Progress & America's 250th Anniversary

As America marks its 250th anniversary, what does "progress" really mean—and who gets to define it? In this episode, Father Norm and Gino explore how our different backgrounds and lived experiences shape the way we view America's story. Together, they discuss the cultural context behind the celebration, the difference between quantitative and qualitative measures of progress, and why honest dialogue across perspectives matters now more than ever.

Have comments, questions, or want to suggest topics for discussion? Leave a comment or e-mail us at heartmatterspcast@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey everybody, uh welcome to Heart Matters with Father Norm and Gino. I'm Gino.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

And I'm Father Norm, and it's good to be here together. And uh we're recording this right close to uh the 4th of July. Uh and obviously I'm sure all know the uh the 250th anniversary, remembering back to uh 1776. Uh Gino always teases me because I'm older and he thinks I remember them, but no, I I saw pictures of K. But I do remember uh back in 1976, which was the 200th anniversary, and I can remember pretty vividly I'm 79 and I was 29. And uh and I was reflecting on that even with what's going on here, and just to mention briefly, uh you know, kind of the uh the different mood in the country. Back then, and I do remember in 76, uh Richard Nixon, who was a polarizing person in the country then as president, and then Watergate and all that was found out. Obviously, people were upset uh, and eventually, actually, the the year before, and or a couple years before, he resigned from the presidency. But Watergate and all of that, yeah, people were divided about him and about what was going on. Another one, too, uh, in that time was the Vietnam War. You know, like in fact, when I go back, I graduated from high school in 65, three of my classmates died in Vietnam. So that emotional connection in that, and then, and I know there was great division, hostility in the country around that war. Often it was younger versus older, but just you could see the hostility. And then civil rights, a number of things were going on there. Again, there was some division. But it was interesting when we came to 1976, it seemed like uh things were moving with the celebration in a positive way. And recognizing, yeah, our country has issues, but looking at the positive and the good of what started in 1776, and being able to look back and say, well, hey, Watergate Nixon, he's not there anymore. Some of these other issues are are getting resolved, the Vietnam War came to an end. And so people had a real sense of hope, a real sense of yes, this is a new beginning, a new dawn, and everything. I'm not gonna say more right now, you may have stuff things you want to add, but I haven't seen this time around for a lot of reasons, that same sense of hope and optimism.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, it almost feels like, you know, historically speaking, most people when they experience these things, they experience it through the kind of the bias lens of their own experience. And so you part of me thinking about this time is like, you know, we've never seen anything like this, we've never felt like this, but then this is all I've ever felt. Not all I've ever felt, but this is you know, I don't have the context of a 1976 like you do, and so kind of hearing what you just described as like this time of hope. It's interesting for me to think about what does that like I I feel like there's a group of people that probably do feel that, but I it feels like the vast majority from my kind of vantage point is people don't feel that people feel, and maybe that's the divide, the you know, the uh the divide of the time that is comparable to that time, but um you now being able to experience both of those, you know, 1976 and the 200-year anniversary now, fast forwarding to the 250th anniversary, are there specific things that you feel personally um that are similar or different in in those senses?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah, no, well, I I think on the one hand, uh and I think in terms of both and a lot, uh, even then, and especially now, that sense of okay, uh there's things that could weigh us down. We were coming out of some of that uh uh with the Vietnam War and some progress in the civil rights movement and and and also overcoming Nixon and what he was doing. So uh there was some of that, but I know uh there even even now, it's kind of when I say both end, a mixture of okay, there's difficult circumstances now, and so that can weigh people down, especially when I talk to a lot of young people, even younger than you. Really? Yeah, when I and sometimes they say, Oh, this is horrible, we'll never come out of this. I said, for me, and not being naive, I said, Well, you know, with a sense of history, I said, Well, in 1976, when I look, we came through some stuff. So was it was it bad for a good number of years? Was there great division? Absolutely. Uh, you know, and yet, and yet I remember back coming through it at least for a while. And so I look at this and say, you know, we'll get through this. Uh is is this difficult? Is this challenging? Is there a great division? Is there hostility? Yes, but somehow we'll get through this. For me, that experience going back and remembering getting through that, and also I think for me, from a from a Christian perspective, not being naive about it, God just doesn't make everything all beautiful and wonderful if we don't cooperate, but that that hope, okay, Lord, you can take whatever's happened. We do a lot of stuff to ourselves, he doesn't have to cause it, but can he still bring good out of it? Yes. So that's why I live with. Am I cynical about what's been? No. Have I had some negative aspects? Yes. But how to see that negative without being cynical and still be hopeful, and in fact, hope motivating us for me, even back then, if I if I'm hopeful, then I feel there's something we can do about it as opposed to saying there's nothing we can do, we just gotta stick with it.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, yeah. So in my mind, there's like a couple things raveling around as always. But one of the things that as you were talking, like a question formed in my in my brain was like, who holds the barometer of progression for the country? Um like that was one of the questions, and the other part of it was kind of like this or rather not a question, but a tension that I think I I feel often, which is this spiritual versus this reality. Um right, and there's always um already, you know, in the faith or the spiritual aspect, it's the already but not yet thing. And so like on when I'm standing in that vantage point, I sit in a space, in a place of hope, right? Um, but that hope is oftentimes are I I don't want to say um warped, but that hope is held in tension with the reality that I see. And so when folks say um, you know, America has progressed, um it's hard to uh quantify that statement. And when it's progressed, progressed for who, right, is the other part of that. So like my my brain is constantly bouncing back, and or even just my person is constantly bouncing back between the spiritual reality of like you know, God will be able to use whatever whatever's happening because all things work for the good of those who so like from that aspect, God will use whatever's happening at the same time feeling called to do my part and to you know bring about this reality that God has empowered us to do, um, but not to do that in a blind way that negates reality.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Yeah, don't worry, be happy.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that for me, that's kind of the dance that I feel on a regular basis, and that can sometimes be exhausting, especially when, and as I'm saying this out loud, I'm I'm processing too, but that can be overwhelming when you are trying to be hopeful, but the reality seems like it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Like you're trying to stay above water, but the weight keeps getting heavier and heavier and heavier.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

