Inclusive Activism and the Quest for a Just Faith w/ Lisa Sharon Harper

Embark on a transformative journey with Lisa Sharon Harper, a voice that rings with the harmony of shalom and the pulsing beat of hip-hop, as she unfolds a gospel that speaks to the very core of our shared human experience. In our thought-provoking conversation, Lisa, an esteemed theologian and author, sheds light on the complexities of identity, liberation theology, and the intersections of faith and politics. Her profound insights, drawn from her works "Very Good Gospel" and "Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican or Democrat," challenge us to examine the depth of our beliefs and the impact they have on the world around us.

Lisa Sharon Harper is a prolific speaker, writer and activist. Lisa is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, a consulting group that’s dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in the United States by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and common action. A columnist at Sojourners and an Auburn Seminary senior fellow, Lisa writes widely on shalom and governance, racial and gender justice, and transformational civic engagement. She also hosts the Freedom Road podcast. Lisa’s books include Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right, and most recently, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World–And How To Repair It All.

Learn more about Lisa on LisaSharonHarper.com, or follow @LisaSharonHarper on Facebook, @LisaSHarper on Instagram, or @LisaSHarper on Twitter.

Chapters

• 0:34 Lisa Sharon Harper's Interview on Shalom and the Gospel
• 12:50 A Journey Into Liberation Theology
• 23:03 Reflections on Identity, Politics, and Christianity
• 30:02 The Evolution of Evangelical Christianity
• 33:55 Understanding Deconstruction vs Decolonization
• 51:56 Exploring Fear, Politics, and Connection
• 56:09 The Power of Radical Connectedness

Transcript

Tamice: 0:34

Hey folks, before we jump into the episode just wanted to let you know there's a little bit of issues with the audio here. You'll hear a little bit of an echo when we get excited about the things that we're talking about. It shouldn't be too distracting, though. I just wanted to hop on and let you know that this episode does have a little bit of audio issues and we are aware. I did my best to edit it, but without further ado, here's my interview with Lisa Sharon Harper. What's up everybody?

Tamice: 1:03

Welcome back to this episode of Life. After Levin, I'm your host, Denise Pinterhounds, and I'm joined by the one and only Lisa Sharon Harper, who is, as you've seen on my TikToks and Instagrams, the goat. So Lisa Sharon Harper, for those who don't know, is a theologian and activist and author of several books, two of which we're going to talk about today, and her most recent book is Fortune how Race Broke my Family in the World and how to Repair it All. Lisa is the president and founder of Freedom Road LLC, a consulting group dedicated to crafting experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment and common action toward a more just world. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for being here, Lisa. It's good to have you.

Lisa : 1:49

Thank you, timmy. It's really awesome to be with you and also with your listeners and audience. It's an honor. It's an honor, thank you.

Tamice: 1:58

Thank you. I really just want to say how I came into contact with you. I read a very good gospel a few years back and the idea that the gospel should be good news was revolutionary for me, and the idea that hope springs from a cesspool of despair really helped me as I was trying to navigate. I wasn't really rocking with evangelicalism but didn't know how to name that. I had gotten back into hip hop, which I had given up because of follow Jesus and evangelicalism, those two things clicking for me, that hope can come from.

Tamice: 2:35

despair actually brought me back through hip hop, actually listening to narratives about God and coming back to God and the intersections of just being two things at once being problematic and also very, very just at the same time, and meeting a space where binaries were blurred, and I felt like hip hop did that for me. Back then you talked about the concept of shalom and completely revolutionized the way I think about what the point of the gospel even is. For those who don't know you, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey, how you got to that first book and what you were hoping it would do for people like me.

Lisa : 3:19

Well, first, I mean, it really wasn't my first book. I think it was actually my fifth book or something like that. My first book was called Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican or Democrat. Yep, I didn't even know about that. Go get that book. Hardly anybody read it because it was my first book and also the publisher didn't do a whole lot of marketing and I didn't know what I was doing back then what. But it really is a great book.

Lisa : 3:44

Here's the thing is what I and all of my books I've really just been using this opportunity to write and this opportunity to process my own experience and understand it. So Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican or Democrat was that space where I began to work out this concept of shalom. So one of the chapters was on shalom. It was actually the second to last chapter, and the rest of the book was really tracing the history of evangelicalism and asking the question if it's not Republican or Democrat, then what is it Right and who are these crazy people? And I just I do want to just say very quickly I'm hearing. I'm hearing some feedback. I'm not sure why Feedback.

Tamice: 4:35

Okay, let me see Turned down my. Is this better yeah?

