[SPEAKER_03]: This episode of True's Table is brought to you by our NAACP Image Award-nominated book, True's Table, Black Women's Musings on Life, Love, and Liberation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Get it where all books are sold.
[SPEAKER_02]: Brothers, y'all all right.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Now pull up a chair and have a seat at the table with us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey y'all, welcome to True Stabil.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a country for great citizens.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a community, and I'm Christina.
[SPEAKER_02]: This table is the Bible, I call it, and four documents.
[SPEAKER_02]: So welcome to the table, see how you doing, girl.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have been e-welcome to, I'm doing well, table.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing good.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm doing good.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing good.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I feel like these clearly these NIV prayers are just our clinic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do I need some more if thou knowest these prayers?
[SPEAKER_03]: Lord help us help us believe thou is helpest.
[UNKNOWN]: I'll write now it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll write now it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll write now it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so that's how I feel about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: How are you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually glad that you took us back to the Kings English because we were taking it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Looking back to the roots, you know, the roots of all of the evilness, you know, my mom.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where were it started?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know it's a genus.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we go and go to the roots of really where we are right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, because we're going behind the book.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going behind it inside it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're going behind is the anti-greed gospel by Malcolm Foley.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to talk about this y'all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why?
[SPEAKER_02]: The love of money is the root of racism and how to listen.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can create a new way forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: Listen, all kinds of evil.
[SPEAKER_03]: You veal.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome home.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the table brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey hey, I've been I've been I've been I've been looking forward to this for years I'm late.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like I'm gonna work my way up to one day being on Tuesday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well today.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go like the phone.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what you always go just be before we get it because you know we was already chopping it up before
[SPEAKER_02]: We started.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me tell the people a little something about you, my brother.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dr. Malcolm Foley is a pastor, historian, and speaker who serves as special advisor to the president for equity and campus engagement at Baylor University.
[SPEAKER_02]: He has written for Christianity today, the anxious bench and mere orthodoxy, fully co-pastors Mosaic Waco, a multicultural church in Waco, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Desiree.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the table, brother Malcolm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my goodness, we're great friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I got a lot of questions now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a feeling that Malcolm has responses.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I have somebody, but I'm usually asked to inspire this, but we can get into that, but I want to know, because this is a burning question for me right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you mean that greed is a racist, you know, a racist, instead of racism, it's what do you mean by that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, not when I tell you that Malcolm stayed ready to answer this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so, so if you're here's thing, I ask people read the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also want them to
[SPEAKER_01]: come to recognize that my book is like, it's kind of about race, but it's, but it's more about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the goal because, because, because, because, because what I want to argue is that America's history of race and racism is really just a proxy battle of a cosmic war.
[SPEAKER_01]: and that cosmic war is between God and Maman for your souls.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I believe that's true because Jesus said it was true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Matthew, in Matthew, six, twenty-four.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us if we can't serve two masters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll either love one and hate the other or we'll go to one and despise the other.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't serve both God and he could have chosen any of the number of idols that we tend to face.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he chooses his man, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: The airman works bridges.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just, so this, this, this whole book, I, I want to actually be an exercise of, hey, like let's listen to Jesus when he says stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's believe him and then like do what he says.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mean like being a Christian?
[SPEAKER_01]: My dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad's dad
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just a big fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you die and get up from the debt like that's a big deal for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I should do the things that you say.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think it's controversial because it's true.
[SPEAKER_03]: And every other idol has a commodification component to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's still under the agenda of what you just described.
[SPEAKER_03]: But let's get into, Kevin, what would have been probably her first question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to expand it some.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell us about the journey.
[SPEAKER_03]: that the Lord led you on for you to be the author of the anti-greed gospel.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not why is this book written, but why didn't Malcolm write this book?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was kind of really emphatic about not talking about race for a number of years, especially as I was doing my MDiv.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I don't want to talk about, I just don't want to do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's so effective that when people talk about it, it fixes it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also just like like just like the presence of my blackness does not mean that I want to talk about race all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So so I so I wanted to do work on like the Greek church fathers and Calvin like that's what I really wanted.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then and then it's like
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like clearly, but carry on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, cozina.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you are.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you talk about what everyone's like about this one.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just wanted to say this in your state of consciousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but then, as I was doing my PhD, I took a class on Christianity after the Civil War.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were talking about all this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were talking about like the modernist fundamentalist controversy in the early twentieth century.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what was going through my mind was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
[SPEAKER_01]: But black men and women are being set on fire in front of crowds of thousands of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I feel like that's actually the most significant question of culture, history, that ought to be, I ought to be a number of books and articles on this, specifically what the church was doing and saying about these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I started looking and I found much less than I feel like I should have been able to provide.
