The Priest & the Prof

In this mini episode, Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discusses the nature of public vs private communication and how those differences relate to the faith.

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DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

MET [00:39] Hello!

Rev. Deborah is still on sabbatical, and our producer actually has shingles, so things are going to be a bit shorter than usual, as it’s just me and Carl is not up to a whole lot.

But there was something I wanted to chat with you about before Rev. Deborah came back, because it might shine some light on some things we’ll do in the fall and winter.

I actually want to talk to you about the public vs. the private.

So, if a student wants to sign up to major in my program at school, they have to choose a concentration. This used to be broken up into interpersonal/organizational, and public/mediated. These words generally mean nothing to undergrads. They very likely mean nothing to you. So, let me explain.

Think of these as levels of audience. There is the first level, which is interpersonal. That’s person-to-person. That’s what you do with your spouse or your buddy or your priest. After that, things are kind of categorized by size of audience. There’s organizational – which is how an organization communicates within itself or to an outside receiver. There’s public communication, which is largely what I do – a person speaking to a crowd. Which has a lot of crossover with mediated communication, which is when the communication is just that – a matter of new media. Depending on what quote-un-quote level of audience you are speaking to, you communicate differently, and you study that communication differently.

Okay, I didn’t really tell you anything that was brilliantly insightful, there. But, I start there to remind you that there is a difference between certain kinds of communication – there is public communication and private communication. You may know this from your job – you make a public memo or flyer for everyone to see; you send a private email or memo to one team member about their particular work. Once again – this is not rocket science.

But I was thinking about how this relates to the faith. Matthew 6:5-6 says, “And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they [a]will be seen bythe people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 But as for you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” But if you go to a liturgical church you know very well that public and communal prayer is integral to a church service. Is Episcopal prayer non pleasing to God because it is done out loud? That seems dubious.

And actually, this takes me back to our very first episode. When I introduced myself to you I told you how I was raised in a very individualized faith. And that’s actually a bit of a paradox, you know? On the one hand, it was very self-centered, individually focused, and without a lot thought for the community. At the same time, there was a lot of emphasis on the public nature of the faith. So it was all about YOUR relationship to God, but kind of how you related to him in public. And that’s a little weird. You would think if it was about an interpersonal relationship, it would be a bit more private. But Episcopalians do the reverse, and I don’t know if we can call ourselves any better. We have this beautiful communal faith – our focus is on the body of the church, both as a physical representation of Christ and a collective community. We pray together, we worship together, we sing together, and we commune together. And yet our faith is very private. You don’t see a lot of Episcopalians telling their friends about how the church has changed their lives for the better. Episcopalians aren’t good at telling people, “I see God in you.” Episcopalians have 100% bought the narrative that it is inappropriate and uncomfortable to talk about religion. They have to be reminded that, yeah, Jesus told us not to pray on street corners, but he also told us, “19 [a]Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to [b]follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you [c]always, to the end of the age.”

Wow, it’s almost like God doesn’t expect our relationship to Him to be one-dimensional.

One of the things that seems to be really hard for some people to wrap their heads around is that God is multi-faceted. God is multitudinous. And, he expects maturity and complexity from us. We are, as Paul observed, not to be content with milk, but should move on to the meat of our relationship.

What I mean by that is that God expects us to understand a bit of context. He tells us, no, I don’t want you to stand on the street corners and pray. That’s what hypocrites do. But that is absolutely different from saying he does not want us to proclaim. God asks us to consider our circumstances. A public street corner with an audience that doesn’t really want to hear you in a show that doesn’t do anybody but you any good is not sharing the gospel. A one-on-one conversation between you and your friend who wants to know how you’re handling things is a very different situation. And this is the difference between a public faith and a private faith. A person who preaches on street corners or college campuses or prays over food loudly in restaurants to make sure the waiter can hear them is the hypocrite praying on the street. They may be doing things in public, but there is no faith to it. A moment with a friend in which you share how God is a part of your life may seem private, but in that moment you are sharing in a very communal thing.

I’m asking you to think about this as we move into the fall and winter because there’s a lot going on in the world right now that asks us to re-imagine our faith in terms of its relation to the public or the private. Who can talk to about what at work? What religions get public funding? Who prays where? What faiths have power over and access to schools? How much influence will religion have over judicial review?

All of these are questions about how the public intersects with religion. It would behoove us all to have some idea of how we situate ourselves in terms of those things as well.

MET [08:03] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [08:30] Music by Audionautix.com

Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discusses her approach to the faith and this podcast. She explores the value of rhetoric in understanding theological issues.

Producer’s Note: Due to some technical difficulties with our Virtual Church recording session, we are going to delay that episode until we can re-record some sections. This week, we are doing a solo episode with Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

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Transcript

MET [00:38] Hello, all. Today it’s just me – Rev. Deborah is on sabbatical, and we had a few technical difficulties recording the virtual church episode, so Carl and I will get that out to you in the future, so I’m going to talk to you for just a bit on my own. So, it’s probably going to get a little heady, today. Buckle up for some schoolish-type-talk!

MET [01:00] No, really, I actually thought I would take a minute to talk to you about where I’m coming from. Sometimes it may seem like I am coming out of nowhere. I talk about all these wild rhetoricians or communication theories or whatever, and it may not seem abundantly clear why I make those connections sometimes. When we talked about Mary Magdalene I was going off about public memory and when we talked about South Africa I was giving you theories about whiteness and the law – I admit this is not normal. If you have a cup of coffee with a friend and say, “Hey, did you hear about…?” They are not going to respond to any of these things in the way I do.

MET [01:42] So, why? What is the point of all of this? How does it fit? And am I just a navel-gazer shoe-horning my particular ideas into a discussion about theological things?

It is quite possible that I AM all of those things. But if you’ll give me a chance to explain myself, I hope you’ll at least find my shoe-horning amusing.

MET [02:07] I teach a class in rhetorical theory. You may have heard me talk about it before. I really enjoy teaching it. It’s interesting, challenging, and for the most part the students are starting from ground zero. On the first day of class, when we’re going over the syllabus, I tell my students, I know you don’t want to be here. That often gets a laugh, or some shocked faces. But, I acknowledge, this is a class about both rhetoric and theory – two things that most people spend their entire college career trying desperately to avoid. And often I see some people get a bit more comfortable in their seats at that point. Because if we all start from the same place – and that place is that we all think this is going to suck – we’re at least in the same boat. But I go on from there. My aim, I tell them, is not to turn them into rhetoricians or theorists. I don’t expect any of them to go on and study rhetoric for the rest of their lives or think about theory forever and ever. My aim is to show them that these big, pie-in-the-sky questions that we think of as irrelevant or just for philosophers and people that don’t do anything with their lives actually matter. That some of these ideas are being played out in their everyday lives, right beneath their noses. That rhetoric, and all of the “nonsense stuff” that comes with it, is actually pretty essential to the way we function. People are pretty incredulous at that, but it gives us a starting point other than, you have to know this because KNOWLEDGE.

MET [03:52] I also tell them there is value in this kind of thing because of the KIND of learning I am asking them to do. The truth is, at least 70% of the jobs out there will be gone in 5-10 years. AI is coming for us all. And in their hearts they know this, because they have all been cheating and getting AI to do their work for them. What they haven’t put together yet is that if they are replacing themselves with AI now, then they are making themselves useless in 5 years. If they want to be useful, employable, and helpful in a few years, they have to show that they can do what the bots cannot. And if you spend your years in college getting the bots to do your work, you absolutely cannot do that. The thing the computers cannot do, is be human. They can do pretty much everything else. Really – everything. But they cannot understand the world the way a human does. They can’t make human connections and decisions. So, I tell my students, if you are thinking about how to make yourself as marketable as possible in the coming AI takeover, your goal shouldn’t be to learn to code, but to make yourself as explicitly human as possible. This is one of those classes where you learn to do that. In rhetorical theory we will wrestle with the questions that are at the heart of the human experience. And if that seems pointless to you, then the machines have already won.

And that may not immediately make you think of a project like this – but it really is an important connection.

MET [05:44] What I do is essentially a humanist project. Historically, rhetoric has been defined as just persuasion. But in the last century people have reconsidered that approach. Yes, there is a matter of convincing people – but that’s more than just a claim and evidence. There’s actually a lot of evidence out there that starting with a claim and presenting your proofs and then coming to a conclusion is a pretty terrible way to convince people because most people don’t believe proven evidence. Most people just don’t buy facts that don’t already justify what they believe, regardless of sources, logic, or presentation. So there are larger questions about emotion, narrative, and identification. These are the things we think about now. How do you reach people? How do you find people at their most human? And when we’re talking about spiritual matters, and how spiritual matters relate to public life, we are talking about inherently human matters.

Let me tell you about my rhetorical theory class again.

MET [06:58] I taught it at the grad level a few times, and it was always really well-received, but the approach threw people for a loop. Basically, I told my students on the first day we were going to read a whole bunch of really smart theorists and philosophers and at the end of the semester they were going to define three things: truth, reality, and rhetoric.

They generally laughed, and I said, no, I’m serious. You’re going to write your own rhetorical theory. Based on what we learn in class, you’re going to take on the mantle of western philosopher and define things that we’ve been struggling with for thousands of years. Good luck.

Man, you should see how they squirm.

But we make it through. And by the end of the semester they feel so smart and have so much to say. But they also know how much they don’t know, and that’s as good a thing to learn as any.

But let me break down the challenge here:

MET [08:04] Let’s say you want to define truth: is it capital T truth? Is it inherent and intrinsic? Is it immutable, and irrespective of the world around us? Does truth exist and not change regardless of the circumstances? Or is truth contextual? Are there different truths based on perspective or situation? Can a thing be true at one time, and not true at another? This question in and of itself is often baffling for my students, because they say they believe one thing, then find themselves defending the other. What I don’t tell them in the beginning is there is a theorist or philosopher who has covered pretty much any position they take – there’s nothing new under the sun – but watching them try to justify what seems to be a very inconsistent opinion is both amusing, but also encouraging as an instructor. They are learning.

Then we have to approach reality: For most of them, they just assume truth and reality are the same thing. If it is true it is real, and if it is not real, then it is not true. But, I ask them, doesn’t that depend on how you define truth? For example, if you are an American, you have been raised to believe in certain immutable truths – that all people are born equal and have the rights to life, liberty and happiness. We’re taught this from infancy on up. Equality. It’s the bedrock principle of America. So it is true that we are all equal. I have yet to have a student say they do not believe in equality. But, is that the reality? This generally causes great consternation. The question then becomes about not just what is real, but what is truth’s relationship to reality. It is true that women are equal to men. I absolutely, 100% believe that to be true. I also recognize the reality that we are not. What does one do with this discrepancy?

MET [10:28]Then consider rhetoric: If rhetoric is persuasion or identification, what does it have to do with these things? Consider the relationship to truth – if truth is immutable, then rhetoric is actually a really bad thing, because rhetoric could be used to persuade you from the truth. However, it is also pretty powerless in how it affects larger questions because it cannot affect the truth. The truth is sustained with or without rhetoric because it is intrinsic. However, if truth is situational, then rhetoric is EXTREMELY important, because that is HOW you create truth. If truth is made in the moment, you convince people of what is true at that time. You create truth as you go. Making a persuasive speaker one of the most powerful people in the world.

I think about all of these things when Rev. Deborah sit down to do a podcast because it weighs heavily on what I do when I am speaking to you. As a rhetorician, I am very interested in questions of truth, narrative, and persuasion. As a Christian, I am very aware that questions about truth, narrative, and persuasion are very dicey for a religion that claims, in many circles any way, to have a monopoly on truth.

MET [11:57] My job, in this podcast, is to provide a perspective on these topics that is not necessarily clerical, but considers the questions we pose from an intellectual, if Christian perspective. But, my intellectual perspective is shaped by my academic background. And my academic background demands that I constantly ask myself, where is the truth, here? What is real? Who is being persuaded of what? So the Bible is a fascinating document. It would be easy to say, “The Bible is true and that’s that.” And I’m comfortable with saying, “Sure, the Bible is true.” But is that different than saying the Bible is real? That’s a question I think we should all be asking ourselves. And, I am quite convinced, a thing is no less true just because it is not real. That can be a hard pill to swallow. But it’s something I wrestle with a lot as a person of reading and a person of faith.

MET [13:02] And I’m not here to argue that the Bible is a work of fiction with great truths in it. I absolutely believe that there is a great deal of the Bible we can look at and say, “Yeah, that happened!” The proof is in the pudding. But I am certainly not ready to think in any kind of literal terms. We don’t do ourselves any favors to say the world was literally created in seven days or that Joshua literally caused the sun to stop in the heavens.

