20 Minute Takes

Brandi Miller & Reclaiming Theology

March 02, 2022 Christians for Social Action Season 1 Episode 7
20 Minute Takes
Brandi Miller & Reclaiming Theology
Show Notes Transcript

This week, Nikki Toyama-Szeto interviews Brandi Miller, the creator and host of the podcast Reclaiming My Theology. Listen in as they talk about deconstruction, scripture, and theologizing with integrity and openness to the expansiveness of God.

You can follow Reclaiming My Theology's Instagram page here.
Check out the RMT Lent 2022 Devotional.
And follow Brandi on Twitter and Instagram.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (00:11):

Hello, my name is Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and I'm the executive director for Christians for Social Action. And your host for this podcast, 20 Minute Takes. This week we're talking with Brandi Miller. She's the host and the creator of the podcast Reclaiming My Theology. Brandi is one of the deepest and most thoughtful Christians that I know, and she takes us on her journey as she has rethought her faith. Brandi Miller, thank you so much for joining us on 20 Minute Takes.

Brandi Miller (00:46):

So happy to be here. Always a pleasure.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (00:48):

I've been so impressed by the conversation that you're curating over at Reclaiming My Theology, your podcast. Can you tell us about what it was that sparked the idea to start that podcast?

Brandi Miller (01:00):

I had been thinking for a long time about how people do their faith and the ways that I was working with college students for almost 10 years. I could see that the things that I was saying to them that were given to me by the evangelical organization I was working for weren't actually intersecting their real life or the real questions that they were having. As I watched students lose their faith post college I realized that the information that I was giving was insufficient to change their lives. That wasn't necessarily because the message itself was bad, but because there was this undercurrent of toxicity, oppression, white supremacy,  and violence that they were deeply suspicious of, as they should have been. Some of the impetus for the work was to speak to the things that corrupt the Christianity that I think could be better.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (01:47):

You're following those places of corruption, asking tough questions about where that's coming from. I have been impressed because I feel like you take on some pretty complex, meaty topics. How is it that as you're interrogating, as you're deconstructing, what is it that you use to give you a foot to stand on while you're asking these questions? Or do you just get reoriented to not having an orientation? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Brandi Miller (02:24):

The irony is that the foundation that I have is from my highly conservative theological background that did many damages to my life. But one thing it did do was give me a love for scripture and a love for engaging with hard spiritual questions. Even if those questions weren't particularly welcome, I did have resources to answer questions that maybe no one was asking. But I still had some sense that if you dig and if you search, you can find perspectives on things. And so as I have been working that out, as I change and as I, to use the buzzword of the day, “deconstruct”, I find that I can hold one thing at a time and deconstruct this thing over here while not totally obliterating another thing. The deconstruction journey for people is challenging because it happens all at one time.

Brandi Miller (03:15):

The foundation I rest on is I don't deconstruct all at once. I can go, that thing is really messed up. Or that doesn't seem like Jesus, or actually that doesn't seem consistent with reality or what it seems like Jesus' vision for the world is and not throw out everything all at once. I've been able to more critically and responsibly engage with new perspectives. Part of the issue with a lot of progressive ideology, especially in social media culture right now, is that whenever a new progressive idea comes out, it seems like it's the most right thing rather than a voice that's contributing to the broader picture of what it means to live in the world. I'm trying to, in my own practice, hold the tension between I've known all of these and there are these other ways of knowing. If I hold those two together and let them be in conversation with each other, it's much more effective and much more helpful and generous to all people than if I were to just throw everything out at once.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (04:11):

What you're describing is really true. I have found a lot of folks who get a bit overwhelmed in the hard questions and in a sense they just sort of toss everything out because they don't quite know where to start. What I hear you saying is you can hold some things and you use that to ask questions of other places. It sounds iterative, like it keeps flowing. You used the word “conversation.” Why do you, why do you talk about it as a conversation?

Brandi Miller (04:47):

I do for several reasons. And it becomes very meta being a podcast host who dialogues about theology for a living. What I'm trying to do in the podcast is model what I think theology should be, which is just God talk. It's this discourse between people who are saying, hey, I've encountered the divine in this way. How have you encountered the divine? Oh, that doesn't make sense with how I've encountered God in whatever way. How do we make sense of that disconnect? And I think part of the issue with a lot of the theology that many of us have inherited is that it was something that was just inherited. It was not conversed through. It was not thought through, it was something that we were told is the truth, or you go to hell. Or this is the truth, or God's gonna be mad at you or reject you.

