In this Episode:
This is a special presentation of an interview with Lisa Sharon Harper on TALKIN’ POLITICS & RELIGION WITHOUT KILLIN’ EACH OTHER. Here are the show notes on this episode from our friends at TP&R:
“In this conversation with renowned speaker, writer, activist and artist, Lisa Sharon Harper, we discuss Lisa’s own genealogy, which she painstakingly researched for her 2022 book FORTUNE: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair It All, and how doing the work of genealogy is doing the work of history. We also got into some theology! In particular, we explored a profound reading of the first chapters of Genesis. Spoiler alert: I love when Lisa said, ‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know this is not science!’ The truths communicated in Genesis are much more profound than the reductionist reading of some of our young earth creationist friends. That leads us to explore the concept of TOV and TOV M’OD. And we went on to discuss what it will take to repair what race broke in the world.”
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Tweet to Lisa @LisaSHarper or to Freedom Road @FREEDOMROADUS. We’re also on Substack! So be sure to subscribe to The Truth Is… and Freedom Road. And, keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think!
www.democracygroup.org/shows/talkin-politics-religion
twitter.com/coreysnathan
twitter.com/lisasharper
twitter.com/FreedomRoadus
lisasharonharper.substack.com/
freedomroad.substack.com/
Resources for learning more mentioned in this episode:
Exploited Immigrent Children:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/us/unaccompanied-migrant-child-workers-exploitation.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/us/politics/migrant-child-labor-biden.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-migrant-child-labor-biden-administration/
Reagan and Bob Jones University
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A135466405/AONE?u=tel_oweb&sid=googleScholar&xid=4e86694d
Reagan and Segregationist “States Rights” Speech
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/reagan-speech-at-neshoba/
Transcript
Intro: [00:00:00] This This podcast is part of the Democracy group.
Corey Nathan: Welcome, welcome, welcome. We are talkin’ politics and religion without killin’ each other. I am your host, Corey. Nathan, and I am so grateful to have a place to talk about faith and politics and all kinds of big ideas in our culture with all kinds of interesting, accomplished people of goodwill in good faith.
And it is an honor to share that our program is part of the Democracy group that is a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it. And I am so grateful that we’ve added a lot of new listeners in recent weeks and months. Hey, it’s, it’s really, it’s really awesome.
So I have a couple huge favors to ask. Make sure to subscribe [00:01:00] if you haven’t already. Uh, so if you’re listening, go into your podcast app. Make sure you mash that subscribe button or follow button, or whatever it is in your app. That, that, that would be really helpful. That way you get to download all of our new episodes automatically.
Another way you can help us is to tell a friend about this program. Tell somebody about it. Tell your Aunt Tilly. Tell your friend. Tell your Uncle Bob. Tell whoever, because, um, I’d love to include more people in these conversations. It’s really easy to find us on any app by typing in talkin’ politics. And the talking is spelled with an apostrophe at the end and no “g” t a l k i n apostrophe politics, you type that into any app and you should be able to find us. With that big purple icon that we got. So last but not least, if you could take a minute to give us a good rating and write a review, you know, hopefully it’s five stars and you really enjoy what we’re doing it, it would really mean a ton because it helps make a difference in terms of how our show ranks and is discovered.
And it helps get the word out, uh, like I said, so more people can [00:02:00] participate in these civil, nuanced, and fun conversations like the one we’re having today with my friend. Lisa Sharon Harper. Lisa Sharon Harper is the founder of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and common action.
Ms. Harper leads trainings all around the globe that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. She’s the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed, the Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right, and Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World, and How to Repair It All, which came out just last year.
She also writes extensively on Shalom and government governance, immigration reform, healthcare reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement with her work appearing in numerous national publications as well as her Substack: The truth is, [00:03:00] Ms. Harper earned her master’s degree in human rights from Columbia University, is an Auburn Theological Seminary senior Fellow and has begun working on her PhD in Christian Public Ethics with the Fry Universidad.
Did, did I get it right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: You did. Oh my gosh.
Corey Nathan: That’s in Amsterdam. Uh, it’s also known as the VU. Uh, Lisa has also served as Sojourner’s Chief Church Engagement Officer. It’s so cool to be with you in this format. How you doing, Lisa?
Lisa Sharon Harper: I am excited to be back with you too. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken and it was really fun the first time.
So I’m looking forward to this. And, you know, we work together on a regular basis. So kind of fun to have the tables turned.
Corey Nathan: Yeah. This is really cool. So listeners should know that, um, after the first time we, we spoke, I first learned about you. I think I read about you in a book I was reading and then reached out sort of cold.
You were so gracious to come on the show the first time. But then I became, I got ensconced in the work, just prepping for that first interview and, um, and then reached out to you [00:04:00] afterwards and said, I, I’d love to see more. And then we had, we just, long story short, we ended up working together. So it’s, uh, you’re, you’re one of my… I would say of 2022.
You’re my favorite new friend and I’m so glad that we have a relationship now.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my gosh. That’s a high compliment cuz I know that you make friends a lot and fast and so, you know. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Corey Nathan: It’s a really meaningful friendship to me, so I’m so glad that, that this, um, that, uh, you know, we’re, we’re doing collaborating together and, and we’re friends and, and now that we’re doing this, we’re doing this thing together.
So I thought a good place to start would be to ask you who was Fortune.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hmm. Well, Fortune Game McGee was my, um, 11 times great-grandmother who was, I’m sorry, 10 times great-grandmother, 11 times great-grandmother was Maudlin McGee. Um, and 11 times great-grandfather was Sambo Game. They were the parents of Fortune Game Magee born on the eastern shore of Maryland, circa 1687.[00:05:00]
And, um, she, in her body being the product of an interracial union, not a marriage, they had an affair. A white woman, black man, in this colonial era, she bore the brunt of the second ever race law on this land because that law was formed in Maryland in response to really kind of a flood of white women marrying and having children with enslaved black men.
And so the planter class, which was, you know, white men, they were like, oh no, we can’t have this because, you know, it bruises our egos and it also confused the racial caste system they were developing with all these mixed race kids running around. They said, okay, so in order to stop this flood of, um, of mixed race kids running around from the product of white women and black men, we’re going to, we’re gonna deem we’re gonna like pass a law that says, In 1664, if any white woman marries an enslaved black man and has children by [00:06:00] that man, she herself will be enslaved to her husband’s master until her husband’s death and her children will be enslaved in perpetuity.
But by the time that fortune was born, about 23 years later, after that, that law was created, um, it had shaken out over time to say that if you were born to a white woman, you could not be enslaved. But if your father was black, then you would definitely be indentured. So, um, post-haste, I mean, at 14 years old, she was hauled into court.
We don’t really know anything about her life up to 14, except that she was likely indentured by the parish, by the church parish, uh, until that time. But she was indentured to, um, Mary Day in 1705. And, um, the day family then indentured two successive generations after, uh, after Fortune and [00:07:00] turns out I have their DNA in me.
Corey Nathan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And, and you know, you would never see any men listed in the, in the genealogy that has been uncovered through court records and court documents because every generation was filed into court to be indentured. But, you know, because of the laws that if they were, um, the product of an illegitimate, um, union while the mother was indentured, then they were going to be indentured as well, which that is what happened.
And because you find Day DNA in me, likely they were raped by the Day men in the family or had affairs with the day. We don’t really know, um, with the Day men in the family. But the bottom line is that there was. There was some hinky going on.
Corey Nathan: Yeah. You know, now I, as I read through that book last year, it, it, it just struck me how much work went into constructing the histo, this historical background.