[SPEAKER_01]: It, I mean, I think it's shaped, I mean, it's shaped me in some pretty significant ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also made me ask some questions about like, okay, so why, why so violent?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did it last so long?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did it start?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did it continue?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did it end?
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I started to dig more into that and particularly into this history, I found, wait a minute, this stuff starts and continues because of material interests, specifically greed, like people want to make money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why they did this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even the category of race, it doesn't just fall out of the blue.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that's intentionally constructed for a particular reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that particular reason is that some people can make a whole bunch of money off of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as I saw that logic at the very beginning of that construction, I also saw that logic play out every time this stuff pops up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm like, oh, so if we want to deal with this, we got to deal with greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to deal with what the black radical tradition refers to as racial capitalism.
[SPEAKER_01]: And and and these were conversations that are happening in academic spaces, but I'm like, why is the, well, but the church needs to know this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The church needs to know this too.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to know what the actual issues are.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to understand that this is not just an individual and communal and systemic issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in the middle of a cosmic battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why this is so hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why that's why we come up against the obstacles that we do.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's why the violence continues and seems to be getting more and more creative over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we're not just dealing with people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so that's so and and especially as I started like preaching this to a to a congregation and and and caring for the people of God and things like that like all of this stuff all this stuff has just been made more and more salient as time is gone well and Malcolm you you started with kind of Malcolm the
[SPEAKER_03]: the curious and budding academic and what your initial interest for, but I want to pull you back even further.
[SPEAKER_03]: into how you got how you wrote this book, because I think I still look down and look at you now, because our stories go back further than just our initial academic interest.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so if you were to pull back those historical layers of your life, how did Malcolm pre-scolar pre- Dr. Malcolm, how did you end up writing this book?
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the story behind that?
[SPEAKER_01]: There was something, yeah, I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: My faith has always been formed in context of conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it started, I mean, grew up in a grew up in a Christian home.
[SPEAKER_01]: My parents are our wonderful models of the faith for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I was in high school, I took a prepared religion class and basically got a challenge to my faith that I needed, but it made me dig more into church history and theology.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it also just started to fan the flame of my love for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: and, and, and so then I do a like a religious studies degree at a secular university and then do an MDiv at like an MDivate Yale and then like like all all these contexts where people are in many ways like, like, theologically different from me, but I have, I have these opportunities to just narrate my wonder and joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that has been just a constant over the course of my life, just being enamored with the person Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And and enamored with the fact that like the one thing that matters in the Christian life is our union with the son of like is our union with the son of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: like that shapes that ought to shape our priorities enough to shape the way that we live, like all of those kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the main thing that I think drives, that I want to drive, kind of everything that I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then when I come into contact with something, like when I learn about the profound levels of racial violence in this country's history, and especially the fact that you got like Christians who are like, I feel like these are things that we should do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt that way about racialized child slavery.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, what is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what is it that gets you to narrate to yourself that this is a thing that you should do?
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I continue to ask those questions, the answer was like, oh, it's demons.
[SPEAKER_01]: like that's what it like it's not just like it's not just kind of people's creativity and like all no no no no like it like we're actually dealing with some significant like spiritual forces and yes people are cooperating with those spiritual forces but like I want to understand like these stakes are really really high so I you know I've been in you know some of the like racial reconciliation conversations and circles and stuff like that
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, we think that, you know, this will just be solved by just like friendships and us hanging out with each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, look, look, you're gonna need, you're gonna need a little more, you're gonna need a little more than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna need a little more than that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And why do we want to hang out?
[SPEAKER_03]: not my kind of fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, carry on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what you're going to need, what you're going to need are communities that are bound by the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's what you're going to need because you're in a, because we're, and, and especially now, I mean, in a world where greed
[SPEAKER_01]: and ego are very clearly on the throne.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've been on the throne for a long time, but what does it look like for us to build communities that can be beacons of the kingdom of God in the midst of this particular reality?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's impossible to do if we don't reckon with what I think is our primal sandwiches.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I would argue that even what happens in the garden is actually a sin of greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Adam and Eve reaching out to grab and take something that is not there to grab when God has already given them everything that they need and possibly want.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not even to say, because it's not even to say that the fruit of the tree is bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's just saying, I don't want you to take it for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: There might be a point where I give it to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't want, but I don't want, but I don't want you to take it for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've given you all this to every other tree.
