Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, the liturgical season observed by many Christians as a period of waiting and preparation for the Nativity of Jesus. This season begins four Sundays before Christmas and concludes on Christmas. The hanging of greens, adorning sanctuaries and wearing vestments of purple, and lighting the Advent wreath candles in order to move from darkness to light are key components in Advent observation. All of this is in anticipation of the celebration of the birth of Jesus, a birth that people anxiously awaited then and a symbolic birth we should anxiously await now. But some may ask, “Why must we wait for something that has already happened? Why exist in symbolic darkness for a time in order to celebrate that which was revealed some 2000 years ago? Why is this relevant to our time?” I suggest that we must wait in order to reclaim the wonder of the light that was brought into this world.
Earlier this year, during an Ash Wednesday service at a large Baptist church, I looked forward to ushering in the season of penitence with somber worship and a penitent message. Ash Wednesday is supposed to remind us of our finitude and it plunges us into a season of penitence, and the journey into the wilderness with Christ. But as I sat in that Ash Wednesday service, I was jolted from somber reflection with songs of joy and a sermon celebrating victory. Not a moment in the service–besides the impartation of ashes which concluded the service–was spent ushering people into the dry season ahead of them because the church couldn’t not praise. On one hand I understood the church’s inability to squelch their praise. It’s a church that has seen many trials and tribulation and its membership are a part of the resilient race in this country who can’t not praise because of how far they’ve come by faith. Why would they want to launch themselves into a period solemnity? But on the other hand, I desired for this congregation to withhold their praise and shouts of victory in order to rightfully claim it at the end of the Lenten season. In doing this, they would truly walk with their redeemer and taste the sweetness of victory because they had made the journey by way of symbolically situating themselves on Ash Wednesday as sojourners with Jesus. This too is our call during the season of Advent except that we are not sojourners with Jesus this time around but sojourners with a generation of people who were awaiting his arrival. People who heard a particular prophecy about the coming of Jesus and who were waiting and preparing for his arrival. People who didn’t have Christmas gift shopping, parties to attend, and a plethora of “holiday” distractions, but who were watching and waiting for him. I imagine that their wait was one of wonder mixed with skepticism fueled by the rumors of Mary, a virgin, who was impregnated by the Holy Spirit with the son of God. How unbelievable that had to be then and how unbelievable we should consider it now in order to rekindle the wonder of it all. Awesome wonder is what this season is about.
Yesterday in church I was reminded of how in danger we are of losing that wonder because we are so familiar with the stories that tell of the coming of Jesus. Some of us know it like the back of our hands and it has become so commonplace that the narrative of a young virgin impregnated by the Holy Spirit and giving birth to the son of God seems just as plausible as a man getting pregnant and giving birth. Some of us are no longer moved by the story because we’ve spent years with it in our churches, in our seminaries and Bible colleges, and in our homes, but we force ourselves to be moved just a few days before Christmas because that’s what we’ve been trained most to do. Many wind down and reflect as they start to wrap up their Christmas shopping, place the last few gifts under the tree, and bake the last batch of cookies. A reflection on the true significance of this moment on the Christian liturgical calendar is sometimes left as an afterthought to what is given top billing on the calendar of capitalism. But we must wait, and wait longer than a few days, to acclimate ourselves to the coming of Jesus. When we take hold of the season of waiting that Advent is, we give ourselves the opportunity to experience the wonder of every occasion that lead up to the birth of Jesus.
When we read the Gospel narratives that foretell of Jesus’ birth, of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, of the Magnificat, we must stop ourselves from breezing through it quickly because we’ve heard it all before. Instead we should be held captive by every word as if we were hearing it for the first time and as if we may never hear it again. When we repeat the refrain, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear,” we are implicating ourselves as those in captivity in need of a release from our self-imposed exile. Given the capitalism and consumerism that has marked this season—and the violence it has wrought—we are now, more than ever, in the need of the discipline of waiting. We must wait in order to restore the wonder of this blessed season we are in, a season that shines light into dark places and gives many hope. We must wait, not only for ourselves but for every person who has yet to experience the great hope that many of us know so well. We must wait so that we refresh ourselves in the wondrous love to come over receiving it as an entitlement that we might take for granted. We must wait, because in waiting we are forced to slow down, and in slowing down we gain perspective on the significance of this season which brings us back to wonder. The awesome wonder of the coming of Jesus is what this season is about, just wait for it.
Man, one of my favorite authors, I mean, I just want to be blunt with you. Every time I see you on Meet the Press, Eddie, I’m always like, he is dead on about something. I don’t know where it comes from. So where were you when you said to yourself, “Self, I need to write a book [like] We Are The Leaders that We’ve been Looking For?”
