Episode 10: D. Danyelle Thomas – Decolonizing Our Faith

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns.

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Pete  

Hey folks, before we get started on our episode today, we wanted to remind you that our “Psalms for Normal People” commentary, which is the newest book in our commentary series, is coming out in just a few days on April 17th.

Jared  

Yep, and Psalms for Normal People was written by Josh James, friend of the podcast.

Pete  

Friend of the podcast.

Jared  

And friend in real life.

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Really brings this ancient collection of poems to life by looking at the biblical scholarship surrounding the book, unpacking the historical, political, cultural context underneath the prose.

Pete  

And you can grab your copy of Psalms for Normal People wherever you’d like to buy your books. And don’t forget to leave a review to let us know what you think.

Jared  

And today on Faith for Normal People we’re talking about decolonizing your faith with D. Danyelle Thomas. And Danyelle is the founder of Unfit Christian. She’s also a speaker, a writer, a spiritual coach. She’s the author of a book that’s coming out in August of 2024. So make sure you put it in your calendar or just follow her on all the socials so you’ll know when it comes out.

Pete  

Yeah, exactly right. And, you know, and don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time where we reflect on our own takeaways from the interview and our own spiritual journeys. Alright, folks, let’s dive in.

Danyelle  

Jared  

Well, welcome to the podcast, Danyelle, it’s wonderful to have you.

Danyelle  

Thank you for having me. I’m so glad to be here.

Jared  

Yeah, I’m excited. So we’re gonna jump right into one of the things I’m excited about, is to better understand this phrase of decolonizing faith. It’s something that I feel like I’ve heard online for a while now, but can you help us understand what does it mean? And why is it important?

Danyelle  

So I think a lot of people are familiar with this movement of deconstructing faith. This unpacking this Christian faith that many of us have inherited and have participated in for generations. For me, decolonization goes a step further, because now we’re looking at this faith from the nuanced intersections of what it means to practice as a person of color. So, for me specifically as a black woman, gender, of course, and how that influences how we see faith, as well as sexuality. So a lot of us who are not cisgender—so, folks who agree with the gender they were assigned at birth—or who are not heteronormative, so are not participating in sexuality, in a heterosexual “normal way” of how we think is a normal baseline of sexuality anyway. What those intersections mean for those of us who have often seen those identities persecuted in the texts, whose reading and exegesis or understanding of the scriptures have often left those of us at intersections where we are not white, or we are not male, or we are not straight, we’re often left unseen. And so decolonizing faith, for me, means unpacking, what does it mean to look at God and not see yourself reflected? And why do we not see our reflection in God? So, unpacking who’s been benefiting from telling us of a God who can only see us as whole if we fall into these very narrow, limited definitions of what it means to be Christian. So, yeah, I mean, long story short, that’s what deconstruction is, for me.

Pete  

That’s a powerful point, to see your reflection in God. And how many people have been told, “Well, you can’t do that. [Chuckles] Because you don’t look a certain way” or whatever. And it seems like your own vision for God is—I mean, to say obvious—it’s inclusive. Can you riff on that a little bit? Just, how you understand God in this process of the need to decolonize faith?

Danyelle  

Yeah, I mean, I have to take it from every perspective, right? So, for me, I grew up obviously, as a Black Protestant and what I cannot separate from this faith is that though it has been inherited through generations for me—my father was a preacher, he’s deceased now. My mother is very deeply churched and religious, or was, at least at one point in her life. She’s also done her deconstruction work. Regardless of coming from these things as a familiar tradition, what ultimately remains true is that for most Black Americans, our relationship to Christianity is directly tied to the transatlantic slave trade. And that’s not to say that Christianity did not exist in the continent of Africa before. Of course it did. However, most of us are participating in a faith that was handed to us, that normalized our enslavement, that normalized our abuse and our torture, that normalized us as less than human in Jesus’s name. 

Danyelle  

And as a woman, of course, it’s the… I write this in my book, I say, you know, from the time I can remember, I was taught that my gender was the downfall of good men, right? Women who are too sexy, who are too provocative, who are too independent, you know. Rahab and Delilahs, and all of these people we point to in the Bible as examples of “this is not the kind of woman that you want to be,” and the striving for a Proverbs 31 woman or the striving to be Ruth—who if you really actually read the text closely, engaged in survival sexwork, but that’s not how it’s presented, right. And so, then, you know, sexuality, [chuckles] if you’re straight, you’re getting put into purity culture. So, that’s repressing your sexuality. And if you happen to not be straight, oh, well, you’re on your way to hell. 