[SPEAKER_03]: Including the tree before.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, this tree was, and not, and not eating of the forbidden tree was another need, because they needed to demonstrate, especially their obedience.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all eating the needs of guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yes, let's talk about demons.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, should we talk about the demon's now?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I'm trying to, but I would like to learn from you is or understand from you is how, how is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: that the church can combat these demons when the church in America.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me just talk in our context.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me say, and let me name it specifically the white church.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go into your stuff about the other church.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, uh, the black, the brown, the gold.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's, that's a different story.
[SPEAKER_02]: But let's talk about the, the white shirt.
[SPEAKER_02]: How can we combat these demons when, um, because we know a house divided among itself cannot stand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, it's a, and yet we have people who name the name of Christ, you know, who were in the past lynching their supposed brothers, co-religionists, brothers and sisters, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Who even now have voted for our oppression even now Trying to strip Medicaid from them now trying to strip our history from us now stripping our museums now So how exactly do we fight these demons when the demonic principality is active?
[SPEAKER_02]: and moving and oppressing and ruling and abiding in those spaces instead of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what do we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, and I don't, you know, I don't want to say anything controversial on this on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we do not do.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to follow, I want to follow the witness of
[SPEAKER_01]: of my black brothers and sisters, particularly during the lynching era, where there isn't a lot of having in-hawing over how somebody can be Christian and also lynch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just say, you're not a Christian if you do these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's make a point.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to the point of a house divided against itself can't stand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the church is not a, I mean, the church can't be described as a house divided against itself because it's not like that's not the kind of thing that the church is the church is.
[SPEAKER_01]: the church is an entity against which the gates of hell will not prevail and cannot like it's just not that's not how the bride works and so so my thing is like if if if someone is presenting themselves in profoundly anti-Christ ways
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I will treat you as somebody who needs the gospel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you need Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't care if you say that you follow him or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm going to respond with the words of the one that you say that you follow.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like so it like it it really causes no existential crisis for me to see people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, it hurts me to see people misuse the name of my savior.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if that doesn't, like, that doesn't make me question Jesus or the Lord in any way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just very clear to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, no, people just want to use the Lord for their own power and money.
[SPEAKER_01]: People have done that for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a sense in which, yes, I'm called to love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I'm called to love them, but also, I trust the Lord to do what he needs to do with those with those folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: And really, my hope is that now, as these things start to get revealed and stuff, my hope is that this is a moment of clarity for the people of God, that people that, so I'm preaching through the book of Revelation right now, about to finish it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm preaching Revelation twenty-two.
[SPEAKER_01]: We started the week before the election, I'm doing Revelation twenty-two this Sunday.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things about that book is just like, look,
[SPEAKER_01]: Does the folks who follow the lamb?
[SPEAKER_01]: They're folks who go the way of the beast, the way of domination and of exploitation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes we just need to be clear about who's direction we want to go with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm a call people to the life of the lamb.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I'm going to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then where there are beastial habits and things like that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a name on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to say them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to call the people of God out of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what there's not a third way.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I got.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the options.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Way of life in the way of death.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it about American-made Christianity?
[SPEAKER_03]: amongst the Christianity sociologically speaking, not the invisible church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will not prevail against it.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is about American-made Christianity that makes it so deficient?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And anemic in repentance and an acknowledgement of the obvious wickedness.
[SPEAKER_03]: of racial capitalism.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is baked in as you do like a theological analysis into that tradition?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a historical thing when you when your national identity and also national economy is rooted in both attempted genocide and enslavement.
[SPEAKER_01]: That material founding
[SPEAKER_01]: has theological and spiritual effects, as well as material effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also think that one of the most significant things that the enemy can do to dilute the witness, the witness of the church is to give people money, cultural influence, and political power.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because once you get a taste of it, it's really hard to let go of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it's true, as I think it is, and as I argue in the book, that the Lord only sees fit to give us resources in excess of what we need in order to share with others who don't have and who also need.
