Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Record Live is a conversation about life, spirituality and following Jesus in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
And we're back with Record Live for another week. Zenita, great to have you with us. Thank you.
It's good to be here.
I'm a little on edge. We have 30 minutes to talk about like such a big issue.
It is a big issue. It is a big issue. So let's kick it off and we'll bring our special guests on.
We're very blessed, this afternoon or whenever timeframe you're watching this to have Dr. Maury Jackson from the U. S. He is the associate professor of practical theology at La Sierra University, which is an Adventist university , in California. Riverside just outside of Los Angeles there?
And we have Nathan Brown. He's the book editor at Signs, Publishing Company, and they've put together this volume, A House on Fire, talking about how Adventist faith responds to race and racism. So huge conversation, a huge topic and a really important one. So let's get them on line with us now.
Welcome gentlemen. Great to have you with us.
Listen, it is a massive topic, and we appreciate you guys putting. This book together. So you were both editors on this project. It's a series or a collection of essays from a number of, I mean, I looked down the names. There are a number of, , theologians, prominent people , in the Seventh day Adventist church that have, put together their thoughts on the church, how it interacts with, engages with this topic of racism.
And so, , if you're watching this and you think, Hey, something that comes out of this discussion is really interesting. I'd like to get the book, keep watching. And at the end, we have a special code for you. If you're watching, you get a 10 percent discount from our Adventist book centers.
But as we start, this conversation, perhaps as editors of the book, what was something that stood out to you, perhaps surprised you as you pulled together this collection of essays and as you, you worked on this project? We'll go to you, Dr.
Maury first as , our guest from America. Well,
thank you. Thank you so much, Jared and Zanita and Nathan. Thank you for the privilege. of being invited to co edit with you. I think,, what I learned the most is that I have a brother from another mother with Nathan because we are kindred souls.
I think that I learned the most and I deeply appreciate. In ways I cannot articulate verbally, but I do try to, bombard him with text messages and shower love on him that he's probably saying that's enough, that's enough, but it's, it's real, it's real. The other thing is I was impressed. And surprised with how up to date the contributors were with the current literature on anti racism.
That they are all conversing with conversation partners who are recently published, well known, and often sometimes they are in conversation with the same authors. And I thought that was an impressive, awareness of how Adventist scholars and practitioners and, , those who are on the front line are informed.
And I think that is good. It means we, we are able not only to witness to each other, but to be conversant with those in the broader.
Yeah, this book grew out of a conversation that Maury and I started having in 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd and the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that went right around the world in the second half of 2020. And we started talking about this and , what could we do about this?
And where could we find other people?, we were both very passionate about this topic. We felt that not only should we be saying something that but Adventism, when it actually looks at the world around us, has significant things to say and offer to the world around us, and there's some of the really significant social causes and projects of our time, and so that was kind of where this book came in, so thank you.
Then we knew there was a few other people that were involved in the conversation. Both Maury and I had been involved with Dr. Kendra Haloviak Valentine, having those conversations with her as well, and sharing reading recommendations with each other. But then we found, as the ripples went out, as we were inviting people to join in, all these other people that were deeply engaged with these topics as well.
And, , one of the best ways to use this book, other than just getting into and reading it, is to look through the reference list, because there's some pretty amazing, reading recommendations that you'll discover in that process. In the fine print.
Yeah, it's such an awesome collection, and it also, like, points to so many other references, like you were saying, but I think one thing that...
Like, I love just the cover and the title. I judge a book by its cover, basically. , but, before we get into things, can you tell us, like, it's a catching title, like, A House on Fire, can you tell us a little bit about that, where that came about and what that means?
Yeah, well, there's a few different references through the book itself to that title.
But probably firstly, it comes from James Baldwin, the 1960s black philosopher and writer and poets and, rebel, , who, you know, in his, his sort of definitive work, The Fire Next Time, and You know, he even in that makes the comment about, do you really want to be well adjusted and integrated into a house that is on fire?
, talking about the context of race and racism. So that's kind of probably our first, place to start. But the first chapter in the book,, is also references,, the book of Amos and God kind of, you know, get yourself together or my fire will break out against your house. So there's all these resonances, even in the Bible itself, that refer to this kind of imagery of a house on fire and, you know, a place that we, that should feel like home, but certainly isn't a safe place to be and, , that , sometimes we're called to leave the house, sometimes we're called to, , take drastic action, to save the house.