MET [13:32] I also have to deal with questions of persuasion in the faith. I come from an Evangelical background where there was a huge emphasis on going out there and convincing people that they were going to go to hell if they didn’t accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. This is another one of those things that, honestly, most people aren’t just going to buy into. There are whole online groups devoted to making fun of Christians who do terrible things in the name of Jesus’ name to supposedly spread the good Word, and somehow the unsaved are supposed to think, “oh, yeah, I will definitely become a Christian, now.” At the same time, that reality question is such a humdinger. There are whole institutions built on convincing people that truth and reality are the same thing. If the Bible says it is true that Methuselah lived 900 years, then that is the reality.

MET [14:31] The reason I tell you these are particularly human questions, is ultimately, one of the last things you have to ask is “who?” Who benefits from you believing in a certain definition of truth or reality? Who benefits from you thinking that there is or is not a place for persuasion or identification in the stories that we tell? And that, dear friends, comes down to power. If someone has spent years telling you, that this is the way it is and there is no other way, they either benefit from that story, or have been so crushed by it themselves that they are reproducing it because they don’t know any other way. Someone wants you to know a particular narrative. It behooves you to ask who.

Finally, I want to tell you about some very specific ways that my field intersects with the faith, so just in case you think I’ve been feeding you a bunch of nonsense up until this point, I can prove that I’m coming from a place of actual connection.

MET [15:44] If you study rhetorical theory, you will very likely take a chronological type of approach. Start with the Sophists and work your way up to things like networked media. When you do that you can kind of follow a basic trajectory of how the West felt about things like these big questions about truth, reality, etc. One of the things that had a huge influence on our perspective on these things was institutional power. Whoever was in charge had a lot to say on what we believed. Now, if you’re an astute listener, you will automatically realize that the same people have been in charge for a really long time and have just recently started to, for a variety of reasons, share the institutional power; so that should give you some insight as to who was influencing our ideas about truth and reality and for what purpose. But for a few thousand years the people who were telling us what is real and what is believable were propertied, educated, white men. And if that is who is deciding what is true and real, you can probably see who benefited from that.

MET [17:00] There have been shifts here and there, though. And one of those happened in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t necessarily a particularly progressive shift, but it happened.

In the Middle Ages, we actually took a few steps backward. The Greeks and Romans had spent a long time building democracy, fashioning a rational way of looking at the world, and generally moving civilization in the direction of progress. Then Rome became an Empire, and empire is generally a bad thing and leads to regression and Rome fell to tyranny. When Rome began to fall apart, another power swooped in to take over – and that was the church.

The Church was no less an empire than Rome was. And the Church was much more invested in mandating truth and personal behavior. The Church took over the finances of the Western world, the state power, and began to regulate the lives of pretty much everyone living within its reaches. So all of those issues that the Classical philosophers and thinkers had been wrestling with – what’s true? Who counts? Who is a citizen? Who gets to be educated? – fell to the Church. And the church had an answer – Wealthy men. Because God said so. And it pretty much stayed that way for over 1000 years.

MET [18:30] The reason I bring this all up is because rhetoric, had kind of been through a number of manifestations through the Greek and Roman years. For the Greeks, rhetoric mattered immensely. That’s because in democracy, persuasion is ESSENTIAL. You don’t vote for a thing unless you are persuaded to do so. You make decisions based on who convinces you that they have the best idea. Rhetoric fell out of favor in Rome precisely because it was LESS democratic. As Rome fell to authoritarianism, it became less important for people to be able to express themselves in a cogent or effective manner because their voices didn’t matter. When people’s ideas don’t matter because only one person is in charge, rhetoric because an afterthought. When people have agency and can exact change in their world, then rhetoric is an essential. Once again, an astute observer might ask why in the last 50-100 years this subject has been taken out of the education system to the point that most people don’t even know what it is. But I digress.

This was the legacy the church inherited, and the Church made no efforts to change that. The Church was looking to maintain power and was not interested in fielding any questions. So it made sense that there weren’t too many major leaps in rhetorical theory for a while.

MET [20:08] But there was one person who stood out – St. Augustine. You will notice I said “Saint.” He was one of the integral fathers of the church and helped figure out early theological issues. He also wrote a book on rhetoric.

A word on St. Augustine – he may well have been bi-racial. That does not show up in any religion class or Sunday School lesson in general. Once again, we ask who is teaching us and why. In fact, I didn’t know this until I was watching a ridiculous television show about demons and detectives when one of the characters mentioned that Augustine’s mother Monica was probably Black. I was stunned. And so I did some fact-checking. Yeah – it’s definitely reasonable to think that. One of the most important Church fathers may not have been a white man. That was conveniently left out of my theology classes.

MET [21:12] Augustine wrote a piece called De Doctrina Christiana. In it, he sets out guidelines for interpreting scripture. What is notable is that he is not a literalist. Scriptural literalism didn’t pop up in Christian theology until much later. Augustine notes that there is figurative language, symbolic language, and even opportunities to think about grammar and structure when interpreting scripture. So he acknowledges in the very beginning that scripture teaches a variety of lessons, each of which may be equally true. He also talked about things that should be enjoyed and things that should be used. And his position is that God is enjoyable – we should take pleasure in our relationship with God. Other things are tools. This is in sharp contrast to the Puritans who would come later. But most importantly for our purposes, Augustine wrote about how eloquence should serve God, wisdom, and the proclamation of the gospel. An orator does not create truth – an orator serves truth and delivers it. God is the source of truth and wisdom and the orator is the vehicle by which that is delivered. Augustine gives some very good directions on how a speaker (in this circumstance, a priest) might do that, but ultimately, a speaker serves a cause, not himself.

MET [21:48] Consider that in terms of this podcast. Are we Augistinian? Do we simply share truths as they are handed to us by God? Do we interpret? Do we have more agency than that? Are we crafting a particular message for you that you should be wary of, the very same way I warn you to think about institutional powers? These are things I am quite sure you don’t think about. But I do. A lot. When I sit down to work on these podcasts I ask myself about my responsibilities to you, my discipline, and my faith. And because my discipline is such a terribly human one, it really does impact how I practice my faith. Because my faith is built of human things. Things like words and relationships. Without those things, I don’t know God. So looking at my faith through a lens that helps me understand words and relationships in general, helps me make sense of things that otherwise, I would have a lot of difficulty understanding.

MET [24:01] I know I have taken you on a heck of a journey today. You probably didn’t want to think this hard or hear about my classes this much. You’re probably missing Rev. Deborah’s optimism and her spiritual take on things. But I wanted to take this opportunity to explain where I am coming from, so the next time I drop some crazy term or theory on you, maybe you won’t think I am incredibly random or that I have lost my mind, but you’ll see how I am just trying to make sense of things, like you. And this just happens to be the best way I know how.

Okay. Thanks for listening to me through all of this. I’m happy to try to explain anything more if it didn’t make sense, so absolutely shoot me an email if you have questions. Carl, Rev. Deborah, and myself are just trying to make sense of the faith in this weird, new, mediated world. Let us know how we’re doing, or how we can help you.

MET [25:05] Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [25:36] Music by Audionautix.com

In this episode, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the relationships among food, power, and labor. Rev. Deborah talks about the rise of agribusiness, and Dr. Thorpe discusses Cesar Chavez.

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Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010\. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

DDM [00:40] Welcome. So today Elizabeth and myself want to speak a little bit about agriculture, our food systems, farm workers, and some of the issues that are important for us to be aware of as we consider issues of justice, human dignity, and the earth itself, which of course are deep biblical values central to our faith. Elizabeth, I don’t really know if you watch the Super Bowl at all.

MET [01:09] No.

DDM [01:10] Okay, you too.I also don’t watch the Super Bowl, but I remember a couple of years back, I sometimes on my Facebook feed will see different adverts that come out on the Super Bowl. And there was a Super Bowl advert about, and God made a farmer. Did you ever see that one?

MET [01:27] God made a farmer?

DDM [01:31] Yes. You skipped that one

MET [01:31] Just the ridiculousness. Okay, whatever. I’ll leave that.

DDM [01:34] There we go. Well, I must say, honestly, it was one of those adverts that was really designed to pull on your heartstrings.

DDM [01:42] It was this beautifully curated advert about the sacredness of farming, the humanity of farming. They had this farmer sitting with this little foal, and it was highlighting the creativity of farmers to meet any challenge, the hard workingness of farmers, that kind of strong masculinity, but also soft. The son wanting to follow in the father’s footsteps and it was really highlighting this whole concept of almost this idyllic family farming with great honor and integrity. I don’t know what farming was like in the past in the USA.

DDM [02:19] I mean, I do know that America used to largely be a nation of farmers, but that’s certainly not the reality today in the USA. So much has changed. And I felt like that video in some ways was idolizing maybe something that’s was in the past or maybe something that’s never actually been. I’m not sure, because I didn’t grow up in this country. But the reality is that what I know now is that only 2% of the population are actually farmers. And farming is… it’s not at all what the advert was portraying. And what I’ve done because I’m passionate, you know myself, I’m passionate about agriculture and about farming.

DDM [03:01] What I discovered is after World War II, farming in this country changed dramatically. Because in World War II, you had all your war ammunition factories. They were producing weapons and gunpowder, all the nitrogen-based bombs that were being produced. And so when the war ended, the big question was, what do you do with all these chemical factories that have now been built after the war?

DDM [03:28] And so they began to build and produce nitrogen-based fertilizers out of those war ammunition factories. Nerve gas, which I discovered, was slightly modified to create insecticides. You had your development of DDT, and these were huge corporate businesses. And I think there were incredible promises kind of post-World War II of what chemical fertilizers could do to your produce.

DDM [03:59] All kinds of chemicals were developed to boost yields, eradicate weeds. And so farming pretty rapidly shifted into a chemical process that needed obviously both chemicals but also heavy equipment. And ironically, I always think this is quite funny, it was called the Green Revolution. And the thought was that these chemical ways of farming would make food available and cheaper for people all over the world, and that it could be the end of poverty.

DDM [04:30] And so farming started to shift to these large monocultures, which is obviously the planting of one single crop. And there was a great increase in food production. But these monocultures obviously were susceptible now to rampant disease and insect problems. And so farmers had to keep spraying and spraying more and more stronger insecticides and herbicides in order for their crops to survive.

DDM [04:55] And so farming started to become more and more costly, and farmers therefore became more reliant on government subsidies. And one of the things I learned, which I thought was fascinating, is that it actually costs more to produce many of our crops today than they are actually worth. Yeah, and we put more calories into producing the nutritional value of one calorie.

DDM [05:18] But the reality is, is those subsidies were increasingly being used to support chemical companies. And farmers were basically told adapt or die. And for many small farmers they started dying. About 330 farmers leave their lands every single week.

DDM [05:37] Increasingly we know in our country that farmers cannot afford to farm. And this whole shift in farming really was called the birth of agribusiness. It was a term that was first coined in 1955\. But agribusiness really is that large scale farming involving monocultures.

DDM [05:56] It often involves owning the whole system from the development of treated or genetically modified seeds to owning the farms or leasing privately owned farmland. to owning the methods of farming, the companies that produce the machinery and equipment, the chemicals and the fertilizer, the pharmaceutical companies, the food processing and distribution and even retail to customers. So agriculture has really expanded to develop such a monopoly on food production and distribution at almost every level of the process. And so those who are actually in charge of food production increasingly are not farmers but businessmen.

DDM [06:43] And increasingly farmers themselves have become captive to agribusiness. They either have to rent out their land to agribusiness to survive financially. They can’t compete with the cheap produce that agribusiness produces. And so more and more farmers increasingly are just put out of business.

MET [07:02] So this is a really random thought. But when founding fathers way back when Thomas Jefferson had this idea that the best way to organize him, like he had this idea that we’re going to be a nation of yeoman farmers, and he wanted to just divide America up into these large, pretty much just squares of farmland. And that was going to be his version of democracy, is these gentlemen farmers who are just going to create this utopia.

MET [07:32] Anyway, that was Thomas Jefferson. But it’s funny to me that what you’re describing is very much more of a Alexander Hamilton kind of won the day with capital and money. Okay, that has nothing to do with what you’re talking about.

DDM [07:46] That’s so fascinating, those two different models of agriculture and how that impacts society. That’s fascinating. That’s really interesting. Well, I mean, for me, the contrast between what it’s become and that advert on the Super Bowl was just so stark because really our food systems aren’t about food anymore.

DDM [08:05] They’re not about healthy soil, about farmers or labor. They’ve really simply become, as you said, about profit, you know. And so everything is simply reduced to a commodity. It’s something we use to make money.

DDM [08:17] Food is increasingly not grown for flavor or nutrition, but it’s about the bulk food and often quite toxic food. And we’ve seen the shift now away from what was called that quote-unquote green revolution to increasingly what became then the gene revolution. And so newer food developments were all about genetically modifying seeds, genetically modified plants that can now actually survive the chemical toxicity of the land and what’s being applied. And so you’re really looking at almost a biotechnology revolution.

