Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Each episode, host Joshua Johnson engages guests who challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh perspectives for embodying faith in today's complex world. If you're curious about how cultural shifts impact your faith journey and passionate about living purposefully, join us as we explore deeper ways to follow Jesus in everyday life.
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Shifting Culture
Ep. 340 Drew Hart - The Disentangling of Christianity from Empire: Why We Need Anabaptism and the Black Church
What happens when the church trades the way of Jesus for the way of empire? In this episode of Shifting Culture, I talk with theologian and activist Drew Hart about his latest book, Making It Plain. We trace the long history of Christendom, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the legacies of white supremacy that continue to shape American Christianity today. But this isn’t just a conversation about what went wrong. Drew offers a hopeful vision he calls Anablactivism - a merging of Anabaptist discipleship and the prophetic witness of the Black church. Together we explore how these traditions, born on the underside of oppression, can help us recover a faith that looks like Jesus: rooted in solidarity, committed to justice, and pursuing God’s Shalom in our neighborhoods and the world. If you’ve wrestled with Christian nationalism, wondered how to disentangle faith from power, or longed for a discipleship that takes Jesus seriously, this conversation will both challenge and inspire you.
Rev. Dr. Drew G. I. Hart is an associate professor of theology at Messiah University where he has directed the Thriving Together: Congregations for Racial Justice program in central PA since 2021. He co-hosts Inverse Podcast with Australian peace activist Jarrod McKenna and is the author of Trouble I've Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism (2016), Who Will Be A Witness?: Igniting Activism for God's Justice, Love, and Deliverance (2020), and he co-edited and contributed to Reparations and the Theological Disciplines: Prophetic Voices for Remembrance, Reckoning, and Repair (Nov. 2023). His newest book is Making It Plain: Why We Need Anabaptism and the Black Church (September 2, 2025). Drew regularly speaks at colleges, conferences, churches, and community groups across the country. He is married to Renee and is the father of three sons.
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God's Apocalyptic Insurrection
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We're deeply, deeply informed by a society that has this disease Christianity, where our values and our concerns look nothing like the person that we see testify to by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and so, I mean, those are some of the challenges. Is that right now we live the past is not past. It is with us. It still lives on and it hogs us, and until we break the cycle and find God's deliverance, even from our own Christian history, we're going to perpetuate it in new ways. You
Joshua Johnson:foreign Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. Today, we're going to step back and ask some hard, but necessary questions. How did Christianity once a radical movement of ordinary people following A crucified Messiah becomes so deeply entangled with Empire and power, what does it mean that the church has carried forward the legacies of conquest, slavery and white supremacy? And how do we disentangle our faith from those histories so that it looks like Jesus again? That's where today's guest, theologian and activist drew Hart helps us. He walks us through the long story of Christendom, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the ways those forces still shape our society, from mass incarceration to Christian nationalism. But this conversation isn't just about naming what's broken. It's about seeing what's possible. Drew offers a vision he calls anabolactivism, a bringing together of the Anabaptist commitment to radical discipleship, to Jesus and the black Church's prophetic witness. It's a way of following Jesus that's rooted in solidarity with the oppressed communities of mutual care and the pursuit of God's Shalom here and now. So if you're ready to reckon with where we've been, wrestle with where we are and imagine what faithful discipleship could look like today, you're in the right place. So join us. Here is my conversation with Drew Hart. DREW Welcome to shifting culture. Thank you so much for joining me. Really excited to have you on
Unknown:Thank you, Joshua. I'm glad to be in conversation with
Joshua Johnson:you. Yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit of like your your background of being in the lineage of preachers for generations. How did that inform some of your life? And then what did you say? I'm gonna take something of my own moving forward as well.
Unknown:It was just a reality when I was young. You know, you just know that your dad's a pastor and your grandfather. My grandfather was a church planter. Started, I think, around like 10 churches on the East Coast, mostly in like the Philly, you know, area, but as high as Boston and as South as Baltimore. So I always knew that my last name in certain spaces carried a little weight, and their expectations placed upon Me. Because of that, it also can be restricting a little bit in terms of people's, you know, those expectations of what that means for how you're going to live your life and the choices you're going to make. And so I felt all of that, but was often very proud to have the lineage of pastors and preachers that go back multiple generations within my family. At the same time I did go off, I intentionally chose to go to college two hours away outside of the Philly bubble, so that nobody would know my name and I could just be me and kind of discover who I am, what I believed for myself. And I do think, you know, there's a lot that I have received and inherited, and I've had to also process things that have been different. And so I grew up in a context where our church often call it black evangelicalism as the color way of framing it, not a term that we would have used then, but I say that to say it was a kind of evangelicalism, but not the same as what I found to be most common in many mainstream white evangelical spaces. But there was also some shared theological doctrines, beliefs and practices that were shared with a difference, certainly in the community that I was raised, I inherited something that I mean, many things that I hold on to very dearly. One, just being that Jesus is at the center of our faith, right? How important that was in my community, Jesus felt like a family member in terms of how often he was spoken of, engaged, interacted with in the life of our community, and was central and really the foundation of our faith. And that really has never left me, and I'm just so grateful for that inheritance, the love for scripture, reading scripture and thinking with scripture, believing that it should norm our lives. That is all something that has deeply shaped faith as well. And so yeah, there's all these things. Things that have carried on a certain I even talk about, sometimes about a certain kind of like black pietism, rights of faith, that has shaped just me seeking to encounter God, not just head knowledge, but to experience God in my own life, and seeking after that, the kind of transformation, inner transformation that I expect to happen as well. So yeah, I'm so grateful for all that, as I also have stepped out into other traditions. And wouldn't call myself a black evangelical today, though I'm deep friends with many who actually still live in that stream, but I would, yeah, definitely have kind of shifted in some of my beliefs and practices that are both informed by some of those previous things, but also informed by other streams of Christianity as well.
