Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 319: America's Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Po

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As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I am so glad that you could be here with us again. Again this week for what is going to be a great conversation. My guest this week on Voices in My Head is author Joel Edward Goza. After receiving degrees from Wheaton College and Duke University, Joel joined the staff at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Houston's Fifth Ward. For 10 years, Joel focused on issues of faith, race, politics, and urban research. He provided leadership in urban redevelopment, immigration, and educational reform initiatives, developed the Healing the Brokenness Conference that brought Christian leaders together across racial, economic, and denominational lines with leading scholars and facilitated partnerships between the Fifth Ward and leading research universities. Joel has also served as a visiting scholar on race, religion, and politics for the Center on Faith and Culture at St. Thomas University and at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary. Joel also wrote America's Unholy Ghost: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Today, Joel continues to write and work from the Fifth Ward. He is a contributing writer for the North Star, and his work has been featured in the Houston Chronicle and Salon. When not working, Joel spends time with his— sorry, spends time pestering his wife. I almost said with his pestering wife, and that was totally wrong. Joel spends time pestering his wife Sarah, daughter Naomi, and son Samuel Roger. Joel Edward Goza, welcome to Voices in My Head this week.

Oh, so good. Such an honor to be with you, Rick. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Well, that ended up being almost one of the funnier intros I've ever done because I almost called your wife pestering, and I apologize for that.

No, no, that is definitely my role within the household. I would know that for sure.

Understood, as a pestering husband myself. Rick Lee James, I'm so glad to have you here today. I really appreciated your book, America's Unholy Ghost. It's a challenging book. I put maybe 2 quotes of it online and there were immediate fights that broke out, you know, whenever discussions happen, just because it's such a topic that everybody seems to have strong feelings about. Yeah. And so it must have been quite a journey to write the book. So I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you today. So we're just going to dive right in because I want to make the most of our time together. So the first question that I have for you. The book starts in America's Unholy Ghosts, and you explain that one of the experiences that prompted you to write this book was a shootout on the street where you lived with friends. Tell us a little bit about that and how that experience impacted you.

Sure. Well, I had been living in Houston's inner-city community of Denver Harbor at that point for about a year, and it was really my first encounter, uh, with the dire poverty that exists in American cities and really challenged the way that I saw my world, the way that I was beginning to understand my faith, uh, and a lot of the challenges that faced our nation. Um, and by the time the shooting happened, uh, it was— we were, we were very intimate with the families on our block, but it was a rough block. And so my friends and I were up watching a movie. And gunfire went off out in the street. And it started to become kind of this gang fight between about 10 or 15 folks of competing factions on the block. And my roommate, who's— ran out the door because we saw that some of the kids were still in the street. And so we ran out and, you know, grabbed the kids, put them in their grandmother's house. And then by the time that we had gotten back out into the street, the last remnants of the fighting, you know, was breaking up. But the thing that really messed with me that evening were the tears from the kids, from the children's mothers. And what I was watching and what I had been witnessing over the past year was the deep hold of poverty in our inner cities. And, you know, we were, you know, Houston has one of the largest economic engines in the entire world. And we were literally 3 miles away from, from the center of downtown. You know, and so you're wondering, you know, how is it that we've created a world where people are scratching out and trying to survive in one zip code? And then in just the other zip code, you know, you have River Oaks with millionaires and billionaires. And that evening and those tears from those mothers really tried— really committed my life to life in the inner city. And I've been here now for about 15 years. And to understand what it was that I was witnessing in my neighborhood and in my city, and in correlation to that, some of the deep challenges that we have facing us in America today.

Wow. And so that sort of became the catalyst to—

yeah—

writing of this book. And I just want to touch on real quick too, one of the reasons you were living where you were in that rough neighborhood was because of a connection to the church that you were at, and Can you tell us a little bit about that and the church connection and why— Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the relationship actually started before I was at a church in the community. I had a friend who was teaching in the community, and so we moved into the Spanish side of the tracks, and then later on what ended up happening is I looked for a job, or I looked for a church home at a church that spoke English, and that's what brought me into the prophetic Black church. And it's with the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church that really worked on a lot of community redevelopment throughout the area that really took me under its wings for about a decade and really helped me learn how to navigate my city and see what was going on in our nation from, from the Black perspective.

