...From White Supremacy: Hierarchy w/ Kat Armas

In this episode, Brandi sits down with scholar and author of the forthcoming book Abuelita Theology, to talk about hierarchy and decolonial theory/theology. You can find her at @Kat_armas or on her podcast, The Protagonistas.

You can support RMT by subscribing, rating, and reviewing or financially partner at Patreon.com/brandinico. 

Taking our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress. 
@reclaimingmytheology

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Reclaiming My Theology, Episode 12: Hierarchy

Brandi: Hello, and welcome to Reclaiming My Theology, a podcast seeking to take our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress. As usual, thank you for all of your support and subscribing, rating, and reviewing. Because of that, we’re going to take this little ditty a little bit farther and expand to more mediums in the near future. So if you haven’t joined us on Patreon, you can join at Patreon.com/BrandiNico.

Today, I’m joined by Kat Armas to talk about hierarchy, and really, we go a lot into decolonial theology. She is a total boss, and I particularly enjoy these conversations that I get to have with women of color.

Along this journey so far, some of you have been asking how I came to this place of reclaiming my theology and what resources, practices, and people have been helpful along the way. So, at the end of each episode in the coming weeks, I’m going to be highlighting some spaces and some people who’ve been really helpful in my journey that might be really helpful in yours. So, particularly women, stick around to the very end to hear about one of my friend’s coaching spaces that could help you expand the authenticity and full expression of your leadership outside of patriarchal spaces.

So, with that, please enjoy this conversation with Kat Armas.

**

Brandi: I am super glad to have you on and excited for what you’re going to bring to listeners today. So thanks for your time.

Kat: For sure. No, thank you for inviting me.

Brandi: So, Kat, for folks who don’t know you—which, they really should. I feel like if they’re on – if they’re anywhere, like, adjacent to progressive evangelical or post-evangelical space, they should probably have seen your stuff pop up somewhere. [Kat laughs] But in the event that they haven’t, Kat, what does it mean to be you?

Kat: Well – oh, that’s such a good question, because I – I’ve been actually wrestling with this question so much as I’m writing – working on my book, because of the – just the multiple identities that I’m constantly, like, in and out of. And for so long I think I was – you know, I would call myself one thing, like, “I am a Latina woman” but I’m, like, really –

So, to be me—[Kat laughs]—I am a Cuban American woman, born and raised in Miami, Florida. I currently live in Los Angeles. Yeah, I was raised Catholic on the heels of popular Catholicism that came from the Caribbean, from Cuban, and then I found myself in white evangelicalism in my early 20s. So, that was…a thing, and I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit about, you know, what that means. But going from, you know, this very, very Cuban context in Miami, then moving into, like, the subculture of the subculture of the subculture of white evangelicalism in Southern Louisiana in my early 20s—

Brandi: Oooh!

Kat: —was very interesting. Because I was an adult, so I didn’t grow up in white evangelicalism, so I was able to see much of it, you know, as an adult, as someone who had a lot of life experience prior to that point. And then I quickly realized that, Wait a minute, there’s something really off here. So let’s figure out what that is. [Kat laughs]

And I sort of stepped out of that space, and, since then – and I mentioned the whole multiple identities because, since then, I feel like I really have been trying to make sense of all of my identities in a world that wants to give you one or say that one is it. So I have just really been wrestling with all of these things.

So I am a Christian woman, yes. I’m a progressive Christian woman. But I’m also someone interested in decolonial studies. So in many ways, decolonialism rejects any of those sort of—[Kat laughs]—you know, labels of progressive, or liberal, or whatever, conservative. So I’m also trying to figure out what that means as someone interested in a decolonial approach to life, right.

Yeah, and I’m also – I’m married, and I am – I would consider myself somewhat of an academic, I love just studying things—[Kat laughs]—really deeply. I just graduated from Fuller Seminary with two master’s degrees and looking forward to doing doctoral work. So that’s a little bit.

Brandi: There’s so much in there, right. I love that you just – so I love when women of color do this, where it’s – we’re not taught to flex, really, but you’re like, “Oh, I just graduated from Fuller with two master’s degrees, probably going to go on to a doctoral.” I’m like, “Who graduates with two master’s degrees at the same time?” [Brandi and Kat laugh] But that sounds like it tells us a lot about who you are in some ways.

And so I would love if you could give us a sense, like, what is your sense of vocation? Why do you do the work that you do? What is the work that you see yourself contributing to the world?

Kat: Yeah, so I—[Kat laughs]—yes, the whole two masters thing is funny. I didn’t mean to do that. But yeah, it does say a little bit of who I am.

So, prior to starting seminary, I was a psychology major. I was studying as a behavior analyst, behavior therapist, which I won’t even go into all the issues with that, but that’s what I was doing. And then I had, you know, this very, very evangelical experience in my early 20s and decided – and, you know, I am – I know we’re trying to push away from enneagram labels, but I am a very hardcore 8 in that sense that I just, you know, I am just gonna get that thing done, and I’m just gonna pursue it.

And so I decided, you know, “I think I want to do” – well, I had been writing on the side, so I had, you know, just this little blog that – my own little, like, “These are my thoughts, you know, on life.” And I decided that I – as I had this very intense experience with God and – and with evangelical Christianity at this very Hillsong event, you know, one of those things, and, you know, I had this, like, moment of like, “Well, now what do I do with my life? I have to give it all up and just follow Jesus.” And then I actually did do that, right? So, like, I just, you know, joined a seminary, and I just started studying. And then within that, I think that that really opened up my world.

So, I was at a southern Baptist setting and a very white evangelical setting, coming straight fresh from Miami, you know, with all of my Miami-ness—[Brandi laughs]—you know, within that. It’s toned down a little bit since I haven’t lived there in several years, but that was just a major shock for a lot of people, including myself. And so that kind of started my first degree of trying to—[Kat laughs]—you know, let’s just try to get an MDiv. And then I realized there’s so much here that I still don’t know, and I transferred to another seminary, and I realized that there was just – yeah, there was a lot that I just didn’t know after two years of seminary in a white institution. So, that sort of opened up my world into pursuing another degree and seeing, you know, what else I can glean from all this.

So, as a sense of vocation, I see myself as someone who really just wants to speak from my position, my social location, from who I am, and use that to help people see other ways of understanding the world and seeing the world, particularly their faith, and particularly the Bible. I’m committed to liberating or redeeming what I can. And that – you know, I think people are a little bit – they question that a little bit. But I – I love the Bible. [Kat laughs] You know?

So that’s – that’s what I feel committed to and called to. And with that, really just elevating the voices, particularly what my book is about, Abuelita theology. I grew up on the heels of my grandmother’s popular Catholicism, and – and so what does that mean for a huge section of people who – our faith traditions have been considered suspect or – just because they don’t look a certain way? So, I’m committed to just elevating those perspectives so that people can see the Divine within that and learn that the Divine – if you really believe that God is in all things, then God is in that, too. So.

Brandi: What I appreciate about you is that there are – well, there are so many things that I appreciate about you. But one of the things is that, as you speak of your own experience, you are aware of the frameworks that you’re bringing in to how you think. And I’m sure that, like, for me that wasn’t always true; like, I didn’t always know. I was operating out of frameworks but I didn’t know what they were. And some of the Hillsong-y, the-moment-is-the-thing-that-matters—those were all part of my frameworks that I had before I began to try to, as we call it, liberate our theology, in some ways. So I appreciate that you bring a particular perspective into your work and who you are. 

And so we’re going to talk about hierarchy in just a minute, but I would love for folks to have a sense of the decolonial theology that you operate from, because I know that’s one of your primary frameworks. And so could you talk a little bit about decolonial theology, and what that is? Because I think that will help people to understand better where we go from here. And, honestly, like we talked about before we started recording, people throw around the word “decolonize” or “colonization” without knowing what the hell any of that means. And so I think it would be really helpful to hear from you: What is decolonial theology? What does that look like? Why do you engage with it?

Kat: Yeah. That’s honestly such a good question, because, yes, as we were talking about, we’ve thrown around these buzzwords, and I feel like “decolonialism” or “decolonization” or “decolonize” has become a buzzword. And, I mean, with reason. I understand. You know, I feel like people are wanting to understand how to get away from whiteness as an ideology, as a philosophy, all these things. And so, you know, we understand that to be sort of what – what, you know, decolonize is. And so people just kind of throw it around. And I think also because the people that throw it around tend to be progressive or liberal thinkers, or these sort of people, so it’s sort of lumped into this, “Well, you know, you’re progressive, you’re liberal, then yeah, decolonize!”

And that’s fine, you know what I mean? [Brandi laughs] Like, I don’t have a problem with that. But decolonial theory is an actual theory; like, it’s an actual study; it’s something that people have been working on and developing for decades, right.