DDM [08:55] And so what we’re seeing now in agriculture is a number of crop varieties are now being made that if the insect eats the plant, the insect will die. I mean, my question is, what damage does that plant then do to us if we eat that same plant? You know, seeds are modified to be sterile. So increasingly you can no longer save seed or use seed that crops produce, which again makes us completely dependent on the seed companies.

DDM [09:24] Pesticide industry basically bought out the seed industry and so it’s harder to find not only seeds that aren’t genetically manipulated but also chemically treated. And then the final blow in this entire shift was the whole patency issue. In the Constitution, creating patents was allowed, but it’s interesting that food was always excluded on moral grounds. So the idea was you couldn’t patent nature.

DDM [09:53] But in 1978, that was overturned for the first time by one vote in the Supreme Court. Are you aware of this?

MET [10:03] I don’t know much about that.

DDM [10:03] Okay. Yeah, and once that happened in 1978 there was a race for patenting everything so genetic engineering became more and more rampant genes were patented and Wherever genes go then you own whatever they take root in if you own that patent So if you’ve patented a gene and it goes into a plant you now own that plant if it goes into an animal you own the animal so the question is If that gene goes into a human, is that human owned? So Monsanto owns, I think it’s like over 11,000 patents of seed and they actually send, as an industry, people into the World Food Bank to research what seeds are not patented and then they immediately start proceedings to patent.

DDM [10:54] Because they realize whoever controls the seeds controls the food not just for the USA but ultimately globally. And so the problem that many farmers have found is that if Monsanto finds any of their seed has taken root in your land, they then legally own your crop and they can sue you for patent infringement because they say you are growing their seed without their permission. The problem is seed spread with the winds and the birds, you can’t control them. And so increasingly seed saving is becoming a legal issue because you’ve got to ask, is the seed patented?

DDM [11:32] Farmers have often had to destroy thousands of pounds of seeds that they save because of contamination. Farmers become too scared, therefore, to save their own seed because they can’t afford legal battles. But the reality is, is 75% of the world’s 1.4 billion farmers depend on saved seed to farm. So this is a huge issue.

DDM [11:57] And multinational companies are increasingly prosecuting farmers, because for them it’s about controlling that monopoly on food. The other issue that has been really a problem from the environment and justice issues is the standardization of food. So we’re finding that increasingly a crop variety is being reduced now to only one or two varieties. So previously we had thousands of varieties of tomatoes, of potatoes, of collards, of whatever the crop was.

DDM [12:32] But 97% of food varieties that were being grown at the beginning of the 20th century have now become extinct. And so the environmental impact on that is absolutely frightening. The other issue which I think sometimes we don’t realize how it’s impacting also immigration into this country is that the USA started exporting all of these genetically modified crops. These crops then were taken into other countries.

DDM [13:02] They destroyed and contaminated local varieties in those countries and the problem is again the same thing happened as we started to see farmers being put out of business because we produce food cheaper than any country in the world and they couldn’t compete and so as farmers lost land and lost the capacity to to farm and have that business increasingly those families are thrown into poverty and then of course look for a different place to be able to find a way to survive and sustain themselves and their families. And so there was this myth that biotechnology would feed the world. And that’s absolute nonsense because we have currently 800 million people starving every day around the world.

DDM [13:46] The issue is not about the amount of food we produce in the world. The real issue is how we distribute that food, how we actually enable that food to go to where it is need. So really the problem is equitable access and distribution. So I think sometimes when we speak about these issues, and that’s partly why I did this whole long introduction, is because we don’t understand the very real power of the agribusiness industry.

DDM [14:17] It is just one of the biggest global powers. They are in the Environmental Protection Agency, they’re in the Food and Drug Administration. Monsanto supports political candidates on both sides in this country of the political divide. They fund research in universities that leads to research that is beneficial specifically to the agribusiness industry and sometimes it even becomes a marketing arm of those industries.

DDM [14:43] And so I think, you know, any of looking at these issues, if we don’t take seriously how farming is actually completely changed in this country, we really don’t understand how to address those issues. Sorry, that was a mouthful.

MET [15:01] OK, that was a lot. I will be very honest, I don’t know a lot about the process of agriculture. That’s just not, that’s not my jam. But what I do know about is the migrant struggle, and people that are involved in this and kind of public discourse. And some of it, and I’m going to talk about this in just a second.

MET [15:22] Some of this is as much my background, you can’t not have some kind of not insight, but awareness of some of this just coming from Texas, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I went to a high school that was something like 60 or 70% Hispanic, right? I mean, there is a large influx of immigrants from where I’m from.

MET [15:51] So while you gave us this huge introduction about the process of agribusiness, I’m going to talk about some specific ways that people are involved in this process and the way agribusiness affects communities. So I’m taking this in a slightly different direction, but I think in the end we’re going to see how these things all kind of come together. I’m actually going to begin with a discussion about Cesar Chavez.

MET [16:21] Do you know a lot about Cesar Chavez?

DDM [16:22] I know some because he was really a South African hero.

MET [16:27] In no way does that surprise me. I’m just going to say this, if you’re interested in learning more about Cesar Chavez when I say this, there’s a lot of good information at the United Farm Workers website and the site for the Cesar Chavez Foundation. I’m putting that out there because for a variety of reasons that I’m about to go through, people don’t know as much about him as I think they should. But I have found that Chavez is sort of a regional hero.

MET [16:51] Like I said, where I grew up, pretty much every major city had a Cesar Chavez Boulevard, right? San Antonio, Austin, they all found a way to honor Chavez because he really is the MLK of the migrant and agricultural worker population. And like I said, it makes sense that, you know, he would be a folk hero in South Africa.

DDM [17:11] Absolutely, in South Africa, land issues.

MET [17:15] But when I came up north, I found that nobody here had heard of him. My students have no idea who he is. And at first I thought, well, I guess that makes sense because there aren’t as many Latino and Latina people here. But that is a huge mischaracterization of what is happening, I think.

MET [17:34] Because there are very large, very important migrant populations in this area right here.

DDM [17:40] Especially in Western New York.

MET [17:42] Yes. Like for example, there is a Mexican market just a mile away from my house that caters to the migrant community. and my husband and I go there frequently to pick up hot sauces and chorizo. It’s just, it’s a great place.

MET [17:55] So migrants are here. Agricultural workers are here. Maybe not at the same level that they are in Texas and California, but stores like Wegmans depend on the work of migrants and people from countries all over. So we have to ask this blatant question.

MET [18:10] Why don’t white people know about this Chicano hero? and I will tell you, it is because the North is still segregated. And this is often shocking to my Yankee friends, but it is true in about a thousand ways. The community that I am in right now is an incredibly segregated community.

MET [18:30] In this very county, you have some cities with town lines right next to each other that are on one side about 75% minoritized people and on the other side about 95% white. And I love to hear the excuses of, “Oh, that’s not segregation, that’s just historically how it happened.” Like, “Sis, what do you think segregation is? What do you think redlining is? How do you think bank loans work?”

MET [18:53] Point being, there are a lot of people in this very town who are completely unaware that we have large migrant populations living within our very hometowns. But those people are separate from us. The people who provide us food and make sure we are taken care of are not a part of our daily lives.

MET [19:14] So nobody knows who Chavez is up here because the people he championed are persona non grata up here.

DDM [19:20] That’s so interesting.

MET [19:20] So with that little, you know, social justice rant, let me tell you a little bit about Cesar Chavez. Sorry, in no way should it surprise you that I started there. Chavez was born on March 31 in 1927\. He grew up in Arizona, where his past kind of speaks to who he grew up into.

MET [19:42] His home was swindled from his family by dishonest white men. So Chavez knew something about injustice kind of from early on, right?

DDM [19:51] And the loss of land.

MET [19:52] Yes, exactly.

MET [19:54] Chavez’s father agreed to clear 80 acres of land and in exchange, he would receive the deed to 40 acres of land that joined the home. But this agreement was broken and the land was sold to somebody else. So Chavez’s father went to a lawyer and advised him to borrow money and buy the land, and later when Chavez’s father couldn’t pay the interest on the loan, the lawyer bought back the land and sold it to the original owner. So it was just swindling in every way. Chavez did not like school as a child, probably because he spoke only Spanish at home.

MET [20:29] So it’s the same thing that affects children all over America today. Specifically because the teachers were mostly Anglo and only spoke English. And Spanish was forbidden in school, so there was no sense of English language learners. Some schools were still segregated, and he was punished with a ruler to his knuckles for speaking Spanish in these places.

MET [20:53] He felt that integrated schools made him feel like a monkey in a cage. And in 1942, he graduated from the eighth grade, but his father had been in an accident. And he did not want his mother to work in the field, so he did not go to high school and instead became a migrant farm worker. So this is kind of the background that leads into why he became the person he did.

DDM [21:15] Beautiful son.

MET [21:16] Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what it was, right? Yeah. In 1948, he got married.

MET [21:21] You know, he had family life as it was. On his honeymoon in California, he visited the missions from Sonoma to San Diego. And then he returned to San Jose, where he met this guy named Father Donald McDonnell. And they’re talking about farm workers and strikes.

MET [21:41] And Cesar Chavez began reading about St. Francis and Gandhi and nonviolence. And after he met this guy, McDonnell, he came across another very influential person, Fred Ross. And Chavez became an organizer for Ross’s organization, the Community Service Organization.

MET [22:01] And his first task was voter registration. Then in 62, he founded the National Farm Workers Association. And this was later to become the United Farm Workers, the UFW. He was joined by Dolores Huerta.

MET [22:16] If you don’t know Dolores Huerta, you absolutely have to look her up. She’s an amazing woman, and she’s one of those people that just kind of gets lost in the fray of history. But she was every bit as important to this movement as Chavez. She’s just a woman. So people don’t talk about her.

MET [22:30] But this led to the birth of the union. And this is where Chavez gets into that activism, right? The boycotts and the hunger strikes and this tireless work that he did this emphasis on nonviolence, the movements that he made to get the farm workers involved in their own agency, right?

MET [22:55] And ultimately, Chavez was willing to sacrifice his own life so that this union would continue and that violence was not used. So he fasted a number of times, like this was an ongoing process for him. And I’m not going to go into like every single bit of the movement and the union. But Chavez was really involved in the activism of the United Farm Workers that really led to the changes that happened in the Southwest.

MET [23:22] And they weren’t like, there’s still mistreatment of farm workers, obviously, but there were changes. And the fact that there was a non-white person that wasn’t MLK, obviously, a non-white person that was standing up for this population that had been just completely forgotten for generations. And he was able to say, no, here we are, we deserve some rights, was a huge moment in the story of immigration in the US.

DDM [23:57] Fascinating.

MET [23:58] Yeah, he’s a really fascinating dude. And I think it’s really sad that more people don’t know about him.

DDM [24:03] Yeah, yeah. You know, I think so often in when we listen to this discourse around farmers and around labor, I think the problem is that so often in our strategies, we very quickly divide farmers and labor. And it can be very easy to demonize the farmers when I think the real enemy is very often agribusiness. And both farmers and labor have become victims in the system, of course, as well as the earth and all plant and animal life.

DDM [24:34] Because if you look at the reality, farmers are really not making much money in this country. But it’s the multinational corporations on either side that are really reaping in the profits. And the only way that farmers really stay in business is through those government subsidies. But the reality is that farmers themselves have become labor for the agribusiness. And I think the problem with any of these oppressive systems is that so often what happens is the one with even a little bit more power turns around and does to the weaker one what is being done to them. And so often what we see is that farmers will use the very little power that they have, ironically, to block changes in laws that would bring about justice for farm workers.

DDM [25:21] And as they are put by agribusiness under more and more pressure, they then put more and more pressure on workers and also, of course, onto the soil itself. And so really workers are the ones currently who suffer the most. It’s almost like they together with the earth are on the bottom of the chain of oppression and they’re working in the toxic environment with all of those chemicals. You know, the USA can boast of being the cheapest provider of food in the world.

DDM [25:49] But the reality is the cost is always borne by the workers. And so the cost of all this quote-unquote cheap food that we have can really be measured in the poverty and misery that result from the system that legally allows the exploitation of those who produce this food. And that cost falls on the shoulders of farm workers who labor in the fields to provide these cheap foods we enjoy and we boast about. And so I think the reality is, as you mentioned, so often in this country, you know, it’s the farm workers who’ve been excluded from the basic working rights that are available to everybody else, you know, the minimum wage, the 40 hour work week.

DDM [26:31] Child labor provisions, unemployment insurance, legal protections. So many of these farm workers just don’t have any access to. And so farm workers to this day ironically remain some of the nation’s poorest workers. And I only discovered this when I became involved in some of the farm worker movements here that New York actually has, and this maybe bears with what you were saying Elizabeth, you know the segregation in the North and you know some of the ways we don’t acknowledge the

DDM [27:02] reality of the North, is that New York has some of the worst, worst legal rights for farm workers in this country. I mean, they are ineligible for overtime. They often do not qualify for disability insurance, even though farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the USA. They don’t qualify for employment insurance, even though their work is seasonal.