I think also, Nathan, if you remember it, we were, we had a working, title initially that was moving, but we wanted , that house,, metaphor to be a part of it. But we were talking about movements like a, a house of cards playing the race card., we had like, the house of God,, Beth El,, and we were playing around, but I think when Janice Dwight, Dr.
Janice Dwight brought her chapter on Amos, House of Fire moved to the top because she really did an excellent exegesis of , the book of Amos and the relationship. Between God and the people of God and the house of God, and where people can have liturgies that, are high and, glorious and majestic on the one hand.
And then they're treating people in the world in such, such a bad way. So it's almost as if, um, our liturgies should be a microcosmic example of what we expect the macro world to look like and live life and to the degree that distortion. , is present, then we risk the fire of God and that's really when she started to do her work there, we started to say, I think, uh,, a title for the book has manifested ,
in the forward to the book.
, there's the statement,, Dr. Matthew Burdett writes the forward , and he talks about, and I've heard this. So I know he's not making this up the argument that the church shouldn't get involved in social issues because we have to focus on evangelism and he does a pretty good job of sort of dismantling that, or he says it's a good question to ask.
What is the church's mission in the world, but then, , where do we go from there? , and is racism are some of these social issues, actually the church's mission in the world and how that looks like big, broad question, but in a nutshell, can you tell us why should the church be involved, in some of this and to what level, because there's,,, there's hints of what we said in the intro that actually the church has set up as a movement, the Adventist church, to address these issues really well, but some people even within the Adventist church argue, but no, this is distracting us from our mission, which is to let the world, know, the end is coming.
Jesus is coming when we have that urgency of mission. I know it's a big question, but how do we start to grapple with that?
I would say this, I like to say it this way. I want to remind. Folk that the first Adventist was the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist. He was proclaiming the first Advent and he models what we should be doing as Adventist in the second Advent. So what did he say? He preached from Isaiah, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, let every valley be exalted, every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked places made straight, the rough places made plain, and then the glory of the Lord will be revealed. And then when you go to the homilies that John is preaching in the Gospels, when they come to him and say, well, what should we do? It was all about social justice., you have two coats, give one away.
Do these things. So the idea that we can detach. And embodied witness of what the kingdom looks like in its ultimate reality from our mission is almost like what Janice was talking about in, in the, in the Amos passage. You know, we can't divorce the lived experience, of our witnessing community, , from what we are proclaiming is , the church in the eschaton, the church in the end.
It's already realized there. It's actualizing here. And if it's not actualizing here. Are we on mission or are we off, are we off task? I think that's a broad way of talking about it. Nathan, what do you say?
Well, the topic of my chapter in this particular book is actually on our committed Adventist inactivism and about how we've kind of assumed that we have this position of non engagement.
And one of the problems with that, it's a little bit like how Adventists say we don't dance. When we do, we do at our cousin's wedding, we do it really badly because we've not thought about it until we get to the point of. Oh, well, we might do that., whereas people who take it seriously, learn how to do it well and do it thoughtfully and carefully.
And I think that's the same with our political engagement. We do engage politically. Things that we do as a church certainly , have an impact. And,, we are a voice and should be using our voice more, I would argue, in the world for the good of particularly those who are marginalized and not listened to.
And so we need to actually faithfully study how we can better use our, to be better stewards of our voice and our influence in the world. Because we do have an influence, it's just whether it matters and whether it means anything. And the more we are intentional about it, prayerful and faithful in doing that.
The more it will be a presence and a force for good in the world
around us. If I could follow up, it's almost like we think of which gospel, right? If you're talking about where to proclaim the gospel, what does that look like? What does that mean? And I'm thinking about Howard Thurman, who wrote Jesus and the Disinherited.
He begins by reminding people. Jesus was a Jew. Then he says Jesus was a poor Jew. We know that by the offerings that his parents brought for his dedication, right? Then he follows up. Jesus was a poor Jew under Roman occupation. So it's not as if the gospel we proclaim is some disembodied, , platitude, but It's, the story of a witness of one whose identity was located among the disinherited.
So that's a part of what we are trying to do as we think about the movement of Adventist Christianity. Hmm. Be faithful to that.
