Reviewing Jemar Tisby's "The Color of Compromise"

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Hello again and welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I'm joined today with my brother, David Scott, and we're going to be talking about Jamar Tisby's new book,

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Color of Compromise, and it came out I think about two, three weeks ago. David, you read this, so why don't you tell me first a little bit about who

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Jamar Tisby is, why we are discussing him, why he's important, and then tell me a little bit about his book.

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Give like the 30 -second synopsis. Well, first of all, you're welcome for reading the book, and for anybody else that's listening to this,

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I bit the bullet for you. We did the hard work, so you don't have to.

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David did the hard work. Exactly. So, who is Jamar Tisby? Jamar Tisby is a young man.

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He is sort of up -and -coming in the, I guess we could call it the social justice wing of the

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Reformed Church. I believe he's Presbyterian.

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He went to Reformed Theological Seminary, but he is very active in a number of evangelical denominations.

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He's sort of a prized speaker right now. Masters in history, those are his credentials.

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He's working on a doctorate, but even just with a master's, I think it's because of sort of who he is and what he talks about.

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You should see his name on every conference, you know, front page of the Gospel Coalition.

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He is a hot item right now. I know he went, or he's going to Mississippi, well, the

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Ole Miss, and they're known to be quite on the, how do

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I say this, they're on the social justice side of things. They're definitely more progressive in their history department there, but so he's, the reason we're talking about him, though, as you just pointed out, is because he's active in a number of different denominations.

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I think he's Presbyterian, right? If you went to Reformed, Theological, and in fact, one of the history departments

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I'm familiar with just recently did a faith and history conference of some kind, and he was the keynote.

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So a lot of undergraduate history students from Christian universities went to Calvin College last year, and I know this is not the only conference that he's done, but he was the keynote at this conference, and I heard about some of the things that he said there.

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This is before his book came out, and it was a little shocking that they had grandstanded him, so to speak, grandstood him,

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I don't know how you say that, but yeah, so why don't you tell us a little bit, what? Grandstanded, I'm the one with the master's name.

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Yeah, that's true, you're the English guy, so yeah, I just have an AA in English, I guess. What about, yeah, so that's what he does, but what about his book?

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His book's done. I know it's been in a local paper where I live, in a secular paper, so people are paying attention.

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What does it say? What kind of an impact is it having? So this is really his,

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I mean, he's young, I'm sure he'll do a lot of things in his life. I wish the best for him, as long as he's doing good things, but this is kind of his seminal work as far as, it's the expression of really the only thing that he talks about, as far as I can tell, and if you watch a speech that he gives, a talk at a university, or even just a two -minute clip, you know, the

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Gopal Coalition has a particular video, I think it was like, what do you wish white

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Christians knew about race, or understood about race? So his basic sort of concepts that he, not only that this book is essentially entirely about, the whole point of the book, but also the concept that he is forwarding, and he's seeking the forwarding, is the idea that, and he says this in the introduction, is that racism never goes away, it just adapts.

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And those are the exact words. He says that. That's his thesis. That's his thesis, but that's not just for this book, like, that's just his thesis, just period.

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Whatever he's doing, that's his thesis. Racism doesn't go away, it just adapts. So this is his historical proof text to demonstrate that that's the case.

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Now, does he go back, I know you'll give us more in a second about the book, but does he go back to the

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Reformation? Because I know he's done speeches on racism and the Reformation and things like that. No, he really doesn't.

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The book is very, in fact, that's one of the things that I think is a weakness in it, is that it's so entirely

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America -focused, which, again, it's a book about America, it's a book about the American church, but it's very

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American -focused. It's very monolithic in that way.

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It doesn't really extend beyond the confines of the American church that much. Okay.

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So that's his thesis, and how is, what does he use to support it then? So really what he does is, most of, the majority of the book is a, it's really a historical narrative piece.

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So I love historical narrative books. Those are kind of what I read in my leisure time, the little tiny bit of that that I have.

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But historical narrative books are, can be done really, really well, and he's not a bad narrative writer, like his, you know, it's peppy and it's sort of kind of nice to listen to if the topic was nicer, but it's basically a narrative piece that is tracing a sort of a thread of racism from colonization to present day.

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So what he's seeking to prove is through a lot of generalizations, very generalized, sort of a lot of generalizations and a couple little specific things picked out here and there.

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He's trying to prove that America is racist, always has been racist. It was founded on racism, and the church, you know, the whole point of his thesis is since racism never goes away, and the church is implicit in it, the church is sort of the fault in the way of the

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Christian evangelical church, at least the white church. And that's really what you get as it starts to go is it's really, this isn't a, he's talking about the white church specifically.

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Well, there's, you don't even know where to start because there's just so many things in just what you said that would be interesting to probably pick apart.

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I mean, the idea that this country was founded on racism. I mean, did he actually, he argues for that, that this country was founded, that was the idea behind the

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United States? Well, he, it's slavery. So slavery started with slavery, and then you go, he goes back to the

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Puritans. Puritans have slaves. He talks about Whitefield, he talks about Edwards, he talks about the slaves who came into Jamestown and sort of, and he actually, he does mention, he makes a lot of passing mentions of the treatment of the indigenous people.

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I'm not sure when it became indigenous. It used to be Native American. Sometime in the last five minutes, changed to indigenous peoples.

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So he makes a lot of references to indigenous peoples, but essentially white supremacy was a start, and it is the, it's been like that the whole time, and it is still that way, and the church has helped it along all the way.

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Okay. So why don't we do this? Give us a preview of his solution to this.

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So I'm assuming there's a solution. It's not just, because it sounds very depressing at this point. You're saying, well, racism just never goes away.