What – I’ll say what I love about it and then I’ll get – you know, I’ll slowly talk about what it is. But what I love about it is that decolonial theory exists in what they call this interstitial space. And that is a space where, if you think about it, right, so you’re thinking decolonial, you’re thinking post-colonial—so you’re thinking what is not embedded in, you know, colonialism, in – in colonization, in European colonialism, from the colonial period, right. You know, you’re thinking 16th century, you’re thinking 15th century, you’re thinking around that time; that’s sort of when all this happened.

And so what we’re thinking is, prior to European colonizers arriving in these places where there were African Indigenous peoples, just Indigenous peoples in general, like, what was life like? Like, what was reality like for these people, right? I mean, and in that space, in this, like, interstitial space, you don’t see things like binary sort of thinking; you don’t see things like – there weren’t two party political parties in these communities; there weren’t, you know – I mean, sexuality was fluid. I mean, a lot of hierarchy was fluid. I mean, you had all of these – there was so much fluidity within just the ways of being, right.

So when we think decolonialism, we’re just trying to think, “Well, what was life like just before European colonizers just came in and made their way the world order? Like, what – what did that look like?” And there was just a myriad of beliefs and ways of being and ways of thinking and ways of – so when we’re thinking decolonialism, we’re thinking, “What are alternate ways of understanding the world? What are alternate being and knowing and having our being?”

I love saying the Acts, you know, that we live and know and have our being, I love that phrase. Because, yes—what were the ways of living and knowing and thinking and having our being prior to, you know, white European colonization? So, essentially, that’s what we’re talking about.

So, it’s not necessarily – like, if you really think about it, it’s not going to fit into what our ideas of what, quote unquote, progressivism is. Because our ideas of progressivism are going to be set in our time. And that’s fine, but it’s gonna – it’s gonna really – I mean, what – something I love about decolonialism is it even critiques liberation theology. Because liberation theology is, in and of itself, a very western thing. And so it’s not saying that western is bad. It’s just saying, “Well, western is not all and it.” Right? And so we’re just saying, “What are other ways of being and knowing and understanding the world, period?” Um, so that’s what we – that’s what decolonial thinkers and decolonial theorists are trying to do.

Decolonialism does not equate to progressive theology. [Brandi and Kat laugh] I mean, it’s going to fall into, yes, fluid ways of thinking and things like that, but there’s more to it, right. It’s nuanced, it’s meteor—there’s a lot that goes into it.

So that’s from where I’m attempting to speak from, and I always say—and I say this in my book—as much as I want to be decolonial or whatever, as much as I want to offer alternate ways of thinking, at the end of the day, I’m a western person. So, at the end of the day, I’m still going to come from a western lens, that I’m – I am myself. As I am trying to lead others into deconstructing, I am also deconstructing. So I am not – you know, I do not have all the decolonial answers whatsoever. I am on this journey, as well as all of us are.

Brandi: And – and one of the things I appreciate about that is that so much of how we have been using the word “decolonize” is it essentially boils down to “run from the traumatic shit that evangelicalism did to us toward a more abstract progressive reality”—which just falls into the same kind of dualism that conservative evangelicalism does.

And so we’re like, “Conservative evangelicalism is colonized, but progressive Christianity isn’t.” And I’m like, “No, we’re using the same tools of white supremacy, of what we think is decolonial, to try to create a more liberative reality.” And, right, we can quote Audre Lorde all day. Like, you can’t use the master’s tools to break down the master’s house.

And I think one of the issues of progressive Christianity is that it becomes the same type of fundamentalism that it’s trying to be free from, but with just a different manifestation or mask over those tools. And so I appreciate you naming those limitations.

Kat: Yeah, and – and it is hard, because it’s, like, man, like, I think we all sort of have the same end goal in mind, right. Like, we want to be – you know, we want to think liberative, and we want all these things, but yeah, we don’t have the framework, you know? We’re just angry at one thing, and so we just, like, kind of pendulum swing and – and I get it, because I’ve been there. Like, I somewhat am, still, you know. [Kat laughs]

Brandi: Yes, yes.

Kat: So I’m not trying to knock on like – I hate when people are like, “I anger progressives and conservatives alike.” Like, that’s not – I’m not trying to do that.

Brandi: That’s not helpful.

Kat: Right. I’m not like “Yay centrism” at all whatsoever—[Brandi laughs]—but I do think that, like, the conversation needs to be more nuanced. Which is why I love, actually, what you’re doing with this podcast. We need to name these things. Like, we just need to all have a collective definition, and I understand that that’s not – you know, that’s hard to do, right. But I think that, yeah, we just need to know what the heck we’re talking about when we’re talking about it. And just have the definition, understand what it is, and, yeah, build from there, so that we can have better tools. So much of it is that the oppressor just ends up being the oppressed or turning around and oppressing, I mean that’s the story of my Cuban peoples in Miami, right. 

Brandi: Yeah.

Kat: They – that’s what they have done throughout the last 50 years. They become the oppressor. And so I think that it’s important that we name these tools and understand what we’re talking about, so that we don’t do that.

Brandi: And to understand that as a theological reality that we see embedded in all of scripture. It’s why I love the story of Exodus. It’s, right, a story of a group of people being freed from oppression and God trying to give them frameworks for how not to become the oppressors that they were freed from.

Kat: Right.

Brandi: And the whole – the whole scriptural narrative is basically God and humanity going, like, “Are we going to ping-pong between empire or not? Are we gonna – are we gonna become oppressors or are we not?” And God going, like, “No, no, no. You can’t do that. There needs to be this whole other way.” And so, even as we talk about hierarchy, we’re just asking, “What is the other way?” And we’ll get there toward the end.

But as we’ve been exploring these attributes of white supremacy culture and the ways that white supremacy plays out in the world, as you give this picture of pre-colonial realities, there are so many ways that hierarchy doesn’t fit into those worldviews. And so as we seek liberation, I think it’s really important that we talk about hierarchy: how it impacts how we view scripture and the world and the church and Christian spaces. And so I would love if you could give folks a definition. When you think of hierarchy, what do you think of, what do you see in all of that?

Kat: So I would say a very basic definition of hierarchy – I would say it’s the ranking of members in social groups, based on dominance and ultimately power, right, and that – that translates into some members of this group being superior or subordinate to others. Right, I mean, that’s just sort of a basic hierarchy.

As I – as we talk about this conversation, I would like to have the foundation of that be colonialism, only because of the effects that we’re still living in today. And I think that what’s also important—and I tweeted this about a month ago, or something—you know, white supremacy and patriarchy are two sides of the same coin, right. And someone responded, like, “This is so dumb, like, you know, patriarchy existed, like, before white supremacy.” And I’m like, “Yes. It did.” Now, when I say that they’re two sides of the same coin, I’m not saying that they were created at the same time. What I’m saying is that they uphold one another, and what I’m saying is that, at the same time, they became the world order, right.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: Like, when we think pre-colonial, when we think Indigenous groups prior to the colonial period, there were different ways of being. Yes, maybe some people groups, you know, had sort of somewhat hierarchical relationships. But the more that I study, the more that I read that that really wasn’t the case for a lot of people groups. But it was different, right. There wasn’t one way of being. Right, like, there was a lot of – and I think what’s so hard for us when it comes to that and when it comes to scripture—and right now I’m just focusing on the critiques of like, “Well hierarchy has always been around, it’s not just a colonial thing.” Yes, 100 percent. But I think what – what reinforces our, like, “Well, it’s God’s design” is when we look at scripture, and we look at hierarchical relationships, well, something that a lot of people don’t realize is that the Bible, right, like the Jewish people in scripture were not the only people alive at the time. [Brandi and Kat laugh]

Brandi: Yes!

Kat: Like, I think we forget that they were actually a minority, too. Like, they were a small group of people at the time. So, you had hundreds of other people. I mean, you had the Canaanites and the, you know, you had all these different other people groups, like the ancient Near East. There was a lot of people other than the Jews. But that’s the story that we get, and so we think that that was it. And so when we talk about “Oh, the Bible times” or the first century, it was a lot that was happening. It wasn’t just what was happening to the Jews.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: Right?

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: So I think that’s also important to name, because then people say, yeah, well – I’ll use patriarchy for an – as an example. “Well, patriarchy existed before colonization.” Yes. But not all societies in the ancient Near East or not all societies in the first century were patriarchal societies; the Jewish society was.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: So I think that these are all important things to name as we think about this and as we think about, like, ways of being and – and ways of, you know, decolonizing or deconstructing. So.

Brandi: Yes. Well, and part of the problem with how all of that worldview comes into play is that we take our own worldview and then we superimpose it on ancient ideas and then we make the further assumption that those ancient societies were not making things up, too.

