast.
Chris McAlilly 0:23
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 0:24
In the interview, it's Chris has to correct me which gave him great joy.
Chris McAlilly 0:29
It does, always. Jemar is, you can hear his passion coming through the conversation. He is a devoted Christian, who has kind of come out to start this organization, and he wants to invest in Black leadership and really help push the conversation across the church in America about how faith, biblical, deeply theological faith, is connected to the work of racial justice.
Eddie Rester 1:00
And what he does in the book, and what he's really going to talk about is, how do we do this? This isn't theoretical. This is very practical. How can we, particularly those of us in the white church in America, what can we actively be about? He talks about awareness and relationship and a set of commitments to make, and he really makes the case for that journey.
Chris McAlilly 1:25
Yeah, there will be, I mean, there's some provocative parts of the conversation. If you've ever wondered about the public policy of reparations, he talks about that. We talk about what the church has gotten right or wrong in the conversation about racial reconciliation. We talk about digging into personal stories and autobiographies and even writing those down. Jemar addresses different dimensions of the conversation that I think, you know, I think he's an important voice. I mean, he's going to continue to be, I think, an important voice in the conversation, long term.
Eddie Rester 2:02
And what I love about him is he's anchored in the community. He's in the Delta in Arkansas, in education, and I really appreciate that he is investing his life in moving people forward. So you're going to enjoy this one, it's going to push you a little bit. So make sure that you share this. Make sure that you leave a comment, invite a friend to the conversation as well.
Chris McAlilly 2:27
Yeah, I want to just explicitly say, you can help us out if you can think of a friend, somebody you think would enjoy the conversation. Just share this episode with them. And have the conversation with folks in your family, in your community, in your Sunday school class or, you know, in people you drink coffee with... I don't know. Do people still do that during the pandemic? They drink coffee together?
Eddie Rester 2:53
Virtually, maybe?
Chris McAlilly 2:54
Drink a virtual coffee with somebody and listen to the podcast together. I hope you enjoy it today.
Chris McAlilly 2:54
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 3:06
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 3:09
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:17
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 3:29
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 3:44
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 3:47
We're so excited today to welcome Jemar Tisby to The Weight. Jemar, we're so glad to have you today.
Jemar Tisby 3:53
I'm glad we can finally make it happen. We've been talking about this for a while. And I'm sure this is coming right on time.
Eddie Rester 3:59
It is coming right on time. I'm not sure yet when this episode will release but it's happening the week of everything that went on, the insurrection in Washington, DC. And so that's kind of the context for when we're recording this. So it really does feel like it's right on time this week.
Eddie Rester 4:20
So Jemar, give us a little background on you. Tell us a little bit about your story so folks who don't know you, maybe haven't read your books yet, can kind of begin to piece together who you are.
Jemar Tisby 4:33
Yes, so I I'm an adopted son of the South. I grew up in the Midwest in the Chicagoland area and went to undergrad at the University of Notre Dame. And right after college, I enrolled in Teach for America and they placed me in the Mississippi Delta on the Arkansas side. And so I signed up for a two year commitment. I was a sixth grade science and social studies teacher. And about 17 years later, I'm still here.
Jemar Tisby 5:10
So got down here, fell in love with the place. Very difficult in many ways, mainly due to poverty, which is directly connected to the history of race-based chattel slavery and its legacy in the Delta. But spent four years as a sixth grade teacher, and then spent another several years as a middle school principal here in the Delta. And then spent some time in Jackson, Mississippi, going to seminary and getting my Master's in Divinity before enrolling at the University of Mississippi, you know, to get a PhD in history, which I'm writing a dissertation now. And so that's a little bit of my sort of professional and geographic journey.
Jemar Tisby 5:56
But along the way, I've gotten involved in racial justice, mainly through writing and speaking and teaching about it, but also started an organization called The Witness, which I'm the CEO of, and we have two divisions: the Black Christian Collective, which is our multimedia division, putting words to the expansive Black Christian experience. And our newest addition is the Witness Foundation. I'm really excited about it. The foundation functions mainly through a fellowship. And this year, we are identifying five Black Christian leaders who are doing justice work, and we are going to train them and fund them to the tune of $50,000 apiece, for two years. So a total of $100,000 investment in each of these Black Christian leaders. And we wanted to make a transformative commitment to Black Christian leadership, because we have so much confidence in our people being able to serve other Black people in a way that a lot of other fund granting institutions do not currently make that commitment.