All right, well, we're going to talk more about that a little bit later in our conversation because I know that, that you have found a lot of hope through the church that you were involved with there and are still involved with. And so I really enjoyed that part of reading in the book. I'm going to ask you to do something that is probably the impossible task, but I'm going to ask it anyway. If you can, on some level, it's It's going to be hard to do, I know, in probably a podcast time, but in this book, America's Unholy Ghost, you focus on three individuals because of their influence on the founding of this nation. You focus on Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith. And I wonder if you could give the listeners of this show sort of just the brief Cliff Notes version of each of these figures and why you felt they were important in telling the narrative of the United States of America's racist roots? And let's start with Hobbes, I guess.

Sure. Well, you know, the way that I kind of trace these things out is I see it as a process happening over several hundred years. I say several hundred, really more like 200 to 300 when you look at the writers that I face with. And what I try to show is how the racial world was first imagined, then how it became institutionalized, and then how it became ingrained into America's— into American souls. And so I start with Thomas Hobbes, and Thomas Hobbes is writing in the midst of the religious wars, and what he is trying to figure out is how to end Christians killing Christians in the name of Christ. And so what he wants to do is he wants to reimagine a different way, a fundamentally new way that we can do faith in politics, so that rather than Christianity inspiring bloodshed, Christianity can bring a sort of peace to this world. And so what Hobbes writes about is how rather than being religious, what we've gotta do is we've gotta lean a little bit more deeply into our rational natures.

Okay.

And so he sees that religion in his time period is nothing less than zealotry. And so what he wants to do is he wants to end that violence. He says, listen, man, we got this muscle inside our heads, you know, and we've got to start using this reason to be able to bring peace and stability. But what Hobbes does in a very interesting and a very unique way is that he individualizes reason. And the reason that that becomes so important is that for Hobbes and during this time period, uh, once reason becomes individualized, it becomes racialized. And particularly what I mean by that is that what looked reasonable to Hobbes and the economic elite in Europe was the person that they saw in the mirror. So white people take on the full embodiment of what reason looks like. And what will happen is that no longer do we kill other Christians in the name of Christ, but we have started justifying different reasons for killing people. And what we say is that those who are not white are not quite rational, that they are savage. And in Hobbes' work, The Leviathan, that rationality where white people are reasonable— reasonable is being the full humanity of people— everything that doesn't look like white people looks less reasonable and less human and develops a way of being where we look at the— where white people looked at the world and justified treating others that don't look like them in violent manners. I don't know if that makes any sense or if there's anything in that that you wanted me to repeat on Hobbes, but it was a critical shift in the imagination. And so Hobbes lays the groundwork for that. Is there anything you wanted to kind of interject, or any questions you wanted to ask on Hobbes before I went off to anybody else? Because I know I write a lot about different things, and that one of the things that becomes critical for Hobbes as well, maybe that I should mention particularly for your audience, is what Hobbes wants to do is he wants to make sure that what religion is is obedience to rulers. And so he will reduce what Christianity is to, one, what he says is faith in Christ, and then two, obedience to rulers. And so what ends up happening in this modern political imagination that goes when it intersects with Christianity is that John 3:16 becomes an important verse, right? Romans 13 about obeying your rulers becomes a important verse. But the larger prophetic tradition within Scripture begins taking a back seat, so that we start— it starts the path of thinking about Christianity strictly as soul salvation.

Right. And if I could interrupt you for just a second. Yeah. That idea of strictly soul salvation, one of my guests that's been on a number of times, Brian Zahn, he said we tend to, when we do that, relegate Jesus to the position of Secretary of Afterlife Affairs. Yeah, which is—

yeah, absolutely. And so it becomes the— after the Enlightenment, there becomes a war on what, what I refer to as the prophetic imagination in Scripture. So everything that involves salvation has a central place, but when you look at James, for instance, of care for the widows and orphans, that has no place in Scripture. When you look at Jesus Jesus's teaching about the role of the poor in the kingdom of God, that becomes second place within the Christian imagination. The second thing that becomes really important with Hobbes is that he wants to convince people that government can't do any good, because what he says is that whenever government tried to do good, they ended up just killing people. And this lie that government can't do any good will end up creating kind of this cultural common sense that we have that really, really idealizes a small government. But what ends up happening, uh, that I write about is not that power players leave the scenes, but by creating an emphasis on small government, what you've created is a power vacuum. Wealthy elite begin taking that power vacuum over, um, And so no longer does— no longer will, uh, will— no longer will rich people be under the government. The government will become under the rich people.