Kat: Right. Right. [Kat laughs]

Brandi: Like, I think there’s ways that we – we assume that because something is old that it is inherent.

Kat: Riiight.

Brandi: And we assume that, because something is closer to – I think – I think we have this very weird view of God that’s like very, very old, and so the older you are, the closer you are to God in some way.

Kat: [Kat laughs] Yeah.

Brandi: Which I think, in terms of elders, I can go, Yeah, sure. I think can get there. But not in terms of history. 

Kat: Right.

Brandi: But because you are, like, closer to the proximity of the creation narrative, or something, somehow you didn’t misinterpret things or couldn’t misinterpret things and then write them down in scripture.

Kat: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Brandi: And so I think that there’s ways we can assume things like patriarchy, hierarchy, kyriarchy, or kyriarchical relationships are all inherent, when we’re superimposing both our own ideas about history and about God onto those things. And so let’s talk a little bit about how Christians or people who say they follow Jesus or have an interest in the Bible form hierarchical knowledge. How do we get to hierarchy? What are the things that we see in the text – I say “we” in a very broad, maybe overly gracious, generous way – in what ways do we read hierarchy into the text and then pull it back out of it in our praxis?

Kat: So I think something important to understand when we’re – even when we’re thinking of scripture, right, particularly when we’re thinking of scripture – when it comes to hierarchy, and I – one of my favorite post-colonial thinkers, he talks about – and he calls it the coloniality of power, and his name is Aníbal Quijano. He talks about how, what happened in the colonial period, and how this was obviously merged with Christianity, but what happened in the colonial period is that two very new things, you know, were brought into the scene.

Obviously race, that was a very, you know, that was the first time that race was introduced. But also capital and world capitalism. Our bodies and, you know, labor, and even salary. Like, I was reading that salary, like – the idea of salary was introduced, and all of a sudden, all these white people are getting salaried, you know, they’re salaried for the labor of whom they, you know, constructed as racialized and whatever.

Okay, so I say that to say that, I mean, we’re still living in sort of, like, the wave of that. That’s how we understand power relationships and – and just relationships in general, right. Capital and race. I mean, that’s how we – people have value based on their production, and that is usually tied to their race. I mean, think of labor, you know, labor workers.

So, anyway, all that to say that when – when that happened, I mean, that was very much tied to religion, that was very much tied to a conquering, militarized God and a conquering, militarized, capital-whatever Jesus, right. The sword and the cross was tied together. And, so, you know, kind of what you were saying, how do we see? I think we see through – I think that’s the only thing, the only lens we see.

So when we read the Bible, and we read about money or read about this or read about that, that’s the – we’re going to see through the lens of capital and, you know, and race. That’s sort of to start. But yeah. So I think the foundation is this idea of a conquering, militarized, victorious God, and we see that so much now, oh my gosh.

Brandi: Oy. Yes.

Kat: So much now. I think that if we can name that, if we can name that this is how we understand power structures and hierarchy, then we can really look at the things that Jesus did and the things that Jesus said and say, “Whoa, hold up. How was he challenging hierarchy? How was he challenging these powers, these power relations that were not in place?” There was not world capitalism, you know, back then. [Brandi and Kat laugh] So I think that that’s very, you know, it’s very important to understand, like – I always say in order to be a good theologian, you have to be a good historian. And even just knowing these details, I think, is very important. Because that shapes how you’re going to read scripture, right.

Brandi: Yeah, well, and I think in some of that, what we end up with is a portrait of Jesus that is a conqueror. And then we put all kinds of, like, we – we use, like – again, we superimpose that onto things like where Paul says, “We’re more than conquerors in Christ Jesus.” And instead of being, “Oh, we’re overcoming in the same way that Jesus did with sacrificial love and forgiveness,” it becomes, “We get to bear the sword alongside the cross,” like you’re saying.

And then we reinforce that by our readings of things like Revelation. I think all the time where it’s talking about Jesus coming with a sword. Because when I was growing up, I grew up in – sort of grew up in – I didn’t really grow up in the church. But when I came into Christianity, I came in on the heels of rapture theology’s popularization through the Left Behind books and the need for a violent God, particularly in – and you’re right, we can go into dispensationalism and all kinds of theologies that reinforce this type of violence. But I became aware that to be a conqueror was to eliminate all kinds of things that you considered evil by violence, because you’re a conqueror. And so if Jesus is a conqueror, then you need to conquer evil by whatever means necessary. If you see Jesus vomiting up a sword, instead of going, “Oh, Jesus is in a robe, dripping in blood, and he’s got a sword, he’s like killing all his things.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s whiteness, that’s world violence, that’s globalized violence.” It’s not, “Maybe this is a metaphor. Maybe Jesus isn’t vomiting up a sword, maybe he’s judging the world with his word, the word of his mouth and the testimony of who Christ is changes things, and that the blood that he’s – that’s on his robe is his own blood, not the blood of his enemies, and the sword is his word.”

And I just think that there’s ways that when we move into colonial hierarchical realities, and we combine those with power and conquering and control, it’s no surprise to me that our pastoral leadership looks like power-hoarding, conquering, and control. Because we’ve created this hierarchical Jesus who conquers through violence, and then we somehow miss the Jesus of the gospels who tells Peter to put down his sword or who, when the disciples are saying, “Who’s going to be the greatest out of us? Who’s going to sit at your right and left?” he’s kind of like, “You all need to shut the f up.” Like, just—

Kat: Yeah, right, right, like, it doesn’t matter. Right.

Brandi: “Keep walking in healing people, like quit saying who’s in and out, quit creating hierarchies among yourselves.”

Kat: Right, right, right.

Brandi: So I just think there’s so many places in scripture where that happens.

Kat: So I took a class on Jesus and the gospels and – and we studied Luke and all of Luke’s table practices, right, and how Luke talks so much about table practices with Jesus. And what stood out to me, as – particularly in my work, because I – when I took this class, I was still working on my proposal for Abuelita Theology, and I – I’m thinking about and I’m reading and I’m learning about all – like the ways – for example, Greco-Roman symposiums and how they were set up and how it was very much a, you know, a social and class thing.

And, you know, societies were based off a lot of table practices and obviously who was invited to the table and where you sat in the table, you know. And it was very much – I mean, like, you know, we have a lot of social practices now that we don’t think about, right. And I can’t even think of one – I mean, I’m sure, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head, because I’m so embedded in it.

But, you know, when you think of, like, first century and, like, how these table practices and where you sat and all the rituals that you did, it was very ritualistic, and all these things. And all of a sudden – and you see in all of these stories that Jesus shows up to these very elite sort of space. And, not only does he invite outsiders to sit in, but then he’ll use the time, the table time, to teach people on how to remove the balance of power at the table.

And – and you see this all the time, you see it with unclean people, you see it with, quote unquote, prostitutes, or whatever, quote unquote, sinners, he’ll say, “Hey, come, yeah, join us at the table. Oh, and by the way, this is how you guys are supposed to interact with other people.” And throwing the entire social order on its head. And I think that that even is – just shows you how power in Jesus’s time, where one of the most elite and sort of societal norms of table fellowship, which was so protected, and so, you know – and I mean that’s why you have something like, you know, communion is such a big deal, and all these things, right.

I mean, this was such an important thing. And Jesus used that to turn hierarchy and power on its head, one of the main staples of society and culture. So, yeah, I think it’s just – if we understand, right, how we got to a conquering God and then see through that lens of what Jesus actually did, then we’re like, “Oh, well, you know, I don’t know.”

Brandi: Yes. And I turn to Luke’s gospel as one of my primary anti-hierarchical texts. Because I think about even the entire framing narrative, the framing poetry of Luke, is the Magnificat, where Mary is saying the proud will be made low, like, “I as this lowly servant am at the center of the thing that God is doing,” right after Zechariah has been silenced. The guy who looks like he should be the person. He’s the perfect Old Testament model of what the person who should birth the Messiah will look like. And instead it’s Mary, and she gets to give the central text for it.

And then we see, for the rest of Luke, Jesus flips things upside down. And I just am so exhausted by evangelicals’ obsession with the Great Reversal while never believing it. Like, there’s so many – everyone can read, like, N.T. Wright for like 5,000 years and still not come to the reality. It’s just always like, “I am the least and God loves me,” and not putting the social realities into that.

But I love that passage in Luke 14—I believe it’s Luke 14, 13 and 14—where Jesus does his primary dinner interruption, where it’s, “If you take the seat of honor, like, that’s not gonna be good for y’all, the least is the greatest,” and makes this dinner party super, super awkward in the name of reducing hierarchy and saying like, “You think that the greatest is the one who is the most elevated, the one who has the most power, the one who has the most control, the one who has the most knowledge.” And instead Jesus turns it on him and says, “No, the one who is the greatest is the one that you didn’t even invite to the party, the one who didn’t make it in your invite list.”