Joshua Johnson:And I think as we look at your book, making it plain, as you trace some of the history of Christendom at Western Christianity, you trace how the church has been complicit in a lot of harm, injustice that has happened, but also that there is some the beautiful essentials of who Jesus is and how people have actually said, let's follow, follow the way of Jesus and not empire. So we're doing that sort of work as a, you know, macro scale, as some of you know, we all should do some of that work at a micro scale as well. What are the things that have been put upon us, the expectations that we have growing up, and then where is Jesus in the midst of it, and what does our faith really look like? So can you help us? Then go back to the macro level, and I want to trace a little bit of Christianity, and I think that's going to help us get into your core thesis of the book of merging some of this anabaptism And the black church tradition together. So let's start with the story of Christendom. How did the church move from a place of, you know, outsider kingdom, Jesus mentality, into an enmeshing of empire and go that direction?
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. And so this will be the Spark Notes version. And even I feel like my book is still even more Spark Notes than what I could offer, right? Because it's such a complicated history. But for our listeners, I think what's helpful for us to understand is, yeah, that I mean early Christians, they had no political power. They didn't have the levers of the government working in their favor, rights, and they did experience periodic persecution. Sometimes we overstate exactly what that meant, as if it was just non stop and just being slaughtered all the time. That's not true, but there is General Hostility that many of them are experiencing, and then there are the seasons of intensified, usually local and regional persecutions that are taking place, though some of the more severe ones and broader Imperial ones happen as the centuries go And so Christians, as some have said, like it took conviction and courage to be Christian. You're not just signing up for this willy nilly. There's no cultural Christianity where you just kind of take it nominally. It's got to mean something significant for you. And so you have these communities that are forming on the grounds that are caring for those that are vulnerable and stigmatized in society, and they're seeking to follow the way of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, to practice this as a community. And one historian talks about conversion, meaning a shift in behavior, belonging and beliefs, right, those three areas, right? So it's a pretty transformative, holistic change in one's way of life, now aligning with the inbreaking of the Messiah's reign in the world, right, in the midst of empire. And so what's striking is that you start with that, and certainly within you know, first couple centuries, you do already begin to see legacies and logics of empire creeping into these faith communities. But in some ways, there's still something pretty radical about what's happening as that's going on, but when you begin to get to, like, usually, a lot of people focus on, like, the fourth century in particular, you have Constantine, who's an emperor who basically the short of it is, he ends a lot of the Christian persecution and offers a lot of benefits and goodies to the church. And so they begin to feel relief because they no longer being persecuted. This is a huge deal, really significant. And at the same time, they're all of a sudden being advantaged in the empire. And there's so there's the church is actually building huge basilicas for the first time, these huge buildings for them, and you got leaders getting tax breaks and don't have to go to war and all these things and and actually, you know, some scholars written about it's really fascinating, like the Roman Senate had such an important role, and by the time, like just few decades in like the bishops begin to take the role of the senates, and they have an enormous role within the. Empire, and a lot of influence and voice with an empire as well. And so what we see is the church moving from the margins to the center and then from the bottom to the top right. And as that shifts, Christianity begins to, over time, really adapt its own ways of being in the world from something that looks more like the way of Jesus to something that really aligns with the way of the Emperor, and not completely, and not all at one time. And I think, you know, sometimes some Christians have oversimplified that that story to make it like this just instantaneous thing that happens. It's actually really a story that takes really, many, many centuries to unfold. And so some of the book, the one chapter in particular that I talk about the story of Christendom, and it's a rise, it's rising, is trying to help us get a glimpse right of this unfolding story of the Christendom. And really, when I say Christendom, I'm talking about Christianity and domination and Empire getting in bed with one another and having a kind of course of Christianity from the top down. Imagine that it's our role to impose Christianity on others. And so we see that happen, especially when you get to the medieval Christian experience, like after 800 ad. This is just a very different worlds, and the kind of Christianity that people are practicing has very little to look looks very little, at least in the west, to what was, you know, the previous ones of Christianity for many centuries. So that's just a quick glimpse of some of the ways that it gets entrenched in structures, institutions, our theology, and it really the marginalizing of Jesus to that creeds almost replace, and I'm not anti creed, but they almost replace the significance of the person of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the birth life, teaching death and resurrection of Jesus as a story, as found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and how our lives ought to conform after that.
Joshua Johnson:That's good. Then, how did Anabaptist come in as really, opposition, really, to Christendom, maybe anti Christendom. And what are some of the traditions there that that help us root ourselves in a discipleship to Jesus, a way of Jesus life.