Okay, sounds familiar.

Yeah, yeah. And, uh, the reason that they— that, that I write that Hobbes has to make these, these changes is because he's trying to harmonize the political imagination and the religious imagination with the institution of slavery. You know, so like, for instance, Hobbes is one of the first investors in the Virginia Company. And so what he has a very vested interest of making sure that the colonies are as profitable as possible. And obviously, one of the, one of the critical instruments in that is the institution of slavery and the justifications for genocide. And so when you read the Leviathan from Hobbes, what you're reading is the playbook for colonialism.

Joel, I think you've cut out for a moment. I'm here.

I'm still here. I was listening. I heard an um and then I paused.

Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. Colonialism, I think, was the last word that we had.

Yeah, yeah, so you have this, you know, within the works of law of Hobbes, you have a playbook that basically ran the colonial project. I mean, it envisions what the economy has to look like. One of the lies that, you know, Hobbes helps write is he helps us start thinking of economics as a moral-free math. And what will end up happening is rather than viewing other people based on their God-given dignity, we begin viewing people based on their economic worth. And a lot of that work begins in Hobbes. And it is absolutely frightening. And so what you'll have simultaneously is the rise of the logics of capitalism and slavery. Those two things happen simultaneously, and that's, that's very important to understand.

Yeah. And when you write about it, it is, it's chilling to read about those two things kind of growing together. And you grow up with sort of a myth about the great Christian nation of America and all that and how noble everyone was. But you really did have, we kind of have partially through Hobbes and the way that you're writing about it even in the book and I mean, we really do have slavery stitched into the fabric of our clothes, you know, of our DNA.

Deeply interwoven.

Yeah.

And so, you know, what I try to trace is some of the political lies that help that to happen, you know, and they start with Hobbes, you know. You had to say the lie that government can't do any good. You had to say the lie that economics is a moral-free math.. But in order to think that way, what Hobbes had to do is change the way that we thought about Christianity as well. And so what he has to say, what he starts introducing, is a logic where we begin thinking that we can be intimate with God without being intimate with the broken and the abused of our world. So that's one religious lie. The second religious lie is, as we mentioned before, that religion is about soul salvation. And the seeds of this imagination are deeply sown through Thomas Hobbes.

Yeah, and definitely we still, you know, have a lot of that today, for sure, when we just think about, like, Christianity as an afterlife religion. So, but yeah, please continue. This is fascinating.

Yeah, and so, you know, what the way that this racial work happens, it's interesting, is that for someone to be— to have a racist imagination, none of their ideologies have to be particularly racist in and of themselves. But what they must do is they must harmonize with racist work. And so people don't think of depending on small government as a racist idea, right? But once government— once you start justifying government not intervening for instance, to provide food for children who are hungry in a land of plenty, that idea begins doing very racist work. It was intentionally and intricately designed to do the work that it's doing, you know. And so one of the things that I talk about, uh, in the book is, you know, when we look at what is happening in, for instance, communities like I'm at, it's not that the system is working— isn't working. The system is working and it's doing exactly the work it's designed to do. It's a system perfectly engineered to create both billionaires, a few billionaires, and many hungry babies, and to put them in the same city.

Wow.

Yeah, it's—

it really is. It's stark, especially when you're reading about it. Yeah. So, so that's the, the first, the first lie. I believe you just covered the first one at this point, and Thomas Hobbes. Um, but let's get into, if we could, um, a little bit about Locke. Yeah. As well, and sort of where this leads us to him and the second great lie.

