Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Analyzing Christian Values in a Troubled World
Note: This episode was planned, recorded and scheduled to air prior to the alleged assassination attempt on candidate and former President Trump on July 13, 2024.
Angella and Leslie challenge conventional beliefs about the intersection of faith and politics, comparing them to what they see as a troubling trend. Inspired by a thought-provoking YouTube video from the Midas Touch channel, "New Turn the Tables on Trump Expose Movement" featuring Politics Girl, they detail their own Christian journeys and discuss the metaphor of faith as a mansion with many rooms. The Besties share their personal experiences of loving Christ in their own ways and they reflect on some of their struggles- from church hurt to hypocrisy, within some faith communities.
Moreover, Angella and Leslie discuss what appears to be an evolution of traditional Christian Evangelism toward white nationalism. They point out the discordance between the Biblical depiction of a loving God who commands us to love thy neighbor with the exclusionary, often racially biased cohort or views the Republican candidate as the next Messiah.
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey folks, this is Angela and Leslie. We are two besties since 1977 and we have conversations that invite you to think deeply and act boldly. Channel. Today we're going to be talking about a video that I actually saw on YouTube. It was on the Midas Touch, called New Turn the Tables on Trump Expose Movement and it's a politics girl, and as I listened to it I was like okay, leslie we gotta talk about this because we are two christian women.
Speaker 1:We are not holy rollers. We are. We live our faith in the best way that we can.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we see Christ in, I think, in a in a much different way than some of what we are seeing showing up in the world right now, and so when I saw this video, and then when Leslie saw it, she agreed that it's something that it was a good opportunity for us to, for us to engage in the dialogue about this and share some of our comments.
Speaker 1:Exactly so the three specific parts of the video that we're going to be talking about. Specific parts of the video that we're going to be talking about. One is there was an analogy used of the Christian faith being like a mansion with many rooms, and that really resonated for us, because we come to our faith in very different ways. So we're going to be talking about how we came to be Christian women in our adulthood. We're going to be talking about church hurt and hypocrisy in the ways that we've experienced them and our thoughts about that, and we're going to be talking about the idea, belief. It could be fact. I don't know that Christians vote Republican. We know it's not a fact with us, so we wanted to talk about that. So those are the three things that we're going to be talking about, and they kind of came up in a different form in the video, but it's what triggered us to say let's bring it to the people. That's true.
Speaker 1:I'm going to try to find it so I can refer to him by name, but he talked about his name is. I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to give it to you right now. His name is Tim Whitaker. He's the founder of the New Evangelicals talked about the fact that his faith tradition was in a very kind of strict evangelical framing Everyone who doesn't believe the things that we believe are damned to hell. And he described it as kind of being in the basement of a mansion with many rooms and you're told that if you, if you go up those stairs, first of all never go up the stairs, but if you go up, those stairs.
Speaker 1:Don't look up there. Yeah, that's where evil is.
Speaker 1:And then, when you go up the stairs, you recognize that there are all these different rooms, and he described the rooms as these different um ways that um christianity is, um is expressed, and you can think about that in terms of yeah right, exactly, so you can think about that in terms of denominations, you know, episcopalian and Catholicism, all those things but we thought we would talk about it in terms of how Leslie and I, the different ways that we came to be believers, and so I'm going to let Leslie describe. It's very different than my story, and so I'm going to let Leslie tell her story first.
Speaker 2:You know. So for me and I think this is Black American, a cultural thing Very often we are just grown up into Christianity and religion, religion. So before I even understood what denomination that, I was a part of my brother, sister and I would go to my grandmother's Baptist church and we would sit in the children's church and she would give each of us a nickel or a quarter to put in the collection plate and we would just sit there and it was more. It was more of a thing that was understood. Okay, um, we didn't necessarily speak about um too much of the christian of the bible at home. Um, from monday through saturday there was always the white Jesus on the crucifix in every home I lived in and we just knew that when it came time for Sunday, it was time to get your hair pressed and wear your dress and go to church, where very often you sweated out your curtains and came home and had a great fish and grits.