Lisa : 4:43

I think so let's see One, two, three, one, two, three, check, check, check. That's better. I hear you better.

Tamice: 4:50

Okay, Maybe I'll just sit right here on the mic, I think my. I'm wondering. Let me see if the window's open. Hold on Sure.

Lisa : 4:58

Thanks, lisa. Oh no, it's okay Just.

Tamice: 5:06

So, yeah, I think it might just be the audience about side. I'm not sure what else I can do, because my headphones aren't turning on right now.

Lisa : 5:17

Well, okay, I'm wondering if it would help for me to put my headphones on, but I don't think so. I don't think it's about, I don't think it's on my side. So, okay, one, two, three. It's actually better now. I don't hear it anymore. Okay, and your voice sounds a lot better. Okay.

Tamice: 5:36

Yeah, so I can just jump back in. So you so Very Good. Gospel was the first book that I read, but that's not your first book, so tell us about your first book.

Lisa : 5:47

So Evangelical does not equal Republican or Democrat Was my first book. It was published in 2008. It was actually published. That was the year that Obama won the presidency, or one you know. Yeah, in November, it's 2008.

Lisa : 6:03

It was also only a few years after I left Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, which was and is a college ministry that I had been invested in for a decade. Before that, I got involved with the university as a, as a grad student at USC and then went on staff with them at UCLA, which was traumatic in itself, which is funny. That's a whole story, and I say that laughingly. It wasn't dramatic, but it's just a funny. You know, to go from USC to UCLA is like going from the US to the USSR and the 80s, but it was actually in many ways part of evangelicalism. It was, for me, a training ground. It was a place where I got leadership training and it was also a place that had very, very, very few people of African descent operating in the ranks, where I was located Very different in the Southeast, but I wasn't in the Southeast, I was in California, los Angeles, and where the city itself only had 6% African-American population and within university when I started, I think there were like five black people maybe, maybe 6 or 7? In the whole, university.

Lisa : 7:33

No, no, no, In the entirety of L of university in Los Angeles, oh goodness, okay, all campuses in LA, right? So, and here I am, I'm on staff and so I'm the only black person on my staff team. There's five black students at our campus at UCLA and they were absolutely my lifesaver, they were my lifeline all time. We still, you know, are connected and friends and but I have to say that there's a way that I learned the scripture that was both like a gift and also not helpful. It was a gift in that the methodology of, like how they studied the scripture through manuscript study and inductive study was amazing and actually a huge gift. I still, I still that's still how I studied the scripture today, and the reverence for the text right was amazing.

Lisa : 9:29

But it also inherited a lot of, a lot of the the conservative evangelical movements assumptions about that text and about its origins and about who wrote it and what their, what their circumstances was. It failed to ask actually critical questions of context and and tended, tended to fall along the lines of, and only that, but like prop up as, as quote, orthodox, the readings of the text that come out of Europe, which, when I came later to understand, really in the process of writing these, like several books before I got to the very good gospel, and then really with the very good gospel, that this text was not written in Europe. Shocker like no person in no person. No speaking role. In the entirety of the whole Bible. No speaking role is given. No, I should say no significant speaking role is given to anybody of European origin. I mean, I'd say the closest that you get to that is pilot and he killed Jesus. Why are we privileging Europe? Why are we privileging Empire, actually the social of Empire that is interpreted a colonized people's text. Why are we doing that? We did the absolute.

Lisa : 11:14

So you know, I don't, I did not have language for that back then, but what I began to see when I went on this pilgrimage about literally 20 years ago in the summer of 2003, was that what I had, my understanding of the text, my understanding of Jesus, my understanding of of of God given to me from the socialization of white Christian America, had nothing to say. It was mew in the face of the injustice my own people had experienced. It did not know what it was, just drawing a duh like a blank, and it hit me in the middle of this actually not the middle at the end of the pilgrimage, when I imagined, going up to my third grade grandmother Leah Ballard who, if anybody has heard me speak for the last 20 years, you've heard me talk about her, because this moment changed my life and changed my face. It changed how I read the text. I imagined myself going up to her door and knocking on her door.