And if that’s the frame that Jesus uses for hierarchy, I feel a little confused about how we’ve come to the church and Christian structures that we have right now, where a lead white, male, cishet, able-bodied pastor gets to play the godhead.

Kat: Exactly. Yeah. Like, the top of the pecking order, yeah, gets to be the one to – I was like, wait a minute. Isn’t that contrary to all of what Jesus is saying, right? [Kat laughs] Not the, like you said, white male cishet able-bodied—it should be the opposite of that that is the one standing and, you know, teaching us what we need to know about God or whatever, however you want to articulate that.

Yeah, and going along with what you were just saying, also, I love the parable that Jesus shares, also in Luke, when he talks about go out and invite people to come to the party; they don’t come. So he says, “Okay, go to the back alleyways and go to all these spaces and invite those people and, you know, invite them to come.”

And what I think is so funny is that parables like that, right, get turned into this theoretical, “Gentiles and Jews, and Jews are no longer invited, it’s the Gentiles, and it’s us, and we’re the back-alley people.” And it’s like, “No.” [Brandi and Kat laugh] Because those listening to this parable would not have understood it that way. They would have literally understood those in the back alleyways. Like, not Gentiles or Jews.

And that’s what happens, though, because we – again, this whole conquering idea, this whole we are, you know, the winners – we’re not the winners, but we are the – the conquerors, and therefore, when we hear scripture that tells us to, you know, do the opposite of what we’re – or how we’re trained to think, we give it some theoretical, religious, spiritual spin about Jews and Gentiles.

Brandi: Yup. Yes.

Kat: [Kat laughs] When it’s like, no, it’s literally us. You know, I think the same thing about the parable – Lazarus and the rich man, where Lazarus is poor and the dogs are licking his sores, and the rich man. We turn that – we turn that super powerful story of literally the poor man who’s on the side of the road, licking his sores, and the rich man who’s God-knows-doing-what in his palace, he ends up in hell.

And we turn that into a whole, you know, “Does the afterlife exist? Or what does hell look like? Can you talk to people in—” And it’s like that is not what it – I remember having these discussions in the first seminary I attended! It was like, “Can you talk to – can people in heaven and hell talk to each other?” That’s not the point! [Brandi and Kat laugh]

All that to say that when we do hear these messages in scripture, because of the way that we have been trained to think, we take these lessons and we totally do all sorts of weird things with them. [Kat laughs]

Brandi: Yes. And even in that parable, like, the hierarchical pieces feel super clear.

Kat: Right.

Brandi: Where the rich man has – he is the closest thing to a capitalistic, militaristic winner that we have in the story. So instead of our seeing ourselves in either person, in Lazarus or the rich man, we choose to abstract that so far instead of going, like, “Oh, actually what it seems like is the rich man is in hell for the extension of his being rich in a way that causes him to elevate himself over the poor man who he has to walk by every day.”

Kat: Yup. Exactly.

Brandi: It’s – it’s a story about values and about proximity and about wealth and about how – right. I think the end of the parable is always so striking to me, where the rich man even sees hierarchy in hell. He’s like – he’s like, “Abraham” – doesn’t even talk to Lazarus, says, “Abraham, send Lazarus to give me a drop of water on my tongue so that I would not be – so that I would not be in so much pain.” He still sees Lazarus as his servant. Which tells me, if we’re gonna abstract it, let’s just say that, like, the ways that we view people in hierarchical relationships now extend to an external consequence.

Kat: Yes. Amen. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandi: It’s so exhausting. [Kat laughs]

Kat: Yup. 

Brandi: Just so exhausting. Well, let’s talk a little bit about how we see hierarchy manifest in structures, in church and Christian spaces. Because I think that—[Brandi laughs]—honestly, we are not without examples. But a lot of the things that I’ve been considering as I think about hierarchy is how, as we’ve talked about, it creates proximity to power, and it almost is always consistent with white supremacy thinking, and so then we turn Jesus into this person who needs to protect Jesus’s own power when Jesus gives up all of his power to become human, depending on what you believe about the incarnation, and then gives up his power to the point of being murdered by the people who he’s coming to save.

And so it seems like we – we take this image of Jesus, and then we try to replicate what we think the Jesus structure is in our church spaces, and then we create these toxic realities like we’re seeing right now. The one I’ve been thinking about lately has been how tragic the situation has been at Menlo with John Ortberg, where we have this hierarchical mega-church where congregants are at risk because of the potential of pedophilia in the community, and the elder board doesn’t allow the concerns of the community to reach high enough up to actually do something about it, and the person who is at the top of that hierarchy is then protected because of the hierarchical practices, leaving the most vulnerable in the community more and more vulnerable.

Kat: Right, right.

Brandi: And so I think we see that playing out all over the place, and so I’m curious if you can talk a little bit about how do you see the hierarchy playing out in church spaces and in organizational spaces. What does that look like, and what are the consequences of that?

Kat: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that situation is devastating. And – and it’s just such a common situation.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: It’s not anything – yeah, it’s not anything new. Well, something that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I think about and just to kind of talk a little bit about the whole decolonial idea and just what I’ve been wrestling with as I write my book, it’s just – yeah. The idea that ways of knowing and ways of being and ways of understanding the world, it’s so locked in that if we have alternate ways of thinking or coming to things or alternate ways of knowledge, then we’re automatically outside of what it means to be or what it means to have power or what it means to be –

So, for an example, I talk a lot about how alternate ways of knowledge that are deeply embedded forms of knowledge for many people—Indigenous communities or what I argue our abuelitas, our grandmothers of the faith, spiritual, biological, whatever—are, for example, dance, ways of moving your body, ways of creating art with your hands as forms of resistance, forms of – of these alternate ways of knowledge.

And I think that in these power structures that we see in society and in these just ways of how society is structured, there is no space or no room for just other ways of understanding and other ways of knowing. And I think that that locks us in so that we only look to the educated or the formally, quote unquote, formally educated, or the white, you know, whatever you want to call it, the systems that we have in place.

We – and even us, and I say – and I fall into this too. I mean, I remember when I was even first thinking of writing this, I had a good friend – she just got her PhD but she’s very much fighting against systems of power and structure. But she told me, “Well, maybe you should wait until you get your PhD so you have methodology to write this book.” And in my head, I’m like, “That’s a power structure.” [Kat laughs] You know what I mean?

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: That is – you are looking to the ways that we’ve been told is right and true and good and smart, or whatever, in order to, you know, to communicate. We need to have this certain way of being in order to communicate ourselves and our stories and – and so yes. That just trickles down to every sort of power structure.

And so the people at the bottom of the pecking order are grandmothers, are immigrant grandmothers who clean, you know, whatever, clean kitchens, who, in our capitalistic society, we would look at as less than or whatever. But they carry knowledge and wisdom within their bodies. And so what would it look like for us in our society turn that on its head? But in the sense of, let’s look at how we can have knowledge, and how we can engage in spirituality, and how we can have spiritual knowledge through lived experience and through the people who are just on the ground, right, who are actually doing things.

And so I think as I wrestle through hierarchy and as I wrestle through these things, I think personally—and because I’m just deeply embedded in this in my mind—but I’m thinking, “Well, how can we turn this on its head in the sense of just thinking of other ways of having knowledge, other ways of knowing things?” And, yeah, it’s not going to look like the elite, what has been constructed as knowledge and power.

Brandi: Yes. And, honestly, that sounds so much more beautiful, and I think that is – even as you talk about Abuelita theology, I’ve been thinking about the theology that we gain from our mothers, or our mother figures in our lives that gets subordinated underneath white male, cishet, white supremacist ideologies. And the worldviews that we have inherently, as you’re saying, keep us from honoring those.

And I just see so many blocks in how we do that, because when I – even when I think about how churches live or die. It’s not based on the faithfulness of people on the ground; I think the easiest way to kill a church is to pull or displace the head pastor. Because the head pastor model reinforces what you said: that the person who is the most educated, has the most abstract knowledge in their head, is the person who is the expert, is the person who is the most important.

Kat: Right. Right.

Brandi: In my organization, it’s the person who develops the most people, or multiplies their influence, or has the most evangelism numbers, or develops the next great tool or evangelistic notion is the one who gets a book deal, and their book gets sold to the entire movement, and that book and that person becomes the leader of this movement because they were successful by very capitalistic standards of what something like a revival could look like.

And so, like, yeah, we’ve been talking a lot in my organization about revival, and I’m like, “Who better to lead a revival than people who’ve been around long enough to know what needs to die first?”

Kat: Right, right.