So well, and I want to ask that because we've talked about this as a black person. I know, uh talking to some other friends too, and even our our talk, that you know, it what's been happening lately has hit all of America, but in many ways hit the black community, in many ways hit other people of color, especially immigrants and all of that. So, so how does that play in and influence you and how you look at all this and how you explore or try to sort out the future?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Um, I think it's an interesting time, um, in the sense that like so much of like African American history and African American um you know experience and storytelling uh is kind of seemingly being attacked, right? Um so it's a very interesting thing to try to erase the realities of certain things that have happened, um, but again for the progression of who, right? Like um, and so I feel like it's a very interesting time to be in a place where um on one hand there is extreme opportunity, and on the other hand, there's this overwhelming sense of does this country really want me here?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah and so that And when you're saying that want me here as a black person, is that an added element or I I think so.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Um and it's not like explicit, like like back in you know segregation times where it was like but it is almost kind of um subversive in a way, like it's very like um anything that anything that I don't want to say caters, but anything that um speaks to um the historical black experience is labeled as woke or is labeled as some other trigger word that like disengages people from the reality that those things actually happen. You know, I think of specifically the uh the the um photograph of the I forgot the name of it, but the photograph of the enslaved um person that has all the whip marks on his back and how like they wanted that to be totally erased. But like that was a that was a reality, like that actually happened. It wasn't it's not to make anyone I mean it does make the the country and what we believed about humans who look like that um look bad, but also like that needs to be told so that we get a fuller picture of the reality of like where we've come from, what we've done, and kind of kill those ideas that like perpetuated those things to even happen.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah, I know top with different people that some have said again more the white community is probably particularly saying, no, wait a second, all that stuff happened years ago. Should we be having guilt about something that happened years ago that we had nothing to do anything with? What difference is it really making now? Why even bring it up? Why don't hey it's 20, you know, uh 26, and and let's just vote, hey, what's good, what's positive, what a wonderful country we are, all the great accomplishments we've been done. Why drag all this in?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah. Um guilt and responsibility are two different things. Do you you shouldn't feel guilty for something that you had no part in producing? Um but guilt I think is the number one thing that oftentimes stops people from being compassionate. Like we talked about, you know, those different layers of engagement when it comes to those things, right? Like sympathy, empathy, uh sympathy, uh, yeah, empathy, um, and compassion, right? Like there's different levels of of engagement in those things, and I feel like um to not acknowledge the reality of past experiences is to disengage with how we got to the reality that we sit in now today, right? Like there's a reality and there's a culture and there's policies and there's things that exist today that sits on the shoulders of the decisions of yesterday. Can you give an example of that? Um, so for instance, like we'll just talk about economics, right? So economically, when we'll go back to the Emancipation Proclamation, right? When when the slaves were freed, um Martin Luther King talks about this, when the slaves were freed, um, they were not given any type of economic floor. And so they were free from the plantation, but they weren't you know equipped to engage in in business and be able to, and so a lot of them went back to the uh you know to the plantations and things like that. Um and then they were also heavily policed by some of the same folks that were you know uh uh manning the fields or or governing the fields that