DDM [27:26] They often are working seven days a week. They do not have sick days or the right to a day of rest. Even to attend church services, they are exposed to some of the worst toxins and yet not given access to health care.

MET [27:41] Yeah, this is another one of those things that I talk about with my students, because they’re always shocked, like, New York, we take care of everybody. No. So I think that’s really important to think about spinning off from the conversation about Chavez, right? Like, if we’re going to talk about changes that are made, and why are they made, and who this affects, and that kind of thing.

MET [28:05] So one of the questions I always have is, Why do changes happen, right? And for me, one of those things is because there is a communicative force, right? I believe that one of the things that matters is what we say in public, right? I think it matters when the president stands up and says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

MET [28:31] And there are some people who think public speech doesn’t matter and that kind of thing, but I think it does. So I’m going to return to Chavez because you’re talking about the rights that farm workers do and do not have. Well, Chavez led a movement that made a change in the rights that migrants, at least in the Southwest, have. And I want to talk about how he made that difference.

MET [28:57] And the reason I want to do that is because I’m curious about what would it take to make that difference again.

DDM [29:06] Right.

MET [29:07] And I think it’s curious to think about what was different about his approach that I mean, he was a very different kind of speaker than a lot of other people. So it just kind of, I just want to go over a few things. Because he really did have a profound effect on policies in terms of how we treat our agriculturals in the Southwest. And I could easily talk about just the last few years and the work has been done to address agricultural worker rights in just my own community, right?

MET [29:41] But I think Chavez is a more generalized place to start. So one of the things Chavez did outside of all his political activism in terms of direct action was, as I said, he was a remarkable speaker. And this is notable because he didn’t come from a background of this erudite speaking education, right? Like I said, he dropped out after the eighth grade, but because he relied on his roots, he spoke from his cultural background, not as a polished orator.

MET [30:12] And I think that’s really interesting when you were talking about, what is a farmer? You know, the gentle, whatever a farmer is supposed to be. On the one hand, as I said, he was the MLK of his movement, and that is true. He was the visionary leader and the prophetic voice, but he wasn’t a preacher like MLK.

MET [30:32] He has many notable speeches, but there isn’t an I Have a Dream or Sermon from the Mountaintop or any of those. But there are a few things worth noting about his speaking abilities that indicate why he was successful in motivating action. One, he was excellent at using narrative. He spoke using stories, stories from his life and experience, and stories from the people he knew.

DDM [30:58] Powerful.

MET [30:59] Yes. He spoke in narratives that dramatized the issues he was trying to advocate for. He seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the fact that people need appeals to pathos.

MET [31:12] People need to have an emotional connection to the issues at hand. We may have talked about this before, but if you’re going to make an argument, it should have three kinds of appeals, right? Appeals to character, logic, and emotion. And the appeal to emotion is called an appeal to pathos, and Chavez understood this.

MET [31:33] People don’t respond to stories that are completely lacking in humanity. Chavez knew how to make a story human. He also knew how to make a story have impact. Just because a speech has emotion does not mean it should lack reason.

MET [31:52] And Chavez was known for making very reasonable and logical arguments as well as tapping into people’s hearts. For example, he commonly made comparisons between the farm workers movement and other social movements, and this does a few things. It inspires a certain amount of hope, because if you can see success in another movement, there’s hope for yours. And it also provides a logical foundation for the structure and organization of Chavez’s movement.

MET [32:21] So if he could point out that this strategy over here had worked before, then it was reasonable to try it again. He also knew how to make appeals to character, and what that means is that he could make himself seem like (A), a member of the community, and (B), a person of ethics. And one of the ways he continually did this is by staking out the foundation of the movement, not as political, but as a moral and ethical imperative. And he couched his actions not as a political movement, but as a moral one.

MET [32:54] So finally, Chavez insisted on nonviolence. Hence, the hunger strikes and the boycotts. In many ways, he was really following the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. and to some extent, Gandhi.

MET [33:06] But this also contributed to his character and political ethos. So because of all this, and I want to emphasize this is the stuff of successful rhetoric, it is of interest to think about why so many people were against him. For example, the phrase sour grapes and putting that in quotes was used to describe the boycotts and Chavez by detractors who wanted to belittle Chavez and those who are fighting for their rights. Sour grapes in the sense of like, oh, that’s just sour grapes.

MET [33:36] You’re just, you know, being whiny. but also sour grapes in the sense that they weren’t picking grapes. But here we can look at other social movements, right? Just as with the Montgomery boycotts or with Malcolm X’s rhetoric about self-determination, the criticism came from privileged white people.

MET [33:54] And the criticism was 100% about minoritized people demanding equality and the inconvenience that would cause people who benefited from their oppression. If agricultural workers were treated fairly white people might have to deal with a little discomfort at the cash register. And, as is so often the case, the majority of Americans are much more interested in saving a buck fifty than the human rights of those we have segregated away. That’s one of the reasons we segregate them, right? If we lived and worked with people and saw them every day and had community with them, it would be a lot harder to say, “Well, we’re crushing you beneath the weight of systemic oppression, but my squash is cheaper, so, meh.”

DDM [34:38] Yeah, I mean unfortunately what you say is 100% true, 100% true, you know. So, you know, I think these are huge issues that we really do need to be looking at, you know, because what we really need in our world is an agriculture that really starts to see the earth as a sacred gift and works with the earth to heal the earth rather than destroying and constantly taking from the earth. We need an agriculture that allows for polyculture and diversity from seeds to insect life and soil microbes to start being cultivated again because we know that diversity is the measure of a strength of a system.

DDM [35:18] We keep forgetting that in every aspect of our social and political lives. God created this phenomenal diversity in creation that over time we’ve just decimated. We need food to be grown that is nutritious and healthy as God originally created it to be. We need food to be distributed equitably so that food scarcity does become a thing of the past.

DDM [35:39] I mean Jesus is so clear about the hungry being fed in his own ministry. And we do need land to be owned by people. I mean, the amount of people that have lost land in the last couple of decades is frightening. And of course, people of color and indigenous people are the largest groups that have been expelled from their own land.

DDM [36:01] And so what would it mean for land to be owned by people and communities, not companies, and for labor to have a share in the profit of their labor? You know land always biblically was there for all to be gifted by and these are the systems our government should be subsidizing rather than these chemically genetic toxic systems they currently fund and the oppressive systems that obviously hold them in place. So there was a lot today that Elizabeth and I went through, but if you’re interested in agriculture, in the migrant movements of farm labor, if you’re interested, many of these Trinity Episcopal Church partner with a phenomenal organization called Rural Migrant Ministries. And I really encourage you, if you are interested, to check out their website and some of what they’re doing, because as you were sharing, Elizabeth, with Chavez, they really root themselves in narrative.

DDM [36:57] Much like he did. What are the actual stories of people? What are people actually living and experiencing? And how do we really allow that lived experience to increasingly shape our policies and our ways in which we are community together or not?

MET [37:20] Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prophet. find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/.

MET [37:39] That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [37:49] Music by Audionautix.com

Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss Judas. They discuss both the Biblical depiction of him and the recently discovered and translated non-canonical Gospel of Judas.

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Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010\. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

DDM [00:40] Welcome. For anyone familiar with Christianity, they would have heard of Judas, the one who betrays Jesus and hands Jesus over to the state. Judas is a character that has also been portrayed in secular history as the traitor, the betrayer, all for money. In the Gospel of Luke, we read that Satan entered into Judas and drove him to betray Jesus. In the Gospel of John, he writes that he, one of the twelve, is a devil.

DDM [01:11] St. Matthew records that Judas hung himself with guilt for what he had done, and in the Book of Acts, we are told that Judas’ belly was ripped open and he died in a ghastly manner. In fact, even the Judas kiss has become a famous phrase. This is by far the dominant narrative and interpretation we have, and certainly been the official narrative of the church historically.

DDM [01:37] And yet I think sometimes people wonder if there’s more to the story. We know our own human need to scapegoat and make someone the villain, and so we find ourselves wondering, what perhaps in the story are we not being told? Was there another perspective to the story? In our podcast that Elizabeth and I did on Mary Magdalene, we spoke a bit about many of the other Gospels that were written, many of them around the 2nd century.

DDM [02:06] The Gospel of Judas, according to the historian Irenaeus, was written around 180 AD. And although the original was probably composed in Greek, the version that we have is a Coptic translation. It was discovered in a papyrix codex or book in Egypt in the late 1970s. It was probably originally composed in Greek, but the version, as I said, we have as a Coptic translation.

DDM [02:35] And translation of this Coptic version only began in 2001\. And in 2006, it was made available in printed form for the very first time to the public. So we’re dealing with a very recent development. There is a loss of text due to damage to the papyrus, but it’s really incredible, I find myself, to think that this gospel, after being lost for 1,600 years, is finally found and re-given to the world.

DDM [03:12] And once again, like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, this Gospel is written at a time when there were still many theological interpretations of Jesus, many different ways of understanding Christianity, and doctrine had not yet been formed into what we have today. So, this Gospel, the Gospel of Judas, records the conversation that Jesus had with Judas over one week, right before the Last Supper. And there’s a couple of very unique perspectives in this Gospel. Jesus is portrayed in the traditional four Gospels we have in Scripture as being very solemn, under great pressure during this week, when he literally musters all his courage and strength to set his face towards Jerusalem, and what he knows lies ahead of him.

DDM [04:04] But in the Gospel of Judas. There is joy in this Jesus at this time that almost wells up within him, and it almost comes out in this like carefree childlike laughter. So in contrast with the serious piety of the disciples, Jesus in the Gospel of Judas is laughing at them, telling them not to take things too seriously. Don’t try so hard to be quote-unquote right, because God is working out something much greater than any of them perceive.

DDM [04:37] In the Gospel of Judas, the other disciples become angry with Jesus for challenging them and their egos or their pride, whereas it is Judas in this Gospel, not Peter, who provides the confession of who Jesus truly is. Judas also sees Christ for who he is as the one, and this is an interesting perspective of how Judas sees Jesus. The one who comes from the primordial mother who is before all else. Judah sees Christ not as the tribal Israelite or Hebrew God, but as the seed which comes from the womb of all.

DDM [05:19] Now this is very different, I think you would agree Elizabeth, than the confession of Peter who sees Jesus as the coming Messiah, an anointed one. And I think we also must remember that at this time any books which were naming God as feminine were largely not being included in the canon of scripture. Now in the Gospel of Judas, because Judas can see Jesus for who he truly is, Jesus pulls Judas aside and asks him this crucial question. What is more important to you?

DDM [05:53] Belonging or the kingdom of God? And will you want the kingdom of God even if it means you lose your place in this inner circle of disciples? What Jesus is asking him is, will you live out your calling even if it results in the destruction of your reputation? Even if you are cursed by future generations?

DDM [06:17] The other disciples in the Gospel are far more interested in Jesus as their tribal national God, rather than God for all the world and the establishment of a far greater kingdom beyond the boundaries of Israel. And in this Gospel, the other disciples are the ones who will use the name of Jesus to lead many astray. And so in the Gospel of Judas, he makes the choice to follow his calling and destiny just as Jesus follows his. His calling is the one not who will betray Jesus, but who will hand over the body of Jesus in order that Jesus may fulfill his calling.

DDM [06:59] And so we can see that certainly this is a very different interpretation from the other Gospels, but it also for me reminds us of the complexity of how Judaism was being understood and all the different competing groups and theologies at the time of early Christianity. and how the life and death of Jesus was being seen and experienced or interpreted in many different ways.

MET [07:26] That is all so interesting. I do not have the theological background to talk specifically about all the different gospels.

MET [07:37] That’s not my thing. But what I can talk about is story craft. And as a writer, as somebody who studied a lot of literature, as somebody who appreciates a good story, I feel like Judas is pretty indispensable. Let me clarify what I mean by that.

MET [08:02] I’ve always found Judas really interesting, and I’m not going to lie. That’s because I have always found the villains of stories to be way more compelling than the heroes. One of the reasons I love Shakespeare so much is because I find Macbeth and Iago to be such fantastic love-to-hate them kind of characters. You know, I think in my senior year in high school, I wrote a whole paper about how, you know, if you don’t have a – it was about Hamlet or something, but like if you don’t have a good villain, that makes the hero, right?

MET [08:34] The hero doesn’t exist without the villain. And in many ways, Judas is kind of the most interesting bad guy of them all because his portrayal was so profound and had kind of a large impact. And that’s – you can say that theologically, you can say that historically, but once again, I’m interested in a storytelling aspect for a second.

DDM [08:50] Right, right, right.

MET [08:53] And this is in a literary sense, right? When Dante reaches the last level of hell in the Inferno, Judas is one of the three betrayers at the heart of hell because his is the worst sin of all, right? Like that’s the ninth level of hell in Dante’s Inferno. It’s Judas and a giant mouth.