[SPEAKER_01]: In opposition to that, we essentially have a history where the goal is a mass as much as you possibly can for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the horizons are endless.
[SPEAKER_01]: like the possibilities for riches?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, oh, just beyond anything that anybody could ever imagine.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, throw yourself into that, which is specifically the call of Maman worship.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's exactly what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when that is then presented, you know, when that's presented as the goal, then whatever it takes for me to pursue that is what is what people is what people end up doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that kind of logic bleeds into churches as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people will then seek religious justification for the seeking of those goals.
[SPEAKER_01]: You find ways to make this common in the book that
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we hear Jesus say you can't serve both God and Maman and we're like, you know, Jesus, I just don't think you were as creative as I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I can figure out what we can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can do both.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of the history of American Christianity is basically that.
[SPEAKER_03]: You mean there are people who have a paternalistic view towards Scripture and Jesus?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's a thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to let that simmer.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to let that cook and we can ask ourselves during this commercial break.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we one of those people?
[SPEAKER_03]: And in ways we have a paternalistic view towards Scripture and towards the way of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll be right back.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, here are back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Christina, hit you with the heat.
[SPEAKER_02]: She sucks you with the heat.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, Missy Elliott came back for us.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got that's a question for all of us for real.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a question for us to ponder.
[SPEAKER_02]: But as we were back and I am wanting to read a little bit of your book to you, Malcolm, and have you expound and talk and do the things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am reading from the chapter, How Greed gave birth to rings.
[SPEAKER_02]: how race hides.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a sneaky little devil in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm reading from page forty Richard Rothstein has written a popular book called The Color of Law, which is open the eyes of many to how government bodies helped create racially segregated neighborhoods in north through the practice of redlining.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the book leaves open the question of why.
[SPEAKER_02]: What if we went beyond the answer?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they were racist.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we know that racism suggests the five modes and structures of exploitation, and the question we should really ask is this, who stood to gain the most from racial segregation?
[SPEAKER_02]: Historian, Kiyanga Yamada Taylor, reminds us that Greed was at the root of redlining and racial segregation.
[SPEAKER_02]: She knows that after the housing and urban development act in sixthed, the government and the real estate industry move from policies of racist exclusion to policies of predatory inclusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: before that decade.
[SPEAKER_02]: Black people were kept out of white neighborhoods due to racist assumptions of unfitness for years.
[SPEAKER_02]: Black people have been barred from building generational wealth through property, but in the nineteen sixties, the doors to property ownership opened up a bit wider, but when the market opened up, it did not open up justly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Instead, Black people face what Taylor called predatory inclusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: African-American home buyers are granted access to the conventional real estate practices and mortgage financing, but on more expensive and comparatively, I'm comparatively sorry, on equal terms, the reason given black people were riskier to banks, but why were they perceived as riskier?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because previous economic exploitation rendered them so.
[SPEAKER_02]: My, my,
[SPEAKER_02]: Please, speak to that unpacked that I know firsthand the ways that I was impacted personally by predatory inclusion during the cows in crisis, you know, when they were giving those zero percent loans, I was impacted family members, you know, of mine were impacted by those predatory loans.
[SPEAKER_02]: So please, if you don't mind, I would never share that on the show, but yeah, I was impacted by that, but I would love for you to speak to this excerpt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wanted to use this as a very specific example to get people to ask the question of when they encounter, when they encounter racism, to ask the deeper questions of, like, why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think about it even when, I mean, even when I think about it, it's just controversial.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wants to go back.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I think about like the current federal administration, like people will throw out the racist thing, because it's racist.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, look.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think, I don't think a lot of people really actually do care about race.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they just care about money and ego.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're told that, hey, these are the people who have resources and these are the people who matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: So align yourself with these people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's like, all right, go, well, let's do, let's do, let's do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similar to the housing thing, it is easy for us to see issues of especially kind of racist exclusion as just hate and just ignorance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those things exist and those things are real.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the argument, but the argument I want to make is that those things come downstream.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those things come when you have spent a significant amount of time treating someone like an exploitable thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: What that does is that breeds resentment.
[SPEAKER_01]: It breeds the fact like I don't actually have to know anything about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're only purpose to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that you make money for me?
