Learning from the Public Witness of the Black Church, with Justin Giboney

So as Christians we are called to love God and neighbor, to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. But in contentious and confusing times, it can be difficult to discern how exactly to live out that call. The increasingly polarized, politicized, and partisan nature of our public life would have us believe that pursuing justice is synonymous with enlisting in the ongoing culture wars, that if we care at all, we must pick a side, armor up and start shooting, and leave the call to grace, mercy, and humility for another day. It’s certainly not the first time that false alternatives such as these are presented as the only choices available, but it can be difficult to imagine other alternatives and other approaches when fighting is all that one sees. And of course, it’s almost impossible to pursue or pioneer what one cannot imagine. But our guest today has argued that we do indeed have real and inspiring examples we can draw upon, including the ways that faithful Christian public witness change the world while remaining faithful and orthodox. He argues that the African American church has long married orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the pursuit of holiness and justice, and sought reform and renewal without moral or spiritual compromise, and that the example of the moral imagination of the Black church of the Civil Rights era offers wisdom that we, the broader church, very much need and can learn from today. Justin Giboney is an attorney, political strategist, and civic leader based in Atlanta, as well as the co-founder and president of the AND Campaign, a civic organization that promotes Christ centered values as the basis for political and public engagement. He’s also the author of the work “Compassion and Conviction,” as well as his new release, “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around”, which we’re delighted to welcome him here today to discuss. Justin, it’s great to have you here.

Thanks for having me Cherie. I’m excited to be here and honored. Thank you.

Well, we’re really excited to talk with you and starting out, I always like to ask my guests “what was it that made you want to write this book?” Any book is an incredible labor of love and I’ve found there’s always a story behind the story. And in this particular case, it seems like your family story actually plays a real role in this book. So what led you to write “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around?”

It’s a few things. I think you hit on the first one, this book was very personal to me. Part of the story surrounds my maternal grandmother, Willie Faye, and her favorite gospel artist, which was Mahalia Jackson. We kind of follow their life as we explain some of the principles that they engaged in church and outside of the church. And they sacrificed so much for me to even be talking to you today, for me to have been able to go to Vanderbilt Law school, which wouldn’t have happened without their sacrifices. So I often think about and wonder, “what would they have me say today if they had a chance to speak into today’s society and two audiences like yourselves, what would they have me saying?” So that’s part of what motivated me to write this. But also, I’ll be honest, I feel like there’s a lot of misconceptions about the civil rights movement and about the black Christian witness. One of those misconceptions I think comes from the left and there’s kind of been this co-optation as if this was a “progressive movement” and while some of the things certainly, you know, that they were fighting for with civil rights might fit that, but I wanted to remind people that this was a movement based on the authority of Scripture, based on a true and devout belief in what Jesus had to say and what the Bible had to say, for example the Exodus motif.

That’s what motivated it and that’s where you see the courage that comes out of this movement and the way that they dealt with their opposition and their allies comes from the authority of Scripture. So I wanted to make that clear, but also to the right to say this was more than just about color blindness, it was bigger than that. Surely they wanted people to be judged by the content of their character, but I think we can also be reductive if we just leave it there. This was a little bit bigger than that. So I wanted to make sure that we corrected the history of that, the record, so to speak. Lastly, to give people, and you hit on this a little bit, to give people proof of concept that going about things in the way that the Gospel has prescribed for us, is actually effective. It’s actually more effective than the culture war way of going about it. And so I wanted to provide this group of people as proof of concept and all that they accomplished, rather than just giving you a theory that comes out of my head. We actually see this worked and how it changed not only the South, but the nation and the world.

I definitely want to ask you about that point you just raised about effectiveness, but first I have to ask you about the title itself. You mentioned several times throughout your book that for the black church during the civil rights movement, spirituals, songs were really forms of spiritual discipline and reminders in a formation too. And the book’s title itself comes from a spiritual that became an anthem of the civil rights movement. And I would love for you to just share a little bit about what the song meant in its original context, and then why you chose that title to really frame your book and its argument.

“Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around,” as you say, is a spiritual that comes out of the black church tradition, but then it’s also becomes part of the civil rights movement. And what they were saying when they said, don’t let nobody turn you around, is so many times we have a good vision and a good cause behind what we’re doing. And we want to advocate for the sanctity of life or advocate for justice. But when we engage people and when we engage opposition, sometimes we get distracted away from that. Sometimes we get turned around, so to speak, and that we don’t move forward in the same spirit that we should have had. And so what they were saying is, don’t forget why you’re here and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Don’t get turned around or in other words, keep your eyes on the prize, on the end goal, and also on the ethics and principles that started what you were doing. And so I think when you look at the culture war at this time, so many Christians need to be reminded that they should not be turned around, that they still should be acting like Christians in the public square, even in the in the midst of serious concerns and serious desperation in some instances.