Speaker 1:You know Sunday breakfast you know at Annalena's house, Savory grits, not sweet grits, no savory, no sweet grits.
Speaker 2:But I think, in summation, I grew up as a more ritualistic thing that you just did, ritualistic thing that you just did. We didn't really stress understanding the Bible more than perhaps the Ten Commandments, and I always remember my mother saying, as she was raised first Catholic, that you don't question the Lord. So if you have any questions about anything biblical or things don't make sense or you're trying to get more understanding, you really weren't supposed to question it because it was an act that your faith wasn't as strong as it should be. And I think just hearing her stories made me I don't know about my siblings, but not really question things that were a little more mysterious or I didn't have a full understanding of.
Speaker 1:Got you, got you, and then fast forward to where you are now. What happened between then and now? Because I remember when I got saved, you hadn't, and I'll talk about some of my thoughts around that, so, and I don't even know if I know this story as well um, you, um, are, are very, um, are very outwardly practicing christian yeah, well, I think what happened.
Speaker 2:For me it almost felt like um, so many, so many of my close sister friends found the Lord and became saved and you didn't throw it in my face, for sure, but I certainly understood your connection to the faith. Likewise, our friend Andy as well as well, and other people who, at growing up into young adulthood, were speaking more about how the Lord works in their lives and things like that. And while at the time I didn't feel it personally, but I think that and walk was one was real and I certainly liked the effect and the changes that I saw and it caused me to explore it more closely on a more personal level, and that's when I accepted the Lord as my Lord and Savior. Got you, okay, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't I didn't know, you didn't think you had anything to do with it.
Speaker 1:huh, I didn't think I had anything to do with it. No, because I, yeah. Anyway, I'm glad about it, though, because I was born and it was Catholicism. I think more because that was the church in our community, and there was always a church, a school connected to the church, and my mother was a teacher, and so she had that affiliation and she was good friends. One of her best friends actually was the headmistress, was the nun, was a nun, sister Gertrude, and my eldest sister, my only sister, is named after her, and so church was the center of the community, and I wouldn't say that my parents were kind of very strict. There were.
Speaker 1:I didn't see any separation between the social rules and the church rules in my growing up. So but I know, like my parents and my grandparents living in this small, small, small town, church being the center and and and and just being really familiar with the rules around. You know, going to church, kneeling, kneeling, genuflecting, all of those things, yeah, um. And then, when I came to the states, my, my mom actually would um, take us to different churches. I remember it. I don't know that we went to church every Sunday, but I remember that she would take us to different types of churches. I remember one day it was bitter cold, I don't know. To me it felt colder then than it has ever felt. I mean, it was like being in the tundra when we came here from Jamaica. I was never warm enough, never warm enough, no matter how many layers. And I remember one Sunday she allowed us to wear long pants to church, which you know was not done.
Speaker 1:It must have been really cold, it was so cold and I remember they were plaid and they had. You remember what they wore. I remember exactly because it was so uncommon and I was so grateful. So so that. So I've always felt like my mom liked us to be grounded in a set of kind of social norms, if you will. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I wouldn't say that that mommy was was, was, was, was super religious or any anything like that. My mother was too pragmatic to be that. And and then, as I got older and I'm going to kind of fast forward to becoming a parent, to becoming a parent, I was going through a lot of difficulty in my marriage to my children's father and I remember that and I also wanted my children to have that grounding also. And so when my eldest was I don't know, maybe they were two or so, yes, because the second was maybe five months old or something like that and I decided that I wanted to practice and learn more about Christianity and I joined an AME church and oh, okay, I'm not sure if I knew that, yeah, so that's where they both, my older two, my first two children, got baptized there.
Speaker 1:And I remember a friend of mine, we were friends, we met at JP Morgan, we became fast friends and he came to the christening and he said he mentioned this other church and that he would hear on the radio. He lived in Brooklyn, we were in New Jersey at this time and so he mentioned this church. And then one particular day it got really bad at home. It was on a Sunday I'd gotten a phone call about some shenanigans going on with my then husband and I remembered this other church that he mentioned to me, and so I went online somehow, or I don't know. I don't know if you'd give me a card, or somehow I knew how to church.
