Rohadi 0:17 Yes, Part 2. Come on. I am Rohadi on Treaty seven lands Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This is part two with Dr. Drew Hart. Part 1, we were talking about activism and justice. And we were unpacking decolonization and paving a path towards, but just reconciliation but a path towards wholeness for black and brown bodies. In this episode, we pick up the conversation and we drill down into Dr. Hart's latest book, who will be a witness, and then stick around for the second part of this conversation where we reimagine what the church can look like in the future. Let's dive right in. Who will be a witness? Follow up from trouble I've seen I was mentioning off air that although you don't name it, your work your hermeneutic. But your work in both biblical scholarship but also just quite simply unpacking the narratives here in Scripture is the work of decolonizing scripture. So you do actually use the words of decentering whiteness, in an example in one of your chapters in who will be witness. But do you process it through that what you're doing is intentionally decolonizing. This one has stories of Barabas. Trouble I've seen has stories around Romans. So every time you interact, every time you interact with with the Scriptures, it's an exercise, and I think decolonizing. Drew Hart 2:02 Yeah, so I would say, yes, that would be my first answer is that it is doing that. And I see myself in some ways as participating in that broader conversation. And also, because of like, I think the language of colonising and decolonizing is not unfortunately as, like, in the US context is just not the way that people think through some of these things. Yeah, same here. Yeah. And so, I mean, sometimes I'll talk about decolonizing Christianity and things like that. But probably more often than not, I'll talk about anti racist discipleship. Because I think that that's where people it hits people, maybe more directly, in terms of my context, to use to talk about anti racist discipleship, which I mean, at the end of the day, when you talk about racism, and you talk about colonisation, we're talking to in basically the same things, just different ways of entering into the conversation, but they meet. And I do think that when we have global conversations, and you have to talk about decolonizing, I mean, that's just the broader way that you have to have the conversation. But on the US level, I think to say anti racist discipleship, I think, enters people into conversations that they haven't been focusing on in terms of Christianity and his readings and how it takes itself. And then also talk about empire. Right, which again, you talk about, you know, I always focus on the Roman Empire as the contexts in which the whole entire New Testament is written, if you don't see the Roman Empire in the background of everything that you're reading, you're missing all of what's going on in Scripture. And so those anti Imperial documents really provide a lot of meaning for us in our present day on this side of colonialism and this side of white supremacy that we've got to grapple with. And that's part of Rohadi 4:02 the anti Imperial documents. Drew Hart 4:05 Yeah. Yeah. And to me this tweet, yeah, they're anti Imperial documents, and radicals, some of them. I mean, the funny thing is, which is why it makes sense why evangelicals have latched on to revelations and made it into what it is. Because if they had read it as it was meant to, it's the most devastating of all anti Imperial documents. I mean, you can't read revelations 13 or chapter 18, without a devastating critique on all empire, right that Babylon is going to fall. It's just it's vicious, right? It makes you know, I don't know anybody will blush. Edward Saeed. He's blushing reading those two chapters. I mean, just just vicious. Franz Fanon, right, he so anyway, I think that yeah, we've got to grapple and read these texts like that. At and, and especially because we're in a context where Western Christianity has reimagined itself as the centre of Christianity, right? They've, they've claimed copyright on Christianity, they've claimed copyright on biblical interpretation, they claim copyright on Jesus. And they think that if you want to reach any of those things, you got to come through us, right, and assimilate and become and contort yourself into these kinds of readings and hermeneutics, and so it's precisely that moment that that needs to be dislodged. And that we have to assume given that our history of colonialism and conquest and slavery all that has gone over the past, you know, 500 years, given that biblical studies and theology all propped it up, that they diseased it twisted it, we have to assume that we have to do readings on everything that that there as they have been handed on to us, they are still diseased, still mangoes, right? They still carry these 500 years of history of being used to prop up white supremacy. And so we've got to not allow them to be the authoritative readers of the tradition and holders and keepers of the tradition. There's no reason for that to begin with, anyway, because they're Gentiles. Number one. Secondly, then Gentiles that thought that they were the chosen ones. And then not just that, but Gentiles who thought that were chosen ones who use that to enslave and to destroy our planet, right in our world. So for all those reasons, we've got to allow, they can sit at the table and have a conversation, but they certainly are not going to be running the theological interpretation and the biblical interpretation of Scripture, that they can't continue anymore. Rohadi 6:45 Mm hmm. They, they operate as the gatekeepers, and then the additional layer, which you alluded to is they have created a Christ in their image. That's right. And is that we now have they are protecting a tradition by that it's a white