Lisa : 12:25

This my third great grandmother, who was the last enslaved adult in our family, who we believe was likely a breeder because she had 17 children, although five of those children, actually they came before, before emancipation, and all five of those children are nowhere to be found after emancipation, so likely they either died or they were sold into the deeper south. She was located in South Carolina, so I imagined her and saying great, great, great grandma Leah, I have good news for you and I. And then you know her going okay, child, what, what is it? And then I say God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, but you are sinful and therefore separated from God. Or maybe I would use you know that that's the, the gold booklet. You know that I use college and campus crusade, right, but maybe I would use the, the, the cloud diagram, or maybe I would use some other diagram that that we were using around that time the diagram about brokenness. Oh, great, great, great. God has a wonderful plan for your life, but you are broken and therefore, you know, separated from God. I think she would literally look at me like I was broken, crack, because she'd be like do you not? Do you not see me? And also, do you not see what others are doing to me, do you not? Source of my brokenness is that I've been raped every day of my life and I've not because, you know, somebody got lustful. I got raped because somebody got greedy and put into the law that there was no repercussion for raping and having children by your enslaved people, and so breeding I might have breeding. So you got about how I'm sinful. So you know, it all crashed and I'm your depression.

Lisa : 14:47

Because, as an evangelical and also not just an evangelical, but as somebody who was a missionary to the college campus, right, like my whole life had been structured around the gospel I gave up theater. I was a theater person, right, my play and push the wind down won a national award, the American College Theater Festival, and was produced at the Kennedy Center. And when I got the award, it was given in the same breath, literally the same ceremony, where an award was given to August Wilson, right, yes, and I said no to that. I walked away from that in order to pursue this hollow gospel, this thin gospel that my own third-grade grandmother said child, are you smoking crack? Wow, whoa. So I was depressed for a year.

Lisa : 15:48

Yes, okay, and that led me to dig into the scripture even more, because, you know, mirzla Bolf later wrote a book called Public Faith and in that book he references theologians that actually talk about thick faith and thin faith. And I'm thankful that my decision was not to leave the faith just because I was disillusioned by this white, whiteified faith that I had inherited, that I had gleaned in this whiteified, white context. So instead, what I did was I spent the next year, actually the next 13 years, swimming in Genesis. The text would not let me go the script, the scripture would not let me go. The script, as theologian David Zach says he's based out of Fuller. Interestingly, he's a Ugandan theologian who is a bishop that has been excommunicated from Uganda because of his own standing up and saying what you're saying is wrong, what you're doing is wrong, and so he talks about how the scripture is not a text. It is a script, in other words, it is stories about what the Hebrew people believed was true in their relationship with them and God.

Lisa : 17:15

And I began to look at this text and ask the question how has my understanding been shaped from the halls of empire as opposed to from the space where it came from, which was the social location of the slave, the social location of the colonized, the social location of those who were called not human by the Roman and Greek empires? And so that changed everything. It changed my reason and it brought me to write the very good gospel and eventually, fortune and every book, every book. You know, it was the journey. The writing journey began with evangelical does not equal Republican or Democrat, and I wrote that literally as I was completing my masters in human rights, and so a lot of it is shaped by my thinking around human rights at that time and putting up this evangelical history against this question of are we doing right by people in the world and if not, why not?

Lisa : 18:32

And then my work took me into the work of doing justice in New York City and I met sojourners and through sojourners, met a bunch of people in New York City, interestingly enough, who want justice together. But there was no evangelical work in New York City that was actually dedicated to doing justice. So we started it. We started New York Faith and Justice and we brought together five streams of the church the evangelicals, mainstream, catholic mainline, but I've said mainline evangelicals Catholic Orthodox and the black church the historic black church to come together in New York City to end poverty. Like, we made our focus ending poverty and we found very quickly that we couldn't say we're ending poverty without actually addressing the issues poor people care about. So that led us to focus on three major issues over six years, and those issues began with police brutality, expanded from there to also include climate justice and environmental justice, and then finally, immigration reform.

Lisa : 19:44

And then downturn happened and because of that it was not sustainable and I ended up going to DC and joining the sojourners crew, which was doing much the same thing but on a national level, and so my role there began to be the director of mobilizing, which eventually turned into chief church engagement officer. In other words, it was my role to engage the church to do justice. So in that work. So you know, I've been doing this theological work over here since 2003, since that pilgrimage to ruin ruin everything for me, you know in a good way. And now I'm actually on the ground in spaces where the powers are in confrontation.

Lisa : 20:30

So, ferguson and Charlottesville, baltimore, at the time when Freddie Gray was murdered by police there and offering my body as a living sacrifice, like the scripture says, and then also traveling around and speaking on poverty and on why we, as Christians, are mandated mandated not just to care about the poor, but to change the conditions of the poor, to challenge the powers that are hell bent on crushing the image of God on earth. They are competing with the supremacy of God on earth, right? So? So what I kind of walked into was a life that is living out and working out a theology grounded in Shalom, and I left Sojourners in 2017 and just earned a call from God was to jump. And then God said I cannot catch you until you jump.