Brandi Miller (05:28):

Or the more practical implication is that the community rejects you for what they think God will reject you for. Very little is conversational because conversation is inherently dangerous.  It's important to have conversation because that's how people in scripture figure things out themselves is by being like, I heard this thing from God and someone's like, no, you didn't. And they're like, yes, I did. And they're like, well, how did you know? And so it's just them figuring it out along the way. But because we have this thing called the Bible, it's a lot easier for people in modernity to say this isn't a conversation. It's an indoctrination, even though we wouldn't use that word for it. And so for me, conversation is the antithesis of indoctrination in our spiritual lives.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (06:06):

As you've been encountering some of these really tough questions or these places of dissonance, what are some of the places of deep sorrow? What are some of the unexpected places of joy or encouragement that you've found in this process?

Brandi Miller (06:23):

I mean the primary place of grief or sorrow  that I experience is really just that my work exists at all. I don't want to live in a world where we need to reclaim our theology. I don't want to live in a world where we need to be doing that. The more I hear stories of the things that people experience in their churches, with their families, with their partners, the abuse and the injustice and how much that is tied to their view of God's self and others it makes sense to me.  I've been reading all these studies about how people are more lonely now than they've ever been. Christianity has not helped that because we create theologies and practices that are super isolating for folks. And so I hear people saying all the time, I thought I was alone. They're saying it in a proactive positive like, Hey, I love your podcast or I love your work because it makes me feel like I'm not alone or I'm not crazy.

Brandi Miller (07:11):

And that means that for your whole life, you have felt alone or that you have been made to feel like you are not grounded in a reality that you've always been living in. I hear those stories that people are sharing with me in the positive, but I can see the undercurrent of how that would be a positive thing for them. It's really, really upsetting. I think one of the things that brings me the most joy right now is I love when people fall in love with scripture and with what Jesus is like in the world. The story that has been given to us, that we have inherited, or been indoctrinated into is not good news. It's not a good story.

Brandi Miller (07:47): 

When people are like, oh, I can trust my body. I can explore things. I can try stuff and I can make mistakes and I can be with people I didn't think I could be with.  I can orient myself in different ways than I thought I could orient myself. I'm seeing people just get really excited about what life with Jesus could look like. I haven't seen that in a lot of conventional church spaces in a long time that's not motivated by some negative thing about yourself that God magically fixes. Life with Jesus by itself is very good. Jesus doesn't have to be born miraculously or die triumphantly for the way of Jesus to be good. I think people get to see that and experience that. It's so beautiful because the thing that creates is love for self, love for others, and love for God that builds beautiful, generous community. And I love that.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (08:35): 

I think that whole statement that your work almost wouldn't have to exist. What, as you have reclaimed your theology, are some of the practices or ways that your spirituality has shown up in new ways that feel like these authentic expressions of this reclaimed theology?

Brandi Miller (09:01):

A lot of it is the conversational pieces. It's assuming from the beginning that I do not have the whole picture. My spiritual practice before was like, I know this truth about God and I'm going to pray this truth about God or I'm going to worship this truth about God. Rather than being shaped by God in real time. I think the conversational piece has been a huge part of it for me because it's far more challenging than any kind of systematic theology I've ever engaged with. I have to lean into empathy. Most theology does not require empathy. It requires - I can't really think of the word- but just random acceptance of things that you may not believe. And so I think for me, it's been helpful to be challenged. To say, I was taught that you should not do that in your spirituality or think this way or do this thing.

Brandi Miller (09:50):

And then I'm like, why not? How would God show up in this place if I were to believe you when you speak? And so I think that's been a difference for me because it's forced me to say, maybe God is broader, bigger, more beautiful, kind, more accepting, more inclusive than I thought. To recognize that even in my own progressive paradigms there are limits to my progressive paradigms that I haven't thought through and that keep me living in the way that I don't want to be living right now. Or that I'm actively critiquing every week in my podcast. I want to have integrity. The other thing is I think that I just feel way less nervous about my spirituality. I think I just used to feel that everything was framed as life or death.