MET [09:10] The Western world has long understood Judas to be the bad guy to top all bad guys. So I’m pretty fascinated by some of these kind of, and it’s interesting that you say the translation was in the early 2000s, because the timing is interesting.

MET [09:24] I’m pretty fascinated by some of these kind of postmodern attempts to contextualize, if not rehabilitate Judas. And these kind of go hand in hand with what we’re talking about with this gospel, because it’s this notion that he was not just some kind of stand in for a traitor, but a fully fleshed out character. So this relates, but give me just a second.

MET [09:46] In my propaganda class, we talk a lot about myth and narrative, because these are really powerful and persuasive things. The idea is that there are certain stories, myths, if you will, that are so ingrained in a culture that you just assume they are true. It does not matter if they are true, because you behave as if they are. The reason this is important in something like understanding persuasion is because if you appeal to a story that can be highly persuasive, that everybody already agrees on, then you’re starting from a point where we’re all in the same boat, we can all head in the same direction, because

MET [10:28] you’re starting with that common starting point. You’re making an argument that starts with something your audience already says, yes, I’m with you. It’s easier to go that journey with you. So let me give you an example.

MET [10:38] Let’s start with the American dream. The American dream, right, if you had to define it, is pretty much that if you work hard and keep your head down, you’ll be able to succeed in life and get your house and your 2.4 kids and a dog and a white picket fence and whatever else you want, right? Like we know this.

MET [10:54] Now, when I say this, often my students scoff, but I tell them a part of you believes this. I know that for a fact. And I know that because you are here. Some part of you believes that if you go to school and get a degree and work hard, things will be better for you, right?

MET [11:11] Like you’ve shown up. I know that you’re invested in this. And we talk about that on a small scale too. They believe if they work hard, they deserve success.

MET [11:20] So if they put in 15 hours on a paper or project, they think they deserve credit. If they get a D-minus on such a project and they come to me to talk about it and say, but Dr. Thorpe, I worked for almost 20 hours on this. And I say, those must have been 20 crappy hours. They would be both crushed and livid.

MET [11:41] B`ecause there is this idea that if you work hard and long, you should be rewarded. That’s the American dream. That’s the myth. And it is pretty important that most people believe that myth because what would happen tomorrow if we all woke up and realized that our work does not guarantee anything?

MET [12:00] The economy would come to a grinding halt because a lot of people would just stop working. We have to believe in the American dream to keep this country going. If we just woke up one day and realized, actually, work doesn’t guarantee much at all, we would stop. So it does not matter if these things are true. We are invested in them as if they are.

MET [12:25] So, okay, all of that is about myth and narrative. The narratives that are part of these myths are foundational not just to America, but to Western Civ. There are certain narratives, certain stories that are just at the core of who we are as a people.

MET [12:40] And I mean, half the world is invested in this. And even beyond that, there’s some universals within that. Things like “the hero’s journey,” or “the quest,” or stories of “the trickster.” These are everywhere. And the reason I bring this up in a story about Judas is because I want to talk about archetypes. In Western civilization, there are only certain stories that we tell. And because there are only certain stories, there are only so many characters. In many real ways, we just keep telling the same stories over and over again, and just kind of popping names in and out while we use and reuse the same characters.

MET [13:22] These are called archetypal characters. You may balk at that because all these characters seem different because of context and development. But the truth is, we’ve been telling pretty much the same dozen or so tales since the time of Aristotle. And with the exception of a few innovations in the postmodern era, we’ve been using the same characters to do it.

MET [13:43] These are characters like the hero, the wise old man or woman, the trickster, the princess or damsel in distress, the femme fatale, right? In whatever movie or book or whatever, you can say, oh yeah, I know who these people are.

DDM [13:59] Right.

MET [14:00] The reason Judas plays into this conversation so well is because as we have changed as a culture, Judas has gone through different manifestations of archetypes. Judas spent a long time as a straight-up villain. He was sort of a big bad wolf kind of a character, right? Evil, focused on one hero, and in some ways a bit seductive, not in a physical or sexual sense, but in a more persuasive and intellectual sense.

MET [14:26] He was the ultimate traitor and bad guy. But as a story-consuming culture, we have not been happy with that bland archetype. That wash of just straight-up evil doesn’t make sense to us anymore. We demand context.

MET [14:41] We demand backstory. We demand to know why Judas is the way he is. And as Judas’ story has developed, be it through pop culture or the Gospel of Judas or even through literature, Judas has transitioned through a few different archetypes. He’s gone from being the ultimate villain to something different, depending on who you ask.

MET [15:02] To some people, he’s more of an anti-hero or a trickster now, and that is absolutely fascinating to me, because Judas hasn’t changed. The story hasn’t changed. But for some people, the core understanding of who this character is, has. And not everyone would have him at the center of the Inferno anymore.

MET [15:23] And that is just wild to me. And most importantly, it says something about us. Because it isn’t enough to just say, oh, here’s this character, blah-biddy, blah-biddy. It’s a conversation.

MET [15:34] No. It is not that we think about him for just randomly bad guy, that he has transitioned into something else. The important question is what this says about us. What do we want or need from this story?

MET [15:51] What do we want or need from this character? How do we see ourselves reflected here? And I think that’s the real question that as a storyteller, this is really interesting to me.

DDM [16:03] No, absolutely. And I think that for me is also the real gift of us finding these new manuscripts. I mean, the fact that this one was written probably around 180 AD, you know, there were different, even back then, there were these very different competing narratives, you know, so we’re only just really beginning, I think, to understand and appreciate the extent to which there was this huge diversity in thought, in understanding of some of these central characters, which, as you say, we’ve only had one way of seeing in the past, and that there was not just also one way in which Jesus was being understood and experienced.

DDM [16:46] You know, and I just think for myself that there’s such a danger in thinking that there is only one way of seeing things, because the reality is we all see, perceive, and understand something depending on who we are, as you were saying, in our own context. And so hearing these other voices, whoever the other voice is, you know, is really so important.

MET [17:09] I had a friend in grad school who was an avowed, well, okay, he was an avowed atheist. I had a lot of friends in grad school who were atheists.

MET [17:17] Grad school is a place where you find a lot of that. He knew I was religious and that was not an issue. We talked about theological things and we had questions for each other and there was never any ill will or tension about any of it.

MET [17:30] We were just good friends and we felt like we had a lot to learn from each other. And if I might add, that’s exactly what it should be like between people of different backgrounds and philosophies.

DDM [17:39] Yes. Always.

MET [17:41] Like we just had a great time, you know, figuring each other out. But one day, we were talking about some of the nuances of the story in question. And he said he always thought the story of the crucifixion got it a bit wrong, bold claim. He said he thought Judas made the ultimate sacrifice.

MET [18:00] And I was a bit taken back by that because in my mind, Judas was treacherous. Thinking of him as doing anything Christ-like seemed a bit blasphemous. This probably showed on my face because, you know, I was shocked, but I was going to let him finish. And he said, there’s no reason to think Judas changed his mind on Christ’s personhood.

MET [18:19] Judas may well have still thought Christ was divine or the Son of God or the Messiah. Judas might well have realized who he was betraying. The question is why? Did he betray Christ because he felt Christ was ineffectual, because Christ wasn’t exacting the kind of change Judas wanted to see?

MET [18:37] There are a lot of guesses as to why Judas turned his back on Jesus, but he said not many of them are that Judas stopped believing. Which, he continued, means Judas may well have known what he was doing. Judas may have realized that there comes a time when sacrifices need to be made, and he made one. And if that is the case, then Judas knew where he would be heading, like to an eternity of damnation, in order to do the right thing for all the world.

MET [19:04] And that, my friend said, is a heck of a sacrifice. Now, I had no idea what to say to this, because I had never heard anything like that. And it seemed so antithetical to everything I knew, and pretty heretical. But that was 20 years ago.

MET [19:19] And I’ve had time to sit with that conversation a lot. And while I’m not prepared to make any statements like what my friend did, I am prepared to make a guess as to why a narrative like that might be appealing. The story of the gospel is really tough. In a lot of ways, it doesn’t make sense.

MET [19:41] It’s really hard to latch on to. We’re supposed to connect to, once again, characters, right? We’re supposed to connect to this person, this character. who is God incarnate, perfect in every way, who loves so much and so deeply that he died for all of us and then miraculously came back from the dead.

MET [19:58] And this is supposed to help us make sense of the world? Sis, please, how is this helpful? If you tell this to the average person with no context, they will move right along. The thing about perfection, the thing about the story, the thing about salvation is that it is unattainable.

MET [20:17] Why bother worrying about connecting to a figure that is unattainable? I mean, that’s why I’m not particularly interested in a lot of archetypal good guys. They’re uninteresting and I don’t have any connection with them. But Judas is 100% flawed and human.

MET [20:33] If we think about sacrifice in human terms, it’s understandable. My friend wasn’t trying to be blasphemous. He was trying to put the story in terms he could make sense of. A god who came to earth and was perfect and then died doesn’t make sense.

MET [20:47] A man who is willing to put his life on the line for others does. And even the act of betrayal makes Judas more accessible. Churches have done a lot of damage by making God and Jesus into these up-on-high, untouchable, and holier-than-us heavenly beings, when what we need is somebody who gets us. That’s what my friend was getting at.

MET [21:08] There is no way that the Jesus who has been portrayed by the church for the last millennia or two would get us. He’s just too much. But Judas is a sinner. He made big mistakes.

MET [21:23] That’s something people like my friend can latch on to. And once again, as we read and reread the stories, the question is less, what do these stories tell us? And more, what do these stories tell us about ourselves? And this is one of those situations where it doesn’t matter what the theology is or what the manuscripts say, because the story has been told in a particular way for a very long time.

MET [21:46] And the narrative matters way more than the primary source or the preacher or whatever, kind of like the concept of myth that we were talking about. Because we are invested in the story and behave as if it is true in that way. There are certain things we have been taught to believe about people like Jesus and Judas, and that’s the prevailing narrative so that’s how we live our lives.

DDM [22:14] Very interesting, eh? So I guess for me, I do need to always work with the primary text. So what I find interesting, and especially coming out of what you’ve just shared there, is in the Gospel of Judas, Judas doesn’t actually see Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. He sees Jesus as one who comes from a far more universal God, the Primordial Mother. So he and the disciples see Jesus very differently.

DDM [22:43] Judas also in the Gospel of Judas doesn’t betray Jesus, but actually is the one who helps him fulfill his destiny and sets him quote-unquote free from the physical body. And in the Gospel of Judas, Judas, by doing this, ends up sacrificing his reputation. That is really what he loses, his place in that inner circle, his historical legacy. Because, and he’s prepared to do this, because for him he’s doing something far more greater.

DDM [23:14] He’s being true to his own calling. And so he chooses the kingdom of God over his own personal reputation. You raised the issue of perfection and I just want to come back to that because, you know, in the Gospels, it’s so interesting how, you know, we end up obviously with these translated texts and we’re looking at them through our Western frameworks, but in the Gospels, the word used for perfection is telios, which doesn’t mean perfection in the sense of how we use that word in English.

MET [23:46] Does it mean without flaw?

DDM [23:46] No, rather telios means to be complete. It means to be whole, to be fully mature or developed.

DDM [23:54] So really the idea of Jesus is that he was a person who was fully complete. He was fully whole. He was integrated. So when the Gospels call us to be perfect, telios, again, it really means to be able to grow into being completely who we were called to be, to be whole people, to be integrated with integrity.

DDM [24:18] And again, that Hebrew word for perfect, which is tamim, means, again, to be whole, healthy, and having integrity. And I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head where we have created often this very unhealthy narrative about God based on very poor translations that end up with this unhealthy, unhelpful, ideology. You know, God incarnates, takes human flesh to show us what it looks like for a human being to be whole, to have integrity, to be a complete human being. And yet how we’ve distorted that so often, you know, in theology.

DDM [25:02] And I guess for me, that’s why the Gospel of Judas and all the other Gospels, in some ways, that’s what they’re trying to grapple with. What does it mean for our choices, although they may be very different, I mean, Judas makes a very different choice from the rest of the disciples, but what does it mean for our choices, even if they’re different from everybody else, to be choices that for us have integrity? You know, what does it mean when the way we see things and experience things may be radically different? But the question is, do they lead us into a greater sense of wholeness and health?

DDM [25:39] What perspectives enable us to live into a greater wholeness? And what perspectives have we been taught or have we internalized that actually break us and do damage to us as human beings? And I think those are some of the questions that are also important for us to look at when we read any gospel, but also when we look at any theology. Is it leading into greater wholeness, integrity?

DDM [26:03] Is it enabling us to become more fully human and more full human beings? Or does it really cause unhealthy damage to myself and others in this world?

MET [26:16] So I want to kind of sign off with this. Some of the things that Deborah and I have danced around really for the last few months are questions of the differences between how we say what we believe and how we do what we believe and how we integrate what we believe. And I feel like some of our last few episodes have really kind of brought all of this into a very synthesized conversation. So I want to kind of bring some of this to a head.