Jemar Tisby 7:11
So I do that, and also write a little bit. So I've got two books out now. The first book is called "The Color of Compromise." It's a historical survey about the American church's complicity in racism. And then the second book, just released on January 5, 2021, it's called "How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice." And you can find out more about either of those books at jemartisby.com, or howtofightracism.com.
Eddie Rester 7:41
So when do you sleep?
Jemar Tisby 7:43
[LAUGHTER] In little 20 minute increments, here and there.
Eddie Rester 7:47
Well, my wife is a middle school principal, so sometime we need to get you all together to talk education. It would be...
Jemar Tisby 7:55
Trade war stories.
Eddie Rester 7:57
Trade war. She would love to talk with you about that.
Chris McAlilly 8:01
I'm interested in how your story kind of intersects with this particular newest book. You know, I think the first time we spoke, as we were trying to set up the podcast, you mentioned that this was the book that you really wanted to write and your publishers or editors, there was someone who encouraged you to go back and make the case historically that there was a connection between race and Christianity in America and to lay that out plainly. But it's, you know, from reading this book, it's very pragmatic. It's very much geared towards the question of, "Okay, we've had conversations about race for a long time, and the case has been made for these connections. The question is now what do we do?" How did you? What energized you in that direction? What is it that that kind of compelled you to write this one?
Jemar Tisby 8:57
Yes. So I always wanted to write this book. And as you mentioned, you know, it made sense to sort of lay the foundation. The analogy I use in my first book, "The Color of Compromise" is like going to a doctor. And if you go in the doctor's office, you know, not feeling well, and then she immediately prescribes you medication, but she hasn't taken your vitals as to what your symptoms are, you know, done any of the background work to try to figure out exactly what's wrong and jumps to a prescription, you're not going to trust that doctor very much to have a good solution.
Jemar Tisby 9:31
And so in a similar way, when it comes to racism and fighting racism, I think we need to pause before we jump to solutions. We need to understand how we got here, and that was the historical survey part in the first book. But I was always very keen on trying to do something to contribute to the solution, to address the issues that we're seeing. And quite honestly, it was a bit selfish, or at least out of a concern for self-preservation, because I was experiencing the pernicious effects of racism. And then I knew others who were experiencing it to an even greater degree. And so it was to alleviate harm. It was to prevent harm. It was to make sure that the people who were most adversely affected by racism were safe.
Jemar Tisby 10:28
And so I wanted to write this book as a way to contribute to that. The other aspect is, this is the question that always gets asked, whenever I speak about racial justice--it could be in a church, it could be at a college, it could be anywhere, if there's some sort of interaction or dialogue--the most frequent question I get is, what do we do? And so this is my sort of book-length response to that question.
Eddie Rester 10:55
But before we get to some of what we do, talk a little bit more about your experience teaching in Arkansas. How has that maybe specifically played into your desire to write this book?
Jemar Tisby 11:12
Yeah, so I've got an interesting testimony. I didn't grow up in church. I became a Christian in high school. And that was through the ministry of a white evangelical youth group, started going to a white evangelical church. And so from the jump, my first experience and interaction with organized religion was, you know, white evangelicalism and all of the racial stuff wrapped up in that. And so that's always been part of my story. And that even intensified when I stumbled into something called reform theology, which was even whiter than white evangelicalism, in many ways.
Jemar Tisby 11:53
And it was touted as this, you know, really rich theology. But then I got to the Delta. And there was a USA Today article in 2019 that listed the county I'm living in as the fourth poorest county in the entire United States. And walking into my classroom on two legs every day, were all of the effects of concentrated generational poverty. So you've got parents who are unemployed or underemployed, You've got a public education system that's underfunded and failing. You've got food deserts. You've got incarceration, taking fathers and other family members out of the picture. And so all of this stuff became real in a way that I had never experienced before.
Jemar Tisby 12:44
And then when I mined the theology I knew about for resources to address this, I found that it was woefully inadequate. And so that started me on a journey of saying, "Well, what does faith and Christianity really have to say about real world issues of material and wealth poverty, about racism and the power structures that are intentionally designed to keep certain people in power and certain people disempowered?" And so all of that led me to a rediscovery of the riches of the Black church tradition in particular. You know, Black Christians have been dealing with this stuff a long time, and there's a lot we have to learn from the Black church tradition. It also started me on a trajectory of disentangling or what they call decolonizing my faith and making sure that what I was learning wasn't solely filtered through the lens of racism and white supremacist theologians.