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It changes form, and the United States is thoroughly racist because of the church, or the church is complicit in it,

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I suppose. Does he give any hope? And then why don't we go back and discuss in detail his solution and the evidence he uses to support his thesis?

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So where's the hope? Well, even before that, I would mention when I first tried to pen just some notes about the book after I finished it,

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I always want to ask myself, when I read a book I really don't like, I always try to ask myself, what did I like about it?

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What was good? You have to be able to take something away from whatever you're reading.

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So he makes a statement at the beginning of the book, which is interesting. He says, which I really appreciated.

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He says, all, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but all characters in history, all people in history are nuanced, and they are full of contradiction.

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So they're not going to line up exactly how we think. We'll try to put them in categories, but they don't necessarily line up in those categories.

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I thought, wow, that's really good, because that's something that you don't see much in history today. Usually we live in an age where you said something 35 years ago, or you did something 35 years ago, and that one thing paints your entire persona today.

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It marks you, and there's no grace or anything. So I thought it was nice that he said that. The only problem is he doesn't really, he mentions it, but then he doesn't carry it into his narrative.

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So Jonathan Edwards, for example, is a great theologian, a great pastor, he's a great example in all these ways, but he was involved in the slave trade.

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He had slaves. That marks his entire, essentially marks his entire ministry and his entire character.

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So slavery and racism are the, that's the sin that you cannot commit throughout the book.

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If you commit that sin, then your whole legacy is destroyed. So that was the one good thing.

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The other good thing, or at least it could have been a good thing, but it does end up really being a good thing.

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The other thing that I thought was kind of nice was he doesn't, he spends the majority of the book kind of cascading the

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South, and this gets into more of the historical narrative, but he cascades the South for slavery, obviously, but then he actually spends an entire chapter where he talks about the complicity of racism in the

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North, and he talks about several different examples. It's what he leaves out. He leaves out the most blatant racist movement in our country's history, and he just doesn't even mention them.

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Or if he does, it's as a, it's as sort of as a weapon to beat the right, the

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Christian right. Are you talking about scientific racism? And I mean, that was a

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Northern kind of Philadelphia development that Southerners opposed strongly.

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Or are you talking about, and it was like pre -evolutionary ideas, Darwinian ideas that eventually became,

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I guess, eugenics and the rest of it. Is that what you're talking about when you say the most blatant form?

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I mean, I would consider eugenics, I've taught history for several years on the secondary level, and I remember the first time

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I taught through American history, and you're looking at racism, and you're like, and then you get to the eugenics movement, and you read the statements of the people who were two of the founders of the movement, which founded blatantly on racist principles so much more than anything that you ever encountered before.

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More than the antebellum South, more than the colonial era. And Tisby doesn't mention it.

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He doesn't mention eugenics at all. Wow. That's actually shocking if it's a book on racism and complicity in America or the church, and he doesn't mention eugenics.

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Does he mention Margaret Sanger at all? No. Margaret Sanger is not mentioned at all.

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Not mentioned. That's really shocking. The whole thing with abortion, though, and that was one of the most infuriating,

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I guess, parts of the book, is if you're reading a book that's supposed to be by an evangelical Christian talking about the sin of racism, then you would think abortion would be at the top of the list.

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More black people have been killed by abortion than as far as I know.

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Yes. It's not even close to anything else. And it's not that he doesn't talk about abortion.

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He does, but he never mentions the demolishing of the black family because of abortion, and he only talks about abortion in reference to, like, it's virtue signaling by white

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Christians. So white Christians will pretend that they care about blacks because, you know, they rally to abortion, or they'll pretend they care about the rest, but he doesn't, there's no actual vilification of abortion in and of itself as a racist means to exterminate the black population, which if you read

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Margaret Sanger and you listen to what she was advocating for, you know, that would be your takeaway.

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So there's that. There's also eugenics, you know, Planned Parenthood. I mean, those things kind of flow out of one another, but he really doesn't talk about that.

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And what's so interesting is rather than talk about that, because we're talking about the progressive era, so the early 1900s, it's not that he doesn't talk about that era.

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He only talks about lynchings in the South during that era. So we're only going to focus on these incidents in the

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South. Only black lynchings, I'm assuming. He doesn't focus on all the white lynchings or anything like that.

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Yeah. So here's a question. I do want to get to what his solution is eventually, but since we're already getting into the weeds here a little bit,

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Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, I'm assuming he mentions Whitefield, have been the whipping boys lately.

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And Edwards, both Edwards and Whitefield were treated, they're slaves as far as I know, with deep care and concern.

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In fact, Whitefield was very, I mean, you can credit him with introducing slavery into Georgia, but he was highly critical of the slave trade.

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In fact, he preached sermons also against mistreatment of slaves.

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Very much wanting to, if you're going to have slavery, do it within the confines and regulations of a biblical law.

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And they were imperfect men. But Edwards would have been the same way. And does he get into, is there any attempt to mention that, at least give them the benefit of the doubt on that, talk about what the

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Bible has to say? Because, I mean, obviously the Old Testament Hebrew slavery system was regulated. It wasn't wrong in God's eyes, biblically speaking.

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He regulated it. And then, of course, the Greek system, we have Philemon and the instructions for slaves and masters to get along in a certain way that honors the

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Lord. And so it seems like in the New Testament, too, there's a regulation there as far as how slave masters are supposed to treat slaves.

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But it's never actually condemned as far as something that should be, like, there's no abolitionists in the apostles or the prophets, not like we think of an abolitionist.

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So Edwards and Whitefield seem to fit nicely into that tradition in a way, or at least in their minds they would have thought that.

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Does he give any kind of consideration to maybe how they were looking at the Bible and that maybe being a legitimate way in their time, as men of their time, to look at it or no?