Brandi Miller (10:35):

So it felt like life or death. Now, maybe life with Jesus is just living, being together. It's talking to God about stuff. When I think I'm hearing something from God, holding that with open hands rather than a tight grip. Predestination, prophetic, whatever, just holding those things and paying attention to my life and reading the story of my life that God has been writing forever and asking, where's the momentum of that going? Where is there dissonance? What's worked for me, what hasn't and allowing that to shape me as my own life is in dialogue with the scriptures and with my spiritual practices and the church and all of that. 

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (11:13):

I've never heard of the empathy that leads to how to enter this conversation. As you mentioned, I was like, oh, I don't know that systematic theology even elicits an emotion. It almost seems like it's out of bounds. Like you kinda have to scrub that or check that at the door. I love this full showing up. It's such an inspiring picture we have. How has patriarchy, white supremacy snuck in and gotten entree into art theology?

Brandi Miller (11:50):

I don't know if they've snuck into our theology as much as they are the entire foundation of it all. When I think about the lens that we read the scripture with… I was a part of InterVarsity for a long time and we love inductive studies. So like trying to like look at all of the parts of the scripture and then deduce what the scripture is saying. But I think that there is a fallacy to that type of scripture study, because it assumes that you're bringing in no lens with which to shape what you see in the text. So like how do I see gender in the text? So I might observe Jesus shows up as a man, but like what that means that Jesus shows up as a man is highly contextual, is highly built into a lens.

Brandi Miller (12:35):

Does that mean Jesus is domineering, assertive, violent? Does that mean that Jesus is hospitable, soft, generous? So that lens that we bring, especially if we're in the United States, are almost always run through the lens of patriarchy and white supremacy before they are any kind of contextual work. There is this kind of counter narrative that I'm seeing, where people are trying to take the Bible and make it less problematic. But I think what we have to do is just go like, no, the Bible is in and of itself problematic. It has things in there that we should never be comfortable with, that we should never be excited about that we should never twist our way into doing or engaging with. But I think what ends up happening is that because this lens of white supremacy or patriarchy, or really just dominion and control, enters our sense of the text it shapes our view of God that we then read the rest of the Bible through.

Brandi Miller (13:32):

If I assume that God is powerful, and power in the United States looks like being a white man and if being a white man means being ambitious, going for bigger and more, then I see God as an ambitious CEO executive, who's trying to build a giant company of people. If I believe that to be true about God, then when the Psalm says, “God is my shepherd,”  we get this gentle image we interpret as the Shepherd's got the staff that’s whipping you around to get you to the right direction and breaks your legs to bring you home. The scripture actually doesn't give us any of that. But because the lens that we read of God is already so violent and corporate it's really hard to say, oh Jesus. When Jesus says I'm gentle and lowly and meek, we're like, yeah, but only for a while because gentleness and loneliness and meekness doesn't do anything for us in American culture.

Brandi Miller (14:34):

A lot of how all of that gets into our theology and then stays there because most of the voices that we hear talking about theology, if we're not intentional, are white men. Therefore, white men become the most authoritative voices who look the most like the image of God that they've created.  I think the consequence of that, is that when someone like me, a black woman, gets up at the pulpit I already look less like God; I’m more worthy of suspicion than the white man who gets up at the pulpit before me. The image of God in me is not considered the image of God because the image of God is in Mark, Brad and John. That shapes a lot of how we see God and people's legitimacy to theologize together.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (15:22):

This initial frame that we approach is already shaped like a particular kind of person from this context and that we're doing mental gymnastics to make the rest of the things we see in scripture, either reinforce or be a one time outlier. We kind of explain it way.

Brandi Miller (15:41):

The assumption of neutrality is the biggest mistake we can make.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (15:44):

Instead of the assumption of neutrality, where should we start?

Brandi Miller (15:49):

I think about the scientific method or data collection. If I was doing a study of everyone in my church, but I only got data from white men and then I said, the whole church feels this way about our budget for this year - that's a terrible method.

Brandi Miller (16:09):

To have a bigger picture of what reality is in this space that I'm in or what reality is in our world, we have to have a broader range of voices, experiences, and opinions, knowing that some of those are going to be outliers. You're always going to have that person on Yelp who reviews something totally outside of the culture of the place and says this place is terrible and I hate it because it's the worst. And you're like, okay, well the reviews are still four or five stars. You throw out the outliers, but you hold the center of what is being said.  I think if we can hold more pictures and ask what is missing, what is dissonant? What is resonant? Where is there tension? Where is there life? Where is there death? That actually gives us a much better picture of things. As I read theologians and black theologians, and as I read children's Bibles and listen to kids talk about God, all of that tells me something that isn't just relegated to the realm of white male academia. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because that's where we're, that's where we're mostly at now. Mm-hmm

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (17:10):

How do you respond to folks who are like, well, if we listen to all of these things it becomes inclusive that it holds contradictory things, and then we end up with mush. How would you engage or respond with that? Is there ever too wide of a circle?