Jesus tradition. Nope. I wonder if we talk about coming to the table, we use that we see that language use quite often when when it comes to work of trying to become more diverse, or churches trying to do some of this work around justice. Whose table, right. And I think we need new tables, we need new tables. We can't just expand existing tables, because that's somebody else's table. We need we need new imagination now to filter through. And of course, the attention to that is also the approach that in our attempts to read scripture, through our lens as as oppressed people in whichever way that we still have remnants of the Empire that impact our reading as well. Right. Right. Who is the because this isn't a book on how to read Scripture necessarily. Who is the target? As you picture as you're writing this book? Who did you have in mind as the recipient and the reader? Drew Hart 8:22 Yeah, well, I'll tell a little story to kind of give you a framing of who I was writing this for. And in some ways, it's broad, but I was doing, I was engaging congregations around trouble I've seen, right. So churches that we're actually wanting to have conversations to go deeper on anti racist discipleship in their congregations. So I'm going over speaking mostly in the United States, and, and all of a sudden, I get these questions like, all right, you convinced us, right, we see if we see the white supremacy, it's all over the place. Right? We're involved, we got to break out of it all this stuff. But and we see like, I guess the issue for them was, it sounds like you want us towards the end to like be in solidarity and the struggle for justice. Right? But like, what does that look like? That was the question, what does that actually mean? What does it mean for congregation to actually do this work? Are you just telling us to go vote? What like, what do you what do you actually mean, when you invite it? So they understood that justice was something that should be doing but actually, there was no tradition of actually doing the work? Right. So that was actually the spark from even wanting to write the book in the first place was like, Alright, I'm assuming that folks can imagine what this is going to look like, and they can't write and so what's that next step? Then? Of course, I'm not just gonna write I mean, there's other books that could they could if they just want a how to on organising and activism and social change strategies, there's, you know, any academic books, there's all kinds of resources that they could go so I'm going to do way more than that, though. I have personal experience on the ground, especially when working with churches on the ground. have that. But um, but so then I was thinking like, you know, what do churches need and who's actually like, who, who needs this kind of like reimagination of what it means to be the church on the ground at the grassroots level in their own communities. And so I was thinking like, it's the churches that either Well, for some, you could say there's some churches that already are doing some work and just need some encouragement along the way. Right. So there's those folks. There's folks that are awakening, right? So I've considered, there's the congregations I think, like they've read, like, you know, my book, travel I've seen or maybe Lisa Sharon Harper's work are often chatting, browns, or whatever. But they read it collectively as a congregation or having conversations you think about, like, you know, the great work you guys do on decolonizing, Christianity like that. That's a movement, right? That's happening. It's not something that's just spread, there's a movement that's happening right now. And people are engaging from different angles, these kinds of questions, as not even just as individuals, but as congregations. And I'm thinking, it's those kinds of folks alongside, there's other folks who I would say, have known that there was something wrong, and maybe know, to some degree, you know, can remember, you know, like African in the black community, there's black churches, they're aware of the Civil Rights Movement and what was going on, there's elders in the community that still have memory, but in some ways, some of the church's their theology is still captive to kind of mainstream, westernised domesticated Christianity as well, right? In some ways. And so there's this range of communities that are poised to get activated to embody something new in their local communities. And that's really who will be witness was written for it's for those kinds of folks. I mean, because the book it offers it, undomesticated vision of Jesus, especially in terms of his activism, and his radical illness and his resistance right to the establishment. It challenges our history, our remembering of how we got to where we are today. It's reframed what it means to be the church collectively. And it gives us very stretched strategic, pragmatic, and yet faithful ways that we can engage at the local level to bring social change. And so that's what the book is trying to do. It's really trying to just get kicked the church in the butt, right. And so let's go, but also with a renewed theological imagination who Jesus is, Rohadi 12:23 yes, go do what you're supposed to be doing. Come on, you use the word empire. Another word you use quite often, is, you just use it again, domesticated Yeah. Which is? I'm not sure that's not one that I've often heard use to describe the Americanized or the westernised version of Christianity. But you use that quite often unpack. Unpack the the punch of Yeah. Why domesticated? Drew Hart 13:02 Yeah. For me, it really centres around the person of Jesus, right? Like what we've done with Jesus. I mean, Jesus is, he's a non violent revolutionary that challenges he can't help himself, but had set his eyes towards the establishment clash with it