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As to, like, systems of justification, like theological systems of justification, or, you know, he spends a while talking about the misinterpretation and genesis of the

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Mark of Cain, or the Curse of Cain. Right. But that was used, that was more of a

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Puritan thing. That was, it is, I mean, he spends a lot of time on that. But he does, as to the nuances of the

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Old Testament and the New Testament texts, the idea that slavery could potentially not be a sin in any circumstances, he really doesn't give any credence to that.

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Evil, racist, wicked. Jonathan Edwards and George… Is it proof text?

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Is it any Bible verses to back any of this up? Very little. There's not much in the way of scriptural exegesis.

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But it's not, that's not the book. The book is tracing this thread of racism through the history of the

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Church. It's not really dealing with any… He mentions that at the beginning of the book. He says other books talk about the, you know, theological issues.

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My purpose is to prove that the Church has been complicit in racism. He really doesn't talk much about the theological…

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Like, he talks about Dabney, for example, the… Robert Louis Dabney. Yeah, but he only, sort of, to use him as the example, like, look, this was the

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South's, you know, scriptural justification. They had Dabney to justify the white supremacy. And Dabney is completely vilified.

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There's no nuance given to Dabney at all. Oh, that's really sad. There's a lot of good things that could be said about Dabney. Complex man, just like Edwards.

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But Dabney, in fact, makes arguments in the defense of Virginia in the South, essentially trying to say…

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He has the welfare of African Americans in mind. And kind of…

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He shares what the Union Army and the policies of the Republican Party, how harmful they were.

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But I'm sure he doesn't mention that, Tisby. So, let's…

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Give me some of the… I don't want to get bogged down with Edwards, Dabney, or Whitfield, but…

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How about Reagan? You want to get bogged down with Reagan? Give me, like, the top three examples that are just, like, outlandish, where Tisby gets way…

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He's wrong, just flat out wrong. So, my favorite one is

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Ronald Reagan. He sort of vilifies Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is a…

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It's sort of painted as this white supremacy figure, which is very strange, especially considering that Ronald Reagan was actively speaking out against our, at the time, ally,

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South Africa, because of apartheid. And he was… He wasn't afraid of sanctions, really, and he wanted to support

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South Africa, but he was very outspoken in his condemnation of apartheid. So, he doesn't…

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I'm not sure where that came from, or I should say, I wasn't sure where that was coming from until I got through that whole chapter.

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So, in the… During the civil rights era, there's a town in Mississippi.

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I'm blanking on the name right now. But there were several, I'm sure you know it, several civil rights leaders who were murdered.

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Selma, Alabama? No, not Selma. It's in Mississippi. But there were several civil rights.

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I think it was three civil rights. It was a very famous case. And Ronald Reagan started his campaign in this same town.

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It's in the first 1980 bid for presidency. So, Tisby sort of paints it as a, for lack of a better term, a dog whistle to the right that he starts his campaign in this…

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I think you're talking about Philadelphia, Mississippi, probably. Which one? Philadelphia, Mississippi.

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That may be it. At the Neshoba County Fair. Yeah, that's the one. So, and his justification for why this is a dog whistle to…

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Because the event happened, you know, you're talking quite a bit before, you know, well over a decade before he starts his campaign there.

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So, what is it? I mean, lots of civil rights leaders and lots of people have been killed all over the country in all sorts of different places in all sorts of different ways.

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So, why is this particular racist? It's because when he gives his speech at that county fair, he talks about states' rights.

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And we know that states' rights equals racism. Oh my goodness.

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There's no nuance to it. It's just, you know, there's lots of reasons why people support states' rights.

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It's not just because of racism. Well, right now it's sanctuary cities and legalization of pot.

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Right, right, right. Especially after, yeah, especially after Trump. Suddenly everybody loves states' rights. So, but it's because he's made this case so long.

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And that's where I think history starts to get really sloppy. Because he's starting to build a decent case in the beginning of the book.

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But as he gets along, you know, he starts to push these assumptions farther.

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And that, to me, that was the point that, and it was almost at the end of the book, but that was the point where I was just thinking…

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Go ahead and run it off. Everybody who supports states' rights because states' rights is racist. Well, in Mississippi, it definitely is.

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So everything is racist. Everybody is racist. Every movement from the conservative right is racist.

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There's no, you know, there's no two ways about it. Okay, give me another example. Is there another one that is fun to talk about, maybe, or just interesting?

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Well, I always like how it doesn't matter if it's a movie, like a documentary, you know, like a

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Ken Burns film, or it's a news story, or a book about the

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Civil War, everybody has to mention the infamous… Cornerstone. What's that?

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The Cornerstone address, or no? No, no, no, no, no. Oh, okay. But no,

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General Bedford… Oh, Bedford Forrest, yeah. It's a very, very short little mention, but, you know, there's no mention of him after the war.

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There's no redemption. I think that's the main thing. So Bedford Forrest, you know, he talks briefly, he makes a mention of, you know, he committed these atrocities, and he was kind of a violent madman, and he would back the

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KKK and all these things, but then he stops there, you know, and we don't know about the rest of his, you know, the rest of his life.

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He rejected the KKK, that he advocated for civil rights for Blacks.

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He's the one that issued the order to disband the KKK. That was him. Right. So there's no redemption.

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There's no redemption in this, really, in this worldview, if you were ever racist at any time.

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You know, because, why? Because racism never goes away, right?

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It just adapts, and that's… I want to focus just for a moment on this Bedford Forrest thing.

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So, I mean, it sounds like that could potentially be almost slanderous. He's not here to defend himself, because he's obviously dead, but this is a man who has a complex life.