Lisa : 21:51

No idea where I was going from there. I had no idea I did. Now, all I knew is that I was, I was supposed to jump, I was supposed to move from the space that was comfortable, and so I did. I jumped and I had. No, I told you know, gave them. My last day had no idea where I was going and then freedom road began to kind of come into my dreams and I began to realize I want to take people on pilgrimages because that's what changed me. I want to give all the kinds of experiences that I had that changed the way that I see everything Right Scripture, myself, god, the other, the land, history. I feel like I have given eyes to see and my goal in life is to help others to grasp their eyes to see.

Tamice: 22:42

Wow. First of all, I feel like saying say love and doing some praise and meditation. Well, I am so curious about the starting of freedom road Now, like what I'm hearing even as we're talking, it's this very serendipitous intersection. My grandmother's name was Leah and she called me while I was in the prayer room at IHOP the night of Obama's election, in the middle of a solemn assembly Wow.

Lisa : 23:15

The first time A solemn assembly.

Tamice: 23:19

Morning, the election of the Antichrist, the first black president. So here you go, you've got black progress Like black progress is Antichrist. That's right, it was. I didn't, and again, I can't even say that even in that moment I understood. I just thought, as a Christian, this is bad, this is wrong, and I can't put my blackness before Jesus. I can't put my blackness before Jesus. And so my grandmother called what is your grandmother's name?

Lisa : 23:50

I want to hear what grandma said.

Tamice: 23:52

She just said well, she said hi, misi, and I said hi, and she said it's a momentous night and I was like yes, ma'am, and I could hear my family. It still brings me tears. I could hear my family just in the background, like the images you had of Oprah and Jesse Jackson just screaming and crying I was jumping on couches with my best friend at that time on that night, literally jumping on couches.

Tamice: 24:15

Yes, it's not the same as August Wilson plays, but it felt like I missed such a historic moment. I mean, my uncle ran security for the entire DNC. So it was like when, I mean, all of my family was so caught up in the beauty of that moment and here I was at IHOP crying or pretending to cry. I mean I couldn't understand why these people were so sad. And then my grandmother kind of like sort of I talk about it like she poked a hole in that silence for me. So I stepped out of the room, talked to her a little bit and she just said well, I just wanted to call and tell you I love you and I love you too. And I went back in and so I guess maybe she planted the dissonance a little bit.

Tamice: 25:03

Oh yeah, so that by the time Trayvon died, watching the people around me handle brutality, I was like this is not something. There's something about anti-blackness in this. So for me, that's where I kind of came into contact with you, and so it's so funny to me because, like, what drove me to getting your book was kind of the inner versity connection, but then also this idea of like what, like this devastation of like what have I been doing this, jesus? I've been following and working for and doing ministry in the name of is white.

Lisa : 25:46

I mean, it's not even just that he had white skin, which he did not, but that he was whiteified. Yes, like he had a white mind, he had a Western mind, he had a Western patriarchal mind. Yes, yes, and that was not Jesus. It's not accurate.

Tamice: 26:10

Mm-mm, mm-mm. And I don't know how we didn't learn that. I mean, I don't. It's so interesting to me to think like how did we not, how did? Why didn't it tell me? It's so interesting to think about it now, thinking back, but I do remember being like I don't have to believe this is not true and it was so freeing, it was extremely freeing for me.

Lisa : 26:34

Exactly.

Tamice: 26:35

And I'm like yeah, like that pushed me into my own work.

Lisa : 26:39

I love that. I don't believe this is not true. You know, that was actually for me for years, for years, I mean, like in 2009,. So I told you, you know, evangelical does not equal Republican or Democrat was published in 2008. And in that year, actually, I worked with folks in New York and also some other folks who were national partners, to put on a conference at Princeton Theological Seminary called Envision the Gospel, politics and the Future, and it was an election year, right. So we're talking politics and we're talking the future.

Lisa : 27:14

And you know, it was catalyzed by people who were the founders of New York, faith and justice, where our goal was to unite the church and poverty. You know, follow Jesus, unite the church and end poverty, right. So well, our goal at the conference was to begin to unite the church by bringing together the two factions of the church that split almost a hundred years before that, actually more than a hundred years before that but the split between the modernist and the fundamentalist edges of the church. They split in New York City New York would be around zero for that and New Jersey and Princeton, right. So Princeton had the great walkout of the 19, I think it was 1923, 1920s, and that's when they went out and they started, I believe, westminster Theological Seminary in protest, right. So the fundamentalists.