confronted call it a den of robbers name it for stealing and robbing widows, homes, right? He can disrupt that space. This is a talk about Occupy Movement, he occupies the establishment space, and does it such that they have to plot to kill him, right. That's the Empire Strikes Back and clashes. And he knows that that's what's coming. That's what happens when you ruffle the feathers of the Empire. So you have this powerful, that's the Gospel story. That is the Jesus story, right? In Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, is the only difference is John has it up front, Jesus is a troublemaker from the jump versus the climax. Right? So that's the only difference. But all of them that's significant to the Jesus story is how he confronts empire, clashes and resistance and as a prophetic witness. And, and so what what we've done to Jesus is we've sent to classified him or dignified him in the West to make him safe to the status quo, right? So I say that we've, we've domesticated him, we've watered down, we've diluted him, and we've turned him into a mascot for the status quo, right? And so he has the teeth, the claws are gone, so to speak. And, and so and so there's no challenge anymore. That's why people can, you know, do all these horrible things. I mean, it makes no sense. How can you mistreat and stigmatise the poor, the least the last and last and little ones of our society and claim Jesus? You're clearly not immersed in the Jesus story, right? Because the Jesus did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. directly, directly, not even like subtly, there's not Things subtle about Jesus right? The lesson are the poor Woe to you who are rich like this? Jesus is not. I mean, I tell you, he makes Karl Karl Marx blush when it comes, right. You don't want to put Marx versus the Gospel of Luke versus James. I mean, come on now like he's radical on these issues. There's no subtlety. Mary's Magnificat. Right. He's gonna send the the, the just radical, it's just random. So. So the domestication that's gone on, is to make Jesus palatable for the status quo for those in power. And so we've got to recover. We can't accept Jesus that's been handed to us from from people that have been doing this kind of manipulation of the Gospel story. Rohadi 15:46 It happens when you turn Jesus white, Drew Hart 15:49 right. And not just, I always tell people at White not just in terms of appearance, right. But as a way of being right, this Jesus doesn't care about mass incarceration. He's not bothered by genocide, I was hoping the most popular image of portrait of white Jesus is the head of Christ image like the one where he's gazing up, right. Rohadi 16:09 I didn't see it when you do that. I see it. Drew Hart 16:11 Yeah, he's gazing. And what's fascinating is he looks like he just came from the spa, right? He's so relaxed to fresh leaves. So he doesn't have a care in the world. There's nothing to be angry, disturbed about. Life is so good. What's the problem? Right, life is good. And so that Jesus knows not the life of the crucified, right? His his world is not invested in, in those that are disproportionately suffering in our world. That's right. That's not but that's, that's the most duplicated and spread out image of Jesus globally, in of all times, and it's a Jesus that was created in the United States in the early 20th century under Jim Crow. Imagine that, Rohadi 16:56 oh, I didn't know the Jim Crow. But when we talk about the domesticated Jesus versus the triumphant Saviour, comes to topple empires. You use also another word in the book around theatre. You draw in the words and the actions of the theatrics of Jesus, particularly around the passion. Right. Which to me, and tell me if you did this on purpose that became now the blueprint to fuel the Church and its activism today, but look at the theatre, the, the exploits, look at the design of the passion and how Jesus was intentional with his movements in his activities, and his upset and subversion. And now church go and do likewise. That's Drew Hart 17:54 right. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, it's, which is classic. I mean, what Jesus is doing, what we see in the Gospel of Mark, is what like nonviolent activists have been pushing. They've been it's about dramatising the issue in the public square. It's performative, right? Those who do like more symbolic, public demonstrations and stuff. It's about being creative, and strategic. And dramatising. So it's not, that's why you've got to bring your best mind. This is not just about having a rally. That's not That's not that doesn't catch anyone's attention anymore. There's nothing strategic about that anymore. Right. And so we're kind of sometimes I'm not saying that we can't have rallies too, because they have their place. Everything has their place. But But when we're talking about actually increasing the tensions in our society to bring attention to what's going on, right? We've got to escalate the tension. Like that's actually what we're talking about. You've got to actually dramatise what's going on. You got to be strategic and creative and have fun with it. I mean, look, you read globally about what nonviolent activists are doing globally. They're creative, they're having fun. They're very thoughtful stuff. They're not so they don't it's not the one hit wonder of just marches and rallies. That's all we can think of now, it seems sometimes, but they're doing really thoughtful stuff to undermine make fun of dictators. I'll just really clever stuff, right? That's the kind of work that we have to do. But we so we got to put our best minds together to scheme and plot for good. And that's what I'm hoping that the church can do and then get out there and embody that bear witness. That's the kingdom of God must be dramatised in the public square. Rohadi 19:35 