Unknown:One of the things that my book argues, which is not always so explicitly said in many Anabaptist work works, though. I think it's always implied there, but that anabaptism is an anti Christendom tradition, and I think it's really important, like I actually think that's more important to say than to say it's a peace church tradition. I think it's more important to recognize it as an antiChristian tradition. There it is born in the 1600s at the same time, as you know, the reformation is taking place. So we have Martin Luther and Zwingli and eventually Calvin and all these really important figures. And Christianity in the West is shifting radically in this moment. And you also have, at the same time, poor peasants who are rebelling, right because of the economic revolts that are taking place. So there's a lot of unrest, and there's a lot of change happening. And in the midst of all that, the Anabaptists are born, and I would say, out of those two things together, right, the economic frustrations, and even those were frustrated and making some theological claims and arguments around what the church ought to be, and the way that the church was contributing to the exploitation of poor people, but also the Reformation, this idea that we ought to read Scripture and wrestle with it and and take it seriously. And so these Anabaptists gathered, and they're like, Yeah, let's read the Bible for ourselves. They actually now for the first time, you know, average people are having more access to scriptures because the printing press and all that kind of stuff. And so they're reading, and they're thinking like, all this stuff from Luther is great and Zwingli is great, but it doesn't seem like they're taking it all the way to their logical conclusion. And so they actually want to really, truly follow the way of Jesus in their lives. And so they begin to practice that reading Scripture together as a community. So not there's not just one person who interprets it for everybody, but believing that, yes, we need leaders. They still had leaders, but they also believed in communal readings and allowing the Spirit to speak, and that God might speak through a poor, illiterate boy, not just the learned person, right? And so it has to be tested. Everything was tested everything was tested in community, but it was this communal, human hermeneutic. There's definitely a deep, deep understanding that Christianity is first and foremost. It's about discipleship to Jesus. That is the heart of Christianity. It's the way of Jesus. It's embracing and embodying the life and teachings of Jesus. And they took that very seriously in that community, they're giving and receiving and caring for one another in mutual economic sharing. Some are actually rejecting private property altogether. Others are just sharing and caring for those in need. But it's a radical contrast to the broader society, where exploitation was the norm. There's actually taking care of each. Other's concrete needs. And there is, like, this kind of I call it, like a early liberationist theology, but in ecclesial form, it's not as much expecting society to shift, but it's like we're going to embody this thing on the ground as a community that actually cares for one another. It's really beautiful. And of course, as many people note, you know, a commitment to non violence that flows out of their commitment to following Jesus and taking him seriously, that also emerges as well. And so there's so many other aspects of anabaptism, but I think that some of those features really begin to make a quite a contrast, because they're making a radical break from Christendom. The whole idea of anabaptism is like, at that time, it was a terrible thing to be called. Basically, it's like saying you're a heretic and you could be burned at the stake. And that's exactly what happened, right? So people are literally killed by the 1000s, burned at the stake, drowned in the waters, tortured, many of them. I mean, when I read the first one, I think was Michael Sattler, and I read his, the testimony of the trial of what they did to him, and I was like, this is horrific, right? And this are Christians doing this to other Christians because of their doctrinal differences. But it wasn't just doctrinal differences. It was that the Civic implications of them embodying the church and breaking from the state actually was deeply subversive for Western society, right? You're not, you're no longer promising to get baptized, which means you're not being signed up into the Empire. That's also, it was a civic thing, not just an ecclesial practice at that time, you're not committing to serve the military anymore. It's, it's a radical break from Christendom. And so I think when we begin to see that aspect, then we see why it was treated so subversively, and why making Jesus their full allegiance is actually a threat to any empire, even ones that want to call themselves
Joshua Johnson:Christian. That's one thread of anti Christendom. And you know, you'd see Anabaptists grown up, and then then trace the doctrine of discovery into then the black church tradition, especially in the in the US and what we have today. So at around that same time later, we have this doctrine of discovery. What was that doing? And how is the church complicit in what happened because of that?