Dr. Glaude
You know, this book is based on a set of lectures I delivered like in 2011. And I was so angry at that moment. Everybody was excited about the Obama presidency. And I was angry in some ways, doc, that people were reading Obama’s presidency as the fulfillment of the black freedom struggle. That that’s what the object of all that sacrifice was for, was to get a black man in the White House. And I just thought, that’s not true. What happened to love, what happened to justice, what happened to the moral dimension of the movement? I wanted to think through that. I wanted to figure out what were we relinquishing, what were we giving up in that moment. And then fast forward, all these years later, I returned to those lectures. And I returned to them because in some ways I had lost my footing. I was trying to figure things out because COVID had disrupted so much, I had lost two partners. I felt like I was unmoored, untethered as it were. And I knew these lectures were a moment when I was trying to usher in a new way of being for myself, a new way of thinking for myself, a new way of writing for myself. So I wanted to go back to that moment. And lo and behold, I saw what I was trying to do differently. So all of this happened in the summer of 2023. And I got to work. And then I submitted the manuscript to the editor at Harvard University Press and they were like, OMG, let’s get this out as soon as we can.
Maina
What would you say to people who feel the disillusionment of people who are going, “I don’t want to be the leader?”
Dr. Glaude
I think part of what I’m trying to argue is that when we outsource our responsibility for the house [of this country], when we say, well, I don’t want to pay the mortgage then we know what’s going to happen. And so we cannot outsource our responsibility for democracy any longer to so called prophets, to so called heroes, to politicians. We have to understand this is where Ella Baker, Miss Baker, is so important that we are our salvation in this instanc. Of course, that that doesn’t disregard one’s faith claims, but it’s what we do.And there’s a somewhat cliche at the heart of the book. And that is that if we are the leaders we’ve been looking for, then we got to become better people. We got to reach for higher forms of excellence. James Baldwin used to put it this way, the messiness of the world is often a reflection of the messiness of our interior lives. So if we don’t begin to do that hard work on becoming better people, then we can’t be the source of significant change. But I also should say this, doing the hard work of becoming a better human being must take place alongside of [and] within our ongoing effort to make a more just world. Because the world as it currently is organized gets in the way of us becoming better people. It’s almost like you’re rewarded to be selfish, you’re rewarded to be greedy, you’re rewarded to be mean spirited, you’re rewarded to be self-regarded. You’re not rewarded if you’re other regarded, if you’re not regarded if you have an I, thou relationship [with others as non-objects], you’re not regarded if you’re committed to justice, if you’re committed to the least of these, you see what I mean? If you’re maladjusted to an unjust world, you’re not rewarded. So we got to do the hard work of self-cultivation in pursuit of a more just world. That’s the heart of the book.
Maina
Which one of these people did you fall in love with the most? You’re taking some of the very, very best and you’re dropping them right in front of us and there are nuggets right in front of us. Which one did you go, “I am more in line with this leader.”
Dr. Glaude
It depends on what age you ask me. So when I was a young kid growing up in Mississippi, Dr. King meant everything. I remember checking out the album, show you how old I am. It was the vinyl of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It was the March on Washington. And I remember stopping it and learning it by memory from Mrs. Mitchell’s eighth grade history class. And Dr. King was so important to how I imagined myself. When I got to Morehouse, you’re baptized in King’s thought. You got the statue of him looking at you. And so King was so important for me at a young age. But then when I got to Morehouse, Malcolm became my guy. And I have my goatee to this day. I will never cut it off as kind of testimony from my first conversion experience, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. So here I am excited to be at King’s Alma Mater and my freshman year, this guy walks up to me and said, “You’re like a hand without a thumb. You don’t know who you are.” And he gave me Malcolm X’s autobiography. And I read it that night. And I found the language for my father’s anger. I found the language for how to imagine myself as a man, given the fact that I was so afraid because my father scared me to death. Malcolm became this hero of mine that I cut my political teeth on. And now here I am in my fifties. And Miss Baker is all up in me. It’s a more mature voice, I suppose, but we wouldn’t have a black freedom struggle of the 20th century if it wasn’t for her. And the way in which she has that wonderful line, “A strong people doesn’t need a strong leader.” And I said this once, I was speaking, I think it was in Chicago. I was like, “What happens when you have fans in the pews and a celebrity in the pulpit?” The church is dead. It’s done. I think we’re seeing a lot of that right now. What happens when you outsource your faith journey to someone else? And so part of what I’ve been trying to do is to live Miss Baker’s edict. Because the title of the book comes from her. We are the leaders we have been looking for. She says, “We have to convince people that their salvation is in their hands.” What we choose to do. Not what the preacher chooses to do, not what the politician chooses to do. So not what Malcolm inspired me to do, not what King leads me to do, but what’s coming from inside of my heart in light of the exemplars of excellence and love that inform and shape my own voice as I understand it. And that’s what I’m writing towards in the book.
Maina
You keep talking to me. So last question. Sure. Your spiritual faith journey, did that come into play in this book at all?
Dr. Glaude
It’s at work in all of my texts. To be honest with you, it’s me trying to understand what does it what does it mean to be decent and loving? What does it mean to exemplify the ministry of Jesus without it being overlaid with dogma and an institutional constraint. So when I call for a coalition of the decent, animated by the power of love, that is the exacting power of love. That is that is at the heart of my religious Christian witness, as it were. And there’s a moment in the book near the end where I’m going to invoke Jimmy Baldwin again. He has this extraordinary essay that is published after his after his death is entitled “To Crush A Serpent.” And in this in this essay, he is relentless in his critique of the Fallwells and the moral majority and the like. But he talks about what salvation involves, what it entails. And it’s an echo of an earlier essay, a talk that he gave at Kalamazoo in 1961, entitled “In Search For A Majority.” And he says salvation is found in effect in “the going towards.” Salvation is found in the going towards in some ways. And I want to suggest that salvation is found in the going towards and love is its carriage. So the short answer to the question is, is yes, me trying to figure all of this out, indebted to the Christian tradition, but not limited by it. Those lectures produced an uncommon faith. So the short answer is yes, all my books are or attempts to make sense of this complex journey that I’m making in terms of my faith.
The parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke is one of the most well-known passages of scripture in Christian communities and beyond. Jesus shares this parable in response to a lawyer asking if God requires that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, then who is my neighbor? The parable can be summarized this way: a Judean man is walking down a dangerous road and is robbed and beaten. He is left hurt and in need of help. A priest walks by, sees the man and walks on the side of the road to avoid him. A Levite, or worker from the local Temple also walks by and does nothing to help. Then a Samaritan man, who was a religious, historical, and cultural enemy of this Judean man, sees him in distress. The Samaritan stops, picks up the man off the road, takes him to a local inn and pays to have him rest and recover there. He promises to pay the inn keeper whatever is necessary for the man’s stay beyond what has been paid when he returns. Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer and asks which of the 3 men in the story acted as a neighbor to the injured man? The lawyer responds “the one who has shown mercy.” And Jesus responds “go and do likewise.”
I taught this lesson to my adult Bible Study class a few weeks ago in the context of talking about how we treat people who come from a different religious tradition from us. I pointed out that this was like a white man helping a black man injured on the side of the road in 1920’s Georgia. The parable was meant to be that striking of a reminder to care for people who are different than us. Our Bible study has people who are in the 30s and 90s, black and white, men and women, many liberal and some more conservative, ministers and members, professors and students all on a zoom every week. We are a diverse group to put it bluntly. But whether we agree or disagree we have chosen to be a part of this Christian community and keep showing up to talk, study, and pray together every week.
We decided to talk about faiths beyond Christianity because of an experience a few members shared. They attended an interfaith wedding where I was the celebrant. The experience raised a lot of questions and a desire to learn from one member who wanted to know more about other religions. After asking the group if they were open to it, we agreed and included it in our regular Bible study time. During our second discussion we talked about visiting a Hindu Temple, and one member voiced that she wouldn’t want to do that because she is not Hindu. Another said that she felt very comfortable because God could be there just like God was in our church. I encouraged them that they were both right, that they could respect Hindus that worshipped in a Temple and not have to go themselves. But if they did choose to go, it didn’t make them less Christian, just having a different experience.
Being a good neighbor is not about agreeing on the same things or sharing the same identities. Being a good neighbor is about how we treat each other. Being in a diverse community can sometimes make us more intolerant of people who are intolerant. I have heard it explicitly from some of my members. But the things we practice in well response are curiosity and welcome. When the Hindu man who was dating a Christian woman came to our congregation months before they were married, we didn’t single him out or question why he was there. We hugged him and offered him food. He came because someone he loved, loved us. When a Jewish Rabbi spoke to us about her pain remembering October 7, and a Christian activist talked about his disgust at the suffering by Palestinians in Gaza in the same worship service, my pastor didn’t apologize. He let them both speak. I know our congregation is unusual. But it is a constant reminder and challenge of the possibility to be together despite differences. I can only hope that as we march toward and through this season of deep division in our country around the election, people who are in communities together whether by location or intention would remember on the other side that we all still need to eat. We all still need care when we are hurt. And we can all still be good neighbors by showing compassion.
UrbanFaith interviewed minister, psychotherapist, and author Dr. Sarita Lyons about her new book Church Girl which is a comprehensive look at the blessing, challenges, and opportunities for black women to live fully as believers and part of the body of Christ. UrbanFaith editor Allen Reynolds believes it is one of the most important books of the year. The full interview is above. Excerpts below have been edited for clarity.
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Allen
What inspired you to write this book? You clearly, you’ve spent a lot of time doing counseling work, and then you spent a lot of time doing ministry work. Why did you decide to write a book to help black women and to help black churches to deal with everything that concerns you?
Dr. Lyons
Yeah, great question. So the thing that I’ve been saying when I get that question is, I really did feel God called me to this. I always felt like one day maybe I would write a book, but never did I imagine I would write a book about this or like this. And I’m so honored to be the vessel that God is using to do this work in the earth at this time, because I do think this is a Kairos moment, right? This, it’s a timing, everything that God does has a very specific timing. And so when I think about the lives of black women, Christian women, the church, and then the influence of the world and all the demonic schemes that are being used to get black women to not really grab hold of the faith and put their confidence in Christ. It is a very prophetic work and it’s doing damage on the kingdom of darkness. That’s the intention. I would also say as a black Christian woman, I wrote this book because Toni Morrison once said, if there’s a book you need to read and it doesn’t exist, write it. And so I have written the book that I have needed that I believe so many black women have needed from my time leading black women and teaching black women and ministering the women and counseling at the local church and in private practice. I’m like, wow, this feels like the book we’ve been craving and wanting that just really hasn’t existed. Orthodox in orthodox in terms of teaching and theology, but clear and biblical in orthopraxy, not sacrificing justice, not sacrificing human felt needs, as if they aren’t gospel driven needs and concerns. So it’s, it’s balanced in the ways in which oftentimes books that do, you know, target black women aren’t often balanced in that way. Yeah, or the other concern that many black Christian women have often felt is we’ve read a lot of good theology about biblical womanhood and what it means to be a Christian woman, but we have in some ways felt erased or missing in the message. And the star of every book, the star of every teaching should always be Jesus, but we do know the importance of contextualization. And so church girl seeks to contextualize the experience of black Christian women in a world where we’ve experienced various forms of opposition, where we have our own unique internal struggles and opposition to really living the lives that God has called us all to live. And so I jokingly say a lot of times that you know this isn’t a new gospel this isn’t a new gospel vision for black women that isn’t similar for other cultures, but in many ways I’m writing The Wiz for their Wizard of Oz.