Brandi: Like, who – who better to know that? And so I can just tell – maybe I’ll say it this way. People’s proximity to power and in hierarchical institutions creates a self-perpetuating reality where mediocre white men and then men in general—in my organization, like Asian American men and you kind of go down, like, what is the – what is the hierarchy set by white supremacy, you go down that.

Those folks, the people in the top, like, 25% of that get to determine what is right and good and holy and just and worth pursuing at the expense of discarding all of this knowledge that is held by elderly folks, women of color, and folks who actually have a pulse of what is happening on the ground. So it doesn’t – it doesn’t surprise me at all that the church and a lot of evangelical organizations are totally out of touch with what this generation of folks – this new generation of folks needs.

What hierarchy does, in my experience, is it takes the lived experiences of white men, it creates an ideal out of them, and then those white men try to recreate their moments, their experiences, their success in other people. And when that doesn’t work, it gets chalked up to people not being spiritual enough or not being leadery enough or not being whatever enough, which then reinforces the hierarchy that that person’s super spiritual and way out there because they were successful, and these people down there just don’t know anything because they haven’t done the thing that looks good in white evangelical space.

Kat: Or the people at the top were blessed, because of – and that goes into a whole other thing. Like, what does it mean – because, you know, even that whole idea of blessing, like oh God blesses this and God blesses that – well, what do you mean? Because in scripture, God blesses deceit, lying, God – you know what I mean?

Brandi: Yeah.

Kat: I mean, it depends on what story and who you are, and I think, like, that’s the whole thing, is that if you, you know – when you actually read stories in scripture, and you actually see the people, the underdogs, maybe, quote unquote, on top by really questionable things that, in our society, would be looked upon as, you know, whatever.

And I – I think that the whole point of that is that I personally see that God blesses the outcome, and the outcome is always going to be on the side of the oppressed, right? Like, God’s always going to be on the side of those who are oppressed, and it doesn’t matter how it gets there, right? Whether you’re a midwife lying to Pharaoh about, you know, whatever, that you killed the – the babies or not. Like, God is going to seek out the liberation of God’s people constantly.

And I think, like, we have such a warped idea, and, again, it goes back to this conquering sort of mentality, you know. And so we – and, again, it’s all connected, but the conquering mentality, right? I mean, conquering women, people of color, conquering land, conquering, you know, everything. And so when we try and – when – when – when these people in power, when white – usually white men in power and those adjacent to them, right—who, like you said, are proximate to power—lead in such ways, then yes, we are completely silencing and eradicating the knowledge that comes from the ground, the land, the earth, communities. I mean, everything, all these other embodied ways of knowledge and of knowing that are powerful in and of themselves, just not in the same power that a conquering Christ is used to showing.

Brandi: Well, and we just, like – we totally fuck up the interpretation from the very beginning. We take Genesis 1, and we assume that there’s, like, a progressive importance in the creation narrative, and, like, humanity is the pinnacle, therefore we can conquer the earth or, like subduing the earth. We do subduing the earth instead of nature and the earth being our sibling or our mother or our sustainer.

We create a hierarchy, even from the start, where it’s there’s God and then there’s humans, but really when we say humans what we mean is we mean men, because Adam – we could do so much interpretation around all of the Hebrew there, but, like, we have Adam, and then woman is pulled from the side, but that doesn’t mean that she’s, like, next to, it means that she’s underneath, because, like, she came after and chronology matters more than – And then we have, like, they’re over the animals, because Adam gets to name them, and then the animals are over the earth because they walk on them.

 And so we, from the beginning, form interpretations of scripture that then we reinforce for the rest of the text and then pulling it back to the beginning over and over again, which I think is just a weird – I think it’s a very white, post-modern way, is going, “Genesis 1 is our example for all things,” which doesn’t make a bit of damn sense when you think about how Hebrew people would have used – have used and currently use that text. Like, that’s not what it’s about.

So we take that kind of interpretation, where we create a hierarchy, and then we read something, like, let’s say 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul is saying things that sound very hierarchical, where he says, like, Christ is the head of – oh, Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head – basically, God is the head of Christ.

And so we take, like, a fractured trinitarian model, where we make the Father more important than the Son, and the Holy Spirit gets to be, like, a cute little dress-up thing that you might bring occasionally. And then, like, men are, like, closer to God and probably the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit’s, like, doing too much feminine or sexual energy around and –  So then we have, like, women, who are being subjugated, and then kids get to be subjugated even more, so it’s no surprise that we have, like, the oppression of children in our society in such substantial ways, because the hierarchical systems that we create don’t allow space for children to have dignity or identity in and of themselves.

And so, I just think that it feels important to me to name the non-neutrality of how we read hierarchy early, because it interprets how we read hierarchy later in the text.

Kat: Yes. Totally. And I will even say, talking about Paul, Paul says a lot of weird things, right. He’ll say all these things about hierarchy but then he’ll turn around and say, like, “Oh, no, we’re all one in Christ; there’s no man or woman.” So, that’s another thing, I think, that we need to – and this goes back to just, um, you know, binary thinking that’s wrapped up in all of this.

But we cannot fathom for the life of us that Paul would say a lot of different things to a lot of different people and that Paul’s trying to figure it out as he went along. Like he’s not writing systematic theology; he’s just trying to figure out his – you know, figure out how to do this thing, you know? And – and that – that is, in and of itself, a holy, sacred space; I’m not saying that that’s not. Me, in my – like I said earlier, you know, I’m trying – I have multiple identities that I’m constantly going in and out of and trying to figure out. I think that is in and of itself a sacred thing, me figuring it out, living in this interstitial space as a second generation, you know, Cuban American woman. Like, all of these realities is all – they’re all existing within us at the same time, and they contradict each other, you know, at the same time. And I think the same thing about Paul, right.

But we – we want to say, “Oh, but look, here, in – in Corinthians 11, he said this.” Yeah, but he also said this, you know. And that, again, goes back to this colonial way of structuring the world and structuring our thinking and, you know, binary, you know. You have your civilized and your savage, your man, your woman, and then all of that is going to be in a hierarchical category. So, of course the civilized is going to be at the top of the pecking order, and of course the noncivilized is – and – and we carry that into our structures today.

How you were asking, “How do we see that in our structures?” Well, yeah, because if someone is uneducated to, you know, to – to the European standards, then they’re automatically going to be at the bottom of the pecking order. But how do you know that they don’t know the things that they need to know, you know, in order to know God, in order to be faithful, spiritual people who have lived experiences from their lived – from their life, you know?

And so I think that all of that comes into play, whether it’s binary thinking, whether it’s, you know, hierarchical thinking, because that comes together. We want – we want to know, “Well, who is at the top?” And there needs to be a top. There can only be a top and a middle and a bottom, you know; it has to be separated. We can’t all work together because we need a leader, right; we need someone to lead us in this.

And I just don’t – you know, I just don’t necessarily – I do see that in scripture, but I also see the opposite of that in scripture. You know? And so that’s why I say, “Well I don’t see” – you can see anything you want in scripture, right? You can see rape in scripture, and I mean – you can see whatever you want in scripture. So that’s why I say, like, yeah, there is hierarchy in scripture. But there’s also the opposite of it. And where do I see Jesus aligning with, right? When Jesus tries to bring forth – or, not tries, but when Jesus ushers in this new kingdom, what do we see in that, right? Because Paul’s not Jesus; Paul’s just trying to figure it out as he’s going along.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: So what – so what is – as Paul’s following Jesus, what are we trying to follow? What sort of relationship, you know, what are we trying to follow?

Brandi: Yeah. And I think one of the greatest challenges of a lot of white theology is that there is a deep need to—I’m going to use a strong word—but, like, to exorcise the notion that Paul is a more reliable narrator of reality than Jesus is.

Kat: Yes. Yes!

Brandi: Because I think that’s what we do, is we assume that Paul’s interpretation of Jesus is more authoritative than Jesus himself. And I think we do that because Paul fits into hierarchical structures that we can understand, because he establishes things, alongside others, like apostles becoming elders, and elders and deacons.

And we create a hierarchy out of that, when the early church, when you look at it in Acts, is warped by hierarchy more than it’s helped by it. I think about how even in Acts 2, it’s a – it’s a communal thing, and yes, there’s people who have gifts of speaking who bring people in, but it’s – it’s a nonhierarchical collaborative space of taking care of one another and loving one another in a different kind of Jesus-y way that isn’t just, like, the scribes get to say who is in and who is out, or, like, the apostles or the disciples get to decide who’s in and out.

And it gets twisty by the time you hit Acts 6, because widows are being overlooked—

Kat: Right, that’s what I was going to say!

Brandi: —in the offering, and you can tell that the disciples have already embedded some hierarchical thinking in how they’re structuring this new movement that they say is a Jesus movement. When they use that phrase, like, “We shouldn’t waste our time – we shouldn’t have to waste our time waiting on tables.”

Kat: Right!