Chris McAlilly 13:52
One of the things that you encourage folks to do in your book, one of the practical exercises is a an exercise of awareness, and basically doing what you just did for us, which was to kind of go back and really think about your personal autobiography in terms of race. As I was reading that section of the book, I was just thinking back through my history. I'm the son and grandson of Mississippi Methodist pastors. And when I moved to, I went to college in Birmingham, small liberal arts school there, and then on to Nashville. And when I was in Nashville, I came across a man by the name of James Lawson, who had been kicked out of Vanderbilt for his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. He was one of the lead organizers, so definitely worth your time, if you don't know the name James Lawson, to kind of look back through.
Chris McAlilly 14:53
But he was this living, breathing United Methodist pastor who Vanderbilt was giving an honorary doctorate and a visiting professorship to at the time. And I audited one of his classes, Jesus Against Christianity. And one of the books that he gave me was "Hidden Wound" by Wendell Berry, which was this deep dive into a Southern agrarian writer, kind of mining his own history, personal history, family history, in terms of race. You know, I think at that time for me, that was the first time. I had no idea that Black students from Tougaloo had been barred from access to the Communion table at Galloway United Methodist Church in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. I remember that floored me, that part of the history. And then coming back, after going to seminary, coming back to Mississippi, just becoming more and more aware of the, really the economic disparity between white and Black churches in Mississippi.
Chris McAlilly 16:04
You know, I confess that it's hard to know even where to begin in addressing some of these matters. But I think that's one of the things that I think is there's a lot of wisdom in this book. But one of them is just kind of mining a personal narrative and seeing what's there. What, I guess, what are some of the other ways in which you would hope folks would engage? What are some of the other practical steps towards gaining awareness, if somebody wanted to get a grip on some things that they might do to confront racism?
Jemar Tisby 16:41
So I structured the book around a model I've been developing called, "the ARC of racial justice." And that's an acronym that stands for Awareness, Relationships, Commitment. Awareness, Relationships, Commitment. And I think all three components are needed to have a holistic approach to racial justice. And so in the first section of the book--there's three chapters on each of those headings--and in the first section of the book, I talked about awareness. And a lot of awareness starts with self-awareness. And so we're used to, you know, sort of absorbing information about racism. That's what the awareness piece is about. It's about building up your knowledge, looking at the data, understanding how race, racism, white supremacy, all of that functions. So you have a good knowledge base to approach this issue. And that's all valuable, we need to keep doing that. That's watching the documentaries that's listening to podcasts like these, that's, you know, doing anything that you can to find out more information.
Jemar Tisby 17:45
But one of the things I think we overlook when it comes to building our awareness is self awareness. And so I talk about writing your own racial autobiography. I love this one, because it's something absolutely anyone can do. The only thing you need is pen and paper, or, you know, keyboard and screen, and you can do this. And I give some guiding questions in the book. I ask the reader to ask themselves, what is your first memory of race? Talk about a negative experience you've had around race or a positive one. What did your parents teach you about race? Did they talk about it? Can you remember a time where you experienced overt racism or perpetuated overt racism? What events happened that spurred you to think about race and racism in a new way?
Jemar Tisby 18:41
I think that's vitally important. Because it's really difficult to push for racial justice, externally, if we haven't understood our own internal racial dynamics and how we've been shaped and formed by a society that is stratified according to race. And we are all swept up in that, in one way or another, but seldom do we take the time to really sit down, think about it. And I do encourage people to write it down. Because that's going to force you to choose words and be selective and to craft language in a particular way. And what that does is it forces you to make sense of things. And so I think we need to make sense of our own experiences, even as we're trying to push for external changes as well.
Eddie Rester 19:31
I was raised here in Mississippi, in small town Mississippi, 1500 people. And you know, some of my awareness began in high school when things would happen. One time I was in a high school singing group and our group got uninvited for the first time in about 20 years to a local church. The deacons uninvited us and it was simply because we had an Afrincan-American member, first ever. And, you know, I talked with that member this summer for the first time in 20 years, and reflecting back on that. Yeah, I think part of the awareness is even if you can go back and reconnect to some of those things from early in life, it deepens maybe what your part was or wasn't or gives you a chance to think the other side of it. I just loved that you start with awareness, because it, one it helps us think about where we are and where we aren't, where we have been, and where we might go. And I think that's a significant thing for all of us in the conversation, in the hard conversations ahead.