Allen
One of the things that’s come up a lot in our culture is this thing of church hurt, and you spend two chapters kind of dealing and wrestling with it. You start out talking and comparing it to The Color Purple and Sophia and Celie. And can you tell us about what is church hurt? I mean, I know folks in our audience have felt it. It’s causing folks to leave the church, and you give ways to not only address that, but deal with it and invite people to stay in the faith, right, and to stay faithful. Can you talk about the church hurt?
Dr. Lyons
Yeah, so I mean, I think we could come up with a thousand different definitions, but the name speaks for itself. It’s any kind of injury, emotional, physical, spiritual harm that is done in God’s house among people who are professing to be believers. And oftentimes, I mean the four walls of the local church. But I also think that there can be global church hurt, meaning just when different systems of church functioning and ideology like nationalism and patriotism end up becoming more important to churchgoers than just human life, people who bear the Imago Dei, the image of God. That is a global way people can also be hurt. I’m talking about the fact that church hurt is really distressing and particularly like thinking about Harpo and Sophia. I’m making the point that all of us black girls, we have a Harpo, you know what I mean? We have someone that was supposed to love us, someone that was supposed to protect us, someone that said they were committed to us that creates an injury and Sophia had to fight Harpo. That’s her husband. No woman wants to fight, but you definitely don’t want to have to fight in your own house. And I think one of the scars, the wounds of church hurt, is that there is this expectation that people who say they love God and preach grace, mercy, truth, holiness, faithfulness, and living abundant life are not committing sins. This is the last place kind of our psyche ever expects to be hurt. We need to have a paradigm shift about that because the church is not made up of any perfect people, but we serve a perfect God. But there is a standard. We should be held to a higher standard. Church should be safe for black women. Church should be a place where black women are affirmed, not because we’re black women, but because we are image bearers because we are the daughters of the Most High God. Because like here’s the thing; don’t say women are the weaker vessel when it’s helpful for you to maintain authority. But then we’re not the weaker vessel when it’s time to protect, when it’s time to love, or when it’s time to care for well. So the first chapter is really naming the church hurt. And [it doesn’t] matter whether you’re a man, woman, black, white, or other. Everyone has a story of church hurt, some of which I talk about in the book that other people may say “I relate to that. I get that.” I really tried to spend a lot of time though I couldn’t represent every black woman because we’re not a monolith. I really tried to think of what the unique ways are black women experience church hurt that may not show up in other circles for instance being white. Sometimes depending on if you’re in a predominantly white church, or if you’re in a black church that has still prescribed to whiteness being standard of holiness and righteousness and goodness, instead of being able to see that the kingdom of God can hold the diversity of culture. We can all be godly and worship God in the uniqueness of our culture and still be on brand as Christians. And so, I’m thinking about the emotional psychological hurt, the physical hurt, the abuse, the being mis-seen, the being overseeing, even the hurt that we experience when we don’t put more emphasis on the brother sister relationship. How we [in the church] have romanticized and sexualized relationships between men and women so much that we don’t know how to just be faithful siblings in the faith, how both men and women are injured when we do not highlight that aspect of our relationship with one another. One of the other ways that we’re hurt is not just from the perpetrator, but we’re also hurt when there are people who are yes men, and yes women, and there’s cover up, and there’s no accountability, and people who have injured us are never sat down. There’s no discipline, there’s no restorative process. We’re not talking about crucifying people.
Now some people need to get arrested and go to jail for some stuff. But most of the time what people are experiencing is the kind of hurt that if we apply biblical principles to it, I believe that restoration can happen I believe that we can come out stronger. And in many instances, reconciliation can happen so that people don’t all have to leave the church every time they get hurt, because to be hurt is a normal part of the human experience. The only person that’s not going to hurt you in a maladaptive way is God, is your relationship with Jesus Christ.