Brandi: And I’m like, “Oh. You’ve already abandoned the table fellowship of Jesus, the collaboration of Jesus, the non-hierarchy of Jesus to say that, ‘The thing we’re doing, spreading the word and evangelizing, is more important than the people for whom we are bringing into the community.’”

Kat: And I also think – I think you had mentioned something earlier, how in Exodus or, you know, when – when God is putting in sort of these rules, it’s – it’s to sort of protect, right. Like, I actually had a – had a conversation with someone on Twitter recently, and they were like, “You know, it’s hard to think that in many ways, Paul was progressive.” And I was like, “Yeah. He really was, in many ways.” Not in every way; there were some things that were progressive, some things that weren’t, but same thing with, like, the book of Deuteronomy, which is really weird to think about. But the book of Deuteronomy in many ways was very progressive. The fact that you had these laws that protected women from being, you know, divorced without – because there were – there were laws in place that if you divorce a woman without any sort of whatever, that you can get in trouble for that. And that, you know, we think, of course, in our modern day, that’s not progressive. But for that time, you know, for that specific moment in history, it was. And by progressive, I just mean, you know, non-whatever – I mean in a more liberative sense, right.

Brandi: Yes, yes, yes.

Kat: So, anyway, all that to say that, as you were speaking, and the widows came to mind, because what if, even in that, right, another way to think of it – and I think you’re 100% right, they fell into this mindset. But, on the other end of that, what if they were also just using whatever structures they knew to try and protect however they knew how, right?

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: So there’s so many ways of looking at that. But at the end of the day, like you said, Acts 2, you know, the – the most, like, the response almost was this sort of, “Alright, let’s just all hang out and we’re all equal in this, we’re all in this together,” you know. And I also think of how, when Jesus engaged with so many marginalized people, particularly women, I think of how there was so much agency involved in that.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: And even in them enacting their own agency, I think that is, in and of itself, a monumental, you know, hierarchical, you know, destruction of hierarchy or whatever. Because, think about it. Jesus is having a theological conversations with women in random places when you’re not supposed to be alone with a woman, and you know, all these things! And – and so I think that, like you said, we look at all of these just profound examples, and then we say, “Yeah, but in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul said this, so.”

Brandi: Yes!

Kat: And it’s like— [Brandi and Kat laugh]

Brandi: And I think it’s because our hierarchy – our hierarchical system is so entrenched in academia that stories don’t matter.

Kat: Yes. Yes.

Brandi: And so we take the legitimacy of the stories of Jesus, and we replace them with the systematic theology that we pull out of Pauline texts. Because I’m like, “Why in the name of all that is good and holy would we prefer the works of Paul over the stories of Jesus?” Because in the communities I grew up in, it was, if you were to take – if you had to choose between the Old Testament and the New Testament, what do you choose? And everyone’s like, “Oh obviously, the New Testament.” And it’s like, “Okay, if you were gonna choose one book out of the New Testament, what would it be?” And I think in my communities, most people would say Romans. Because it was an identifiable systematic theology that fits into our way of what is – what is the best kind of knowledge, what is the hierarchy, and how we learn knowledge, instead of embracing stories in a way that actually allows us to grow. Which becomes particularly ironic because Jesus uses parables all the time.

Kat: Right. [Kat laughs]

Brandi: And so Paul doesn’t teach like Jesus in any way. Their teaching styles, their evangelism, or whatever you would call that, styles are so different.

Kat: You know, you hit the nail right on the head so, so well when you said that we – in – in the way that we understand education and the way that we understand, you know, what is knowledge in that sense, that we value, right, systematic theology over story. And I just – I really, really, really think that you hit the nail on the head, in that we are so embedded in these hierarchical – hierarchical—I always have trouble saying that word—ways of knowing and understanding the world.

And I think, for me personally—and I’m biased on this—but I personally think that is the foundation to so much, because if you possess the knowledge, then that’s it! Like, then you possess the power. And if you possess the power, then you – you can say how everything is, you know, structured, and you call the shots.

And so, for me, what I harp so much on is other ways of knowing, because I think that it’s in that that we can really start to tear apart these structures. And that’s what – why I’m so passionate about this Abuelita theology, because it’s like, “Well what – what can we learn other ways of – of possessing knowledge?” What if that’s in dancing salsa? Like, what can we learn about the world and about God through dancing salsa, right? Or – or whatever, you name it.

What encourages me is that I do see a push for narrative and a push for story. And that is what I love about liberation theology, what I love about womanist theology, what I love about that there is a push for positionality, social location, and story within interpretation, within understanding the Bible and God. So, yeah.

Brandi: Yes. And I just think that that feels very – very Jesus-y. Again, I feel like I go back to the parables every time, but when I think about how you were talking about women in the text. I think about the Syrophoenician woman all the time, who Jesus is having this conversation with, says presumably a racial slur, which, you’re like, “Okay?” And then this woman is the only person in the entire text to finish a parable with Jesus. She finishes the thing that he’s saying, and he goes, “Yeah. You’re right.”

And so Jesus even decenters that knowledge is the primary prerequisite for, like, knowledge or positionality as the only prerequisite for being in the kingdom; it’s engagement and the willingness to mess up and be corrected and to have that done by someone who is marginalized.

And I love that because I feel like it interrupts some of the primary facets of how hierarchy is maintained, which is the notion that you need to be perfect and that being perfect means having more and more education. Right? You and I are both relatively educated people—you’re super educated, I’m kinda educated. Like, we’re really educated people and can still say, like, that doesn’t mean anything.

Kat: Right. [Kat laughs]

Brandi: Like, it means something, but it doesn’t mean everything.

Kat: Right, right, right.

Brandi: Just because we could overcome the financial gap needed to become – ughh, I just think about, like, how much schooling costs, and how we assume that that person then gets to become a master, and the person who the knowledge comes from – and if you have more knowledge, you’re closer to perfect, and then you are above reproach because you know how to interpret the scriptures. And then we end up with all of these mediocre white men in positions of power who just learned a lot of stuff and can—

Kat: Because they had the finances and the accessibility to it and that’s it. Yeah.

Brandi: Yup. Because the hierarchical system in our world allowed them to have those things because of their privilege to begin with.

Kat: Right. Right. Right.

Brandi: And so I love the idea of Abuelita theology and these more embodied ways of knowing, because it creates access to more knowledge of God that isn’t just passed down through power. Because anytime we pass down knowledge through power, it’s going to get twisted. We see that in the entire – read the history of the early church, everybody! Like, the more that power is associated with, quote unquote, the truth, the more distorted and twisted and oppressive it gets.

And so I, like you, love that as we lean back into stories as a push in non-dominant white theologies, that I think we actually find liberation in that because we find that we don’t have to aspire for hierarchy, nor really should we. But we can instead aspire to be ourselves and to let our experiences form us and our communities in a collective way. 

And so, with all of that, it sounds like we are not super convinced that hierarchy is—a word I rarely use—biblical, helpful, or liberative for us.

Kat: Yes.

Brandi: And I know you’ve done a lot of work around this. So, what is the other way? Is there a way to live outside of the bounds, sins of engagement with hierarchy? What do you think that looks like?

Kat: That’s such a good question, and it’s so hard, because, you know, we – we don’t really know another way, in a sense that we haven’t really seen it modeled in our society, in our world, right. So that’s why – you know, I said earlier, like, I’m a western person, and I’m trying to deconstruct at the same time. And I think that we’re all trying to figure this out together, right. We’re all living, doing this in real time.

But I think, for me, just based on the work that I do, I think it is – it does look like starting with receiving or allowing yourself to receive knowledge in ways that are different and embodied, and listening to the land, and listening to people who listen to the land, and understanding, you know, like – something that I talk – and by the way, I love that you mention the Syrophoenician woman, because I do a chapter on her, and – and on that, that literally – right? It happens right – oh my gosh, I don’t know if it’s before or after. But when he – he literally tells Peter, like, “You of little faith.” Then he turns around, and this woman – he says, “Wow, you have great faith.” After she – yeah, theologizes alongside him. And he – so she’s considered someone of great faith and she is triply, quadruply marginalized, no, quote unquote, power in society, but she has the greatest faith, right?

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: And so when I think of, like, what is a better way? Well, what are some ways that we can engage in alternate forms of knowledge and learn from people who we wouldn’t think have knowledge or possess knowledge or possess what we think is knowledge? Because I think that, in that, I really, really do believe that we can start to break up these power structures and give – not necessarily we don’t have to give power. But I think that we can just – just kind of rip it apart in the sense that, yeah, we can receive our knowledge and our ways of understanding the world from those that white supremacy and colonialism would have convinced us that there is nothing to glean from or learn from or gain from or any of that, right.