[SPEAKER_01]: When that's when that's the way that you continue to treat somebody that then shapes assumptions that then manifest themselves as as as as ignorant and hate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so and so if we just if we just stay at the level of affections.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to deal with this stuff at its very root.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got to deal with the material like we've got to deal with the material underpinnings of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we think about remedies like we've got to think about I think about this in the last few years of Kings of Kings life as he started as as he was much more vocal about about these kinds of things as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's not just that, you know, it's not just that I'm a black and white people to hang out together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want black people to have food and housing and jobs and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: The things that we need to flourish is human beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what, this is about, this is not just about us being able to hang out with each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not about the lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about me being able to live in peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so especially as I think about the role that the church is supposed to play,
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we're supposed to be communities of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're supposed to be invitations to the world of an alternative.
[SPEAKER_01]: And far too often, we have been just other outposts of a neoliberal capitalist status quo.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just like that's a shame.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a shame.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because what the world needs is hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world needs people need to be convinced that there's another way that there's actually another way to live a more joyful and more peaceful and more loving way to live.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Christ has called us to do and be that.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know I'm curious about what you would say.
[SPEAKER_03]: to our listeners, particularly our listeners who are clergy or overseeing ministries and nonprofits.
[SPEAKER_03]: But kind of clearly Christian in terms of their kind of their ethos and their goals.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they are listening to this and wondering the ways in which greed is present in their hearts and in their church and their environment.
[SPEAKER_03]: What would you recommend that they do
[SPEAKER_03]: as a means to develop a filter, to see to what extent they are in cohoots with the, with the Greek gospel versus the anti-Greek gospel.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you help them to do the necessary, yeah, introspection work?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I think all of us would say that we are committed to the way of Jesus, even as we are defined by stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is to ask the question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do this whenever I'm in front of a crowd.
[SPEAKER_01]: I ask them how often they hear sermons about greed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the answer is always rarely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'll run through just kind of all of the scriptures that talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, does your, do you preach the scriptures?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you do, you're going to hear about greed often.
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone, if this is somebody who preaches that I'm talking to, I would suggest you like, in a flat-footed way, preaches through the sermon on the Mount.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, you know, and just sit with Jesus as words.
[SPEAKER_01]: and find out from the people whom you serve, what makes them most uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in many ways, people will probably be shocked by the fact that these issues of solidarity with the poor, of constantly giving of what you have without any consideration of what you might have left.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, when they hear that over and over again, I think people will, as they're being called to reshape their priorities, I think you'll find some challenge.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll find some challenge there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, as we're moving into the practical, how can, you know, let's, I mean, after so, there's actually so much to you because I really want, you know, I guess my question is too full.
[SPEAKER_02]: How can,
[SPEAKER_02]: they attack this idol, you know, of greed, spiritually, but then also practically, like for me as a reparation of activists, I think, okay, so I agree gospel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, whether reparation that.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, in relation to, you know, a shadow slavery, Jim Crow lynching and then colonialism, right, appear on those things, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it is a pan African call, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So this would be a global for reparation.
[SPEAKER_02]: not just here, but also globally, or on the continent within the diaspora as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, how does this, you know, where does reparations fit into the conversation?
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a practical move step forward, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, cavity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So back to the back of the controversial points.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what I said in response to that, like I
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a significant amount that the government, like the United States government and other global governments, have stolen, vast, vast amounts that they've stolen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think any of them have the moral imagination or fortitude to actually repay what they have stolen.
[SPEAKER_01]: something as a profound failure, just about the nature of the way that states work, that they're just not.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, when I think about people who claim to be gathered under the Word of God, so these church communities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many of whom may have endowment that may have been intentionally built on the backs of exploitively.
[SPEAKER_02]: Act like am Protestant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Act like am Protestant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I mean, I mean, we'll opportunity to watch our retirement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: When, when that's the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever ethical creativity that we have ought to be used toward thinking, okay, what does just redistribution look like?
[SPEAKER_01]: I tell my church this regularly that when I think about the way that we ought to function financially is that financially we ought to function fundamentally as redistributive entities.
[SPEAKER_01]: When people give, when people give to your particular church, they need to understand like what they're giving to, they're giving to the media in their mess, like they're giving, they're giving to, they're not just giving to the password or whatever, like no, no, no, like you're giving to the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and so, and so to the reparations point,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think there are, there are ways in which governments are on the hook.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they lack the moral imagination, will and all that to do anything about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that we, I think that we have an opportunity as, as communities bound by the Holy Spirit to be, to be images of what that can, of what that can look like.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see that in intra church relationships, but also in church relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have opportunities to be models of solidarity and of a repair of harm that that that can I think be really attractive to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Malcolm, I'm curious about your thoughts about this and you obviously you talk about some pieces of this certainly in your book.