they that they worked in and things like that. And and so it's it just created, and it's not just I'm just using that as an example, but examples like that, to where like folks weren't given the opportunity to work for uh honest wages and be able to establish you know um themselves to be able to provide for their families and things like that. You fast forward to the 40s uh and the GI Bill, right? When soldiers were coming back home and able to come home, get a loan, and purchase their first house for their families, and that established the economic floor that they then, you know, built these houses, those houses built equity. They either sold those houses or they took the equity out of those houses and were able to afford their children, you know, you know, uh opportunities and things like that. It's those same soldiers who fought just as their white counterparts did were able to, were you know, came back and weren't able to get those uh access to those GI bills and couldn't afford or couldn't get approved for a loan to be able to purchase the home. And for economics, right, the top two uh entry points in the wealth is home ownership and life insurance. Um and so if you deny someone's ability to purchase a home, you deny them you know the opportunity to build wealth. For instance, uh in you know, you bring this fast forward going over a lot, but fast forward to like I just say Shore, which is uh the shore neighborhood that um we focus on in Canada, the the organization I work at. Uh when I started there, the whole neighborhood, um I think it was 70, it was 24% of the people in that neighborhood actually owned their homes. 76% of those people um rented. Um and you know, now it's changed a little bit at 30% and 70% um rent, but still um no coincidence, like that's one of the highest uh uh rental rates or rental neighborhoods in the whole entire city, and not coincidentally, but like that's also the poorest um part of and so when you start talking about poverty, you start talking about wealth, you start talking about opportunities, some of those policies and some of those decisions and some of those uh denials of access to resources back then had a drastic impact on the economic acceleration of folks, not not to say that there weren't anomalies and people that, but when you start to really analyze you know the reality of why people are in a certain place that they are, a lot of it goes back to some of those decisions. Now it's not solely some of that, but you know, always talk about there's prohibitions and there's inhibitions, yeah. Right, prohibitions are the laws that are enforced that perpetuate a goal of whatever system is trying, whatever the system is trying to achieve, right? Inhibitions is the psychological barrier that then then that creates. So uh I use uh there's a town right outside of the city of Centon uh called Louisville. When I moved there, or no, I didn't move to Louisville, but when I moved to Centon, I was pastoring in Louisville. I was the first African-American pastor to pastor in that city. And I had no context for it, but when I when I would tell people where I was at, it was like, oh, where's your where's the church you're at? Oh, it's in Louisville, and they're like, oh wait, Louisville? Um well you don't want to be there like past six o'clock. Somebody actually said that to me the first time, and I like I didn't understand like what do they mean, whatever. It wasn't until like years later that I found out that Louisville used to be a sundown town, and so if you were caught in Louisville past six o'clock, past the sun being down, you were liable to be attacked, to be ran out of town, or even worse. Now, was that for blacks only? That was that was for black and and anybody who wasn't white. Yeah. Um and so though the law has changed, right, the prohibition of color people not being allowed in the town after six, that law has changed. Yeah, but the mentality that that created still exists. We talk about that that that neighborhood and and not having um access to home ownership. Some of that was inhibition, not prohibition. Some people had the credit score, some people had the income to be able to purchase a home, they just didn't believe that they could. The process was too overwhelming and too too um you know hard to engage with, or or you know, they were afraid that they were going to get denied, or they didn't even think that they could get one. And so all of that plays a part in that.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