MET [26:54] You know that I am a communication scholar, so I’m very interested in the words and the language that we use. And today I was talking about being a storyteller, right? It’s just All my life I’ve been interested in what we say and how we say it and the narratives we weave. And you know, Deborah is just such a fantastic purveyor of theological knowledge and doctrine and just such a great teacher.

MET [27:19] And one of the things that I think we are trying to do is talk about how we tell stories and how we tell stories about ourselves and how we tell stories of our relationships. and the way that we as people dialogue and how that shows up in our theology and how that theology shows up in our life stories. So, when we do episodes like this, that seems, well, just kind of a one-off, well, it’s just about Judas, how does that – it’s not just about Judas, it is about who we are as people. And that’s kind of what – I want that to carry us through as we look through these next few episodes, because we’re going to be looking at some very specific topics.

MET [28:05] But I don’t want you to think of this as a lesson on Judas. I want us to think broadly in terms of what does this lesson say about us and how are we communicating ourselves to each other? Do you feel like that’s a pretty good way to?

DDM [28:19] Absolutely, absolutely. So when we look at this topic, for instance, today, how do you understand who you are? How do you understand your calling? That may be very different from the way other people understand theirs.

DDM [28:32] That’s okay. How are you understanding what is sacred? Maybe you name it in ways very different from those around you. That’s okay.

DDM [28:41] You know, it’s that really pushing and allowing other stories for us to reflect on them and say, so where am I? Who am I?

MET [28:51] Yeah. I think that’s so important.

DDM [28:52] How does that influence the choices that I’m making? You know, because the reality is, is integrity is the most important thing. So, you know, Elizabeth and I have some very similar values.

DDM [29:04] We live them out in very different ways. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the beauty and the diversity of this world in which we live, is that there’s so much space for diverse action, diverse belief systems, diverse ways of understanding, and the more we come into conversation with one another and our ideas, the more we can grow and spark these own inner journeys that we have within ourselves and in relationships.

MET [29:30] Yeah, so that’s what we hope you’ll keep in mind as we move forward with some of these kind of singular topics, is we’re not thinking about when we did Mary Magdalene, it wasn’t a lesson on Mary Magdalene, it was a lesson what these people say to us and about us.

MET [29:40] Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to future conversations.

MET [29:58] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. Find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [30:25] Music by Audionautix.com

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Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe and Producer Carl Thorpe discuss Juneteenth.

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Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

MET [00:40] Hello listeners and welcome. Today is a very exciting day. We wanted to do a special episode for Juneteenth, but Reverend Deborah is away. So what we did is we brought in a special guest host.

MET [00:55] And I have to tell you, I am very excited. This is Carl Thorpe. And Carl Thorpe is, if you don’t know, kind of the brains behind the operation here. He is Coming from behind the mixer onto the mic.

MET [01:12] If you’ve been listening for a while, you might know that Carl Thorpe is our producer. But what you need to know is he is the guy who thought of this whole project. He does the editing, the recording, the whole thing. He really is the guy who makes the magic happen.

MET [01:26] So I’m so excited to have him with us today on this episode of The Prof and the Producer. Welcome, Carl.

Carl R. Thorpe (CRT) [01:36] Hello

MET [01:37] I know, I’m so excited. Okay, so we’re talking about Juneteenth today. And this is something that’s kind of interesting for Carl and I because Juneteenth, as we will discuss in just a few minutes, originated in Texas. And that’s where Carl and I hail from. So we have kind of a, you know, a special interest in this.

MET [01:58] Anyway, all that is to say, welcome, and we hope you enjoy our special episode today.

CRT [02:05] Okay, so on January 1st, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, ostensibly freeing all African slaves throughout the Confederate States. Union soldiers marched on the plantations throughout the South to read copies of the proclamation and free slaves. However, states that were still under Confederate control did not free their slaves, and it took more than two years for Union soldiers to arrive in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865. General Gordon Granger issued the following decree.

CRT [02:35] The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with the proclamation from the executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer. The more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state were free. By 1867, some schools in Texas began commemorating the day with celebrations.

CRT [03:07] This began the period known as Reconstruction in the South that was also marked by mass migrations to the North. Many newly freed Black people decided to move to the North as slavery had been outlawed nationwide by the 13th Amendment ratified shortly before Juneteenth. This brought the remembrance of America’s second Independence Day with them. Juneteenth would continue to be celebrated among African American families and communities.

CRT [03:28] Opal Lee, a black former teacher from Texas, began working towards recognition of Juneteenth as a federal holiday at the age of 89. She began a series of symbolic walks of 2.5 miles each in major cities around the country, 2.5 miles because it took 2.5 years for the slaves in Texas to be freed. In 2016, she walked from Texas to Washington DC to petition the government to make Juneteenth a holiday. Despite having more than 1.5 million signatures in a petition, she said that that trip was a failure.

CRT [03:56] However, she returned again in 2021 and her efforts were rewarded. On June 17th, Of 2021, President Joe Biden signed the national Juneteenth Independence Day Act into law, establishing June 19th as a federal holiday. Opal Lee was a guest of honor at the signing ceremony, and in 2024, President Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

MET [04:18] Okay, that’s a fantastic bit of background talking about how Juneteenth made its way into kind of the cultural conscious of where we are. Juneteenth was always a thing in Texas. It didn’t necessarily make its way into American way of life until much later. What I want to think about as we continue this conversation is kind of broader thinking on how Juneteenth and the way we think about kind of the The systematic way we think about how Juneteenth fits into our understanding of who we are.

MET [05:08] So I’m actually going to talk about DEI because I feel like if we’re going to think about how we celebrate Juneteenth, we have to think about broader impacts. So bear with me for a minute while I take us on a little journey. The attack on DEI, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion in state and federal institutions and education, is not just a random policy directive, but it is a response to the kind of progress that led to Juneteenth being a holiday. America has, for the last few decades, been trying, at least superficially, to acknowledge that it is a country made up of many peoples.

MET [05:50] Specifically, our history is a history of people from many backgrounds and cultures. Now I am quick to emphasize the superficial nature of this. We can slap some names on holidays and put some faces on stamps or even dollar bills, but that doesn’t erase a history of racism or sexism. But there have been efforts to at least acknowledge a diverse past.

MET [06:17] This changed as soon as Trump was elected. In his first administration, he made it abundantly clear he was only interested in a white male past. In his second administration, he is doing everything he can to erase the legacy of Juneteenth. As an example, I’m actually going to go back in time a little bit to something that happened that directly addresses the attacks on DEI, so we’re going to go back just a few years, and how these are playing out in the world right now.

MET [06:48] So in 2021, Boise State, the university, suspended all 52 sections of a required course. The course had been running since 2012, and it concerned ethics and diversity and challenged students to inquire into key ethical ideas and values together, giving equal voice to all who are committed to the public good. Individual course sections covered topics like moral problems, moral courage, censorship, the ethics of food, folklore, deviance, and human rights. 1,300 students were enrolled and therefore affected by this decision.

MET [07:33] In an email, President Marlene Trump wrote that we have been made aware of a series of concerns culminating in allegations that a student or students have been humiliated and degraded in class on our campus for their beliefs and values. So according to Inside Higher Ed, One faculty member who quickly deleted his comments wrote on Twitter that he’d been told a student taped a Zoom discussion on white privilege in which apparently a white student was made to feel uncomfortable and sent video to state legislature who are enraged. BSU suspended all of these 200 classes mid-semester as a result. The professor also said that the state legislature and a group called the Idaho Freedom Foundation have been requesting syllabi for this class for years now, looking for something they can use to force the removal of anything related to diversity and inclusion, and at that point they thought they

MET [08:38] had it. The Idaho Freedom Foundation said on its website that UF200, otherwise known as Foundations in Ethics and Diversity, is among four mandatory general education courses that are infused with social justice, a toxic ideology that has captured many facets of life at Boise State. The state legislature’s Joint Finance Appropriations Committee voted to cut $409,000 from Boise State’s budget with members alleging that the university was pursuing an expensive social justice agenda. Okay, this is problematic in so many ways.

MET [09:24] On the one hand, what is the state government, as well as the executive branch, doing interfering with education? I could talk about that tons, because that in and of itself is a huge issue. But more importantly, what exactly is the DEI issue? I think in these circumstances, I always want people to explain their problem.

MET [09:49] Okay, so you are against DEI. What part of it? Explain your objection. What part of DEI are you against?

MET [10:00] Is it the diversity, the equity, or the inclusion? Which of those do you object to? I would like somebody to explain what aspect of DEI is so objectionable that we have made it a public crusade. But if nobody is willing to do that, I think we need to look at what we are doing here.

MET [10:22] The goal is very clear, to eliminate all discussion of anything that smacks of non-white. I see examples of things like the Tulsa Massacre or the GI Bill all the time, and I think those are really bad examples. And what I mean by that is people will say, oh, if you think people should learn about history like the Tulsa Massacre or that black people were left out of the GI Bill, then you think DEI or sometimes CRT is important. And I think that is a crackpot example on both accounts because those are not DEI or CRT.

MET [10:59] Those are just straight-up history. And I have this crazy idea that just because people of color are involved doesn’t mean it isn’t just straight-up history. The Tulsa Massacre happened. That is a verifiable fact.

MET [11:19] It is not giving you a particular perspective on history to tell you that it happened. Same with the GI Bill. It is not any kind of agenda to tell you that black soldiers did not benefit from it. Those are facts, irrespective of any kind of paradigm.

MET [11:38] What would move into an area of DEI education, or CRT if you will, is if you talk about the systemic forces that led to that. And the reason I say this is because the administration doesn’t want you to know, not the theories behind the systemic forces, they do not want you to know the actual facts. That, my friends, is not an educational agenda. That is censorship and propaganda.

CRT [12:11] And it’s important to remember that systemic racism exists in all aspects of life. And you know, while this administration is trying to get rid of DEI, get rid of discussions of race and history, our education system is racist. And it is built that way. For three years, from 2007 to 2010, I taught middle school language arts at a school in Texas.

CRT [12:34] In 2009 to 2010 school year, there were 881 students enrolled. 21.1% of them were African American, 51.5% were Hispanic, 26% were white, and 1.4% were Asian Pacific Islander. 74% of the students at the school were economically disadvantaged. 10.4% had limited English proficiency, and 58.6% were considered at risk.

CRT [12:42] 25.3% of the students spent at least one day in alternative classroom settings due to disciplinary placements, and 22.4% had no permanent address. However, in a school with that type of student body makeup, the teaching staff was made up of 82.8% white teachers, 9% African American, 6.7% Hispanic, and 1.5% Asian Pacific Islander. While I was there, I taught everything from co-taught classes with special education students to pre-AP classes to high-achieving gifted magnet classes. To say that those classes were clearly segregated along racial lines would be an understatement.

CRT [13:39] My pre-AP and magnet classes were overwhelmingly white. My lower level classes were overwhelmingly students of color. Discipline at the school was also clearly biased. All it took was visiting the in-school suspension room to see that it was overwhelmingly black students who lost out on classroom time and were left isolated in cubicles with little more than busy work to keep them occupied.

CRT [14:03] The teachers were in many cases blatantly racist. One of my co-workers told me once that she wasn’t even going to bother with allowing one of her African American students to take a makeup exam that they missed while hospitalized because, quote, those kids don’t care. So why should she? When pressed on who those kids were, it became clear that she blatantly discriminated against students of color in her classroom, interactions, discipline, grading, and parental communication.

CRT [14:30] In defense of the school, that teacher did not remain at the school much longer after that. I frequently heard teachers and administrators complain that only white families participated in events that were held during the normal work day, as evidence that parents of color don’t care about their kids’ education. Of course, forgetting that those parents had to work. In 2010, a bullying incident led to an organization called Texas Appleseed looking at discipline records for the school.

CRT [15:01] They found out that African American students, while making up less than half the student population, were four times as likely to be issued citations requiring court appearances than any other student group, often for minor infractions such as profanity or disrupting classes. Along with the Texas NAACP, Texas Appleseed and other civil rights organizations in Texas filed a federal complaint that resulted in the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education to begin an investigation into the district. Because of Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, there are no records as to how that investigation concluded.

MET [15:41] You know, it’s easy for us to sit around and say, oh, this is racist, or oh, that’s racist. But in the face of just kind of that overwhelming evidence, and even if it is just Carl’s personal experience, even if it is just that kind of anecdotal story of, oh, this teacher that I knew, that kind of overwhelming this happened, here are the percentages. What do you even do with that? I want to continue what I started above and also expand on what Carl has talked about here.

MET [16:13] And I also want to encourage you, if you have not already, to go back and listen to our episodes about South Africa and prisons and the penal system, because we talk a lot about whiteness and the law and justice, and that feeds pretty directly into what we are discussing here. But I’m going to continue talking about Texas schools in just a slightly different way. I went to Texas A&M for my master’s and my PhD.