[00:08:00] What, so what, are you a trained his historian? I know you have a lot of education, but are you a trained historian, archaeologist? Like what, how, how did you put all this together? Hmm.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, I mean, a lot of it honestly, when you’re doing genealogy, you are doing the work of history. You’re actually looking at, at primary documents, you’re looking at, um, primary and secondary.
You’re looking at census documents and immigration man, you know, ship manifests, immigration lists, I mean, all of it. And so in just trying to figure out the story of my family, I came across all of these primary documents and also the work of other genealogists who themselves archived primary documents and, you know, listed all the information they found when looking.
Um, in terms of Fortune’s story, the only reason I was able to go back that far is because Fortune’s mother was white. Because she was white. Um, they were documented, they were well documented. If Fortune’s mother was black, she would not have been documented anywhere. And in fact, [00:09:00] around that same time, that just soon after Fortune was first indentured in 1705, um, the legislature decided to pass a law that they were then finally going to document the births and deaths of all of the citizens in Maryland.
But what they decided to do, they said explicitly the white citizens, because other people are not worth the trouble. That is what they said. It’s not worth the trouble. So, because it just wasn’t worth the trouble. People are just not like there’s the record of their lives was erased from the record.
So I had the fortune of having my family trace back to a white woman. And that horrible fortune is what made me able to, um, to stumble on the work of a genealogy who put together all of the free black families in Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. And he was able to do that.
And what he found was that [00:10:00] they all traced back to white women. That’s how he was able to do that. So in mixed race marriages. So what I did with Fortune though, was I decided not to stop with Fortune game, McGee’s story. Although when I saw that her story intersected with those first race laws, I realized, oh, this is much bigger than just my own family story. This isn’t, this is an American story. This actually tells the story of race in America. So I decided to go through not all, but most of the successive generations that came after and ask what was their intersection with American history. Um, how can we learn more about, how can I learn more about them by knowing American history, knowing their context if I don’t know their details, as was the case for most of the rest of my family because they were enslaved or, um, and I, in one strain of the family, chapter two talks about the folklore around the family having connection, um, to the Cherokee Trail of Tears and, [00:11:00] um, to the story of the Chickasaw Trail of Tears as well.
Um, well, in, in researching that, I found more. American history because the history is really, truly hidden in the details. And what we are normally given is that overarching store of wars and treaties, not the story of people. So in looking at my family’s story, um, I found American history. And it’s not
Corey Nathan: just centuries old history.
No. It’s recent history. Your, was it your grandfather, your grand great-grandfather who owned, uh, who was a, a, a, you know, property owner in that neighborhood in Philadelphia where you’re actually living now, you’re, but, but there was Yeah. Legislation. Um, and, and things happened. Highways were built and all of a sudden your family’s, uh, fortunes, if you will, turns.
Could you share some of that?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Well, basically what, what you’re naming is the story of Hiram Lawrence. So chapter two, um, goes into this story of Hirams father actually, [00:12:00] but his father Henry, um, was a Civil War veteran. He was caught in that. Post-Civil War era where identity is being reshaped in America because the relationship between races is being reshaped after the Civil War.
And he then, uh, according to the family story, was chased out of Kentucky and moved right across the river into Rockport, um, Indiana, um, where he and his wife Harriet had, um, had Hiram my great-grandfather. But it turns out in this, I didn’t even know when I wrote the book, I found this out later. Literally, like right after writing the book, I found out that there was this big racial pogrom that actually happened around Rockport, but it wasn’t, it was actually all of these towns throughout Indiana.
Indiana basically became like a sundown state. There were multiple cities and towns in Indiana that black people couldn’t be in after dark, and Rockport became one of those [00:13:00] towns. So, um, Henry was chased out of Kentucky by the clan, um, and moved across the river into Rockport, which was a safe haven for him.
But then Hiram ended up having to run from Rockport in order to survive as a black man and made his way to Philadelphia, where circa 1910, 1900 he landed. And, um, he became a mail clerk. Um, and he became then a mail carrier. And by 1955 decades later, he becomes the supervisor of the mail clerks in the central office of the US Postal Office in Philadelphia.
I’m like, I’m so proud of my great-grandpa. That’s my great grandpa, black man. Right? So what, he’s a supervisor of the mail clerks and, um, and black, and as he would say, black and Cherokee, right? And so he, he then, [00:14:00] suffered eminent domain because in the 1950s when he gained that, that money, he saved his money and he bought a bunch of homes in this neighborhood that was called Elmwood.
And it was over by the, by the Philadelphia airport. And it’s was marshland that he and his neighbors built up. And he had several homes. They were these nice homes with porches. My mom visited many times as a child and she would go for walks with her grandfather in, um, in the tall marsh grass, and they would sit.
You know what, we cross-legged Indian style and he would tell them stories, you know, of, of the, of the people and of the olden times, and that’s her memory. And they would literally sit there drinking Coca-Cola. I have, I have pictures. And then the city came and forced the black bo… everybody in that community, which was a black community to move, um, paying them only pennies on the dollar for what their homes were worth.
So while he owned what my mom says was like a whole block of homes or at [00:15:00] least several homes in that community, um, that he used to house people coming streaming north in the great migration, he only from that money they paid him, he only had enough to buy one home. And in that home in South Philadelphia, which is about a block away from where I live now.
He housed three generations in that one home and a three story house. Um, much like the house I live in right now that I’m sitting in. Where on the top story, you had one generation middle story, you had another generation, bottom floor, you had another generation. And so for about 70 years, my family lived right here in South Philadelphia.
And you know, eventually there were other homes that were, that were bought, um, by Hiram and then, you know, given to my grandfather and they lived in those homes. That house is about, they’re literally all within a block of each other. So when I started researching, um, Hiram’s land in Elmwood to try to find it, I got inspired and I, I felt, I actually felt Hiram calling me back to [00:16:00] this land saying, this is your birthright.
Come back, come back to this land. And I heard him say, you know, in my mind’s ear, I heard my ancestors say to me, if I can do it, you can do it. So I had been a renter my entire life. I, I really had no intention of ever buying a home. Um, but in the middle of Covid, my little three room apartment in DC was feeling super cramped and I realized I need more space.
And for the money, Philadelphia was a much better, a better deal than trying to find, um, something for the same cost down in DC. And the fact that my ancestors were calling me was like, you know, it sealed the deal.
Corey Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. I relate to some of that. I had one moment, um, that sort of overlaps with what you’re talking about.
My grandmother, um, as you know, I’m getting a voice just talking about it. Oh. Um, came over from Trinity Ostra Ukraine. Uh, they landed on Ellis Island on March 3rd, 1921. [00:17:00] And the story that I’d always heard is that my Baba, who, uh, which is Yiddish for grandmother, um, and Aunt Rosie were the kids and they had a baby brother named Usher.
Um, but Usher was, uh, became sick on the, um, on the ship, uh, that, that, uh, brought them here from Amsterdam, actually.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow.
Corey Nathan: They, they, they took the boat from Amster, Amsterdam. He became sick on the, on the boat, and then he ultimately died on Ellis Island. But my grandmother, um,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow, that’s tragic
Corey Nathan: Sorry, I’m getting emotional about this.
I mean, really the last two years of Bob’s life, she had, uh, a theory that Usher was actually kidnapped, um, and put up for adoption. So, We finally, my, uh, cousin Sheila, who’s actually her, uh, Sheila and the Wasowskis live in Israel, and they’ve actually been on this show. So we told the story of the ____, uh, Sheila was doing some of this work on our family, and she learned that [00:18:00] no, indeed, Usher died on Ellis Island, and she found the burial platform on Staten Island.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow.