And so, it requires, then, deconstruction requires looking at all of these nuances and it requires inclusivity, because the only way to deconstruct this faith is to understand that the way in which it has been built is to support hegemonic control. It is to support a very few qualified people, or qualified ways of living, as what is holy, what is right, and what is acceptable. And, for me, that inclusivity means opening up these doors, opening up and really diving into what these texts actually could say. And also, understanding that the Bible is limited, you know, that’s the first admission for me, and inclusivity, and removing all of these barriers that do not allow corporate access to God. That is what inclusivity is, and why it’s so important to me, because so many people feel like they have to bring themselves to God, compartmentalized. They can bring this part of them, but not the gay part. They can bring this part, but not the Black part. They can bring this part, but not the woman part, or the Latino part, or the former practicing Muslim part. You know what I’m saying? Like, there are so many pieces of ourselves that we are told must be left behind in order to please God and I just—I can’t sit with that as the acceptable absolute of what this faith could be for those of us who choose to practice it.

Pete  

Yeah, I gotcha. So, when you said “the Bible is limited,” what I take you mean by that is, the Bible doesn’t address all these scenarios that you’re talking about.

Danyelle  

Absolutely. And my expression, or my opinion of the Bible is, first of all, that it’s neither infallible nor, you know, inherently absolute. This is a collection of testimonies of other people’s experiences of God. And if their experiences of God are worthy, then why not our own experiences of God be seen as worthy, as a litmus, as an understanding of who God is to us and for us in present day? So, for me, you know, it is limited in the way, yes, that you described, but also to say that this is just one collection of experiences of how people perceive God. And sometimes I’m not even sure that the biblical text is always talking about the same God. Because sometimes people are experiencing God in ways I’ve never experienced God or never understood God, and vice versa. So, I think, to look beyond the Bible as the sole sacred text, and to begin to see sacred texts in our culture, and each other’s humanity is so incredibly important to me.

Jared  

It sort- This conversation, so far, reminds me of a time in seminary, when we were having a conversation about metaphor in the Bible and God’s nature. And it was so interesting how the conversation went from “God as Father is ontologically true. In God’s very nature, God is a father. But it’s only metaphorically true that God is a mother.” And how weird, like it was bizarre how many of us were arguing like that just doesn’t even make logical sense. It doesn’t make, like…

Pete  

Jared  

Why are you privileging this one metaphor, when we have this other metaphor of God as Mother? We have God as Father and nothing in the text tells us to privilege one over the other and yet, this professor was dogmatically insistent on how important it was to the entire theological enterprise of Christianity, that God is ontologically a father. Which I don’t even know what that means biologically.

Pete  

There you have it, Danyelle. That’s it. [Laughs]

Jared  

That’s it! [Laughs] But just, my point being that the, kind of, the inherent privileging of certain ways of viewing God, that—again, privilege these things of race, gender, sexuality—to the point that we dismiss one as “only metaphor,” and the other is “ontologically, or in God’s very nature true,” when they’re just like, back to back or like next to each other in this text.

Danyelle  

Right. And I think it’s so interesting, because like, we obviously know looking at the text that by definition, God didn’t have a gender. And yet, like, we feel so compelled to privilege one over the other. And, it’s like, again, my question to people is always: Who benefits from your oppression? So someone benefits from privileging, you know, a race or gender, an ethnicity, a sexuality, ableism. [Laughs] If we really want to get into things, classism. You know, all of these -isms and social constructs, and we love to limit the text to be what we need it to be in order to maintain these systems of hierarchical power and that is why I lean more towards the decolonizing, rather than just deconstruction. Oftentimes, I find that deconstruction stops where it gets uncomfortable. So, it’s easy to say, “Let’s find a God who loves us engaging in our sexuality,” but not as easy to say, “Let’s honor God by dismantling these systems of power and oppression that still benefit me,” and calling that holy and calling that salvation. And so, this is why I lean deep into the decolonization thing, because most of us are, unfortunately, if we’re not Paulinian Christians, we’re certainly engaging in a colonized Christ. We’re certainly engaging in a space where we are believing God, and believing tenets of God, in a way that oppress other people, and privilege ourselves and put ourselves in this hierarchy of “I’m better than you, and I’m more saved than you, I am more holy and sacrificial than you.” And I think we really need to unpack why we want to engage in that kind of harm, while also saying that God is love.