Lisa : 28:07

So we brought together evangelicals and liberal scholars to be in conversation in 2008 at this conference. Well, the next thing, we gathered down at Sojourners because we had this relationship with them and it was really helpful and great. And so we gathered at Sojourners and several of us on the evangelical side were like we have never really had these conversations, we're not ready to be in conversation with a bunch of liberal scholars and we don't even know how to talk about the LGBTQ stuff we don't know how to talk about. We don't know what we're talking about, gender justice and all this. These are the things they were talking about. We had never even had the conversations. So we, next year we started. Actually, over the next year, we started something called Evangelicals for Justice.

Lisa : 28:56

And it was a gathering of evangelical scholars and practitioners who were all working out our these questions, these critical questions, right, and we started to come together and it's in that context that I really did a lot of my wrestling, logical wrestling, and began to understand. Well, actually, I should say we began, I began to wrestle and many of us began to wrestle with and they're still wrestling, quite honestly, many of us. But do we call ourselves evangelicals? I mean, it's still called evangelicals for justice, right, Do I need to call myself an evangelical? I thought evangelical was, you know, basically meant Christian. If you are evangelical, you are Christian. If you are Christian, you're not necessarily. I mean no, if you are Christian, you are definitely evangelical. In other words, not every person who calls themselves a Christian is a Christian. Only if you're evangelical are they a Christian. It was really what I was brought to believe through my evangelical context.

Lisa : 30:02

And then it hit me. I mean, jesus wasn't an evangelical. Nope, all wasn't an evangelical. You, I mean not even Charles Finney would have called himself an evangelical. The creator of the altar call? He wouldn't have called himself an evangelical. None of them would have, because it was a movement of the Holy Spirit that got called evangelical in the 20th century when they looked back on it and they said this is what it means to be evangelical by historians.

Lisa : 30:38

But, and it was located movement, if you go way back in the 16th century, you know, in Europe. It was a movement that had a prophetic word at its time for its place in Europe. Yes, yes, Right, like Calvin and Luther in terms of the Reformation, like they had actual good things to say, you know, and prophetic words for their context. Yes, but but their words are not necessarily everybody's words. I mean, it's not. Why do I, a person of African descent, need to identify? I mean whole thought, as in like swallow home, the identity and a framework for the faith that was responding to a context for 500 years. 400 years. You know what?

Lisa : 31:40

I mean, yes, I do, and, and on a whole other continent, in another context. Yes, I can appreciate it, I can even say that's true, some of these things are true. But I can also say, but y'all didn't get this. Your context didn't give you the ability to even ask these questions that are salient right now.

Tamice: 32:06

Right. So I do see, I mean I do see a trajectory, though, like, if I think about it, I'm sitting on 40. So I feel like I know a little bit but have so much to learn. And in my time in Christianity, evangelicalism, reading scripture because I too really love the scripture and seeing this sort of trajectory of you know, sort of rebuilding, reframing, recapitulation, that leads to an embrace of humanity, less and less hierarchical, less and less controlling. It's almost like the narrative is kind of trending that way. So for Luther and Calvin to say like hey, you can read it yourself and let's make a way to you know, print this thing and have it disseminated to folks, that's really a great thing. Because now I got a text, you got a text, you know, everybody got a text, everybody got a text right.

Tamice: 32:59

So I do see that I think I'm wondering about how you know, as you're thinking about how you live and move in society, how people who are coming to these realizations about the scripture. I mean you've got basically TikTok, theology, theology happening. You've got, I mean there's so much information that's happening and you couple that with artificial intelligence, like what does wisdom actually look like? You know, as we think about where do we go from here? If we grew up Christian, if we grew up evangelical, if we still want to keep Jesus and nothing else like what would you say from your vantage point is the way forward for people like that? For people like me, that's kind of like, if I'm Christian, it's a light jacket. At this point, it's not. What will be your thoughts for that? I?

Lisa : 33:53

think. I think that the call is not simply deconstruction.

Tamice: 34:01

Yeah, okay.

Lisa : 34:03

And that's what I think what we're seeing mostly coming out of, you know, post-evangelical theology, right now ex-Fangelical. I don't know about TikTok, I'm too afraid of that platform.

Tamice: 34:17

You said TikTok is the usual thing.

Lisa : 34:21

Lisa, you need to be on TikTok. Like it will eat up my day. I can't do it.

Tamice: 34:25

Maybe Jesus will tell you to jump on that too, because we can use some wisdom on TikTok for sure.