Yeah. I love that dancing analogy, Nathan. And I feel like as a church, this is a generalization and probably also as Australians, we are quite like passive about the holy shoots.
Like we just don't talk about it. We. Kind of just, a lot of us just push it to the side, because it's divisive, like it, it's a sensitive topic, and so, I think we have this wrong attitude, but why do you think, as Australians, or as a church, we just do that? Is it like a cultural thing?
Is it a sin issue? Like,
Hmm, yeah, I mean, for one thing, I think it's a position of privilege where we can ignore it. Some of us that are in certain positions can ignore it much more easily than others. For those who, every time they step out their front door, it's an issue that they confront or that confronts them.
It's not an optional thing. It's the reality. And so for those of us who are in relatively privileged positions, to recognize and be alert to and be empathetic and sensitive to the reality that our experience in the world is not the experience Of even our neighbors, that people have very vastly different experiences of our same communities, depending on what you look like as much as anything else sometimes.
And that's something that as people of faith, as people who are concerned for our neighbors, that is something that we need to even prayerfully say, this should be a priority for me to have growing sensitivity to these issues. And then they become much more urgent.
Because when we actually can see how people are being hurt, people are being crushed, people are being oppressed and marginalized by these realities in our society, then we can't just shrug our shoulders and say, Yeah, I'm not sure if that fits quite within my theological paradigm or whatever. It's just, this is an issue in the world that must be addressed because it hurts people, it damages people, it destroys people's lives.
And that matters to us.
Yeah, and I think in the U. S. they also avoid it, but they avoid it in certain companies. What do you mean? You know, depending on if they're in close groups, they may talk a lot about it. But when they get into interracial spaces, , it's a delicate matter,, and so, yeah, this is a question of privilege and freedom , and posture.
And what I mean by that, I think of , Andy Lampkin, Dr. Lampkin, he and I were friends. , we went to college undergrad together. I had no idea of the story he had, the personal story he told, until I read it in this,, in the chapter he submitted. But it brought me to tears because I had the same experience of being spat on as a kid, you know, by older men in cars. , and you realize posturing, you don't even have the space to look weak and to talk about that experience, even though you're a helpless kid, when these kinds of moments happen, you kind of. put them aside. And this became a moment to think maybe there should be new ways of how to talk about these experiences to bring this kind of painful, experience to the forefront, removed by decades.
But maybe there's another story about just levels of psychological hurt that people still carry because of the wounds of Racist.
I guess the title of our broadcast today is the church racist. I guess we use that as a little bit of a click baity question. I think we could say, yes, In many ways, there's racism harbored within all, institutions that have people who are broken ,, and, fallen, a lot of people may struggle with that question because they would say, of course, the church is not racist.
It's God's house. It's not a racist place. It's not a simple answer, but if we can start at that point to continue to unpack,, this topic, is the church racist? Because it seems to me we like to trot out, and I believe there's a chapter in the book,, Where , I forget who the author was, but, they reflect on a good positive story about race relations that we love to tell.
I think it was Willie White, , not Willie, um, his brother and the work amongst the African American people in the South. And then there's the stories we hear about the hospital turning people away, people
dying. I think you're talking about Mark Carr's chapter.
Mark probably probably and so we've got these we've got these examples in Adventist history So if someone wants to say hey, the Adventist church is racist they can find evidence, right?
But if they want to say, no, we were fighting for abolition, we have a heritage of, addressing these issues positively. So we can't be racist. It's in our DNA, how would you see the state of the church today in this day and age?
Let me tell you a really big story. One of the revelations for me in studying race, and I came across this in study, in a master's program I did in justice and theology and, across the mid twenty teens, and, I've had a long passion and interest in the topic of justice and the Bible's call to do justice, but I kept discovering that every time I turned over a rock in trying to look at issues of justice and injustice in the world, that racism was there, that it was kind of the operating mechanism By which so much of the justice exists in our world and is allowed to continue.
And so then you start saying, well, where did racism come from? And let me take the big picture church as in Christianity., basically racism as we know it in the world today was, was a theological innovation of the 14th and 15th centuries. Now, that's kind of something that takes some big kind of study to get through because 600 years of Christian history, , takes a fair bit of getting your head around, but to actually go deep into that and to reflect on the fact that so much of our theology, so much of what we mean even by us, by talking about church, so much of the theological, what has been basically the theological underpinnings of the development of the modern world.
in the last 600 years has, is based on this doctrine of racism, doctrine of discovery in the colonial kind of setting basically, the Pope in 14, whatever it was, gave an, explicit instruction, you know, a papal decree that said to the European powers, you could go out and basically you can enslave, you can exploit, you can, displace, you can rip off everybody in the world that doesn't look or believe like us.