Corey Nathan: And when I learned this as, as I’m getting emotional now, just reflecting on it, I cried my eyes out and, and my, my kids were little at the time. I think it was Jackie boy who walked in, daddy, why are you crying? And I just told him the story of our family. So I bring that up. Did you have moments when you discovered, uh, these details?
I mean, down to like, there are some details, like down to the, literally the landscape of the neighborhood that was changed. Did you, did you have some of those moments?
Lisa Sharon Harper: I did. I had several of those moments while writing Fortune. Um, you know, the first time that I just literally wept. Was when I realized, first of all, when I did that DNA matching thing that you can do on Ancestry and they’ve made it much more difficult now, you wouldn’t even see it if you were to look at my DNA you wouldn’t see any connections to any of these people because they’ve made it more difficult to trace like distant, like your distant relatives.
They only show you up to like, I think the [00:19:00] eighth generation. And these are like 10th and 11th generation people. And some people say only the fifth generation, but when I started they weren’t doing that. So you could actually see where you had matches with, with people with the same surnames in their family trees going way, way back.
So I, I thank God I documented it and you know, and I saw that there was, there was Day DNA in me and also Fooks DNA Anne Fooks was the person that Sarah Fortune. Fortune Game McGee’s daughter, she changed her last name to her mother’s first name, taking her mother as her legacy, isn’t it something? Mm-hmm. Um, but in those, in those court records, I, it was clear that, you know, she was indentured to the Fooks family.
The Fooks family was this like gentry-class family. They were, they were literally courtiers in the court of King Henry, King Henry the fifth. They were, they literally stretched back to William the [00:20:00] Conqueror. They were fighting alongside William the Conqueror in 1066, right? So I’m like, whoa. Like this is a family, right?
So they were, so, Sarah was indentured to that family, and that family was in me. So when I’m seeing that day, family is in me, and the Fooks family is in me, and these are the two families that stretch back that far. All of a sudden, I realized that’s why there’s no men listed in any of the court records. The law said that if a man had an illegitimate child by an indentured servant or a male servant had an in illegitimate, then they, they would be indentured as well.
Right. So the woman usually got about another three to four to seven years on her term, on her indenture term, if she had a, a child outside of marriage while indentured. But it was according to the law that the men, the man who impregnated this woman should also, but there was never any [00:21:00] man listed with them.
And I think it’s because the family was hiding the fact that the men in their lives were the indenturing men, the gentry class who were used to taking, who were used to owning everyone and everything and being entitled to everything and every body around them.
Corey Nathan: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So what I realized is that my ancestors were in some ways among the first to be used as breeders, um, breeding free labor, because that’s what the law encouraged, because if they were to sire a child from one of their indentured servants, that child would actually become their servant for another 21 years, not 31 by the time Sarah was around, because the man would have to be black.
If the man was [00:22:00] black, the child would be indentured for 31 years. If the man was white, the child would be indentured for 21 years. So the math works out that this was likely a white father, and so they were indentured for 21 years. Um, thankfully though indenture is not enslavement. It was all, it was like enslavement in every way.
But one, um, they were whipped. They were drawn and quartered. If they tried to escape, they were, um, hung by their ankles or by their wrists and tortured. They had limbs cut off, they had ears cut off. They had hands cut off, um, for infractions. But the one thing that was different was that there was a timestamp. At the end of their time, they would be set free.
And that is what happened eventually for Sarah’s children and for Sarah and for Fortune. They were eventually set free. And there’s this [00:23:00] incredible deed that is, that I found. It’s the deed to Sarah’s sister’s land. Sarah’s sister Betty inherited land from the Day family. They actually, they actually willed the day.
Scott, one of the, the brothers or the sons of the family willed land to Betty, um, said You have to pay for it. Pay the rest of what is owed on it. In order to get this land. And so she had that land by, by 1756, this black woman owned land in, on the eastern shore of Maryland. And I went and found that land and stood on it and paid homage to her.
And it was beautiful land.
Corey Nathan:Wow.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Beautiful land. And so there’s a record actually in the tax, um, the tax collector’s records, um, that, that he tried to collect an extra black woman’s tax on her land at some point, um, in the late seventeen hundreds. And she refused. [00:24:00] And I see her, I kind of have this picture in my head of her coming out with a shotgun just saying, get off my land.
I’m not paying this. And it was an actual black woman’s tax, like a free black woman had to pay an extra tax to own land. And she said, I’m not paying it. So what he said was, Betty Game of the Fortune Game stock, which is the same, you know, Fortune McGee, Game McGee, she was, she refused to pay, pay the tax on the land.
And so, yeah, that’s, that’s my stock, that’s my people.
Corey Nathan: I see. I see a movie. I see a screenplay in your future.
Lisa Sharon Harper: You know, honestly, I saw it too as I was writing the book. I could totally see that.
Corey Nathan: Yeah. Now, as you’re sharing your history, your family’s history, what also occurs to me is that fast forward to today.
There are state legislatures and governors, they’re signing bills into law and, and many states around the country now. [00:25:00] That you must be seeing the parallels and the, oh my God, the echoes from our history. Is that fair to say? Or?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes. Yes. So what I learned was, you know, we’ve, we’ve spoken a lot about Fortune and her and her family, but when you flash forward to the enslaved and branches of my family, Leah Ballard, um, and, you know, she was there when the emancipation docu, I mean, declaration was, was, sounded.
She was in South Carolina on a plantation enslaved, and she saw freedom. She, she lived, um, for the first 20-some odd years of her life, 25 years of her life as an enslaved woman, had had at least five children while enslaved, none of whom survived, or they were sold into the deep south and she never ever saw them again.
And yet, she saw freedom and she saw the backlash against freedom. She saw the compromise of 1877 and 1876 with the [00:26:00] 1876 contested presidential election. In order for, uh, the Republicans to say, we’re gonna win. We actually to, to maintain their winning of, of that election, which was contested just like our last election. Right?
They said, we’ll, tell you what, um, Democrats were the Southerners at that time. They were the ones who were they Ironically, they were, they were the, the Confederates. They were the former Confederates. And they said, we’ll, tell you what, we will let you have the south. If you let our Republican president maintain the presidential seat.
So they ceded the south, they pulled the federal troops out of the south, and that is when the KKK just rose up and the lynching rose up. Within about a decade, you had, um, thousands of people being lynched every other, I mean, every few years. Um, and, and, and you, you saw the, the taking away of rights one by one.
Um, because of this, [00:27:00] this pact, this compromise that the north made with the south that said, we’re gonna, we’re gonna allow the southern states to have their own right to govern their own citizens in their own way. And what their own way was, was terror. That was their way. Their way was the squashing, the quelching, the hemming in, and the containing of Black Freedom.
And because they saw black freedom as a direct threat to their own. So it’s in those years that you see Leah Ballard’s granddaughter, um, Lizzie, my great-grandmother, run from the south and she ran north into, first from Washington DC where she stayed with friends, likely in the U Street district, which is the black historic black district near Howard University and others, um, other, other historic areas.
And, and then [00:28:00] eventually she made her way into Philadelphia. And um, and that’s where, you know, her, her daughter, Willa Lawrence. Willa Jenkins actually. But, um, that’s where Willa then eventually met Junius Lawrence, the son of Hiram Lawrence, and they became my grandparents. And they begat Sharon Lawrence, um, who in her age, in her day, and in her chapter we talk about this.