Jared  

That ties to this quote that I have from your book, and I thought maybe you could unpack it and just say a little bit more about—I think it ties to what you’re saying now—but you say, “I’m no longer willing to live in ways that have a form of godliness, but actively deny the power within out of fear and poor understanding of how our desperation for salvation is weaponized against us.” So, what do you mean by this form of godliness? And how is salvation weaponized against us? 

Danyelle  

Yeah, so, for me, in writing that particular passage is in the context of me talking about this reconciliation with my gender identity, this reclamation of my womanhood outside of the narrow confines of how the church defined it for me, this expansion of self and seeing myself beyond simply, you know, this vessel who will not reach her zenith of womanhood until she’s both married, and a mother. So this form of godliness, this idea that we have to follow these strict codes, the strict legalistic ideas of what it means to be Black, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be anything under this umbrella and a lot of times we’re told that this is the will of God, this is how God wants us to be and wants us to do. And it’s like, I don’t know, of all the things that God has going on in the world, is God really that concerned with who’s in my bed? [Laughing] 

Or the kind of food that I eat, or, you know, the kind of ways that I show up, you know, visually or publicly? Is God that concerned when we literally have famine, and we have, you know, homelessness or houselessness? When we have all of these social ills that are, truly, as a result, not of this god versus devil thing, but truly of human selfishness. I often find that everybody likes to be the victim, but nobody likes to acknowledge how their choices impact and influence and instead of doing that deep interrogation, we will simply say, “Well, that’s just what God calls for. The Bible says that the poor will always be among you, so, maybe it’s not my responsibility to do away with things, such as you know, the evils of capitalism, or you know, the terrors of classism.” 

You know, we’ll say like, instead of loving our neighbor truly as we love ourselves, we will say we love the sinner and hate the sin and that edict never appears in the text. All of these things appear to have a form of godliness, but truly deny God and truly deny the fact that if we say God is love, and that love is expansive, the text says, “of all these three things,” and it names these things in that particular passage, it is, of the greatest of these things is love, right? This is the thing we keep seeing repeated over and over again. And we like to give conditional love and call that godliness. And I just can’t continue to stay in this space of following these precepts that do not resonate with me, that do not feel good to me, that don’t feel like they align with the way in which I see and envision God, because I’m fearful of hell. Because I’m fearful of blowback. Because I’m fearful of what the saints might say. I have to live in a way that truly feels like it honors both my personal beliefs, and the way in which I see and perceive God.

Jared  

When I hear too, a theme that’s coming through you, as you talk about love. I feel like you start with talking about dismantling systems of oppression and you end by talking about love, and so, I think it’s important to maybe recognize—and you can correct me if I’m wrong—but I hear you saying that there is a form of love, an important form of love, that is a dismantling of systems that cause harm. That is a way to love.

Danyelle  

Absolutely. Everything that I’ve ever had to deconstruct in this process has required me to expand how I love. Of course, I grew up Black Protestant, more specifically, I grew up Black Evangelical. [Laughs] So, we’re talking about, like, my dad was Full Gospel Baptist, which is a offshoot of the National Baptist Convention, the difference in dogma there is, you know, the belief in the gifts of the Spirit, the full gifts of the Spirit, including speaking in tongues, as opposed to National Baptist Convention, which doesn’t embrace that particular belief. And my mother was Church of God in Christ, which is the largest Black pentecostal denomination in the world. And so, that’s my upbringing. And so, with it came, the homophobia, the trans-antagonism, the internalized anti-blackness, the misogynoir—which is specifically misogyny, or hatred for non-men towards black women, or black women, femmes, marginalized genders, because I don’t think misogyny is just limited to cisgender women—but nonetheless, this thing against femininity. 

All of that was part of my upbringing. All of that was part of my faith and as I’ve had to deconstruct it, the first thing I’ve had to acknowledge is, who did I harm when I carried these beliefs. So, whom did I give less love when I internalized these beliefs as absolute? And so when you decolonize, or deconstruct these things, and you dismantle these systems, it is a way of showing people, “You know what, I was wrong, here’s my atonement. Here’s my accountability. Here are the ways in which I’m going to make you living in this world much easier.” My biggest thing is Jesus says, “I come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” You can’t have access to that abundance when every system and structure is against you. And those system and structures are made up, everything’s made up! So, it’s not even required that we engage in these systems, and yet, we choose to. So, yes, for me, it is synonymous with giving people the love that they both desire and deserve by giving over your privilege. That’s what dismantling this really is, is giving over your privilege and allowing there to be more equity for everybody. 