Speaker 2:And it was. It stayed in the back of your mind at the time.
Speaker 1:It stayed in there. It stayed in there and, um, so I packed up and I was like listen, I'm going to church, I this is not gonna. You know, I could feel that that I was being pulled to not go and I was fighting against that because it was going to be so easy for me to just to say no to my sadness and whatever.
Speaker 1:So, packed up, the kids went to the church and the first thing I noticed is that, you know, I'm used to going into a big church building, whatever, and it was in a like a industrial park. I was like what, the what?
Speaker 2:Wait a minute.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute. And then, as we got out of the car, I remembered seeing some bikers, leather white men and women, tattoos, the whole thing, and they're getting off their bikes with their Bibles, you know, under their arms and I'm like what the heck did Fred get me? What is going on here? They had the joilies on their heads.
Speaker 2:The white gloves they traded for a motorcycle belt.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was like what is going on, but let me tell you that, um, it changed. It changed my life really, because I saw um, the type of um, exploration, the type of teaching, the type of invitation to think deeply, to do your own research, to hear what the pastor is saying and then go get your own confirmation. Sure, sure, Even opening the Bible and reading verse by verse this was a verse by verse reading church, Whereas before, it was so untraditional for us and not really the way that we were raised or grown up.
Speaker 1:It's almost like you wonder is this heretical? Right, it was so heresy, it's going up here and then this is what got me. So my middle child was still breastfeeding and they had a room for nursing moms. It was a one way mirror, a one way glass, whatever, and we could see the service, hear the service and also nurse our children. That was game changing for me, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you know, more than 20 years ago I was before you.
Speaker 1:There wasn't any of that and you know I'm not kind of comparing it to say one was was, you know, good, one was bad. I don't mean it in that way. I just mean it that I just felt like this is a place where I could really, in the place in my life where I was, I could really learn about who this, this, this Christ is, yeah, and so that started me to becoming more involved and I decided to do become a leader in one of their, their children's groups, the Pioneer Girls, and that required that you do some instruction around a Brown servant leadership, which, again a totally new concept for me. I was used to seeing you know, the preacher, the priest, being just revered and could do no wrong and you know, and you, basically, you know you're there for his service to serve him, versus being a servant leader where you know if something needs to be cleaned, you clean it.
Speaker 2:You're not looking for who's going to come. And you know what I mean and I'm sure that experience then so many years ago then informed how you want to view religiosity in general Absolutely, and where you choose to practice your faith in that group setting.
Speaker 1:Absolutely there was no going back. There really was no going back after that.
Speaker 2:There must have been those bikers. Huh On those hogs.
Speaker 1:And I tell you, there was a time when I would travel different parts, wherever Pennsylvania or Jersey, or at that time we would go to Myrtle Beach sometimes. I would always kind of seek out the, the, the, the, the church group, because it was one of those churches that had their different congregations or fellowship, we called it, and I would always seek them out when I went to visit my sister, whatever, and they all had bikers, so it was. It was always that, but anyway. So this idea of of getting to know, get, reading the word, understanding it, bringing my desire to, to please Christ and be grateful for the changes that he was making with me. And I remember, when you got saved, I felt so relieved because there were certain things that I didn't feel comfortable talking to you about. You know, I didn't want to obviously put any pressure on you or anything like that.
Speaker 2:And I just didn't think you would understand.
Speaker 1:You know, I didn't think you would understand.
Speaker 2:you know, when I talked about being led by the spirit and things like that, and then I felt that I wanted to explore this changed person that I could see. And here we are. It was a beautiful thing, but let me tell you it was like I can talk about anything now.
Speaker 1:Really, it was like a next level of our friendship. Really, it was like a next level of our friendship.