If you're going to get your ass beat by the state, you might as well have fun doing it. What does it look like? And the book certainly helps in some ways, but what is the reimagine? One church of tomorrow, the one that is operating against the Empire at the onset, the one with the multi ethnic one that is filled with the Jesus followers who have the crucified Messiah leading the way. What does it look like? A that church? What does that church look like? What is that church that's not starting at the top? Rather, it's positioned against empire in the best way that it can, what does that faith in that church look like today? Because we need a new imagination for the church today, especially when so much of the old is struggling? Drew Hart 20:50 Yeah. Let's see. I mean, there's so many angles into this right? I think that we can think about what it means to be community, right. Because most churches in the West because we're just so hyper individualised. We don't know what it means to be community and to belong to others, to give, receive and share to, to be caught up in intertwined in each other's lives, and to not think of ourselves as just as individuals who happen to collectively gather, right. And so I think so that would probably be a significant because we do need communities that actually share resources, redistributed resources that do reparations, right, ecclesial reparations, all these kinds of like, I think that so even just on the material side of just resources, and how we think about that, and navigate that can be reimagined from below on the underside, even as we challenge with a prophetic voice against the system that is designed and organised for the masses to be poor. Right. So I think that that's one thing is that I also think community in terms of, I'm a big, big believer in dialogical, space and communities, not in a kind of rigid way. I think there's a lot of different ways that that can happen. But I do think that the idea that we should just be passively coming into a Christian community, where the experts speaks, and everyone else just listens and receives as recipients, right, that's not healthy. And that's not church. So we've got to have more dialogue and interaction giving, receiving in all different ways. Because the fact of the matter is, I know as someone who has a PhD, that the spirits doesn't speak just through folks with PhDs, in fact, often it's folks who have less education and resources and opportunities that God is going to say something powerful through and we're gonna miss it if we just if we've got a pre designed ideas about who the experts are, right? It's I think, dialogical space that allow unleashes the Spirit to speak through who the spirit chooses, is really important. I think hierarchy flattening hierarchy, from all the ways that we've imagined doesn't mean that there's no leadership. But but not the loading over others kind of leadership that I mean, we're seeing in the news, all the failures of pastors that have been wielding power over others and all kinds of terrible ways. We've got to flatten that hierarchy. Again, all these things work towards the same goal of creating authentic genuine community. I also think that discipleship, right that we've got to reimagine discipleship, that discipleship isn't about book studies. It's not about what we corps it's well record, the TV shows and all that stuff. But it is about how do we collectively help each other follow Jesus in our lives, immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus and then live that out to embody the good news before our neighbours, right? bear witness to God's reign breaking into the world, because we're actually living it out. So that when our neighbours see us live in the community, they see snapshots of the Jesus story. That's that's what they ought to see. Right? So how do we disciple in actual ways that actually take Jesus seriously, that's the very thing Western Christianity never wanted to do. They wanted to claim Jesus, but they didn't want to take the birth life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus very seriously. And that's precisely what those on the underside did, like, that's black Christians, you know, enslaved after my ancestors, right? They, they heard this, this slaveholding Jesus, but they received a different kind of Jesus that was liberated and that cared about those who are suffering in the world because they understood something more about the significance of his actual life, right? While mainstream Christianity does, I call it the the cradle to the cross jump, right? They love baby Jesus, and they want to talk about Jesus on the cross, right? And they think that everything else is meaningless. So it's like a potluck. You pick and choose what you want. It's right at the buffet gonna escape the world anyways, right? We're gonna skip through it. So I do think that discipleship is going to matter and a holistic kind of conversion right? Come urging that means change as the early church minutes change not just in belief, but belief, behaviour and belonging, right? That our new imagination and understanding of which is about our story that we live by, right, the Gospel story that God's reign a new world is coming. What does it mean to be locked into that story that Jesus has inaugurated? And then also our, our behave our ways of living, right, who we identify with? How do we practice again, overcoming evil with good, right, sharing resources redistribution reparations, when we do wrong, right, resisting evil, like these are things these are, I'd say, basic Christian practices of just being followers of Jesus, this is you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And you're trying to live that out. It's like, somebody gives the example of who's a Robert J line, if he's a black pastor, and I believe Denver, Colorado, and