Pete  

Right. And, you know, deconstructing—or dismantling is maybe a better word here—the systems that you’re talking about that are harmful to people. This is… I mean, you know, this is part of the prophetic critique and this is part of the sermon on the mount, the Beatitudes, the turning upside down of the social structure and that’s very consistent to say the least with, I think, the nature of the Christian faith. So… So, let me, let me ask you something, though, Danyelle, why do you think—What, in your opinion, your experience, why is the call for decolonization such an uphill battle?

Danyelle  

Pete  

You know, because it’s like, I think you talk to some people in this like, “Yeah, I see it. That’s a really good point.” But it’s very, people don’t listen, or they do listen, and there can be hostile reactions. And I don’t know if you’ve thought about, like, why that might be. I asked the question because knowing why might help us understand the depths of the nature of the problem, you know, and maybe be more effective in combating it. So, I don’t know.

Danyelle  

Here’s the thing—and I’m going to try to slow-walk it, but quickly-walk it. [Laughs] 

Pete  

Okay. [Laughs]

Danyelle  

I think it comes… I think what we have to acknowledge is that Christianity is not just a religious faith. It is very much an identity for a lot of folks who practice this faith. For some of us, it’s just literally the faith that we practice as part of our spiritual beliefs. But it’s not the totality of who we are. It’s not our personality. For some folks, it literally is their personality. And so, anytime you begin to interrogate and hold those beliefs up to the fires of intellectual rigor, right, I think that people misconstrue your questions as a personal attack. And so, because it becomes so deeply personal, people are not able to separate, “You are critiquing my beliefs,” from, “You’re attacking me and saying I’m a stupid person, I’m a wrong person, I’m a bad person.” 

And, I think, more often than not, the reason that we have so much resistance against these things is because we don’t want to—again, going back to my earlier statement, everybody likes to be the victim. Nobody likes to acknowledge how their choices continue to reinforce systemic oppression or systemic marginalization. And so, I think, it’s not just a matter of “Oh, well, people aren’t willing to believe and like, one God, one faith, one baptism,” I don’t think it’s that as much as, this is—I spoke about inherited faith and I want to unpack that really quickly. Inherited faith, as I define it, is unquestioned or uncritically examined religious beliefs that you assume from your family, from your communities of origin, from your churches, you know, just from your culture, without ever having gone through, “Do I actually believe this? Or was I just told to believe this?” So inherited faith. When you think about it in that way, it’s also not just an attack against the person, or they may not perceive it as just an attack against their person, but also against their mom, their dad.

Pete  

Danyelle  

You know? Their grandmothers, you know, all of these people. Yeah, like, you talk about somebody’s mama, it’s a problem. 

Danyelle  

In that, you know, particular ideation of things, I believe that’s really where most of the resistance comes from. We are not only unearthing people’s current beliefs, but we’re also challenging them in ways that causes them to have to challenge their parents!

Pete  

And their own tradition. 

Danyelle  

Yeah, I don’t think most people are ready to do that. Most people are not ready to have that uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner table conversation, about a shift in beliefs, and about the necessity for all of us to make these shifts so that we can make room for everybody at the cross.

Jared  

If I can, not to take us in a different direction, but I keep spinning about—a couple of times you’ve mentioned, people like to be the victim, rather than to take responsibility for how they’re perpetuating the systems that benefit them. I just find it ironic that you use that word because, again, I come from a family who would, likely several members would still say, “Oh, no, it’s people who acknowledge systemic oppression that are the ones trying to be the victim because they’re playing the victim when they have all the choice and all the responsibility to get out of the system, but they don’t,” or they won’t acknowledge the system is probably a better way of saying that. So, can you say more about how refusing to acknowledge or to step up against these systems of oppression is a form of victimhood?