Chris McAlilly 20:45
I think that one of the things about the book that's interesting is you kind of toggle back and forth between individual and personal and societal and systemic. And those being two dimensions that oftentimes in Christian conversations, they tend to be associated with conservative or, you know, what gets labeled a kind of conservative theological trajectory, or a more progressive one, where conservatives are more interested in individual and personal sin and progressive folks are more interested in kind of systemic and structural change. You're trying to hold those things together. I think that it, as I read your work, it's part of the legacy of the Black church, that's the Black church has always held those things together. And it's really kind of the fight between white and white evangelicals and white progressives kind of tens to tear it apart. But I wondered kind of, if you would talk a little bit about that dynamic in your kind of theological and practical vision around some of these matters.
Jemar Tisby 21:53
Right, what we see often times in majority, white Christian spaces is a bifurcation of the systemic and institutional from, you know, the personal, or also the systemic and institutional manifestations of racism from the individual and interpersonal manifestations of racism. And, I mean, the Bible holds those together. They're not opposed or mutually exclusive to one another. And so in the book, I talk about things that we can do individually, whether that's writing a racial biography, or writing to, you know, a politician or support a lawmaker or something like that.
Jemar Tisby 22:38
But I also talk about the things that we can and need to do, collectively. And in particular, so to finish walking through the model Awareness, Relationships, Commitment, the relationship section is a little difficult to explain because those of us in racial justice work understand how the relational aspect can backfire, or has been misapplied. And so if you look at the white evangelical racial reconciliation movement, essentially, it defined racism as mainly an issue of individual interpersonal attitudes. It's one person not liking another. It is using the N word or treating someone badly. And if that's the problem, then the solution is to change your attitude and be nice to Black people, and say, "Well, some of my best friends are Black. I have friends across the color line; therefore, I'm not part of the problem."
Jemar Tisby 23:33
That's not what I mean by relationships as a way to push back against racism. What I talk about, I actually have a whole section in the book about how we got racial reconciliation wrong. But what I talk about in terms of relationships is that all reconciliation is on some level relational. You have to reconcile with a person, not an inanimate object or a principle or a system. It's people that we're talking about. And at some point, if all we do is build our awareness, get all this information, and on another level, we're pushing for these broader systemic changes, but we're never actually interacting with people--especially who are different--then it's easy to label those folks as other or as the enemy. And they cease to become human. They becomes something less than human. They becomes sort of a static idea, or a two-dimensional figure, that it's easy to hate.
Jemar Tisby 24:33
And so I want us to constantly be pushing ourselves to not just be around the people who are just like us, but to be around--and I'm not saying be in toxic relationships. Let me be very clear on that. Because a lot of Black people and Black Christians have been guilt tripped into staying in really unhealthy relationships with white people and white institutions for the wrong reasons. What I am saying is let's never be content just to be passive about who we know, but to be intentional about who we're getting to know.
Jemar Tisby 25:10
So I'll pause there. There's a lot more to go to. It was not quite on the nose in terms of your question. But I just wanted to make clear what I meant by, you know, what does it mean to pursue relationships in this journey toward racial justice.
Eddie Rester 25:26
One of the things in the book, you talk about acknowledging your church's racial history. Why is that significant? And how would someone go about digging into that if they wanted to really look at a church's racial history.
Jemar Tisby 25:49
So racial progress can't happen without truth telling and confession. And the reality is, in the United States, we have done not just a poor job--I heard someone else say this, but they said what has been uniquely bad about the United States is not that it's racist. You see racism globally. But what's been uniquely bad about the United States is our lack of confession of it, the lack of acknowledgement, and especially in historical terms. So you can go all the way back to the Civil War, and in the immediate aftermath, there's the myth of the lost cause being formulated as a narrative that romanticized the antebellum South. This is where you get the trope of the happy slave and the benevolent slave holder. This is where movies like Gone with the Wind come in. Those are all built on the myth of the lost cause.
Jemar Tisby 26:49
This is why to this day in the 21st century, we're still arguing about Confederate monuments. And right there in Oxford Square, right in front of the courthouse: massive Confederate monument. Because we haven't confessed the truth of the past, and on top of that, we've layered myths of the past. And that happens to this day. I think what's happening right now, in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, with all of this debunked talk of election fraud, is the latest version of the lost cause--making up a myth to explain a defeat, and then using that myth to push back against democracy.
Jemar Tisby 27:35
And so this happens in churches, too, where I think part of the process of repentance and confession and moving toward racial justice, before you can look forward to the future, you've got to look back into the past, to see where your congregation has been. So especially if your congregation has been there since the 1970s or before, and it's predominantly white, there's going to be some interesting history there. And so I would look back at the minutes of, you know, Elder or Deacon board meetings. I would talk to previous members or previous church leaders and see, you know, was there a big racial, racist event in your town? What did your church do?
