Latest / Follow the Leighder / The Black Church and American Christian History | Dr. Jemar Tisby

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The Black Church and American Christian History | Dr. Jemar Tisby · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks, and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Lee Larson, and joining me today, y'all prepare to be humbled. Prepare to be humbled, is joining me from Louisville, Kentucky is Dr. Jamar Tisbe. Welcome to the studio. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Hey Lee, thanks you thank you for having me. Glad to be here. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, folks. Y'all, I mean, I it's so impressive. First of all, Dr. Jamar Tisby is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, and educator whose work examines the intersection of race, religion, and American history. He's the author of The Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and the Spirit of Justice, and the producer of the documentary Jesus Was a Migrant. He hosts the Justice Briefing podcast and writes the footnotes newsletter on Substack. I know a lot of y'all are Substack folks, so make sure to check that out. and that footnotes newsletter on Substack, that's where he connects past and present contemporary commentary on race, faith, and culture. I am so excited to to talk to you, but I I mean this like I said, you an author, writer, speaker, public theologian, historian. Can you talk about your your faith journey? and and and also just kind of your childhood. How does one become just so well a spoken on on all of these experiences? But also how has faith chaped your life? Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yeah. Well, I think the most comprehensive treatment is gonna come out next January, which is when my next book comes out, and it's called Notes from an Evangelical Reject. And that kind of tells the story of my faith background. So I grew up in the Chicago area and I was a a nineties kid. So this is during the Bull's six peat, and Michael Jordan for sentimental reasons will forever be the goat, no matter what the stats say. So we're right away we can start arguments with your listeners. But yeah, that was that was my context. And I came into Christianity through the evangelical racial reconciliation movement. Like that whole thing was gaining steam. And I would argue as a historian that that's the first time in US history, we're talking about late 80s, early 90s when this is taking off. First time in US history where Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Ecclesiastical racial integration was broadly viewed as a positive thing, broadly, right? There's always pockets where people have tried reconciliation and interracial worship, but by and large, at least on the part of the white church, was not really celebrated. It was tolerated or it was experimented with, right? So I just think that's a kind of a mind-boggling sort of realization. If you think about it. Anyway, I was, I was, I was, I was all up in that. high school became a Christian. College was really interesting because I went to the University of Notre Dame, go Irish, but it's a very Catholic school. And so I'm a minority of minorities. not many black people there at all. And also not many Protestants, but also got introduced to Catholic social teaching that put me into volunteer spaces that eventually after college landed me in Teach for America teaching in the Mississippi Delta on the Arkansas side. And that was a transformative experience because you talk about proximity. I was teaching in the fourth poorest county in the country. And all of these issues are about food deserts, about about pollution in impoverished areas, about joblessness, homelessness, all those things came walking into my classroom on two feet every day. So I had to deal with it in a way that was immediate. And I looked to my faith for resources and I found out the tradition that I was used to in evangelicalism didn't have a lot to say about these real world issues, material issues I was encountering. So then and went to seminary at an extremely conservative Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, the heart of the deep south. and then after that, more school, where my PhD in history, that's when I wrote my first book, The Color of Com Compromise. And throughout it, I've started my own ventures from The Witness, a Black Christian collective, a nonprofit I founded, to now Tisby Media, which is a multimedia educational company looking to provide a counter-narrative to the Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Jemar Tisby, PhD: right wing, anti democratic white Christian nationalist rhetoric that we're all unfortunately exposed to right now. So that kind of brings us up to today. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, and and it's so important because I feel like a lot of people are reckoning with history and having to learn history very quickly on a lot of things. Like it feels like for a lot of people I talk to, I this wave has just really but it's anyone who has studied history know that this is coming, this is building, this is like in in in line with historical research. But it is really I I'm curious how often do you feel like you're having to explain history to explain right now? I mean, do you feel like you're almost one foot in today and one foot in yesterday just trying to decipher things to folks? Or what is that experience? Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm. That's a perceptive question and timely because I was just in Selma, Alabama. So the Supreme Court last month, well, in May, essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act. It's still on paper, but it is much less enforceable right now because of the the majority ruling. And black people saw it for what it was. Like we have in living memory what it was like not to. Be able to vote very easily because of Jim Crow laws, because of things like literacy tests, which I don't know if people realize, but like it would be they would take the state constitution or the US Constitution, they would find some random passage and they would tell you to interpret it. What does it mean? Well, it was all subjective. It was all sub dependent on these poll workers who were always white and didn't want black people to vote. So no matter what you said or did, it was always going to be wrong. Not to mention that we had a segregated school system, which the most pernicious part wasn't just separating people by skin color. It was the disparity of resources. And so you have people at or below the poverty level who also have underfunded, defunded, not funded schooling. And then you're telling them do literacy tests, or they do random stuff like guess how many Jelly beans in the jar. And if you didn't get the right answer, you couldn't register to vote. I heard of one test where it says, guess how many bubbles in a bar of soap? Which is an unanswerable question. And that would be so what I'm trying to say is that's history. But like pre if anybody's born before 1965, they lived it. And so it's within living memory. And you talk about one foot in the past, one foot in the present. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Yeah. Jemar Tisby, PhD: So we went to Selma for the all roads lead to the south, march and rally, and we literally marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which in 1965 John Lewis did, Amelia Boynton did, and and 600 others on Bloody Sunday, so-called, because when they crossed over, they were marching from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. And when they crossed over, they were met by law enforcement state troopers on horseback wheeling billy clubs and tear gas. John Lewis had his skull fractured. Amelia Boynton was knocked out on the street. And we were walking in their literal footsteps for the same exact cause voting rights. And so I am constantly re narrating the past for people, A, who didn't get it and don't know it, and B to remind us that the past doesn't repeat itself as a copy paste, but. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. Yeah. Jemar Tisby, PhD: There are patterns and we are seeing echoes of the past in the present right now. And we sh we need to understand the context in order to understand the stakes. What we're looking at right now is a return to Jim Crow. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I attended seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is right there, Black Wall Street, Greenwood. And the history I didn't know I didn't know about I mean, I'm from Fort Worth, Texas, and I knew nothing about Tulsa and and Black Wall Street and Greenwood until I got to seminary. And it's those like types of stories that also don't particularly in the in the white liberal mind, like or just like in the white mind, just that there was wealth, that there was success, there was power and like this idea of how perception is powerful with like white supremacy messaging media. And it's you going back, you're talking about literacy. that is it it it's one of the most crippling policy. I mean there's so many policies that but like literacy is everything. And how Man, we're about to get a rabbit hole. But I was particularly I was introduced to James Cohn and and that the cross and the lynching tree. I mean, to this my goodness. Can you talk about theologians or authors, Christian authors that have helped shape because you talked about the Catholic social approach, which Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Like the Catholics and social purchase for sure. But but but also talk about the these other w faiths and and and approaches that have shaped you. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yeah. So you know, there's this concept of organic intellectuals and and and that's the idea that you don't have to go to ha formal schooling to be an intellectual and develop like really sophisticated models of thinking and philosophy. I think there's a parallel of organic theologians. And so if you look at the black religious tradition, particularly Christianity, a lot of the formal pathways to education were Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Shut off from us because of racism. So we couldn't go to school for a long time. We couldn't even learn to read for a long time in a lot of parts of this country. And yet that didn't mean we weren't doing theology. So a lot of black theology is found in somewhat non-academic, non-traditional academic sources. So it's going to be in the sermons. It's going to be in the songs, it's going to be in the blues music, it's going to be in the spirituals, it's going to be in our political activism, right? So, so we have to become fluent in these other modes of doing theology. There's so much theology in the writings of Ida B. Wells, in the writings of Du Bois and Douglas, and so many others, right? But then you move forward into the 20th century, which because of protest and social change, we were able to get access to some more institutions. I think it's also, you know, just as an aside, really important to recognize that Martin Luther King Jr. was brilliant and very well educated. He enters Morehouse College at the age of 15 and holds his own. And he's got his PhD by the age of 25, as well as his first pastorate. and extremely sophisticated in his thinking because when you actually go back, and I recommend reading the speeches because it you you kind of absorb it in a different way. The connections he's making with like Hegel and Enlightenment thinkers and black hymns that you sing that he was singing growing up in church, it's just like wow. Like he's his ideal life, had he not been sort of sucked into a vortex of activism, would be a local church pastor and a professor. Like he was just a scholar. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Yeah. Mm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: At he was a churchman and a scholar at heart, but that's an aside. So so then you move up to the late 20th century, and and James Cohn is really interesting because what he's doing is taking sort of organic theology, but now putting it in the academy. So his intervention, theologically and historically, is to he's at Union Seminary in New York for most of his career. Is to take these ideas from the Black church and particularly from the contemporary Black experience at his time in the late 60s and into the 70s and translate them into theological categories of the academy. And that was disruptive because you had all these white folks who who were mainline and liberal in general, but just did not get the black experience, did not understand, and and and to an extent, didn't think it belonged in the academy. And Kohn is arguing very confrontationally that no, it does belong. And matter of fact, y'all are getting a lot wrong because you are failing to understand the concept of black Jesus, which refers not to phenotype, but to experience. whoever is the marginalized and an oppressed in a society, that's where you find Jesus. And unless you understand in the US context, that's for that's that's among black folks, you're gonna miss a lot of what Christianity teaches. So there's just so much to learn. I'm Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Mm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: obviously very passionate about this kind of theology. And I just think it it it it holds a wealth of wisdom for a lot of the issues that we're dealing with today. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Mm. And I appreciated especially appreciated in in the cross and the lynching tree just how he did challenge. Like you said, the white church didn't understand. And he calls out Nieber, he calls out Bon Heffer, like like white figureheads that were kind of put on these pedestals and they're like, You don't actually get it either. And and then that was it's just so important and so brave, particularly at the time. Like, and and anyway. Jemar Tisby, PhD: I think I think you mentioned Bonhoeffer, right? So that's a really interesting story. there's a book called Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus that I recommend to folks. But you know, right now as we're dealing with domestic fascism in the United States in in various shapes and forms, a lot of people, particularly white people, are looking to nineteen thirties Germany for very understandable reasons. And I would encourage you to continue to look so because Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: To to do so because it's about how do you resist the rise of authoritarianism, right? or what do you do when it's there. But we've already had American style authoritarianism for generations. It's just been directed toward black people and other marginalized communities. And what's happening now is like middle class white people are starting to feel the authoritarianism in a new way and sort of like Grasping around for what. And so I say all that to say that Bonhoeffer spent a year in Harlem in New York and was going to a historically black church there, a very well-known black church there, and was doing some stuff for them. But that's where he picked up a lot of the strain of a sort of liberationist Christianity that he brought back with him to Germany and reinterpreted for their context as under the Third Reich and all and all of that. So even folks like Bonhoeffer were learning from the black church to to resist the Nazis. And I think that's really instructive for us in the US that we're going to folks like Bonhoeffer, but Bonhoeffer was coming to us. And and so we should take a page from that book. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Uh-huh. Thank you for that. I didn't I did not know that. I've been kind of examining 'cause in the same t like same say I I've been looking at this this narrative and Bonoffer's coming back up. He's been elevated again. but like I've I I've got some questions about that. But I've just been looking at that time, but also looking for ways that this is totally different and and and there's a whole other commentary. But I I want to return. I You had mentioned being down in Selma, so I wanted to follow up with a you know, your your theology, but I I do want to go back to this voting rights act. Okay. So we we touched on this earlier. If you could, could you give folks a s a synopsis of where what's going on and what currently they need to know? Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. Well, let's start with an analogy, right? So let's say you're in a car, somebody rear-rends you. You're you're fine, but you you you now you gotta deal with insurance and all that stuff. So you get out and you make an insurance claim. All you have to do to get that claim filed and approved should be you show pictures of the damage, right? You like your your fender is bent, your your tail light is is broken. the the other car that ran into you is right there, no question about who did it, right? That should be it. That is how it worked. It used to work under section two of the Voting Rights Act, which deals with drawing congressional districts for the purposes of representation in Congress. Because of this nation's history of voter disenfranchisement, the voting rights act in 1965. Said a couple of things. Number one, it said if you are in a state that historically has really egregiously discriminated against black voters, you have to seek permission before you make major changes in elections to make sure you don't go back to your old ways. That was a provision that was effectively gutted back in 2013. It was called the pre clearance provision. And the reasoning of the Roberts Court was we've advanced far enough as a society that we don't need to keep quote unquote punishing these places for past wrongs. They're doing it right now. And so they don't need preclearance anymore. And what happened? They go right back to changing districts in ways that disproportionately affect black voters. That was back in 2013. What just happened in May 2026 was a continuation of the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. To go back to the analogy, when you get that fender bender, all you have to do is prove there was a damaging impact. That's all you had to do with districts is say that the Impact of drawing districts a certain way disproportionately harms black voters. And then you can make a case that those districts need to be redrawn. And the only thing you had to prove was that impact, that outcome. What the decision in May 2026 did was say, impact's not enough. You have to prove intent. So it would be as if, in order to file that insurance claim, you couldn't just show the damage to your vehicle. You had to somehow prove that the driver of the other car meant to hit you and that they targeted you because of your race. So so now you have to be like you have to be psychic, essentially. And that's what the Supreme Court said. It's not enough to have districts that, because of the way they're drawn, dilute black voting power. It's not enough to show that. You have to ensure that the you have to show that the people who drew those districts intended purposely. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Right now. Jemar Tisby, PhD: To disenfranchise black voters or dilute their voting power. And they said this really convoluted logic that the solution to racial discrimination is not more racial discrimination. Well, that word discrimination just means deciding. It just means distinguishing, right? So there can be positive and negative. So the point is: if black people have faced challenges in Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, right, right. Jemar Tisby, PhD: The political system because of their race, then the only way to remedy that is to take race into account because you have a group that was targeted for race, for disenfranchisement. Now you have to actually target that group for repair. So you have to use racial language. What this court is saying is you can't use racial language at all, even if it is to balance the scales. So they're saying totally colorblind, can't use race at all. But Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: The other thing they're saying is racial gerrymandering gerrymandering is wrong, but you can do partisan gerrymandering. So they're saying it's perfectly legal to draw districts that favor one political party over another. Could be Democrats over Republican or Republican over Democrats, and both parties have done it. The problem is party is also a proxy for race because we tend to vote in racial blocks as well as political blocks. So Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Jemar Tisby, PhD: All the Republicans have to say now is we're not doing anything to black voters. What we're saying is we are drawing maps that are favorable to the Republican Party. And it just so happens that all these black voters, and I'll give you one last concrete case so people know what's happening on the ground. This Supreme Court case is called Louisiana v. Calais. So this comes out of Louisiana. What happened in Louisiana? Louisiana has six congressional districts. Prior to this ruling in Louisiana v Calais, activists successfully got two map, two districts drawn that were majority or close to majority black, which meant they were able to send two black democratic state democratic reps to Congress. That is exactly proportional to their population in the state. Louisiana is about 30% black. You got six districts, so that's one, you know, one third. So they had one third of the districts. What happened immediately after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act was Republicans in Louisiana redrew the districts. So now instead of two black or close to majority black districts, you have one. So they took something that was a corrective meant to have equal. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Proportional representation and they reduced it, meaning they went backwards, back from two to one district. And then everybody, whenever I post it online, they're saying, Well, you can still vote. Who can't vote? The point is, you are deliberately diluting black political power. The people in charge know it, and they're using partisan gerrymandering as cover for the racial discrimination that's happening. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Is this? Is this? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's a it's a narrowing. A sort of like a purging. There's all sorts. I just did a video on the religious faith codes in the United States military chaplain corps, and these haven't been published or officially released yet. Another chaplain emailed it to me, and the chaplain corps is looking to cut like two hundred and twenty-one faith codes down to thirty-one. And I was like, Well, that'll be interesting because Jemar Tisby, PhD: So Leigh/@followtheleighder: Is Christian gonna get one faith code and who's gonna speak like I see those lists kind of like what you're talking. Those are lists like when you see lists like that, it to me it's that it's like a table of power. Like who is sitting at the table of power? And it's not just like a list, but it's like if you imagine each one of those items as as representation and just like you're saying, like when you start trimming, like you also need to start looking at the way the the Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yes, yes. Leigh/@followtheleighder: everything moves because it did not simplify the faith codes. It's not like all the Abraham religions get one code each. It's Islam, Judaism, and then it's Christianity gets 20 some odd codes and Mormons aren't even recognized as Christian. And it's just like it's it's it's about whether it's gerrymandering or defining faith codes for the military, these actions Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: folks that we're seeing in the past year matter. Like it matter. Go ahead. Jemar Tisby, PhD: I big time. And I was literally going to ask you about that because I was just talking on another podcast. They I they alerted me to it. I I wasn't aware before about the changing the faith codes. What is the practical effect within the military of reducing that and and shifting these boundaries? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, so it's got kind of a an interesting story, a background. basically about ten years or ten years ago or so, after years of a lot of different pushing, they just added a whole bunch. Like it because it's very hard to define faith. So they basically were like, All right, if you meet these parameters, you are now an officially DOD endorsed faith that someone can claim on their dog tags for burial, for whatever, religious accommodations. And folks like Pete Hexeth don't like that. They don't they and there is a lot of valid criticisms. There were folks who maybe took advantage out of some of the religious accommodations for non sacred or religious like just kind of again, but a lot of folks didn't. And again, it's the exploitation as we know is very small. compared to the people who were enjoying that freedom. We we we know this and so 221 they decided to trim it down. they also in that same wave that they were updating those faith codes and enlarging and like throwing in everybody. They were like humanists get in here like they were just kind of like we don't want this argument anymore. so of course the new administration comes in Very vocal how they don't like certain faiths. He's been very vocal about pagan faiths. he wrote a whole chapter about his disdain for Islam. that too. But and and so we knew coming in, I mean, he's been saying on Christmas this past year, maybe the week before, but he dropped a video talking about how his goals for 2026 were to make the chaplain core great again. And then he came out again in March and then Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yeah. Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Now we're hearing these these faith codes, but again, the argument is that people have been exploiting the faith codes. and now people are just taking advantage of it so they can grow beards or not do certain things. but really we we know that this is a a dog whistle of simplifying who gets a seat at the table. And so what that looks like too, atheism is not even a faith code. that's a big part. Let's just start with the title of it. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It was faith and belief codes. Now it's religious affiliation codes. So faith and belief, like even just like language. So now it's not faith and belief. It is you have to be religiously affiliated with some sort of institution. So you have that. like I said, it was 221, gets trimmed down to 31. and Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: twenty one, twenty two of them are Christian adjacent, meaning again, that was money, that was political power. that was and we and we yeah that yeah, that's what it is. So it's it's real interesting. this is not going to they said it's not going to affect dog tags, but it does affect religious accommodations. Like you better identify as one of these thirty one, and you have to have like real clear They're gonna ask you for your religious accommodations like up front so that you're not changing midway. It's it's a lot of folks are making again that in that claim. Well, it's just like institutional cleanup. And it's like, yeah, but it's saying a lot. It's saying a whole lot. And the big thing, and again, seat at the table, that analogy was Protestant has now been broken up. That was a faith code and it did have other like it again, it was two hundred and hundred turn two hundred and Jemar Tisby, PhD: Currently, yes. Leigh/@followtheleighder: twenty something, but Protestant is not a faith code. Now it's like broken up. You've got Anglican Episcopal, you've got Methodists, you've got like those non-denominational has their own code, ironically making them a denomination. Like not really, but I was like, that's ironic. Like that's your name now. and evangelical has their own code. So again, those did not have their own codes. They have a seat at the table now when they didn't. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm. Mm-hmm. Right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: whereas you know, African Methodist Episcopal Church, that was a faith code. That's now kind of grouped into eight there. I think there's other faith codes that they could identify as, but I mean like things that were very clear seats grouped under someone else, some something else. So it I Jemar Tisby, PhD: Craig's. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It it it does take some time to really sit and think of what you're of what you're looking at because again, it's it's not simplifying. It does, it's going to have major changes. The other thing about the chaplain core, and I this is you, so I want to go back to interviewing you, but the other thing about it is that endorsing agency, since roughly the nineteen forties, evangelicals were largely they were non-denominational, they were independent congregations, they had very little political clout power money. And we have written document documentation right around World War Two or the Cold War. I'd have to go check my notes for which decade, but it talks about how I am evangelicals will not will not will continue to be met with a hostile environment in the chaplain core unless we have full control. Like there is like a like a deliberate like from a chaplain talking about how he feels marginalized as an evangelical with the Protestant mainline and Catholics chaplains. And so since then, there has been a deliberate, like we're needing let's go stack the p the chaplain core as part of our mission theology of God and country. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And then on the flip side, as it would work out, they're getting stronger, they're getting more motivated. But on the flip side, mainline Protestants reacted very adversely to Vietnam War and were not so pro-military chaplain, they were not so pro-war. many spoke against war policy, but they never became pacifist. And so you see those Protestant mainlines sending their chaplains more into hospital, prison, nonprofit, social justice, but like not military. And so that's how the Protestant, that's where people are like, well, the the you know, the progressives or the Protestant main because we stopped supporting war. And now the worst case scenario is here. And but Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But I mean, that's again talking about having to stand in multiple decades while explaining the present. Like that's exactly here we have a deliberate, they feel marginalized and now it is their mission for total dominion. And it's yeah, it it's against the theology that I understand Jesus to be. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Wait. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And it is not all chaplains that believe so fondly, so intensely about this. but it is a lot. There is something it it it's well over it's like sitting around seventy percent of chaplains are evangelical, but something like twenty percent of the core or sorry, twenty percent of the general force is evangelical and There's the we can that is a whole other thing, but it's significant because again, this is all taxpay. This is the intersection of church and state. It's the priestly class, like the the military chaplain corps. And it's just a real on top of it, what's again, going back to history, is that all they keep trying to have this narrow interpretation of what America the superpower and I'm like, dude, like without Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm. Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Bodies of color without women, without do you understand that there like war doesn't discriminate? Like there have always been people fighting this that are non-white males and white protot Protestant males for American battles. And interestingly enough, the military, for all of its very, very real sins and flaws, has also been on like a a leader in integration when society hadn't gotten there yet, mainly out of necessity. So there is Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm, down here, and the hood. Leigh/@followtheleighder: like a really interesting, like kind of 'cause just so many communities have a stake in the military just because of the economic titan that it is and opportunity. And of course, if you're an immigrant, you can fight and then get a citizenship. So there's this military is a really nuanced topic because we are talking about imperialism. We're talking about nukes. We're talking about the United States and white supremacy. And like those like Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And then also you're talking about this whole other layer. So again, I feel like we've derailed folks. I didn't mean to this is doctor. Jemar Tisby, PhD: No, thank you for indulging me. I had an expert here with so I I I just took advantage of that for a moment. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Well and and that's kind of I'm expanding my thesis on it into a book and my thesis was largely all about American military chaplaincy and its connection with Christian supremacy and just like its role because out here in the West US troops played a role in our boarding sch in the in the boarding schools towards indigenous folks. So aga this lot of messy Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: relationship between clergy and the US government and it's here in our military. And anyway, it is it's it's not good at at all. But of course I don't have to explain that to to a scholar like yourself who has written so much on this topic. And I that's kind of also why it's so important to elevate so many different voices, because for a lot of particularly like Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: might be white liberal Christians or just white Christians in general. They're like, what? Where is this coming from? And you're like, it it's always been here. What do you talk? Where is it coming from? Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. It's always been there. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Like it feels almost like Scooby-Doo where you like take off the mask and you're like, it was always this guy. Like it was this, like, it's just a new mask. so so talk about you you you we touched on James Cohn, we've talked on Salem, we've touched on MLK Jr. talk about how white Christian nationalism and how it understands the church and Jesus. Can you kind of talk about how the the black church understands Jesus? 'Cause they're they're Jemar Tisby, PhD: Right, right, right. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: They're they're different. Even if they say, I want my country to know Jesus. I want my ever you know, they're they're saying different things. Can you cannot talk about the the black church and and theology and how they see Jesus Christianity? And I know it's not a monolithic, so that's a a a hard question to ask, but kind of talk about at least those two larger differences, please. Jemar Tisby, PhD: I think the fundamental difference is black folks have always seen the flaws in the US project because we've always had to fight for participation, positive participation in that project. So we don't have as a as a community, or a Christian tradition. in the United States, this perception of a time when America was supposedly great. Because if you ask a black person, make America great again, well, when was it great? What what time period are you asking me to go back to when I had to face a poll tax to vote? Or when I couldn't sit next to You in a movie theater or a school, or when my ancestors were in chains, like when was it great for us? Every bit of progress we've made, we've had to fight for at the cost of blood, sweat, prayers, and tears. So when you have that understanding of the underside of empire, you're gonna interpret religion very differently. And I think it's I think it's a a a Luke 4 interpretation. I think this is a pivotal moment in Jesus' ministry because it's the announcement of his public ministry. So scripture says that you know, as Jesus was a kid, he grew for years in stature and wisdom with God and with people. But that was all quiet. He was in this little backwoods town of Nazareth, he was learning a trade, he was reading the Torah. Finally, when it's time for him to announce his public ministry, he unrolls the scroll of Isaiah chapter sixty-one and he talks about these groups of people. He talks about the poor, he talks about the prisoner, he talks about the blind, he talks about the oppressed. What's he doing there? He's saying everything you're about to see from me is about these kinds of people. Who are those kinds of people? In Matthew 25, he tells us the least of these, my brothers and sisters, who we would call the marginalized, right? So when you have a marginalized community, Practicing Christianity, it's much easier for them to see through that perspective of the marginalized, of the oppressed. And so the expressions come out differently. So black Christianity at its best, it's got flaws just like every other religious tradition, but at its best is liberatory. It is Expanding democratic participation. And when we're talking about the intersection of religion and politics, that's a critical difference between the black Christian tradition and white Christian nationalism. So white Christian nationalism, just like we were talking about these religious codes, they want to narrow it. They want to very narrowly, rigidly define who belongs, who is truly American, what counts as Christian. They want to do the same thing in politics: who belongs, who has power. Who can vote? Who can be represented? Contrast that with the black Christian political tradition, it has traditionally expanded access. It has expanded the meaning of who belongs, who is in power, who can vote. Those are very different expressions, which the irony is if you look at like the questions they'll ask on a on a poll to decide who's white Christian nationalist or not. They'll ask questions like, Do you believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation? Do you believe that the laws of the nation should be patterned after, you know, Bible teachings kind of things? The reality is, black Christians and white Christians have a lot of the same responses, but the expressions are vastly different. The two groups that p behave the least like one another, they're meaning they're the two groups. That politically are the most different from one another when it comes to religion are white evangelicals and black Protestants. You have some groups from other religions, like Jewish or atheist, that are further on the spectrum. But when it comes to Christian groups that are diametrically opposed politically, it's white evangelicals and black Protestants. and that tells you everything about. How these different traditions interpret faith in politics. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's thank you for for that walk. And have you seen like as you've moved and and and done all of your advocacy and talks around the country, I'm sure you're just I've moved quite just so many different regional quirks and and different things. You talked about being in Selma, you you're in Louisville, Kentucky, and then you mentioned Cone up in New York. Have you seen the black church How does that change regionally, or even how you speak and engage? Jemar Tisby, PhD: It's good. I would say the main differences would be rural and urban, and then generational. So you actually have a lot of similarities with historically or majority black churches around the country. Because how did those churches get there? traditionally it's it's during the Great Migration, which is what's happening is you have this concentration of black people in the southeast because of slavery. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. Okay. Jemar Tisby, PhD: And then over the course of generations moving out to different parts of the country. Well, when they do that, they're bringing their brand of Christianity with them. And so you'll get a lot of cultural, religious, historic links between the deep south, where so much of the black church was birthed, and churches in California, Illinois, Ohio, New York, right? So you'll be able to go to a black church in Albany, New York. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Jemar Tisby, PhD: And and and still find familiar resonances with a church in like Savannah, Georgia. it's not to say it's one-to-one or identical, but there is a lot more that's in common, I think, than different. I think there's maybe an urban-rural divide too. So in contemporary context, you're getting a lot more of the sort of mega church, highly produced kind of vibe. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, right, right, right. Jemar Tisby, PhD: in urban areas that would feel a little bit more distinct and disconnected from traditional black churches that that are smaller, perhaps more rural, simpler. and there's a lot of dialogue within black Christian spaces about issues that come with this more like big box church model among black folks because are we losing that liberationist strain in the name of growth kind of thing. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Jemar Tisby, PhD: and then there's a big generational difference. So I would say that Gen Z and younger in particular are not as churched as previous black generations. So that's important, not just in the sense of do they physically go to church or not, but do they have that culture? if you say God is good, are they gonna be able to have the response? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Got it. Jemar Tisby, PhD: And all the time God is good. Right? Like there's there's like these do they know the songs? Do they know the tradition of church ushers and deacons and all of these kinds of things that even if you don't go to church now, if you grew up in that, it is familiar. So I think now in a moment where I would call it the civil rights movement of our day, I mean, you don't get more on the nose than rolling back voting rights and having to fight for voting rights. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Jemar Tisby, PhD: That is a that is a very clear par parallel to the past civil rights movement. We've got some work to do because the Black church, I think, is still vital and still does a lot of what it has always done in terms of working for black civil and political rights. But you also have a generation that's not as steeped in or connected to black Christian spaces. And I think that's going to be. in my opinion, detrimental to progress and we're gonna have to find a way to connect and bridge that gap. Leigh/@followtheleighder: You know, I'm I'm really glad you bring that up about the generational loss of shared language, of tradition and culture. Even if you don't believe, support, agree with it, not hav being able to talk about it is is is is tough. And just so I appreciate your comment on that. And earlier you we we touched briefly on how Jemar Tisby, PhD: Mm-hmm. Exactly. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Prevention literacy education or lack thereof changed the way that the changed black theology and how it was expressed because it wasn't so academic. It wasn't in this just completely other different way and and allowed to flourish. I took a in seminary, I took a class, it was a small class, it was called Preaching Across Platforms, by a black womanist theologian. Dr. Chelsea Yarbrough, I don't know if you've seen her online, but she that was her thing was that preaching is is not standing at the the pulpit. Like there are more than one way to preach and was like pushing us like towards poetry, towards just like art and and and that was the first half of the first day of class was talking about and her establishing the black church as a as a guide towards Jemar Tisby, PhD: Nice. That's beautiful. Leigh/@followtheleighder: fall towards just being able to, like you said, express theology that is so different than standing at the pulpit. And it has made such an impact on me, but also just in the way I saw speaking, preaching, education, I I've taken different trainings to be more dramatic or theatrical because academia is so cold, because white culture is just so like now everybody look at my PowerPoint. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And like I was like, this is so there's no energy, there's no l like this it was a critical class and I loved it. But I that is kind of going into my to my last sort of question, but what can Christians from all black backgrounds learn from black church, black Christian history in the United States, and and where do you suggest that we start learning? Jemar Tisby, PhD: Great question. And and we didn't plan this, but I I maybe need to put a check in the mail because it's a great plug for my book. my latest book is called The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. So the first book, The Color of Compromise, was essentially about white Christians behaving badly. but the spirit of justice is about how black Christians resisted and overcame. So I think it's a great resource as we talk about the the relevance and the salience of the past to the present. To understand, not that precisely we've been here before, I think that's analytically a bit lazy because it stops us from thinking about the complexities and the nuances of where we are now as opposed to where we've been before. But it does say something that Reverend Tracy Blackman said, we're built for this. In other words, we've faced incredible adversity. We faced authoritarianism. We faced voter disfranchisement, and we've stood up to it. And so we have within us the resources to resist today and to overcome. And I name that resource the spirit of justice, which in a Christian frame could be the Holy Spirit of justice. But I was really inspired when I heard Merley Evers speak about this. Her name's gonna be familiar because of a tragic incident. Her husband, Medgar Evers, was shot and killed in their driveway. In June of 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi, because he was promoting voting rights. He was the field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi. So he had a literal target on his back for years and was killed. And she went through this whole dark night of the soul, but eventually came out and continued the struggle for civil and human rights. And she was at the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum back in 2017. I had the opportunity to attend it and then to be part of a press conference, small press conference afterwards, where journalists asked her, How does now in the 21st century compare to the civil rights movement that you lived through in the 50s and 60s? And she said, I'm seeing things today that I hoped I'd never see again. She's essentially saying, We're going backwards when it comes to civil and human rights. And I thought we Had fought those battles. But then she said something I'll never forget. She said, But there's something about the spirit of justice that raises up like a war horse. That horse that stands with its back sunk in, but then it hears the bell of freedom. And all of a sudden the back becomes straight, the neck becomes stiff, and you become determined all over again. And I sat back and I said, This was a woman who at the time was in her mid 80s. And by the way, she's still alive as we speak today. And she should have been done. She should have been retired with all this. She should have been you know, kicking her feet up by the pool with a drink that has an umbrella in it and said, I don't know what y'all are gonna do, but it's not my battle anymore. But she said, There's something about the spirit of justice, and you become determined all over again. That's why we read history. We have this great cloud of historical witnesses who faced even greater odds and obstacles than we do now. And somehow we're able to pray, keep the faith, keep hope, keep community, keep loving, raise families, and resist everything they were up again and make progress, not just for them or their people, but for all of us. And as I look at history, I say I don't have the luxury of cynicism. Because I've inherited a legacy of activism, and it is up to me to continue that forward. Merle Evers didn't lose her husband and their children, their father, for me to say, it's too hard. I quit, or we're not making progress fast enough. I'm not gonna do it anything anymore. That's not honoring that legacy. So I feel a a a burden, a responsibility, a glorious duty. to continue that legacy of struggle and to inhabit and enact the spirit of justice today. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. And and thank you, by the way, for for plugging your book. And I want to follow up and continue to to to support your your mission. How can folks follow you? Jemar Tisby, PhD: I'm all over the place. but the one stop shop is my Substack, jamar tisbee.substack.com. That's gonna be your portal into when's the new book coming out, your portal into my weekly podcast, the Justice Briefing, your portal into the Tisbee Justice Academy and the courses I'm teaching online, your portal into Tisbee Studios and the Jesus was a migrant documentary. So if you go to jamartisby.substack.com and you can also tangibly support my work. I did the math. Is this worth $5.83 a month to you? Because that's the cost of an annual subscription to jamartisby.substack.com, $5.83 a month because you get a discount when you when you sign up annually. And I was like, yo, you you can make it possible for me to continue to do this work. out from the shadows and the strictures of some institution that's gonna get all nervous when I talk about racism or white supremacy or white Christian nationalism. So it really makes a difference for folks who've gone the independent route like like I have. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Absolutely. Well, folks, please head on over to support Dr. Jamar Tisby. This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for imparting so much wisdom and and advocacy and and just heart. Thank you for your authentic heart. because we we're we need that. We're up against some some real dark twisted egos and it is going to be our authentic hearts that that Get us through. So folks, let me know. Jemar Tisby, PhD: Well, you have a way of putting it in your words and I've appreciated it. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot from you too. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Absolutely. Alrighty, folks. Well, that has been another episode of Follow the Leader. Y'all know the drill. Don't forget to like, follow, comment, subscribe, you know. And listen, I would love to have you back, Dr. Tisby. And if you would like that, folks, let me know in the comments if you have any follow up questions. So I can make sure to to ask that the next time around. That'll be really cool. listeners, if if you feed back Questions, maybe want a deeper dive on a topic. obviously, Dr. Tisby's more than happy and more than knowledgeable to make that happen. Alrighty. Well, like I said, this has been another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Lee Larson. And until next time, see ya. Okay.