Unknown:Yeah, so the way I kind of try to frame it in the book is to show that we got to start back to continue the story of Christendom again, right? And Western Christian and so it's like, all right? So we get, you know, medieval Christianity and the merging and state and Empire and all that kind of stuff is going on, and then you have, like, the Crusades. And in the West, what's one thing that's really striking is that in the West, they begin to forget that they are Gentiles, that Christianity is not indigenous to the west. So it's almost like I say to my students, they imagine they have a copyright on Jesus, on the Bible and Christianity, right? And if anybody wants to become Christian, you come through us and become like us. And so Western Christianity begins to look out on the rest of the world, and they see the rest of the world is heathen in themselves as Christian, right? Even other communities that had Christianity way longer than they did, it's heathen worlds, right? And so by the time you get to the 1400s with that mindset in place, you have Portugal, who begins to enslave African people, and to do it explicitly with a Christian kind of framework, they're writing and thinking about it theologically, why it's okay for them to be engaging in this practice of enslavement of other people in Africa. And so I talk a little about Zora and his comments on that, but then after that begins, then you have a papal bull, right? So these formal church statements coming from the Pope, but, but what? What's interesting about these church statements is it's both doctrine and Legal Policy at the same time. It's law and doctrine simultaneously, right? And these papal bulls actually give formal permission for Portugal to go to unChristian lands, supposedly right, and to reduce people to perpetual slavery. That's literal language, perpetual slavery. And so the Doctrine of Discovery first starts with Portugal, and it's pretty much doing the heavy lifting to theologize and legalize what Portugal is doing. And then Spain wants to get in on the action. Then more papal bulls are written, and so they're pretty much giving permission to go out to engage in plunder, basically, if we're going to keep it Frank, right, in the name of Jesus, because these people have not used the land properly, have not fulfilled it, and it's unChristian. And so the most Christian thing they can do in their imagination is to conquer it and to make it truly Christian, right, which is to have Western society. With this Christendom kind of practice in place. And so what happens out of that is people go all over the world. Throughout the Americas right conquest, throughout Africa, there's conquest parts of Asia conquest, and there's plundering of land and resources. There's enslavement of other people, all happening in the name of Jesus Christ. And so it's a very different kind of Christianity than the one that we began with right in the first 300 years of the church. And so that's where the black church is born out of that context. It's born out of the suffering, again, at the hands of white Western Christians who are practicing this diseased version of Christianity. And they're on the underside of that. Similar as Anabaptists are born on the underside of Western Christendom, the black church is born on the underside in the midst of slavery and torture. Literally, think about centuries and centuries of torture in the name of Jesus so that people can get free labor out of people for their own greed, right? And so do they completely just reject Jesus? No, what's striking is they encounter Jesus for themselves on the underside, but they encounter Jesus different than how it's being preached to them. So you read the slave narratives and listen to the spirituals, and all of a sudden we see a Jesus that's a friend in hard times, a Jesus that's their that's their CO sufferer, that understands what they're going through, and a Jesus that's a liberator that's going to bring them out right of their suffering and their slavery and bring them towards freedom. And so they have a different understanding, rooted in the Exodus story and Moses, rooted in the God of justice that we see in the prophets, and rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus, the specificity of who Jesus was, who he associated with, right the least, last, lost and little ones, that orients them to a faith that looks very different than the mainstream version that was intentionally oppressing them.
Joshua Johnson:One of the things he said early on is it took centuries to really be enmeshed within Christendom, and as you're looking at something that happens around, you know, reformation time, right before that, the Doctrine of Discovery, what was happening, really, anabaptism, just, you know, coming up in anti Christendom, we actually then continue, you know, a few centuries later, a lot of times, you know, when I'm growing up in the white Evangelical Church and I'm, you know, I'm singing songs to Jesus, I'm loving, you know, what he is saying and doing and these stories and I'm coming. I don't know the history of what's happened, happened in the past. I don't know how this has been enmeshed, and what some of this thinking has been, you know, Christendom, some of this thinking is Jesus. And then how do I detangle some of that stuff growing up as I'm like, realizing we're there. So as we come to this moment today, what do you see as still complicit within mainstream Christianity, as you call it, what is still complicit within empire, what's happening
Unknown:if we pull together both of those things, right, the story of Christendom and the story of the doctrine of discovery and emergence of white supremacy and anti blackness and slavery and conquest, and you think about What happens at the intersection of all of that, right? It begins to help us understand, I think, almost the inevitable trajectory we were on that brings us to where we are today, right? So a big conversation point that we're having even right now in our society, is this leaning in and wrestling with the emergence or the bolstering? Maybe, is the better, not the emergence, the bolstering of white Christian nationalism, right? And so it's a Christian faith that sees itself as first and foremost, not an ecclesial, grassroots project in the public square, but first and foremost, a statecraft, a state project, an empire project, in which we've got to get back to the good old days where we ran our country, where we had control and could coercively dictate the moves and the policies and the practices that make Christianity normative in broader society. And so it's not, how do we embody the way of Jesus in the public square, in before a watching world, before our neighbors, right? And then practice the way of Jesus and embody the way of Jesus, loving our neighbors, doing justice, showing mercy, seeking peace and reconciliation in the world. Instead, it's we're gonna gain power and dominate and impose our our particular vision of Christianity onto a very pluralistic society that is where a lot of people don't even identify as Christian, and certainly even others that do identify Christian, maybe not that version of Christianity either, right? And so it's, it's that inclination that, I call it, the Christendom mindset, is deeply embedded, certainly in white Christian national. In terms of, we, we might have dropped off some of the worst of some of the medieval practices, right? We're not torturing, at least not right now, torturing folks in the level that happened during Christendom. But we certainly, there's certainly the desire to return back to a Christendom society that's there. And as well, the Doctrine of Discovery, you know, the worst of it, in terms of the violence, at least in our own country, we supporting it globally. In terms of other places, we still support the dispossession of lands, of Palestinian people, and all of that all around the world. But here, that work is already done, but we live inside, happily, inside this vision, without wrestling with the white supremacy and anti blackness that deeply has shaped our cultural practices, our institution let me think about like mass incarceration, the disparities and funding for public education, the legacy we live in the aftermath of so much of the housing segregation and the impact that zip codes that were red lines just a few decades ago are disproportionately poor today. We can track that all across the country, right? Well, so we could go on and on about the legacies in the ways that often it's Christians, American Christians, that are actually the most likely to have the the the most harsh views towards immigrants, to be the most punitive, to be the most war mongering, to be pro death penalty, to have the least care around trying to figure out how to reduce gun violence in our communities, to support the harshest polity policies towards the poor, in terms of access to Medicare and health care and all of those things. And so we're deeply, deeply informed by a society that has this disease Christianity, where our values and our concerns look nothing like the person that we see testify to by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And so, I mean, those are some of the challenges. Is that right now we live the past is not past. It is with us. It still lives on and it haunts us. And until we break the cycle and find God's deliverance, even from our own Christian history, we're going to perpetuate it in new ways.