And that then set the tone for the next 500, 600 years of the world's history. You know, 90 percent of the world ended up being colonized by one or other of the European powers. We have the transatlantic slave trade, and we have so many of these other things that set up the mechanism, the economy, and the world as we know it today, based on a statement of theology.
Now, so we get to where we are and we say, so we as Adventists want to be people of the Reformation, but the Reformation hasn't yet spent a lot of time really focused on the deep theological roots that underpin the world as we see it and the injustice in the world today. And so there's two things that I think that we get to as a church is to say that we,, if we recognize the theology here, that's.
To put it really simply, we don't believe that, we don't actually believe what we say that everyone is created in the image of God. Because if we did, , we can't do this. We can't continue to do so much of what we do. We say, well, it's firstly, it should be a position of some, , reflection, some humility to say, well, our theology has been colonized.
Now, theology has been a colonizer and colonized for the past 600 years about this. It is very deeply entrenched in so much of how we think and what we do, even as an Adventist church at the end of that history that simply came lately on that history, but largely inherited most of that history and those assumptions.
But secondly, that we are people that know what to do with theology. Kind of the Adventist project is, can we come up with some better theology for how we live in the world, how we understand God, what God is about. And so we then have this challenge. There's nothing more Adventist of saying, we're going to try and come up with some better theology around this particular issue.
When we see the urgency of it in the way people are treated, abused, exploited, and excluded in the world today. Then we say,, we've got some reformation work to be still to be doing here. And that to me is exciting. But it's also something that gets back to the premise of the book, what Adventist faith can contribute to the issues of race and racism in the world today.
We can get back to just even if it is as simple as insisting that every person we meet is created in the image of God. And of course that has all those implications,, after that,
I'd like to get, I'd like to get your answer, Dr Mori, but I just want to reflect on something that Nathan said there in terms of,, and I think in your chapter, you, Dr Mori, you reflected on some,, criticisms of , the white fragility.
Book and how they were talking about taking out,, theology. It would almost seem that people would argue that theology needs to be taken out of this conversation. , it, it shouldn't be used. But what Nathan's just shared with us is that in fact, theology was used to set up this scenario in the first place, and that.
In some ways, you have to fight fire with fire. We need theology to overturn the theologies, the bad theologies that have set up this scenario in the first place. Just to perhaps yet, I don't know if our audience is thinking the same as I am, but that's what I'm hearing. When I'm hearing Nathan say that, I'm like, Our theology has to be better to fight that misapplied theology in the past.
But yeah, please go on. No,
no, Jarrod, that, thank you for bringing that up because it makes me think of one of the, I've slogged through some books that I thought, man, was it, is it really worth it? Once I started and I got about a third in, I sold my work. One of those books was John Milbank's book, Theology and Social Theory.
Theology is It's a social scientific tool, so those who want to pull it away, I would just say,, sit with John Milbank and watch what he does with all of the, in fact, I, I'm, I'm reducing what he's saying probably, too much, but he's pointing out that all social theories Sit on a mythology. They often move the mythology quick and then start showing you the operation of the skills of how they can illuminate social phenomena.
But they all have a story. They sit under and sit on and that story is their theology. So it's either an anti Christian theology or heretical Christian theology, but it's all a theology. And so we don't have to run from ours as a social scientific tool. That being said, I would say, and, I like that Nathan dealt with the broader church, because for me, the church is one, we don't have Adventist church.
Baptist Church. Catholic church. There's the church and the catholicity, of the church means that it is a universal church. So to the degree a church sees itself that way. , it is actualizing toward the way the church will, is realized in the eschaton. So when, let me answer your question directly, is the church racist , in the eschaton, the church realized is not racist.
Every nation, kindred, tongue, and people are there, right? That's the realized church. The church actualizing toward it is racist, without a doubt. And what that means is that the church has to not only
Find itself a new every time in its worship and in its practice, it finds itself, it reveals to itself and manifest itself over and over again by being faithful to watching for those moments that Nathan has pointed out. Many of the authors have pointed out this historical development of racism, but our heresies aren't only in what we say, it's in how we act.