She came of age in the civil rights movement. So she was in grade school when Emmett Till was assassinated, was murdered, eviscerated in Mississippi, and that the pictures of his dead body haunted her and the rest of black America for the next decades. And it was those pictures that motivated her to eventually, once she could engage in the Civil Rights Movement in 1966, 1966, she joined SNCC, [00:29:00] the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
And, um, that’s also the same year as the Meredith March, where Stokley Carmichael, her boyfriend actually, um, jumped on the truck and raised his fist and said, black power, black power for the first time. So it, that, that’s my family’s story. And then for me, um, you talked about recent history. My mom and dad were both products of the Civil Rights Movement and also the black theater, you know, black arts movement after the death of, of MLK.
And so I was born to those two people who had a very deep connection to their, their sense of their history. Um, but I was born in an era, um, in the era of 1969, um, where it was post-civil rights. And, um, my mom and dad eventually divorced and my mom moved us down to Cape May, New Jersey, which was mostly white.
And that’s where I found Jesus was in the context of a white Evangelical church.
Corey Nathan: That was my next [00:30:00] question, actually. So yeah, yeah. You start, you start Freedom Road podcast. Uh, great, great program. By the way, it’ll be in the show notes. I was gonna start the same way that you start your, your podcast. And, and, and if you could share a little bit about your own faith journey.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. So the way that, the way that my faith came to be was I was invited to a youth group meeting, uh, circa 1982, um, fall 1982, beginning of the school year. My good friend Amanda invited me to her youth group. And all I could think was, youth group is, church is boring, so I’m not going right. So I just kept saying, no, no, no, no, no.
And then finally on a whim, cuz she just kind of wore me down, I just finally one time said, okay. And when I got there, I was surprised that this is where all the popular people were. I was like, oh my God. Like this was actually, I think that it was Young Life. Because Young Life does that. It’s like an area wide youth group.
And that’s what it was. They called it Why? Um, and I never knew at the time whether it was the letter Y or the word Y, but I just [00:31:00] kept going and calling it why, whatever it was, it was why. And so, but that, it was during that year that I started to ask, you know, deep spiritual questions and, and start to have them responded to, well it happened to be 1983 and that was also the very same beginning of the religious right movement.
And this, this space down in South Jersey was one that was not fully taken over by the religious right yet. Not at all. But it was a conservative and certainly a white Christian space, as in they saw the world through the lens of whiteness, um, and saw the faith through the lens of whiteness. So therefore, Since I got Jesus through them, I saw the world and my faith and Jesus and God through the lens of whiteness.
So my mom and I had major clashes, um, throughout the eighties and nineties. She really kind of thought these people took you from us as kind of, that’s the way she thought of it is, you know, she really resented this white faith that I had [00:32:00] adopted. Um, and I didn’t see it as white faith. I saw it as saving faith.
And I was like, Mom, you need to be saved too. I was telling her, you need to now, this is the thing I remember. I became a Christian in 1983. This was also the year that Ronald Reagan was running for president for the second time. It was second run. And um, I was handed a pamphlet while coming out of church one day that told me that Mondale was the anti-Christ and that if Mondale won, all the children would be rounded up into work camps.
And, um, taken away from their parents. So we have to vote for Reagan. I swear to you. I, and I’m not the only one who saw it. I showed it to my sister and made her cry and weep and run to my mom saying, you have to vote for Reagan.
You have to vote for Reagan. And she just couldn’t stop crying. She was like, this is gonna, we’re gonna be taken from you.
And I was crying. My mom was like, what have you done? Like, don’t bring this stuff into our home. Like, what are you doing? And I, I really believed it because I trusted the people who gave it to me. Yeah. Like anybody else [00:33:00] who believes the, the, the quote alternative facts that are being, um, pushed through the internet, they’re believing the, the people who are giving it to them, they have closer proximity to the people who are giving it to them.
So it’s more trustworthy to them. But it’s false. And it’s a, it’s a time immemorial tactic used by the right to connect and marry evangelical faith. With conservative politics, but ironically it was not, you know, evangelicals in the 19th century were anything but conservative. It was they who were fighting for abolition, right?
Which is like the least conservative thing you could think of at that time. The entire American economy rested on, on slavery, like the internet is what we rest on today. It would’ve been equivalent to lobbying for the end of the internet. Can you imagine how ludicrous that would’ve [00:34:00] sounded? And yet it was the evangelicals.
Who were saying, because of the ethics of, of slavery, we cannot maintain this, this particular economy, this slaveocracy, and this is making us dirty as a society, so we must end this. And it was, it was their work. And it wasn’t just white evangelicals. It actually, it was led by black evangelicals, by, um, the black church, the original historic black church.
And then white evangelicals came along in the, in the mid eighteen hundreds. But in, in any case, it was evangelicals. And so, but you would never know that today, because what happened circa 1983 when I became a Christian, was the takeover of the white evangelical church by the conservative movement. Um, first
Corey Nathan: The moral, the moral majority, the, the, the early formation of that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right, the right, actually, literally the moral majority was formed in, I believe, um, 1983. Um, con consolidated at that time a little later, you had the Christian Coalition and [00:35:00] Ralph Reed and, um, you had Pat Robertson and, um, you had Jim Bakker that came up as well. And, um, you just, you had this whole machine and, and behind it was the political machine run by Paul Weyrich, who was the founder of the Heritage Foundation.
So the Heritage Foundation still exists to this day and still serves the same, um, purpose that they serve back in 1983, which was the, the, they, they, they have one, one reason to exist, which is to further the conservative movement. And it did not yet in the seventies or sixties have intersection with the Evangelical church.
It was Weyrich who did that. Right. His strategy that did that. And unfortunately, I came to faith in the midst of that and bought into it whole hog for a good decade, maybe decade and a half. And then in the mid nineties, my eyes began to open when I was, um, I, I, my, my path took [00:36:00] me to Los Angeles and I ended up literally standing in the middle of the LA uprising on the second day at the place of the flashpoint on the second day.
And I was introduced the next day when our church came together and began to ask the question, what does God have to say to this? I was introduced to Jeremiah 29:4, um, which says, seek the peace, the shalom of the city to which I have sent to you. And in that city’s peace, you will find your own. So in this Nazarene church that I was working in at the time, um, and Youth Center that I was working in as an, as an educational director.
It was in the middle of that that I discovered the Bible’s call for justice and the Bible’s call for systemic equity. And the Bible’s call for the flourishing of all people, including people who look like me. Which up to that point I didn’t know. I didn’t understand that God loves people who look like me and not just loves them as in [00:37:00] I love the poor. I love, um, the poor children in Africa who have flies in their eyes and bloated bellies, although God does. But it’s more than just an ooshi gooshi love. It’s that God created me and those children to exercise dominion in the world. Agency.
Corey Nathan: Genesis
Lisa Sharon Harper: leadership in the world. That’s right.
Genesis one. Yeah. 26. That what it means to be human is to be called by God. To exercise stewardship of the world. And when I began to put that together, this is, um, actually later, it’s in the two thousands when I started to put this together. Um, when you realize that to be human is that, then you must understand that, well, if that’s the way that God created it, then something came in and messed that up because it’s not the way we live now.
We now live according to, uh, a way of living together that assumes [00:38:00] the leadership of some kinds of people and the followership or exploitation of others to benefit those who are leading. And that that came from really from colonized Christianity, starting with Constantine and going forward.