Speaker 2:We're gonna need to bring a whole other uh recording about this, because yeah, for sure I've got a lot. We have a lot more to say yeah, and this is.
Speaker 1:You know again our faith. We don't keep it. This is not a sunday thing, this is a no no, no, we take it to work with us we take it into this podcast.
Speaker 2:We take it to the podcast. Yeah, I'll say that We'll take it to the podcast, all the things.
Speaker 1:So let me just kind of really quickly go to the things. I'm going to jump to. Number two the Christians vote Republican 75% of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I don't even know. Les, do you want to? How do you want to jump into that part of?
Speaker 2:the conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, what I want to say is that when I see a group of people or a we'll talk about the evangelical movement or the Christian evangelicals or it when I hear what they profess to believe in and who they profess to believe in, versus the behaviors and the people they endorse and the explanations that they give and the things that they overlook, I say that you know, I know the Bible, we've read it cover to cover, we know what the tenants are and we can recite many of the phrases.
Speaker 2:But I've also, in my understanding of the Bible and the Lord, that I've internalized the Holy Spirit and there are things that are in line with his teaching and there are things that are not. So the things that I am seeing in terms of some of this, the things that I am seeing in terms of some of this, the evangelical movement it just doesn't make sense to me and that's why I think that we can talk about it and it almost seems to me that the Christian evangelicals now have become so far into white nationalism and exclusion and separatism, and it doesn't at all look like the word that I've been reading for a number of years right now.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, I would agree. And what Mr Whitaker, tim Whitaker, said about it, about it, I love this. He said you know that we're taught that we bear the cross for others, but as Christian nationalists, they want to nail people to the cross. They want to nail others to the cross.
Speaker 1:We're supposed to bear the cross for others, and that is a good summary of, I think, how Leslie and I kind of feel about it. We believe that Christ is love. We believe that he was a refugee, and so you know he has. There is a reason why we feel very deeply for for people who are downtrodden, for people who are underprivileged and unfortunate by no virtue of their own deeds.
Speaker 2:Right, which should not be relevant, you know, for foreigners and people who are seeking refuge. Right, you know, when we, in my opinion, profess the values that I believe are more in line with what Jesus says, you know, we get called socialists when we want to love other people and love on other people and serve other people and help more than individuals. Right, I think that Christian evangelicalism today looks very selfish. Yeah, yeah it can, because it's a broad, because it's all the rooms right as well.
Speaker 1:Right, it's all the rooms I want to just be kind of be careful about, because that term is really broad and I think for people who are, um, if, um, they, I, I feel like I'm I'm a Christian evangelist, but my evangelism is that I live a life that makes people see Christ in me, and that's how I even, um, evangelize. Right, I don't do it by, you know, sitting on the corner, stand on the corner, some people, that's, that's their way.
Speaker 2:So but, as Assisi says, we are charged to preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words.
Speaker 1:That's right, st Francis of Assisi. Yes, that's right. Very good, very good, very good Friends of.
Speaker 2:Assisi. Yes, that's right, very good, very good, very good. So. But I'll tell you, it's almost like I look at it, the way that they, that that people have captured the word marriage. Yeah, you know, when you say a Christian evangelical, it almost has its own hierarchy and structure. It almost has its own hierarchy and structure and, again, it's very exclusionary. So it does not include people that look like us, perhaps, who are black Christian women who believe in our Lord, our savior. Nationalistic, white nationalistic umbrella that I mean. Remember people on that um have been corrupted by conservatism. Remember, people don't realize that black people are traditionally very conservative people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we have conservative ideologies in terms of financial, fiscal, fiscal conservatism and so certainly social conservatism. But when we think about the conservatives as a group, it really doesn't look like us and nobody thinks about us Right right, about us, right right. So I'm using the term only in terms of how, almost like MAGA, Make America Great Again. Who the hell doesn't want to make America great? You know it's, but they've coined that term.