Brandi Miller (17:36):

Well, I would prefer mush to our current oppressive reality. If it's oatmeal versus a poison steak, I'll take oatmeal. That's the reality. I think part of the issue is our imagination for the divine is so small that when we start to eliminate the boxes that our theology fits into, I think a lot of us become triggered. We become triggered toward believing the truth is what keeps me from a bad consequence, so I must believe the right thing. If it gets wider and wider, then what's right and what's wrong is just nebulous. That's not true because what you're saying is that theology as it's broadened, loses its ethics and that's not true. All of us have to start from a place of ethics and ask, what are some inherent things - does this cause death? If this causes death, we need to look at it.

Brandi Miller (18:36):

Jesus gives us this frame of a tree by its fruit. The broader theology gets the more complicated it gets, but does it create more death?  I don't think it does. Does it create more violence? I don't think it does. Does it create more colonization? I don't think it does. I think we have to become more comfortable with if we say that God is big and eternal, if we believe that that is true, then our sense of who God is should be ever expanding rather than shrinking. Our systematic theology, our theological approaches right now attempt to make sense of a God that has always said things like if you see me, you will die. This is this expansive, big, powerful, complicated God. We have to be a little bit more humble about what we believe about God and if expanding is going to ruin our faith, then our faith is already ruined.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (19:29):

That's so interesting. So we're asking totally the wrong question. It's not what is box does God fit in, but rather how all these other things are actually revealing parts? God is bigger than our imagination, that that God is, is bigger and bold.  I have a totally personally invested question because I'm trying to re raise a couple of little peoples. I feel like I have appreciated a lot of the hard questions that are being asked about the church and about the theology that I've received growing up. But when I think about a grade school kid, I find myself reverting to these old tropes and dichotomies that I received. Do you have any advice because those things are very easy, they're simple. They have a right and wrong, you know, like they're easy to transfer, but at the same time  how do I transfer the questions to my kiddos who don't also have a foundation? Do you have any advice of what are the renewed paradigms, these are the renewed questions or how to respond to the day to day moments?

Brandi Miller (20:53):

I don't know. But what I do know is that our theology is never meant to be static. And so much of the problem with how we teach kids about God is that we teach things and we call them fundamental truths that we then hope for them to believe forever. Instead of saying, Hey, because you're like zero to three years old, you only understand things in concrete terms. So I might teach you Bible literalism or something, or tell you a story as though it's real when you're three because your brain literally can understand anything outside of that critical framework. When a kid is in elementary school, they think of God as like God in the clouds far away or magical. And of course that's true because they're imitating what they see in the media.

Brandi Miller (21:40):

But in their grade school years, they can separate a personal fantasy from reality. They do that in every part of their lives. As kids grow and age, our view of God can become larger and more abstracted because after we're out of high school, abstraction makes more sense for our lives. I can't answer the question of how do you raise kids outside of the frameworks that we knew before. If we assume that how we talk about God will change as kids develop and grow, as their brains shift in how they understand the world, then that can be really helpful for us in having less pressure on parents to do everything right and how to assume in our own lives that the way that we understand the divine will change.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (22:25):

As you think about the future and as you dream for the church, what is the dream that you are moving towards that you're leaning into?

Brandi Miller (22:38):

That the church would be a space where everyone belongs. That there would be space, whether it's in a building or with people, where people could be fully known and fully loved regardless of where they're at. I interviewed Dr. Willie James Jenning recently, and he described it as refusing to interpret scripture in our lives on our own. That would be my dream for the church is that we would interpret and dream together in a way that everyone would be more free.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (23:08):

Wonderful. I love that dream. I want to join you in that dream. Brandi Miller, thank you so much for joining us on 20 Minute Takes

Brandi Miller (23:16):

Our deep pleasure.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto (23:23):

20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action. Our music is created by Andre Henry and our show is produced by David de Leon. I'm your host, Nikki Toyama-Szeto. If you want to find out more about our work, visit the website at christiansforsocialaction.org