Danyelle  

Yeah. So, I’m going to wrap this in a story. [Chuckles] So, my best friend’s boyfriend and I are actually really good friends and he called me one day after their argument. And, you know, he was venting, he was asking for my advice, and he said, “D,” he’s like, “I’m not all the way right, but I’m also not all the way wrong.” And there was something about that statement that just stuck with me because oftentimes, most of us are not able to hold the tension of both/and. We are often able to come to the table and say “this is how you hurt me and this is how you’re making me feel bad,” and so, often, I find when I challenge people in the dominant group of any kind of marginalization—you know, of course, classism, ageism, sexism, racism, all of the -isms—people are very quickly able to say, “I’m not a racist, I’m not classist. I’m not this and you’re blaming these things on me, and you’re making me feel bad.” That’s victim talk, right? It’s this idea that because you’re making me feel bad by telling me the truth, or the reality of a situation, me feeling that is much more important than the larger systemic issue that’s happening here. And so, we’re often able to articulate how someone made us feel, or how a truth made us feel. But we’re not always able to say “I’m not 100% right, but I’m also not 100% wrong.”

And so, I tend to find that people just struggle with this idea, that even simply acknowledging that there are systemic issues, somehow makes them solely and personally accountable for doing the work to shift and change that all along. And it’s like, no, I actually just want you to be aware, so that you can start to be cognizant of the ways in which you may be unintentionally contributing to these things, and so that you begin to do restorative justice work. That is literally what deconstruction or decolonization is for me, is how do we bring about the truth? How do we acknowledge these things are happening? Because when I’m talking about these issues, I’m never saying all white people are bad! I’m saying white supremacy is a problem. I’m saying hegemony is a problem. I’m saying classism, and racism, and ableism. I know, I can talk about ableism, because it is the most temporary ability that we have and yet, like, I think, it might be as big of an issue as any of the big three that you might name for, you know, our systemic, marginalization classes. 

And we have no problem, again, you know, acknowledging how talking about those things might hurt our feelings, but we seem to struggle so deeply with, what does it mean to actually say, “Okay, I am participating in this system. I am, you know, doing these things that might be causing harm. How do I give over my privilege so that I can make room for someone else?” So, that’s moreso what I mean, is this idea that like, it is so easy to be offended, or to feel victimized by someone holding you accountable to a social or global truth, as opposed to simply stepping back and saying, “This is not about me, the individual, it is about the larger culture and the larger dominant group that I belong to and because I have dominance, that means I have privilege and it means that people listen to me in a way that they will not listen to a marginalized person. So, how do I give over my privilege to being used in such a way that it brings about deliverance, and freedom, and release for those who are resisting these areas of marginalization?”

Pete  

So, maybe a brief, succinct example, at least in my opinion, of what you’re talking about is, you know, the response to Black Lives Matter is “All Lives Matter” or “White Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.” It’s not acknowledging the systemic problem, and instead, turning it back on yourself and saying, “By you saying Black Lives Matter, I’m actually being victimized.”

Danyelle  

Right. 

Pete  

Right. Okay. So, okay, listen, you’ve said—this is very interesting, this is provocative. You said that a focus on a suffering Christ rather than a radical Christ, is a form of suppression. So, share what you mean by that, and just maybe expound on it a little bit.

Danyelle  

So, I think that’s a more normal term or normal way of saying, you know, the difference in Christological perspective—either, you know, low or high, Christological perspective—how do you see Christ? So, for me, I feel like we’re often given this story of like, “Oh, they whipped him all night long and they crowned him with thorns,” and, “Oh, they pierced him in the side,” like, we get really deep on this quite horrifying depiction of the crucifixion of Christ, and just how deeply Christ suffered, just so that we might be saved. Right? So, we get hit with the guilt trip right out of the gate. 

And what I tend to find is, what we’re seeking salvation from, through coming into community with Christ, if it’s not just this eternal damnation and Lake of Fire that, you know, some people do tend to believe in, we’re trying to be saved from human conditions created by systemic oppression. Like, the salvation and what we’re seeking out and what we’re seeking refuge from, are literally systems that we have the power to dismantle that didn’t require a suffering Christ. We could literally choose to do community better with one another, we can literally choose to say these systems are not working for everybody, let’s go and expand them. And so when you put that narrative of Christ around just how deep the suffering was, and how much you should honor that, as opposed to a Jesus—if we frame the crucifixion of Jesus, who is murdered by the state, simply for doing work to dismantle systems of oppression, and who is killed in front of his mother, which for me, of course, is very deep as a Black person who has all too often witnessed the execution of black bodies by the state in front of folks’ mothers. And when you begin to look at it in that way, that’s more radical, that’s more “Oh, my God, we need to do something about this.” 

