Exploring Freedom and Heritage Through Juneteenth with Rev. Lynne and Bishop Jack

What does freedom truly mean in the context of religion and spirituality? Join us on this stirring episode of Spiritual Gumbeaux as we unravel this profound question with Rev. Lynne and Bishop Jack. As Juneteenth approaches, we dive deep into its historical and personal significance within the African-American community, from its delayed recognition in Texas to its early celebrations in South Carolina. Rev. Lynne provides thought-provoking reflections on the lingering effects of colonialism on African-American spirituality and stresses the importance of achieving both mental and spiritual liberation.

Our conversation continues as we highlight a special Juneteenth event, "Telling Our Story," taking place on June 19th at the Hillside International Truth Center in Atlanta. Co-hosted with the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, this event features renowned elders and griots. We discuss the value of preserving and sharing our histories through intergenerational dialogue and understanding our ancestry. The episode also touches on an upcoming trip to Ghana to honor Dr. Barbara King's legacy. Tune in for an episode filled with heartfelt stories, invaluable insights, and a celebration of our shared heritage.

Transcript

Rev Lynne 0:22

Welcome to Spiritual Gumbeaux. I'm the Rev Lynn Washington, the pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation here in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bishop Jack 0:30

And I'm Bishop Jack Hillside International Truth Center here in Atlanta, Our neighbor, your neighbors.

Rev Lynne 0:37

We are the people in your neighborhood.

Bishop Jack 0:40

In your neighborhood. We're so excited to be with you today to share another wonderful, enlightening, I guess content information podcast.

Rev Lynne 0:51

Yeah, wow. And this week, well, this week coming is a very exciting week for African-Americans and for America as a nation, because we are getting ready to celebrate Juneteenth Juneteenth.

Bishop Jack 1:04

Juneteenth. You know what a powerful time. It's an exciting time right now in the nation, especially within the African-American community, and how it's been embraced and we have to just be mindful of how it's also being commercialized. But what it represents and the pride and the education all that comes with the Juneteenth celebration, it's just a wonderful time in our community when did you become first conscious of Juneteenth?

Rev Lynne 1:31

I know for myself. I think I remember hearing about Juneteenth, maybe about 10 years ago. About 10 years ago my grandparents were from Texas Texans and hearing them just kind of talk about it a little bit. But beyond that I don't really remember it as a big event or African-American event, maybe about five years ago or so.

Bishop Jack 2:00

It's about the same five, ten years ago Now. Having lived in South Carolina, where the enslaved were freed earlier than 1860, actually in 1863. January 1st is considered the Juneteenth like Freedom Day, especially for those in South.

Rev Lynne 2:28

Carolina low country.

Bishop Jack 2:28

But probably about five, ten years ago that Juneteenth became more prevalent. I guess in consciousness we became more aware of it. Always known the history, but it became I don't know, it just came to the forefront.

Rev Lynne 2:44

Well, probably, I think, south Carolinians got the information on Emancipation Proclamation Day, which was June 1st.

Bishop Jack 2:52

January 1st.

Rev Lynne 2:52

January 1st, because that's where the Civil War started, right In South Carolina.

Bishop Jack 2:57

And the proclamation. Remember, the Emancipation Proclamation was actually read on January 1st. It was believed that that's why the whole watch night, the whole experience of watch night, was a part of that process. Because it was believed if you were not present when the Emancipation Proclamation was read on that day you would not be free. But for those who were present they would be set free.

Rev Lynne 3:19

That's good history. That's great history to hear that, because I was not aware of that and its connection with watching I kind of knew. But OK, that's, it's put together a little bit tighter for me, having Texans as family members.

Bishop Jack 3:35

as we know, they didn't get the message till much later in the game, and so that's read for years A few years, didn't?

Rev Lynne 3:43

know it, can you imagine no?

Bishop Jack 3:45

one told them that they were free can you?