Joshua Johnson:It is interesting that it is the cycles of violence over time and throughout history that goes from generation to generation, and it is really generational trauma, like, if you're talking about people talking about generational trauma, what it's going to the next generation, you set out a vision of maybe Breaking the cycle and saying that maybe you call it anti blacktivism, can actually help break this cycle and bring us into a space where we can embody the ways of Jesus. What does that look like for us today, and why are you merging these two traditions to help us come with a vision for a better way, yeah.
Unknown:So this idea of anabolactivism really just emerges out of my own lived experience. First and foremost, it is I've been the beneficiary of having a foot in both the black church and Anabaptist communities, right? And that has deeply, deeply been enriching to my own faith, challenging to my own faith, stretching, but certainly turning my eyes and fixing my eyes more and more on Jesus and on the way of Jesus, not just claiming Jesus, not just accepting Jesus into my heart, but actually embodying the way of Jesus. And hopefully my prayer is that at times, when I yield enough to what God is doing in the world that My neighbors might even get a glimpse of the Jesus story in my life, like that's my hope and my prayer, right? And so these two communities are two traditions that are born on the underside of Christians, oppressing and persecuting, right? And did not throw it out, but instead salvage Christianity on the underside by leaning in even more to the person of Jesus Christ, to the particularities of who he was and his commitments and his practices, his ethics, his conviction, all of that, right? And so I think for me, there's something really beautiful about how to find a way out by listening and learning to those that have most severely understood the consequences of what this all has meant. And I think these traditions, by unveiling Christendom and unveiling white supremacy as they do, begin to give us insights imperfectly, but give us insights nonetheless, for ways forward the radical discipleship to Jesus, right? Is really significant for us today. How do we really lean into rooted in the way of Jesus Christ, not just claiming him, not just singing songs that make us feel good about him and that he's our boyfriend, but really, truly taking Jesus seriously in our lives. What does it mean to. To recognize that that same Jesus identified with the oppressed, with he lived as a first century Palestinian Jew under Roman occupation. He understood what it is to have his cousin experience. We could call it police brutality, so to speak, right or state execution, right for him to be grabbed at night and to be given state execution. I mean, he understood the vulnerability of life from the underside, and he preached that, you know, his first sermon right from, quoted mostly from Isaiah, the spirit of Lord is upon me because he's anointing Me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And so we have this radical vision of Jesus, who does exactly that as he goes out in his ministry. So we have that. We also have from the black church like this, what I call the prophetic witness, right? And I think this is really significant, is so where, like Anabaptists, have had a really strong emphasis on discipleship in the church, some Anabaptists, not all, but many Anabaptists sometimes have not always had a vision for what does that mean to be the church in the public square, in the midst of empire, in the midst of evil happening, in the midst of death, dealing forces all around us. And the black church has a tradition of what I call the prophetic tradition, that is not foretelling what's happening, but foretelling in the way of the prophets, right, in the way of Isaiah and Jeremiah Micah and Amos right. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. That's that prophetic tradition. And they, they saw brilliantly the connection between the prophets and Jesus, who also, I mean, Jesus loves to more than anything else. He quotes the prophets and embodies, and, at times, evokes the prophets in so much of his ministry that it gets lost sometimes. So there's this prophetic challenge to if we're going to embody the way of Jesus, it's actually an embodying and evoking of the prophets as well, that in some ways that's you could say, that's the Torah, certainly, especially the Exodus motif. And the prophets are a significant aspect of Jesus' understanding of what we should be drawing on in Scripture, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. And so I think that that also is really important for us. So when we combine the radical discipleship with the prophetic witness, with the anti christenum posture, with an anti racist and liberative understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then you also begin to see the ethics of peacemaking and liberation, and how all of those things lead towards a vision of seeking shalom, right? God Shalom in the world. Great. I love Isaiah 65 right? A beautiful vision, a Shalom that's holistic, that's good for all of creation, where I like to say, where everyone belongs, everyone can flourish, where everyone matters, right? Like this big, whole, big vision for all of creation that's restored and all wrongs are set rights. And so, yeah, I think that these two traditions together allow us, and I say this not as in, like everyone needs to become part join the black church or the Anabaptist community or something like that, but that we can be learning from these traditions on the underside, and that there actually are people who, like myself and many others, who actually have lived at that intersection as well, that I think, really give us some great insights into ways to live faithfully in the midst of the challenges we face today.
Joshua Johnson:So give us some of these, these ways. So think about, I'll think about my community, East Kansas City. You know, you think about redlining. You have I'm on the east where most of you know the black community resided in Kansas City. It's a poor community still today. But I want to be in this community. And I want to see Shalom happen here. I want to see the ways of Jesus embodying the ways of Jesus also then seeing like, hey, what has gone wrong? I want the prophetic tradition, the prophetic witness, to come forward let people know, hey, this is not the way of Jesus is, you know, we have injustice. It's not just. And let's bring us together. How do I, or you know, us in a community here, see some of the shalom happen? And how do we do this on a on a micro scale, and then on a macro scale? What do we do within empire to call Empire out? But first, let's start with the community. How do we do that on a micro scale?