Corey Nathan: I have so many questions now for you.
I had like five pages of questions and I’m not getting to any of ’em.
Lisa Sharon Harper: No, that’s okay.
Corey Nathan: Now I have more questions. So it’s so interesting because we, Genesis, you brought up Genesis and Dominion and the themes. It’s so interesting because the, my valley, the valley that I live in is pretty dominated theologically by John MacArthur.
Uh, and if you, if you know Johnny Mack, he reads Genesis here,
Lisa Sharon Harper: He’s part of that. He was a part of that rise of the religious right. Yeah, I was way into him. I mean he was really kind of a saint within the circles that I grew up in, in my faith, yes.
Corey Nathan: But he derives six literal 24 hour days and that’s what we should derive from Genesis, uh, one and two.
You are reading. [00:39:00] I love not it the very good gospel. That’s not it. So, um, I’m getting way off track now, but that’s okay. Can, can, can we talk about Genesis specifically? Yes. Genesis two, who wrote it? When was it written? Fill in some of the blanks cuz we need a different, we need a better reading of Genesis.
Genesis one and two.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, Genesis one was written by the, the big theory that is still held by most scholars is that Genesis one, actually the whole book of Genesis was written by four separate sets of authors.
Corey Nathan: Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Um, and Genesis one, they believe, and I believe was written by this company of priests that were exiting the Babylonian exile.
They were, now, if you know the, you know, Babylonian exile, the Babylonians came in and actually sacked, um, Jerusalem and they sacked, um, parts of Israel and they took the people and shipped them to Babylon, which is actually Iraq. Right. So they shipped them to that area and said they held them for 70 years and basically enslaved them and said, [00:40:00] you’re gonna be our slaves.
You are the, you are the booty of war. You’re the prizes of war, and so you’re our slaves. And they told them over that time, you were created to be enslaved. And that’s because that was actually their worldview. That’s the worldview they had of their own gods. That the gods created humanity to be enslaved to the gods.
Right? So for 70 years, that’s about what, at least what, four generations? Um, four, yeah, about four generations. Maybe actually even five generations when you count, when they were actually having children back then around the age of 13, 14, 15. That, so about five generations are growing up under this mindset that we were created to be slaves.
Right? And so scholars look now at that Genesis one text, they, they understand this is not, first of all, doesn’t take rocket science to understand this is not science, because science didn’t exist back then. This was written like, you know, circa 2000 bc [00:41:00] right? Like, or in the one thousands BC this was not, They were not thinking of things in a way that people thought in the enlightenment period when we had science and we thought in terms of facts and we wanted to know the facts of what exactly happened.
And, um, the scientific method in terms of logical thought, that wasn’t, it wasn’t their concern. They didn’t care about what actually happened back then. It wasn’t their concern. Like it was the concern in the enlightenment period. Their concern in the pre-modern era was what is true.
Corey Nathan: Hmm.
Lisa Sharon Harper: They would tell stories in order to communicate truth, or they would, they would tell, um, sell poetry, like recite poetry in order to communicate truth.
That is higher than the thing on the page. So scholars now look at the, the construct, the seven day construct of Genesis one, the repetition of the word good in that text, which is usually used in the context of, of poetry, and you have it repeated [00:42:00] seven times, which is the Hebrew, um, number for perfection.
Um, in that text. And on the seventh time, it’s _______. Oh, and it’s rad.
Corey Nathan: Very good.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And it’s radical goodness, it’s overwhelming, abundant goodness. But the thing is, the way that the Hebrews understood goodness, is that it was not like the Greeks would’ve understood it, located inside the thing.
They didn’t think of goodness as being something that somebody could possess in themselves or a thing could possess. Goodness was located, in fact, literally synt tactically in the sentence “tov” was located as a connector of thoughts. So they thought of “tov” as being, um, the thing that exists between things.
Goodness exists between things. So ethical goodness is about how we live together. So the fact that you have in this epic Hebrew poem, good, “tov”, repeated seven [00:43:00] times; what it’s saying, is that what God considered “tov ____” very good, was not that walrus that was made over there, that thing that possesses goodness or that perfect cloud that, that God just made.
No, it was the relationships, the relatedness between all creation and God and each other and the earth. That’s what was radically good. There was reciprocity between all things. There was integrity between all things. There was truth telling and justice between all things, all things were provided for, and the relatedness was perfect.
In other words, when God called all humanity to exercise dominion, um, over the earth, it wasn’t to dominate the earth. It wasn’t to destroy or extract from the earth it was to serve the earth. And in fact, you see that word used in the picture of dominion and Genesis two, the word dominion is not used. But when God says, takes the [00:44:00] human, the, the, the author of…
And takes Adam the human and places in the middle of the garden and says, till and keep it. Those words actually mean, serve and protect. Serve and protect the earth, right? That’s what it looks like to exercise dominion: serve and protect
Corey Nathan: You know what makes so much sense? I read, I was reading about Freedom Road and at one point you say pretty bluntly, it’s not diversity training, but this is where it makes sense and it ties into your theological convictions, is that it’s about restoring “tov m’ao” restoring shalom among us, among being a community, being a people together.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Right. So that all of us can flourish. Yeah, you’re right. It’s definitely not like your typical diversity d e i training. In fact, we actually also add B to our equation when we do do that
Corey Nathan: Belonging. Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That consulting belonging. Exactly. Um, because what we’re looking at is we’re looking at [00:45:00] radically creating, um, first of all, examining our systems, examining our assumptions about how things should work.
Um, examining our histories for the ways things have worked and asking the deeper questions of what are the, how have those assumptions and the, the structures and the ways that things have worked, how has that caused a break? In the relationships, how have these things caused certain groups among us to flourish and others not to?
And then we call, um, the groups that we work with, whether it’s a church or, uh, international NGO or whoever it is, to ask the deeper questions of how can we then restructure? Because we do believe structure matters because structure, structure is the container for what we will do. It actually determines what we can do.
Um, so how can we restructure and re um, reimagine the way things can work in order to create flourishing for all. In [00:46:00] our, in our, um, shared spaces, whether it’s work or home or church or wherever that is, where that would be.
Corey Nathan: So since we’re talking about it, and you’ve touched upon this already, what you mentioned, NGO, non-governmental organizations, you mentioned churches.
What other types of organizations does Freedom Road work with and what, give me a practical sense of what that work looks like.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, it, we, we do work in lots of different ways. Um, our primary thing we do is that we create experiences that create, create common understanding, common, um, commitments, and common action.
And we do that through consulting with different groups. We do that through trainings that we offer. We do that through, um, pilgrimages. It’s like that’s the most, um, highly potent thing we do that creates common understanding and common commitments, common leads to common action. And we also, in the last, over the covid, you know, lockdowns, we actually created an institute where we [00:47:00] could reach the masses and actually begin to change how people approach their faith, right?
Through different webinars that we offered and learning opportunities and community building opportunities online. And we’re now in the midst of transitioning that into a resource center and focusing our work more, more. Um, clearly on the consulting work that we’re doing currently, we have just wrapped, um, a large, um, contract and not, not really wrapped.
We like wrapped the first two phases of a large contract with, um, a pillar church here in Philadelphia where I live. And, um, this pillar, historic white church, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian, has a 150 year, um, history of. Of being right here in Philadelphia. And it’s only since the 1960s that they began to see that they have a stake in this question of racial equity and racial justice.