Rev Lynne 3:47

well, you know that's it's. It's a funny thing, but I think to this day some of us don't know we're free hey, watch out, watch out I mean, I really do believe that, that we still in our minds and our consciousness are bound just by some of the crazy stuff that we're doing out here.

Bishop Jack 4:05

And so when we're talking about freedom, then what are we talking about? What does it mean, Reverend Lynn, to be free? What does it mean for you to be free?

Rev Lynne 4:14

I think what it means for me personally to be free is to express myself and not be so worried about what other people are thinking about that and not be so worried about what other people are thinking about that. I think the other piece is and I have to applaud you in this is I think the thing that's most bound in us, especially people of color, is our spirituality.

Bishop Jack 4:41

Well, say more about that.

Rev Lynne 4:42

I think that we have been so dogmatized with our European theologians, who have defined how, when and what we believe about the God we serve, that the colonialization of our spirituality has kept us bounded and it lives a secret life.

Bishop Jack 5:10

And we don't even know it. We don't even recognize the mental and psychological and religious change that we have been bound by and that we've held on to because of how we've been socialized religiously. Dr Naeem Akbar talks about breaking the chains of psychological slavery and looking at how what we've been taught about religion and faith and seeing having an image of the divine that doesn't look like you or look like me, and how that lends to this perpetuation of what he calls psychological slavery.

Rev Lynne 5:54

Yeah Well, you know this past. I don't know if you heard Dr Daniel Black's commencement speech.

Bishop Jack 6:02

Well, you know he's going to be one of our speakers coming up. I know For our anniversary. I just really commencement speech.

Rev Lynne 6:05

Well, you know he's going to be one of our speakers coming up, I know For our anniversary. I just really love him. He did the commencement speech for CAU, clark, atlanta University. It is now, I hear, one of the most seen commencement speeches in the HBCU history. Now, mind you, at the same time you got Biden, who's over at Morehouse, and you got Angela Bassett, who's over at Spelman, but the speech that's been most watched is his, and why do you think that is?

Bishop Jack 6:35

I mean, what is it about that speech? Was it his charisma? Was it his message? What is it about that speech that has catapulted it into, I guess, the consciousness of the masses as it has?

Rev Lynne 6:52

I think, because he is one of them, and when I say that what I mean is this is ours, that we've lifted up. This is somebody who attended CAU. This is someone who ascended to be a professor at CAU, who also had the background of other higher institutions, right but who has committed himself to this community, hadn't gone off somewhere big and you know, committed himself but has no bounds in terms of he can speak truth and he's not bound by traditionalism but respects it, knows it, understands it and can translate it in a different kind of way. That's my sense of it.

Bishop Jack 7:45

He epitomizes what it means or what it looks like to be free Free in your theology, a free thinker, free to express the divine as you feel that your soul wants to express. Do you feel, feel that your soul? Wants to express, so do you feel that that's why so many?

Rev Lynne 8:07

because it's probably almost a million people right now of encouragement. I mean, he just spoke the truth. He's just said some of you, all folk, thought y'all wasn't gonna make it here, you weren't gonna graduate because you had this, you had that, you that, and. And he championed Sometimes you need to hear it. You need to hear it and I think he championed it and that their success, their potential, because that's the other piece that's in bondage.

Bishop Jack 8:37

Wow, wow.

Rev Lynne 8:38

You know your potential If you hear that tape going on and on and on. Your mama ain't no good, your daddy ain't no good and you're trying to get up that hill, but that recorder is running. It's so easy to be discouraged, especially in a job market. Or wow, I know I got to go and get two more degrees to have any sense of success. Even though you're already successful, but the way in which the world defines success, and how we've-.

Bishop Jack 9:11

Monetized success Bought into that idea, that concept A lot of times. That perception and the idea that we have of success is really, I know so many people are trapped, they are in bondage to and by their idea and ideal of success.

Rev Lynne 9:32

You know I'm going to kind of go back to this notion of bondage because it was so shortly after this commencement speech which has gone viral, and I preached about this list last Sunday. Once you go viral, you're subject to the attacks.