MET [16:42] If you don’t know anything about Texas A&M, it’s a really good, really big school. Actually, Carl and I met there. The faculty are not necessarily right wing, though you may find more conservative faculty there than at other schools because of the engineering and business schools, which were both very good, but the student body is decidedly conservative. It is evolving over the years but it has always been a very traditional school.

MET [17:20] So let me give you a little bit of history. Texas A&M was founded in 1876 in Brazos County, Texas, making it the oldest public institution of higher education in the state. It’s not the oldest school, however. The school I went to for my undergraduate degree, Baylor University, is actually older than the state of Texas.

MET [17:41] It is not as old as some of the churches around here, though. So, Carl and I always laugh about that. In 1891, José Ángel Ortiz was the first Hispanic graduate. In fact, the first Aggie touchdown was scored by N.

MET [17:59] Valdez, and I’m so sorry, I don’t know his first name, I just have his initial. N. Valdez from Hidalgo, Mexico, the class of 1897. There was one Chinese student in 1913 and one Japanese football player in 1923.

MET [18:15] In 1925, there was a resolution against allowing women into the school. In 1956, after Brown v. Board, the Texas A&M Student Senate voted 24-7 opposing segregation. However, in a campus-wide election on whether students were in favor or against segregation, Texas A&M students voted to continue segregation.

MET [18:43] In 1962, Texas A&M System Board decided to admit qualified students, regardless of race, to Arlington State College to avoid the threat of lawt suit for admittance by three African American students. And it was in 1963, almost 100 years after its founding, that three black men enrolled in Texas A&M. They enrolled for the first summer session as special students, becoming the first black students to attend Texas A&M. Later that year, the Board of Directors permitted women to enroll on a limited basis.

MET [19:22] In 1965, Texas A&M’s head football coach publicly stated that recruitment of African American football players would create disunity on the team. In 1967, Clarence Dixon Jr., a graduate student, became the first African American to graduate from Texas A&M. In 1968, James L. Courtney and Leon J.

MET [19:46] Green graduated in January, becoming the first African American undergraduate students to graduate from Texas A&M. And in 1969, women were allowed to register at A&M freely. Okay, that’s a lot of history about a school that you probably don’t care about. But here’s where I’m going with this.

MET [20:04] Texas A&M is 50% white. SUNY Brockport, where I work now, is 70% white. The point I am trying to make is that we assume whiteness and masculinity are baked into some places. You say, oh, Texas, yeah, that place is just sexist and racist.

MET [20:28] And history bears that out. But if you stop there, you might miss the fact that you’re sitting square in the middle of a pretty big field of whiteness yourself. And if people aren’t aware of that, they are missing out on a lot of perspectives they may not see because those perspectives have not been introduced. And that’s why something like Juneteenth is so essential.

MET [20:54] And why I am couching this discussion in a little story about my Texas school. Juneteenth is a quintessentially Texan day that has spread, and that is a little weird to people because so many folks think of Texas as this backwoods, backwards place. But the story of Juneteenth hasn’t been told, and that leads to a lot of racist misconceptions about whiteness and where it is manifest. There is this idea that racism only exists in certain parts of the country, But we desperately need education in DEI to remind us that racism, in its many forms, is not relegated to the proverbial ignorant South.

MET [21:40] It is here. With us. In us. This is the difference between teaching the facts and teaching DEI.

MET [21:51] It is very easy to say A&M, ooh, bad. College Station, Texas must be racist. When confronted with the fact that segregation in Monroe County is much worse, it’s a little uncomfortable. We can know the South fought slavery.

MET [22:12] What we need… We can know that the South fought for slavery. What we need to understand is that slavery wasn’t cognate with racism. Racism was the water that flowed beneath the ground of the entire country.

MET [22:33] It fed slavery, but racism infected all parts of the country. There is not a state that remained untouched, and pretending otherwise just reproduces its evils.

CRT [22:46] I mean, we can look at the Episcopal Church and talk about this as well. For those of you that don’t know, the Episcopal Church is considered one of the most progressive churches in America, possibly the world. They are seen as being on the forefront of gender issues, sexual orientation, race, immigration, all those things. But it is important to know and to remember that the Episcopal Church did not question American slavery at the time.

CRT [23:20] The Episcopal Church was the only major denomination that was present in both the North and South that did not split over the question of slavery, as it was seen as a legal and political issue rather than a moral or ethical issue. The 1856 General Convention of the Episcopal Church stated, in refusing to comment on violence in Kansas directly related to slavery, that the church would have, quote, nothing to do with party politics, with sectional disputes, with earthly distinctions, with the wealth, the splendor, and the ambition of the world. In 1861, the presiding bishop, John Henry Hopkins, published in an extended defense of slavery, in which he concluded that even if you are morally opposed to it, slavery is in the Bible, and it’s legal. In 1804, the first African-American Episcopalian priest, the Reverend Absalon Jones, was ordained and allowed to form a Black congregation in Philadelphia, with the condition that he and his congregation would have no voice and no vote at conventions.

CRT [24:30] After the Civil War, the Episcopal Church actively created segregated conventions, dioceses, and churches, especially in the South. The church did not question the construction of legalized segregation in the United States and actively treated Black Episcopalians as second-class Christians. In 2006, the Episcopal Church’s Committee on Anti-Racism stated that it is time for the church community to collectively engage in reckoning with the full impact of racism, historically and in present day. Reconciliation and restorative justice are best achieved when they emerge from an honest examination and shared understanding of inequity and marginalization in church and society.

CRT [25:14] That resolution proposed that the church build on the model of truth and reconciliation in South Africa, adding the third step of justice to ensure that action follows healing dialogue. In 2015, the Episcopal Church launched a commitment to acknowledging the Church’s complicity in slavery and the continued propping up of the systemic racism throughout Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and beyond, called Becoming Beloved Community. Beginning with clearly acknowledging the church’s failings in racial justice, examination of the institutions within the church, and working towards a goal of truth-telling and racial reconciliation, Becoming Beloved Community has been a guiding principle in both racial reconciliation, but also a means through which the church has been examining how other groups have been historically discriminated against, such as women, immigrants, indigenous people, and the LGBTQIA plus community.

CRT [26:07] Today, the Episcopal Church’s Office of Racial Reconciliation organizes their ministries around four quadrants of becoming beloved community. Each of these four commitments is necessary, they say, to dismantle and heal white supremacy within us, our churches, our communities, and society at large. The four tenets are truth-telling, which is telling the truth about our church and race, Proclamation of the Dream of the Beloved Community, Formation and Practicing Jesus’ Way of Healing Love, and Engaging in Working for Justice, Repairing the Breaches in Society and Institutions. As such, the Church has embraced Juneteenth and has embraced DEI, Father Joseph Green Jr., the canon evangelist of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, has said on many occasions that black Americans are an Exodus folk.

CRT [27:03] He goes on to explain, we identify with the enslaved children of Israel whose cries were heard by God and were freed by God’s mighty hand. Juneteenth speaks to God hearing the cries of enslaved people in America and setting into motion all that went into the freedom of the enslaved people in the United States. The Reverend Miguel Bustos writes that Juneteenth, a day commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, calls us to remember our history while striving for a future where true freedom and justice prevail. It’s a powerful reminder of the ongoing struggle against systemic racism and the urgent need for equality and reconciliation within our society.

CRT [27:43] He goes on to point out that Juneteenth occurs in the afterglow of Pentecost, where we remember how the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, equipping them with the ability to speak in diverse tongues. This miraculous event enabled them to communicate across cultural and linguistic barriers, embodying God’s vision for a united yet diverse kingdom. The Spirit’s flame ignited a global movement driven by the core message of love and inclusion, compelling Jesus’ followers to go forth and share the good news with all the nations. Consider how Pentecost and Juneteenth guide us in our mission to build a beloved community.

CRT [28:22] This vision, deeply rooted in justice, peace, and love, challenges us to embrace not only those within our church walls, but those outside them. It encourages us to extend our table, making room for more voices, especially those that have been marginalized or silenced. Embracing others requires more than passive acceptance. It demands active engagement and understanding.

CRT [28:47] It means listening to the stories of those different from us, standing in solidarity with them, and taking concrete actions to address injustices. It involves examining our own biases and systems of power and privilege, and tirelessly working toward a community where everyone can flourish.

MET [29:06] Okay. So, what are we supposed to do with all of this? One, if you are listening, and you’re an Episcopalian, it is time to do some self-reflection. I hate to break it to you, but chances are you are white.

MET [29:24] Like, real white. So, that is of course a generalization, but the Episcopal Church is not exactly a diverse group. If you have never sat down and asked yourself why that is, now is the time. While you’re at it, think about your friend group.

MET [29:45] Is it diverse? And I don’t mean do you work with a black guy or a Mexican woman. Do you have friends, even close friends, from all walks of life? Or do most of your friends look like you?

MET [29:59] If they do, it’s time to have a come to Jesus with yourself about why that is. You are not immune to whiteness. Consider your surroundings. Have you ever gone to an event and been the only white person there?

MET [30:13] Or the only man, or the only woman, or the only Christian? Did it feel awkward? Were you uncomfortable? Well, guess what?

MET [30:24] How do you think a black person feels every time they walk into your church, or into your office, or try to join your friend group? You may not have thought too much about it, but that feeling you get when you’re the only person like you and you’re afraid to stick out, some people live that life every day, all the time. And the fact that you have never thought about that is 100% your privilege. So one thing you can do is to go out of your way to make people feel welcome and like they belong.

MET [30:56] And another thing you can do is invite more people. Educate yourself. There are a million podcasts, books, and shows on these topics. For example, PBS has a great documentary called Juneteenth, Faith and Freedom, that might appeal to listeners that are interested in the connection between Christianity and the history of slavery and emancipation.

MET [31:19] There’s so many resources out there. Just start looking. All of that is personal and individual, but there are larger public things you can do. Support Juneteenth celebrations.

MET [31:32] Go to cultural events. Let your community know that you want and support activities that celebrate diverse voices. Vocally support DEI initiatives. Don’t let the voices that want to erase the lives of our neighbors and community be the only ones that we hear.

MET [31:50] Let the public and public officials know that it is important to you that we have a variety of voices and narratives in our public lives. Because the public is diverse. And this one might be surprising. Support local libraries.

MET [32:06] Libraries aren’t just places where people get books. They are community centers that support a wide variety of people and activities at the heart of many diverse communities. Many children, from all strata of society, find their voice and their identity represented at the library, and sometimes for the first time. It may not seem the obvious thing, but libraries are champions of diversity and inclusion.

MET [32:34] Make sure they are thriving. Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org.

MET [32:55] Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [33:13] Music by Audionautix.com

Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the Episcopal Church’s response to the US administration’s demand that the Episcopal Church assist in resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa. They discuss the history and lasting legacy of apartheid in South Africa, as well as structural racism in the United States.

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Transcript

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010\. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

DDM [00:38]Today Elizabeth and I want to focus on the recent situation with the South African Afrikaans asylum seekers and the conflict that developed with the Episcopal Church.

DDM [00:51] Now before I start, let me say that this is a very personal issue for me on both fronts. I’m obviously an Episcopal priest here in the USA, but I’m also South African. I am white. My grandmother was from the Afrikaans Dutch speaking community and our family on her side were actually farmers.

DDM [01:14] So this is a very personal issue for me. But I also need to say that since apartheid ended, I have not felt so embarrassed to be a white South African as I do right now. Every time I meet someone and they immediately recognize the accent and they say, where are you from? And I’m like, South Africa, but I’m not a refugee.

MET [01:34] Oh, no. Oh, what a terrible situation.

DDM [01:37] It is. It’s because it’s become quite embarrassing.

MET [01:38] To deny yourself that way. I’m so sorry.

DDM [01:44] No, it’s okay. It’s just very embarrassing. So let’s unpack some of the issues. So 59 white Afrikaans, South Africans arrived in the USA this May, where they have been granted almost like an expedited refugee status.

DDM [02:03] They claim to be victims of racial discrimination. Their refugee applications, as I said, were fast-tracked as the USA government claimed that there is a white genocide taking place targeting white farmers. So I’d like to just unpack that statement a little bit. Firstly, white English and Afrikaans immigrants came to South Africa about 350-400 years ago and forcibly displaced local indigenous South Africans off of their land.

DDM [02:38] Now that movement continued right up until the establishment of the nationalist apartheid government in 1948\. This government then legally built the legal and social framework of apartheid that drew directly on Nazi policies and ideology. It was founded on racial supremacy and really brutally oppressed and murdered indigenous South Africans while legally, socially and economically enriching white communities over decades. This brutal apartheid regime eventually ended in the 1990s with the freedom of Nelson Mandela and the election of the first democratic government of South Africa in 1994.