Unknown:Yeah, so, I mean, what we really need is actual communities that are not just about, you know? I mean, I think it's challenging, like today, many of churches, many of our churches, are about the ABCs, right, attendance buildings and cash, right? And they're really well organized machines that have their own survival in mind, and sometimes getting lost, drifting from our mission of why we exist in the first place. Don't know how to be faith communities. Don't know how to be discipling communities. Don't know how to be worshiping communities, and don't know how to be communities that are engaging our community faithfully, right bearing witness to God's reigning. The world, and so I think some of it is like actually returning to the very, very most basic, simple practices of gathering together, discipling, worshiping and forming, literally being formed to be a people that go out and that engage and have the convictions and the ways of Jesus kind of embedded in us as we go out into our neighborhoods. And so all we got, I mean, I feel like some ways, and sometimes maybe like, after a while, you're like, it seems so simple, I feel like almost silly saying me something like, but like we do as Jesus did, right? We go out, we we emphasize, we look for those that are hurting, those that are vulnerable, those who've been pushed to the margins, edges and cracks of society. And we join and we share in suffering with them, and and we make their pains our pains, and their struggles are our struggles. And we do what we would do we as we love others, as we love ourselves, we take care of our own bodies, we take care of our own concerns. We're going to do the same thing, and so we're going to speak up. We're going to show we're going to show up at the town hall meetings or at the school board, or we're going to, you know, organize, for me, one of the big things, that's my previous book. But like organizing, I think community organize is one of the great ways that we can, on the grounds, at the grassroots local level, begin to participate in something without needing to feel like we've got to have control over the empire, but actually still, nonetheless recognize like there are power dynamics and policies that need to be changed, and that while we can't guarantee anything, we're going to work for the good of our neighbors, especially those little, most vulnerable and poor, right? And so I think, like it's that coming alongside, joining, not taking over, especially those that you know maybe are more advantaged in society, pulling back the inclination to try to take over and run everything, but first, learn to be not the teachers, but students, to come alongside, to join, to be in solidarity, to link arms, right and struggle. I think that there's so much that can happen, not only for the liberation of others, but also for yourself, because I think sometimes we don't, you talk about trauma, right? We all have this stuff in our bodies that we've got to unlearn and be transformed from and delivered from, that we don't even sometimes recognize in us. And it's going to take time of immersing and coming alongside for us to kind of find that healing, even in our own bodies in ways that we actually need. And so that would be my vision, is that local church that's actually mobilized and engaged and responsive to the needs of their neighbors, that know the stories of their neighbors, they know their names, and they know their stories, and they're moved by them, and they can't but do otherwise, because they love them.
Joshua Johnson:Can you give me a vision for somebody that is in mainstream Christianity that feels like when we have power and control and trying to make things the way that you know, Christendom has made things. I am comfortable. Things are easy for me, and I feel like, you know, we have peace, but not shalom, right? We have a peace type of thing, but not true. Shalom. True, true, deep peace. So how? How can we help people know that the way of Jesus is his uncomfortable, it's suffering, it's hard. It's for the margins. It's for the neglected people, the least and last and the lost. But it's also going to be really good for people that like are reveling in their comfort right now.
Unknown:Yeah, so one of the things that my church so I'm at a church that is not only multiracial, but socioeconomically diverse as well, and I've been there since what, like 2018 and we developed some core practices to kind of orient us, and one of them is what we call mutual healing and liberation, right? And the reason why we said we wanted to frame that is because it's very easy for some folks who are economically advantaged, have more education, right? All this access and all that stuff to feel like, Oh, I'm gonna serve and help everyone else out, right? And, you know? And so I started name I was like this, we gotta, we gotta weed out some of the paternalism in this community, right? There's some paternalism that we've got to kind of reckon with. We got to name it for what's happening and also think about and so what I wanted people to begin to see is like, there's something that we all need in this. All of us need something, and first and fore, like we've got to see that we also have lack just because you're college educated, you got your big house and a nice job, or whatever, you may be lacking more than so. So how do we begin to realize all of us need to be on a journey of healing and liberation. We all need to be liberated from something and healed from something and actually like the results of like, let's just say, like, slavery, for example. Like, what does it do to a community, to the people in a community? Reality that for centuries, accommodate slavery. How does that deteriorate one's humanity? Right? When anti blackness becomes so normative that when you see black suffering, you're unmoved, when we hear about children in Gaza starving, and we're unmoved, and we got some biblical verse that we want to code at people, right? Like there's, this is good for everybody. This is healing for everybody. This is transformation for everybody, so that all of us starting from different starting points, but all moving closer to a healed Imago day, right? The image of God as desired fully who God designed us and created us to be. That's what we want to be in search of. That's what we want to find. And it won't happen outside of community, but also a community where true reconciliation, which is flipping on its head, the social expectations right We're the first to last, and last the first, and allows us to truly rest in who God has created us to be. And so, yeah, I think there's a journey here that I think all of us need. And I do think that the combination of anabaptism and Black Theology have a vision together that can, I think, really invite people into something really powerful again, without necessarily joining those specific traditions, but learning from those traditions, I think are really powerful for us.