Jemar Tisby 28:25
There's one church in Mississippi, where the judge who acquitted Emmett Till's killers, was an elder at the church. But that's really interesting history, because it tells us, you know, what that church would tolerate as far as racism. So I think it's a vital part of our process of building self awareness is to understand the racial history of the communities of which we're a part, even in especially our faith communities.
Chris McAlilly 28:53
The last section of the book is kind of the broadest in terms of work for racial justice, thinking specifically about kind of more systemic or larger factors. I think the most provocative or at least one of the more provocative dimensions of that section is the account of reparations. I think that's one of the... paying reparations, specifically to Black individuals or communities. Could you just talk through that as a public policy issue first, for folks that don't understand the dynamics? And then also kind of how you think of a place to start that conversation?
Jemar Tisby 29:39
I don't think we're having any serious conversation about racial justice unless we're talking about money, and that is because so much racial oppression was perpetuated in the name of money. So it's not that people weren't just racist on their own. But, you know, it begs the question why was, for instance, race-based chattel slavery so resilient? Why did it take the literal Civil War to finally abolish slavery? It's because there was money involved.
Jemar Tisby 30:12
At the end of the day, racism was a system that was propped up by economic exploitation. And even after emancipation... This is what I think people need to realize, because if it's... Reparations is mainly talked about in the context of reparations for race-based chattel slavery, which meant that for centuries, Black people labored and built the wealth of this country, and we were compensated not a penny. We didn't see the fruit of that work. That went to the land owners and the business owners and other people, but not the actual laborers. And even after emancipation, that problem was never remedied. Even the idea of 40 acres and a mule, which was Field Order 15, issued by General Sherman, that was rescinded, and that land went back to the previous land holders who were often slave owners. So that's never been remedied.
Jemar Tisby 31:13
But I also need people to understand that it's not even just about race-based chattel slavery. It's about what happened after. So I mentioned at the top of the show, living in the Delta, and in such an area of high poverty. Well, that's because after emancipation, landowners found another way to get cheap labor, and that was through sharecropping, which is a form of debt peonage. And I can go into all the economics of that, but basically, it kept poor Black people and some whites in constant, perpetual, generational debt, which meant they couldn't build wealth.
Jemar Tisby 31:46
And even if you did, say, during the Great Migration, get out of the South, go to an urban city, get a manufacturing job or something like that, it's not as if in the Jim Crow era, which lasted basically a century, you would ever be promoted to a position of authority over white people. It's not as if... There were some unions, even, that excluded Black people from the union, so they couldn't organize for better working conditions or higher wages. Of course, we know during when the GI Bill was being issued, Black people excluded from loans for home mortgages, excluded from financial support to go to college, to get a better job, to get more wealth, redlining, of course, Black people kept out of certain neighborhoods.
Jemar Tisby 32:32
And so the biggest asset most people have is their home. And we didn't have homes or homes in neighborhoods where they were valued at the same rate as white people. And so this continues on even into the present day, in terms of the financial and economic exploitation of Black people. And reparations is about making amends. And I'm talking about literal money. Writing checks to people, which is not unprecedented. We saw this in the pandemic, where the federal government did what a lot of people thought would never happen, which is write direct payments to individuals and families. So it is possible. It's been done in other cases, like the case of the internment of Japanese people during World War II, and other times. So it can be done, but it's a lack of political will. And it is outright opposition by a lot of people, including many Christians who refuse to acknowledge the economic and financial aspects of racism.
Chris McAlilly 33:35
You also mentioned that Germany has paid about $50 billion a Holocaust survivors and their families just as another example of cash reparations for atrocities in the past. I think it's interesting that, you know, the economic dimensions of a public witness from the Black church have been there. That's a through line that I see, particularly in someone, there's a, one of the heroes of Mississippi Christianity over the last 50, 60 years, is a man named John Perkins who started the Christian Community Development Corporation. If you don't know who John Perkins is, like, stop. Just stop the podcast, go look it up, and come back. He's...
Eddie Rester 34:25
Yeah. Get a book.
Chris McAlilly 34:26
Yeah, he is, you know, just one of those heroes, who holds together a really rich, biblical, Orthodox Christian theology with, as he talked about Christian community development... Talk about that, the ways in which economic development has been an engine and an instrument of racial justice, you know, really coming out of the Black church. I guess, tied together kind of the work that you're doing now, with that tradition.