So, I think that’s part of [it.] Not only are you going to get hurt. But if you tell the truth, you are going to hurt. And one of the things I really wanted to do in the chapters on church hurt was bring balance to it. I think the only place we often ever have a vision to see ourselves is as the victim. We never see ourselves as the victimizer. We never see how we have caused hurt to someone else that someone right now is going through a healing because of something you said or didn’t say or something you did. And so we don’t want to blame because people who are actually victims need to be protected and taken care of and stood up for and they need to be healed. But we also don’t want to pretend that all our hands are always clean. And so that in the same way we need forgiveness from people, we also have someone else needs our repentance. I say in the book that healing from church hurt is a form of spiritual warfare, because the enemy would love for us to get broken and devour one another and be Christian cannibals and tear each other up. But healing, he doesn’t want that because as long as we stay broken, we can walk around with our proverbial church hurt baggage. We can then project the offenses that come through people onto a holy, perfect, righteous, loving God so that He begins to bear the blame and responsibility of the unfortunate sinful acts of the people that represented him. And instead of then having problems with church people, we start having problems with the Groom of the Church. We start having problems with Christ. And so, we don’t walk away from just people sometimes we end up walking away from the faith. And because the devil is intent on robbing God of glory, the breakdown of the integrity of the local church is one way he wants to rob God of glory, get people to distrust God, distrust the community of faith that God says we need for our own sanctification and growth from spiritual immaturity to spiritual maturity. And so [the enemy] wins when we don’t heal. He wins when we stay bitter. He wins when we stay broken. He wins when we stay unreconciled. The way God wins is when we solve problems with biblical prescriptions. When we do things God’s way, from discipline to correction to restoration, we usually get God’s results.
Allen
What advice would you give to young girls and young women, trying to find their places church girls?
Dr. Lyons
I would just say, one of the main ways you just grow as a Christian is you have to grow in biblical community. Meaning [no] isolating yourself. This mantra of “it’s just me and God,” that is a lie from the pit of hell. God doesn’t even exist in isolation. God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit exist in community three persons in one. I think that is one of the ways we protect ourselves from the attacks of the enemy, from false teaching, from all the things that help us drift from the faith is to be in strong biblical community with other brothers and sisters who are like minded. And we also need discipleship. Discipleship is not just finding one super saint to lock arms with, go to Starbucks and get coffee, and do fun things. That can be sometimes a part of it, but really, we need to see every aspect of the church as a means of discipleship. You showing up on Sunday and listening to the preached word, you’re being discipled, you going to women’s ministry or men’s ministry or singles or marriage ministry, you serving in the local church. Those are all contexts where you can receive discipleship. I also think really got to put our hand to the plow. And because in the context of serving the local church, not just being a consumer is when you get to be around other people you get to learn the ways of Christ. You get to give up yourself and give yourself over to the work of the Kingdom. And that’s how you grow.
I would say, not even to say this last because this is definitely like last but definitely not least, prioritize becoming a biblical scholar. And I want to say biblical scholar and theologian, not just like I read my Bible, I did my devo time, but get in the book get in the text. If you’re using devotionals use them as supplements, use them as vitamins. Vitamins are good but they’re not food to live off. Prioritize eating that book, eating that word. Research has shown, even if it was just four days a week. If a person reads the Word of God, four days a week, their life would drastically change. I tell people read something every day, because there are things we do every day like brush our teeth. We wake up, we care for our bodies, we do things every day because it just has become a natural pattern. Eating God’s Word has to become a natural pattern. You grow by the Word of God. If you get into the Book, it will drastically change your life. When God delivered me from African spiritualism and all the ways in which I drifted from the faith and into tarot cards and kyrie shells and astrology and you know just all the altar building and ancestor worship, I had a Bible that looks spanking brand new that I found where God confronted me and convicted me of my idolatry. And all I did every single day, whether I understood it or not, is I read that Book. And I still have that Book, and it is tattered and worn and half of Romans is missing. And the pages are all crinkled up, because it was in the Word of God that God strengthened me and changed my mind and changed my desires. It is getting in the Word of God every single day that will literally revolutionize your life. I would also just say, hey, being a church girl is about being unapologetic. Like you can’t be afraid of cancel culture. You can’t be out here trying to fit in with the world and be on brand as a Christian. We [must] be willing to be soldiers. There are people in other countries who are literally dying for the faith. Surely you can handle not being liked or somebody thinking you a Jesus freak. If being a Jesus freak is the worst thing you could ever be called in this life, I mean, you have surely picked up a jewel to go in your crown. We have to we have to interrogate our lives and say, God saved me from the world. But the intention was to send me back into the world and be a light and be a disciple and be an ambassador. Be a living epistle being read by man because God is making his appeal to the lost world through us. Sometimes you’re the only version of God or church that a lost person will ever met meet on their way to being a believer. And so, if we’re a living epistle, you want to look at your life and say girl, am I telling the story correctly? When people look at me, when they observe my speech, when they observe my walk, when they observe where I go, and what I do, and what I share on my social media and what I even like on social media, because I’ve been tripped out by some of the Christians liking some wild stuff, do I look like I’m a serious Christian? Do I look like I’m a serious Christian? And if not, what are the things that God says you got to die to in order to walk in obedience to [Him]? Like you just can’t live in your kind of way and call yourself a Christian. We shouldn’t just live your kind of way and just call ourselves sliding into heaven. Stealing home base ain’t the way to go. It’s not the way to go. I want to I want us to get our weight up biblically, but I’m challenging us like stop playing church. Stop being on the sidelines stop just attending on Sunday and living wild and reckless and sleeping around and smoking blunts and you ain’t got glaucoma and talking crazy and sharing dumb silly memes and laughing at the church, laughing at all kinds of foolishness. Because what you laugh at you normalize. Check the music you listen to, what are you feeding yourself? Because here’s the thing, whatever you feed will grow and whatever you starve will die. How are you feeding your flesh? And how are you starving your spirit? The goal isn’t to starve the spirit; make it weak make it impotent. [It’s] to nourish and feed the spirit man so that that can be the giant. [Then] the flesh can be the little person, but we are functioning opposite of that. I see too many of my sisters just out here, really wanting to figure out how to be a carnal Christian. And that’s corny. Being a carnal Christian is corny. We need to stop it. Be unapologetic, be bold, be courageous the Bible says the righteous are bold as a line. God wants to use you sis. And the enemy is sitting back laughing at us as he eats up our lives with us looking like we serve him and not serve God. It’s time to come up and that’s what Church Girl is doing. Get this gospel vision for your identity for your purpose, for your healing, for your rest, for your ability to live unapologetic in Babylon, so you can flourish and stop drifting away from the faith. Or my last chapter, go after the gone girl, the missing black woman from the church and help guide her home like God guided me home when I was the prodigal daughter out in the world. The book isn’t meant to beat up on you, but it is a clarion call that says where’s the remnant? Where’s the remnant? Stand up! Stand up to the glory of God.