And they have, they came to us at Freedom Road in order to see how can we do this even more effectively going into our next [00:48:00] 150 years. And so we’re in the midst of, of work with them. We have worked with other groups, um, like friends, Friends Committee on National Legislation. We worked with them for two years to move their organization, Quaker organization, um, into uh, more, more equitable and just and inclusive place where all belong in their workplace.
They do amazing outward work, but. Their actual structures were actually working against their desired outcome, which was a place of flourishing. And we helped them to identify the places where they could actually focus their work in order to pull levers and create a more just system and, and community.
Um, now we’re actually working with the Carter Center. We worked for two years with the worksheet for, sorry, for about a year with them discerning how could they leverage their history with, um, with President Carter, their heritage as I’m coming from a, a founder that is evangelical and now out of that, we discerned with [00:49:00] them and they then contracted with us to move this forward in their organization.
Um, that they have the ability to organize and convene evangelical institutions to move forward in the work of truth telling. Um, to do that in that really courageous work. Of interrogating the stories they tell about themselves and seeking the truth of their, the genealogies of their institutions and asking what, how do their institutions intersect with the things that have happened in our world that have created,
Corey Nathan: Is that our friend? Is that the dog?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s my dog.
Corey Nathan: What’s the dog’s name?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s Babe. That’s babe. Babe.
Corey Nathan: We gotta introduce Babe to the world.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hi baby. You know what? It’s, hold on. You can, you can cut.
Corey Nathan: No, no, no. It’s okay. We wanna keep it.
Lisa Sharon Harper: She’s not gonna stop cuz my mom is walking around outside right now and that’s what she’s responding to.
That’s funny.
Corey Nathan: Yeah. Okay. I have Char Charlie’s, uh, today’s Friday. So Manuel comes [00:50:00] whenever Manuels Charlie goes crazy. So I have Charlie upstairs. It’s okay.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Good girl. That’s good. Good girl.
Corey Nathan: Yes. Thank you. I’m totally keeping this.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my gosh. Okay. Gotta keep it real. Gotta keep it real. Gotta keep it real.
Well, we definitely are keeping it real here, so Yeah, it is definitely, babe wants to have her say in everything I do, so there we go. Absolutely. So, but what I, what I was saying was that, um, you know, so we’re right now working with the Carter Center to move 13 evangelical institutions forward in a three year initiative that will work, um, move those institutions forward in the work of truth seeking, truth listening and truth telling, working from the rubric that’s in the back, the last part of the book, Fortune.
Corey Nathan: Okay. So I have a question and, and you’ve been. Already, you know, discussing this in depth. But, you know, we have a range of listeners, um, to this program. In fact, some [00:51:00] folks that listen are Trump supporters, just totally candidly, and I, I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful to be in conversation with some folks all, all, all across the political spectrum, uh, religious spectrum.
So yeah. What might you say to folks that are, you know, very different from you philosophically, politically, what will it take? Well, let me ask this way. From all the work that you’re doing, your academic endeavors, the conversations you’re having on the Freedom Road Podcast. Yes. Have you learned anything or come to any, uh, epiphanies about what it will take as you say the subtitle of, of your book, Fortune, what it will take to repair what race broke in the world?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes. I mean, I think that the number one thing that it would take is it will take humility. It’ll take humility, and I think actually on. Um, from all of us. I, I think, but, but I have to say most of all from people who have been trained to see [00:52:00] the world as they see it, and to declare that the way they see the world is the way the world is.
The history books were written by white men, generally speaking, for a century, for the 20th century, you know, from the start of public education all the way through at least the 1990s of not actually going into two thousands. It’s really in the last, just in the last 20 years, that we begin to have history books that are not written by white men and that are ch, that challenge the stories that those white men have told about how America became America.
For example, one time I was speaking at a conference, um, and I was speaking at this, it was actually, I mean, it really may as well have been like a MAGA rally, but it was bef, it was before MAGA times. It was really much more like a tea party rally. Um, back in the tea party days, it was 2012, um, 2013, and I was speaking from the book that I wrote with a tea partyer called Left Right In Christ.[00:53:00]
And um, so my, my co co-author, DC Inez from King’s College, he also spoke and he actually spoke before me. And he said that there are two ways, two ways for nations to gain wealth. Um, one way is through plunder and the other is through productivity. And then he made the case that America’s wealth was gained through productivity.
And I was like, what? Yeah. Um, hello. Yeah. So thankfully I was up next to speak right after him, and I’m speaking to this group. I’m the only black person in the whole room. I mean really there’s probably not another black person in the whole room. I’m almost, everybody else is white. And most of them are very conservative.
Not just conservative, but very conservative. They are tea partiers, generally speaking. He, as he was, and I said to them, I said, you know, it’s funny because when you say that America gained its wealth through productivity, the first thing I think of is the plunder [00:54:00] of the lands of my ancestors. Um, and according to my family’s story, we are Cherokee and Chickasaw as well as Creek.
And it was the plunder of those lands that gave the settler col, colonists free territory literally granted to them. By colonial powers, by the kings and queens of Europe. The land that Mary Day had that Fortune was indentured on, was granted to her by Lord Baltimore. She didn’t pay a red penny for it: it was given to her.
And how did he have it? He plundered it. They plundered it. The wealth of the United States is traced back to King Cotton. How was King Cotton produced through the literal blood and rape of my ancestors. So, you know, you can come at [00:55:00] this with your theories, but my actual body tells another story. The DNA in my body.
Corey Nathan: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Is the evidence of a whole nother story. And so it takes humility and courage. To wanna know and see truth, to bow to truth. Um, the truth that is told from the underside of colonization, the underside of enslavement, the underside of Jim Crow, the underside of mass incarceration, the underside of eminent domain, the underside of the drug wars, the underside of failed and broken, and, actually, intentionally broken immigration policy.
Where now, right now, um, many of the children that were separated from, from their parents under the [00:56:00] last administration’s rule, those children were not sent home. They were not sent back to their native lands. They were sent to work in factories, factories around the country. And only now is that beginning to come out. That you have 10 year olds, 12 year olds, 13 year olds, 15 year olds working 12, 15, 16 hour days in factories that are, and they’re doing blood letting work that is incredibly dangerous. And this is something that we fought against at the turn of the 20th century, right?
We are now literally 100 years from those labor laws that protected children’s rights, and also from, um, the rise of the liberal church that came up under Rauschenbusch, literally to proclaim that the gospel says we must protect [00:57:00] the dignity of children and the dignity of human beings in labor, right? So we’re 100 years from now, and yet now we have immigration policy that is, you know, happens to benefit our corporations by what? providing them again. Mm again. With low cost to no cost labor. Yeah. So there is a straight line from Fortune to that 12-year-old child trapped in that, in that factory today, the straight line is the modus operandi of wealth building in America is through the exploitation of imported labor. Whether that imported labor is the enslaved labor of Africans or the after civil war, imported labor of Chinese people who were brought in to [00:58:00] literally fill the same slave cabins that black folks had just fled from.
Um, in the turn right after the Civil War in Texas and throughout the deep South, or whether it’s from the imported labor of immigrants who are undocumented, and because they’re undocumented, they can be exploited within that 100 mile–Isn’t it convenient?–100 mile border red zone where immigrants cannot get past?
They can’t. If when they come into America, they can’t get out of that 100 mile checkpoint, checkpoint, checkpoint for a hundred miles, but they don’t, they don’t send them back. What they do is they send them into the fields to provide the next iteration of slaves in America.