Jemar Tisby 35:01
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's in the Bible that the gospel will be preached to the poor, that it will be good news to the poor. And of course, many Christian traditions have just completely spiritualized the poor to mean, you know, the spiritually poor only, and not the materially poor. So, and then the Old Testament is just rife with considerations for the poor, from the gleaning laws to the year of jubilee; you can just go right on down the list. And so there is a priority given to caring for the poor--Old Testament, New Testament, Jesus everywhere.
Jemar Tisby 35:44
So, you know, owing to that, when you are expressing Christianity in the midst of a materially poor and wealth poor community, how is the Gospel good news in that community? How is the Gospel good news, if it doesn't speak to their material conditions? And so, many churches that are comprised of marginalized and oppressed communities have seen this, in the Black church, as well. So it's always been part of it, that the Black church has been and still is the central community organizing organism of the Black community.
Jemar Tisby 36:29
And we can see this even in the present day, where Raphael Warnock, who's the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church which Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead in Atlanta, he just won the Georgia senate runoff race. And don't for a second think that the Black church wasn't a massive part of that in terms of organizing the community and mobilizing the community to go out and vote. And that is just one sort of manifestation of the way Black churches and Black Christians have had a holistic view of the gospel and good news to encompass their material conditions.
Jemar Tisby 37:08
Now, when it comes to money and economics and finances, you have a lot of Black churches functioning as de facto community organizations, you have folks like John Perkins, actually starting nonprofit community development organizations that recognize the need to care for the material conditions of the people. That dovetails with my work. I mentioned The Witness Foundation at the top of the show, because for a long time, throughout the history of this country, Black people have had to do a lot with a little. And that means anything, right, but especially having to do a lot with a little money. And man, look, if we could do this much, if we have been able to create this much and do this much good with a little, imagine what we could do if we actually had the resources we need.
Jemar Tisby 37:58
So that's where we want to make a difference. That's where we want to make an impact. And to that end, we started something called the Will You Be a Witness Campaign. It's our first formal fundraising campaign. We started that on October 31, 2020, with a goal of raising $500,000. We're at $200,000 raised so far. But the Will You Be a Witness Campaign is will you put your money where your racial justice commitments are? A budget, as you know, is a moral document. And so how are we spending our money? And even in philanthropy, are we supporting Black-owned, Black-led organizations? Or is it still, because there's something called philanthropic redlining, is it still going to majority white organizations with white leaders, even if they might be, you know, somehow tangentially doing some work in Black communities? Are we actually supporting Black leaders and Black organizations in our donations and our giving?
Eddie Rester 38:59
I was gonna let you do a commercial for The Witness at the end. But let me just go ahead and tell folks that if you're interested right no, in making a commitment, exploring what that might look like for you or for a group to do something, it's thewitnessinc.com. thewitnessinc.com. I-N-C, thewitnessinc.com. Cody's looking at me, like, "Just spell it correctly, Eddie."
Eddie Rester 39:25
So, yeah, I think as I think about where my money goes, and talking with wife and kids, it, you know, so often we just don't ask that question of who's leading? What are we supporting? Where does everything go?And how does it create support for a different narrative than what we've supported through the years? These are conversations I think that particularly white Christians just have not been had through the years.
Chris McAlilly 40:01
I think that there's a level of intentionality that I hear you calling for, Jemar, just in the way that you budget your time, in the way that you think about your money and the way that you think about your relationships, how you engage in social and political life broadly. I wonder, you know, I listened to the conversation that you had with Esau McCauley. We had him on the podcast last year. And that conversation was really interesting to me, because I feel like Esau was coming, seeing what your work and your witness as someone who's kind of stepped out of white communities, white denominations, and decided intentionally to work for Black-owned and Black-led organizations and denominations, etc. And Esau, seeing a path or work within a prominently white denomination right now and trying to reform kind of from the inside, but being partners in the work of the gospel. Just talk a little bit about how you got to that place and what your hope is, I guess, for the legacy of your work with The Witness, and in your writing, long-term, what you hope to work towards.
Jemar Tisby 41:27
Yeah. Esau and I are good friends. We go back and forth about methodology all the time. And I love it, because I think it puts on display the fact that Black Christians and Black communities are not monolithic, as well as the fact that pursuing racial justice, especially in terms of changing institutions, is not a one-size-fits-all approach. I very much view it as, you know, a calling and particular people are engaged in different callings in this work. And so he's part of the Anglican Church, which is obviously predominantly white. And in at Wheaton College, which is, you know, some people call it the Harvard of evangelicals. And so, he's doing a lot of great work in those circles.