Lisa : 34:30

Oh my gosh, oh Lord. Okay, maybe that's 2024, y'all Maybe that's 2024. But the practice, and actually the trend, has been deconstruct. But let me just tell you the difference between deconstructing and decolonizing. Okay, so deconstructing you, deconstruct you. Your sensibility is centered and you go into the text and you go into the faith and the history and the traditions and you determine what stays and what goes according to what you think, regardless of how thin or thick your faith is. You've made it.

Lisa : 35:15

You've seen something didn't like that. You know, didn't like the fact that somebody is raped in the scripture. Sorry, trigger alert, my bad, can we go back on that? And yeah, you, you might, you might see something and don't like that. Women are subjugated in the scripture. And because somebody told you some time at some point in your white, western patriarchal faith that because women are subjugated in the scripture, this is God's prescription for the world, this is what God wants for the world. So now you go, you see that, you deconstruct it, you take it out, you say I'm not going to buy it by that the scripture is bad and that's it. Well, I just want to say that is a white supremacist act.

Lisa : 36:05

Come on Talk to us, it is a an act of white supremacy. What you have done is you have centered still the white view of the text in order to determine your actions and relationship to the text. Woo Woo.

Tamice: 36:25

You might need another sentence, give us another sentence. So the Deacon colonizing.

Lisa : 36:29

On the other hand, Embraces the journey into a thicker read of the text, the script, zach would say. And it recognizes and centers the actual way of life. And it recognizes and centers the actual social location, historical location of the people who wrote the text yeah, and the people they wrote it to, mm hmm. And it asks the question the political location, mm hmm. It asks all of those contextual questions and when it does, it must land on the reality that those who wrote this text, every single person who put their hand to the pen or the quill, mm hmm, and wrote a scratch or a scribble in the book we call the Bible, Mm, hmm.

Lisa : 37:47

And the text of the book was either colonized or under imminent threat of colonization Wow, every single one. So that must change how we read it, mm hmm. So, therefore, when we look for Mm hmm In that context, understanding that only about 30 years before that moment, when Jesus walks into the synagogue in his hometown, only about 30 years before the year he was born, mm hmm, there was a major uprising, yeah, in Galilee. That was put down, yeah, by white supremacist Rome, mm hmm, mm hmm. And the Josephus tells us that 500 Galileans, 500 Jews, were crucified every day, men and boys lining the roads, mm hmm, every day, by a general who came through to squash the uprising.

Lisa : 39:06

So, when Jesus Goes into that synagogue and says I have come to bring good news, trust, mm hmm. To set the prisoners free, mm hmm, in his context he's talking about political prisoners, yeah, yeah. And the oppressed are his people, mm hmm. Who, in the context of Rome, which embraced the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato and Sophocles, mm hmm, who did believe that all of us were human, that only believe people who were white, male, able bodied were human, mm hmm, Mm hmm. And the throne was occupying.

Tamice: 39:59

Yeah, let's go there, palestine, Come on. You said he was born, he was born in Bethlehem.

Lisa : 40:06

Let's talk about it In that moment. Yeah, so when he stands up in the synagogue and he says I have come to proclaim release to the captives, to set the prisoners free, that it's not as I was taught in my whitefied campus crusade and intervarsity context, that he was talking about spiritual oppression, spiritual imprisonment so that they could relate to it from Starbucks or borders, yeah, okay, no, that's not what he was saying and it's his first sermon and his last sermon ever was Matthew five, right when he says. He says the righteous will say when did we do these things? When did we feed you? When did we give you water when you were thirsty? When did we visit when you were an immigrant in our land? When did we care for you? You were sick, when did we? And Jesus says the righteous.

Lisa : 41:28

That word righteous in the text it's not. It does not mean, as I was taught in my white context, evangelical context. It does not mean spiritually holy, oh hell, no, no. What that word literally means is the just ones, the one, equitable action and character, not equal. Equitable, which means fair. You cannot talk about fair action and fair character without talking about policy, without talking about systems and structures and the way things work, which is why the first, the original church, the first century church, the acts church, they were not in a democracy, they didn't vote. So what did they do? They created their own economy and alternative economy that had a different system, a different structure. Right, we leave that, we go. Aren't those Christians? Nice, the Holy Spirit is so nice. See what the Holy Spirit did. The Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, gave to the poor. No, no, no. The Holy Spirit took from the rich to give to the poor and make that the system of the very first church.

Tamice: 43:08

Oh my goodness. I'm like, oh my gosh, you have to teach us. You got to teach. I mean seriously, I think I'm like so being so unprofessional right now. But I'm thinking about these 18, 19, 20 year olds who are so far removed from that kind of a story about Jesus, like there is no world in which they would hear something like that. Oh my gosh, they're kind of they're in the midst of fog and they know what they don't want and they've not been presented with the Jesus or a take on scripture that speaks to that fairness that they care about. We know they care about fairness I'm thinking about March for Our Lives and you know Greta Thunberg and they care about equity apart from evangelicalism.