Bishop Jack 9:49

Absolutely.

Rev Lynne 9:50

And so his attack came and I got this text message from one of my sons. They said Mom, I'm just done and I'm thinking what? So I go on. And they sent me this video about one of his former students who comes back and says well, you know, basically he's blasphemed me against the Holy Spirit Because in his speech he says something I'm paraphrasing about. The Holy Spirit said hell, yes, here we go.

Bishop Jack 10:21

Oh, you know that's to be expected.

Rev Lynne 10:22

I'm sure he, oh, I'm sure he had in mind that there might be some backlash and he did another podcast, or he was interviewed and he talked about that, but I, you know, I talked a little bit about it too. In the first place, is we got to do something about this Barstool? Biblical knowledge from pasta? Yeah, this literalism and taking scripture out of the context.

Bishop Jack 10:52

But that's part of how we've been socialized.

Rev Lynne 10:54

Yes, taking it out of context, and I rose to question well, if he blasphemed me, did this person blaspheme me too? Because the Jewish understanding of spirit ruach is feminine.

Bishop Jack 11:09

Wow.

Rev Lynne 11:11

It's not masculine, it's feminine. And what has the church done as she has? Because church is considered feminine, taking away the feminine side of this energy. So when I talk about spiritual bondage. I'm talking about this kind of language to where a woman gets on a podcast and calls her English professor, an African-American history professor, a blasphemy, and she has to speak truth against this blasphemy. And I'm sitting there thinking, girl, what you talking about? You clearly ain't. Whoever taught you didn't teach you what Ruha and the Shekinah comes from.

Bishop Jack 11:53

You know, I think that could be an example of being enslaved, and don't even know it.

Rev Lynne 11:57

Yes, and now you just helped enslave a whole bunch of other people. What?

Bishop Jack 12:02

was it? Harriet Tubman said I could have freed so many more if they only knew that they were slaves. Yes, they thought they were free, but they were enslaved.

Rev Lynne 12:13

And that's what I'm sitting there. And then there's the amen corner who's typing thank you for speaking truth, and I'm going. Oh my goodness, and that's one of the reasons I've kind of hesitated with this podcast stuff, because I'm like Lord, I don't feel like I don't need no new headache.

Bishop Jack 12:30

Well, you know, I think it's about how we interpret whatever comes.

Bishop Jack 12:34

We get to choose, and that's one of the many freedoms that we have here. We have the freedom of choice. We get to choose how we're going and what we're going to take in. First of all, we get to choose what we're going to give our attention to. We get to choose which texts or emails we're going to read. We get to choose which comments we're going to give ear to. We get to choose, and we get to choose not to, and that's a part of the freedom that we have.

Bishop Jack 13:01

You know, if there's if there's any one, I would say, or one ideal that matters most in this nation, I really believe that that word is freedom, because if you start talking about freedom, when people feel that their freedom has been world today, about the freedom to bear arms and the freedom of religion, the freedom of to practice your faith, freedom from debt, freedom from, maybe, relationships or jobs that are just not working out for them. So, as we celebrate Juneteenth, there's an opportunity that we all have and that is to lean into this idea of what does it mean to be a free people today? What does it mean to be a free individual? What does it mean to be a free people today? What does it mean to be a free individual? What does it mean to be free in mind?

Bishop Jack 14:08

I often say it is so hard to enslave a liberated mind. And when the mind has been liberated, what's it saying? It's once the mind of man or woman or the mind of the individual has been stretched by a new idea, it can never return to its original dimension. So once we have been stretched, once we've been freed from religious dogma, once we've been freed from all of that of how our spirituality has been demonized, once we've been freed of other people's opinion, it's hard to go back into that state and that place and state of where we used to be.

Telling Our Story

Rev Lynne 14:48

Well, you know, it's as we talk about this for our listeners. You may be wondering what are we talking about in terms of what are we doing? We're talking a lot about Juneteenth, so how are we putting this into action? So how are we putting this into action? Well, I think I'll speak on behalf of both of us.