A, a heresy is a turn away. So our ortho proxies are oftentimes manifested as the heresies of racism. , our orthodoxies have their challenges. So I, when I think of it, I think of,, let's look at the broader James Cone, who many of the authors were reading. I read every book the man wrote, and I thank God for him, but he points, I mean, he's pointing out that, that the doctrine of white supremacy in the manifestation of the Christian church in America was in fact a Dorsetic heresy.
This is that, that ancient heresy, of God seemed to be in Christ, but could not be in a man. And he says the docetism is God can't manifest himself. Christ can't be , in the color of this flesh of these black people. And so we have to find a way of talking about Christ that excludes that option.
And he said, that is docetism. It's a theological heresy. All right.
, but then let's go to the Adventist community. Ask yourself the question, a unique forming of a Christian denomination at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.
How did the ethos of that era shape the way even well intentioned Adventist pioneers thought? When you hear Uriah Smith talk about the land beast of Revelation being the Americas and being there because it was sparsely populated, When scores of millions of indigenous people were killed. This is someone who's located in a Eurocentric understanding of the world and history that is blind to the fact that genocide has made these numbers low.
Not that they were low. Right? So it's reading backwards into history. We have to be critical of that., we have to think about the fact that even when John Byington's brother, Anson Byington, John Byington, the first president of the General Conference, his brother he writes to Uriah Smith saying, Hey, look, man, I'm not going to re up my subscription of the Review and Herald because you all are failing to deal with the slave question in your publications and you're right, Smith tells him, well, the second coming will reform the institution of slavery.
And he fires back and says, well, would the editor of the Review and Herald wait for the second coming to eat his breakfast? And then he goes on to say, you know, we have to be in solidarity with people who are suffering, right? So, the issue is, yes, not all, not equal, but the church is working together, actualizing toward the eschaton, where we will realize ourselves in the way We are to be fully known.
I hope this is A way of helping people both, not only be self critical of the church, but be hopeful as we work forward , in this world, with an anti racist Adventist agenda.
Yeah, love that. I've heard, I would love to keep unpacking this, but for time's sake, I'm gonna change direction a little bit.
I've heard a lot of people debate that, for example, with Australia that they, They're like, we didn't do anything, it wasn't our generation, so can't we just kind of , move on? And Ellen White, when I was reading like, people talking about this book, she says, Our nation owes a debt of love to the coloured race, and God has ordained that they should make restitution for the wrong they have done them in the past.
Those who have taken no active part in enforcing slavery upon the coloured people are not relieved from the responsibility of making special efforts to remove. As far as possible the short result of their enslavement, which is a it's a pretty hitting point But what are some things we can be doing like practically speaking.
, and like what would refer? What would reformation look like in this or reconciliation look like
and of course that would be a statement like that made by a Politician today would be a deeply divisive and controversial thing to say So, I mean she was revolutionary ahead of her time But, , also there was those influence those currents within her time that did recognize that just like in our time that these are things that need to be addressed and we do need to seek reconciliation and restitution and restoration and justice. It's not something that is, we've kind of got to this point and suddenly we've just realized that we've inherited a long line. of people that, , do recognize, have recognized these things in their own time and place. And, there's a chapter , in the book that references the, black liberation theologians and compares that with some of the writings.
, who mostly write in the second part of the 20th century, compared that with some of the statements from Ellen White, such as the one you've referenced, and find some pretty good echoes between the two. And I tend to think that , the reasons for those echoes are because they were following the same Jesus.
They were seeking the same vision of God and the same vision of humanity of people flourishing and people with equal opportunities and chances and, that kind of thing. I think that we shouldn't be surprised that prophetic voices echo throughout history. And so this is a significant thing for us to, to recognize and I think even to rehear our own prophetic voice.
, and expect that it will be prophetic, in that way, that we should be alert to, they might actually lead us somewhere if we listen, , that might be beyond some of our assumptions and some of our, some of the things that we would be happy to settle with. So, I mean, practically, where do you start? But,, I think that there's, real opportunities for us as a church and for us as a community. individual churches,, and even as individuals to be voices on this, to do the work, to get educated, , to read this book and to read some of the other, books that are referenced in it, to actually learn the stuff because it's complicated.