Yeah. Let’s go back to that point that you raised about effectiveness, because I think this is going to be at the top of so many people’s minds in that, you know, your work and really your work, just not in the book, but your broader work talks about the importance of public witness, you know, our testimony to what is true and right and good. And you’ve argued that just now that it’s effective, you’ve argued in this book that it never goes out void, but boy, does there seem to be a lot of evidence to the contrary. We hear every day, we see every day the power of propaganda. We read about the fact that falsehoods on social media circulate six times as quickly as something which is true. Our entire kind of mediums or media of public communications themselves reward the snarky, the sensational, the speedy over the measured and the truthful and the gracious. And we see lots of political campaigns where clearly propaganda has helped them. And so I want to kind of poke a little bit at that point that you made because you’ve worked as a political strategist on campaigns. How does witness work when it seems like we have so much evidence to the contrary? And why do you think it will work in our current context, when our very media itself seems biased against it?

Yeah. So first of all I think as Christians, we have to realize that one of the things that we stand for is that doing right is always the best thing, right? So, no matter what we think the outcome might be being truthful, being honest, being compassionate is always the right thing to do. So that should make our decision from there. But if you look at what happens in the civil rights movement, you had people that actually based on the visuals of seeing how they were being handled, how they spoke to others, that were able to once the rest of the country kind of saw this on television, was able to inspire people. And I think that’s what we’re losing here. Yes. None of this is easy. And so if we want to be lazy and we want to give quick answers and not do the hard work of being artful, like Doctor King was artful. I mean, we’re talking about people who spent months and months coming up with the rhetoric that they were going to use, making sure that it was truthful, but also making sure that it was true. So what I want people to understand is I’m not saying that we can’t be shrewd or we can’t be tenacious. I’m saying that there is a framework that we have to follow. We cannot lie. Now, sometimes lies do go a little further than the truth.

But I think what we’re seeing also is that it doesn’t last long. And so what we have is a pendulum that’s swinging back and forth. One group gets a hold of it. They run for a little bit. They overreach the next group. And so it’s not many of these changes aren’t lasting. And lastly, we don’t have any credibility amongst each other in a republic. Credibility is capital. It’s currency. And so if I’m in a republic and I want to actually be able to convince people on the other side, like Doctor King convinced people on the other side, then they need to know I’m credible. They need to know that I’m not going to lie just because it’s in my immediate or seems to be in my immediate self-interest. So I think for lasting change, to really change hearts and minds, you might not win every election. So if that’s what you’re looking for, this isn’t the key to winning every election. But if you do want to take the time to do it right and reach hearts, I think you do have to be honest. And you have to do it in a way that sticks with Christian principles. That’s what lasting change does. I’m not saying it’s always politically expedient.

Yeah. I want to ask you about what you just said there about in terms of persuasion, convincing people, winning hearts and minds. One of the things that really struck me about just how different some of the strategies and tactics of the civil rights movement and its leaders were from now and came in the way that they saw their enemy. You mentioned the example of Diane Nash, the civil rights leader who talked about how people are not the enemy. Unjustice, sin, unjust systems and structures are the enemy. And you contrast that with the father of, I guess you could call them in some ways the father of cancel culture, Saul Alinsky, whose tactics really characterize really both sides of the culture war, which aims at very much personalizing the opposition, isolating them, personalizing them, hitting where it hurts. And he was very explicit about the fact that don’t go after institutions, it’s people who bleed and that you’ll actually get a lot more political traction, for activist traction if you do that. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit more, perhaps comparing and contrasting the approach towards opponents that the black church and the civil rights movement took compared to where we are now.

Yeah. That’s good. I think it starts with this. It starts with the understanding that we can’t only see the wickedness in our opponents, which sometimes is there and needs to be addressed. But we have to see the wickedness and potential for wickedness in ourselves. So one thing that happens in the culture war is you get this good versus evil framework. They’re good, everything we do is good, everything they do is evil. Now, you may be right that they’re doing more evil than you are, but if you think for a second that your side doesn’t have the potential for evil, you’re going to miss a lot of negative things that you should be standing up against just to be and maintain your side. And so what I have suggested in the book is not a good versus evil viewpoint, which doesn’t align with scripture, but really in Imago Dei and original sin view of it, seeing the Imago Dei, which is the image of God in your opponents, knowing, believing, really believing that they can be redeemed, even if you have to go against them in tenacious ways.

And also knowing the sin in yourself. I think that may be one of the biggest things that they were able to do, is to admit that we can go wrong, that guess what? I can see something that’s evil in society, be fighting against something evil in society, and that can make me evil even in fighting it. So I think sometimes we think if we have a good cause, then all is well. We have a good cause. We’re fighting against something that’s bad. What I learned from reading and listening to my grandparents was it’s not just the cause that matters, it’s the spirit of the cause. And if you look throughout history, whether it’s Stalin or the French Revolution, you see people with good causes initially fighting against things I think we all would agree were evil and turning evil themselves because they didn’t have those principles to keep them grounded and to keep them rooted in something bigger than themselves and in some of their passions and desires.

Yeah. So much to ask about. Let me pick up on one of the things you said about essentially being both aware of our own fallen nature and propensity to evil, but also to critique our own side when we see seeds of wrongdoing start to flourish. And, of course, especially in our highly polarized and negatively polarized current structure, that is very difficult to do. I’m sure we both have heard about, have talked about sort of the plight of what’s been called the in-group moderate, people who do critique their own sides are very likely to find themselves in exile in our current public context. I’d love to hear your thoughts about how we should think about that from a Christian. What does it mean to do that in a spirit of grace and truth? And then how does one deal with the aftermath?

I think it’s the cost of discipleship. I think we get a great example from Jesus himself of that. Jesus comes into a very tense situation. I mean, we’re talking about a Roman occupation here, and people, even within his own community are handling this occupation differently. We see the zealots, for instance, who might be handling it with terrorism and belligerence. Then we see the Herodians who say, if we can just fit in and assimilate, hopefully we can not have any of the issues and benefit from some of the things that are going on in this regime. You have the Pharisees and the Sadducees who say they’re against this occupation, but at the same time are willing to use it to their advantage to maintain their power in their own community. And Jesus comes and does something completely different. He tells us to love our enemy. He doesn’t say, well, you know what? Those Sadducees are legalistic. So let me be a Pharisee, you know, those Pharisees are legalistic. Let me be a Sadducee. I think that’s what we do sometimes. So it’s the cost of discipleship.

And let me be very clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a Republican or being a Democrat. If you think one side gets seven out of ten things right, it makes sense that you might lean that way or the other. The question is, what about the three things they get wrong? And I think what a lot of people are doing today is they’re ignoring those three things they get wrong, not saying anything about it, which discredits their witness just to be a part of the group. And let’s be honest, in many people, and I know yourself and in others, we have many friends who suffered because they stood up and said, this is wrong. Myself to stand up and say, hey, the sexual ethics and the lack of respect for the sanctity of life in the Democratic Party is a huge problem. For people to say in the Republican Party, hey, how you’re treating immigrants, how you’re dealing with racial justice is a problem, comes with consequences. So none of this is easy, but if we read the Bible, it’s a part of the Christian life. And I think the best that we can do is try to come and do that with community, with churches and leaders beside us.

But I don’t think it’s avoidable. I don’t think we can avoid it and be faithful. We have to stand up and say when things are wrong. That’s very different than just being a contrarian though, right? We all know people that just like to kind of stir things up to be different, that’s not profitable to me, but there’s so many things that we all know that we all see that sometimes we look away from. And again, it kills our credibility because the good faith people that are watching, the persuadable people that are watching, when they see us defend something that is indefensible that’s absurd, the next time we come to them to try to persuade them on something else, we lose. So again, this is part strategy. And then it’s mostly principle. These are principles that we have to stand by. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. But when in conflict, we certainly have to choose the principle. And we know that bigger things are ahead and that the victory has already been had.

Yeah. You know, one of the more distressing developments of the last, well really it’s been going on for over a decade, has been the support, the increasing support for violence at the edges of the ideological spectrum. And there have been different surveys that have shown that at this point, around 20% essentially of partisans on either side say that violence against one’s opponent is sometimes justified. And one of the things that struck me is such a stark and dramatic contrast. You framed the idea of nonviolence in the black church, in the midst of reform efforts as a core theological conviction. And that civil rights workers actually received church training, sustained church training in receiving verbal, even physical abuse without returning it in kind. I’d love to hear you say a little bit more about why the movement’s leaders believed that this was so vital, so very central to the movement. And I’m also really curious about the kind of training that they received.

Yeah. One thing that they realized was that this wasn’t just about an exchange of power. And so much of what we see from different ideologies around us and the parties around us is this is about an exchange of power, but to them, it really was about redemption. Can I get the rights that I deserve and also see the redemption of a society or people around me? I don’t win if I have to destroy you to get what I need. I win if we can come together and agree and be enlightened in a way to see things differently. I think that is at the core of what they were doing. They also would say things like, one of the core principles was regardless of how bad your enemy was or how bad things got, you could never let them have a negative impact on your spirit. Right? So if I got the law passed that I wanted to get passed, but now I’m bitter and I’m despairing inside, I lost too much. We tend not to be able to see that tenacious fight for justice, fight for righteousness. Going along with also saying, this is not just a zero sum game. We have a hard time understanding that because everybody’s looking at the scoreboard. But as far as their training, they didn’t just go out there and say, hey, do your best to be nice to these people that are putting dogs on you and spraying you with fire hoses.

They went through a process. A part of their process was spiritual purification. Before they engaged in social action, they had to make sure that spiritually they were in a place that they wouldn’t return evil for evil, that they wouldn’t respond to insults with insults. And so you literally were not supposed to go out until you had that moment of prayer and coming together and fellowship to say, I’m doing this for a different reason. And if I respond in kind, if I reciprocate the hate that I’m getting, then we actually lose. Something else they would do that I think would benefit us too in that process was kind of fact finding. Before you actually say something publicly or you act on it, let’s make sure the facts are what people are saying they are. And today we have these algorithms that literally hide certain perspectives from us. We may not get all the facts, even if we’ve been on there for hours, yet we’re speaking and acting and don’t have all the information. And so this was a very sophisticated, although it was very spiritual, it was also a very sophisticated way of going about social action.

Yeah. Several times in your book, you talk about civic pluralism and, as you mentioned, there are people went from protesting, demonstrating for civil rights to a world post civil rights where real gains had been made. But people are also living alongside, working alongside contending with people who were very unhappy about that. And I’d love to hear you dilate a little bit about how black church leaders pursued their convictions with such intensity and persistence while working within and for a shared civic order, one they didn’t control and which often was comprised of people who might have had authority over them, who continued to mistreat them. How do you operate in a pluralistic way, in a way that both pursues justice and holiness when the mistreatment is ongoing? And you may have lost a particular round, you may be the one who’s mistreated in defeat.

Yeah. So one strategic thing they did, and I’ll get to the spiritual most importantly, this is why people wonder why in the black church, the pastors end up being political leaders. Well it was because a lot of times they had more independence and so they couldn’t be fired because they were leading something. Whereas the White Citizens Council might fire you if you were the leader or you were seen as the face of a movement. Many times pastors were able to step into that. And here’s the other thing. I think it goes back to the understanding of your frailty too. They had respect for other people’s views. And this is what makes, I think, made the movement so democratic was that they wanted to meet you in the public square. They didn’t want to cancel you. They didn’t want you to be quiet. They wanted to give bad ideas a very public and democratic death. And so even if they had to go and debate on somebody else’s terms, from Frederick Douglass all the way down to Fannie Lou Hamer, they wanted to do that because they truly believed that the merits of the case were on their side. And when I look at Christian nationalism and I when I look at cancel culture on the left, I see people that I’m not convinced believe the merits are on their side because they don’t want to have that time in the public square.

They want to do things to give themselves an advantage in the public square instead of actually debating and showing people, no, this is the right thing and please meet me there so I can prove it. That’s the spirit that we need to have. I think we spend too much time trying to find ways to say people don’t deserve to be in the public square or shouldn’t be listened to. No, I want that bad idea to come so I can prove it’s bad and we can move on to the next one. More of that I think would benefit us, but then also realizing that you could be wrong on certain things too. So there’s things that we need to be confident about that we need to approach with some certainty, especially when it comes to human dignity, things of that nature. And then there are others that say, well, we may go about it differently. Let me listen to you because I’ve been wrong before, I can be wrong again. But on those serious issues, we need to have a serious discourse and serious discussion, and I want you there. I want you to meet me there, especially if we have disagreements. A very different posture than we see a lot of times today.

Yeah. Let me ask you about forgiveness. In that we’re in a context, well, in any culture or context, forgiveness is often seen as being weak or squishy. And certainly there are times when forgiveness is urged as a way to gloss over or diminish or just push out of a public memory, great evils, frankly. I’m struck by some of the examples in the book that you cited. I’m thinking of Reverend Shuttlesworth in 1957 with his head bandaged and his arm in a sling, in front of a mob who was very angry and urging both forbearance and forgiveness. And I’d love to hear from you, the role that that forgiveness played in the black church and the civil rights movement, how they thought about it, how they practiced it, how does one keep forgiveness from being abused and to again, whitewashing, glossing over or forgetting evil?

I think more than anything, forgiveness keeps the heart pure. So if I’m going to pursue justice tenaciously, with a pure heart, I can’t have the bitterness, I can’t have hatred on my heart. I can’t hate the person. I have to go against the issue or the behavior. And that really, again, is what allowed them to approach things with clear eyes and a more pure heart than they might have had before. Can it be abused? I think if people have done terrible things and they’re saying, well, just forgive me, yeah, that’s great. The things that are happening still need to change. That doesn’t mean that we can’t have a conversation about what happened to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. I don’t think there’s a time that you shouldn’t forgive. I just think forgiveness doesn’t mean that certain things aren’t addressed at all. And so when people try to use it as a shield to continue to get away with things or to not be held accountable for things that have been done in society for a long time, that’s not what it’s about. It really is about making sure that we can move on, that we can have the humility to say, I’m a recipient of grace, I gotta give grace to somebody else. And even if you look at the situation like Dylann Roof, who goes into a church, who’s accepted into a church, shoots the church up, and these Christians go into his hearing and forgive him. What statement of negativity could have been stronger than that? What could they have said nasty about him that could have been more profound than saying, no, you’re going to go to jail. You’re going to pay for what you did. But we sincerely forgive you, even though you shot our loved ones. At some point, Christians have to realize the power of that. And I think we can become so pragmatic that it’s actually counterproductive, that there are profound things that we can say, that we can move people by sticking with our own principles. And if we lose, and that’s, again, one of the reasons I wrote the book, because I don’t want us to lose sight of how profound the gospel is in addressing issues, but doing it in a certain way.

Yeah. At the outset of our conversation, we talked a little bit about how it is very difficult to do that, which one cannot imagine, that a moral and spiritual imagination necessarily precedes or the orthopraxy. Right action. And as someone who founded an organization aimed at encouraging the expansion of moral imagination into our public sphere, what counsel do you give to people who want to expand their own moral imagination for what is possible in terms of living a faithful life in a true Christian public witness at a time when it seems so very difficult to do so?

Yeah. That’s a good question. One thing that I would say is you have to remember why you’re doing it. You’re not doing it because you’re going to automatically change the world or because you’re going to get glory for everything you’ve done. You’re doing it because it’s right and it glorifies who you serve and it tells people who you serve. And I think when we keep that in mind, that does help us address issues with a different perspective. And so people can go through their day and say, I have to push because there’s something bigger that I’m moving towards. The other thing I would say is more imagination helps us not be arrested by the moment. And so many of us lose our principles. We end up doing things that we thought we would never do or saying things that don’t represent what our faith is about because we’re just set in that moment. And the moment is so toxic, it’s so desperate, there’s so much fear attached to it that it’s like, this is the one exception to all the principles that I had talked about all this time. Well, that’s another reason that’s it’s a good example to use the civil rights movement because the civil rights movement, I would say, is worse, I mean these were people who were getting their churches bombed, whose friends were being lynched, and they would still sing a song like I’m going to treat everybody right until I die and mean it. And so to me, moral imagination is not discounting what can happen in the future, but also making sure that you can engage in a way that’s actually healthy and maintain your principles. Because what’s happening in this moment isn’t everything. And that’s what we don’t hear in the culture war.

Yeah. Justin, this has been terrific. But we’re going to turn to the questions from our viewers. And there’s a bunch of them lined up. And if you are one of those folks who are with us for the first time, you can not only ask a question in the Q&A feature, but you can also like a question. And that helps give us an idea for what some of the more popular questions are. And obviously we won’t be able to get to them all, but we’ll tackle several of them. So the first one comes from Christine Warner. And Christine asks, what counsel would you offer as an effective way to disarm the strange reality that Christians who actually share so much in common, in contrast to non-Christians, end up villainizing and demonizing and fighting so intensely against each other rather than aligning as a family in Christ. That’s where so many of us get stumped and discouraged.

Yeah, I think it goes back to one of the understanding is that we have to allow people to be able to disagree with us, even on things that we hold very dear. I mean, that’s pluralism. That’s forgiveness. Think about this. If the disciples had to agree ideologically on everything, or if they had to have the same perspective, there would not have been 12 disciples. But the 12 disciples were asked to drop all that stuff and follow Christ. And so to some extent, we have to focus on those primary principles. And I think one of the sad things about even the conversation about race, which is a very important conversation that we need to bring back up, is we got to the point if somebody didn’t use the right term exactly the way you wanted them to use it, everything fell apart. Or if you like this movie and I didn’t like it, everything falls apart. Or these authors need to be thrown away because they got one thing wrong. That’s no way to move forward. And in fact, I think in a lot of ways, those things are presented by people who have no interest in us coming together. And so there has to be a good amount of grace within our conversation and a focus on the principles that we share together. But here’s the big thing, a focus on the fact that it’s a command for Christians to love one another. And if we don’t, that has a major impact on our ability to evangelize. And so if me and you are going to be friends, you might say something that I think, well, she could have said that differently, but I gotta see your heart and I have to give it time to build a relationship to say, maybe I can help her see that differently. And maybe there’s things that she can help me see differently. The problem is, today we’re coming to the point on racial lines, partisan lines, that we don’t think other people who disagree with us have anything to contribute to our lives. And that’s a lie.

Yeah. So question from Betsy Cote, who asked, what have you learned about how we can best interact with those on either side of the political spectrum who do not appreciate civil engagement in the first place?

Yeah, that’s a tough one. And sometimes all you can do is model it. There are situations where say, hey, this isn’t safe, this isn’t constructive. I love you, let’s talk about something else. And so there’s no magic wand that you can wave to make somebody ready for that, but you can try to build relationships. And guess what? We don’t have to debate and talk about those issues every time we meet or every time we have a conversation. Let me get to know you. Let me express to you in a sincere way that I care about you as an individual. And I’m also not here to make you look stupid, or all those things that we see in the culture war to tell you how wrong you are. I want to get to know you. And here’s the thing about it. That means that we really have to believe that people aren’t political abstractions. That means we really have to believe that people aren’t defined by their worst opinion, or even by their vote. That there’s so much more behind who people are and what they’ve been through. That if we really got to know them, we might still disagree, but understand a little better.

Yeah. So I’m going to combine two questions that both have to do with pastors. So Shawn Christensen asks. He says, I agree with your thesis. What advice would you give to white evangelical pastors who want to learn from the strength and powerful example of the black church? And then an anonymous attendee asked, based on your experience with the black church, what advice would you give to a pastor who has congregants from both sides and is seeking to avoid talking about politics in order to maintain unity? Any guidance on when to speak out and when the unity argument is more important. So essentially advice to pastors.

So advice to pastors on that second one especially, I think you need to be very explicit that you’re not there to be partisan, that you’re not there to give people a Fox News or a MS NOW sermon, that you are there to challenge them sometimes because I think what happens is people expect their pastor to agree with them on whatever issue. But sometimes and you preferably you want to do this before the big issue comes up, right? Because every time there’s a racial crisis or there’s an election, we try to catch up. There needs to be discipling up until that point. And I think part of that discipling is, I’m not here to affirm your ideology. I’m here to talk about the gospel. You may be right. You may be wrong. The gospel asks far more of us than ideological conservatism or progressivism or either party does. And so I’m here to bring you to that higher standard. You can have those conversations, but I’m here to help you focus on the principles by which you have that conversation. I’m not here every time something happens to affirm what you already believed. And what was the first? I’m sorry. Can you remind me what the first part of that question was?

Sure. The first question was from Shawn, who said, what advice would you give to white evangelical pastors who want to learn from the strength and powerful example of the black church?

I mean, I would look for some powerful resources. I know Bishop Claude Alexander has come up with great resources. Tony Evans has talked about it. Charlie Dates, there are African American leaders and pastors who sometimes just, you need to pick up their book, read the book, find people in your area that are dealing with it in a constructive ways. And the truth is whether there’s white evangelicals or people from the black traditional church like me, not everybody’s dealing with it constructively. So you do need to take the time to recognize if those people are dealing with it constructively. But that doesn’t mean, and let me say this very clearly, that doesn’t mean they’re just going to tell you what you want to hear. And so you have to be willing to accept that challenge here or there knowing that this is a person who is number one biblical, believes in the the authority of Scripture, and is also seeking the redemption of both and willing to have a type of intellectual humility within those conversations.

Yeah. Great. So question from Beth Cook and Beth says, here’s the dilemma. If you rightly push back on the 3/10 of the more extreme things that you disagree with your group about, you will likely get sidelined. But can’t really accomplish anything without being in the group. Lone wolves accomplish nothing. So how do you improve/impact your group without losing your ability to have positive influence?

Well, I think that’s a great question. And it’s dealing with practical concerns that are real. This is why the AND Campaigns and the Trinity forums need to come together. This is why we need to create community so that when somebody does question or whatever, they have cover and they’re not doing so alone, they’re doing so within community because none of us are alone. We think we’re alone because nobody speaks up. And if we continue to speak up, it’s going to continue to be that way. Because what both parties do is they isolate you and they just take you out. We need to work so that they can’t isolate people. So even if I have disagreements with somebody in the Trinity Forum, if they’ve stood up for something that’s right, I need to say they deserve to be able to say this without getting canceled. And there needs to be a community that comes along with them. And that has to happen because as an individual, whether it’s about these issues or not, it’s hard to do anything as an individual. Politics is about doing things in groups, and we need to be able to come together and organize to be a broad coalition of people that’s saying, no, we know we need to stand up. We know about the three things on my side, the three things on your side. We’re going to come together and cover each other and protect each other in that way.

Yeah. Okay. A question from Stephen Roach, who asks most of our current choices to vote for in the upcoming federal elections don’t fit into your ideal. What criteria would you suggest to us to consider as critical, like integrity, ability and willingness to reach across the aisle?

Yeah. I’m one of those people who think character does matter. I want somebody who has a history of showing integrity, of saying, of doing the things that they say. Now these are all politicians. Jesus is not running. And so that’s within reason, but it does matter along with the policy and what I would do when it comes to the policy is, I tell Christians all the time, list your five top policy issues and see who who connects to that the most. We’re not going to have the perfect candidate. So I don’t have a perfect rule for that, but I think we can go through it in a more, sensible way, a more thoughtful way. And those are some of the things that I suggest, but also remember that everything’s not on the vote. So we put so much on this national vote. Think about what’s happening locally where you could have more direct impact on who’s actually running and things of that nature and what’s being brought to the agenda of your school board. Let’s not just focus on what’s going on nationally. Let’s make sure we focus on other things. And once we make that choice for that imperfect candidate, whether it’s on a local level or on a national level, we can’t just defend everything they do even though we know what’s wrong. I think what we tend to do is once we vote for them, now it’s connected to my identity. Therefore I have to defend it. I think it should be just the opposite. Now that I voted, I have to be more likely to hold that person accountable because I’m in part responsible for them being there and make praying the decision, make it. And then I think, go for it in that way.

Yeah, it’s hard to do. A question from an anonymous attendee who asked, many of us are likely thinking that we’d like to dig deeper into the history of the civil rights movement. Can you tell a story or two of people we can learn from and look to as guides for life today?

Yeah. I think it’s some people would come across this conversation and say it’s pollyannaish, but illustrations are really important. And one I would give you is Shirley Chisholm. Shirley Chisholm was the first, she was a congresswoman, the first black woman to run for president in 1972. One of the people she was running against was George Wallace, who we all know was a stark segregationist. And so they were both running the Democratic Party. George Wallace ends up getting shot in an assassination attempt. And Shirley Chisholm stops her campaign and goes to visit him. Now this is somebody that not only didn’t want her to ever be president, but probably didn’t care if she voted, didn’t want her to take part in the political process at all. She stops her campaign, goes to visit him. The first thing she says is, look, we had our disagreements, but this should not have happened. You shouldn’t be here right now. This is not how we are supposed to do things. But she doesn’t stop there. She goes on. She starts naming the things that they agree on. How the little man is being treated, how they should deal with corporations and other things. So what that means is she had the maturity to filter out the hate and all the stuff he was saying about segregation and all the ignorance that was coming out of his mouth and actually stand there and listen to see that he actually had something to contribute. How often do we know we disagree with somebody on something that impacts our identity or our primary issue and still listen to say, but there’s still something there. There’s something redeemable. So after all this is done, maybe it’s months later. I don’t know the exact amount of time she obviously left. And George Wallace goes on an apology tour and he apologizes for his views, segregation and all the things that he’s done. Now outside of the gospel, what reason did Shirley Chisholm have to believe that that would ever happen?

Yeah.

That’s why we don’t doubt what the gospel can do. She went there because she thought that was the best thing for a Christian to do. Not because she could make a logical argument for it, but there was a power in her ability not only to listen to him, but to have compassion for somebody that had no compassion for her. To me, that’s the kind of defining illustration of what this is about. And that I think provides a really good example of when you act as God has told you to the amazing things that he can do through your public witness.

That’s great. So a question for another anonymous attendee who asked, could you discuss what the Black Church’s experience can offer as we deal with the technological environment we’re now living in. Ai, algorithms, social media, all these things colonizing our attention.

That’s a tough one. I mean, I don’t want to guess too much. They weren’t they weren’t dealing with a lot of these technical issues. But one thing that I named before is just kind of like the fact checking, not speaking before you know what’s going on. So many times our algorithms make us think we’ve seen everything and we really just haven’t seen it. And so I would suggest that we kind of take a step back. 2 Corinthians 5:20 says that we are ambassadors of Christ as if he were making his appeal through us. What we say on social media, what we say in public matters. And I think if each of us would think of some of the things that we’ve said publicly or on social media or shared on social media, we wouldn’t say that it was something God would say speaking through us. And if we’re truly ambassadors, I think the best thing I can tell you is to think that way. Number one, try to get away from that algorithm as often as you can. The other thing I would say too is I think based on how they went about things, they would get rid of the conflict entrepreneurs in their feed. I think those people who have built their platform off of division, off of hate, off of keeping you enraged. I feel like they would say those people shouldn’t be influencers in your lives. And each of us have those people in our algorithm. I think it’s time to seek those people out and unfollow them, get them out of our algorithm because they are discipling us to hate our neighbors. They’re discipling me to think that everything a white evangelical does is meant to harm me. They’re discipling you to think that all African Americans are are acting this way or that way. That’s not true. Build the relationship yourself. Get to know people yourself and get rid of those conflict entrepreneurs.

All right. So Victoria Martino asked, was Sojourner Truth an inspiration to you? If so, can you please share with us and more broadly, who are some of the other black Christian leaders from the pre-Civil rights era we should listen to today?

Pre-civil rights. Okay. Yeah. Sojourner Truth for sure. I mean, one of the things that sticks out to me about her is just courage and leadership. The oratory and how this is not somebody that went to Ivy leagues, but someone who had a great way of communicating and moving people and having an impact on people. Somebody else is Richard Cain, who was one of the first black congressmen in South Carolina. And just to read about him and hear about how he felt about the potential of democracy to be representing so many people who had just gotten out of slavery, and to really believe that this democracy, this constitutional republic, had the tools needed to make this a nation that could really treat people better than it did. To me, that takes a lot to be able to see through all that your people have gone through and say, no, there’s some there’s still something here. Of course, Frederick Douglass was able to do the same things. But again, in the book, it talks about civil rights, but it actually starts before that, it actually starts with reconstruction. And so you get a number of those examples that I think you’ll enjoy to hear those stories.

That’s great. So let’s see here. We’ve got another question from an anonymous attendee going back to apologizing and forgiveness. So they write the concepts of apologizing and granting for on one hand, and granting forgiveness on the other seem to be considered a sign of weakness in all spheres now. What can we learn from the black church that might turn us around?

I think again, we have to separate ourselves from things that are politically expedient. If we only do what’s politically expedient at this moment, it’s the perfect recipe to maintain this toxic status quo. And it’s only by-And yes, can I guarantee you that if you’re in a position and let’s say you’re in office and that you do one of these things, can I guarantee you won’t lose that office? I can’t guarantee you that. But again, if you have a remnant of people who are more interested, not that things aren’t important, but they’re more interested on doing things the right way and the belief that it will always be profitable, then you do impact people. I mean, if you look, one thing that we’re dealing with is just people don’t believe in our institutions. There’s no trust in our institutions. How do they begin to trust institutions if Christians are just doing what’s politically expedient? Is there honor in losing something but doing it the right way? And I think for the civil rights movement, doing the things, doing things the right way, putting their lives on the line to do things the right way, that’s what spoke to the nation. It was that self sacrifice. And if I understand love from a Christian perspective, it’s about that self sacrifice. And so until we can be self sacrificial, that also comes with planning and the coalition building that I talked about, it’s not always just about going on that, that kamikaze mission, so to speak. But it is a willingness to do it when necessary. And you see Chesterton behind me and that’s his definition of courage, really loving life, but being willing to die for, for something that’s bigger than you. If we’re not willing to have a part of our career die or something like that to push a bigger principle, then I think we’re missing a large part of what our faith is about.

Yeah, well, we’re rapidly running out of time. So I’m actually going to combine two questions to pose to you. And then later I’ll ask you for a last word. So we have one question from an anonymous attendee who writes, we all see a lot that is wrong with our society right now, but what are some of the things you’re observing that actually encourage you? And then a question from Betsy Cote, who says, do you have a favorite or most inspiring saying or action that comes from the civil rights movement? So what encourages you, and is there a saying or action from the civil rights movement that is inspiring to you?

That’s good. What encourages me the most? And this happened last week. I mean, I live in the city of Atlanta. Obviously the civil rights generation is passing away, but there are still some people who are near that age and things like that, that are still around. And so it’s great to be around them. But if I speak or something, or if they engage with the AND Campaign, just hearing people from that generation say, this is what it was really about that, that we’re doing it justice and to know, and just to really go around the country and see people in different spaces, white evangelical churches, a tradition of black churches catching on to this and saying, that’s what we’re missing. A lot of what the AND Campaign does, we didn’t create the framework that we talk about, but we were able to articulate it and give it language. And when people feel like they got language from that, it really does, and this is personal, but that really does encourage us in general. And just to see some of the young leaders rising up that do have that courage to do things in a different way and to challenge things that if you’re just worried about professional achievement that you would never challenge. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m forgetting. Give me the other one really quick. I apologize.

A favorite or most inspiring saying or action that comes from the Civil Rights movement.

A saying or action. I’ll go with Fannie Lou Hamer. Another person that’s looking at me right now from behind. She had a saying. There was a moment when she was like, I don’t know if anything’s going to happen with this civil rights stuff. It doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere or whatever. So people are like, well, why are you still doing it? And she said, I do it because it’s my mission, because it’s my calling. God has called me to do it. So again, I’m not doing it just because it’s politically expedient. I have to do it. And if we view our calling and our mission, whether it’s for reconciliation, whether it’s for the sanctity of life through those lenses, again, I think we see the reward in it. Even in those times where it looks bleak because King, all these people, Fred Shuttlesworth, all these people had a moment where they were hurt or had a moment where they didn’t know where they were discouraged. And I think it’s that view that I just have to do it and trust God, that it means a lot to me and helps me get through, you know, some of the tougher moments myself.

And finally, as we indicated before, we’d like to wrap up with a final thought from you, Justin.

Yeah. Well, for one, I’d like to thank Trinity Forum as well. Thank you all for having me. It’s an honor to be here, and I’ve appreciated your content and what you’re doing for the public square for a while. My last thing would be this, I think we all need to think about what are outsiders who need to know Jesus getting from our public witness. I think sometimes it’s in the darkest of times when the light will shine the brightest. And so if people were to view you, look at your post, see what you say on social media and what you say publicly, would they just say, well, that person’s a really good conservative or a really good progressive, or they’re really devoted to that, but would in some way they be able to see Jesus because you’ve responded differently than the culture war would have you respond to make them wonder who this person that you say is your savior, what that person’s really about. And so I think we all have a chance to make our mark, to make those who are watching us wonder about this Jesus and wonder why we respond in the way that we do, that we’re not going to be toxic, that we are going to draw the line and maintain our principles, even when it’s not in our immediate self-interest. I think that’s what will draw people to Jesus, not us being the best conservative or progressive we can be, but getting it right on the issues and maintaining our principles.

Justin. Thank you. It’s been great to talk with you.

Thanks for having me.

And thank you to all of you for joining us. Have a great weekend.