Rev Lynne 15:05

We are inviting you our listeners to join us on June 19th here at Hillside International Truth Center, located 2450 Cascade Road in southwest Atlanta, to join Hillside and the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation for a conversation with our elders and griots called Telling Our Story. Now, this is a really, really special event. Erin Grosser Mitchell will be there, who's from Chicago, and she writes about from color to black and that whole journey. Then we have Mr Charles Person, who is one of the original Freedom Riders. I believe there are only two living now. This is the group that was with CT Vivian and Blessed John Lewis, Congressman John Lewis and his book. Buses Are Coming.

Bishop Jack 16:08

All right.

Rev Lynne 16:09

And then Catherine Meeks. Dr Catherine Meeks, I mean, and all of our speakers are in their 70s and 80s, but it's important that we don't lose these stories. Catherine Meeks' book is A Quilted Life, a story of a sharecropper's daughter coming from Arkansas. And these stories, some of our folks may say well, why are they important? We may know that, but they're important because we have to continue to tell our stories. Other ethnic groups are very good at telling their stories Very good.

Rev Lynne 16:45

And if we complain about our young people not having roots and I know, I come from Richmond Virginia and we were surrounded the place where I worked five public housing projects, five, wow. And one of the things that our young people at the community center thought was that we'll grow up and go get us a apartment in the public housing. Their beginning and their end was there and that is so not true and it's important that we tell our story to dig into our roots. Okay, bishop Jack, ask me why I'm wearing this T-shirt.

Bishop Jack 17:25

Why are you wearing that African Ancestry T-shirt?

Rev Lynne 17:29

Okay, one of the things that I think is crucial in our learning about who we are is to learn about our ancestry. This is not a promotion for African Ancestry, but if you want to take it for a promotion, we can do that too. African Ancestry if you're listening, come and be one of our sponsors. But we did the DNA testing as a family. I mean, I've done it on my mother's side and on my father's side, and the Yoruba people and you got some Fulani and Hausa in you, so that gave our children some sense of grounding on their African ancestry and I think that's important, especially as we go into Juneteenth, as we grow this holiday, and especially as we go into Juneteenth, as we grow this holiday, and as a shout out to Joe Biden, who's had the audacity to make it a federal holiday.

Bishop Jack 18:43

Absolutely, and so I believe to your point, it's really a Sankofa moment for us, and we have these moments where we you know the Sankofa. For those of you who may or may not be aware, sankofa is the mythical bird. It's like a Nayan symbol of the bird flying forward while looking backwards, holding an egg in his beak, to suggest that we can only know where we're going and we can only get there by understanding from whence we've come and from where we've come. Looking back, to remember, to reflect on our history and that's what Sankofa Juneteenth to not only celebrate our freedom, but to reflect and to be educated on what it has taken for us to get to where we are as a people, as a community, and to celebrate our ancestors, celebrate those who are on the front lines of freedom, the freedom fighters, to celebrate those who are fighting right now for our freedoms and to remember to speak their names.

Bishop Jack 20:00

Yes, to say their names Not only the names of those that you'll read about in the textbooks, but speak the names of those in our family, those who have championed freedom for us.

Rev Lynne 20:15

Yeah, I'm excited about that. So for our listeners again, 2450 Cascade Road, southwest. The time is from 11 to 1. There will be a wonderful luncheon as well, so you don't have to worry about getting hungry or maybe your sugar level dropping and all that good stuff. So that's important and come out and share some time and bring some knowledge, and this is an intergenerational event.

Bishop Jack 20:43

Yes, yes.

Rev Lynne 20:44

And that's the other thing that's important. Bring your grandchildren. You're babysitting. Bring your grandchildren.

Bishop Jack 20:52

I'm going to make a call to all liberated minds, all liberated people Come here and let's celebrate together. It's nothing like celebrating with liberated people, and I guess, if I had to offer some takeaways, and that is to let's be very conscious and conscientious of those practices and things that we do to liberate our beliefs, liberate our thinking, to liberate ourselves, and as we are freed within, we are freed without.