[SPEAKER_03]: But as we think about how humans
[SPEAKER_03]: are designed but have come to be redesigned or reworked.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it about accumulation?
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it about money that makes the human as been redesigned?
[SPEAKER_03]: Willing to risk denying others their humanity to have.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, it comes back to, you know, I think it comes back to the fact that we have bodies.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we need to support said bodies.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is why this is why the Lord speaks economically throughout the scriptures, because like your body is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: Food is important, clothing is important, housing is important, all those things are important.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Jesus is also very clear that like
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like when I say these things are important, I don't mean that you're supposed to worry about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of important things that I'm not saying you should worry about them.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of y'all want to y'all do, but I got the Lord knows that you need these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he says, seek first the came of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you need this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I promised to provide for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seek my kingdom and my righteousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got you with the other.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got you with the other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back in marriages just that we don't, we just don't believe them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so and so and so in an effort to build security for ourselves because that's the other thing that we love to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I when I feel when I feel unsafe it's like, okay, what do I have to do to build the security for myself?
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that we do that and the way that we're told by our politically economy to do it is by a massing for ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know what tomorrow's going to hold.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let me make sure that I have enough now.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: to make so that tomorrow is not a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and, and, and it's why, you know, and like that's why we store up treasures for ourselves where Moth and Rust can eat is because we think like, I mean, we don't think about Moth and Rust possibly eating it because like we have, we have so many complicated financial instruments.
[SPEAKER_01]: that can keep moth and rust from eating what we have.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we tell ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when we hear Christ say something like, you know, build up for yourself, treasure and heaven, and then he explains what that means in Luke that it's like giving to the poor, like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they deserve it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they have it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they have they jump through all the hoops that they need to to be able to eat and have homes?
[SPEAKER_01]: I got some questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: As opposed to just hearing Christ when he says, well, I know you need that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I got you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seek my kingdom and my righteousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got you for this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I got some other stuff that I need you to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some seeking that I need you to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: As opposed to spending all of our time seeking after the desires of
[SPEAKER_01]: of Maman.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when we're in a world where Maman is all they know, it's hard to maintain that stamina and that focus.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we've been we've been formed.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been shaped and the crucible of this Maman worship.
[SPEAKER_02]: Cash rules everything around me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Creme.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get them on me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get them on me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, somebody.
[SPEAKER_02]: Creep, get the Holy Ghost.
[SPEAKER_02]: Come on, vintage Christian rapper.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, because it's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have been shaped, we have been misshaped in these ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that is my job.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just saying, let's be honest, we kind of call it, we have been shaped in these ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that, well, that's really the question of our, our sanctification is that we are being shaped and reshaped.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And where do you and how do we want to be shaped?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we want to be shaped more like Jesus?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, sanctification is the process of getting us ready for heaven that we will actually like.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: We need to be sanctified to even like what heaven actually
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is but two.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, this is all of the follow-up book is going to be said.
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_03]: You heard it here.
[SPEAKER_02]: You heard it here.
[SPEAKER_04]: You heard it here.
[SPEAKER_02]: You heard it here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You heard it here.
[SPEAKER_04]: You
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I shouldn't be on Twitter anymore, but I still am.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's like a few more weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So don't worry about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Malcolm, Malcolm B. Foley over there, but Instagram and Instagram and Threads, it's Rev Doc Malk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and uh, but you can, you, you can get the book out on the, on the, on the browser's website.
[SPEAKER_01]: They, they still got a, they still got a, I think a thirty percent discount discount going over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll suggest, I'll suggest that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also anywhere, anywhere books, anywhere books are sold, you can, you can, you can pick it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I encourage you to do so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Malcolm, we have learned so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: from you about the anti-greed gospel.
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, we want to take our time to thank our sisters for taking us to see that the table with us this week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's keep the conversation going.
[SPEAKER_02]: Share your thoughts about this behind the book episode, the anti-greed gospel of Malcolm Foley.
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[SPEAKER_02]: True Sabos audio producer Joshua Heath, our video producer is Darrell Bradford, and true stable executive producers and hosts are the Camini Owen and Christina Evanson.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you soon on the next true stable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye.