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Kelly Brown Douglas - Christianity, The Law, Racial Justice, and The Moral Imaginary: Part 2
59 Plays8 months ago
In this season of Interactions, Terri Montague, and Brandon Paradise, engage with contemporary leaders and social change agents regarding the influence and convergence of Christianity, the law, and racial justice. Today’s guest is Reverend Doctor Kelly Brown Douglas, the Canon Theologian at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, author of several books, and the president of Episcopal Divinity School. Douglas is also a leading scholar of womanist theology, social justice, sexuality, and the Black Church, as well as racial reconciliation. This podcast is produced by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in collaboration with Canopy Forum.
Kelly Brown Douglas: Episcopal Divinity School
Center for the Study of Law and Religion: Center for the Study of Law and Religion | Emory University School of Law | Atlanta, GA
Canopy Forum: Canopy Forum
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Transcript
Religion's Core Question: More to Life?
00:00:04
Speaker
That's what religion is all about. Religion is asking the question, is there more to life than this? And the religious person says yes. And the religious person has to fight for the more.
Podcast Introduction: Law and Religion
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to Interactions, a podcast exploring how law and religion interact in today's world and throughout
Season Focus: Christianity, Law, and Racial Justice
00:00:24
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history. In this season of Interactions, Terry Montague and I, Brendan Paradise, engage with contemporary leaders and social change agents regarding the influence and convergence of Christianity, the law, and racial justice in their work. This podcast is produced by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in collaboration with CanopyForum.org.
Guest Spotlight: Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas
00:00:46
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You are listening to the second of two episodes in which we engage with the Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas. Dr. Douglas is the canon theologian at the National Cathedral in Washington DC and the president of Episcopal Divinity School. Dr.
Racial Justice: Memory and Narrative
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Douglas is a leading scholar of womanist theology, social justice, sexuality, and the black church, as well as racial reconciliation. In our last episode,
00:01:11
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We discussed the importance of recovery memory and changing the narrative to addressing racial injustice. We continue that discussion in this episode as Dr. Douglas shares with us her thoughts on the path forward with faith, hope, and laughter.
White Supremacy and Moral Vision
00:01:35
Speaker
We concluded our last episode with you mentioning the route to fixing the problem. You previously indicated that one of our challenges to doing this involves the self-reinforcing nature of white supremacy, white privilege, and the hegemony of these power structures. What do you see in our time as the way to not only galvanize the kind of moral vision and energy needed, but also to translate it into transformative action?
Urgency in Racial and Religious Issues
00:02:05
Speaker
Well, first of all, you know, if we can't see that there's an urgency of now as Dr. Martin Luther King would say, then I don't know. I don't know what more in a sense could motivate particularly the black faith community or black community and other people on the underside of what's going on in our country today.
First Amendment and Discrimination
00:02:33
Speaker
Because, of course, what we see is that, well, talking about the intersection of religion and law, we see a right, the evangelical right, if you will, coming to bear using the second clause of the First Amendment as a way to that you have the right, no one can inhibit your freedom of religion. They're using that whole notion
00:03:02
Speaker
as a way to discriminate, right? So that you have, because of your religious freedom, you have the right to do what you want to do. And no one can impose something on you that restricts your religious freedom. And therefore, if you don't want to serve LGBTQ persons, you don't have to do that.
Legacy of Equality and Freedom
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If you don't want to treat black people right, you ain't got to do that. So if there's
00:03:28
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what's going on and we've seen what's happened with Supreme Court rulings, if that's not enough to motivate us, I really don't know what one can do, but say that it's not. Here's the thing I know, that if it weren't, and I've talked about this in my book because it's what motivates me, if we can't
00:03:55
Speaker
be concerned for our own state of affairs and wellbeing, we have to fight for the children we don't see. What do we want to be our legacy for the children that we don't see? The three of us wouldn't be here talking right now. If it weren't for people who fought for us,
00:04:20
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people who didn't even begin to enjoy the freedoms, quote unquote, that we enjoy. As I say in my book, they couldn't breathe a free breath and never dreamt that they could breathe a free breath. Yet they fought for freedom anyhow. They fought for the freedom that they believed in. For them was the freedom that was the justice of God and the freedom that they wanted, the three of us.
Theology's Role in Justice
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to enjoy that to me is the motivating factor. We have to be motivated up in that here by our history and by our future. And this is where theology is so important because you said there are those who would make claims for religious freedom
00:05:07
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discriminate against other folks, right? And we know that throughout the black experience in America, we've been cognizant of, aware of a sharp difference between the gospel of the slaver and the gospel, right, that liberates all people and black people in particular. Could you say a few words about how it is that we begin as people of faith who are also scholars of law and scholars of theology
00:05:38
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to differentiate in the public imaginary the difference between what James Cone would call the gospel of the oppressed and the gospel of the oppressor, because that seems to me to be really significant and central to the dynamic you've just described about the uses of religion. Yeah, no, that is so very right. One has to decide, you know, what kind of God do you believe in?
Historical Christianity and Oppression
00:06:05
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You really have to decide what is your norm for understanding who God is, right? Because this is what comes into conflict. And if you really believe that God is a God of justice, that God is a God of love,
00:06:24
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then it seems to me that you have to ask yourself then as you begin to do things under the guise of it with a religious sacred canopy, is this reflective of a God of love? Is this reflective of a God who is just? Now, you know, Christianity in particular is a very dangerous religion when it aligns itself with power.
00:06:46
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And in fact, some of us say way off track when it did that, particularly tracing all the way back to Constantine. And it becomes a religion that has all of the tools, all of the resources to oppress.
00:07:02
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And that is what we have historically seen happen when Christianity aligns itself with
Faith vs. Racial Identity
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power. We must always also be aware that there have always been a legitimating sacred canopy for people who've tried to enact unjust power. And Christianity has served that purpose well in the Western world. So Brandon, I don't know if there is any fail-safe way
00:07:34
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to begin to get people to understand that religion can't be used that way.
00:07:42
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except to help them to understand that the inconsistency in who they claim God to be or what they claim their faith to stand for and how that faith is actually being enacted. But here's the thing. One has to also ask the question, really, what comes first? I can ask that in terms of the enslaver. I can ask that in terms of the way in which we see
00:08:11
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white right-wing persons using religion today. And I ask this, I think in my book, white people got to make a choice. You had to make a choice between being white and being Christian, can't be both. And so, and I say that too. And then I ask myself, well, what comes first, your whiteness or your faith?
00:08:34
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And if you make the decision that it's more important to you to be white with all the privileges and rights there too, then you use your faith to provide a sacred canopy of protection over your whiteness. Now, if you say your faith comes first, then your faith critiques your whiteness.
00:08:53
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And so people have to make a decision, make a choice, and I don't know how better to say that or get them to do that, but to get people to realize you've got to make a stark choice here. You can't be at once white and Christian, and I don't mean white just because you happen to look like a white American, but living into what the white moral imaginary. And you can.
Politics vs. Faith
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And I don't know, too often, you know, people of privilege who enjoy the privilege of whiteness is hard for them to make a choice for their faith because that means they're going to have to give up the privilege of whiteness because you just can't be both.
00:09:33
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Wow, that's a powerful idea regarding making a choice. And yet so much of the empirical research says that when push comes to shove and people have to choose between their faith commitments and their political commitments, they're actually choosing their political commitments. And yet in your book, Resurrection Hope, you leave us with this resurrection invitation to open up spaces for critical self-evaluation, for critical deliberation,
00:09:59
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for critical reform.
Conversations for Change
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How are these conversations to be structured? We can talk to and among ourselves, but it seems to me it's the cross talk where some of the real possibility for social change and structural change exist for our society. If you had audience with all of those well-positioned leaders right now who are looking inward in their communities more so than outward and upward to God's vision, what would your guidance to them be
00:10:28
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in terms of how we begin to have the kind of needed crosstalk. Something has to happen prior to that, right? And you just implied that. And that is something has to happen within particularly white communities and white communities of faith. And in my book, I'm pretty clear that the quote unquote good white Christians need to step out, make a choice and start being Christian and start talking to their own folk. They need to call these people out.
00:10:56
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that they need to find themselves, and I really mean this, out on the Dagon public square, calling these
00:11:07
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Christians who, these white people who happen to be Christian out because those people are controlling our public narrative and they're controlling our political narrative and they're controlling the landscape right now and making life even more difficult for minoritized and marginalized peoples of color.
00:11:28
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White faith leaders have a particular responsibility to not only talk within their own communities and have those hard conversations within their own communities and begin to open up the moral imaginary of their own communities,
00:11:43
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They also have a particular responsibility to put their voices out there on the public square and call those folk out and to challenge that narrative. And I must say, you don't see a lot of good white Christians doing that. And, you know, when people of color get out there and do it, well, you know, it's discounted or that's what you expect.
00:12:09
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good, quote unquote, the good white Christians. They can't be silent as King would say. They've got to go out there and take the risk. And what for them is the risk? The risk for them is that then they become marginalized within their community or they use their power and whiteness and all of those things. Well, so be it.
00:12:27
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if indeed they've made the choice to be Christian. And so that, you know, so I, I've just affirmed what you said, but I don't feel like having any cross talk with folks who haven't already, I will meet them out there. I won't meet them. Oh, do you think we, this time to have a conversation? No, no. When I meet you out there in the fight, then, then I know you're already, you're already in.
Public Challenges Against Racism
00:12:51
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But I'm not going to meet you in a back room somewhere to have. Let's talk about race. No. I'll talk with you if you're already out there in the struggle.
00:13:04
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Let me give you one example, and I don't want to sort of, I don't know, affirm sort of my own folk, but, you know, and she'd be the first to say all the time that she's not perfect. But I think of someone like, and I wrote about it in my book, Bishop of Washington, Mary Ann Buddy, right? When Trump goes out there with his little Bible and all that, well, she calls him out.
00:13:35
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And of course, calls him out on a national scene, a national platform. But she also, when Trump talked about Baltimore and called Baltimoreans to say Baltimore is full of rodents and all of that, and he talked about Elijah Cummings, she co-authored with me a piece that said, have you no decency? Again, calling him out.
00:14:04
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putting her faith before her whiteness, right? Now, of course, the other side of that is, as my son asked, and when he saw her do that, and I ask of her, so, okay, why can't you do that all along? You know, where were you when it wasn't about Trump, when it was about
00:14:26
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you know, black people continually being killed by the police, et cetera. Where are you when, you know, fellow white Christians and Christians in quotes are using their faith to discriminate? Where are you then? This is where, you know, white people have to make the choice to be out there
00:14:50
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and to call their own into question and to live into their faith and not their whiteness. And when they're out there, this is why I did mine pairing with a visual buddy, because she gets out there. So when they're out there, I don't care, you'll make mistakes, but at least you're on the arc that bends toward justice. We all make mistakes. But I'm not going to deal with it if you aren't already out there.
Symbolic Actions for Racial Justice
00:15:12
Speaker
In that connection, I want to make two quick comments about your text. You mentioned this shocking,
00:15:19
Speaker
to my mind, fact that the Washington National Cathedral had stained glass windows of General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. And those were only recently removed. And this is the way in which the white imaginary deodorizes
00:15:42
Speaker
sanctions and legitimates white supremacy by lifting these two figures up, as you say, as Christian soldiers. And then closely connected to that is Presiding Bishop Michael Curry's call to actually be a part of the Jesus movement. That to my mind was a powerful call because it underscored the way in which the church itself has not always been a part of the Jesus movement.
00:16:13
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which is then tied to the silence of white Christians and tied to the indifference that's too often clear about black suffering.
00:16:23
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among white Christians. You're right. And let me start with Bishop Curry calling us into the Jesus movement. And I thought just like you, Brendan, I thought, oh, my gosh, that is so biting and prophetic and courageous. And, you know, some of my fellow white Episcopalians probably missed the point of it because the point of it was that you all have not been a part of the Jesus movement.
00:16:50
Speaker
And so what we too often find is that we protect an institution and forget to be church. To call ourselves church is aspirational. Bishop Currie was calling people away from an institution that happens to be religious into being church. And that's a movement. So get that, that's a movement. A movement toward a more just future and all that that requires. The cathedral,
00:17:16
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and its windows. First of all, it was just September 23rd, the weekend of September 23rd, that the cathedral has come full circle in terms of its windows because the windows were taken down in 2017, I believe, and they were called for it to be taken down. In 2015, we engaged in a process
00:17:45
Speaker
and I'll talk about that and it will answer your question to lead us to take down those windows. But two weeks ago on September 23rd,
00:17:56
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The windows were replaced and they were replaced by two windows that were commissioned by the cathedral commissioned Kerry James Marshall to replace the windows. He charged the cathedral $18.65.
00:18:17
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to replace and there are two wonderful stained glass windows now there that reveal a movement toward freedom.
00:18:29
Speaker
and black bodies in those windows. And the inscription beneath those windows is provided by our own poet laureate, Elizabeth Alexander. And she provided a poem to be inscribed beneath those windows. So that's the full circle of those windows, the in-between
00:18:55
Speaker
that happened. These are the hard question, the hard conversations that you're talking about. The in between when those windows, when the Dean at the time was Dean Gary Hall called for those windows to be down, taken down, there was also a task force that was put in place to see, well, what are we gonna do about that? I was asked to be on that task force.
00:19:22
Speaker
We engage, what I recognize, and I talk about this in my book, is that we begin to engage in conversations the cathedral had never engaged in before. Conversations about race, conversations about the stories in those windows, the stories left out of those windows, and how in the world did those windows stay in this cathedral for 70 years? And I didn't know about them, and I had been in and out of the cathedral, but a whole lot of folk did know about them because they were in a bay, ironically. They were in the bay in which Woodrow Wilson is entombed, so I had no reason to go into that bay.
00:19:51
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so I really never saw those windows. But the cathedral launched into these conversations.
00:19:59
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about history, being told, not told, what it meant to be a house of prayer for all people when you got windows like that in there. And really began to have these conversations, our conversations about race, racial justice, launched a racial justice task force, launched racial justice programming that continues to this day that allowed the community to move together
00:20:26
Speaker
Yes, we had some people that left and protested, et cetera, but to move together to the point that they're celebrating two weeks ago, putting in these windows by Kerry James Marshall that tells a whole different story about God and the cathedral and a place where people of color didn't often feel welcome now.
Faith Communities Prioritizing Justice
00:20:51
Speaker
is more inviting and also calls the question for the cathedral because it forces the cathedral to continue to live into the story they claim to tell and that those windows now hold them accountable to as opposed to having windows of two white enslaving traders for the cathedral to hold accountable to.
00:21:10
Speaker
So I think the cathedral and I, you know, it's got a long way to go, but I think the cathedral is a good example of what can happen in a white faith community that wants to begin to take its faith more seriously than its whiteness. Right. And also tied to your notion of reparation as going beyond compensation and instead trying to construct a world that's just whatever that may require.
00:21:37
Speaker
And these are all small movements, as I understand your thought. You don't have to always take on a radical restructuring. That's important. But all of these, what seem to be, you say in your text, you might think some of these changes as less important, but they're all important because they go to the symbolic world that structures are mental imaginary. And so when we see monuments around the country,
00:22:01
Speaker
to former enslavers, to folks who fought to continue the oppression of black folks, we are then seeing the lifting up of the legitimation of white supremacy. Now, that's exactly right. You know, it's not here's what I say. We can look and say, oh, my gosh, look where we are today. I mean, and look where we are today. How do we get out of this?
00:22:29
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We'll never
Engagement in Justice Movements
00:22:30
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get out. We can be hopeless. Or we can look and say, okay, you know, the object here is to create a movement toward a more racially just society. And that happens, you know, by always staying engaged in the fight. I say that two things have to happen.
00:22:55
Speaker
we have to continually offer the critiques, sort of the critical analysis and the critique, the ideological critique of what's going on. And that becomes the role of folk like you, like us to continually, there's a role for everybody. And if we too as scholars and legal scholars, theologians, et cetera, we have to hold ourselves accountable, not to the narratives of our guild,
00:23:22
Speaker
but to the narratives of a more just future and hold ourselves accountable to the people who made it possible for us to even be here talking about the narrative. And that means that we use our tools as lawyers, legal scholars, theologians, et cetera, to critique, do the ideological critique and call into question and be able to say, no, no, no, no, no, this system, something's wrong with the system, to talk about a moral imaginary.
00:23:53
Speaker
Right? We have the luxury to do that. Right? And one more thing. So we have the luxury to do that, right? Because we, by and large, the three of us, we aren't going hungry. So, you know, you can't think when you're hungry. We have the luxury to do that. There's also one other thing that always has to go to that. That and always
00:24:17
Speaker
and be engaged in movement, be engaged in movements, be engaged in the action on the ground in some way. So that two things will move us closer and as long as we stay engaged in the prophetic critical critique and in the movements, then we're gonna move if not into closer even when we take two steps back.
00:24:45
Speaker
As I look at the recent history during COVID and since, elections, election season, the tenor of our elections in this country and now after January 6th, the aftermath of our elections and the disquiet and unsettledness seem to represent those kinds of setbacks.
00:25:12
Speaker
And yet here we are moving into another major election season. I bring that up as I ask a broader question. You mentioned movements, but what ultimately gives you hope that we can sustain our momentum towards racial justice in this country given the intense polarization and the way elections
00:25:41
Speaker
unfortunately bring out the worst.
Hope Amidst Polarization
00:25:43
Speaker
Here's one thing that brings out the worst in us. Yeah, it manifests itself in elections, but black progress brings out the worst in us. Can I mean that? W.B. Du Bois was right. You know, after Reconstruction, we went free for a moment and then moved right back, we're in the sun for a moment, moved right back on into slavery. Here's what we know, and I'm going to get to what gives me hope, but I just want to say, you know, here's what we know historically,
00:26:10
Speaker
Anytime black people have made progress toward freedom, there has been a backlash because the white supremacist narrative always pushes back. And it's usually proportional. It is no surprise that after a black man was in that Oval Office, that we get MAGA realities. That's the proportional response to that.
00:26:37
Speaker
And so there's always, as we know, there's a backlash after the civil rights movement, et cetera. So black progress, it seems to me, brings out the worst in this nation because the nation is grounded.
00:26:51
Speaker
founded back to the beginning. It found it upon this white exceptional supremacist foundation. It's in its blood and it like always jumps back and roars back anytime something, something begins to dislodge it. And that's what we're seeing. And that's why you have this. We ain't going to talk about that in our schools because they don't, if we don't talk about it, then you can't dislodge it. And they're seeing the threat. So.
00:27:19
Speaker
Even as I say that, it's like, so Kelly, what gives you hope? First of all, let me say this. Let me be honest. There are days when I'm scratching my head and saying, Lord, have mercy.
00:27:33
Speaker
And I'm looking at my now very adult son and saying, now you know, don't limit yourself to where you live. You might need to think about following the tradition of the Baldwin's and the Du Bois and repatriating somewhere else.
Young Activists Fueling Hope
00:27:53
Speaker
Because I, you know, how far is the pendulum going to swing back? And where we are right now is a scary time.
00:28:02
Speaker
But what gives me hope? As long as there is a movement, as long as people stay engaged, I mean that, I will be hopeless if I see people who are no longer engaged in calling the question.
Resilience through Laughter
00:28:24
Speaker
no longer fighting for justice and for freedom. And so as long as there are those folk like the Justin Joneses and the Justin Pearsons, you know, that's at least two generations beneath me. As long as they're still out there in places like the House in Tennessee still,
00:28:48
Speaker
trying to fight, then I have hope. As long as there are Black Lives Matter movements, then I have hope. I will no longer have hope when people give up and give up on the possibilities for something better and something more. And our people,
00:29:17
Speaker
Look at us, our people don't give up. Our people stay rooted in the possibilities for the more. That's what religion is all about. Religion is asking the question, is there more to life than this? And the religious person says yes. And the religious person has to fight for the more. I wanted to end with something about laughter.
00:29:43
Speaker
because you just hit on this idea, right, between where we are and where we need to be. And in your text, laughter is that signal of transcendence that captures a discrepancy between what we are and what we ought to be. There is a black tradition, right, of laughter, of humor, be it the blues, be it this raw black comedy. And I even say that jazz is laughter through music, always signifying.
00:30:10
Speaker
and pointing to the possibilities of, as you say, the transcending the present. Here's the thing about laughter. You know, it points, laughter, you only laugh when there's this great discrepancy that makes you laugh. There's this absurdity that makes you laugh. This world,
00:30:32
Speaker
in which we live is absurd, but what's even more absurd is for us to be striving for justice and saying that we're going to get there. That's God's last laugh. I always say, you know, read your Bible. Jesus laughed all the ... is playful. The resurrection is God's last. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Got you. You all thought
00:30:57
Speaker
You on? We got you. And that, you know, to me, the black struggle has been a struggle of laughter because we have never given up.
00:31:09
Speaker
I mean, really, we have never given up. And I know that there must be some white supremacists scratching their little heads because we have never given up. And that's my laughter. And that's why I laughed when I was down there on Black Lives Matter Plaza, because I'm looking at the mega White House and all them folk out there talking about Black Lives Matter. And I just busted out laughing because it was like we got the last laugh.
00:31:37
Speaker
So yeah, laughter is a part of the Black tradition of struggle against the absurdities of Black life. Well, thank you, Dr. Douglas. The Black folks that we come from are enduring, strong, resilient, hopeful, never going to give up. And we thank you for your unwavering, unflagging leadership, unflagging commitment to justice. So thank you very much, Dr. Douglas.
00:32:03
Speaker
You've given us so much rich wisdom and you've issued within it a challenge to choose for those who haven't made the choice of choosing faith over their whiteness. And even for blacks having to choose how we will enact our quest, our belief, our living that future that is now.
00:32:33
Speaker
in our lived experience and so thank you so much for your time and for sharing it.