Jemar Tisby 42:16
My personal experience, and that of many others who reach out and contact me is that we very quickly find the limits of what we can do toward racial justice in these predominantly white fellowships, nonprofits, schools, etc. And especially, I mean, in this era of Trump from, you know, basically 2015 when he announced his candidacy, all the way through 2021, those lines, those limits were highlighted, constricted, and very, very traumatizing.
Jemar Tisby 42:51
And so I was in the Presbyterian Church in America, I was on track to be ordained as a teaching elder. Within the PCA, only 1% of teaching elders are Black. But I was going to be part of that 1%. And I always tell people, I didn't leave. I got kicked out, basically. You know, there was no letter saying you are excommunicated from the denomination, but in so many different ways, the pushback I got ,the backbiting, the trolling, and then most importantly, the silence of people who I thought were allies, all very clearly communicated to me, "You're not welcome here. At least, if you want to pursue racial justice in this way, this is not the place for you." So I said, "Okay. You can have it. You can take it and the labels: 'evangelical,' 'reformed,' whatever. Keep it. I'm not going to spend my time and energy trying to claim something that was never built for me in the first place. Because you wouldn't accept all of me, including my Blackness and my concern for my own people."
Jemar Tisby 43:58
So I said, "Let's do our own thing," which is honestly how most historically Black denominations got started. We needed autonomy and independence from white Christian fellowships that were continuing to oppress us and exercise racism, even in the household of God. So what we're doing is nothing new, in that sense. And what we're trying to do with The Witnesses is build our own table. Instead of trying to beg for a seat at a table built by and for white people that would only accept us on a provisional basis, we want to be able to say the things we need to say and do the things we need to do for the people that we're concerned about. And the only way we can do that is you know, sometimes by starting our own organizations.
Jemar Tisby 44:46
But again, it's an uphill battle facing headwinds, because we don't have the resources. We don't have the financing. We don't have the connections, like many others do. There are other Christian organizations that are literally working with multi-million dollar, hundreds of million dollar budgets. And we could get by on their paperclip budget and do much more work for Black people than they've ever done. So that's what we're dealing with. And I encourage people, especially right now, if I can just riff one more second.
Eddie Rester 45:17
Absolutely.
Jemar Tisby 45:18
What we're seeing now is assisting in the church. And people are having to declare where they stand on issues, such as racial justice. And I think what's unique right now is the moral clarity of the moment. The moral clarity of the moment. So you've got kids being separated from their parents at the border. You've got the president saying, "Stand back and stand by," to white supremacists, ultimately resulting in an insurrection, which he signaled all the way back on December 20, when he said, we need to march on January 6, when they were going to certify the votes of the Electoral College. You've got all kinds of statements from Southern Baptist Convention leaders about critical race theory, and basically throwing everybody in those circles who's working for racial justice under the bus. So you have all of these instances where it's very clear: you can take one side or the other. And for so many Black people, when white Christians and white fellowships declare themselves on the side of racism and white supremacy, it's time to go. And so we've talked about the quiet exodus, that was the title of a newspaper article by Campbell Robertson in the New York Times, that quiet exodus is going to get a lot louder, and it's not just Black people leaving white churches, it's some disaffected white people, leaving those spaces as well. And all of that is because people have declared themselves to be on the side of racism and white supremacy, rather than racial justice in a way that is clearer than I can ever remember.
Chris McAlilly 47:03
I think one of the things about this podcast is that we want it to be a place where Christian leaders or intelligent Christians are thinking through matters that are important, but it's also a place we hope that folks who are beyond the church can find a conversation that nourishes their spiritual journey. And I think one of the things I would just say, you know, in this space, is that the church that you grow up in, necessarily, that's not the whole church, you know. There's a sense in which the Church of Jesus Christ is expansive, you know, and there's something that can be learned. I mean, and there may be a journey from one denomination to another, from one space to another.
Chris McAlilly 47:53
And, you know, I would just encourage folks, if they're finding themselves at the moment, homeless, or they haven't found a community of faith that really helps them move along the journey that is... I think part of what you're saying is that if there's a quiet exodus from one denomination or one place or one church, don't stop moving. Find another community. Don't just hang out there on your own. There are other spaces and there other churches and other denominations, always.
Jemar Tisby 48:23
Well, I think what this pandemic is teaching us is that, it's expanding our definition of the church. You know? It's not just a building. It's not even just one particular group of people in close proximity. And I say that without at all undermining the importance of the local church. Be part of a local church. But I also think it helps us understand that the church is the people of God, whoever and wherever they may be found. And so on this journey of racial justice, my church has expanded, if you will, because I've been able to connect with and link arms with other people of faith who are doing good work, and are on the path of Jesus, but they may not be geographically nearby, or folks who I expected or would have run into in a particular denomination.