Tamice: 43:58

They did not give that to them. No, I think a way to navigate what Jesus gives us is a way to navigate these times and to have perspective and wisdom and a bit of resilience in these times, not because pie in the sky and it'll go away, but because someone else has been there, done that, seen that here is a way through that. So to me it feels like what we're missing is this we're missing hope.

Lisa : 44:31

With teeth right, we're missing a deep lens, a decolonizing lens.

Tamice: 44:37

Yeah, we don't have that Like honestly, anyway, shoot, I will run your TikTok, you just do sermons, I'll split them up. People need to just know that this is an option. I think that people are feeling like myself included that there aren't any other options. I don't want any parts of this. You know like, and I think about whiteness, I think about decolonization, but never before have I thought about the way I'm thinking about it now, because what you're making me picture is Palestine and what's happening there.

Lisa : 45:13

Let me let you know this that when you decolonize, you center the actual people who wrote the text, yes, center their intentions in writing the words. Yes, you center how the people who heard it would have heard it and how they would have responded, and you move from that place. They become the authority on the, on the text, not you in your 21st century sensibilities, your whiteified, centric sensibilities. And so you bow. You bow to the oppressed, to their their, to the ones who wrote the text, to the intentions behind the text and to the reality, but, honestly, that they too were human, that they were not God. The text itself is not God. The text is a text about God, reflecting what the people understood of God human frailness, right. So yeah, so you know what I might just be on this next year.

Tamice: 46:25

I mean I know that I'm like it's not tongue and cheek at all for me, like I'm there and I'm seeing what's happening and what's being said and it's all very jostling. I mean, yeah, like people are kind of tapping these houses of cards. What we don't have is that thing that's going to carry us, and they don't have the thing that's going to carry them in 15 years.

Lisa : 46:47

Right, that's right Through this craziness that we're experiencing.

Tamice: 46:51

Because everybody knows it's bad and it's maddening. But I haven't even been able to be on social media long term because of the weight of the fact that hundreds of people are being bombed by a country. Yeah, we can talk about that, let's have a part of like I don't even know how to. I am at a loss.

Lisa : 47:15

Don't get a loss. Take action, don't get a loss. Move your body, move your fingers, speak into that social media space. Your voice is necessary. I've been listening to you. Your voice is necessary Just today.

Lisa : 47:33

I mean, I think we all feel at a loss, but I've been actually thinking, and I think a lot of people are starting to catch on. This thing is run by money. Oh yeah, people are being silent on Capitol Hill because they're afraid of losing money. What if we revoke our money? What if we actually say I'm not donating one more penny until you say two words, three technically, but become this, become two words. These are now. When you say to these fire now, my donations will flow again, but until that time, I boycott you. That's what I'm on.

Lisa : 48:13

I boycott you, senator Schumer. I boycott you, joe Biden. I boycott you, kamala Harris, for allowing yourself and your brown body to be used by the powers of whiteness and maleness to put down Palestinian people. And it's not.

Lisa : 48:32

And look, jewish people are made in the image of God. They too are worthy of protection of the law, but not on the equal protection of the law, and so we are doing everything we can to get those hostages back, but we will not and shall not and cannot crush the image of God in Brown or any people in order to get anybody back. We must do it in ways that protect the image of God Absolutely. And in fact, when we crush the image of God over here, we make ourselves more vulnerable to being crushed over here, so that and Yahoo isn't doing the Jewish people one bit of a favor. In fact, what he's doing is he's he's upping, he's. He's upping the timestamp. Yes, the state of Israel, yes, whereas it had and still might have the ability to live in perpetuity and a flourishing state, but only only if the Jewish people abide by the shema.

Lisa : 49:42

If the Jewish people actually love their neighbors, to be feared by your neighbors. Love your neighbors. Love, love extravagantly, yes. Love freeze Love. Love sets free, love sets up a system where all people made in the image of God your text, oh, israel, your text, you are the ones who told us all that we are all made in the image of God, that we are all worthy, all humanity, what it means to be human is to be made in the image of God and therefore called by God to exercise dominion in the world. So then, why are you crushing the capacity of Palestinians to exercise dominion over their own damn selves?

Tamice: 50:47

Where does it come from? I'm white supremacy yeah, that's, and money it's it's so clearly empire in a way that I can't. It feels like we've. I mean, I can go to the text and I can look at it and go, oh my gosh, like this is what Empire looks like. Yes, yes, and yet being done in my name, right? Joe Biden is going on TV and saying America stands with Israel. No, I do not. I do not stand for this.

Lisa : 51:25

This is not humanity.

Tamice: 51:27

Absolutely.

Lisa : 51:28

Absolutely, america must stand with humanity. Israel is our human, jewish people are human, palestinian people are human, arab people are human, all people are human. And until, until America stands with humanity, than America, america is complicit in genocide.

Tamice: 51:56

I'm wondering about how. I've been wondering about the fear of you know, like once you, the idea that once you tell a lie, you keep telling the lie. I'm wondering about America being afraid of all her skeletons. Oh, that's so it's. It's too late to do what's right, because you'll have to now start to name all the things that you did wrong, which to me feels like what is the hope? And then I mean I see, I know we're running out of our time, but I see brother West Coming to the forefront. Do you have thoughts about that? Or like what? How we're? How can we navigate an election year? What are the things that we can be thinking about?

Lisa : 52:40

I can't say I'm in deep prayer about this election year. I am not. I'm committed right now. Until Kamala and Joe say ceasefire, I will not vote for them. I just won't. I can't, not in good conscience.

Lisa : 52:57

That said, you know I have to. I have to find a candidate that can win, and I do not believe brother West can win. And because we cannot have we I mean literally, it is, it is existential we cannot have Trump back in the White House. Yeah, that's just. It cannot happen. And it would happen would happen if, if brother West, I love him, I have marched with him several times, we have laughed and hugged and cried together, both in Ferguson and in Charlotte. I believe that brother West is more valuable outside of, outside of the halls of power, than he is inside. I believe is a profit, and it is incredibly easy for profits to be co-opted once they enter the halls of power. And so I don't want brother West inside the halls of power, I want to free, to fully push, because once he goes inside, it will be another story. And so we need him out.

Lisa : 54:09

And I'm still looking for who that person is, who needs to rise up and who will respond to West outside. Yeah, you can actually win. That is my priority. And I don't know. I'm looking for God. I'm looking for God to part the waters. I really am. I'm literally praying for God to part the waters, to move the mountains, to move this course of streams, because that's what God does, that's what our God does, and so I believe, I believe that that is possible, but I also believe I do not need to sell my soul in order to, in order to get Shalom, in order to get any hint from God's peace, because God's peace comes in God's way and you cannot get God's peace by going against the ethics of God. You just can't.

Tamice: 55:01

I'm just unbelievably grateful for this conversation and feel kind of like there's a comma for me on this conversation. It's true, in the midst of this conversation, and I guess one thing that I ask everyone that comes on the show is kind of know what are some words we can live by? And so, if you don't mind thinking about kind of the way I describe my listeners, if you don't mind maybe leaving us with some words to live by in this hour, yeah, really helpful.

Lisa : 55:43

Connect, connect. It has become my core belief that Shalom, that thing I talk about in the very good gospel and that thing I write about, was broken in my family and has a possibility of being restored in fortune. It is ultimately really, truly about connection. God considers very good Connectedness to self, to the story of yourself, To the story of your people, to the land that you live on, to the land of your people Radical connectedness. Radical connectedness to you Across all the Genders, radical connectedness with the rest of creation, radical connectedness with the systems that govern us.

Lisa : 56:53

So we are in the conversation. We do not leave them, leave the system, to do what they will. We are in conversation, we are pushing, we are shaping, we are connected to the systems and structures that govern us and shaping those systems and structures, especially in the context of a democracy which we have the blessing to be a part of, and understanding that no democracy is perfect. The reality is that for people of color around the world, for marginalized people, not even just people of color, all marginalized people the kind of democracy that has been structured here in the US is the best possible system that we currently have to protect the least of these, because it offers the capacity to exercise dominion, to exercise stewardship in the form of the vote, and so connect with the structures and systems and call them to account and protect the capacity to vote.

Lisa : 58:09

Connect, don't disengage. Connect, and when you do, when you become more connected to yourself, to your body, to your spirit, to your soul, to your story, to your family, to those who've been estranged, you'll find that that it's in that space, that in between these, where you are connected, that is where heaven is. Yes, that is where Shalom lives, mm-hmm.

Tamice: 58:48

Ache, ache. Thank you so much. I'm hoping to have you back.

Lisa : 58:57

I would love that. Thank you.

Tamice: 59:01

Thank you for listening To pick your money and your heart is donate to Subquatcher Inc and clear the path for black students today.