he talks about, imagine, you, you you meet someone that's been who says they've been playing the piano for 25 years. Right? And, and then they sit down, and then they just plunk out like, barely can get out, like Mary Had a Little Lamb and you know, it's just like, clunky and it's a mess. You be like, something's wrong here. Right? I mean, granted, there's different talents and gifts that people have, but like, but like you're gonna there's some basics that you can, you should be able to expect if you've been practising the piano for 25 years. Same thing with the church, like, if they've been disciples of Jesus for 25 years, there's some basics right? That we should have speaking truth. Loving your neighbour, right? Caring for the least last some awesome little ones and identifying with them like Jesus did, right? Like there's some basic stuff, a reorientation around blessings, right? There's some basic stuff that just come with what it means to be a follower of Jesus that clearly have not happened. And then belonging. What does it mean to belong to others? White supremacy distorted sense of belonging identity in the world, it ripped people's identity away from place and lands, and it racialized everything, right. But what does it mean even in the midst, and it doesn't mean like, I still, I consider myself a black man who identifies as black men, but also that it's caught up though in belonging in Jesus Christ. And what that ought to mean for how we see others and how we see ourselves and how we relate to others, not belonging in the kind of like, church versus the worlds kind of belonging actually, Jesus belonging should orient us in the other way, right, which is to open us up to others to hear other people's stories, to be listeners to other people's stories. You were not insecure and ourselves, we should be very secure in who we are, and then can enter and learn and grow from others mutual sharing, because of that, right. And so I think that that kind of stuff is good. All right. So also theology and practice. What does it mean to dissenter, the white theology, the westernised theology, the domesticate theology that we've been talking about, and to allow indigenous theologies to emerge to allow theologies from the margins and the edges of society to emerge, for people to realise that we have the freedom to, to both we should be conscious of I do believe there's a responsibility to be conscious of the historical theology and global theology, but also that we do theology ourselves on the ground in our own communities and our own contexts, right. So there's no homogenising where we've got to there's no policing of theologies, where everyone has to believe the exact same thing in the exact same way with these particular words, stuff that that's that's not even what we see in the New Testament, right? That we have for Jesus stories, right. And it's not I don't think it means that anything and everything is necessarily faithful to the way of Jesus I will say that out there also, right. But also that it doesn't have to be this kind of obsessive heresy hunting that Western especially Protestant Christianity has created, or maybe more than promising but but Western Christianity in general has created this strange ugly inclination around heresy hunting, that's just not healthy for the church because it doesn't allow contextual theologies and indigenous theology is to emerge and for people to figure it out believe we got to believe that the Spirit of God is at work all around the world in fresh ways and that we just have a part of what we have and and other folks gotta have to have a part and that we can actually learn and dialogue with them when when we allow them to be fully themselves on the ground in their communities. Rohadi 29:31 Because this your next book, Drew Hart 29:33 No, that's not my next book. Just add like six Rohadi 29:36 chapters right there, man. Yeah. Well, I want to respect your time. We didn't get to your next book idea. Next, Next time, yeah. Did you want to leave off with anything about about your book about who will be witness or trouble I've seen I guess, but Anything we want to you want it to slot in? Drew Hart 30:04 No, I just I just hope. I really hope that congregations in particular, I mean, individual reading it is great. But also, I'm hoping that so if you do end up reading it, and if not your congregation to read it with you, and there's actually free study guides, so if people don't know what to do go to herald press.com. There's free study guides for both trouble I've seen and who will be a witness, and who will be a witness. I got my friend, Terrence Hopkins organising in South Carolina, he actually did the study guide for it. Good brother doing some really, really good work on the ground. And so yeah, so it's a great resource for collective reading, because it can open up congregations imagination for what can be so good for individuals, but even greater and better for groups to read together. Yeah. Rohadi 30:50 That's it. There are a lot of different resources out there. Drew's been kind of doing this circuit with podcasts. And so if you want to hear more, Freedom House has some stuff that's run by Lisa Sharon Harper. Go find more of his podcasts, read his books, the two main ones trouble I've seen and who will be a witness. They're all out. Now. I know these two podcasts, they're just dense, they're just full of good ideas and they will require you to revisit them as I did a few times because there layers of depth here so thank you so much for listening and you can support this podcast just check out the website. rohadi.com For details on that and follow myself and follow drew on Twitter. All right, next episodes are just around the corner. So let's dive into that one or take a rest but come on back for a new series with my friend Robert Monson.