When you look at a radical Jesus that comes in and [Scoffs] I think about the woman who they brought before Jesus to be stoned for adultery, and Jesus stoops down in the sand, and starts writing and he goes, “He without sin, cast the first stone.” Jesus literally is our first example of what it means to be a person in a privileged position as a man in a patriarchal society to lend his privilege to cover and protect and save the life of an underprivileged or a lesser privileged person. That is a radical Jesus. We don’t hear that often happening in the text, we don’t see women being spared in that way, even when they are “wrong” for their behavior. And Jesus didn’t shame her after everybody leaves. He says, “Go and sin no more,” like just don’t put yourself in this position again. When—that’s just, to me, a succinct example of seeing Jesus in a more radical way. And if we began to understand and be fed stories in that way, to me, it would help us feel more empowered to resist. Empowered to do work of justice. Empowered to really say, “This is not okay and we need to find ways of changing this.” But if we focus on this narrative of suffering, and just, “Oh, my Lord, my poor Jesus, and I just need to be out here just living right and doing right and following these very limited codes of behavior because I gotta honor Jesus is suffering.” To me, that puts us in a position that is more passive, that is more… I can’t think of the word I’m looking for. But that’s less radical. [Laughs]

Jared  

In some ways, it weaponizes gratitude. Where there’s this sense of like, “you should just be grateful.”

Danyelle  

Jared  

“You should be grateful for the eternal salvation, and not-“

Pete  

“Quit your complaining.”

Jared  

Yeah, rather than being this troublemaker about all these other things-

Danyelle  

Correct.

Jared  

“Just be grateful for this eternal salvation.” So, it’s like, don’t be greedy, you already have the best gift. Why are you like causing all this trouble for these other things? Rather than, yeah, than seeing-

Danyelle  

It builds in this promise of like—I think of “The Color Purple,” the film, and there’s a scene that happens between two of the characters, and the main character has advised another character to abuse their spouse, and the abused spouse comes over and goes like, “Why would you tell him to put his hands on me?” And so, she’s like, you know, “This world ain’t but so long, heaven will be here always,” right? It’s this idea that you should endure this. Longsuffering is a virtue, right? This idea that you should continue to suffer in silence and just get through it, just get through this life. Because there is a reward on the other side, there is heaven and you will get to heaven and be happy and be blessed. Meanwhile, there are so many restrictions about who’s going to go, how you can get there, what you’ve got to sacrifice in the meantime, it’s almost as if you spend this entire life suffering with hopes that it’ll pay off in the end. 

But it seems like, as they say, the way is narrow, the way is straight, and the gate to hell is wide. That’s what they say. And it’s almost like, so you want me to suffer in this life in silence in the face of the things that are unjust, and then simply hope that I live right enough that maybe I’ll get a reward and it’ll be justified in the end? That, to me, is the kind of suffering narrative that puts us in this position of just not resisting oppression. And that is what this hegemonic society continues to use to dominate folks and to maintain corrupt power. That is why it’s so essential, to me, to bring forth an experience of God, an experience of this Christian faith that says “No, actually, we can use this to really, truly interrogate and talk about the ways in which we should be radical, and we should be resisted against tyranny and the things that are causing us harm.”

Jared  

Well, that’s a great segue into, as we wrap up the conversation here, what are ways—because I can see a lot of our listeners- Maybe a colloquial way of saying this is they’ve deconstructed their faith in the way you talked about earlier but, maybe, aren’t sure of how to decolonize that. So, what are- Are there some practical ways that people in the West can decolonize their faith or get started in that process? What would you recommend to folks?

Danyelle  

I think what’s most important is listening to those of us who are doing this work very publicly, and very loudly, because I don’t expect people to go off on their own and do this research and this reading. But I do expect people to respect that I am the best living text that I can offer you on the experience of being a Black woman raised in the Deep South, and raised in a very deep tradition of this faith, and how all of those intersections have impacted me and have shown up. I am a really excellent resource in that way, and so are my peers and so are those of us who keep having these conversations, seemingly sometimes preaching to the choir. 

So, to me, the most practical thing you can do is to listen to those of us speaking and to amplify our voices. So often, I find that people will simply go and find the resources—confirmation bias. Things that already confirm what they believe, that already do not make them feel uncomfortable. Discomfort is the most fertile soil that you will ever experience in your life. And so, if you truly want these practical ways of how to engage this, start to question how, you know, maybe some issues around discrimination of race, and gender and sexuality show up in your beliefs. If you are saying things like “gluttony is a sin,” and “your body is a temple,” and you encourage these things around diet culture and weight loss, and do so with a sprinkle of Jesus, you should consider the ways in which you are upholding fatphobia and how that is harmful to your brothers and sisters and they/thems who are in community with you. 