It's so deeply embedded that , we can miss it. If particularly those of us in relatively privilege can miss it. And so we need to do the work. , and that can be simply listening., there's a million podcasts, there's a million documentaries, there's a million books, all of which that are worth our time and attention.
As far as learning, and in our Australian context, we, one of the obvious, ongoing issues of racial injustice is, the situation of our indigenous peoples. And that's something that is getting some , some, public discussion at the moment in the context of the, uh, indigenous voice referendum and the opportunity that we as a country could actually take a small step forward in recognizing the pre existence of our indigenous people, and that they.
, be given a voice that we would actually listen to as a nation. So I think, you know, and there's a lot of, , I've been doing a fair bit of work on that at the moment in the context of doing a fair bit of reading and, engaging with Indigenous people, listening to some of the perspectives on that , and working on actually finding some ways to make some broader noise about that.
And I think that's something in our Australian context that we as a church could really get on board with and really. The supportive standing with members of their own family, you know, we have our church family who are indigenous people., Maury from your side of the side of the ocean. What can you suggest?
I love what you're saying there. I'll say three things. Number one. Oftentimes I hear,, particularly black, activists will respond to the question of, well, you know, we didn't have slaves, et cetera. We didn't. So what is, what does this have to do with us? And they would say, , a CEO, who comes to a company that can't take the debts.
The debit sheet and say, I wasn't CEO when those debts were made. So I don't have nothing to do with that., I'll just take , all the profits, but none of the, you know, there's something about the fact that we carry our histories forward. Think of what the people of Israel, our Israeli brothers and sisters say.
every Passover. They don't say, when our forefathers were slaves in Egypt, you know what they say? When we were slaves in Egypt, this idea that there's a kind of corporate identity. And I think that, that then goes to the second point, which is for me, an important point. Individualism is a heresy that has creeped into Christian Thinking Christian theology, Christian thought, the idea that, that I am not a particular in a larger universal.
But I am an individual, I'm absent from all of that context and nothing sticks to me unless, I, I do something. I think we have to be critical of these doctrines of individualism that often we appeal to, to escape accountability, responsibility and community building. The third and final thing, and this is to speak.
With what Nathan is saying, but I'm going to put it in the context of the U. S. and just say it. When I teach classes, I'll ask students, how many of you know about Martin Luther King Jr.? Raise your hand. Every hand goes up. How many of you have read one of his books? Keep your hand up. Every hand goes down.
We're in a generation that McDonald commercials, on the King holiday is what feeds the minds of people about King. But they don't know the king that was murdered. They don't know the king who was against... America's militarism, who was against rampant and unchecked capitalism. They only know one part of King that they want others to know.
These other voices are too radical , of a gospel of a message to get out there. So I tell people read, and I would say in the context of Australia, read indigenous authors. And not the ones who are promoted by people who you would say, why would they promote them? Cause that's probably not the best argument.
That's probably not the best expression of the soul. Read those who actually have, who can speak the soul of, of the Aborigines. Like W. E. B. Du Bois, when he wrote The Souls of Black Folk, every black person could listen and say, Amen, I couldn't have said it better. But that's my experience. That's the complexity.
That's the challenges that I'm feeling. And so I think that a lot of ways we can do that is we have to Check our individualism, we have to recognize that the part of the story of the gospel , is a story about an enslaved people. I should imagine Egyptians would must hate Passover.
I'm saying that facetiously, because Egypt is also a kind of communal Arab African community that understands pass along our credits and our debits. And , we owe, we owe to those who are in community with to stay in community and be accountable. And I think we just. Individualism gets in the way of that.
So, just let me summarize what you've said a little, in this, this response. So what I'm hearing for myself, if I want to do something about this , is two things that I think we are losing in our current generation and our current. Western context is one,, people are sometimes uncomfortable with the word Catholic.
So I'll use the word universal, but there's a collective, a community. , motivation that we need to have. We need to be in community with each other and with people that look different and sound different and come from a different context to us. And we need to be reflective. We need to meditate on some of these things.
Reading is a meditation in some sense. We need to sit with these and wrestle with these , and think through and listen, Nathan recommended, there's podcasts out there , . We can wrestle with these ideas because I think if we just pretend they don't exist, we disenfranchise whole groups of people.