Sure, sure. And really the second philosopher, because they partner on writing these lies together. And so, you know, the way that I write about it is how Locke really follows the same tracks that Hobbes goes down, but he's a much better marketer than what Hobbes is. So, you know, Hobbes is very brutal, very stark, John Locke is very sentimental and he goes about things very differently. And what he is able to do with such a powerful, powerful brilliance that, you know, I think is a really sick brilliance, but it is a brilliance, is he figures out a way to harmonize the interest of the wealthy elite and to institutionalize these ideas that lead to radical inequalities within society, but with kind of a smiling face. So there are two things that are really critical that Locke begins arguing for. One is he says that property— that what the government is about is that it is about the preservation of property. Now to us that seems like common sense, but back in the day what the government was about was taking care of the poor. And taking care of the vulnerable and protecting the people who need protection from often society's wealthy. John Locke reverses that. He says, no, what, what government is about is it's about preserving property. And how that becomes important is you hear a phrase, for instance, taxation without representation. That idea that we could fight a war over taxes comes directly from John Locke. The— the beginning from Thomas Jefferson's favorite philosopher is actually John Locke. So when we talk about all people being created equal and the pursuit of happiness and da da da da, all of that is from John Locke. What he also does is he further— he furthers the lie that religion is soul salvation. And so he kind of takes out— he, he takes Hobbes's idea of soul salvation and obedience to rulers, but he doesn't emphasize the obedience to rulers quite as much. What he does is he says, no, no, it is just strictly about our souls. But when you think of what happens to the place of the poor in society when no longer is government about protecting the poor No longer does religion protect the poor. No longer does even the economy consider the poor. What you have done is create a, create a society where the poor are attacked from all sides. And one of the important things that Locke does is he really, he understands he's rewriting the way that politics and religion has been played. And so what he wants to do is he wants to create a blank slate in the minds of his readers, and he wants to convince his readers that they know nothing. So what he wants to— what— before Locke starts writing, Rick, you and I can look at each other and we can know each other as a human just by looking at each other.

Sure.

And the idea of that was is that we are born with these innate ideas that since we are made in God's image, we can know some things. We can know good. We can know evil. We can know each other as human. What Locke does is he says, no, actually we don't know any of that stuff. Since we are made in God's image, what that means is that we have the ability to learn. That we have the ability to put ideas together and to think. But one of the things he begins questioning is the very humanity of African Americans. So when he says that— when he says, "What is a human?" He says, "The truth is, is that we really don't know, and not everything that looks like a human is a human. After all, not everything that looks like gold is gold, and we can't really know what these Africans are." And that becomes a very important ingredient for the work that he is— he too is looking to do in the colonies, and he too is very invested in the colony of Virginia. And one of the things that he begins questioning is the quality of African Americans' humanity. So when Thomas Jefferson writes that all men are created equal, he meant it, but because of Locke, he's not quite sure what a human really is. Are those with afros on their heads every bit as wise as those with the white wigs on their heads? You know, like one of the things I write about in the book is how the white wig during this time becomes this fashion symbol, and what it shows is it shows people's intelligence and it shows their power, and they become the apex of what society is striving, is striving to become more like. And so all of the work is subtle, but the subtle work is providing justifications for very sadistic work in the colonies and throughout the world.

Yeah, which is why, and you talk about this in the book too, and not to give too much away because I want people to read it, but when you were talking about Thomas Jefferson and him very much believing in the equality of all humans, and yet, well, at the same time he thought nothing, just like most of society, about raping his slave women, you know, because they weren't considered human. They were just, you know, utilitarian. And so it— people don't realize that, that it was so much a part of early the United States, you know, in the early days. And you write about how it's just sort of, it just sort of seems to be commonplace that, that, you know, slaves are not humans. And so we basically can do with them what we want. And it's, it's terrifying to think in those ways. And the, the amount of inhuman treatment that was given to all slaves, but especially the women— there was sides of slavery that I had never considered until I read your book.

Sure. Yeah, sex was very central to the project, you know. I mean, sex was central to why the project ever existed.

And, and right even to the point that— sorry to interrupt you again, but even in your book, when you know, they would use scriptures to justify it, even like, you know, it's not good for a man to burn, uh, you know, with lust, so use your slave for that.

Yeah.

And, and it was— and, and there was the church right along with it seeming to justify it, which is, you know, you just can't hardly wrap your mind around something like that. At least I can't, um, today. And yet some of the things we see in society, um, have maybe taken that place, and we still tend to justify those types of behaviors at times. And But anyway, please continue with your thought. That was a fascinating part of the book.

Well, it's crazy, right, of how white people thought by raping their slaves they were protecting their Christian purity. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, their Christian sexual purity. But we still, you know, the reason I wrote the book is that When I was looking at what was going on in Fifth Ward and Denver Harbor, what became clear to me is that the cultural common sense that we had, you know, whether it was how we thought about Christianity, how we thought about the nature of justice, how we thought about economics, how we thought about politics, that all of those thoughts were able to combine and create these radical inequalities that was throughout Houston. And what I started learning is that the same ways of thinking that got us comfortable with slavery that got us comfortable with chaining men and chaining women and raping women and da da da da da, that that type of common sense that was started in slavery is still the type of common sense that is functioning today. So we don't think that it's a moral monstrosity, for instance, that here in Houston we were able to put a white person on the moon through government dollars, but we had never been able to justify feeding children with government dollars. $1,000. You know, I mean, that is a powerful thing. And, and I understand that there is some food available for children, but even that you have to work to justify that, you know. What is clear is that we haven't achieved the educational or economic equity, even though we can do— we can place a white man on the moon, you know.