Joshua Johnson:Today, I'm going to read you something you you wrote in your book. It says, One of the challenges for the 21st Century black churches, whether it's historic orientation of liberation of black people from racist systems, will expand to reflect the depth and width of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it's good news for all oppressed people. This includes recognizing the deliberative significance of Jesus's life for everyone recognizes the inherent dignity of each person and practicing the rule of the kingdom where the last are first and the first are last. God's liberation is not limited to race and poverty. It extends to gender, sexuality, abilities and anytime people are stigmatized, socially rejected or discriminated against, how do people coming from an oppressed place actually get a vision for other oppressed people and saying, Hey, my suffering has been long, and I want freedom. And how do we get a vision for all people?
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, I think that's the beauty of what Jesus invites us into. Is Jesus doesn't only get drawn to those who are poor, but also to the Samaritans, and not only the Samaritans, but also women who are being ostracized right under patriarchy. And not only that, I mean, He even talks to Matthew about the eunuchs, right? He's got attention to this really small group of folks, right? And so what we see is this expansive vision. And it's not by accident that Jesus one of the when he goes into the temple and clashes with the temple elites. One of the passages that is echoed is Isaiah 56 which is the inclusion of foreigners and eunuchs, right? It's this Jesus first sermon in Luke four. They're concerned about their own liberation, right? And they're loving him for that, for Jesus of walking Isaiah 58 and 61 but when he starts talking about the foreigners, and they're included in this thing, then they're like this, we're gonna throw this dude off the cliff, right? And so it's this expanding liberation, this expanding deliverance for all people that I think Jesus, if we follow Him and immerse ourselves in the story, our hearts begin to widen. And I do think we ought to then begin. Everyone has struggles, and so do we choose to lean into and see our shared humanity as we experience these things and what connects us as human beings, rather than the other, in group, out group, kind of mindset that we can fall into? Right? So that's a challenge. So we need to hear the stories of others and hold them dearly. For me, that's deeply shaped me. I mean, I grew up in a my church was way more like patriarchal than I am and all that stuff. But as I began to hear women's stories, right, Jesus was working on me and the Holy Spirit was working on me to expand my empathy and my understanding and even my own complicity in harm that I've done to others, right? And so that's the work of following Jesus in a way that isn't only about my own deliverance, but seeing its unit, the universal salvation of God breaking out to the nations, right? And I think that that's really an important part. It's hard, it's hard work, and we'll never have like, look, none of us are God. We don't take this posture from above that we are all knowing of all the different situations going on in the world. But as we meet and encounter other people's pains and struggles, that's our invitation to follow Jesus into. To follow the way of Jesus into these conflicts and concerns and struggles that people carry.
Joshua Johnson:That's so good. And you know, for so many people in the church, we talk about discipleship, and we talk about discipleship to Jesus, and sometimes we we get off and we figure out we're actually discipling to something other than the the ways of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus, but we're discipling to maybe, you know, Christendom, or cultural Christianity, and not the ways of Jesus. What are some some ways that we can make sure that we are discipled towards the ways of Jesus, that we could start to embody Jesus in the world and not go off into discipling, into Christendom again,
Unknown:one of these things where it's like, it's so simple, right? But we have to actually say it, I guess. But like, but first of all, we have to immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus, right? Like, that's Matthew Mark. Like, there's a beautiful Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes from when he's in prison. And I think I already almost echoed him a little bit earlier, but, but he talks about, like, must immerse ourselves slowly, again and again in the Life teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, something like that, right? He says this little go off quote, I think it's just so beautiful, right? Because here he is. He's dealing with same situation, right? Like he's seen how terrible Christianity has gone in Germany. And so it's a facade of the real thing, right, a shadow of of what it ought to be. And so it's like we've got to actually spend some time with Jesus. And so there's both in the written form, and then in our lives, yielding to to Jesus in our lives to embody and to encounter and to to know. And so it's the two together, right? And then having practices in our communities that actually help us, we'll say, socialize us into the way of Jesus, right? I love the early church. I mean, just the vision of like, they had, like intensive catechism processes that could last, like multiple years to socialize you into the way Jesus Christ, right? And that includes like, I love Cyprian. He's like, he complains about how initially, like, it's hard. He's like, had to give up his like, nice clothes and the nice food and all this stuff. And he's serving the poor. Like, that's a part of their catechism process, right? They're out there serving folks. And so there's a re socializing that happens that actually preceded the baptism. So what are we doing? What kind of experiential practices, what kind of serving and what kind of way of life are we helping initiate people into that gives them some direction on some practical ways of living and being right? Have been leading this program at Messiah called thriving together congregations for racial justice. And, you know, among all the different things we do, we take them on, like, a week long civil rights trip, right? It's this immersive experience, right, that deeply shapes these folks. Do not come back the same, right? Because it's experiential. It's not just reading books that is always the thing that more than anything else that we do, no matter, we bring in speakers, amazing speakers from all over the country and all it's the experience that once they have that it's like there's no going back, right? And so and they're meeting people for the first time, people who were involved in the movements, who are still alive, hearing their testimonies and experience and that they're going to carry that with them for a long time. So what I think in the church, we need to also initiate and socialize people into the way of Jesus Christ, creatively, thoughtfully and contextually for our spaces that we're in. Drew if
Joshua Johnson:you could talk to your readers of making it plain, what hope do you have for this book and for the readers of making it plain?