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He was a slave trader for a little bit, but even in that, he was more or less ethical, in a sense that,

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I'm comparing him to the other slave traders. He would not separate families. He was known to be more of a gentler sort, but of course, he was a rough and tumble

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Scotch -Irish guy who got into fights. He wasn't a Christian, but he respected women.

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That's actually one of the big things about him. He was always willing to defend a woman's honor, and that's actually how the

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Port Pillow thing ended up happening. I don't want to get into too many details here, but it's very debatable.

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It's, in fact, very unlikely that he really knew what was going on at Port Pillow until after it had happened. But he, after the war, ends up becoming almost like a sort of an early civil rights activist in a way.

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I mean, he makes this speech in Memphis. It was sort of an early civil rights organization.

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I forget the name, but he kisses a black lady at the end of it, and he becomes a

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Christian, and he's known. His slaves were the ones that fought with him. He frees at least 18 of 20 of them, and a lot of them just want to come back and live with him and share crop after the war, and he's known to be a very merciful and kind -hearted.

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He's not a master at this point, but he's a property owner, and he has sharecroppers, so I don't know. That's just a very brief overview of some of the complexities of Nathan Bedford Forrest, but yeah,

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I mean, this guy, kind of like the original, was he the first Grand Wizard of the Klan, but the Klan at the time was different than the

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Klan we think of now, not justifying it, but it's more complicated, I guess, is the point, and you're saying that as Tispy said at the beginning, everyone's complicated, but then he just kind of...

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He doesn't allow for the complications. He doesn't allow for any complications, or any racism.

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He's just a racist, that's all he is, and we're not going to focus on his anti -racist remarks, especially towards the end of his life.

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Yeah, okay. Which I think what's disturbing about it is that it's coming from a different time.

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So we're supposed to be about grace. We're supposed to be about, you know, our whole worldview is predicated on the idea that people can change.

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That there is hope, and that change is, especially if you're reformed, change is not just possible, change is inevitable.

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Right. If you come to know Christ. So there's allowance for that, but it's contingent upon the color of your skin, it seems, because if you were racist at any point, well, that's racist at all points.

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And it's not just you, because again, the whole point of this book is that the church and sort of whites at large were complicit in this racism and white supremacy.

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So even if you were, you know, so really even if you were an Italian immigrant that came in, you know, and your grandfather came in in 1924 to Ellis Island, you're not off the hook because of the color of your skin makes you sort of complicit if you didn't, you know, fight for justice, if your grandfather didn't fight for justice in your lifetime.

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So it's the original sin, the original sin, but it cannot be expunged. The color of compromise is white. Yeah. That's the color, that's the insinuation.

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Yeah. Any other things that you'd want to mention, not about the solution he has, but about the evidence he uses to back up his claims that the church is racist or America is fundamentally racist, that that's kind of what they're about.

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Any other thoughts? Well, I think, I mean, this is kind of a general thought, so it's not super specific, but there's a conflation between individual and personal responsibility and collective and, you know, sort of group responsibility, and I think that's where a lot of the confusion comes from, and the whole idea that racism never goes away, it only changes.

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Well, if you're talking about society at large, and, you know, to be more specific, he talks about, right, first the slaves come into Jamestown, and so then we have slavery there, and the

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South becomes sort of dependent, economically dependent on slavery, so there's an example there, and there is an attitude because of majority culture and where the power is that perpetuates what you could argue is white supremacy, but there's the group, and then there's the individual, and the responsibility of the group falls on the individual, and the responsibility of the individual falls on the group.

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There's not a whole lot of allowance for the sort of personal decisions that, you know, individual people are making throughout their lives.

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Robert E. Lee is a good example of that. He really, interestingly, he doesn't, this is more specific, but interestingly, he doesn't really get in much to Robert E.

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Lee because Robert E. Lee, he's kind of the

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Achilles' heel because he's an abolitionist. He's fighting for the South, but he's against slavery, so, you know, so you have examples like that, so he just doesn't really get into them.

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He doesn't get into Stonewall Jackson. He doesn't get into these things that are going to, that are going to throw a wrench.

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Just, when you said, because the, you know, the audio cut out for a second there. You said Robert E. Lee was an abolitionist.

28:55

I think, did you mean to say more like a gradual emancipationist? Because I think Robert E. Lee wouldn't have been like a

29:01

Northern abolitionist type. Oh, right. So, when I say abolitionist, I mean, I'm just, I mean, against slavery.

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Okay, so he's a gradual emancipationist. He doesn't like slavery. He wants it to go away. I know, I know.

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He doesn't want it here anymore. In case anyone wanted a nitpick, I just have to, and the other thing,

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Oh, I have to say this. So, we want to make it clear to anyone watching this, who's seeing us laugh, we're brothers, so we're going to laugh a little bit.

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I mean, we do take this seriously. And we do think, we both think that the slave trade had, it was horrific.

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And slavery itself had many great sins attached to it. We don't, we're not endorsing that at all.

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We're not endorsing, you know, the way the Jim Crow laws in the North or the South. Racism is disgusting.

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We don't like racism. It's the worst. It's the worst. But what we're saying is, I think you can tell me if you agree with me or not, but I think in all forms, it's wrong.

30:02

And that's the moral component to it. And we think Tisby is, sounds like from what you're saying, he's kind of like only focusing on, he's cherry picking.

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So, so morally speaking, he's not getting the full picture, which puts him in a position where he's actually even maybe slandering brothers and sisters in Christ from the past, misrepresenting them to forward his narrative.

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The other thing is, he's not being, it sounds like a good historian. And I want to read something.

30:30

This is, this is a quote from Tisby from a talk he gave last year at a seminar,

30:37

I guess, at Calvin College. And he says, Confederate monuments kneeling during the national anthem, the

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Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter. We live in an age of protest and reform. College students often stand at the forefront of these movements by lending their energy, passion and creativity to virtuous causes.

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But the problems of today arise from circumstances in the past. Today's activists must pursue a deep knowledge of this nation's history, especially as it relates to race and justice in order to change the present and the future for the better.

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That quotation was given at a conference for Christian historians, undergraduates, who are history majors.

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And I'm assuming there's probably some poly -sci majors and so forth, but he's speaking to them as a historian. And hey, if you're going to be a historian, this is what you need to do.

31:27

And there's a, I'm going to put this in the info section. This will be the first link. Actually, this will be the second link.

31:33

The first link will be, David, you wrote a little short blog about Tisby's book.

31:38

That'll be the first link. Second link will be another blog written by Samuel Smith, who was a historian.

31:43

And he critiques this quote from Tisby because he was at the conference. And I'm not going to read his whole critique.

31:50

You can read it yourself, but he basically says history answers the what's and why's, and it does not really answer the oughts.

31:56

And he critiques Tisby for becoming, for not looking at history with an eye to understand as much as looking at history as kind of a treasure trove of quotations by which to further a political agenda, which is not really the way a historian should.

32:14

Activism. History. Yeah. And there's a place for, you know, obviously using historical examples to further things, but he's, this is

32:23

Tisby revealing what he believes about the craft of history. And that's not really how history is.

32:29

It shouldn't be how it's done. You shouldn't be telling people that are going to go on to possibly be historians that, you know, basically use this for furthering social justice.

32:38

That's just going to destroy the very, the very discipline. So, so those are our critiques.

32:46

Do you have anything else you want to add to that or critiques for the way he uses history? Well, I guess just briefly, being a historian,

32:57

I love history. History is fantastic. It's great. But the best, probably the best discipline ever, ever in history.

33:07

But ironically, but what Tisby is doing is no one ever wants to talk about the civil war.

33:13

Why was there a civil war? Why was it, why was it, why it happened? You had one side wanted to build a wall, keep the

33:19

North out. They said, no, they said, no people like that coming here. So they came down.

33:27

The main thing is just that it really, at the end of the book, because he makes so many suggestions at the, at the end, that's the whole point of the book is to like, well, how do we move forward from here?

33:36

Given that the church is racist, that the church is racist, and that America is racist, given that, how do we move forward?

33:42

And so it's a call to activism. And since the majority of the book is about slavery, and what came out of slavery, you're sort of left with just like, wow, you know, you kind of just feel yucky at the end.

33:56

You're like, wow, everything's terrible. And that's, you know, it's just the worst. Wow. Everything. And it's still so bad.

34:01

And then you kind of zoom out a little bit, and you start to think about it. And you're, you're like, I mean, if the activism is so important, then why did not

34:10

Tisby write a book about slavery? How about today? Like that there's more slaves today than there's ever been.

34:15

And that the country of Uzbekistan still picks cotton, ironically, cotton with slave labor to this day.

34:24

And that the country of Mauritania has an estimated up to 20 % slave population. And that just last year, there was videos taken in Libya of slaves.

34:34

They're probably all obviously white Christians that are doing that, right? Exactly. That's the problem. That's the problem.

34:39

So it's, it's, it's hard to take the narrative seriously. You know, it's, it's, it's just so bad.

34:46

And the effects of it are still being felt. And you kind of think like, yeah, but the slavery is still going on. Like there's going on all over the place.

34:52

And it's not even just that. Cause you'd have the whole, the whole trafficking issues that are going on, even in this nation.

34:59

So that's not to say that obviously he cares very deeply. But whenever, whenever people,

35:06

I would call it virtue signal, virtue, virtue signaling about things from the past, you always wonder how much you care about these things in the present that are happening right now.

35:15

What about that? There aren't mentioned, those aren't in his suggestions for, cause you would think, you would think if, if it's a narrative about, you know, how bad slavery is that the sort of carry over would be, all right, let's oppose slavery today.

35:28

That's not it. It's reparations. He talks about reparations in the end. So we're getting to the solution now.

35:35

So solution reparations. So, yeah. So his solutions at the end of the book, it's a good segue.

35:46

I'm going to, I'm paraphrasing, I'm summarizing a little bit, but basically quotas, that would be one thing we need to see, you know, something that would demonstrate that we've moved past race or that we're dealing with racism.

35:56

Affirmative actions. Yeah, it would be, we need to see more, we need to see more black voices, black opinion.

36:02

We just need to see more black. So affirmative action. He doesn't, he doesn't specifically use the words affirmative action.

36:09

It's basically what he's lobbying for, but not affirmative action. He's talking about on an individual level, which he makes some good suggestions.

36:15

He's saying, no people, you know, who with, with different perspectives, you should get to know people.

36:21

I completely agree with that. You should get to know people with a lot of different perspectives. Hopefully we'll train you to defend yours better or change if you have bad perspective.

36:31

So that's a good suggestion personally, but then when you throw it at the entire church and say, the church needs more, you know, the church needs just more color, you know,

36:42

I will go down to my church. I go to a very diverse church and I look around and I say, it looks pretty diverse to me, you know, like, do we need more

36:49

Asians? Oh wait, no, because their income probably don't need, we need less of them actually.

36:54

Cause we need more, more Indians. We need about four more of them. And then, and then you're getting into just ridiculous land.

37:01

And ironically, what it does is I, you know, some, I'll walk into church, look around and think to myself, how many of this race do we have?

37:10

Which I never have thought that way my entire life. But because of all this instigation, now

37:16

I'm actually being programmed to think that way. And that, to me, that actually brings out racism. It doesn't fight it.

37:21

It actually brings it out. Does he at all? I think I know the answer, but is he, make any advocation that like maybe black people or other ethnicities should enter a white church and become part of it?

37:34

Or is it just white people need to welcome in? Or obviously we do need to welcome him, but is it, is it one sided?

37:41

Is it just white people need to accept minorities in more? It's, it's, it's sort of, it's not specifically one sided in the way that he talks about.

37:50

Oh, that's good. I decided, but well, it is though, because, because, because all the, the blame is put on, on the whites.

37:58

Oh, that's bad. Only positives in the black church, only negatives in the white church. It's, it's, you know, cause he spends a while talking about like, here's all the things that the black church have to offer.

38:07

And I'm thinking, yes, they have rhythm. We have none. And the

38:14

Appalachians, they have a little bit of rhythm cause they play bluegrass. New Orleans, they have some, cause they're, you know, I've got a lot of all sorts of different, like that are beautiful.

38:23

Those are, those are awesome. Those are fantastic. I've worshiped in many black churches and loved it.

38:30

You know, that doesn't mean that, that they have a monopoly on the Holy spirit. You know, it means there's cultural differences, which hopefully get together and love and celebrate.

38:40

And that's all fantastic. I mean, it should also be said there's theological differences. I know when I was in seminary, there was a lot of people that were professors.

38:47

They're saying, Hey, we need to, what's the problem? Why do we have churches that are segregated?

38:53

But then they went to the whitest churches in town and they would wonder, why aren't, why aren't black people coming? It's something that you only really hear in white churches.

39:01

You go to white churches, you know, there is, they look around and say, why is it so white here? It's like, well,

39:06

I mean, you could go somewhere else. Like you don't have to, but my point would be the other options that I knew of in the place that I was, there really weren't like black churches per se that were theologically in the same tradition that believe the same things.

39:19

There was usually a prosperity issue, like a prosperity gospel, or like they were more towards the

39:25

Pentecostal side or say, you know, it's just, they're not that that's all wrong, but they're, you know, not,

39:30

I shouldn't say wrong, but not that it's all an essential issue in every way. But it's like, when

39:36

I have a church that doesn't believe those things, that believes what I believe, like I'm, I go there based on theology.

39:42

That's what I'm trying to say. The choice for me to go to a church is going to be based on what they believe, not on the color of the skin.

39:48

I don't even think that way. And I think a lot of the professors that I knew that were advocating for diversity in the church, they, they like never mentioned that, but they're making those same choices.

40:01

They're going to churches because of theology. And I don't know, it's just, it's weird to me. Just, it's like, you have to almost get your mind, like you were just saying in this like new way of thinking where that you have a prism, almost like a glasses over your eyes and you're just seeing race all over the place.

40:18

And you like take off your theology glasses, take off like whatever other glasses you have and just see race, which that sounds like what you'd have to do almost if you want.

40:27

I think it is. I mean, and it becomes very difficult not to do that when, when there's some, because really

40:33

I think for a lot of people and that's why this whole social justice movement is just, it's going to produce racism.

40:39

I really think that's what, that's what's so sad about it. It's the whole idea is we need to deal with racism. And the effect of that is going to be, it will produce racism because it's going to, it's going to train people who have grown up in a, actually a really nice time where people are kind of programmed not to consider race, but only right.

40:59

That was Martin Luther King's dream was just based on the content of the character. And I think there have been people that have felt that way probably for like ever.

41:08

It's just that, you know, there's, there's, there are all, you know, every, every culture there are, are, are attitudes that are ungodly.

41:17

Just, it doesn't matter. No. The guy needs to read a little bit of Thomas soul. I think he has some good things to say about, about that, but that really gets into the sort of the just very

41:27

America focused. Cause the book is, you know, it's about America, but it like, if you took this,

41:32

Oh my goodness. If you took this to like India or China or in my, my own experience,

41:39

South Africa, my goodness, the, the, the number of colors and it's the rainbow nation down there.

41:47

So the number of colors and the number of, you know, this group of press, this group, and then this group of person in the Zulus slaughtered the

41:53

British and this Lawanda is 1877. And then the, the board, you know, then the British press the board and like everybody hates each other and loves each other.

42:01

So, you know, if, when you try to export this, it gets, it gets, it gets very dicey.

42:07

But the other, the other part of, of the, the conclusion. So part of the conclusion that was,

42:12

I thought the lack of better words, the most preposterous was the idea of reparations at first glance, you know, cause he, he kind of talks about, he, he is leading up to reparations.

42:26

He doesn't want to jump right into it. So he kind of talks about like, you should get to know, here's some personal suggestions. You should get to know people who look different than you.

42:33

So we're all going, okay. And then he gets to the, then he gets to like what he's leading up to, which is, now this is controversial to talk about, but reparations.

42:43

And so if you think about reparations as in, I don't know, you meet a guy and somehow we find out that my great, great grandfather owned his great, great grandfather as a slave and never paid him.

42:58

And he somehow has worked out how this is, has affected him. And I have the money to pay him.

43:04

And, you know, he doesn't want to forgive me. Maybe we can talk about something. That's not what he's talking about.

43:10

He's talking about the church specifically giving, basically finances.

43:16

He's talking about redistributionism. Can I ask a question? I'm going to cut you off for a second. Would he be the recipient of any of these reparations?

43:24

I have no idea. I'm just wondering. I don't know. He already is to me.

43:29

I mean, yeah, yeah. That's where, you know, Bodie Bachman will talk about the social justice being this multi -billion dollar industry.

43:39

yeah, well, you sold me. So, so anyway,

43:45

I'm sorry. Keep going. so the reparations, if you're talking about, if you're talking about reparations on an individual level, you know, it's, it's something to be talked about.

43:57

It's kind of ignoring the verse in James, though, that talks about how mercy triumphs over judgment, I think, because the reason why we don't really talk about things like that, that much is because forgiveness in Christianity, there's the idea that forgiveness is much better than, you know, than,

44:14

I mean, kind of than even justice, because that's the whole point of Christ is that Christ forgives and that we, we, let's say escape justice.

44:24

We, you know, we are covered by him. So really we're covered from justice, but in Tisby's world, there's no, there's really no forgiveness, you know, so for the, for the crimes are collective and personal crimes as, you know,

44:39

I guess you could say for me as white people in the past, we have, we got to keep paying, you know, we need to pay from our finances, you know, and he does talk about that.

44:48

He talks about even like government reparations, you know, so if you're, if you're talking about on a personal level, that's one thing, but if you put it on a government level, that's

44:58

Marxist territory now in Marxism, complete Marxism. And not only is that, I would say not biblical.

45:06

It's also very bad for the people receiving the reparations. Very bad. Welfare state or entitlement mentality.

45:15

Yeah. Getting free stuff really doesn't help anybody. I really, you know,

45:20

I can't think of an instance where it really does. This is also very messy because I'm just thinking about the different diverse groups in America, immigrants who came here.

45:29

I mean, Oh goodness. I mean, we different groups would owe different groups.

45:35

The North was the South for Sherman's March, maybe. And, you know, people in New York city owe money to people,

45:44

Italians who came here or Irish Ellis Island for their discrimination against them. And you know, the native

45:51

Americans obviously are owed a lot, the various tribes, but I mean, it gets so sticky. Well, not even that though.

45:57

Just think about this on, think about this on an, if this is both individual and collective, okay. You are a historian sort of by trade.

46:06

I am a amateur historian. I guess you could say, I mean, I'll say amateur,

46:13

I'll say amateur. I don't want to take a story. Well, I'm a history teacher. I teach high school history. So we're both, we're both history professionals in our own way.

46:21

Right. I don't have a book. I don't get to do speaking tours and I have a master's degree. I don't get to do any of this.

46:27

Why does he get all this recognition? That's not fair. You know,

46:32

I have to work two jobs to get by at this point. I don't understand. It's just the attitude of, it's not fair.

46:38

Right. In the past, somehow it's not fair. Now we can, we can, you know, but that is the problem.

46:44

Is it individual? Is it collective? Are those the same thing? If racism never goes away, if it only adapts, well,

46:51

I'm not really sure what the whole point of this to begin with was, because there's nothing I can do to get rid of it. So it says he refutes himself.

46:58

I would, from the very introduction of the book, that was my first thought. Racism doesn't go away. It just adapts.

47:04

We're talking about a culture. That's true. Racism doesn't go away until new heaven in the new earth.

47:10

Sin will always be here. And racism is a fact of life, just like lying, stealing, you know, murder, adultery, we will see it, you know, if racism, if that's personal, that's individual, then there's no point in writing this book at all, because there's nothing you can do to get rid of the racism within you.

47:28

It just adapts, just changes. but that's not really, that's not the Christian message.

47:34

The Christian message is, it doesn't have to be this way. If you are racist, you don't have to be a racist anymore.

47:40

You know, if you are a liar, you don't have to be a liar. Real quick. Is there a difference?

47:46

I'm sure Tispy doesn't talk about homosexuals, but with rhetoric, I think there's a difference. But do you think there's a difference between the way we treat the sin of homosexuality, described as a sin in multiple places, and then the sin of ethnic pride, or if you want to call that racism, because with homosexuality right now, it seems like there's a lot of books being cranked out there in evangelical circles that are saying, we have to love, we have to love, the church has gotten this wrong, we're not compassionate enough.

48:18

And then you have the sin of racism, and that's like, condemn, condemn, condemn. Am I reading that right? Well, that's a good point.

48:26

In the beginning of the book, he anticipates what the objections against his narrative are going to be.

48:31

You know, he mentions them very, very blatantly. He just says, you're going to read this book, and people are going to say, there's basically two objections that people are going to have.

48:39

One will be, you know, this and that about the historical narrative, and, you know, is it really accurate? Is he blowing things out of proportion?

48:46

The other one is that this is just, you know, Marxism. This is Marxist thought. This is, you know, the same thing.

48:53

We've heard it before. He never addresses that objection. He says that it's going to be an objection, but he kind of just lets it hang there and says, like, this will be an objection, but he doesn't explain why it's not

49:05

Marxism. Is he a Bible versus trying to support his Marxist ideas? no, not really, not really, but he, he, he, you know, in anticipating the

49:18

Marxism, by the end of the book, it's pretty clear that it is basically just Marxism.

49:25

You kind of think, well, you could have written this book and called it, you know, the sexuality of compromise, you know, because really you could have taken the whole narrative.

49:34

You could apply it to homosexuals. It's, you know, it's a class against class narrative. It's group against group.

49:41

Oppressor, oppressed. Yeah. Oppressor versus oppressed. And you could really, you know, fill in your blank.

49:48

I mean, he makes a lot of allusions, a lot of mentions of the treatment of women. So he's already accepted the sort of feminist narrative as well, because a lot of the time it's treatment of blacks, treatment of indigenous peoples, treatment of women, you know, mentions a lot, mentions a number of times, right to vote, women's right to vote, their struggle for the right to vote.

50:07

Sort of the feminist, or at least the first wave feminist movement as being equated to, to the civil rights movement and other, you know, similar movements that would claim to be in the same vein, which would include the gay rights movement.

50:26

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, you can certainly go on for a long time about those things, but final thoughts.

50:33

Let's, I think you've already talked about the dangers of this, but your man on the street, your layman in the church who gets ahold of Tispy's book.

50:47

If he's going to read it, which may be by the end of this video, if there was someone like that's watching, they're going to be convinced.

50:53

Hopefully don't, this isn't worth your time, but let's say they read it. They just, they're curious. One sentence.

51:02

What should that person be looking for or watching out for? I don't know if I can do it in one sentence.

51:09

How about two? Two sentences. Okay. So sentence number one, you want to understand the woke church movement, read this book.

51:21

So you're endorsing it now. Okay. In a way, I mean, if you want to, if you, if you want to, if you want to understand the presuppositions behind woke church, you got to read this book.

51:31

You have to read it. Okay. That was one sentence, wasn't it? That's right.

51:37

I get two. You got the first sentence. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to take both.

51:45

So the other one, no, now I forgot what the other sentence was. I guess I only needed one to begin with. Do we, we've been critiquing

51:53

Tispy here, but I mean, does your heart go out to him? It does. It does. Oh, now

51:58

I remember my other sentence. This is why my heart goes out to him. And this would be the number one thing I would say about this book.

52:06

Tisby's Christianity is not an actual redemptive move or redemptive movement.

52:17

It's not something that actually brings change to people in society. It's something that,

52:24

Christianity is not something that reforms society because it's been several hundred years and it hasn't reformed.

52:30

It's only, it's really, his book is, Christianity has made things worse. You were an atheist.

52:36

This is a nice little, a nice little box of ammo, ammunition against Christianity because it's, you know, it's sort of a vindication of, or a vilification rather of, of Christianity because Christianity has not helped racism for the, you know, for the history of this.

52:59

Yeah. So it has no power. The gospel hasn't seemed to really make any dent. I mean, which is the reason the slave trade ended.

53:07

I mean, we could go into like Christianity kind of undermined a lot of these things. He's complaining. We could also compare slavery.

53:14

I don't want to get into history again. We could also compare slavery in the United States to that of Brazil. Oh, yeah.

53:20

I mean, Islamic slavery, you hit the jackpot if you ended up in America in a way, if you were a slave, just not that it was all good.

53:29

In every way at all, but like compared to the horrible conditions you could have experienced other places. Yeah, you're right.

53:36

But so downstream from this, let's say people read this or accept the arguments in this and they have children and they teach their children.

53:47

You know, what history of the church is just this racist history. And you're part of this horrible tradition.

53:53

That's oppressed women and blacks. And I guess other minorities, presumably. And I mean, what kid is going to want to keep being a

54:01

Christian? In my mind, I would just rebel against that faith and say, okay, well, I'm not going to be part of that. That sounds horrible.

54:07

I'll start my own thing or be part of a different religion. So, I mean, that would be my concern.

54:13

And I don't think Tisby wants to go there, but I don't, I don't either. I think Tisby, I think

54:18

Tisby seems to have a, you know, have the understanding of, of the gospel.

54:24

He talks in the beginning of the book about how, you know, that he said, he says, at least that Christianity is the solution, not the problem.

54:33

So he makes it, he makes it very clear to his credit, makes it very clear. This is not, you know, it's not atheist ammo.

54:39

It's not meant to be that the solutions that he's an Orthodox Christian, and he believes in reform tradition, and he believes in the gospel.

54:47

But at the end of the book, you're the question that you have is why do you, if it has no impact or effect on the history of this country, if everybody's supposedly

54:57

Christian, you know, if all these white people are Christians, but all they do is oppress, then why, then why do you buy into this religion?

55:03

You sort of left with the idea that just, I just, I don't want to make generalizations, but black people would have been better off if they never would have come to, to America.

55:13

They would have been much better off in Africa. And it's, if we believe in the sovereignty of God, then there is a plan.

55:24

There was a plan to this whole American, you know, experiment. There, there, it's not, it's not all bad.

55:33

It's not, you know, it's not all bad. Yeah. But we shouldn't be surprised by the bad. We should be surprised by the good.

55:39

Right. Right. Yeah. So human depravity is at work, but God is also at work.

55:45

And, and he's shown how he can even redeem institutions that have evil connected with them and use them for his purpose, which is,

55:56

I think even slavery fits into this, using that to introduce the gospel to people.

56:03

That doesn't justify the institution, but it definitely shows that God had a plan or is working.

56:10

So, all right, well, that was excellent. I'm glad that you shared with us some of those thoughts. And I've read,

56:16

I've looked at some other reviews and things, and I think a lot of them, the reviews are looking at kind of the solution and critiquing the cultural

56:26

Marxism or critical race theory. And they don't, they kind of ignore the, I think the first half, because most people have now just kind of, they kind of buy this narrative, this looking at history through this racialist lens.

56:39

So I'm glad we were able to at least address some of that stuff as well. And I would ask where people can find you, but I think they already know.

56:47

Just go to worldviewconversation .com and you have some things there written there. The first link will be your blog on this book.

56:56

And is there any parting thought that you want to tell anyone like a knock knock joke or something? I don't know.

57:04

I don't think so. Just, just that Christ and the gospel can change every, every, every nasty brutish bad part of us.

57:19

There is power to change in Christ. And I hope that that's something that kids will realize as time goes on.

57:30

And that's really where, that's really where the only hope is. I think you probably, you probably believes that, but that's what's that's really what's most important is that, that if you have

57:41

Christ and really can move on from the worst of circumstances, because mercy triumphs over judgment.

57:49

Amen. Well, thank you for joining me and discussing that book. See you later.