Well, and, and by that same token, things like, you know, think of how much of the world's poverty could be be wiped out with what it costs to create a bomber, you know, like, and we always think of that, well, no, the government has to build these war machines, but we can't be about feeding hungry people, you know, we've got to protect these people, not feed them, you know, and it's kind of—

I write a lot about, you know, how those mythologies started, because what the wealthy people wanted is they wanted a government that the only thing that they did was protect its wealth, you know, and so you wanted a small government that carried a very big stick. And that is precisely the imagination that forms where we're at today in America. The truth is, is that there is starvation in our world simply because we have chosen not to share food.

Yeah, yeah, it's not that there's not enough. No, there's not enough people willing to share.

And, you know, I talk— I write about, you know, some of Thomas Hobbes' work in that in that he creates this myth of scarcity. You don't believe that there's enough to go around. But what the myth of scarcity was intentionally designed to do was to justify unmitigated accumulation. Now, that is a strange— you know, that's a strange twist, because the belief in scarcity could theoretically emphasize the need for equity. We, you know, we don't have endless resources. We've got to make sure that we share what we've got in a way that children are fed, that people are clothed, that we can provide all people's needs. That's not what the myth of scarcity does. What the myth of scarcity does is say that billionaires need to aim at becoming trillionaires, millionaires need to aim at becoming billionaires. And it's a very sick way of viewing the world and stewardship of what God has given us.

Yeah, that's crazy to think about, but I see it, you know, even in religious circles too, that same idea. It's not been too long ago that, you know, the year 2000 was coming upon us, 19 years ago now, and I can remember pastors that were storing up, like, in their basements guns and food, and, you know, like, they were ready to move out in the woods because the end was coming. And I always thought, like, what a, what a kind of warped view of the gospel is it that says instead of— let's say there was a crisis at the year 2000. The Christian's call is to be there in the midst of it and to help those if there is scarcity, and, you know, to be a part of helping and so that together we can get through this.

Yeah.

But, but because of, like, thinkers like, uh, like Locke and and things like that. In the church, we even have this mindset that says, oh no, it's self-protection by all means. There's not enough, so we will kill, we'll defend our stuff with murderous intensity.

Sure, sure.

And it's wild to think about that.

Yeah, yeah. And it was very much a co-opting of the imagination, but it only gets worse in some ways, because when you look at the intersection of economics and the church's life. We have convinced people that go to very wealthy churches that giving to their church is a means of being charitable, right? So what will end up happening is that most of the money that is spent by wealthy churches goes back to wealthy people and the services provided to wealthy people. So it's not it's not a charity where we give unto others, but it's generally a charity where we give unto ourselves. And when you look at what could happen if that way of thinking was changed, you know, there would be plenty of room to do a lot more work than what we're doing right now to care for people who are in need, and particularly those people that are the people that Jesus said he would be found with.

Wow. Well, for sake of time, I'd love to keep continuing down these roads, but we're gonna run out of time unfortunately if we don't hurry through some of these things. Let's talk a bit about Adam Smith too, because he was a fascinating read, because in many ways he, as you write, was able to point out a lot of the flaws in these kinds of thinking that Hobbes and Locke were presenting to us and that we're becoming a part But in some ways, he wasn't as much of a help as I think he wanted to be. And I wonder if you could talk a bit about him. Yeah, so people can kind of understand his part in this story as well.