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, I think there's multiple hopes I have. I mean, I think one is simply that I hope that we understand how we got to where we are today. I think there's a lot of folks who are frustrated with the church, frustrated with Christian nationalism, that that's a big topic right now. A lot of people try to understand how you get from the life and teachings of Jesus to Christian nationalism, right? It's a there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, and there's a lot of people walking away from Christianity because of the way that Jesus is His name is vandalized in the public square. And so I want us to understand that there's a history, a much longer history, a lot of people want to emphasize, which is, right? All the history around like the 80s and the Moral Majority movement, all of that stuff is important history to understand our current political situation. But there's a much older story that I think is even more significant that made even the Moral Majority movements probably inevitable, right at some point. And so I want us to understand. In Christendom, and I want us to understand the doctrine of discovery and the things that are taken for granted, and also then help Christians understand there have always been Christian communities on the underside that are reinterpreting and salvaging the way of Jesus Christ on the ground, and that in my personal experience, I want to offer a gift of the two that have really deeply shaped me right, which is anabaptism in the black church, and that somehow, through learning with the broader church, and particularly these communities that have followed Jesus from the underside, we might also have a more faithful witness, a more radical discipleship, A more prophetic witness, a more beautiful whole healing community that we're a part of, and that we might actually participate in seeking the shalom of our communities and out of our nation and so and of the worlds, right, that we would be participating what God is doing in the world. And so, yeah, I think that that it feels so timely right now in response to so much of what's going on in the church, that we need to kind of recalibrate back to Jesus and rediscover a Jesus shaped way of life.
Joshua Johnson:Yes, yes. Couple quick questions I have for you at the end here. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give my
Unknown:21 year old self? Wow, I don't even know what that's a really fascinating question to think about. What advice I would give, probably just to I mean, things I did, but I do think, you know, as I feel like I'm getting old, I'm not old today, maybe sometimes I do remember when I was in my 20s, it was a young woman I was talking to for a little bit. She was interested in me. We never actually became a thing but, but she did tease me once to say I had a spirit of an 80 year old. So, so maybe, so maybe there's some of that coming out of me still, even though I'm only 43 but I do think the relationships and leaning into relationships, just treasuring time with people is really significant. Being present is something that I would say, I think I would say, probably for me, I think I probably would have told myself to trust my gut a little bit more, as it related to when my body was telling me that certain spaces that something was a little off. In some Christian spaces, trust my body a little sooner, like your body, the alarms are going off for a reason. Look into that, lean into that question, what was going on? I think I was, to some degree, but I also was probably overly patient with some things that I probably could have spared myself from, but also just love Jesus and to keep following him, and that he's going to take me on a wild journey that I will not anticipate. Where it's going, but it's going to be really good.
Joshua Johnson:So yes, that's good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend one
Unknown:of my former professors and briefly colleague who at Messiah, he wrote a book called God's apocalyptic insurrection. I think, I think I'm getting the title right. I should know the title of the meeting, but really beautiful accounting of the gospel and for our times. So if you're looking for a holistic theology of salvation in particular, tied into God's in breaking kingdom. It's really beautiful and timely again for kind of stuff that we're going on, that's going on right now and almost been working through the the lamb of the free a great book on atonement theology as well. Yeah, so many, I don't know, but, yeah, those are some of the good books I've been reading. Great.
Joshua Johnson:Well, making it plain, is available anywhere books are sold? Drew is there anywhere you'd like to point people specifically to get the book? And is there any way anywhere else you'd like to point people to?
Unknown:Yeah, no, you can get them anywhere books are sold. I mean, you can order them at your own bookstore. If you go to the Herald press website, you can order them through there as well. And so, yeah, anywhere you want to buy your books is
Joshua Johnson:great, great. Any, any way they could connect with you, connect with any, any other thing that you're doing.
Unknown:Yeah, you could keep track of me. So I do. I mean, I don't really use it that much but, but I do have a website where you can contact me. So Drew gi heart.com, you can. There's a contact thing there. So you ever have questions, want to reach out, want to invite me to your community. I'm always glad to do things like that. I am always speaking and traveling quite a bit, so I'll be all over the place, all over the country this fall and spring, you can find me online. Have pretty much almost all my social media accounts are at d r u H, A R T, Drew heart, d r u H, A R T. And so you can keep track of me there, and you can find me. In Harrisburg. I live in Harrisburg. Pa attend Harrisburg First Church of the Brethren, and so if you ever in the area, come check us out. We're a cool little community in Allison Hill neighborhood of Harrisburg.
Joshua Johnson:All right. Well, DREW Thank you for bringing us into the history of Christendom, Christianity, the Doctrine of Discovery, and where that has led us to today, and how Anna baptism and the black church can come give us a great vision of how to deeply follow Jesus and radical discipleship be a prophetic witness to tell truth to power and say, this is the way of Jesus, and let's actually follow Him and be for the the oppressed, the marginalized, just like Jesus was, and so we could actually see mutual flourishing for everyone. So Drew. Thank you. This is a fantastic conversation.
Unknown:Thank you for having me. You