As women, particularly as women of a dominant group, think about the ways in which like you are upholding misogyny and misogynoir more specifically, when you talk about maybe women don’t belong in the pulpit, or when you don’t consider the ways in which your conversations around diet culture are also contributing to misogyny and those things. With race and class, listen to people who are not Christian, honestly. You really want to deconstruct? Get outside of Christianity. You really want to deconstruct or decolonize? Get outside of Christianity. Listen to the leftists, listen to all the people who keep telling us the same story and the same narrative, time and time again, about how harmful these experiences are and then begin to give over your privilege and ways of amplifying their voices. 

Support the work through financial giving, like, these are real ways in which you can decolonize because quite frankly, a lot of us, you know, my peers, specifically, you know, other Black folks doing this work, we’re severely underfunded. Like, a lot of us are paying out of pocket and, like, we just keep going because we really truly love this. And part of decolonization and deconstruction is also access, it’s also financial privilege. And so, these things just have so many tentacles and I think the most practical thing folks in the West can do is to truly say, “Where is privilege showing up in my faith?” And be honest with themselves about it. And don’t beat yourself up. And nobody’s asking you to castigate yourself. It’s simply: How do I acknowledge this? And then, if I have privilege, how do I give it over so that we can create more equity? 

Pete  

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you, Danyelle. Thank you for sharing your time, your experience with us, and your wisdom. And it’s been great having you here on our podcast.

Danyelle  

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time.

Pete  

With Pete and Jared. 

Pete  

Alright, Jared, well, Danyelle said that discomfort is the most fertile soil you’ll ever have in your life. And let me ask you, when was the last time you were uncomfortable when it comes to decolonizing your faith and what did that discomfort teach you?

Jared  

I have a very specific experience. When I was teaching undergrad in Phoenix, I had to take public transportation—I mean, I didn’t have to—but I would drive to the train station, I would take the train to a bus stop and then I would take the bus to the university every day. And I had this experience where on the train it was all the like Latin American—mostly Mexicans, I would guess Mexican-Americans—and just people not like me, probably socio-economically, racially, and after about a week, I realized that I was unconsciously putting my hand on my back pocket, the whole train ride.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And that was the first time when I realized that a couple of weeks into the semester when I realized that I had racial bias. I mean, I had… I just had bias in general.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

I absolutely just assumed, “Oh, people will try to steal for me on this train.” And it was totally unconscious, did not think about it and I was mortified whenever I realized it. And it was very uncomfortable for me to recognize that and to figure out what to do with it. And, fortunately, that was about the time—this would have probably been in 2012, you know, more than 10 years ago—but there were already resources online and stuff to like, give me information about what what is this? And what do I do with it. But that discomfort, which really taught me, basically, that I was racist, or had racist tendencies, without knowing, and I had to work through that because, you know, I was of the opinion that racism was this explicit, overt thing. And I didn’t have that, so I wasn’t racist and I had to wrestle with that narrative of, “Well, am I racist?” And it created all these new paradigms and new vocabulary and new categories for me, that ended up being very helpful, for me. But absolutely. That’s the first thing that came to mind was the discomfort around decolonizing my faith.

Pete  

Yeah, I think for me, there are several, but the first one that popped into my head—which probably means it’s the most meaningful—is, you know, having been raised in a part of the country where everyone around me was white, everybody. We had one black kid in high school, his freshman year, he left. And all my theological training was in a very white, male, it’s safe to say, Eurocentric-Western way of thinking, and for me, it was getting to be in a cosmopolitan setting in graduate school. You know, Harvard will do things to you and it wasn’t—I always tell people, it’s not like, the stuff that I learned in the classroom, it’s the larger experiences that I had where there were now people teaching me and people in my classes with me, who were “other” and across the spectrum, right. And I realized how, unconsciously, I thought of people differently, who were not part of my own background. And I wound up having to hold my mouth more than once. Because one thing that I thought was very innocent, wasn’t innocent at all. And that’s an uncomfortable moment. I mean, I think, I received that well, I didn’t resist it. I just was uncomfortable with it, you know. So, that was for me, that was a moment that I had to really, you know, your world gets bigger, and you have to decide how you want to live in it. That’s all, and I could have continued on but I, you know, I didn’t.