Well, you know, it's interesting. He's really famous for writing a book called The Wealth of Nations that released in the year 1776. And what Adam Smith's goal was, was it was to create what he referred to as the wealth of nations. And the way that Adam Smith measures the wealth of nations is how much the poorest people in society have, which is, which is something from Adam Smith's work that we completely lost. That it was, it wasn't gross domestic product, but it was look at your poorest, wherever those people are, that is how we judge ourselves. And so what Adam Smith wanted to say, Adam Smith was able to diagnose, you know, with stark, stark writing, you know, the evils of slavery. He wrote about how the wages that we pay our workers is killing children because the workers— because the owners of the companies want a little bit more luxuries and that that's a moral monstrosity. And so he talks about this war of wages to where what the workers want is they want the ability to feed their children. What the wealthy want is they want the ability to have a few more diamonds and a few more more money in the bank account and this, that, or the other. And he says that the wealthy will always win that battle. But what becomes interesting and what becomes tragic in Adam Smith's work is even though he can see the problems in society very clearly, he is very influenced by Stoicism. And what Stoicism believed is that you can't have radical changes, that time itself is progressive, and the best way for, for justice to come is to not change too much, and in time things will become more just on their own. That becomes a philosophy that we buy into. And so what justice is understood at in the Stoic imagination is that it's strictly punishment for rule breakers. And then he will write very convincingly about the power of self-interest. And that's another— that's another thing within Stoicism is even though they wanted to war against the passions. One of the passions that they flirt with is the power of self-interest in providing for society's good. And so one of the most famous alliterations from Adam Smith is that it is by the butcher, the brewer, and the baker pursuing their own self-interest that we receive our meals. And so the very act of fellowship, the most basic act of fellowship comes about through a pursuit of self-interest. But what also clearly happens is that you have in cities like Houston beef and bread and brew growing— going to waste, not because there's not hungry folks, but because the best interest of those who have resources never automatically harmonizes with those who don't have enough to survive. And that is the fundamental reality that is the hole in Adam Smith's system. Yeah.

Well, and, you know, in reading about Adam Smith and the way you wrote about him, I mean, it just pulls you in. And I just kept thinking, you know, he's so close in some ways, like he's diagnosing the problem so well and is able to so see what, like, there's something that needs to be done. Oh, yeah. It's so disappointing, kind of, that outcome of like, "Oh, it'll just correct itself." Yeah.

What's interesting with Smith, and particularly perhaps for your audience, that I write about in the book is that once you have the writers in the Enlightenment going to war on the prophetic tradition and reducing Christianity to soul salvation, what they are in fact creating is a faith that is Christian in name but Stoic in nature. And the environment that Adam Smith comes, comes up in, in Scotland, is where a phenomenon known as Christian Stoicism. And so what Christian Stoicism— how Christian Stoicism impacted America is that perhaps we could say that America was a Christian nation, but it was a Christian nation very comfortable with the institution of slavery. It was a Christian nation very comfortable with inequality. So when you look at the work that the American church has done, it is clear to me that it is more stoic in nature than it has harmony with the prophetic tradition of Scripture.

Well, and your observations are amazing throughout the book, and again, I hate that we're going to run out of time here in a minute, so I'm going to try to condensed. So, so let me just say this. I'm gonna have in the show notes to this show, when it releases, there'll be a link to the book and more information that people can find about it, because I do want them to read it. And it's fascinating to read about the 3 lies that, that are political lies and the 3 lies that are religious lies that have been adopted. And people really need to dive into that more.

It's fascinating.

I want to, before our time is up together. We've talked about some of these philosophers and their, their influence that, you know, you don't have to look hard to see their influence today. You know, for sure, we still have it. I, I would love to talk though and get back to kind of a place where we started. You say in, in the book, you talk about the way that you see the political and religious imagination of Black Christians as something that white Christians should seek after to really embrace, and that's partially because of your time really ministering in and being a part of that community. I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about why you feel that that's something that white people like me could so benefit from in my congregations.

Right. Well, one of the myths that we bought into and that formed kind of a stoic Christianity was that what we strived for was to be neutral. And so what we had felt was being impartial was this kind of best moral perspective. And what I write about in the book is that in the prophetic tradition, that the best perspective is those who are— by standing in the shoes of those who suffer. And that that is where you truly see the character of our nation, of our churches. And it is only by being fully committed and standing in solidarity with those who have suffered intimately that you can can have a truthful self-understanding and self-awareness. And so throughout America's history, it is with the poor and the oppressed that the prophetic Black tradition has stood. And so there's a lot of similarities sometimes between white Christianity and Black Christianity, but it leads to a very different political imagination. And one of the tragic truths within our nation is, is that the people who have rejected the vision of Martin Luther King most thoroughly are white evangelicals. And the problem with that is that when you look at any religion in America, the two that have the most in common are Black Protestantism and white evangelicalism. Now the difference, the reasons that these become so different as far as how it expresses itself in the world, I believe, is because the white evangelical church has become the epitome of many of the lies that were written to harmonize with the institution of slavery. So the way that white evangelicals think about the nature of government was not what Jesus said, nor what scripture said. It is what writers like Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith said. The way that, that white evangelicals often think about the nature of economics is not from scripture or the prophetic tradition. It is from these guys' writings, and that is true about Christianity as well. You know, one of the things, one of the lies that I write about in the book is that we believe that we could be indifferent to injustice and be intimate with God. You know, when you look at the prophetic Black church, the reason that it is so important for America is that the lies that were written to harmonize American Christianity and American democracy with slavery, the only institution that rejected those lies was the prophetic Black church. And that is the only place that these lies didn't hold full sway. Yeah. And so one of—

I was just gonna say, and that is just to our shame, you know.