The full interview is above. Excerpts from the interview are below. Dr. Wilkes book Plenty Good Room is available for purchase here.
Allen
We have the Reverend Dr. Andrew Wilkes talking about his book today Plenty Good Room. He has written for us in the past many years ago as an intern, but now continuing his work as a political scientist, social thinker, and a pastor.
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
It’s good to see you, Allen, a joy to be in conversation, deep appreciation for Urban Faith and of course for the wider work beginning in the 70s of knowing Black folk need Black authored materials for Christian Education that are culturally relevant that you and I has been doing all down through the years.
Allen
Why did you feel like you wanted to write this and get your thoughts out in Plenty Good Room?
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
Yeah, really appreciate the question. Plenty Good Room, as I note in the preface, is part argument, part appeal, part prayer. And it’s something that I’ve been pulling together for the last 10 years or so, went through research and other means that I noted that so much of our approach to economics is still grounded on a mental model, a planning model of scarcity and austerity, rather than a beginning operating assumption of sufficiency and abundance. And so the prayer, the appeal, the argument is that if we’re in a moment where, let’s take America for instance, where we have gross domestic product of some $26 trillion, whatever we have, it’s not scarcity and it’s not austerity. We’re in a place where we have to think through the public choices and the public priorities that we make. And so Plenty Good Room is trying to argue that public choices and public policy is not simply a technical consideration for experts, but it’s rather an encompassing matter for the full body of Christ, for everybody that considers themselves to be a neighbor, or somehow enmeshed exactly as you named in this work of trying to create a better world.
Allen
A lot of folks may have heard of socialism. We certainly have black Christians. Can you define black Christian socialism for us?
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
Yeah, so I’d like to define it by image, because I think that’s helpful. Black folk play spades and when you play spades, you have a hand. And we tend to think that the hand that somebody plays with and wins depends on the skill or the savvy of the person who’s playing their particular hand. But what really is the meat and potatoes and often the most influential factor is the distribution of cars that one has in their hand. Do you have the Joker? Do you have the deuce of diamonds or the deuce of spades depending on how you play? I know black folk plays spades differently in different regions, but the question of distribution is co-equal to in some cases more important than the individual skill of the spades player. And you may have perhaps heard those who are listening may have perhaps heard folks say, I can’t even do nothing with this hand right here. And so, I talk about spades as a way to get the question of distribution and black person socialism on the table, because too often the question of what it means to be a justice-oriented Christian devolves into a kind of budget shaming or financial scolding of how folks save, invest, spend or how they don’t. Rather than having a question about how are we co-creating and distributing the resources in a context where we affirm that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. And so, in a nutshell, black Christian socialism is about trying to pay more attention to the pre distribution and the redistribution of resources so that all of God’s children can flourish and help make decisions about stuff they help create.
Allen
I love that image. And one of the things that you lift in the pre-distribution but also in thinking about what has happened before us as you spend some time with history and I think it’s important for people to see that this is not new stuff, right. The ideas are rooted in our traditions.
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
Very much so.
Allen
Can you talk about some of that history, some of those figures you lift up, you know, Dr King and bell hooks and, and, you know, can you talk about some of why that history is important and where the historical precedence is for something like this, this black Christian socialism?
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
Absolutely. You know, in 1896 in the middle of trying to figure out how industrial capitalism and in a moment before public health codes and building codes whereas modernized as they are now, you have a Reverend Dee Ransom, who’s pastoring a church in Chicago, no, no less in the institutional and me church later to become an AME bishop, who writes in an 1896 edition of the AME church review about Christians and socialism. You have a black bishop in the Episcopal church, the door Holly, who in that same issue. Again, this is, you know, 140 years or so, prior to our current moment addressing the same and they talk about the values and the virtues of the carpenter from Galilee and how questions of socialism and Christianity need to be on the table as we think about what it means to express a kind of discipleship, civic responsibility, agitation for justice that can fully serve black people and so in terms of the history. I point out the fact that it’s not just individual outlier clergy, but this is a denominational church press, which is talking about black churches and socialism. And on just a plain level. I think it’s important to open up the continuum of optionality for Christians that there is no inherent marriage and in fact I’d argue there’s some a good deal of antagonism between Christians and Christianity as a religious tradition and capitalism. Even if one doesn’t buy that premise, certainly Christians should be able to choose the political economy that they feel best matches their vision of what Christ’s message in ministry is all about. And what I’m simply saying is that I think we need to see that the radical stream of black social Christianity has always existed and has turned towards things like mutual aid and socialism to express what it looks like to turn the world upside down.