Corey Nathan: Wow, we covered so much ground today, and there is so much more to discuss. Uh, the thrust of, of this [00:59:00] program is figuring out how to have these conversations, but to specifically have them across our differences. I know in my endeavors, um, I have certain friends, uh, from, like I said, from different religious backgrounds or no religion at all.
Uh, certainly a, a broad range for my kids went to a Christian school. I’m living in the valley of Johnny Mac. I’m constantly coming in, um, contact and, and have relationships with mm-hmm. Uh, folks across a, a, a wide array of, of political views. So when I’m talking to my friends about these difficult issues, how it’s the TP and R question talk, politics and religion, not killing each other.
How can we do it better? How can I do it in such a way? Because my part of it is really, for me, it’s an exercise for me. Cuz oftentimes being a, you know, a jersey, you know, a kid from Jersey, my, my approach is like, I just wanna rhetorically punch ’em in the face, you know?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Well, hey, I understand [01:00:00] that. I really do.
Because, honestly, because what they’re saying and the way that they’re voting is really literally impacting the people’s lives. Yeah. Um, and, and the li the livelihood and wellbeing, like literally the health and wellbeing and futures of whole generations of families in America. So, I mean, I think that the way we do it is literally by talking, by telling our stories.
Um, I just came earlier this week, I was at, um, the Council on Foreign Relations and every year they have a gathering of, I think it’s invitation only. So I was like, oh, I got invited. That’s so cool. I mean, I’ve been in, I’ve, I’ve gotten several times, but I didn’t know I was gonna invited this year and I was, um, and uh, they were, they, the last panel was on peace building. And of course, most of it’s foreign relations, right? So most of their focus is overseas. It’s, it’s international and it’s, you know, oh, how we, we need peace building in this area, and how are we gonna do peace building in Ukraine and how are we gonna do peace building with Russia and how are [01:01:00] we gonna do peace building, you know, Israel and Palestine and go to, well, my question was, Hey, you know, in America our, our elections are actually now, um, not free and fair.
In fact, they’ve never been free and fair. We have people who are needing to monitor our elections. Um, we have our own judicial system has become corrupted. We have violence, mass violence in our streets every single day of the year, several times per day. Um, we, we are the ones who need peacebuilders now.
And when you trace it back to the genesis of, not the genesis, but I would say like the fork in the road, one of the forks in the road where we had a choice to make one of those places was in 1983. When, um, and you could actually trace it’s 1980, whether or not we were going to choose Ronald Reagan as our president or Jimmy Carter, right.
The, the peaceful president who believed in Shalom, Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, who actually made his [01:02:00] very first, the very first thing he did when coming into president in his presidency was to go to Bob Jones University in order to support their case before the US Supreme Court supporting the right of, of white Christian universities to maintain segregated space.
Right. That’s what Ronald did. Reagan did right? Wow. So that was his first act as president was to do that. Um, and he declared his crazy, declared his run in 1979 by going to Philadelphia, Mississippi, um, the place where the three civil rights workers were buried in an earth and dam in the summer of 1964.
And he went there. To declare that he was gonna become president and didn’t have any civil rights workers with him. Instead, he was there to proclaim, he was on the side of the segregationist.
Corey Nathan: Wow.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right, right. So, so at that point in 1980, our, it’s one of the times when our nation had a choice. Which way [01:03:00] are we gonna go?
Are we gonna go toward the way of flourishing for all, or are we gonna go toward the way of securing the flourishing, or at least the, the false flourishing of some white Americans at the expense of everyone else? And we chose, we chose for white people to flourish. And that was the eighties. Right? That was greed is good.
That was the, the greed is good eighties. And that’s what got us eventually to the economic meltdown and, and to Trump and to all of the things. So what does it take now? Um, at this, I stood up in that last session and I asked, you know, in light of the, the deep division in our nation, After the rise, and in the midst of the rise of authoritarian rule, which traces itself back to, um, the rise of the anti-abortion movement in 1983 and and throughout the 1980s, how do we, how do we begin to talk about how do we peace build within American politics within [01:04:00] Americans who are political?
As in we are all political beings. We all have to, or at least are called to vote in a democracy. How do we do that? And what they said, they said, I think the most profound thing it was, um, Dr. Gobin, Steve Gobin, who said, we think too much in terms of winning and losing. And when we think that we’re actually thinking in a false paradigm, because honestly, no one ever actually wins and no one actually ever loses, um, the winner.
The person who thinks they won will be surprised within a few years when the, the quote loser really just comes back and has comeback a few years later. And that’s what’s, that’s the cycle. It’s the cycle of domination and retribution, domination, retribution, domination, comeback, payback. Right? Well, how do we get out of that cycle?
Dr. [01:05:00] Gobin said, Dr. Gobin said it’s a matter of listening to each other’s stories. It’s a matter of building the relationships. Um, we have to build the relationships. We have to begin to listen. So that’s a lot actually of what Freedom Road does in order to try to shrink the gap between our narratives.
That’s what Freedom Road Podcast does, is is it, it’s kinda inviting everybody to listen in on these conversations they wouldn’t normally have access to. That’s what we do on our pilgrimages that give you the opportunity to actually walk in the shoes of the other and, and allow their story to become a part of your story as you, as you retrace their steps and, and consider the world through their eyes.
And it’s what we do in our consulting, which usually has some combination of all of the above, um, as part of it. Yeah. So what will it take? It will [01:06:00] take humility. The humility to know that I don’t have everything I need. I need you, I need to know the perspective and the story of the other in order to, to understand.
Better in, in order for us to live better as a society and it will take the discipline to listen.
Corey Nathan: Amen. Amen. I almost hesitate to ask you this second to last question, which is, do you have any questions for me?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow. Well, actually I do have a question for you. Okay. You know, as a person of, of Jewish descent who has embraced Jesus as your Messiah, in an age where we are seeing the rise in authoritarianism around the world in America, and it’s led everywhere by white evangelicals, um, I mean, it really is true.
It just really, you know, you just can’t deny that in America. It’s been led by white [01:07:00] evangelicals largely through the anti-abortion movements. And then you can see it in Brazil, you can see it in Hungary, you can see it even in Russia. Um, although Russia is a, is a secular state, um, you see that there is, um, there’s like a friendship that has been developed between Russia and that element here in the US. Um, and now you see the rise in authoritarianism, even in Israel. And I would say that in, in the way that, that Israel has, um, interacted with Palestine, particularly Palestinians in the West Bank. You can see authoritarianism, obviously with the building of the wall and the, the X-ing out of vote.
There’s no, they don’t have the ability to vote. They’re literally kind of non-citizens. But now that’s bleeding into the politics, the general politics of Israel. How do you think of your Jesus faith in this context? [01:08:00]
Corey Nathan:You struck upon a chord That has been my greatest challenge since even before I became a Christian.
The biggest stumbling block for me before I finally, you know, became a Christian was the knowledge that the men swinging swords and literally beheading my baba’s neighbors in the shtetl in, uh,_______ were men wearing crosses on their chests. Hmm. Um, and you know, even fast forward to today, the first passion play at the church, I was going to, um, seeing the depiction, first of all to conflate the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
I’m like, y’all don’t know who you’re talking about. Like, they’re not the same. They were kind of at each other’s throats and you’re depicting them as if they’re the same character. And then could you, could you just not with the prosthetic nose to make caricature out of these characters
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Corey Nathan: The Jews, you know?
Lisa Sharon Harper: So, wow.