Jemar Tisby 49:15
But I absolutely agree that don't stop journeying. Don't stop journeying. Don't stop looking, because after the exodus is the wilderness wandering, but the wilderness wandering is done among the people of God. And you move with and journey with other people along the way.
Eddie Rester 49:33
Towards towards the promised land, ultimately. And I would add one more thing, the church is always becoming. The church that was and is, is the church also that will be. Jesus is not done with us. And for those out there who may be kind of trying to figure, maybe you feel like, "It's time for me to step aside." I guarantee there are people who would love to do some of this work with you, have the conversations with you, to read Jemar's book with you, and begin the intentional journey forward.
Eddie Rester 50:06
We've got just a couple more minutes. I want to end today, and Chris is looking like maybe we're not gonna end. I don't... We'll see. You start in the book talking about civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer. What, as we kind of close out, what is it about her story that's so significant for us to hear and know, as we continue in the journey of fighting racism?
Jemar Tisby 50:37
Fannie Lou Hamer is such an example to me. She's one of my historical heroes. Born 1917 in sunflower County, Mississippi. The youngest of 20 children. Born into a sharecropping family, and she grew up with everything against her from an earthly standpoint: she was poor, Black, and a woman. And it was not until her 40s that she started becoming involved in Civil Rights activism. And she heard a presentation at William Chapel Baptist Church about voting rights. And she raised her hand as one of the people who would go register to vote in Jim Crow Mississippi, which was taking your life into your own hands.
Jemar Tisby 51:22
And sure enough, that very night after she tried to register and was turned away, because of the quote-unquote "understanding clause," where workers could ask you a question about any part of the Mississippi constitution and ask you to interpret it, and of course, Black people never adequately interpreted it to these white racists. She lost her job and was kicked off of the farm where she'd been sharecropping for years and years. But that didn't stop her. She went on to become part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and waged a quest to get seated at the Democratic National Convention, because the the political party in Mississippi was all white. And Mississippi, to this day has the highest proportion of Black people of any state in the country.
Jemar Tisby 52:13
She also was an activist for the poor, and tried to do something for poor Black and white people in the Delta. She started a farming co-op and pig bank and other initiatives. And what stands out to me about Fannie Lou Hamer is two things: number one, her credibility. No one could go to Fannie Lou Hamer, who had grown up in the Mississippi Delta, as a sharecropper, and say, "You don't know the struggle. You don't know the what racism is really like." She had instant credibility because of who she was and what her experiences were. Number two, what stands out to me about her is that she was explicit about her faith empowering her activism.
Jemar Tisby 53:02
I talk to a lot of young Black people today, and they feel like they have to make the choice between their faith or activism. You know, they can get real involved with Christianity, but that's going to take them away from doing something about racial justice on a broader level, or they get really involved in racial justice, but they have to leave their faith behind. And then I tell them about Fannie Lou Hamer. And I say, "This was one of the staunchest, boldest, bravest, most courageous folks who ere fighting for racial justice that you'll ever run across. And she did it not simply mentioning Christianity, but as a result of her Christianity. So what do you do with that?" And I try to let people know that those two can and should go together.
Chris McAlilly 53:53
I think that that's a great place to land the conversation today. Jemar, your work is important, and we appreciate what you're doing and are grateful for you taking the time to talk to us today. And, you know, I think we've named several different names of heroes. You know, I think for me, when the church has failed, or when I have failed the church, you know, one of the things it's helpful for me to remember that the church, the vision of Christ in the church is really embodying the saints. And those people, like Fannie Lou Hamer, who have gone before us, and I think having having those memories and lifting those stories up are super important. And then also, I appreciate the ways in which you've given us some practical things to do. So, Jemar, thank you so much for being with us on The Weight today.
Jemar Tisby 54:44
Thank you for having me. Let's do it again sometime.
Eddie Rester 54:46
Absolutely. And for those listening the book is "Fighting Racism." Go check him out at jemartisby.com.
Chris McAlilly 54:52
"How to Fight Racism."
Eddie Rester 54:55
"How to Fight," right. Thank you. Yeah, "How to Fight Racism." Thank you.
Chris McAlilly 54:58
It's all good.
Eddie Rester 54:59
All right. Thanks, Jemar.
Eddie Rester 55:03
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 55:06
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review, that's always really helpful. Subscribe and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 55:18
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]