And what I'm hearing from you guys and what I've witnessed in my own experience is that the church doesn't, the church would almost prefer to ignore some of these things and use excuses of omission and staying on task, etc. , I mean, Nathan's chapter is even in the title, the silent, what was it?
Inactivism, silence and inactivism. So I guess what you're saying a good place to start is for us to reflect and connect with people in our church communities. It's nice. Those two things rhyme reflect and connect. So everyone can remember it all week, to spend some time reflecting and connecting.
, is that an accurate sort of
response? That, that
is, I think a beautiful way of putting it because connecting makes a difference. I'm going to give a little. a brief story about my life. I was deluded. I thought I was going to be the next Martin Luther King Jr. I'm at La Sierra University.
Charles Teal is my professor. , he's putting me on fire. He's making my life really,, open up., for some... who know my first cousin is Ice Cube. And at the same time, he was going through his, with N. W. A. And Daryl Gates. , and we're the same age. He's on radio.
They're going at it debating, and I'm learning about the black Christian tradition. And liberation theology and Martin King and I'm reading his work and the first church I assigned I'm thinking I'm gonna be in a big urban church. I must keep this movement going. I'm sitting here and I'm assigned a church in Lancaster, California in the Mojave Desert.
And at the time, I think maybe a 600 member church with about 85 to 90% European American descent and the first day I worked, I had to go into a hospital to pray for a member. I didn't know. I went into the hospital. I went to the room. I went to the bed. I called the name. A man looked up. And the man looked like Bull Connor, the segregationist sheriff who ordered dogs and fire hoses on black people.
And not only did he look like him, he looked like what Bull Connor would look like if he was still living.
And the first thing that came into my mind was, I'm not praying for him. I'm trained to pastor. He hasn't done any, I don't know this man. And the man looked up and he said to me, Oh, you are a new pastor. I'm so glad you came to visit me.
New college pastor. I shrunk in my mind so small. And I said, man, everybody has to have this experience if they're going to really pastor. So connecting makes all the difference in the world. People cannot share a table for communion with someone. Who they're fussing with and fighting with. And I think Protestants do too much talk and not enough table fellowship in their worship.
Because if you have to come to that table every week, ,, you realizing we share the same, we are dependent upon the same bread and wine , and the same table. And so I think that connection is crucial. Get into spaces you're not comfortable with. And learn to be and feel that discomfort and then you'll be sympathetic to the one who's in your space where you're comfortable, but you realize that they feel live and all of this helps us.
That's cool. There's one more thing that I'd like to add, Jared, to your connect and reflect on that. And I was trying to come up with the next rhyming one,, but,, you know, enact it almost wrong, but just take action, actually do something. Because, kind of the language that's used at the moment is anti racism that was part of our working title for the book was to connect with, , but it's a bit of a trendy topic, but that idea of anti racism is that racism is so embedded In the systems of the world around us in our own consciousness in our own unconsciousness and in so much of what we encounter that if we that we simply can't say we're not racist, we can say I did not do anything racist today.
That doesn't help. We actually need to Commit to being anti racist to being positively acting and enacting a vision of , what the world would look like if racism wasn't one of the. the functioning mechanisms of the world around us. And so that might be,, getting in touch with a politician or a political leader and speaking up in that kind of way.
It might be doing something to undermine, , systematic oppression in your local community or in your city or in , your sphere of influence. It might be, sharing a book. You know, buy a copy of the book for everybody in your church and start a discussion group that can get other people on board with this,, so that it's not just again, it's not just you, but connect the movement to actually take action, , and look to change policies, look to give people opportunities that they would not otherwise have looked to, ,
so what are the things that we could do to actually do something about it? Because you can, you can fill your head with a whole lot of, , knowledge and that can simply make you angry and frustrated.
But we are called to step out into the world in the name of Jesus to make the world better., and that , the community we live in should be a better place because there's an Adventist church here and that one of the things that we can do is seek to undo the effects of racism, undo the reality of racism as we will come to see it, , in the community around us.
So, yeah, look for those opportunities to then,, do something.
May I add one note? This is for the younger generation. Because the work is so hard, part of the work is to not cancel anyone. Let me tell you, you're going to find people who have, who are well intentioned and so far behind in this discourse that in attempting to help, they're going to say some things that are so bumbling and so forth.