Corey Nathan: The, um, [01:09:00] not so subtle anti-Semitism that runs and, and sometimes it is, uh, seemingly benign, but it cuts like a knife. When I’m sitting in a Bible class and, and somebody says something like, Hey, why do all you Jews vote Democrat? I’m like, first of all, you lost me at why do all you, you know? Yeah. So throughout the greatest challenge to my faith, um, and, and my theological convictions is seeing what primarily defines these church communities that I’ve been a part of, whether it’s my kids’ school or the, the churches that we were going.
We, uh, we found a better church, fortunately, but, um, that it, it, it’s not the theological convictions that brought me to Rabbi Jesus. Rabbi Yeshua. Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s these political social strains that, that of toxicity. Um, so I, I have to constantly fight against that. But you know what brings me back?
The compass that brings me back is, [01:10:00] like I said, rabbi Yeshua. You know, the, the thing
Lisa Sharon Harper: Brown? Rabbi Yeshua.
Corey Nathan: Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Who, I’m sorry, can I just say this? Yeah. Who existed in the context of the Roman Empire, which who believed the Greek philosophers, who basically unders, who understood the world in terms of hierarchies of human belonging and had crafted a world where their, their belief was that if you were like them, you were fully human.
If you were not like them, you were not fully human. And part of what meant being like them was white, white men. Not even women. Women were not understood to be fully human. Yeah. So when you think about Rabbi, brown, Rabbi Yeshua being, being crucified by white supremacist, Jerome, that’s what you’re talking about there.
Corey Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. One, one of the most influential talks, I, I sat in, in a couple of his talks, uh, I, we might have talked about this, Jay Cameron Carter, he used to be, uh, a prophet at Duke Divinity. He’s at Indiana now. Indiana, where some of your family had some history, um, [01:11:00] is his, the, the concept of race tracing back the concept of race.
And what I see even, even talk about benign, even the way some of the folks I went to Bible study with for, for years and years, the way they think of heaven is much more, uh, a product of Rome, a much more a product of Socratic thinking.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, yes. Yes.
Corey Nathan: And, and not the pro, not biblically based. Like I read my Bible and I see ________
I see where we’re headed and what the story is going towards. So that’s what brings me back is Rabbi Yeshua Ben Joseph, who, who I can imagine, you know, I can imagine myself at that time, going back to my parents’ house and saying, I think this Yeshua may be _______. I, I think he may be the one. And having similar conversations to the ones that I actually had to have with my father about why I think this Je… you know, why I think the, the, the New Testament [01:12:00] is so theologically profound that I have to change the course of my religious life.
But yeah, you’ve really struck on a chord for me and, and talk about ambivalence, you know, um, the, the, my, my first, uh, pastor, pastor Tom used to say that the most red version of the Bible is the believers’ behavior version. You know, and, um, it, it just, I can’t get around it. It just gives me great, great ambivalence.
But, um, I do read my Bible every day, uh, and, um, that that’s what brings me back, you know?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And, and I think, I mean, if you were to trace, okay, so what’s the, what is the Christianity that you inherited from, that, you know, from the, the politics, right? The, the Chris, the politics of Christianity that you inherited.
It was a Constantinian Christianity. It was a colonized Christianity. And so the work that we are really having to do now, it is the work of the whole church now, um, back at the fifth, the 500 anniversary of the, [01:13:00] of the Protestant, um, Reformation, I was interviewed for this documentary. I still don’t even know if it ever came out.
I think it probably did. But I was interviewed and they asked me, you know, what would you say for the next 500 years? What is the work of the church for the next 500 years? And I said, without, uh, missing a beat. It just came to me. Work of the next 500 years is to decolonize
Corey Nathan: Decolonize the church!
Lisa Sharon Harper: faith.
Right, the faith, the church, the scripture, our read of the scripture, um, because I mean, it was, it was basically you had a, a brown, um, indigenous colonized people, serially enslaved whose faith was captured by Constantine shaped reshaped in the image of Constantine and Constantinian, um, imperialism.
And then from forevermore, um, orthodoxy was determined [01:14:00] by constantinian imperial structures. Um, you know, going from, you know, the, the Pope and, and you know, the Vatican, Vatican City, which is basically like another iteration of Rome, literally in Rome. Um, all the way to, um, the ways that we have centered orthodoxy in Europe, like the judges of orthodoxy are now in Europe when this is not a European faith.
So it. Though I see the work that you’re doing as being, um, vital and it’s work we all have to do right now.
Corey Nathan: Hmm. Well you just opened up a whole new can of worms, so I have to have you back just to talk about, I mean, I could do a whole series on what it means to decolonize the church. Um, yes. And, uh, yeah.
So, but, but before we go, really important, how can we follow you find more info, info about, uh, freedom Road, uh, your kitchen table conference. Like there’s so much, so many places where we can, uh, come in contact and, and, uh, benefit from all the work that you’re contributing.
Lisa Sharon Harper: How can we find [01:15:00] you? Well, we are, um, online at lisasharonharper.com and freedomroad.us, so you can find out more about Freedom Road at Freedom Road.us, and it’s kind of like a. Uh, a bread basket that holds it all is @lisasharonharper.com. You can connect with me on all the socials there and all the rest. Um, Twitter, @lisasharper, um, Instagram, again, @lisasharper Freedom. Sorry, Facebook. Um, I’m at Lisa Sharon Harper, both my page and my profile.
And I would just love, I’d love to, um, to get to know your audience more and, and respond to questions and Yes. Um, it used to be every Friday night. Now it’s gonna be once a month on Friday nights. This time it’s, um, on May 26th is gonna be our next kitchen table conversation. Um, and, uh, kitchen table conversation is simply a time we come together on Instagram live and we kind of debrief the, the week with each other.
And sometimes I have guests on to come to my kitchen table and talk with me about stuff like this. [01:16:00] Um, and at other times it’s just me kind of. You know, spouting about, well, this is what I think about what happened this week, and what do you think? That kind of thing. So it’s kind of fun. It’s a fun space.
Corey Nathan: Oh man, that’s awesome. And substack don’t forget, substack
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yes, of course. Yes. And Patreon. Hello. Yeah. So yes, so Substack and Patreon, Substack is a place where you can get my writing once a month. And also the writing of, um, Freedom Road Writers. We have a global writers group that, um, comes together every week and writes together at Freedom Road.
And they are amazing and it’s become this fabulous community. And we highlight a lot of that writing on our Freedom Road substack. Um, but the truth is, is my substack and please come subscribe. Um, come a sub, a paid subscriber, and you also get special treats, um, that are also offered to our Patreon patrons. Um, from our podcast, you get like extra tidbits, backstage, tidbits from the podcast.
Corey Nathan: Awesome. Good stuff. Well, this was long overdue and, and we’re gonna have to do it again. I didn’t even get to any of my questions. We just, oh my gosh. [01:17:00] Yeah. So, uh, this is great. I, I appreciate your time and I appreciate my friendship with you and, uh, learning so much. Uh, as, as, uh, Jack Nicholson once said in a movie, you make me a better man.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I love that movie. That’s so I’m honored. Thank you.
Corey Nathan: You bet. And as always, if you dig what we’re doing here, please hit that subscribe button. Leave your review and comments wherever you get your podcasts, and tell a friend about talk of politics and religion without killing each other.
We are easier to recommend than ever. Uh, it’s politicsandreligion.us. By the way, I stole the .us from you. Shamelessly.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, fabulous.
Corey Nathan: Stole it. Yes. Politics, end Religion. Do us. You can find me online at Corey s Nathan. That’s Corey with an E in S as in Sam at Corey s Nathan. Now go talk some politics and religion with journalists and respect and have a great week.[01:18:00]