Yeah.

When we think of that. And I wanted to point out too, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but in the midst of that, you know, we tend to be people, probably myself included more than I want to admit, as much as I don't want to admit it at times, of how influenced I am by the white privilege that I have. And usually the response will be, well, I'm, I'm not a racist, don't call me that, don't lump me in that. And it's, it's really not saying that at all. It's saying more, just to clarify, I think what you're trying to tell us is it's not that we're so much a bunch of racists, it's that we live and support a bunch of things that continue to perpetuate racist things. And it's like we're empowering that. And so whether or not we would see ourselves as that, because probably almost nobody sees themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

But we're still, um, blinded to things that are actually perpetuating racism in our world and, and keep it going. And by doing that, we are sort of like indirectly racist, whether we, whether we feel badly towards people. Because I think the whole idea that— I don't know that racism is just like a person going, well, I hate those people of another color. Racism so often is just keeping those people down.

No, you know, right, right. So the greatest threat is not, uh, is not active hate, right? Greatest threat is moral indifference, right? That is the greatest threat. And so when Martin Luther King Jr. is writing from the letter in Birmingham, he's okay with the K— he understands the KKK, you know, they're hateful folks. What he can't understand is how good people can be on the sidelines and in this battle. And so even, you know, I was asked a question one time during a book event of whether or not if people voted for Donald Trump, whether or not they were racist. And, and, you know, all I could say is that whether or not they're racist, I don't know. But what I do know is that they harmonize their votes with the most racist instincts in our nation. Exactly. And to me, that is absolutely terrifying. And that becomes to me the greatest challenge that we have in front of us is what will it take? How much racism does it take to begin thinking, to begin rejecting political candidates? And what Trump knew, knew to some extent, and I think he even surprised himself with how truthful it was, was that he would gain many more votes by being more explicit, explicitly racist, than he would lose. Because racism, racism is not a deal breaker for so much of the white voting bloc.

Hmm. Yeah.

Until it becomes a deal breaker, we won't, we won't be empowered with the type of three-dimensional thinking that we need right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's, and it's again, I don't think I love kind of the way that you answered the question when you were asked at that book event, because I don't know that most people even think of it in those terms when they, they thought of voting for Trump. Or, you know, honestly, let's not just pick on Trump. There's a lot to pick on there. Yeah, the whole idea of how we, we often enter any voting booth or any sort of thing that might affect the society around us We're just trained, as we've talked about today, we're just trained to think about our self-interest for the most part. And it really would be an entirely different thing, I think, just in light of this conversation. I don't know if finger-pointing is the best thing to do or not. Sometimes it feels antithetical to do such things, but maybe if we could get our brains to switch a little bit and start thinking about how, how are the choices that I make going to affect, um, those around me, you know, and those of different colors? And how is the choice that I'm going to make today, say in the voting booth for instance, is just one small example of like, how is it going to affect my neighbors more than it's going to affect me? How can I ask these questions? Because as Christians, we're supposed to to be people who love our neighbors as ourselves, you know. And it's not this idea that at all costs we protect our own self-interests. And somehow the gospel has gotten distorted, and, you know, it just seems like everything is just out of whack in so many different ways, partially because of the way that so many people's understanding of the faith started. And it gets so intertwined with the nation, and then the nation gets so off base, and then we start looking at people as subhuman because of color of skin. And then instead of asking, like, you know, how has that affected us over the time, and what is— how is that built into society, we just tend to kind of move on and ignore it and say, well, I'm not racist, so I'm going to ignore it all, you know. Yeah. And I don't know, it's a fascinating conversation for sure. And sorry for cutting you off. No.