And – and so one of the things that I – I always talk about when it comes to – because, you know, obviously we want to talk about spirituality, and we want to talk about God and our faith. And one of the things that I always think about, and I – I also touch on this, is the idea that, you know, we have, as – as western people – or not necessarily we, but western culture has extracted knowledge, ways, um, alternate ways of being in the world that are liberative and are healing and are, you know, beautiful, whatever. Extracted those things from other cultures—and I’ll give you an example in a second—put their own western spin on it, and then turned around and demonized those cultures.

So, one example is other forms of healing. I’m thinking essential oils; I’m thinking all of this, all these white – these white western things that are now popular culture that literally come from Indigenous and African spirituality. They are sacred things in other cultures that – that have been colonized. So we extract those things and now are – are knowledgeable and helpful and liberative. And we literally extract it and then demonize them for the very thing that we’re – you know?

And so I think that, in all of these things, how can we take a look in our own lives and take a look at what are some of the things that we have maybe allowed – or – or not that we necessarily have, because a lot of it, we don’t even realize. And again, that’s the thing—we should stop and realize it, right? So, what are these things that we can stop and realize that they’re alternate forms of knowledge that we’ve allowed dominant culture to sort of pass on to us, but that we’ve also internalized the demonizing of the people who gave us that knowledge or of the practices that, you know, that give us that knowledge? So, those are some of the things.

Brandi: Yeah. Well, and yes, that power allows us to do this extracting, to go be voyeurs of other cultures, assume that we can do better, co – coopt. I think the process that I see is there’s extraction, there’s cooptation, and then there’s commodification. So we say, “Oh, we did a better version of it, and we’re gonna sell you that version.” Like, I saw a white lady who started selling bonnets, like, “White women, you’ve got to wear these when you sleep.”

Kat: No!

Brandi: And was selling them for like $100, and I was like, “Excuse – ahpt – you could go buy one of those for $4 at a Walgreens.”

Kat: Oh my gosh.

Brandi: And we just assume that we have a better way. And I think there’s a way that we do that theologically, where we say, like, “Oh, I went to this place and I saw how happy the poor people were.”

Kat: Right. Right.

Brandi: “So I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna think about how they were, and then I’m gonna use that to build my ministry.” And we keep going back and extracting stories, using them for our own good, and then seeing ourselves in all that as still being above them, because we get to go back and do paternalistic work around them.

Kat: Exactly. Exactly.

Brandi: And I just think that like – I just think that Jesus gives us a much better model of co-learning and collaborating than that. 

Kat: Yes. Cocreating, yeah.

Brandi: But the problem with cocreation and all of that is that it’s slow.

Kat: Yeah.

Brandi: It’s really, really slow. In the west, our obsession with people in power supercharging a mission is what we – what we love, what we know, what looks like success to us, what looks the most spiritual, what looks the most blessed, what looks the – what looks the best and the most desirable. But Jesus does this slow journey, where he learns alongside, and he collaborates with people, and I think it’s striking to me that Jesus grows in a human body for 30 years before we hear pretty much anything about him.

Kat: Right. Right.

Brandi: That Jesus is learning the world and engaging with the world and isn’t trying to create, like, a position of power or building up a kingdom in his youth. Like, that happens way later in his life. And that Jesus isn’t too good to ask people questions. I just love that – I think about the story where Jesus is asking, like, “Who do the people say that I am?” And I think that we turn that into some kind of theological test, where it’s like, “Who’s gonna get it right?”

Kat: Right. [Kat laughs]

Brandi: But I wonder if he’s just like—

Kat: “No, really.”

Brandi: —“You’re out there on the ground. Who do they say that I am?” [Kat laughs] And they’re like, “This guy. And he’s like, “Nah, that’s not quite it.” And they’re like, “This guy?” And he’s like, “Eh, no.” And Peter gets it right, but then he gets, like, the next five chapters of how to follow Jesus wrong. And so I just wonder if there’s some collaboration and co-learning and ways that, if we’re in it for the long haul, we don’t actually need as much hierarchy as we think that we do, because we can learn together, and we can mess up, and that’s okay. And we can betray each other, and we can betray the way of Jesus and learn and grow and not just need to pass theological or life tests to elevate our way up and then have to hold onto that at all costs.

Because that, I think, is what’s killing a lot of people in the pastorate right now, is the pressure to maintain hierarchy through perfection or perfectionism. And so I just wonder if there’s so much freedom in rejecting hierarchy because it means that we can trust ourselves and not just our leaders; that we can trust our bodies and not just whoever our favorite author is; that we can trust our friends because they see us, because they’re close to us, and let proximity change us more than distance from hierarchy and our proximity to it. So. I think there’s something there.

Kat: Right. And there’s – I think that there’s – there really is – and we even see this example. And I just thought of it. When we think of, you know, we have – we feel like we constantly have to trust these leaders or trust – and we – we feel like in order to trust ourselves, we need to trust these systems, these hierarchical systems. And I think so much, like, not only have those systems failed us, obviously, have failed so many people that are at the bottom of the pecking order.

But I think of, like, women like Hannah in 2 Samuel, when she’s at the temple, like, crying out to God, and Eli’s like, “You’re drunk; go home.” And it’s, like, Eli’s the high priest. And he’s supposed to be, like, the person closest to God, you know, essentially. And he gets it wrong, and he judges her and he, you know, like, “Get out of here, you’re drunk.” And she stands up to him and says, “No, I’m not. Like, I am beloved of God.

And I think that that is such a beautiful model, that folks have been getting this wrong for a long time, right? [Kat laughs] So when we look at the Bible, and we, you know, sort of see it as this model of, like, hierarchy, it’s like, well, it’s an imperfect model of hierarchy, so maybe that gives us space to critique it and space to, um – where we see it wrong, where we can use these stories as, you know, mirrors, really, into our culture of where people get it wrong.

Because how many times have we – I know, me, as a woman especially, as a Latina woman, as a Cuban woman, have, you know, been thought of as suspect, just for being a normal person by leaders, right? By people in power. And so I think that, yeah, we need to have – allow space, even in scripture, to be able to critique these power structures that don’t always get it right and, in many ways, harm. In more ways harm.

Brandi: Yes. And then to see those in the structures that we operate in.

Kat: Right.

Brandi: I think one of the major manifestations of that hierarchy is Christian celebrity culture.

Kat: Yes.

Brandi: That whoever has the biggest following or the most status is the person who is the best or the most qualified. And this has become really tricky for me.

So, in my organization, right around four years ago, we had had a lot of mismanagement of how we responded to Black Lives Matter, a lot of saying things and then kind of walking them back, and it was really traumatizing to Black staff. And for one of our Black staff gatherings, which is one of the only time all Black staff get together during the year, they invited in all of these leaders to come and listen to us and to hear all our experiences. And if I have to sit through one more listening post, my God, I’m gonna lose my faith. [Kat laughs] But they were coming to listen, because somehow sending people from the top to listen to us would somehow make us feel, like, loved and cared for, when really what we needed in this traumatic season was just to be together.

And I remember at the end, we were in our last session, and they had invited up one of our elders, like one of the giants, like our prayer giants, one of the women in the community, to get up and to pray for us and to end us with this time of prayer. Right, I think even in that – even in our community, for Black folks who aren’t totally entrenched in patriarchy, Black women, like Black elderly women, the grandmas in our culture get to – get to be the spiritual masters, because they’ve held and carried and floated families for generations. They’ve been the people who have done – who have done the work.

So she goes to speak, and this white woman from – from our national organization gets up, kind of goes, “Hold on, I want to say something.” And the thing that she said was, “I wake up at night trying to figure out how to make this right for you. Like, how – I just can’t—” She starts crying white lady tears, and the thing that she says is, “I just need you to trust your leaders.” And so she invokes this notion of hierarchy—and I wish people could see your face right now. [Brandi and Kat laugh]

Kat: I know. Sorry, I’m like,  “Egghhh.”

Brandi: Egghh. So she invokes this notion of hierarchy and assumes that hierarchy and good feelings then should beget trust from the marginalized, when the reason we’re in the position that we’re in to begin with is because the hierarchy itself could not be trusted to hold us and to hold our stories and to trust us to be the best narrators of what we needed.

Kat: Right. Yes.

Brandi: So I think, for me, that is, like, the perfect parable of what hierarchy does and what it looks like. Because it will always fall back on good intentions to maintain power and control to disregard the lived, present experiences of the marginalized and to push people out. And it’s not just about listening! Because I think even just the idea of a listening post is wild, because it says like, “We’re above you, and we’re going to listen, and we’re going to do something for you.” Instead of going, “What do you need? Great. Let’s assign”—like, it’s the Acts 6 thing. “Let’s assign people from your own community to do the work. Here’s the resources. Now go do it.”

Kat: Right. Right, right.