Rev Lynne 21:22

Now wait a minute, Bishop, before you leave, there's one more thing I need to say. You're getting ready to go to Ghana.

Bishop Jack 21:28

Ghana yeah.

Rev Lynne 21:30

Yeah. So you've got to bring back to of the things that are going to be a part of the ongoing spirituality and Sankofa moments for you, and we'll have to have a podcast, even though I do believe that if I was such a good neighbor, I'd be packing my bags and coming with you.

Bishop Jack 21:56

Yes, you should be.

Rev Lynne 21:59

Because I love Ghana and it's going to be a very powerful West African trip. I think going to Ghana is probably one of the most memorable. They say Dakar and Gambia is good too, but it's not going to be as good as the experience that you're going to have in Ghana.

Bishop Jack 22:20

Well, listen we have actually maybe about 20, 25 people that will be traveling and we're two ceremonies that we'll be participating in there. Many years ago, the founder of our ministry here at Hillside, dr Barbara King, bishop Dr Barbara Lewis King. She was instilled as the first woman chief in one of the villages there in Ghana and it's customary that when a chief transitions, that they host a kind of a funeral remembrance rite in her honor once a successor is in place. So a part of our trip in Ghana, a significant part of the trip, is to participate in the remembrance rites of Dr Barbara and then they're going to instill me as the new chief, not just in the village, I understand, but it's in the region, in that area where the river where our ancestors took their last bath before they were taken into slavery.

Rev Lynne 23:21

My experience in Ghana changed my theology. My experience in Ghana changed my life. As you know, I've been working on my dissertation. Yeah, my, as you know, I've been working on my dissertation and my dissertation is about chieftaincy women, black women in America who have received chieftaincies. It's a little bit more narrowed to the have really done a lot for my dissertation work but that experience at the last bath, I can say to you, changed my life in every way life in every way, because that was my first real experience of global evil and, as our guide, shared that time with us.

Rev Lynne 24:32

one of the things they will say is that you've got people who have been trekked from all over Africa, who were intentionally separated Think about this who were intentionally separated so that they could not communicate with their other tribesmen. Simply, one of the reasons is, if I talk to you and you know the in ways and outs of Africa, I'm going to be free, but they were emaciated. If you think about Holocaust, people not eating, drinking, tied together, unable to communicate, et cetera. Right, you've taken away something right there in your homeland. Right, you take them to the last bath, you baptize them. Well, you feed them first, because then you're happy.

Going to Ghana

Rev Lynne 25:18

you happy, you willing to get baptized at that point and this beautiful clear blue water I remember. And you baptize them and then you put them on a ship in the name of jesus. To me, there could not be anything more evil, and that's one of the reasons I don't really like even hearing this hymn Amazing Grace.

Bishop Jack 25:39

I know.

Rev Lynne 25:40

I know it. People say we're going to play Amazing Grace. That ain't my Amazing Grace and that ain't my understanding of freedom. So I am looking forward to us doing a podcast just on your experiences of Jagana, doing a podcast just on your experiences of Ghana, and if you experienced anything like I experienced, or if you had any of the raw emotion I had, and especially going to Kwame Mkumras, I think you'll probably have that experience in which they'll tell you some wonderful things which I will not spoil for you.

Bishop Jack 26:15

Well, listen, we'll continue the conversation after the trip.

Rev Lynne 26:19

Oh freedom.

Bishop Jack 26:21

Oh freedom.

Rev Lynne 26:22

Please join us June 19th here at Hillside International 2450.

Bishop Jack 26:28

Cascade Road, cascade Road and be a part of freedom.

Rev Lynne 26:30

11 am 11 am to 1. And if nothing else, lunch on Hillside Ashe, ashe Amenm 11 am to 1.

Bishop Jack 26:37

And if nothing else, lunch on Hillside. Ashe, ashe, amen, amen. Thank you.