No, no, no. I mean, I, you know, I agree with much of what you said. And I think to add to what you said, you know, we have to think— one of the things I want to highlight is that thinking that is fostered within segregated context will always carry racial edges. And so when you even think about self-interest within a segregated context, that only sharpens the racial edges of segregated thinking. And what we've— and that's why I think that trying to learn from the prophetic Black church on these issues throughout history, they've been on the right side of history much more often than what I believe the white church has been. And one of the lines that I write about is whether Christians were liberal or whether they were conservative, what they believed is that they could know God without knowing Black people, which means that you could know Father God, right, without knowing his children. And that's highly problematic. But I do think that at this time, that it is critically important to talk about Trump. Now, when I write about the book, and you can verify this for your readers, I don't just critique white conservative people, and I write clearly how I believe that JFK was every bit as racist as what Trump was. But what I do believe is, is that when you saw David, David Duke and James Dobson enthusiastically supporting Trump, you have the KKK and evangelicals supporting the same man. And we've got to highlight that truth. We can't allow that truth to be buried under our love for our white evangelical brothers and sisters. And the point is not to demonize, and the point is not to shame, but you know what we— I think that the calling that we have on us right now is much more difficult, and that is how to simply speak truth truth in love, even knowing that that truth may make us rejected by those who we do love.

Yeah, and it's, it's true. And that is a battle, you know, for sure.

It is.

We, we see it every day, and it's so hard, uh, especially in, in a nation as entrenched in lies as we are. I mean, the, the 24-hour news networks, it's like they have to have something constantly. And they both kind of gone into their— they've kind of all gone into their corners, you know, and they're all espousing their own thing for their own, uh, for their own purposes. Um, and it's— a lot of this is about becoming people again who will actually respond to the truth and not to the lie.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, I think this is one of the hardest things for us to break out of. It's, it's a very hard thing to talk to people who have supposedly been, you know, identifying as the repentant people. Yeah. And say, and say, we need a major repentance.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and, and then if, if you're ingrained to just think of, again, Jesus is only the Secretary of Afterlife Affairs.

Yeah.

Um, and kind of like, well, I don't need to repent of anything. I, I asked for forgiveness for my sins a long time ago.

Well, and it's really interesting though, um, because as Christians, we should be the people who are most free to confess our sins.

Right, exactly.

But we've only made it safe to confess very particular sins. So we've made it free to confess that, for instance, maybe we spend a little bit too much money on ourselves, or that we struggle with lust, or that we struggle with lying, or that we struggle with doubt, or that, you know, But it is— we do not feel comfortable saying that we struggle with really having intimacy with people who are different than us, with people who think differently than us, that we do vote in ways that makes the racial crisis within our nation worse. And that, that might mean that we're racist. You know, it's one of the things that convinced— that I was convinced of when I moved into the inner city was that I was a racist. You know, because the ways that I thought about things changed along the lines of color. And the ways that these lies— segregated spaces are very fertile for American lies. They are very fertile grounds. Loving families are very fertile grounds for a racist imagination. Because we know that there is something good within our fathers and our mothers. We know that there is something good within the churches that we have gone to. And because we love the people who have loved us in a very Christ-like way, we have failed to question how our lives together have perpetuated the right racial crisis within our nation. Uh, and that's the power of generational sin.

Right. Well, this has been a rich conversation today, and I hate to kind of draw a string, but I'm afraid we're just going to be running out of time. And I think if we can maybe point to anything, is that, you know, maybe God help us to begin to have these conversations together, and may God help us to begin to see not only our sins of commission but our sins of omission, you know, and the ways that maybe we have not only not loved God in the way we should, but the way we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. And, and, and may God just quicken our hearts to be a people of repentance. And by that I mean not just a sorrow, but a sorrow that acts on it and, you know, does all that we can to make things the way that God intends them to be. And I just so appreciate your book, and I want to remind listeners again, the name of the book is called America's Unholy Ghosts: The Racist Roots of Our Faith and Politics. It's a very good read. It's a very challenging read. But I think it's also a very necessary read. And it— you go so much deeper than what we were able to today in the time that we had. There's just, unfortunately, the limitations of a conversation in a few minutes over a podcast. But I think I think what you were able to share with us today will whet people's appetites to learn more about this and maybe start some good conversations.

Well, I appreciate you reaching out, and it was just an honor to be with you today.

Well, it is very much— the privilege is mine for sure, and thank you for the good work you're doing. And as I tell all of my guests as they are on here each week, thank you for being one of the voices in my head.

Absolutely.

Thank you for joining me here this week. Week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.