Guest Bio:

Jemar Tisby, PhD, is the author of new book The Spirit of Justice, and he also wrote the New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise, and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. He is a historian who studies race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century and serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college.

Connect Online with Dr. Tisby:

Website: https://jemartisby.com/ | Instagram | Facebook | Substack/Newsletter

On the Podcast:

• The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance by Jemar Tisby
• The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
• Amy Julia’s previous conversations with Jemar:
  S5 E10 | How Kids Can Fight Racism with Jemar Tisby, PhD
  S4 E1 | How Do We Fight Racism? with Jemar Tisby
  S3 E6 | Now Is the Time for Justice with Jemar Tisby

YouTube video here with closed captions

Note: This transcript is autogenerated using speech recognition software and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Amy Julia Becker (00:04)

I’m Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. I don’t usually have historians on this show, but I wanted to invite Dr. Jemar Tisby to talk with us today about the way history shapes our imaginations.

Seems to me that the way we tell the stories of our past has a very direct impact on the way we imagine our futures. And one thing that Jemar does in his work is he insists that we tell a fuller story of our past, especially when it comes to the history of race and justice within the United States. Jemar Tisby is the author of the new book, The Spirit of Justice. He also wrote the New York Times bestselling The Color of Compromise.

and the award-winning How to Fight Racism. I will link to these in the show notes, but I got to talk to him about both of those books in past episodes. So if you like this conversation, you’ll also want to check those out. He is a historian who studies race, religion and social movements in the 20th century. He serves as a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college. And today we are talking about justice and the history of white Christian nationalism and the Black church.

and how in the midst of oppression we can hold on to

Dr. Jemar Tisby

Amy Julia (01:39)

welcome back to the podcast. It is really awesome to have you here. We’re going to talk about your latest book, The Spirit of Justice. Welcome back.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (01:48)

Thank you so much. was was saying before we recorded and I should say on air now that as soon as I knew I was writing another book, I knew I wanted to be on your podcast again because I enjoyed our first conversation so much.

Amy Julia (02:03)

Well, thank you so much for rejoining us and thank you for this book. I love the title, The Spirit of Justice, and I wanted to start just by asking you to tell us a little bit about it, where it came from, both like the actual title, but also where this book came from in your kind of series of the work that you’ve been doing.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (02:23)

So the title was partly inspired by an event, a historical event that I was privileged enough to be witness to. It was the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, December 9th, 2017. Merle Evers Williams spoke and folks will remember her husband Medgar Evers was killed in front of their home in 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Amy Julia (02:32)

Mm

Jemar Tisby, PhD (02:47)

And so she’s coming back to this site of tragedy and trauma. And one of the things that is remarkable to me, and I didn’t realize this until afterwards, in the museum, which she toured privately ahead of the event, they have the same rifle that was used to kill her husband, the very rifle. And I can’t imagine, you know, seeing that weapon right there.

Amy Julia (02:51)

Mm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (03:12)

But she gives this public address to national news media and hundreds in the crowd. And then there’s this private or the smaller press conference that I was at. And I actually had my cell phone out and recording when she said this. A journalist asked her, how does like the state of civil rights and race relations now in the 21st century compared to then in the civil rights movement? She said, you know, I’m seeing things I thought I’d never see again, never wanted to see again. And there are echoes of the past and the present in negative ways.

Amy Julia (03:40)

Mm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (03:41)

And then she said, I’m weary, which was like an understatement because she’s 84 years old at this time. And as we speak, she’s still alive. And then, you know, I thought she would just say like, okay, it’s up to you now. I’m passing the baton. But she didn’t say that. She said something I’ll never forget. She said, but there’s something about the spirit of justice. And she said, it makes you determined all over again.

Amy Julia (03:50)

now.

Mm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (04:07)

And that phrase just stuck with me, the spirit of justice. And I said, that’s it. That’s it. That’s the thing that explains so much of the attempts at progress in our country. Because it struck me, like what kind of person can in her ninth decade of life say that she’s determined all over again?

Amy Julia (04:11)

Yeah.

Mm.

Mm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (04:32)

but it’s the spirit of justice in her. And as I looked at history, the scope of history, it’s the spirit of justice in anyone who stands up against oppression and injustice and racism. So that’s what I wanted to write about. And that’s partly what inspired the book.

Amy Julia (04:46)

I love that and you tell that story early on in the book and as I read it I was equally just struck by her words and that sense of a through line that you then are able to trace I guess in some ways backwards since that’s 2017 but then forwards again in terms of really the black Christian experience in America.

where there are, as you just said, stories again and again and again of oppression and injustice, and yet this spirit of justice that is rooted in faith and hope and love that keeps bringing people back to continue to persevere. And I guess, what do you, like, will you give us a little bit of that overview, the way that the spirit of justice runs through the story of black Christianity in the United States?

Jemar Tisby, PhD (05:40)

So I think people who read my first book, The Color of Compromise, were kind of shocked and appalled to see the actual words, to learn the actual events, right? We know in broad strokes there’s racism in the church, but to get the actual history is pretty like, you your mouth just drops in some of these instances. But it struck me, it occurred to me that, you know, evil is unsurprising.

Amy Julia (05:51)

Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (06:08)

Unfortunately, right? But it’s always showing up. Evil in the form of racism is always showing up in different ways. What is truly remarkable, what is truly astounding isn’t necessarily the evil, but that there’s always people willing to stand up against it. There’s always willing to resist the injustice. And that’s what I think the Spirit of Justice, the book,

Amy Julia (06:26)

Mmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (06:34)

helps remind us is we inherit this great cloud of historical witnesses who come from all kinds of backgrounds. There’s over 50 different people I profile in this book and they are not superhuman in the sense that they have something that you and I don’t.

Amy Julia (06:41)

Mm

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (06:57)

that allowed them to do what they did. What they did was they had some courage and took a step, however small, and that led to another step and another step and another step until, you know, now we write about them in history books. And I just thought, you know, the season that we’re in, I’m very concerned about resilience. I’m very concerned that we are living in an age of uncertainty.

Amy Julia (07:11)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (07:25)

particularly politically, we have no idea what’s gonna happen in November, right? We have no idea what’s gonna happen with the election. And I keep reminding people, that’s not the end, that’s just the end of one thing and the beginning of another. So who knows what comes after that? We probably won’t even know the election results for real, for real, until several days later, right? So I’m very concerned that in the midst of all this uncertainty, there are some Christians who would fall into cynicism or apathy.

Amy Julia (07:42)

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (07:53)

And I wanted to remind us that there are people throughout history who under often under much more adverse circumstances found a way to keep going and not quit in this pursuit of justice. And that’s what we need right now too. I don’t even know if that answered your question, but that’s what I was inspired to say.

Amy Julia (08:11)

Yeah, no, absolutely. think it speaks to, both the history. Well, one of the things I love about your work is the way you insist on talking about the past, telling a true story about the past and connect that to what is happening in the present moment. And we can talk more about that as this conversation goes on. But maybe we can begin with I was thinking about stories as I read your book.

because you have so many stories within it, again, of like over 50 different people, as well as this kind of overarching story of the spirit of justice. And I wondered if we could maybe talk a little bit about like the predominant story of race that Americans learn in school or the ones that we tell ourselves. And I’m perhaps talking primarily about white Americans, although again, we are often all being told the same story. And then I’m curious particularly about how Christianity subverts that story.

or maybe tells a different story. I wondered if you could just, yeah, talk about that.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (09:14)

That’s really good. So stories are vitally important, They’re the lens through which we see the world oftentimes. in many cases, white Christians in particular have this narrative of history that is one of perpetual progress, specifically in the United States, where it says that we were founded on fundamentally good principles of freedom and liberty and equality.

Amy Julia (09:31)

Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (09:43)

Yeah, we had this, you know, this misstep of race -based chattel slavery. There was some segregation in there, but we’ve largely overcome it. It’s a thing of the past. That’s why you’ll get, you know, critics, to put it nicely online, who will say, you know, why are you, why are you bringing up the past? Leave the past in the past. Leave it behind us.

Amy Julia (10:07)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (10:08)

As if it has no relevance today, which is wrong on two accounts. Number one, the past is always relevant. The past is always exerting an influence on the present. As historians say, everything has a history. So where we are now is a result of where we’ve been. And number two, it says that racism is a thing of the past, largely. Sure, there may be exceptions here and there, but they’re just that exception, which completely belies reality and facts. And what people

Amy Julia (10:21)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (10:36)

don’t realize in the story of the United States and race. There’s something I said in my first book, racism never goes away, it adapts. And a lot of people take umbrage with that. he’s just, you know, grievance and you see him racism behind everything. Well, if we, if we say racism is a sin, which I think even, you know, the most extreme right wing Christian would say racism is. Well, then what other sin has been eradicated in human history?

Amy Julia (10:46)

Mm -hmm.

Mm

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (11:05)

Right? Like, if it has, me, give me the date, give me the place, because I would like to commemorate the end of racism, like, make it an anniversary every year. Obviously, that that’s ridiculous on its face. It hasn’t gone away. It has adapted. Michael Emerson and Christian Smith talk about how we live in a racialized society, one in which every significant quality of life factor falls predictably along racial lines. I shouldn’t be able to look at your skin color and know

Amy Julia (11:31)

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (11:34)

the average level of education you’re gonna attain. I shouldn’t be able to look at your skin color and know your average life expectancy. I shouldn’t be able to look at your skin color and know that you are more or less likely to maternity related deaths, right? But all of that stuff does fall predictably along racial lines. Another way to conceptualize where we’re living right now in terms of race is the colorblind age.

Amy Julia (11:42)

Right.

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (12:02)

This is what takes over after Jim Crow, after the civil rights movement, when it becomes a bit of a social faux pas to say you don’t like black people or other people of color. Instead, you say, I’m colorblind, which is another way of saying, you you’re invisible to me. You’re the fullness of your experience is invisible to me. Right. So I think that’s another way that that racism has adapted, which is to say that race doesn’t matter anymore.

Amy Julia (12:13)

Right.

Hmm.

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (12:31)

And it very much does.

Amy Julia (12:33)

Well, Anne, it seems like it matters both in the sense that we can say it doesn’t matter from a perspective of I don’t want to deal with the reality of racism, but also it matters in the honor and dignity that can be afforded to our particular experiences and cultural backgrounds and families and, you know, church traditions. So it matters in, I think, a multitude of ways.

that are not all bad actually, not all bad is not the right word, but like negative. They’re not all even pointing, some of those things are pointing to the reality of racism. Some of them are pointing to the reality of like reasons to celebrate.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (13:10)

Exactly, exactly. Because I read recently somebody said, you know, I’m American, meaning as a citizen of this country by default, because they were born into it, but I’m black by choice.

Amy Julia (13:22)

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (13:23)

And that language black, know, it was all kinds of language from Negro to color to Afro -American to African -American. Now the nomenclature is black and there’s a long linguistic history to all of that. to say black is a very much a conscious choice to reclaim what has been framed historically as a negative. That black or dark was bad, right?

Amy Julia (13:47)

Mm -hmm.

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (13:51)

And then in the, you know, black power era, the black consciousness era, got James Proud saying, say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud. You’ve got a recovery of Afros and dashikis and Afro -centric wear because it’s a reclamation of an identity that has been denigrated. And so to say one is colorblind, I understand the motivation and intention behind it, often, you know, good intentions behind it. But what that says to me,

Amy Julia (14:17)

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (14:20)

as somebody who’s consciously black is you don’t see my history, my culture, the ways race has shaped my experience, both in negative ways and positive ways. There’s a culture that has developed around black Americans in our history that I want you to see and celebrate and as part of really a beautiful diversity in the church and society.

Amy Julia (14:43)

Yeah, totally. I’m thinking about, again, back to your book, the denominations that split, church denominations, so Christians who split over the issue of slavery, which I think is something, again, especially for those listeners who haven’t read The Color of Compromise, we might not know or remember, right? Like that this actually split the church because I do think most, I mean, hopefully,

99 % of the Christians and non -Christians in this country would say, yeah, slavery should not have existed. And so the fact that Christians were splitting over that issue, I think now seems very odd and foreign and shocking. And yet I was wondering as I was reading your book, did the people who split because they were pro -slavery, did they think that they were on the side of justice?

Were they thinking in those terms? they have like, they, just was, and in what ways might that help us today recognize our own, you know, areas where we just can’t see clearly.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (15:47)

I really like this question.

Yes, they thought they were right is the short answer. Why they thought they were right, I think there’s maybe some variety there. So one of the things that we should attend to is the difference between the grass tops and the grass roots, so to speak. So when we’re talking about white people, say in the 19th century prior to the Civil War,

Amy Julia (15:54)

Okay.

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (16:15)

The grass tops of society, the white elites, particularly white Southern slaveholders, and you could say white theologians, because these are the highly educated class, they really thought it was like God’s plan that black people should be enslaved, that they were inferior.

Amy Julia (16:22)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (16:37)

This is where the term, you know, this is classic definition of white supremacy is white superiority over all kinds of people, including indigenous people. And so they theologized that way, convinced themselves that the Bible, whether through things like the curse of ham or in the Jim Crow era, much later, there was a sermon by a guy named G .T. Gillespie, who was the president of Belmont.

Amy Julia (16:41)

Mm

Jemar Tisby, PhD (17:06)

college now university in Jackson, Mississippi, who argued from Leviticus about the separating. You can’t mix fabrics. And he said, because you can’t mix fabrics in the Old Testament, how much more would it apply to not mixing people and different colors and different races, right? So yeah, they really believed it. I would say at the grassroots though, there was a sense of. Take a step back.

Amy Julia (17:16)

Hmm.

Okay.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (17:35)

rich white people don’t have much affection for poor white people throughout US history, right? In the post emancipation period, the wealthy politicians and businessmen were perfectly fine if poll taxes and literacy tests, which were meant to exclude black people from voting and political participation,

Amy Julia (17:41)

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (18:02)

They were perfectly fine if some poor white people got swept up in that. Cause they didn’t, they didn’t really care about what they thought anyway. Right? So that’s why one of the reasons why I make a distinction between grass tops and grassroots. So the grassroots said, you know, we’re poor white, mostly rural people. We ain’t got nothing on this earth except we’re not black. And I’m going to hold onto that as a social privilege and as an identity.

Amy Julia (18:08)

Good job.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (18:28)

So it’s a very long -winded answer to say, yeah, they believed it. They were true believers, but they may have had different reasons.

Amy Julia (18:35)

Yeah, and it sounds like they also may not have been appealing, although they were appealing perhaps to biblical examples and so forth, they may not have been appealing to justice. I mean, just in the sense of, again, kind of like a warning, I think, in terms of when we pick and choose what we’re gonna talk about, whether it’s like, obviously there’s a problem with just picking one verse of the Bible out of context and applying it, but even,

Jemar Tisby, PhD (18:48)

Right. Yeah, no.

Amy Julia (19:04)

when we try to take a whole theme, but we’re like ignoring or, know, yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (19:08)

Yeah, well two more quick points on that one.

They thought they were being really, really faithful to the Bible in contrast to these northerners and liberals, right? So they would argue, well, show me chapter and verse where the Bible says outlaw slavery, right? And you can’t, but there’s a trend. This is what other theologians were saying. Well, there’s this whole thing about, you know, man stealing in the Old Testament. There’s this whole thing about loving your neighbor as yourself and the golden rule and the Beatitudes. Like, how does that accord with race?

Amy Julia (19:19)

until

Right, right.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (19:42)

Obviously it doesn’t, but pro -slavery theologians were saying, well, we’re the ones actually following the Bible. You guys are the ones who are doing funny stuff with the word of God, which we can hear, you know, even up to the present day, right? And then you talk about justice. It was really interesting when the word justice does come up with pro -slavery Christians is when speaking of the injustice of the federal government, potentially abolishing slavery.

Amy Julia (20:10)

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (20:11)

Because it was their right to hold enslaved people and it was about property rights for a lot Yes, exactly. Yeah, so they did talk about justice but in terms of like property rights and theft in the role of states versus the federal government

Amy Julia (20:13)

Right.

I was about to say they were seeing it as theft, right?

Mm. Right.

Mm -hmm. Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you. well, and I guess within all of this as we talk about kind of these different people talking about justice I’m also curious about the language of hope. This is a quotation from early on in the book How do people see the worst of humanity? Experience the most demoralizing setbacks and still find the resolve to work for change How do they not give up what keeps them going and on some level you’ve already answered that question from really? What’s her full name now? Yeah, so

Jemar Tisby, PhD (20:56)

Yeah

Amy Julia (20:58)

But I’m curious to hear more, I think, about that. way in which, especially throughout the book, there are also examples of nonviolent resistance, praying for enemies, forgiving those who harm you, kind of living out the cultural way, the countercultural way that Jesus lived in the midst of injustice. And I’m just wondering if like how the practice of nonviolence resistance, prayer for enemies, forgiveness allows

justice to come into being and to hold on to hope? how do see those practices and that kind of more abstract justice and hope idea go together?

Jemar Tisby, PhD (21:39)

It would be really interesting to sort of do a study of the Christian disciplines that some of these people employed. The historical record doesn’t get into that a ton. And that was one of the challenges of selecting figures for this book was there were so many people I could profile. But what I was trying to do is make an explicit connection between faith and practice, faith and justice.

Amy Julia (21:51)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (22:03)

So that constrained my choices a little bit, but even when I could find that explicit link in the historical record, they’re not necessarily talking about like the habits or, you know, the disciplines that they practice. But we can kind of put some of the pieces together. One of them was this principle that you don’t, the oppressed not becoming like the oppressor. So there’s this through line throughout the black freedom struggle of.

Amy Julia (22:26)

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (22:31)

We are not gonna do to them what they did to us. And we can see that just on a practical level, right? There’s been no widespread violent repercussions on the part of black people toward white people. Maybe isolated or individual incidents, but no sort of mass uprising or insurrection, right? Is what they would used to call it in the Jim Crow era of black people going against.

Amy Julia (22:45)

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (22:59)

white folks in the ways that white folks have come against black people. And that was partly spiritual. That was partly a, this is what it means to follow Jesus is to turn the other cheek, not in a passive way, but in a way that’s not gonna return harm for harm, violence for violence, right? So that’s a through line. I think another one is,

Amy Julia (23:03)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (23:22)

the they saw in the book of Exodus of resonance with their experience, obviously, right during race based chattel slavery. You’re talking about Hebrew slaves, right? So they saw in the book of Exodus, a God of liberation, a God who literally emancipates people from slavery. And they constructed the theology around that, a theology of liberation, if you will, that that that worked that that held out hope.

Amy Julia (23:36)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (23:51)

for an eternity in which they would be free, but also a spirit empowered activism to work for freedom right now. It was a very embodied faith and not one that was just about the by and by, but the here and now.

Amy Julia (24:02)

Mm

Yeah, and I was been reading Dr. King’s last book, which is called Where Do We Go From Here? From Chaotic Community. And I struck by so many things in that book, including just its continued relevance to our present moment. But also by just the depth of his commitment to what I would call the way of Jesus. He doesn’t call it that because he’s appealing to

I think outside of just Christian bounds when he’s talking about nonviolent resistance. And yet he, and for me as a white person reading his words, I am really compelled by his insistence that this is not a matter of flipping the social hierarchy so that black people end up on top. It’s a matter of dismantling it so that we don’t have a hierarchy in which some people are considered more valuable

Jemar Tisby, PhD (25:00)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Amy Julia (25:09)

than others, some people matter more than others, some people get more than others. We’re actually looking for a society in which we care about each other and love each other and share. And I guess it sounds idealistic, but it also sounds kind of simple and like a kindergarten classroom. Like, yeah, you know what? The reason we do this is because this is how we don’t.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (25:18)

then.

Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Julia (25:31)

hurt each other and we learn and grow. Anyways, I’m just compelled and I always am grateful for his essentially what feels like compassion towards me reading as a, as we’ve talked about before, privileged white woman, however many years later. But it does strike me that the ethos of a of a Christian perspective both gives a tremendous strength to the

vision of and work towards justice, as well as a tremendous like gentleness or compassion or something as far as, yeah, not just trying to say it’s our time to lord ourselves over you all who’ve been oppressing us. As you just said, like we’re not going to become the oppressors. Like we’re not going to do that because guess what? It’s really bad for those people who are in the role of oppressing.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (26:21)

Exactly.

Well, it’s a really great point and I’m glad you brought up King. have a whole chapter called Beyond the Quotable King where I delve into some of the lesser known and much less popular aspects of King’s life and teachings, his anti -war stance, his economic views around redistribution of wealth, universal basic income, universal jobs, kind of.

Amy Julia (26:32)

I’m sorry.

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (26:49)

things, but you’re also bringing up a great point that black people have never asked for supremacy. We are demanding equality or in some cases, autonomy and just leave us alone and let us have our own and do our own thing. Right. So in that sense, and I do think that’s informed by Christianity, that it’s the goal is not to move from.

Amy Julia (26:57)

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (27:18)

a subjugated group of people to a group that can subjugate other people. The goal is to have equal footing, which by the way, just to add a contemporary application, a lot of people online or on the right will say that folks who are advocating for racial justice are communist. And the way they’re thinking about communism is

Amy Julia (27:23)

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (27:47)

equality of outcomes. And they will use that language equality of outcomes. So they basically want to say, no matter how hard you work, these people want the federal government to take everything you’ve earned, and then distribute it to everyone equally as if everyone’s put in equal effort. And so your effort isn’t going to count. It’s not going to matter. That’s one way they’re thinking about communism, right? And so

Amy Julia (27:51)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (28:15)

History refutes that. mean, black people aren’t saying we want everyone to come out the same. What we’re saying is we want to have a fair shot and opportunities just like white people have, and then let us do our thing and see where it shakes out. It’s actually people who are oppressed who truly want meritocracy because they’ve been denied opportunities whether…

Amy Julia (28:22)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (28:44)

even when they’ve had the merit to earn them, right? And so it’s really interesting now that the forces that are sort of pushing back against racial justice are claiming that we want equality of outcomes. It’s doing away with meritocracy when the reality is we’ve been demanding a true meritocracy, if you will, or at least the equal opportunity for the longest.

Amy Julia (29:06)

Mm -hmm.

And I agree with everything you’re saying. I also think though, when we talk about something like a basic universal income or jobs, we’re also saying that there are some things that are the same, which has to do with like the dignity of the human person, the value of your ability to participate in our community, even if it’s not in ways that are deemed.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (29:26)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yes. Yes.

Amy Julia (29:38)

as economically productive as the next person over for whatever reason. So I just think there’s like more of a both and than an either or there. And perhaps the people who are arguing and calling it communism, honestly, are not wanting either of those things. Like they’re not wanting a true meritocracy, but they’re also not wanting to say that we all in a rich nation that could make sure that everyone has food and shelter and education. Well, yeah, we should just do that.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (29:52)

Yeah, they don’t want you.

Amy Julia (30:08)

and you deserve it because you were born here. So I just think there’s a little bit of a both and there.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (30:08)

Right, right, right. Yeah, the way I think about it is there should be a floor but not a ceiling. So, you know, that’s what King was talking about was like, we have enough for everyone to have what they need and everyone should get what they need, period. Food, clothing, shelter, you know, the opportunity to flourish.

Amy Julia (30:19)

Mm -hmm, yes, I agree.

totally.

Yeah, right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (30:37)

Now, once those basic needs are taken care of, people do what you can do. But, you know, in the modern discourse, especially, actually, I would say this has been the discourse throughout US history, is you can’t provide that floor without doing away with, you know, people’s hard work and what they supposedly earned on their own, right? As if white people haven’t had…

Amy Julia (31:00)

Right? Right. Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (31:06)

help from the government, like the Homestead Act or the GI Bill or whatever.

Amy Julia (31:10)

Yeah, or the mortgage deduction. Anyway, we could go on and on about that. But I want to ask you a question that’s kind of a different piece of this puzzle, I suppose. I’ve re -titled this podcast, and it’s now called Reimagining the Good Life. And when I talk about the imagination, I don’t mean like fantasizing. I’m talking about like literally how do we re

shape our vision of the future? Like what images do we have of what’s possible? And I was thinking about that because there were these two places in the book, one where you write about Black Jesus and another where you write about a Black Madonna. And I was just thinking about how those were literally like re -imagined images of Jesus and of the Madonna. And I wondered if you could tell the story, like where did those images come from and how are they helpful? Why are they helpful in

Jemar Tisby, PhD (31:54)

Mm. Mm.

Amy Julia (32:04)

understanding Jesus more fully, perhaps of understanding like the heart of God as it comes to justice more fully. Yeah, I just would love to hear a little bit more about Black Jesus and the Black Madonna.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (32:15)

So there is this famous painting of a very European looking Jesus painted by a guy named, an artist named Warner Salman in the 1940s. That’s become the most replicated image of Jesus. And of course he’s got this flowing Auburn hair, this long thin nose, thin lips, right? He looks very white, at least European, right? And that has been the physical…

Amy Julia (32:36)

Yeah, totally.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (32:44)

image of Jesus spread globally for decades and what does that do to a people who don’t look like that, right? So throughout U .S. history, in the case of Black people, there have been occasions when folks have explicitly said, you know, Jesus is not white. Matter of fact, what if Jesus is Black?

Not in the sense of necessarily he has Afrocentric physical features, but what James Cone was arguing, black liberation theologian, was that Jesus identifies with the oppressed and the marginalized in a community. And in the United States context, that would be black people. So there’s a sense in which Jesus is black, which what he said in his writings. And then you talk about the black Madonna.

Amy Julia (33:14)

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (33:37)

There was this pastor in Detroit during the Black Consciousness era, late 1960s into the 1970s, named Albert Clegg Jr. And the church that his congregation was in was actually belonged to a different congregation, part of a predominantly white group before. And so it had this mural of a very European looking Jesus, Mary, all of that. And they worshiped in that space for quite some time until

Amy Julia (34:02)

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (34:06)

was just so persuaded that this image was harm in terms of identity of the people worshiping there that he has a local artist create a new mural, a new painting with a black Mary and a black child, Jesus. So, then unveils it on Easter and says, you know what, instead of a sermon, we could just sit here and look at this image.

Amy Julia (34:19)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (34:32)

of the Black Madonna and Child, and he renames the church Shrine of the Black Madonna to convey a sense of Christianity through an Afrocentric lens.

Amy Julia (34:42)

Yeah, yeah, and I just think for any of us who are, you know, wondering about, wait, wait, I’m not sure I follow this. Like, why would it be okay to portray Jesus as black? I think because you mentioned how harmful it might have been to see the Walter Selman, Selman portrait if you were black. But I also think about how harmful that can be if you’re white. And if you therefore, without even knowing it,

Jemar Tisby, PhD (35:02)

Yeah, corner sawman.

Amy Julia (35:11)

think, God looks like me and not like these other people, as opposed to being, I think, in a wonderful way, challenged by the thought of what if God looks black? even I understand what you’re saying, and I agree with you that the point is not that Jesus had Afrocentric features. But the point is that if I can’t imagine Jesus with Afrocentric features, there’s something that is going wrong in my heart when it comes to understanding the image of God.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (35:14)

Exactly.

Amy Julia (35:40)

that is in our common humanity and our diversity, right? And so I just think there’s, I don’t know, for me, that’s like a helpful exercise almost just to be like, okay, wait, why does this strike me as like, huh, are you allowed to do that? Is that okay? And it raises like really good questions in my heart about who God is and about how I’ve been shaped and formed to see him. I mean, the same, obviously, even just with the language of the gender of God, right?

Jemar Tisby, PhD (35:46)

Yep.

Amy Julia (36:11)

think about the feminine aspects of who God is and not only the masculine ones. If we push on some of those boundaries, it can actually expand our understanding, I think, of who God is and of how God shows up in each and every one that we encounter.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (36:24)

Just a really quick anecdote along those lines. I studied abroad in the Holy Land in college in Israel and.

Amy Julia (36:27)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (36:35)

Palestinian territory and we got to tour all over and we went up to Nazareth and there’s a the Church of Nazareth I think but a church in that city and It had all of these depictions in this rotunda of Mary from Mary and child I think from all these different countries. They were mosaics and they were intentionally diverse and it was a wonderful opportunity to even look side -by -side at different depictions

Amy Julia (36:53)

Hmm.

Yeah.

That’s so cool.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (37:06)

of Mary and child. again, like you said, to challenge our conceptions of how we visualize God, how we visualize what Catholics would call the holy family, really shines a spotlight on the ways that culture shapes our understanding of religion. And it’s not just this pure theology that we’re getting straight from the Bible or from God.

Amy Julia (37:13)

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. That’s really helpful. All right, so now I’m back to the book a little more explicitly in the history, but I remember talking to you before and you brought up white Christian nationalism as kind of the biggest problem facing the church. And when you said this, this was years ago at this point, I was kind of like, I don’t really know what he’s talking about. And now white Christian nationalism is in the headlines, I mean, very regularly. So.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (37:50)

you

Amy Julia (37:58)

you just were paying better attention than I was. And again, your historian’s lens, I think, gave you an understanding that what we’re seeing happening in the church right now, or at least in some parts of the, the white evangelical church, is actually really dangerous. And it’s dangerous to our nation, but it’s also dangerous from the perspective of faith. And so I wanted to ask you, in terms of your work in general, the Spirit of Justice most recently,

Why does it matter that we understand this history, especially as Christians are really looking at members of our faith community who are embracing white Christian nationalism?

Jemar Tisby, PhD (38:41)

call the black church the ecclesiastical rebuttal to white Christian nationalism. So the black church is its own thing, right? It didn’t, it’s not defined in opposition to white supremacy or white Christian nationalism, but

much of its tradition directly contradicts the ideology of white Christian nationalism. So it’s important to or pay attention to the threat of white Christian nationalism. And unfortunately, it’s really become intertwined with evangelicalism. And so at least since the immediate post -World War II era,

Amy Julia (39:06)

Mm -hmm.

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (39:28)

evangelical has, has come to have more of a socio -political connotation than a theological and spiritual one. And what happened is that through various media sources and individuals, there was an alignment between evangelicalism, theologically conservative Christianity and the Republican party or political conservatism.

Amy Julia (39:55)

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (39:57)

But what was really interesting and what I don’t think we maybe put the pieces of together until more recently was this ostensibly Christian movement was really aligned with political and financial power. J Howard Pugh billionaire, well, multimillionaire at least, I don’t know what the conversion is, but he was a very rich guy who funded things like Christianity Today.

Grove City College, according to a very narrow, you might even call it fundamentalist view of Christianity and politics, right? So the money was tied to a certain kind of politics. And over and over the course of decades, 70, 80 years now, there’s almost a one -to -one identification that such that nowadays you have people who say, well, you can’t be Christian and vote democratic. To which I say,

Amy Julia (40:41)

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (40:57)

What about black Christians who overwhelmingly vote democratic? Right? So, so are you going to actually just, just completely discount the faith of people who vote differently than you and who happened to be black people and other people of color?

Amy Julia (41:13)

Well, and am I right? Let me ask you this for a minute, because there’s some people who define evangelicalism based on kind of a high authority of scripture, like seeing the Bible as authoritative and understanding Jesus as, you know, the who died on the cross for our sins, personal conversion, like that. There are kind of four things. And am I right in thinking that, like, the majority of black Christians are like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So it’s not as though.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (41:37)

Yes, exactly.

Amy Julia (41:39)

I mean, if we were to simply say, what does it mean to be an evangelical? And we were to articulate them, the people you’re describing who are voting Democratic would be called evangelical Christians. So I just think that’s like important to point out that we’re not talking about people who are like, I don’t really believe in the Bible. just go to church because it’s a good social club, right? Like we’re talking about people who are like reading the Bible daily and like seeking to follow the way of Jesus. And I don’t know, for me, that was like really important.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (41:49)

Absolutely. Yes.

Right, right, no.

Amy Julia (42:08)

to understand in terms of being able to say like, yes, we are brothers and sisters and that doesn’t mean we always vote the same and it doesn’t mean we always see everything the same, but goodness, do I have some things to learn from you, you know?

Jemar Tisby, PhD (42:19)

I mean, yeah, and that’s historical too, right? I say there would be no black church without racism in the white church. Part of which, by which I mean, it wasn’t because of some deep, like basic theological differences that black people formed our own denominations and congregations.

Amy Julia (42:38)

Mm

Jemar Tisby, PhD (42:39)

It wasn’t like we were arguing over the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus or things like that. It was because we didn’t want to be treated as second class citizens in the household of God, plain and simple, which I would argue is theological, it’s theological anthropology, but it wasn’t because we wouldn’t check all the same boxes in a lot of the ways, theologically, right? So yeah, it’s a kind of ridiculous assertion on its face to claim that

Amy Julia (42:59)

Right.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (43:08)

Christians who vote democratic or any particular way aren’t Christian because there’s a lot more in common than different theologically. So anyway, that’s been a, know, people have been discipled in this for decades around what we now label white Christian nationalism. And I thought it important in a book like the Spirit of Justice to say, you know what, there’s a different tradition and there’s another way, not only believing in Jesus and following.

Amy Julia (43:17)

Mm -hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (43:36)

the Christian religion, but also of engaging faith in politics because the way that black Christians think about politics often starkly differs from white Christian nationalists or sympathizers.

Amy Julia (43:48)

Yeah, it’s super helpful. And I do think they just drawing out that contrast is really important. also, and this is I’ll kind of end with this question, but towards the end of the book, this is again a quotation. It’s not enough to point out the problems of an unjust system. The people who became become the greatest agents of change also convey a notion of a better future. It is not sufficient to decry what is we must also craft an image of what might be.

And so I wanted to end with that question of what you see as possibilities for living into a better future and crafting a hopeful image of what might be.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (44:28)

Angela Y. Davis, who’s now a professor but was also a member of the Black Panther Party, wrote that freedom is a constant struggle. So what I foresee is constant struggle, that when it comes to justice and particularly racial justice will never be done, will never be finished. What we need to be is resilient. What we need to be is persistent.

Amy Julia (44:41)

Hmm.

Mm

Jemar Tisby, PhD (44:53)

And what that movement, I think, looks like in the 21st century and going forward is multiracial coalitions where white people are not the center, but standing shoulder to shoulder alongside other people who have different experiences. Women have come to the fore much more in this vision of the future. And then,

Also, we have inter -class solidarity so that rich and poor people are coming together for the good of all. I think also we’re going to have to quote unquote do church differently because we have the rise of the religiously unaffiliated who are now more than a quarter of the population.

Amy Julia (45:23)

Mm

Hmm.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (45:46)

And these are not, you know, the numbers for atheists and agnostics have held steady. So these are not people who don’t believe in a higher power or don’t want to believe in a higher power. These people who look at the institutional form of church, whether a congregation or a denomination or an institution and say, I don’t, I don’t quite trust it. I don’t, I don’t want to be part of it, but I think institutions are still important, but we’re to have to find different ways of conveying the integrity and the authenticity.

Amy Julia (45:53)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (46:15)

of the church as an organization, as an institution to draw people in, in an age of skepticism and honest, genuine hurt. I don’t know how to do that, but I hope folks are committed to figuring it out.

Amy Julia (46:27)

Hahaha!

You know, towards the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned that kind of we shouldn’t be surprised that evil continues, right? Like that sin never really goes away. And one of things I was thinking about when you said that was I’ve heard it said that evil is, yeah, constant, but it’s also not creative. That like God is the one who actually creates. And I just that’s what it made me think of when you were saying that, that there’s

Jemar Tisby, PhD (46:50)

Mm -hmm.

Amy Julia (46:56)

On the one hand, it can seem kind of intimidating to be like, my gosh, we’ve screwed up so many things and there are all these young people who are not interested and old people too, actually, who are not interested in the institutional church. And yet there’s also, I think, an invitation to, like, again, our own participation in being created in the image of God, like to be participants in God’s creative work and renewal and bringing new things that are, again, out of that place, the spirit of justice, but with

And yeah, with hopefulness and your words that we can craft an image of what might be even that idea of crafting or like creating, you know, I really love that. And it does give me hope.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (47:40)

I’m so glad. I think of hope not simply as a feeling but as action. And any action we take to resist injustice is an act of hope. And one of the things that gives me hope is simply the principle that nothing can stop a people who simply won’t quit. And if we don’t quit in this journey of justice, then we will make progress and we’ll do it together.

Amy Julia (47:58)

Hmm.

Amen to that. Thank you, Dr. Jemar Tisby for being with us again.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (48:14)

Thank you as always for stimulating conversation. I appreciate it. The book is available now. And since it takes so long to write books, if folks want to follow me in between, they can subscribe at my Substack, jermortisbee .substack .com.

Amy Julia (48:29)

I am a subscriber, it’s very well worth it.

Jemar Tisby, PhD (48:32)

Thank you. I’ve been posting excerpts this week and then this one was, I wonder what the critics will say about this book. Yeah. Yes. We’ll see. Thank you.

Amy Julia (48:39)

Well, stay tuned.

Chapter List

00:00 Introduction and Inspiration for ‘The Spirit of Justice’

05:11 Confronting the Dominant Narrative of Progress

09:10 Christianity’s Role in Subverting the Narrative

15:35 The Split in the Church over Slavery

21:27 Practices of Nonviolent Resistance, Prayer, and Forgiveness

24:02 Dismantling Social Hierarchies

31:36 Reimagining Images of Jesus and the Madonna

37:50 Understanding History: White Christian Nationalism

44:28 Envisioning a Better Future