Jared  

So, speaking of that, another question here is, you know, Danyelle talked about the colonized Christ. What comes to mind for you, whenever you hear that term? What does that mean?

Pete  

Jared  

Mhmm.

Pete  

I’m sort of Episcopalian, that’s what I tell people. I’m not a member, but I’ve been going to Episcopal churches for, now, a dozen years. And it’s pretty white and there’s an intellectual dimension- Now, I love that tradition. But still- And, you know, the churches that I’ve gone to have been very aware of that. They’re not oblivious to the notion but, yeah, it’s… You know, those things. We’re always colonizing Jesus somehow, I think.

Jared  

Well, and that’s what came to mind for me is—not to ask or raise more questions, but that’s kind of what we do here—is I keep thinking; well, we all, probably, have to, in some ways, interpret Jesus in light of our own context, and culture, and history.

Pete  

Yes, right. Inevitable. 

Jared  

And so, that, in itself is not problematic in my mind. I think it’s inevitable and that’s what we do. I think colonisation happens when there’s a power dynamic at play. And we normalize and absolutize one way of, you know, seeing Jesus and interpreting Jesus.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

Then we say that is the absolute way Jesus was and it’s othering to other people. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

It, basically, it trumps their view of Jesus in favor of my view of Jesus, not in in ways that are grounded in scripture, like for, you know, there’s no short haircut of Jesus in scripture explicitly. I mean, maybe-

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

We bring them into our on culture, so, it’s not like—that’s not what I’m talking about, those pieces where we can go to the scripture and say, “Well no, it’s, like, it’s right there.” It’s these other pieces that, then, we absolutize, and then there’s a power dynamic where we utilize that, we weaponize it to other someone and to bolster our own sense of superiority.

Pete  

-With blonde hair.

Jared  

-Maybe implicitly, I don’t know. So, it’s not a matter of interpretation. A lot of these pieces of colonization are how we culturally embed or contextualize Jesus. They’re not in the scriptures, it’s the inevitable way we do the things that we care about. 

Pete  

Right. 

Jared  

And for me, I just see that quite a lot.

Pete  

That line is very important, to know where that line is, especially for people who are part of the dominant culture, right. 

Pete  

So, yeah, I think that’s really, really important, because we all do… It is the history of Christianity—let’s just forget Judaism—it’s the history of Christianity to do exactly what you just said. It’s what the Creed’s, do, they bring this into their world, and they talk about it using their language. We all do that. And I know, Jared, you’ve done this too. And I’ve done this, teaching New Testament to college students. When we talk about the Gospels, the first thing I put up is, you know—you’ve said this too—these pictures of Madonna and child. 

Jared  

Right.

Jared  

Pete  

You know, it’s Italian nobility and like weird-

Jared  

-A castle in the background. 

Pete  

-A castle in the in the background, you know, servants out there, but then we look at other pictures from Spanish. 

Jared  

Yeah, Asian cultures. Yeah.

Pete  

-Chinese and all cultures that depict Jesus the way they are. And the moral of the story is, that’s inevitable, in fact, it’s good. You just can’t use it to beat other people up, right? 

Jared  

Yeah.

Pete  

And it’s okay, and what are you going to do with it? And that also helps us understand the Gospels themselves, who’s portrayed Jesus according to their audiences. And-

Jared  

They did the same thing.

Pete  

The Bible does the same thing. So—but that’s different, like Matthew’s Jesus wasn’t colonized against John’s.

Jared  

Right. 

Pete  

I mean, Matthew and Luke used Mark, for heaven’s sake, you know? So, they’re sort of in this together, in a sense, but that’s the difference that colonizing is taking it and exploiting that by people who can do it who have the power.

Jared  

Right. Yeah.

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show! If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.

Pete  

And, if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.    

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.    

Outro  

Thanks for listening to Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, The Bible for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Steven Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.

Outro  

Pete  

All right, well, listen…um…[taking a moment to think]…Jared, you know, Danyelle said that—

Jared  

Did you just forget my name? 

Pete  

I was about to call you Danyelle. 

Jared  

Pete  

Because it’s right in front of me and my focus—

Jared  

Pete  

Like, laser vision focus. Yeah, I’ll start over again.

Jared  

Excellent, alright, well…[deep sigh of frustration] I said “excellent” again.

Pete  

Don’t say “excellent” again.

Jared  

Do not put “excellent” in this.

Pete  

Try saying “mediocre.” This is an out-take. I have a feeling.

Jared  

We’ll see you next time. 

Outro