Brandi: And so I just am aware that the way that we experience hierarchy in Christian spaces always pushes back to hierarchical models that ask us to sacrifice our own bodies and wellbeing for the sake of trusting people in hierarchy who have proven over and over again that they cannot be trusted.

Kat: Yeah. That they can’t be trusted, yeah. And at the same time, yeah. It’s also a – that people in power, we say that we trust the Holy Spirit; well then, trust the Holy Spirit in people that, you know, who are under you, right? Trust that the Holy Spirit is also working in there. Like you said, they cannot be trusted; these power structures, you know, have proved time and time again that they can’t be trusted. And so where’s the Holy Spirit in that? And – and if you believe in – you know, a lot of people say they believe in the Holy Spirit, then – then yeah, let’s put that to the test.

Brandi: Yeah!

Kat: Wow, that’s a powerful story, Brandi. Oh, gosh. That’s a perfect example. Yeah.

Brandi: Well, and I love what you just said, too, like, maybe if we just stopped playing God, we could actually allow God to be God.

Kat: Right.

Brandi: Like, if we trust the Holy Spirit more than we trust the hierarchies that we put in place—I’m sorry, but, like, no white guy who wrote a book is more authoritative than the Holy Spirit!

Kat: [Kat laughs] Yeah.

Brandi: Like, no missions organization is more well-equipped to interact with people than God is. And hierarchy, I think, what it tries to do is position people closer to God, and if they are perceived as being closer to God, then they get to play God. And so maybe the basis of hierarchy and the thing that we need to reject is the notion that people in power or people in hierarchical institutions are closest to God—and actually invite ourselves to practice scrutiny that we’re never taught, to go, “Are these people really authoritative, or do they just have a position and a title that’s probably reinforced through nepotism, or people hiring people who they see themselves in?” And rather go, “Whose stories have I not heard?”

Whose stories have I not heard? Who are the abuelitas that I need to listen to and engage with and learn from and just shut my mouth and quit acting like my education somehow makes me superior and go, “What can I learn from the stories and lived experiences of people who have actually done the work and not just thought about it, talked about it, or reinforced it through church practices and using other people?”

Kat: Yup. Yup. And training ourselves to find God there, you know? Training ourselves to find the divine in these stories. I mean, yeah, like, we – God is found in the – honestly, the strangest places in scripture.

Brandi: Yes. Yes!

Kat: I mean, even going back to that parable of like in the back alleyways. Like, how are we going to – how do we seriously think that these – that people in power who are at the top of the pecking order are going to be closer to God when God Godself says, “Look in the back alleyways!”

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: “Look in the—” You know what I mean? It’s just like, you know. So, yeah, I think a lot of it is – yeah. Just trying to see where God exists and God does, but just training our gaze to go there, to see where God exists in the places where – where we would least expect it. And I know that sounds so – so elementary, but we just don’t do it, you know?

And it’s weird, because it’s stuff like social media. Like, it was so funny. I – I wrote this blog post recently. It was like a – I was arguing for theology of hopelessness. I literally wrote it in, like, 30 minutes, because I’ve just – I’ve just been thinking about it, I was like, “Oh, brrrr, theology of hopelessness, okay, blah, blah, blah, Tamar, all these things.” And—[Kat laughs]—some guy on Twitter—[Kat laughs]—did like an entire response, like, you know, exegeting every line, and I’m just like, “That’s weird.” But then I think about it and I’m like, “Well, he probably thinks just because I have more followers than him that I some sort of have this authoritative position where he needs to correct it, because just in case I might lead people astray.” You know?

Brandi: Yes. [Brandi laughs]

Kat: It’s the weirdest thing! It’s just the weirdest – and I’m just like wow. We really do – and I think, unfortunately – and I’m not anti-social – I love social media, I’m not anti-social media. But it really has reinforced those structures; it really, really has. Because someone with, you know – if someone has a thousand more followers than you, then automatically they have more authority than you.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: So it’s just that – that in and of itself is also such a weird thing. Such a weird thing. But. Yeah.

Brandi: Yes. The most trolling and feedback I get in my inbox or when I’m being, like, threatened by folks is, like, white guys over 21 who went to a Bible college for a year who are like, “You’re leading people astray with your lady parts interpreting scripture and you – I’m just trying to make sure that I pull you back to the truth.”

Because, like, even if they see me as having authority, because I have – or, like, a following, because I have more followers or something, they see themselves as being closer to God and their theology as being hierarchically above me. Because we’ve been taught, especially white men, have been taught everyone is below them. So as a Black woman especially, oh, I must be corrected and subjugated. It’s the legacy of theology in slavery, it’s – it’s that my ideologies can be subjugated for whatever reason, and I – it’s – so, I always joke that those men get their judgment, and they’re going to spend, like, two hours writing a thing that I will never fully read or ever respond to.

Kat: [Kat laughs] Yes. Exactly.

Brandi: Like, their judgment is in their work; they can do whatever they want with that. I’ll just swiftly hit a block button and go drink a cappuccino. Right? It’s just—[Brandi and Kat laugh]

So, Kat is there anything else you want to say on – on hierarchy before we close up?

Kat: No, I mean, I think that we’ve touched a lot. I just – all I wanna say is that, yeah, let’s look for these – these spaces where, um, where they wouldn’t be on the, you know, on the—I’m moving my hands, but I’m—[Kat laughs]. Where they – they’re not on this sort of hierarchy order, that they’re gonna be in a position or in a place where that doesn’t fit in that, and they’re overlooked because of that. And I think that – I mean, that’s where we’re going to learn about God the most.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: That’s what I argue in Abuelita Faith, so when that comes out, pick it up; plugging for that.

Brandi: Yes.

Kat: No, but really, I mean, I – the more that I study scripture and the more that I spend time listening to the stories of our grandmothers, and, you know, Black mothers and Cuban American and whatever other mothers and grandmothers, the more I can see that, man, that’s where you’re going to find that, that’s where you’re going to find God. That’s where you’re going to find God existing and people existing alongside God in that space. And it’s unfortunate, because we miss a lot of that. Including myself, right, as someone who is educated, or as someone who loves to think and read about the Bible, and yeah. So, I think that that’s where we’re going to find God for sure.

Brandi: Yes. I love that. And I love that there’s an invitation in there to ask the question, “Who have I never seen elevated to a leadership position but that is the definition of faithful? Who are the people who have lived it, who have embodied it, and what can I know in my own body that affirms that their experience of God and their experience of truth is true?”

Kat: Yeah. Yeah.

Brandi: Because I think that a lot of us actually trust our, like, trust our grandmothers or trust our maternal figures in our bodies, and we trust them. But when it comes to a theological reality, we abstract them out of their own experiences because of hierarchy. And so I wonder if there’s an invitation to ask, “Whose voice have I never heard?” And that takes work, to go, “Who are the voices who have been elevated in my existence, and what has been lost and whose faithfulness and stories of resilience have been lost, and what can I learn about the Divine in there?”

Kat: Yeah. Yes. Amen.

Brandi: So, Kat, you already talked a little bit about your book, but is there anything else that you want to plug? Where can people find you online? I want to connect as many people to you as possible.

Kat: Yeah, so I’m on Twitter, just Kat_Armas, A-R-M-A-S. I’m also on Instagram and – if you want to follow me there. I have a podcast as well, it’s called The Protagonistas. Actually, Brandi, you’ve been a guest, so that’s really exciting. And so yeah. I – I just speak to women of color in church leadership and theology, and that was sort of what I was trying to do, right, elevate these stories of often overlooked women, particularly in the church and particularly in theological spaces and circles. So if you want to check that out as well.

Brandi: That’s excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time and for being on today. It’s just such a gift to get to chat with you for a little while.

Kat: Thank you. Yeah, this is great. Thank you so much.

**

Brandi: Thanks for joining for another episode of Reclaiming My Theology. As promised, I want to highlight one of the key resources and key people in my life that’s helped me reclaim my theology and become more myself.

My friend Andrea launched Full Palette Coaching to serve women in leadership roles who desire more integration of their holistic selves and, honestly, who doesn’t need that? They’re your companion on your journey and understand the complexity of untangling from oppressive ideologies and theologies, because they’re on that journey, too. When women lead in ways that are culturally responsive and intuitive, there’s a potential to create something thriving and sustainable for ourselves and those that we influence. I’ve experienced this personally.

So please, if you have any interest in that, check them out at fullpalettecoaching.com, because you can get a free consultation and explore whether working with Andrea would be the right step for you. And, y’all, it has been one of the greatest gifts of my life, and I think it could be for you too.

So with that, I just want to reiterate that it’s a gift to be on this journey with all of you. I’m glad we’re on it together. Let’s keep on trying to do better together, and maybe get some coaching along the way. See ya.