Speaker 1:It's the again part. Yes, because the last time, the last time white Christian evangelism was really at its height. That was when the Ku Klux Klan you know that burning cross thing that was in reverence to their faith. That was in reverence to their faith. So don't think for a moment that there isn't a very, very, very dark, criminal, wicked side, and not just during Jim.
Speaker 2:Crow and when the Ku Klux Klan was here terrorizing people. In fact, they still are. People don't realize that, but when I was in Ghana some years ago, I told you I went to Elmina Castle, where was one of the places that the enslaved people were left Africa to come to America, and I would actually see the dungeons and the cells of where they were held prior to getting on the ships, and in every room there was the inscription of biblical scriptures, and under were the quarters of the masters or whomever, with their rooms for their Bibles and their churches and things like that. So they were very intertwined and specifically chose verses that subjugated others Right and I suppose left out those love thy neighbor, yeah, verses. They were irrelevant. We don't need that.
Speaker 1:And, of course, there was a very different slave Bible than what the white folks taught. I don't know. They're cutting the grass, hopefully it's not very loud.
Speaker 1:It's okay, we want grass cut, we're coming up on time. But the other thing I wanted to talk about really quickly if you, you're the timekeeper, les, so you have to say we did want to talk about really quickly You're the timekeeper, les, so you have to say we did want to talk about church hurt and hypocrisy, but I don't know if we have time this time. Do we have time? Yeah, we do, we have some time, okay. So on this topic, I know that there are people who have had deep, deep, deep wounds from their experiences in churches, and I wouldn't say that my experience comes anywhere close to that. My experience comes anywhere close to that, but, coming from this type of fellowship that I described, and I continue to, even when I moved from New Jersey to North Carolina, I sought out um and um. God directed me to a church that was within that um, that um, structure and um. I and I had, uh, an experience there which which made me, made me stop going to that church and the way that it.
Speaker 2:Do you want to talk about it briefly?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the way that that showed up was, you know, you kind of noticed a few things here and there and listen, you don't have to agree or believe everything that a pastor says, period, um, we're all human beings and even if um a pastor is called this is my belief even if a pastor is called to um, to the pulpit, it doesn't mean that they, they are perfect and they don't make Right, because they're human beings, exactly we understand that.
Speaker 1:Gone are the days where the scripture was held by the pastor and no one else had access to it. We all have access to it in all different forms and you can do your own stuff. So it wasn't ever my expectation that I would believe or I would kind of endorse is probably a better word, and so, but there were just a few things that would make me kind of uncomfortable. And you know, and what I noticed and this was this is a black man and what I would notice is that that he just would throw us under the bus. Well, I'll just, I'll just kind of say that the thing that kind of brought it to a head this was like the first big thing is when.
Speaker 1:Um, was that a george floyd? It was when george floyd, yeah, and the way that he reacted to how black people and other people who felt outraged and just hurt to the core about what happened and how he was murdered, and the way that he talked about it on from the pulpit, it was just like what, what you there, there's no other, what like I? I won't think words into his mouth, but but the, it, the, it was blaming. It was kind of like um, they shouldn't be, they shouldn't be looting and all of that. I mean you can talk about that and then talk about this. Right, you can. You can kind of frame it in such a way that people get a broader understanding versus just this, this, this kind of very, very narrow. It's about it in a way that there was almost oh, there's no justification for people behaving that way and being so kind of angered.
Speaker 2:Without an understanding of some of the things that led up to that, and that's hurtful. When people look at a circumstance as a point in time, right, and they don't put it in context of any beginning, like that's the middle of something and you're leaving out this part, right?
Speaker 2:And I know that must be hurtful, especially when we look at our church families as family. Yeah, absolutely, you know. We look at them as family. Right, family can hurt us, you know. Yeah, absolutely, you know. We look at them as family and family can hurt us, you know, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I just felt like he had such a. He had such a position of power, of, of, of, of people looking to him and it was a. It was a very kind of diverse group of people in this, in this church, very diverse, and so I just saw it as such an opportunity to frame things so that people would understand more broadly why we were feeling this way as Black people. And he went completely the opposite way. It was almost like and he would kind of say you know, well, I'm Black. Well, not, you can be Black and not like Black people.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying. Yeah, we know quite a few people who can't relate to that or they feel very disconnected from it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, or even if you are socially or economically disconnected from the masses of Black people. Right To forget where you come from is the term that we use.
