Randy and Kyle talk with Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson about their recent book Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, in which they grapple with the church's responsibility to repair the great damage done to African Americans by the history--and ongoing reality--of racism in the United States. Duke and Greg are forceful and eloquent and refreshingly hopeful. It's an important conversation that will hopefully spawn many others.
The letter discussed at the beginning of the episode can be found here: https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jourdon-anderson-freedman-writes-former-master.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Traverse City Straight Bourbon.
=====
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Randy and Kyle talk with Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson about their recent book Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, in which they grapple with the church's responsibility to repair the great damage done to African Americans by the history--and ongoing reality--of racism in the United States. Duke and Greg are forceful and eloquent and refreshingly hopeful. It's an important conversation that will hopefully spawn many others.
The letter discussed at the beginning of the episode can be found here: https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jourdon-anderson-freedman-writes-former-master.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Traverse City Straight Bourbon.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
NOTE: This transcript was auto-generated by an artificial intelligence and has not been reviewed by a human. Please forgive and disregard any inaccuracies, misattributions, or misspellings.
Randy 00:01
Welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Kyle 00:04
The podcast where we mix a sometimes weird but always delicious cocktail of theology, philosophy, and spirituality.
Randy 00:14
are excited to be here with you, we're excited to hold the space, whether you're in your car, cutting your grass, sitting in your living room, or who knows whatever you're doing. We're glad to be here with you and excited about this conversation today. Today's a major one. And so serious conversation, we're going to be talking to Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson, about their book that they wrote, that is called reparations, a Christian call for repentance and repair. Now that word reparations is a jarring kind of decentering word in our culture, particularly for white people. And it's a really important word and a really important concept for us to reckon with. And these guys do an amazing job of it. I thought,
Kyle 00:55
yeah, it's really important, but not an easy read. No, don't go into it thinking it's gonna be like, inspirational necessarily. Thank God, a lot of history that's difficult to grapple with really painful, unnecessary.
Randy 01:10
Yeah. Well, before we before we do that, what do we what treat do you have for us here today?
Kyle 01:16
Yeah, changing gears completely here. So today, we're drinking a straight bourbon whiskey from Traverse City whiskey company, says it was aged in New American oak for three years or more, which I guess is pretty good.
Randy 01:28
I don't know. Yeah, better than less than three years, I
Kyle 01:31
suppose. So I mean, straight bourbon just has to be two. So I guess they went above and beyond
Randy 01:35
what I've heard from my man, Joe at Stony Hill, BK C is that Traverse City, Michigan is actually has this little pocket. It's on Lake Michigan. And it has this climate control. That's really remarkably similar to a lot of amazing wine regions. And so you'll they're in Traverse City, there's a lot of amazing wineries. There's a number of distilleries, and they all have this unique dynamic because of the climate in Traverse City. So when he as soon as he said that, I want to travel to travel, Traverse City and check it out. Yeah, podcast excursion sometimes. But here we have their whiskey. So let's give it a shot.
Kyle 02:12
Cheers. This is 43%. So not too strong.
Elliot 02:15
On the nose. It's like a citrus for me when you get lemon zest? Yeah. I mean,
Randy 02:21
I blanked in drank before I smelled. But I taste citrus as you say that.
Kyle 02:26
It's not a super aromatic nose for me. But it's got a nice, even palette. It's not terribly complex. But all the things that you want out of a straight bourbon.
Randy 02:37
I think it's really good. I mean, it's particularly I'm biased against micro distilleries, and I'm sorry, there's probably like three to micro distilleries out there listening. Most of those Micro Distillery the products from it taste new Mickey to me. It just takes just doesn't taste like that. Not at all. But there is a kind of bourbon that tastes that the notes are extremely high, and they're bright. They're acidic. They're citrusy you don't get a lot of the deep fruits and cherries and oaks. That's like this to me. This is very, very, like bright. In his palette. It's enjoyable, but it's not. That's where it is for me.
Kyle 03:14
Yeah, no, that's, that's fair. I think it's not
Elliot 03:16
not a ton of heat. But I get an enjoyable it's it doesn't. It doesn't taste diluted or anything. Yeah.
Randy 03:23
I do get like salty, salty candy in the nose.
Elliot 03:28
We say candy. I was just going to ask I don't know as much about bourbon is there like 10 Other dessert wines? Are there dessert bourbons? Because this is in that category? For me. It's it's sweeter than I was expecting. Yeah, it
Kyle 03:38
was great. Yeah, I wouldn't put those too far into the sweet spectrum, at least for my palate. But I also have a real sweet tooth. So no,
Randy 03:44
I think there I've had, I've had whiskies that I smell straight marshmallows. I don't know if you guys have ever had that. This is like, this is just a hint of marshmallow for me. With some savory notes to this is fun. It's this is a good Micro Distillery that we should support. It's good stuff. Yeah, like
Kyle 04:00
they're drinkable. And I wouldn't feel bad about mixing it with something. If I wanted to make an old fashioned. It'd be great. Yeah, it's good to have those around.
Randy 04:08
So Trevor city whiskey company, this moves. Good job. Yeah. Do Kwan. And Greg Thompson, thank you so much for joining us this evening.
Greg 04:20
is great to be here.
Randy 04:22
Super fun. I'm excited to talk about your book reparations. Can you guys tell us about yourselves before we get into this pretty major work that you put together called reparations? Who are you? Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. I am
Duke 04:35
a pastor in Washington DC, part of a church that started up about 10 years ago, part of a network of congregations here in the District of Columbia that started up about 18 years ago. And so this is home. Why can three kids three young kids that are also here all born here in DC so this is definitely home. Playing didn't launch your roots plan to be here. I grew up in California for most of my life. A lot of my family's still out there. But came over to the east coast for college and never went back, which is not not common for Californians. But that's that's the case for me. So here I am, which also makes me a Lakers fan. So you can love me or hate me for that. But that's what it is man.
Randy 05:23
Left the coast but not the team affiliation. I respect that. Absolutely. Do what kind of that was Duke, by the way do kwon do what kind of church is Do you pastor? What's the denomination network affiliates? Yeah,
Duke 05:33
the church is called Grace Meridian Hill, the network is called grace, DC. Network, three congregations. And we're a part of the Presbyterian Church in America. So PCA.
Randy 05:44
Got it. Thank you.
Greg 05:46
So I'm Gregory Thompson. And I am a former pastor. And I'm a scholar of civil rights movement, and really, kind of functioning as an artist of kind of diverse creative background. Right now I'm leading a project to build a national memorial, the Underground Railroad, outside of Philadelphia, I'm the creative director of a new cocktail bar, that's an homage to African American cultural history called Star and lantern. And, and that's in the that's opening in the Philadelphia area. And so I'm based in Charlottesville, Virginia, but I kind of live at this interesting intersection of theology, and our spirituality, politics around around race and racial justice, and essentially the hospitality world, the food world, and those are the that's the space where I'm spending most of my time like, I was just over at the restaurant before I came over here. And so trying to pull all those circles together in some coherent, some coherent fashion.
Randy 06:51
I'm you got me, Greg. I mean, good grief. I love food. I love civil rights. I love the church. I mean, cheese ends. Yeah, whatever, I'll just stop gushing a little bit. But I'd love
Greg 07:02
to talk to you about starting later. And if you want, it's gonna be an awesome thing. Yeah, let's
Randy 07:05
let's try to get that in before we're done. Um, how do you guys know each other? How do you read up wind up writing a book together?
Greg 07:12
Well, we've been in the same we've been in kind of same broad network, I was in also in the Presbyterian Church. And we had known each other for a number of years, but I don't think really had been together more than once over the past 15 years, then we ended up in a meeting in DC the month after the Charleston shootings and 2015. And the two of us were there together, and kind of discussing what had happened and what a what a credible and meaningful response to it would be. And then we just have sort of stayed and stayed in touch, you know, over the years. And that's kind of how I think our relationship developed. We have not, it should be said, I don't think we've been together. But one time since we signed a contract to write this book, because of because of COVID. So I do can only exist in each other screen. We're not real.
Randy 08:02
So was it was the book one of your ideas? Or was it the publishers idea that came to both of you? How did that work?
Duke 08:08
I think it was our idea, not not the publishers, but I think really, it just bubbled up. When we found each other sort of a rare shared interest in this topic. Obviously, it's not one that many people in our sort of ministry and church spaces have necessarily tackled or embraced. I had the privilege of sharing a talk at ACU ideas conference a couple of years ago. And that may have been the first time that Greg heard me speak on this publicly. And that sort of, you know, triggered conversations about hey, you know, you find two unicorns in our denomination that actually want to tackle reparations, started thinking about what we could do together on the subject. So yeah, the rest is history.
Greg 08:54
Yeah, I texted, I was actually sitting in the audience when he gave the talk. And I had a prior commitment to work to meet with a publisher The following morning to talk about a contract on a book on MLK. And I texted Duke during his talk and said, I think we need to write a book on reparations together. And I'm meeting with the publisher in the morning. And Are you cool with me pitching? It was pretty much, pretty much that's how we we I think that's really how it happened. He was doing really good constructive work. And I've been thinking about these issues and thought I see. And I, we both saw an opportunity that we thought to serve in that way.
Kyle 09:34
Yeah. Well, it's a it's a great book. I just finished it a couple of days ago. It was a challenging read, hard green, but it's an important read. I'm going to ask you the obvious question that I know you get at every interview about this just to start us off, and I know you have to prepare to answer because it's in the book. Why are a white guy and an Asian guy writing a book about African American reparations?
Greg 09:56
Well, you know, as we say in the book, we don't know who else should be writing it. At one level, I mean, the reparations conversation is by nature a two party conversation. Those two those who owe reparations and those to whom reparations are owed. And so we're writing as people who were in a predominantly, but not exclusively, but predominantly white denomination. And, and we wanted to speak into that audience, as people who in some ways represent that community, it's complicated for both of us, obviously, it's more complicated for Duke, because he has, he has an entirely different sort of story and this, but that. So in one sense, we're taking it from the perspective of what we say is the penitent. And we're also doing it as folks who believe in the church and believe the church should take responsibility for it.
Duke 10:44
Yeah, it does stand out to some folks as being odd, or at least not what they might expect in terms of authorship on a topic like this. But that's been a joy. I think it's important that even though we are who we are, we did labor as best as we could, not only to write and think but even in our sort of our own development over the years to really sort of sit at the feet of African American thinkers, pastors, ministry leaders, and all the rest. And we try to reflect that in the book that even though we're writing as non black people responding in this two part conversation, that we also did want to do our best to represent not just our own thoughts, but the thoughts of Christian leaders, both past and present from the African American tradition.
Randy 11:27
Yeah. And he sure did that. I mean, that was very, very clear. And that's really a lot of the gut wrenching stuff for me, as we read that. I mean, you start out the book, the introduction got me, I mean, completely 100% hooked, just reading that letter from this former slave named Jordan Anderson. I wanted to read this out loud, over the Unifor listeners the whole letter, but it's just too long. It's bad listening, we'd waste our time with you guys. But could you let our listeners who haven't read this book, and I think this is going to make them want to buy the book, tell them about this letter, how you found it, how you became aware of it, the history of it, and then just tell them about the contents of this letter? Because it is incredible.
Duke 12:08
Yeah, I mean, I found it online, just browsing through different sources, and especially at a time when I was interested in getting down to original source material. And just a fascinating story of a former slave, who once lived on a property in Tennessee, eventually ran away and made a new living in Ohio. And so the whole sort of context of this letter that we have, that was written by Jordan Andijan, this former slave to his former master, just this amazing response to a request a plea for him to return back to the home, the former master, apparently, his property had fallen on hard times. And he needed some extra help and wanted his former slave to come back and get things back in order. So yeah, just that letter actually sort of not went viral, but it just got some press time, some years ago, maybe 10 years ago or so. So it got circulated a little bit, and people were chatting about it. But I think a lot of people have forgotten about it. So it was fun for us just to put it back in print and make sure people got their eyes on it, because it really is powerful. And Greg, maybe you can just summarize what the contents of the letter was.
Greg 13:25
Yeah, well, this, the essence is, you know, I mean, it's a mess. It's a total masterpiece. But the essence of it is, I appreciate you asking me to come back. I miss the old homeplace, even though you shot at me on occasion, and I am interested in talking to you about coming back. But the precondition of that is for you to show me your good faith, that you really do want to work together on this and treat me well by paying me what you owe me. And then Jordan Anderson, calculates what he owes what he is owed over for all the years of service minus like a tooth extraction and a couple other things and says, so that'll be $11,000. And please send the money to a server certain place. And if and if you don't, then there's, there's no way I can trust you to treat me well, when I come back, and I don't really need you. And so it it was just, it was just incredible.
Randy 14:25
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's worth the book, right there. read that letter, and it will hook you for the rest of the book. And I mean, the the power of the book, one of the powerful things about the book to me was the stories that you tell. I mean, you're just helping us see the history of our nation helping us see the history of slavery of Jim Crow of, you know, the 60s and 70s the whole dang history of our nation and in the first chapter, I mean it I was depressed by how history repeats itself. You tell the story of the sanitation workers protest in Memphis in 1968. And after two sanitation workers who are black are killed in the line of work and the response to that protest that you that you detail in your first chapter ring so familiar to me right where you say the response, some claimed that Dr. King was stirring up trouble to grab attention. Others claimed that it was a movement of violence that was launched by black nationalists other said it was a strategy formed by Northern union leaders trying to explain local problems on and on. That sounded so familiar to me from the summer of 2020. And even till till now, when we talk about the Black Lives Matter protests, and you have you had this like two week window of a lot of unity, you know, like, people get kneeling for nine in the suburbs in the rural areas, and all this beautiful stuff. And then all of a sudden, was like you've had your time now. And then when it continued to turned, just angry and bitter. And you heard all these ideas. And these reasons for why this is happening. It's Antifa. Or it's their, their their violent, even though we know 93% of the Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful. It reminded me so much of in depressed me in how our nation's history repeats itself all the way up to the present moment. Can you just you guys are scholars, you guys have researched this brings us into that world of history repeating itself. And why you might be a little bit hopeful even?
Greg 16:19
Well, I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that of all of the qualities evil has creativity is not one of them. And it continually, you know, plays the same songs. And I think that these things do repeat themselves just because they're, they're unaddressed it's like a wound will continue to scab and and so I think part of part of what we were trying to help people see is that these, these essentially tropes of deflection, that are used by people who want to deny the reality of white supremacy, or frankly displace responsibility for our social turmoil onto African Americans, and away from white folks, they really only have so many ways they can do that. And they just do it over and over and over again, you know, in some of the people that are talking today, I was joking with Duke Today. I was like, some of the stuff that's being said today, it could have been said by George Wallace, you know, or it can be said about John C. Calhoun. And these its highest profiling and original, and the way it thrives is by obscuring itself. You know, I think I think we're seeing that, and I'm personally hopeful and be interested to see what duke says be precisely for that reason. What we're facing is not new, and it's just compounded evidence. And this does this moment, like many other moments that we chose not to embrace, this moment does present us with an opportunity to finally address these things, which seems so transparent to us, in need of redress.
Duke 17:51
Just to comment on the last part of the question, one reason why I'm hopeful, and there are a number of reasons, including things as foundational as the power of the resurrection, believing in the power of Christ in the life of the church, truly real things can happen in and through the church, so believing and things like that. But what stands out to me, I think, in this generation, if I could almost talk like an old dude or something, is I feel like there's there's more attentiveness to history, I think, then, I've seen in in generations past, as if I've lived in any other except my own right, but I just mean, they're people. You know, one of the things that has have obscured these things over the years is when Americans and especially American Christians have opted to live under these dense mythologies, and then sort of inheriting them as they're passed down from home to home and church to church. But without actually reckoning with history on its own terms. I feel like people are actually going back to the sources and reading for themselves. And more accessible histories are being written as well. And so it's a fascinating thing, I think, to see Christians that are wanting to know truer stories, more than I've ever seen. And I think that's actually igniting both a deeper kind of honesty and penitence, as well as an eagerness to rewrite the story or to overwrite it or to just write new chapters of it going forward. There's a different relationship to history than we've had before.
Greg 19:28
And if I could add to that, I want to just underscore this book was not written as an indictment of the church. There are indicting parts of it for all of us. It was essentially written and addressed the church because we have hope in the church, because we believe that if the people of God actually saw what was happening in this world, and actually committed themselves to the work of reparations, that it would be possible to make profoundly constructive action and You know, real real strides on this. So I believe in the Spirit, and I believe in the creative possibility of Christian folk. And so I think that's, that's one of the reasons we were so deliberate about addressing it to, to the church precisely because this is, this is a work of hope. And we think that if the church owned this and said, Yes, we're going to we're going to figure out what this means and how to respond. I think we would actually start to see movement in this culture.
Randy 20:29
Well, we, we found two guys who have hope in the church. Let's, let's try.
Kyle 20:37
Right? Yeah, we tend more towards despair on this podcast.
Randy 20:42
We need more hope. Yeah.
Greg 20:44
It's a hope in the presence of Christ. Amen. Yep. Yeah,
Randy 20:48
I'm there with him.
Kyle 20:49
So Well, I'm glad that you mentioned the historical stuff, because a great strength of the book, I thought was in the early chapters where I mean, you could you could assign some of this as like a pretty decent introductory history to white supremacy in the United States, and like an undergraduate class, like I was talking to my students about it, actually, because we just happen to have our unit on race this week. And so it was fresh in my mind. I mean, there's some really useful stuff in there, you guys have a quite useful, I think, synthesis of a lot of historical scholarship on the concepts of racism, and white supremacy. So could you briefly for our listeners, before we get to the reparations part, specifically, tell us what you think racism is. And specifically, if you could describe for us your idea of cultural racism, because I think it ties together a bunch of different scholarly strands in a really nice way. So if you could explain what cultural racism and white supremacy are, and then we can talk about the repaired? Yeah,
Greg 21:45
great. I'll try to do it succinctly. Racism, as we define it has three aspects to it. The first is the identification of people according to putatively static or unchanging physical characteristics, to imputing certain moral and intellectual capacities and correlating them to those those physical characteristics. And three, assigning correlative social value, or d value based on those characteristics racism is, is all of those things, as as we talked about it. And when we talk about racism as a culture, what we're simply saying is that we have inherited a culture and American culture has certainly been a culture that did that, that, especially to African Americans, and not exclusively to African Americans, but in a distinctive way, to African Americans. And though, you know, we see this, we see this happening all over the place now, but so it's not just what's happening in my heart. Racism is not just a broken relationship with somebody of a different quote, race. It's not even just a sort of discrete institutional injustice. It's actually an entire cultural system, where that traffic is and perpetuates those three features that we continue to talk about people in these racialized categories, which are a modern invention, that we continue to assign various capacities to them. And we continually reward or, or harm people, according to those signifiers. And that has embedded itself in every institution, and not just in the institutions, but in the interaction between those institutions into a mutually reinforcing system. That system, we refer to as white supremacy for a very simple reason. It is beyond controversy historically, that the United States of America privileges those that it designates to be white, our entire catalogue of blood laws from the 19th century is nothing but and the correlative privileges that were associated with how much how much white or African American blood you had in you, is an irrefutable incontrovertible demonstration that that this was a this was a basic lodge anthropological logic of this country. And that it continues and so it, what it does is it takes people that it designates to be white, and it elevates them, makes them supreme, across all of these across all of these different institutional manifestations. And so, white supremacy as we describe it is not you know, as we say, hooded dudes in the woods or torchbearers marching through Charlottesville on my on my town, it is an actual system that advantages those that it deems to be white and disadvantages those deemed to be not white. That is, I want to say one more thing. This is not to say that all those advantages are equal. It is not to say that the presence of of advantage means that those it deems to be white have an easy life. It doesn't mean that some just have what Dubois called the psychological wage, of knowing that at least they're not black and coming from you know, relatively poor southern roots myself. I'm I can testify to that. That is That is true. And so that's, that's what we mean,
Duke 25:05
if I could just add, you know, that I this idea that we tried to introduce early on racism as a culture, we describe it kind of as being an eco system, right? So even in the way that word is used to describe the natural world, what is that it's it's sort of this web, network and web of, of not only organisms, but their relationships with each other that their environment, right. So this includes people, individual people, and institutions and their ideas and what's in the water, and what's in the air, all of those things together, which are the source and some of all these other aspects and dimensions of racism, whether if it's broken relationships, or evil ideas, or corrupted institutions, the reason why we felt it was important to describe racism as such, as far as the logic of our argument is concerned, is basically to just show how bad and intractable the problem is. That of course, if it's just if racism is just about broken relationships, then let's just hang out more, or, you know, or if it's just about bad ideas, then let's just read more books. If it's just about broken institutions, well, let's just fix these organizations. We're saying it's all that and more. It goes deeper, wider, it's been longer, it's been harder. And therefore, this is the simple conclusion out of that, that sort of emerges out of that definition. Therefore, we need something that goes as comprehensive and deep and wide as white supremacy itself has infected our nation. And that is why we need something like reparations. And so it's, it's an argument and a definition that tries to set the stage for the need for something like reparations.
Randy 26:57
So I mean, in your first couple of chapters, you do a really good job guys, of taking us into the darkness and the depth in the disgusting nature of white supremacy in the history of the United States of America. I mean, and you talk about the color line, in the call to see white supremacy that is ingrained in our culture, when we don't really see it. So can you take our listeners into that world, the color line that functions to keep African Americans and white Americans from seeing one another, and that is a line that runs you say, deep through the structure of our daily lives going all the way back to hidden and separated lives, on the plantation to our world today? Take us into that world, that color line, it was easy to see then it should be easy to see now. But can you just take us into that reality a little bit?
Greg 27:42
Well, you know, it's interesting, it both is and is not easy to see, because, well, I'll talk about that a second to talk about the color line. You know, that's obviously Dubois this phrase, and he was talking about an entire social separation, that that existed that was being challenged, that had in fact been challenged through emancipation and through reconstruction, and was never fully resolved. In fact, that line was reestablished in Jim Crow as he limits in some of his poetry. And the basic idea is that what we were just talking about a minute ago, that this this separation of essential selves, according to quote, racial categories, and then giving people completely different social experiences based on that. And those two things don't interact, except as those who are in empowered need those who are not in power. And that line is very firmly policed, you know, it was obviously policed in in the plantations, it was policed in segregation, it was policed by this hyper hysteria about Black, White sexual relationships that were prominent from the 1880s, really, through the Civil Rights Movement. And so I think it's, it's a structure that expresses itself everywhere in their educational systems, you know, our laws, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's one sense in which is really easy to see, I mean, all you have to do is drive through town, and you can drive through various towns, you can see it look at educational systems, look at who's getting free lunch, and who's not at school, like all these things, you can see it. But on the other hand, it's, it's not easy to see, because by nature, it was designed to conceal. And that's why we refer to like, you know, the hidden staircases in Monticello and places like that, because white America not only needs to be in power, and to subjugate these other folks, historically, it needs to believe that it's not doing it while it's doing it. And that means that that it's fundamentally pathological in nature, and that's a part of the thing and that's part of what we're seeing right you know, right now in our in our own country is this, this, this is, this is a system that is predicated on pretending that it is something other than it is. Well, that is why people can say, you know, we always treated our slaves real good. That is why people can say, you know, black people loved it down in the south with like a straight face. That's why certain people who may or may not have been in the White House over the past four years can say, I'm not a racist, when everything, everything that you see taking shape is a reinforcement of a racial order, because it is predicated upon self deceit.
Kyle 30:21
Do anything to add to that?
Duke 30:23
Yeah, no, I mean, just to say that that line runs not only right through American society, generally broadly, but also through the church. And it's just as invisible in the life of the church as well. And in fact, church people are sometimes the most blind to those realities, most hidden from it and most self deceived as far as wanting to believe the best of themselves and of the church's history, and therefore don't know how to reckon with it or heal those divides. And that separation and that blindness, because they don't even believe or want to believe that it could be there.
Randy 31:00
I mean, you kind of answered it. But I want to just go dig beneath the surface a little bit there. Why do you think the church maybe is the most blind? You just said, something similar to that? Why What Why is that as a pastor?
Duke 31:12
Well, I think part of it is we just as much as anyone else cling to sort of the social order. And I mean that both Ecclesia Lee as well as more broadly, in American society, we don't want disruptions, we like things to be tidy and not unsettled. And to actually see things as they truly are, is deeply distressing and unsettling. So I think we choose not to really deal with things. I think part of it is, our spirituality in the American church is impaired in a lot of ways that gives us this real deep, almost embarrassing inability to confront reality, to tell the truth about ourselves, and we're pretty good at telling the truth about others failures. The world yes, but not our own. We it what I mean is, we really, truly do not believe in the life giving power of repentance. We don't believe in the grace of confession, we believe these are damaging things, rather than things that truly do, liberate and restore my humanity and the true nature of the church reveal the true nature of the church when we tell the truth. So So I think we just would rather live under lies, deceptions, because we're afraid, and because we're afraid of what we might lose. Yeah, it really is tragic, because Christian should be the most courageous to enter into, into those honest places, the most vulnerable, the most risk taking. And I don't mean just by going into dangerous countries to bring the Gospel to bear around the world, I mean, dangerous as in like telling the truth, yeah, in bearing that kind of risk, even institutional financial risk. But unfortunately, the church tends to be the most cowardly, at least has been over the centuries.
Greg 33:04
And I think just you know, just to add to that, it's important to remember that American Christianity broadly conceived, especially we're talking about largely white Protestant Christianity has always been a de facto statist institution, meaning it is it has always been one part Christian gospel, and one part nationalist mythology. And insight, in fact, has seen itself as the Baptizer, and the legitimate moral steward of this order. And so the church has put itself in this situation, where if it names reality as it is, it has to, it has to thereby contribute to its own undoing. And so I think part of our work right now, is to name this because a lot of this isn't really about the history, the histories, the histories, readily accessible. People, people who want to know this, they can see it, it's not like we had to go, you know, dig under some pyramid and find some mystery record somewhere. All this is like broadly in the public record. What is happening in our view in the church is the church is incapable of seeing this because it is enslaved to nationalist mythology. And it is this close at every moment, to becoming a nationalist cult. And I think we have to understand that and Christians around the world know this to be true of us. Okay, this is what this is, what global theology is. It's common, its commentaries on this. And so I think we have got to reckon with this, how deeply enslaved we are to cultural mythologies, and how much life and vitality and power and sanctimony and self respect we have derived from believing ourselves to be on the right side of history, assuring ourselves and we're on the right side of history, even as we make our brothers and sisters sit in the balcony.
Randy 34:55
Man, I'm a former boxer in that we call like a technical knockout like this, this one's Oh over, it's done. You guys. I mean, that's, I mean, the encouraging thing, from what you're talking about, Greg is that it's this is nothing new, right, this wave of nationalism that we find. It's kind of like the wave of racism that has been exposed in the last five years in our nation's history, which is really like it's always been there. We've just had someone who has been who has empowered it and revealed it. It's kind of an apocalypse almost in the last five years of saying it's an unveiling of what's always been there, the nationalism, the racism, the tribalism, all of that. Yeah.
Elliot 35:33
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Kyle 36:10
So let's talk specifically about reparations then. So I was in favor of the idea before reading the book. But I was I would have been skeptical of the idea that the church had much of a role to play prior to reading the book, not because I don't think it's an obligation, a religious and moral obligation. But because I have no, no real hope that the church can be effective, it seems more likely to me that they would get in the way and make things worse. So if you were to ask me, whose job is the reparations? My answer would have been the stereotypical one, the federal government, but you make a pretty strong case in the book, I think that the church has a significant role to play in this. So first, explain what reparations means for our listeners who might not have considered the concept and then explain what role you think the church plays?
Greg 36:53
I'll take the first half, Greg? Sure. So in order to understand reparations, what it means we understand the white supremacy is not as just a cultural order. It's a cultural order that that has certain consequences in the world. And those consequences are primarily by us, reducible to the concept of theft, that is to say, it has been as time as he calls it a kleptocracy. And so I think white supremacy, as we say, stole the truth about human beings and also the truth about history through these kind of mythological self deceit and self conceits that we were just talking about. It's still also power, and, you know, bodily power, political and institutional power. And of course, we're seeing a real reestablishment of that theft of political power through voting. Restrictions like that just took place in Florida. And it's a theft of wealth as well, both through extraction of wealth from black communities, and the obstruction of there tends to get wealth and build wealth for themselves. So that's important foundation, because reparations is simply it's essentially rolling the tape backwards and thinking, what does it mean to restore what has been stolen in with respect to areas of truth, power and wealth,
Duke 38:03
as far as the church's role is concerned? I mean, our argument in the book is a couple of things. One, just by the nature of what the church is and who the church is that we believe that there's a there's an undeniable missional calling to love neighbor. And this stands as sort of the identity of the church whether or not the church actually was involved in white supremacist theft. This is what we do and who we are, we go, we love, we fix we, we repair, we restore, we heal. This is part of our central calling. But that more specifically, we have this dual identity as both friend and foe of white supremacy throughout American history. And what I mean by that is that we as a church collective, have been essential participants in these thefts as perpetrators, accomplices, and willful, negligent bystanders, in the face of theft. And so we are, therefore responsible, corporately, to make restitution for these things to give back what was sinfully taken. But that's also not the whole story either. Like we were saying earlier before, just because we're culpable if we didn't actually believe in the possibility that church, we also wouldn't be looking at the church. And to be frank, you do see this often out there people who want to hold the Christian church responsible for things but don't actually believe the church can do it. It's like, well, you can't have it both ways. Either, either we're responsible and there is even if in a faint and diminished way, yet by the power of the Holy Spirit sufficient power to make a difference and to do the work or there isn't. But either way for us we believe that the church can actually engage its mission. We let me be clear, we believe that resistance against white supremacy in the church has always been a remnant movement has never been popular. Never probably will be And yet in the past, Christians and the faithful witness of the church has been able to make a real difference in healing these wounds, and making substantial changes across American society. And we believe that that's still the case. Even today, if we will pay attention to the great moral tradition that we have, that tells us, if you stole something, you got to give it back. And when you see a theft, even if you didn't cause it, you need to be a part of restoring it and healing it. That's Zacchaeus. That's the good Samaritan. That's our Bible. That's our Bible. And therefore we need to pay attention and be faithful to that word.
Randy 40:38
Good. Yeah, I
Greg 40:38
don't want to say that our affirmation of the church is not it's not a form of like theological wistfulness, it's, I'm in a civil rights scholar. It isn't, it's inconceivable to think about the black liberation movement in the United States historically, without centering the church. It just doesn't, it doesn't work. And so, again, it's not just, it's not that we're we, we believe in the resurrection, and therefore we're making wistful deductions. It is to say, we believe in the resurrection, and look, the data have been raised. And so we want to call people to participate in that again, by reminding people of the nobility of this history even though it's it's, it's a complicated nobility as all forms of nobility are, I suppose.
Randy 41:27
Let me ask the simple question. That is the most basic question and common, you know, deterrent to reparations that I've heard is, I'm not a slave owner, I never own slaves. I'm not even a racist person. So why should I be responsible for what, you know, generations ago did and in all that business, you talk in the book, you say, this line that says, We must see ourselves not simply as inheritors of history as nobility, but also as ones who were implicated in history's nightmares implicated? That's a strong word. Can you just tease that out just a little bit for listeners who might be having that offense of like, Why should I be responsible for what generations ago did?
Greg 42:04
Well, this is essentially Frederick Douglass point that we and we talk about this and Americans want to celebrate the Fourth of July. We want to stand at baseball games and put our hands over ours and pledge allegiance, we want to get misty eyed when the F 16 screws over the football stadium, when our grandsons are standing there, we want to be the inheritor. So we do want to take responsibility and enjoy the privileges of things that we contributed literally zero to, okay, okay, we know how to do that. What we don't want is to somehow imagine that we are implicated in the dark sides of that, and that is a form of willful moral deception. And so I just, it's just, it just transparently is. And so I mean, I didn't fight in the revolution. But I know how to make hotdogs on July 4, like, why why is that? Okay? There is you have to understand that there is this is the this is an expression of moral sickness, and of ideological commitment, where we're willing to be so profoundly morally inconsistent, and to choose to do something when we are the beneficiaries of that thing. And to refuse to do this thing, in fact, to call it morally problematic when it requires something of us that's a sign not of intelligence. I'm not even a good argument, but of a moral sickness. And so and this is essentially what Frederick Douglass was saying in his, in his speech on July 5, you know, when he was like, America has been good to you. But it has not been good to us and you are the beneficiaries. And I think we say it in the book, you know, we have to see ourselves not only as inheritors of a city on a hill, but as inhabitants of a city that was built on the bodies of broken children. And as beneficiaries of that breaking. And unless we can do that, then we are being morally dishonest and also civically incoherent.
Duke 43:55
Yeah. Tonya Harding. Coates calls that fairweather patriotism, right. The inconsistency that duplicity and hypocrisy, you know, he talks about the need not just to celebrate one side of it, but the whole of it, right, the whole of our inheritance, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, which again, Christians are not great at doing. We are happy to put out hagiographic biographies and all our great wonderful American heroes, American Christian heroes. And when it comes to their failings or their slaveholder ship and all the rest, we off you skate and excuse and rationalize complete their failings in that way. I want to point out to though that why does it matter for even the person that knows and maybe they're accurate in knowing that know their family didn't own slaves? Maybe they didn't, weren't even here in this nation at that time. Two parts of the argument that I think need to be made clear. One is that we do have in our Christian understanding over the centuries of the ways in which it's proper to apply the ethics of restitution, that When those obligations are not fulfilled by the original perpetrator, they do get passed on to his or her descendants. And so if the hot goods that were stolen, come into the possession of someone that was not the original criminal that took it in the first place, the original Thief, well, it doesn't matter, it's not yours. And they were illegitimately in sinfully. Taken they need to be returned. And so it's actually not a coherent argument simply to say, well, it wasn't me, you are rendered an accomplice by being a beneficiary. In that sense, whether or not your great great great granddaddy owned slaves or not, in a sense, we all are complicit because we all do benefit from the bounty of this nation that was harvested and built on the backs of slaves. And we need to reckon with that a lot of the problems that we have are simply just the radical individualism that blinds American Christians from really being able to see a corporate realities, corporate dimensions, especially in Scripture, it's like all people, Christians should be the first in line to say, we are a we. And yet we find ourselves arguing and all these strange arguments about Well, no, I was not there. And I did not do it, that we don't we're not supposed to talk that way. The Bible doesn't teach us to talk that way. We need to deal more corporately, with our corporate evils and failures.
Greg 46:20
And one thing on that it all that question also, while it's an important question of political economy, and in questions of who owes into whom, and how much those are, those are, like basic questions of political economy that I think really matter. But for church folk, you got to remember, we are a missionary people. And can you imagine going into the mission field and we said this before going in the mission field and Rwanda in 1996, and just being like, I didn't kill nobody on this genocide? So like, Why do I have to do something about it? You know, what you would do, you would be labeled as a terrible missionary. And you know why you would be because you are. And so what's happening here is that Christian folk with a straight face, are saying that same thing, and thereby betraying their establishment identity, rather than their missionary missionary identity. And I think I think it's a really clear indication whenever somebody says that outside of the context of like a serious conversation about political economy, that they have not yet grasped what it means to be a neighbor to the hurting, and what that requires of us, and it is shot through with self interest, and I think betrays itself to be so
Kyle 47:28
yeah, you, you said you quote, somebody in the book that I just want to mention, because it was really powerful to me. So this is in chapter four, I got him James Forman, who was a representative of the National Black Economic Development Conference in 1969. And he goes into this church in New York City, causes a disruption during their service, stands at the front and reads out this statement. And when asked afterwards, why did you target the church and other representative of that group said, because the church is the only institution claiming to be in the business of salvation, resurrection, and the giving and restoring of life? General Motors has never made that kind of claim. So right for everything you just said about responsibilities of civic patriotism, or whatever. I didn't do that. So I have no responsibility to do anything about it just has no place in the mouth of a Christian that's simply not in the character of Jesus. Oh,
Greg 48:22
that's correct. To the extent that we persist. And that's that line of reasoning. We are condemned.
Duke 48:29
Yeah, no, no, no, that's right, that quote, and it's one of my favorites in that section. It's just so striking, because it's a simple call to integrity, to live up to our own confessions, creeds, and claims, my goodness. And it's embarrassing, because the whole world sees it right? You know, the name of Christ is blasphemed, among the Gentiles because of you. And it's like, if all we could do is just live up to all that we teach and preach to each other. And unfortunately, to the world, we would actually be on the hook to do that these things and more, we have an integrity problem.
Kyle 49:07
Yeah. So let me let me ask this, a reader looking for a practical plan of reparations with like numbers and math and stuff is going to be disappointed by the book, you're not gonna find that, but you give a good reason as to why that's not in your book. Can you explain why you didn't include something like that?
Greg 49:27
Yeah, so I think part of what we wanted our readers to understand is that a this is introduction, that's important to say, second, that we really think people need to sit with this history and sit with this theological tradition that is apparently having so little effect on our moral imaginations. And so really, to get into that before rushing in and saying, Hey, I've started a fund, you know, I mean, we're in favor of that and as the NASA says, really hilariously, reparations can't wait, wait for you to finish with your mercury. You know, I think she's right away. She's right about that. But the main thing is because as we say, in chapter seven, African American communities can lead the way on it can show us what needs to be done. And this isn't, it isn't, it isn't morally appropriate for me to say. And here's what it should look like. The whole point is that we have to build these collaborative communities, where we are going to figure out how to do this together over time. And so we wanted to at the end, chapter seven, which is where we take up the kind of the call to reparations, the call to repair we wanted to send our African American leaders and their voices. And that was not like a summary, it was a moral choice to say, we've laid out all this stuff historically and theologically. Now, we're going to turn it to them, and they're going to show us the way it will be we'll just listen to them. And that I think is is what we the kind of spiritual discipline, of openness of renouncing control, and actually letting other people lead us into the path of repentance. That I think that that's, that's a moral decision that we have to make together.
Duke 51:05
Just to add I, it is absolutely possible and probable, to even with the best of intentions to run out the door. And to attempt to enact reparations, in perpetuate and recapitulate the very white supremacist moral logic that got us there in the first place, because of our paternalism, because of our refusal to let go of the steering wheel, because of the insistence that we be the authors of these programs and the holders of the money, and the definers of the strategy and and all the rest, there needs to be both a real work of reparations and an inner transformation within our communities, which is why the first part of that chapter and chapter seven talks about becoming a people of reparations, the inner life that needs to become more aligned with the outer work, virtues of repair that need to take place, humility, and repentance and confession and relinquishing of control, and a revaluation of money. And all the rest is just as important, not sequential, you know, and ASA has that great quote to where she's like, well, we can't sit around and just wait, right? But these things happen in tandem together. So we grow and we go, and it's back and forth in the door out the door. But we need to slow down a bit. And we're not willing to slow down. And that's part of the problem.
Greg 52:29
Yeah, and in some ways that chapter seven is, it's just, it just takes us back to Jordan Anderson. We started with African American voice and said, This is what it will take. And we ended with African American voices saying this is what we will take. And the book is called a Christian call. And now the obvious thing that is left for the Christian church to decide is Is there going to be a Christian response? The whole thing is predicated upon a call to response. And I think that that's, that's what we're waiting to see. And it is in that response as we build these relationships. And as we've listened to these leaders and Senator, their voices, that's where the healing will happen.
Randy 53:07
So I know you guys have very little time left, I want to ask two last questions. Be quick, if you can. But this is super interesting, because just a couple of months ago, the city of Evanston, Illinois became the first US city to actually give reparations, financial reparations to African Americans. What are your thoughts on? I mean, did you look into that very much? And what are your thoughts on that? I think I have a good guess, because of what you just said about the white church just listening to the African American community. But what are your thoughts on what happened in Evanston?
Duke 53:37
Yeah, I'm aware of it. I don't feel like I know enough about it really to give substantive commentary on that. But from what I can see, it looks like some good initial steps in the right direction.
Greg 53:49
Yeah. And I would say, without talking about the particulars, I think it's exactly the kind of thing that we want to see community based initiatives based on local collaborations, identifying the problem with coming up with strategies, that is what in our judgement of the model needs to be. You know, Virginia just signed a bill granting reparations to the descendants of the enslaved people that have built the University of Virginia. So I think that these local initiatives, in my view, really are the kind of tip of the spear and they're very important to cultivate, even as people are trying to, like, figure out if they're going to work or not. The point is to try to experiment and to do that collaboratively and discern
Duke 54:26
right through it through a process community base process, not just running after answers, but through real work through Truth and Reconciliation Types of commissions, and really grinding through the hard stuff. That's really what we're hoping to see.
Randy 54:41
Yep. So at the beginning of this conversation, we talked you talked a little bit about hope, and then we kind of dragged through a lot of despair. Can you finish off last question? Remind us again, guys, why do you have hope that this can happen? Why do you have hope that racism in America the the cancer, that is racism in America can actually be healed? overcome?
Greg 55:01
Well, the facts of the matter is Christ is risen from the dead. And that act of fact, reverberates throughout all time and space, because of the triune will. Now not not because we figure some stuff out. And I think at a very at a very fundamental level, we believe that Christ is with those who have been cast down and who's, you know, to quote Howard Thurman, whose backs are against the wall, we believe with Julian of Norwich, you know, with the John of the Cross, which would St. Francis, with so many others start with Gutierrez and Howard Thurman and Martin King, all these people, we believe with them that Christ is with those who have been cast down and that he will vindicate them. And so that's one thing. And we also believe that there are many, many amazing women and men in the Christian church right now who actually want to see healing happen. But they have not been equipped by the church to talk meaningfully about reparations. To the contrary, there have been they've heard their leaders, they've heard their thought leaders, like misnaming, and call it dangerous. And so I think that part of what we're wanting to do is say to those people, this is Christian, this other stuff that you're hearing is ideological. Okay. And if we would just take this up and do this, we could see something profound and transformative happened. And I remember, like, when you study the end of the transatlantic slave trade, I'm not gonna go all Wilberforce on this here. But just keep in mind that, like, we're talking about the largest, the most powerful global market in the world. Okay. Ends. Yeah, yep. And so I think that we have to keep in mind, but theologically And historically, that this is what the church does. It's not the only thing we do. But it's what we can do. And I believe that we will. No, that's
Duke 56:57
That's exactly right. And literally, it's what I would say to ours, theologically, the hope of the resurrection, the identity of the church, truly as the temple of the Holy Spirit, we believe in the possibilities of what can come out of the church, not not when it rises up, but rather when it kneels down. Right? Not Not, not when it feels at its strongest, but actually when it feels most weak, which is what this invitation is, but then also to pay attention to history and to say, again, like I said before, it's not at all that we think that the church has always gotten it right. But history tells us that it can do sufficient work. And in Jesus name, we hope it will,
Randy 57:37
will Duke Kwon. Gregory Thompson, thank you so much for this work. Thanks for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Right. Thank you.
Greg 57:44
Pleasure. Thanks so much, guys.
Kyle 57:45
So the book, again, is reparations, a Christian call for repentance and repair Duke Kwon, Gregory Thompson, go out and buy it as soon as you can. It's really important,
Randy 57:54
really, yeah. That the first few chapters, I think, is almost required reading for anyone who wants to talk about
Kyle 58:02
that it really is a good historical summation of not just white supremacy, but like the invention of race, right? Because they have to kind of explain that in order to even explain why it's a fundamental problem in the United States. And so they start in about 1680. And explain how prior to that point, there weren't white people. That's, you know, a creation of the slave trade. And, yeah, this could serve as a primer on the history of racism, not just the United States, but in general, there's much, much more to be said, but they also have extensive footnotes for that. So
Randy 58:33
absolutely. No, I mean, I think getting under the dark underbelly is our responsibility and our job, and they do a really great job of succinctly bringing us on into that dark underbelly. Without ever having like, just completely cripple you even though I got close a few times. I felt like I mean, it was it's rough stuff, but it also feels, it feels like that required hard work that feels cathartic when you're doing it, it feels painful. Like you can't wait till it's done. And also you know that it's going to bring about healing like it's it was that kind of reading for me. Really important.
Elliot 59:13
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. You can find us on social media. Like and share and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you're inclined to leave a review, we read through all of those and we love the feedback. Till next time, this has been A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.