So with you and uh the work you do in Canton and everything, uh with some people also in the black community are poor. Are you uh trying to encourage them like that inhibition? Hey, no, don't don't defeat yourself. You got legitimate concerns, but here you gotta have hope. Here's some positive possibility. Do you see being able to offer that? Or you think if I try to offer that, they're gonna be disappointed because they're not ready for that.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah. I mean, luckily we have we have uh amazing people like uh Tracy and J. That work with us, they're our housing uh our housing director and our assistant housing director, um, and they work with our families first firsthand. And they I I always tell people go through the process because even if you're not you know able to get a home or you're not like Jayla and Tracy will make sure that you at least know where you're at and you have a plan to get where you need to be in order for you to have access to those things. And you know, in Ken, we have uh for our program, we have you know up to $90,000 uh down payment assistance that we can offer people for first-time home buyers, and so um you know we try to create space where one people get immediate equity out of their home, um, they have access to a brand new home, uh, you know, and and and being able to be a homeowner and and be able to get all the the benefits of that. Um, but also we want to help people kind of down that path because that process is intimidating. Um what I'll I'll just use my story. When I first moved to Centon, um I bought my first home in in the city of Centon. Um and there was a guy there at the time that I I was uh pastoring with. And uh he was like, Man, you could you could buy a home. And I was like, No, I can't, I can't buy a home. Like I don't have the credit, right? And uh he was like, Well, what's your credit? And I told him my credit score, he said, your credit score is higher than mine. And you know, I ended up just going through the process, found out that I could buy a home. But it was just that mentality of like, you know, I didn't grow up, like my my grandparents um owned their homes. My aunt, my older aunts, my great aunts, they own their homes. But my mom and my stepdad, like we we moved in these different places and we didn't um we didn't own our home. Like we we rented in these different places and things like that. And so that was a model for me.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Well now here's a question too. We're talking about uh this 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence. I've often thought about that, that um on the one hand, yeah, independent from England. On the other hand, uh it's interesting, again, I look at things from a number of angles, that uh in some way uh in our culture that can be very individualistic, independent uh in the sense of I've lived my own life, I'm doing what I'm doing. Other people, that's their issue, their concern, you know, uh and so from that sense that I'm independent of their concerns or their needs, that's their issue. Why should we even have to be looking at it? They just need to be more independent on their own.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Yeah. I mean we just passed Juneteenth, right? Yeah, which is and it goes back to kind of where we started of like for who? Right? Like who who are we saying uh is America? Yeah and what is the what is the collective mass of of how we're calculating our progression? Um because freedom from Great Britain means something to descendants of people who you know had the impact of what that freedom looked like. But you know, Frederick Frederick Douglass talked about like the tales of two Americas, right? And the tale of two different Christianities, too. Um like all of those things are layers to you know things that I feel like we probably have more questions than we actually do have solutions and answers, but I think the foundational thing that keeps us um moving towards progression is constantly like dissolving, it feels.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