And so it requires, actually, not cancelling them, making them afraid to continue in the effort, but helping to re educate and affirm the well, the good intentions,, but help them to understand the landscape of the discord. Because we need every soldier. Or, to use, not a military, we need every person. In the community,
it's been awesome to talk to you both. I feel like we've still only scratched the surface But you've given us some really good things to think about. And I think we can all just Yeah, I guess commit to connecting and reflecting and enacting a little bit more. Just to finish off We mentioned at the beginning we have a discount code for anyone who has been interested in what we're talking about You can get the book a house on fire and learn more from yet 20 other authors or so.
, so do we have a discount code for that, Jared?
We do. The discount code is record live, R E C O R D, live one word., it's all lowercase as I've been given it. So if you put in record live, when you go to the. It says voucher or something as you're doing the checkout, as you're ordering this book, you can do that.
We've put the link in the comments. So you go to the Adventist book center link for the house on fire book. It's a book I've been a little intimidated to read. I've read some of it because it's a heavy, it's a big topic and it's. It's a little academically dealt with. It's got fantastic research.
It's got very in depth comments.
So it's a really good book to have as a reference, , volume to have a broad overview of a topic that, as we said today, we've only really scratched the surface of this., but there's a lot more that we could go. into. And so I'd encourage you if this topic has interested you at all, it's to me, I'm excited to know that there are Adventist voices and Adventist theologians grappling with the theology and the understanding of this concept, because very often we sit on the sidelines of these discussions and these debates.
So to have a full volume with such a variety of authors, of different races, all coming together and putting this volume together. I think we can be proud that we've taken a small, tiny step, in the fight. , I guess the last thing to say is thank you both for joining us today. Thank you both for the work that's gone in and the investment that's gone into creating this book because it's a valuable resource for our church,, theologically, socially, in many different areas.
So, thank you both. Any final. thing that you'd like to, leave us with , to take away from this conversation?
Well, firstly, thank you for the opportunity to have a brief conversation about it. I really don't think we got past the foreword The size of the topic So, you know, we could come back to 20 more episodes where we go through chapter by chapter But we were kind of intentional about we knew this would be a heavy book and that there's a lot in it Which is partly that it's a great resource But also, and we've kind of arranged it so it moves from the familiar to the less familiar.
So you begin with an old testament, a Hebrew prophet, and you move through the story of Jesus and some of the New Testament teachings and some things that will be familiar from an Adventist perspective of reading Revelation and some of the key things. But then it gets more complicated and I would say a bit more challenging as far as a reading project the further you get through it.
We've done that intentionally, but you don't have to finish the book before you can step out and change the world. There's not a test that you've read chapter 20. But,, it's... Yeah, so, of course, one of the beauties of a chapter book like this is you can pick the chapters if, , if you're a fan of Kendra Holowiak Valentine's work, you can go straight to her chapter and read that.
And, , that's probably enough for you to then spend the rest of the week thinking about., so. , we've tried to pitch it at a number of levels, and it's currently being used as a text in a number of university classes around the Adventist world. And non Adventist. And non Adventist, that's right.
So, that's exciting for us, because we're, we want it to be really engaged with seriously, and that's one context in which that will happen , but, , of course the other thing you can do with a book like this is read it with a group of people. , a small group in your church. I gave a copy to my mum for Christmas and I said, you don't have to read it all.
It's pretty heavy going some of the way, some of some parts, but, and she surprised me by reading it all and then recommending it to a group of ladies at her church. So, you know, that was very gratifying to me because it surprised me that she would. Give it that much time, time and attention and energy.
But she said, it's really helped me in how I think. And, , my mum, as my, as I would look, is an older white lady, , from suburban Australia. And this has helped her think about this topic in a different way. , there's a recommendation from my mum.
I thank you. And I think this, , I think the division. The South Pacific Division. This was a courageous step and I think a model for the future of what divisions will need to do to be taken serious by the younger generation in their division, by , the critical thinkers of outside the church and the activists in and outside the church.
And I think this was a model. And again, thank you, Nathan. Thank you, Jared and Zenita. And, , those who are watching. It's been a pleasure.
Thank you all for joining us. Thank you guys. It's been a real pleasure to have you on.
Thank you again. See you
later. Thank you. God be with you.