Speaker 1:Or forget, or because this is what I think was going on with him, or to not forget where you came from, but to project that negative place that you came from in your family and project that on my family. Behaved this way and therefore, and this is some of what you know- my family behaved this way and therefore this is.
Speaker 1:This is the way that I frame black folks right, all black folks. We're victims. We act like victims when we're not, when you know we make bad decisions when we shouldn't. We, you know we're responsible for our lot in life and nothing else affects it except us, and you know that's very hurtful.
Speaker 2:And you know that's very hurtful.
Speaker 2:I've had personal experience with that, because I have someone also very close to me who you know, also a Christian, and with the tenets of the Bible that I read, you know some of the love thy neighbor is missing. Certainly, the extension of grace is absent and you know forgiveness is, is is huge in our faith. Um extending grace, yeah. Um withholding judgment and let letting judgment be, uh, thy lord's, you know, and no one is without sin, yeah. But when you castigate those who may be less fortunate or in different circumstances, I have difficulty with that. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:And I don't it doesn't matter, then, to me how many verses you can recite and how many times, or how often you carry the word in your hand.
Speaker 1:If you're not living the.
Speaker 2:Bible is a living document.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, Mm, hmm, mm, hmm. And so that was the, that was the, that was the first, and then there was a, there was, there were a few other things that just every time I would kind of, okay, I, I get that, I grace, grace, grace, grace, I'm not gonna agree with everything. And then I would, um, kind of get in that space where I'm, I'm kind of back, mentally back, and then something else and something else, and so, um, I think it kind of there was a protest at a pregnancy what do they call it? It might have been a Planned Parenthood or something like that and some of the church members went there and there was a recording of it. It or it was a live maybe and he pointed out how many black people were, were in the waiting room. You know, see what I mean. He was like look at him, see what I mean. And I was like what, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing.
Speaker 1:What are you doing? And so that was like the. That was like the end of it for me. I just couldn't. And you know, some things came out after that, but those things, you know, I, I I'm not into like like the the gossipy stuff at all, whether it's true or not, into like like the gossipy stuff at all, whether it's true or not, I don't know. But that's not what was the thing for me. It was it was just when I saw that there wasn't a separation between his personal experience and the ways that I think a pastor should lead the congregation.
Speaker 1:Should lead the congregation?
Speaker 2:yeah, and then, once you experience that and I'll just be very personal here that it becomes very difficult. You have to really stay fast into who you are following. You know whose counsel you choose to to follow and to take to be the gospel. You know, because you you listen to people and in this case your pastor, and you had set him up to be had to have a certain standard. Um, and when they let you down and you wonder, is it? Uh, am I questioning the faith?
Speaker 1:or am I in?
Speaker 2:disagreement with this person who was our leader. It's a personal problem not a faith problem.
Speaker 1:And you got to remind yourself of that. I know I've done that for me, so glad you said that, and that's probably a good place to wrap this up that nothing, no one, no one can come between us and our Savior Christ. No one, there is no. It's just not possible. We know that there's a difference between human beings and God and I thank God for that. I thank God for not anchoring.
Speaker 2:You know our lives, our faith journey to people. Yeah, you know what I mean, and not to them that could separate us. Yeah, yeah, but it's pervasive, it's what now? It's pervasive, it's a problem the political parties and look at human beings as the next savior, as the you know, our only hope.
Speaker 1:Right and in terms of person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, oh, it's so, and then yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway, thank youessie, thank you, hey babe, Thank you, thank you, this was good. Thank you, guys for listening.
Speaker 2:Don't forget to like and subscribe if you want to hear more from Leslie and Angela.
Speaker 1:Angela Thanks for listening All right, guys, see you next time. Bye.