Allen
You can’t read Acts right you can’t read Acts 2 and Acts 4 and not see this. Can you talk about some of those biblical foundations, especially for people who may not be as familiar or may have not read those scriptures? Can you talk about how that’s rooted in our faith and rooted in scripture?
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
Absolutely. Beautiful question. You know I think about a number of places we see Jesus and Luke 4 talking about how the Spirit of Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor to bind up the broken hearted to set the captives free announce the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor. But we often miss Luke chapter one, Mary’s Magnificent where she talks about the humble being exalted, the mighty pulled down from their thrones, the rich being sent away empty and the hungry being filled with with good things, whatever that correlates to it certainly doesn’t correlate to Silicon Valley Wall Street dominated capitalism. When we look at the vision of what I think we can interpret our current moment not saying this was the concern of the office but in terms of our current moment acts to and for talks about a fellowship dedicated to the teaching of the Apostles and folks sharing all things in common. And so we have this cooperative pooling together of resources that we see as contemporary as black churches creating credit units to get away from predatory finance systems that wouldn’t give fair loans or gave predatory loans to black people like folks that wait, wait, wait, we can pull our resources together. We can have membership in a financial entity where we can resist white supremacist notions of credit worthiness and instead do what the best of church traditions have done as canonizing scripture, but also as practice by our people down through the years and so I think credit unions are one way to live into that and so we can do and for tradition. But there’s also a sense of wanting to have a comprehensive vision of economic justice and when I think of a passage like James five, which is a sim essentially a manifesto against wage theft. And so this is about how farmers farm workers had wages withheld from this. This is James words that my from from the rich and the text says that the wages cried out and that the Lord of Hosts, her. This is a kind of a caring through of that kind of Exodus 3 of God hearing the cries of folks who experienced economic oppression, and the church men called to do something about that. In a nutshell, Allen, what I am suggesting is that a model of what some economists and sociologists have called solidarity economics is a way to try to translate this beloved community, this co creating tradition that we see in the scriptures. This way we can translate that into how we do public finance, how we do nonprofit work, how we do community development, how the church engages with labor unions, and how we can think beyond the two party system in America because multi party democracy is a common thing for churches and most of God’s creation, it ought to be something that we do here in the States as well.
Allen
How can people join into these conversations or do some things on the ground to make this implemented because it is something that’s actually possible now that’s being done now?
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
Absolutely. So, a few things. I mean, on the policy front, we’ve talked a bit about calling for supporting already existing credit unions with respect to finance community land trust with respect to housing. Solid wealth funds that are democratically controlled with respect to economic development models and rural metropolitan suburban and exurban areas, calling for the use of taxation policies that prioritizes families that are rather that prioritizes working families rather than tax abatement strategies in perpetuity to build stadiums that project jobs which I’ve never quite created at the volume and at the pay rates that the models say will take places. I think there’s a way to participate specifically and land use zoning and town planning conversation that says how can we use the fiscal leverage that the public sector has in a way to generate full employment in our communities and a way to generate more catalytic investment from nonprofits from small businesses from arts and cultural institutions which are often unheralded economic drivers in terms of the demand that they bring to cities through concerts through forum through symposium. Anytime you talk about stimulating consumer demand and bringing people to an area that’s an economic impact that should be seen as such and not explained away because it may not be, you know, a cash cow in the way that say a high profit yield tech industry is. So, my point in saying that last piece and talking about equitable forms and models of economic development and getting people involved, not just in voting, but in planning conversations and city council meetings, calling for things like public banks. That is the way on the policy front that I think we can start to activate and make more actionable what may feel like a big conversation. The other piece that I’d say and I think there’s a theological piece to this explicitly that I want to name. I think it’s important to add more detail to the vision of what often goes by beloved community but so many things have been described as beloved community or social justice. And when you scratch below the surface, it’s the vision of economic empowerment for those who are already well connected, well degreed, well spoken, and those whose new divergence or whose multi-lingual gifts or who’s not quite being at the center of social status and power isn’t quite as central to those visions. I think it’s important for us to recognize that gap and then be to draw from some of our most famous and heralded figures. Martin Luther King Junior is and was known by his colleagues as a Democratic socialist to draw on late Reverend Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, who in womanism and the soul of community. It’s drawing on the work of Oliver Cox to make a very similar point. The take home being that when we think of what it means to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God, the 21st century expression of that is to work in politics, to work in economics, to work for nonprofits, to work in unmet need round tables that do mutual aid. Right, because it’s not inherently turning towards government. There may be some, not maybe there are ways to distribute resources and a philanthropic and like peer to peer with that can also cause justice. And so what I’m simply saying, Allen, is that, and I know I’m taking the scenic route. Now I’m going to land the plane. The being a systems change sustainably minded Christian who’s concerned about justice, not for an election cycle and not just for the temporary upswing in a business cycle, I think has to mean that that some kind of socialism or cooperative expression is a viable consideration.