And so it makes it very hard to like truly move forward because there's always like this Yeah, and for me thinking about that, the plan words with independence, that um I I've often as a as a minister, as a preacher, talked about uh in some way a vision, not the only way you have to look at it, but an important way to look at it, is that maybe we need a declaration of interdependence, you know, among all of us. I mean, the other thing, when I look back in 1976, uh there was uh in many ways a coming together. I mean, you know, back then, and it's not gonna happen again, but back then there were just a couple different uh TV stations, everybody watched like Waltercron guy then and everything, and now the independence of so many different versions, so many different things you watch. But I do think about that, even from a faith point of view, what does it mean in terms of how God created us to see? Hey, I didn't make you to be independent, you're you're all isolated, and I didn't make you to be dependent that uh uh you know that you don't have a sense of self and what you can do, but but really exploring, yeah, what what would it look like, or what could it be like if we really saw ourselves as interdependent? What would foster that? What would keep us from being from going in the independent your life, my life, don't have to meet, or that dependent where yeah, uh I can't do anything for myself, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

I I think the sad reality of of that is the only thing, and this isn't even just a religious response, but the only thing that actually could motivate us to get there, I think, is Jesus. And I think I actually think that that's what the church's role is supposed to be. Um even in even outside of culturally, I think culturally, you know, as a byproduct, but really as a the spiritual element, right? Like my wife, uh Cassandra and I were just talking about this yesterday. She just visited a church on uh yesterday, and she was talking about the the difference that she experienced there, like how it was so as she was going on, it was very prophetic, like there was a sense of a prophetic there, and she was like, I I just haven't felt that in a very, very long time, and and so that's very, very strong. And then we were talking about these other church experiences that we had that were different from that, had a value, but it was just different from those different things, and we're talking about all these different things, and I was like, this is the problem, is that this prophetic thing is disconnected from this like great teaching gift that's over here, and that's very disconnected from this great evangelistic gift that's over here, and that's disconnected from this very shepherding gift that's over here, and that's really disconnected from this very apostolic gift over here, and there there needs to be, and the foundation for this is Jesus. The foundation for this is Jesus should be the reason that we have unity at all costs, right? That we come together with the interdependence that helps us to one, maintain our objectivity, two, tapers our giftedness so that we don't go too extreme into our gifting, that we're not tethered to something else that is counterbalancing you know our gifting. And you know, and and and I said this before, but like I think Tony Evans said that the church never loses its anointing. Like it gifts go without repentance, and so the gift of the church and the influence of the church doesn't change. So the fact that the church is divided, no wonder the country around it is divided. It is very influenced by the foundation of like this this segregated church, um, the segregated spiritually, the segregated culturally, the segregated in all the ways. Um, and if we don't have the motivation in Jesus to do that, how can we expect a government to? Or how can we expect a world that doesn't know Jesus to?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

And so I know we have to wrap up here, but it's striking me again when I think about that that notion and exploring it that we have a declaration of interdependence, not just a document we can sign. Even that document wasn't worth it until we started and still have yet to learn how to live it, but that yeah, we're interdependent, and being able to have those kind of conversations in the church and the wider culture and everything, even with all that diversity, hey, uh, yeah, we're different. But can we see ourselves as interdependent and in that recognize that we have something to bring and give to each other as we listen and be open? And but if we come from that consciousness, I mean in a family or in a church or wherever we are, hey, we're all in this together. We're all interdependent more than we realize, and instead of resenting that or not ignoring that, how do we live that out? I know we gotta wrap up any final comment you want to make about all that.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

You just open up a big can of words. Oh, yeah, for another. Um, but I think it's it is that family piece of like what qualifies and what disqualifies us from family? Jesus says, like, who is my mother, who is my brother, that they like, and so like what what are the things that like how are we in the same way that we say for who, how are we qualifying family? How do we qualify our neighbor? And then because that that drastically changes the implementation of what it is that we say that we profess to believe. If we think that Jesus likes the the person on the margins, the poor and the widow, and all that. If we think that Jesus likes that person, that's one thing, but if we think that Jesus is that person, that's something totally different. Because now it's like, well, when when were you hungry and we didn't feed you? So have you done to the least of these? So have you done so perspective and alignment and and reorientation is crucial to us living out the very things that we believe.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

So for me, part of that, if we're gonna have a conversion to Jesus, we need to all to have a conversion deeper to who he was, who he is, and how he calls us to see one another and respond. Well, hey, thank you. Always good conversing with you. We could go anywhere, anytime. Thank you for paying attention. God bless.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Yeah, no, we appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining us. Um, yeah, if you have any questions for us, if you have things that you would like for us to talk about, please email us, uh, follow us for more, and we'll see you soon. Peace.