Allen
What advice would you give to younger believers about how they can try to live into a more just economy politics world that you have studied and see playing out ?
Dr. Andrew Wilkes
The first place that that go is to is to take a comprehensive, consistent and consecrated view of everything you’ve studied, including scripture, but not ending with scripture. And I’m inspired by the pause letter to the church of Philippi where he says, you know, whatsoever is good whatsoever is pleasing whatsoever is lovely whatsoever is just whatsoever is essentially virtuous thing on these things. And so that that call to consistently study to think to research, certainly is a call to dig deeply into the canon of scripture. But I think it’s equally a call to think through what does justice mean in terms of political science what does it mean in terms of the different institutions that shape identity and community that will take you to sociology What does it mean in terms of psychology what does it mean in terms of reading the newspaper consistently and beyond just Fox CNN and MSNBC like once in the local newspaper and neighborhood weekly. So that one can get a sense of how public affairs plays out in your immediate environment as well as meetings and pre existing convenings there’s almost always somebody working on what you care about exactly where you are that you just may not know about and so the call to study the call to see what’s already working and to presume that you want the only one that God has spoken to and stirred up for justice. So, the call to lock arms and join in Federation with folk who are trying to do God’s work of renewal and of making those who are too often put last in our society put first.
This Interview contains conversation about depression and suicide. If you or someone you know is dealing with depression make sure you encourage them to seek professional help. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. The Lifeline provides 24-hour, confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress.
This interview is published in honor of World Mental Health Day. You can find April Simpkins co-authored book with her late daughter Cheslie Kryst, here.
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Maina
Ms. Simpkins, what a powerful book. And so I’m asking this question with all sincerity. I’ve been there before. How are you doing?
April
You know, I take a temperature check on myself. And my mental health on a regular basis. Right now, honestly, out of a 1 to 5 scale, I’m a 4, which is OK. And that’s a good place. Good place. You know, losing a child is just hard. It’s just one of those things I pray that nobody goes through.
Maina
You said that she had high functioning depression. Can you explain that term to me because I think some of people may not understand that term?
April
Sure, I think most people are familiar with the term major depressive disorder. And we see that it will take over. That is when you see someone really struggling. They’re fatigued. They’re not eating. It shows in their facial expression. There are so many outwards visual appearances to having major depressive disorder. But what Cheslie had was persistent depressive disorder, which is a little different. And persistent depressive disorder shows several of the symptoms of major depressive disorder. But they’re not as critical and they don’t go away. I think for many of us who have gone through a trauma or a change that took you over, that maybe weren’t expecting, you will feel the emotion of depression. It’s the natural emotion. We all feel that.
Maina
We all go through it, yes.
April
Exactly. But that’s the key word is that we go through it. With Cheslie, she lived with it. And was still able to function. And that’s one of the challenges with persistent depressive disorder is you will think to yourself, it’s not that bad. I can still do these things or I’m still able to do these things. And that is where it gets its hybrid name, high functioning depression. I had not heard that term before. And so, I was like, that is really deep. And it made me lean into friends and family members who are in that category. Because we usually see the other side [of depression] and not this side.
Maina
Cheslie’s Foundation. How did that come into play? How’s that going?
April
Cheslie was one of the most giving people ever. Even now, I still hear stories of things she did for others. And it teaches me so much. As a matter of fact, I was just in New York on Friday and talked with a young woman who said that Cheslie had read over one of her essays she had to write for college and gave her a few tips. There are people who I know Cheslie has given them some encouragement on becoming an attorney and words of support and taking the bar exam. When she was in law school and, of course, getting her MBA simultaneously and just involved in a plethora of other organizations, she still found the time to mentor at-risk teens. And would go, I remember vividly, when she skipped a family event, which for us is sacred. But skipped a family event because she wanted to go to the graduation of one of the young women that she mentored. Cheslie gave. And she did it without boasting. She didn’t do it to win awards or anything. She did it because that was the essence of who she was. And this, for me, in my mind, is always going to be Cheslie’s book. And what do I do with what comes of her final work? And that is to allow her legacy to live on and doing that through the spirit of giving. And so, all the net proceeds from the book will go into the foundation. And then we will, in turn, send that money back out to other nonprofits that are focused on the mental health and wellness of youth and teens, our young adults and teens.
Maina
Dr. Glaude
The parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke is one of the most well-known passages of scripture in Christian communities and beyond. Jesus shares this parable in response to a lawyer asking if God requires that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, then who is my neighbor? The parable can be summarized this way: a Judean man is walking down a dangerous road and is robbed and beaten. He is left hurt and in need of help. A priest walks by, sees the man and walks on the side of the road to avoid him. A Levite, or worker from the local Temple also walks by and does nothing to help. Then a Samaritan man, who was a religious, historical, and cultural enemy of this Judean man, sees him in distress. The Samaritan stops, picks up the man off the road, takes him to a local inn and pays to have him rest and recover there. He promises to pay the inn keeper whatever is necessary for the man’s stay beyond what has been paid when he returns. Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer and asks which of the 3 men in the story acted as a neighbor to the injured man? The lawyer responds “the one who has shown mercy.” And Jesus responds “go and do likewise.”
Allen
Allen