MET [03:29] Can I interrupt you and ask a question? I know in my upbringing one of the things that people were like is “Oh well, you know, Nelson Mandela was in jail for terrorism or whatever.” What was he in jail for? What was the story of Nelson Mandela?

DDM [03:44] Terrorism.

MET [03:47] Yeah, I want to get this story out there because I think a lot of us were told “Yeah, well, context, blah blah blah.”

DDM [03:54] Yeah, it was interesting for me coming here how almost Nelson Mandela has been, excuse the phrase, whitewashed in the USA. Nelson Mandela was in, he was a freedom fighter, fighting for the liberation of his people. Nelson Mandela was part of a liberation movement. which was not a pacifist movement, it was a military movement and we had a whole armed military uMkhonto weSizwe and Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for terrorism charges for blowing up… for bombings. Civilian.

DDM [04:30] ANC was fighting for their liberation of the communities and for us resistance to oppression does not need to be pacifist. There’s no obligation to fight a violent regime with pacifism.

MET [04:45] So I think, oh my gosh, producer let’s make a note we want to do an episode on pacifism.

DDM [04:51] Yes.

MET [04:52] Talk about Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.

DDM [04:56] No, absolutely, but I think you’re right. And I think it ties in with this whole issue of the white Afrikaans refugees, because I think there’s so much misunderstanding in the South African situation, and there’s been in some ways quite a retelling of the story to sanitize it.

MET [05:19] That’s so fascinating. I’m sorry, I did not mean to disrupt your narrative.

(crosstalk)

MET [05:31] Yeah, let’s keep going.

DDM [05:32] So from about 1913, so for like say 75 years in South Africa, black people were actually not allowed to buy or occupy land legally, which many people may not be aware of. So although black people in South Africa make up 80% of the population, white people only about 7%, white people still to this day own 72% of South African land and black South Africans only own 4% of the land. I mean that is just frightening. So although apartheid has ended, land and particularly farmland is still largely in the hands of white South Africans, while communities and families that were forced off their lands live to this day 30 years later still largely as landless people.

DDM [06:28] So this is the reality of what’s actually happening in South Africa. It’s a terrible injustice and it’s the ongoing legacy of apartheid. So last year in South Africa, now these are just statistics, pure statistics. Last year, about 40 people in South Africa were murdered on farms.

DDM [06:49] Now that number 40 is for all racial groups. That’s not just white people. That would be the murder of farm laborers. It would be, you know, if there’s a fight in a farm and somebody gets killed, 40 people nationwide were killed and that’s of every race group.

DDM [07:07] In 2023 it was 49, in 2022 it was 50. So these are annual figures of farm murders. Now compare that with the fact that every year about 27,000 people who are murdered in South Africa. And you can see we are talking about only a tiny, tiny percentage of murders in South Africa are actually farm murders.

DDM [07:36] And that tiny, tiny, tiny percentage is not of white people, it’s of every demographic group. So you can see that the claims of genocide against white people are just simply ludicrous from a factual point of view. The reality is white people still occupy over 60% of top managerial positions in South Africa, despite being only 7% of the population. White people still own the bulk of the land in South Africa.

DDM [08:08] The wealth disparity between black and white is actually worse now than it was under apartheid. The average black household in South Africa owns only 5% of what an average white household owns. 80% of South African’s wealth is still in the hands of 7% of the white population. So you can see in a way that in many ways, this country is still entirely skewed towards white supremacy and domination.

DDM [08:43] And so in some ways, something has to be done. And so for the South African government, that’s where they came and said that if land is owned, and it’s not being used or it’s been abandoned. Maybe a white family owned a whole bunch of South African land and then decided to immigrate and that land is now just simply sitting there. The government has said, and this is the legislation that they passed, that they may take that land without compensation if it’s not being used or it’s been abandoned for public use.

DDM [09:22] So, you know, it actually hasn’t been done, there hasn’t been a case of this actually being done, but it was a law that they passed, much like your public domain.

MET [09:31] I was about to say eminent domain. Yeah, this is not strange.

DDM [09:36] Eminent domain, there we go. There we go, it’s very much, it’s not unusual. But just like those wildly overblown claims of farm murders, this law was claimed by the White House as we saw in that press conference recently with President Trump as being a quote-unquote seizing of Afrikaans land without compensation, which of course it was not. And while we’re on that, let me just say that it was a bit embarrassing how the South African president was kind of thrown in that press briefing under the bus, but the images of the crosses Those were actually like a protest. They’re not actual graves.

DDM [10:19] It was simply that white farmers organized a protest to try to draw and whip up a media frenzy around this claim of white farm deaths. And so they had planted these white crosses all the way down these roads, almost like as a protest, right? It was a symbolic sign. So it was a little embarrassing, obviously, when on national TV in the US that was claimed to be actual graves of farmers.

DDM [10:46] They were not graves of farmers at all. And I think as well, a lot of the images that were being shown of farm murderers, some of them were actually in the Congo. So again, it was that overblown, you know, anything that happens in Africa is one nation, whereas they weren’t even South African murders, you know. So that was a bit embarrassing, you know, to see that.

MET [11:09] Okay. Oh, my gosh. I don’t even. Alright, so let me…

MET [11:16] I cannot speak to your experience as a South African, obviously. This is very personal to you. So instead of trying to talk about what’s going on in South Africa and what it means to be a South African, because obviously I can’t, what I will talk about is American legal procedure, like what this means.

DDM [11:39] Yes, yes. Interesting.

MET [11:40] And let me begin by just acknowledging that this sort of thing should be ridiculous by any standard. For example, the administration is trying to get rid of any non-citizen that says anything anti-Semitic.

MET [12:01] Okay, there’s a thousand things we could talk about how ridiculous that is, but whatever. Or the administration is trying to keep anyone who has ever said anything anti-Semitic out of the country. Now, anti-Semitism is defined completely by Trump and his associates, of course, except for these Afrikaners. There are plenty of examples of these quote-unquote refugees saying not just anti-Israel things, but straight-up bigoted things against the Jewish community and people.

MET [12:32] And I thought about sharing an example, but honestly it was so offensive I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. Some of the things that some of these Afrikaner refugees have said, about the Jewish community are just so vile.

DDM [12:46] And that in South Africa is this very unique way in which, remember, so much of the apartheid ideology comes from Nazi ideology.

MET [12:55] So when you said that, I was like, okay, that makes sense. But this isn’t held against this group of people the way that’s held against some other people. And I will say the difference is written on their faces. So what I mean by that is whiteness is entrenched in our law and educational system and penal system and all of these systems we’ve been talking about throughout this entire project: whiteness is built into it. With whiteness legally fixed into such foundational institutions like those, people of color face enormous difficulties in fighting things like systemic racism. So I want to talk about kind of, it’s a really big claim to be like, whiteness is systemic in the law.

MET [13:40] That’s something that an academic says, and you’re like, yeah, okay, well, that means something. But I want to, I’m going to back this up.

(crosstalk)

MET [13:49] I don’t want to be like, crazy academic who’s just like, oh, whiteness. So for a really obvious example, it’s helpful to go way back to the Scott v. Sanford opinion, which is more commonly called the Dred Scott case. If you remember your high school history classes, this is 1856, way back when, Dred Scott case.

MET [14:10] The Dred Scott case dealt with citizenship, specifically legal citizenship. The court concluded in 1856 that a free black person whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves was not a citizen within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States. So even if a black person was free, if their ancestors came as slaves, they were not a citizen. The court did not burden themselves with rationalizing any issues of morality or racism or historical ideas on race the way that an original intent reading requires today.

MET [14:50] To the majority of the Supreme Court, it was very simple. They decided that since African Americans were not regarded as citizens or members of the state when the Constitution was drafted, the special rights and immunities guaranteed to citizens did not apply to them. So this was like straight up Black people didn’t count when we wrote the Constitution. Black people don’t count now.

MET [15:14] The court saw the Scott issue as a very straightforward matter of whether the progeny of property is a citizen and therefore privileged to the legal right to sue or other legal rights. And the court claimed that the words people of the United States and citizens were interchangeable, but since originally black people were deemed, and this is not my words, an inferior class of beings, they did not fall into either category and were not protected by the Constitution in the same fashion as white citizens. Right, yeah.

MET [16:01] Good moment for us, right? Perhaps the most striking observation to come of this kind of rhetorical legacy is that race, according to the Supreme Court, is cognate with the law. And what I mean by that is from the beginnings of our nation with things like the Three-Fifths Compromise and following the legal reasoning through Scott and Plessy, which I’ll talk about in a minute, The court constructed a narrative in which race was not just a demographic or identity, it was a marker of property.

MET [16:33] And that’s really important to understand about American law. Race equals property. So just five years later, in 1861, the Civil War began. Two years later, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

MET [16:50] And two years after that, in 1865, the 13th Amendment radically changed the landscape of the United States by abolishing slavery. However, it was not until the 14th Amendment in 1868 that the Scott decision was truly nullified. The 14th Amendment proclaimed that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens and that the states can’t make or enforce any laws that abridge the rights of said citizens, primarily the rights of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

DDM [17:22] Oh, so that’s what the big issue nowadays is people being in the USA.

MET [17:27] Yes, absolutely. I’m 100% getting to that. You are absolutely right. It also explicitly states that no citizen can be denied equal protection of the laws. And this is where I was about to go with that. I will note, it is absolutely important that you pay attention to the fact that the current administration is trying to get rid of these rights guaranteed in this amendment right now. Where in 1865 the goal was to guarantee rights regardless of color.

MET [17:55] There is a concerted effort right now and nobody is hiding it to strip those rights for the same reason.

DDM [18:02] And again, it’s around race.

MET [18:06] I’ll be very judgmental if you’re not grossed out by all of this, you’re a bad person. So, The Scott decision, because of the Civil War and the amendments that passed, was neutered in a relatively short, if bloody, amount of time. Legal citizenship was no longer a question for African Americans born in the United States. Then there were these other cases that came through in 1872 that aren’t cited very much, the Slaughterhouse cases, they kind of reiterated this.

MET [18:34] The Slaughterhouse decision affirmed that, so random, the state of Louisiana did not have the right to create a monopoly that required butchers to work for a particular corporation as that amounted to involuntary servitude, which was unconstitutional. Now this seems really random, like what do butchers have to do with all of this? But what it came down to is you couldn’t force people to work. So this led to a transitional period in court opinion as illustrated by Plessy v. Ferguson. I know I’m taking you through a lot here, but I think it’s…

DDM [19:08] Fascinating.

MET [19:08] Right. The infamous Plessy case established that separate but equal doctrine that dominated America until 1954.

DDM [19:18] Oh, which was very much South African.

DDM [19:19] Right. So this should sound familiar to you.

DDM [19:22] Absolutely.

MET [19:23] The Plessy case did not create separate but equal as a practice, but affirmed that the practice was legal. In fact, The opinion spent a good deal of time discussing how segregation was already practiced throughout the United States, specifically in education.

DDM [19:41] And this is about a similar sort of period. I mean, in South Africa we were ’48.

MET [19:46] Yes. We’re simpatico right here.

DDM [19:47] Yeah.

MET [19:48] The court noted that, as was brought to their attention in the slaughterhouse cases, the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to establish the citizenship of black people, to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens. Therefore, the question of legal citizenship was no longer an issue. What was at stake was whether the rights of citizens could be protected when those citizens were divided along racial lines.

MET [20:26] So I’m taking you through a long line of thinking here, but the reason I want to talk about this is because it is very important to see how race plays into the law. The court decided that separation does not automatically mean one party’s rights are being diminished. The court specifically argued that segregation was not a denial of due process or equal protection, and was not ready to accept any evidence to the contrary.

MET [20:52] So this is how we end up with a segregated country that says, oh, we’re really equal even though we’re separate. Okay. The reason I go through all of this philosophy of the court, at least the majority of the court right now, is because most people in the legal field today, and most people in the court today, would argue that the Constitution is or should be colorblind. And that is clearly, as I have just laid out, 100% nonsense.

MET [21:21] It has never been colorblind. Whiteness and melanin as property was written into the law from the very beginning with a three-fifths compromise. The law has never once in all of America’s history been colorblind. So when we pretend it is colorblind, we actually do a huge disservice to the people who it marginalizes.

MET [21:43] We ignore their plights. Race blindness or colorblindness does little to help race relations. If anything, it targets not the harmful effects of racism, but it completely obliterates any way of addressing those harms. It imposes a blanket identity on a group of people, which inevitably marginalizes those who do not conform to that identity.

MET [22:07] The idea behind this kind of blindness is that race should have no real significance, but it ignores the culture and the problems of a group of people and assimilates them all into one category, which inevitably is the majority. In other words, it eliminates the means to effectively battle racism by ignoring that racism exists. In this way, race blindness or color blindness, or however you want to talk about it, exacerbates the hegemony of white culture. It simultaneously declares race irrelevant while it prevents any step to achieve racial irrelevance.

MET [22:43] Understanding whiteness in the law, then, is crucial. Whiteness itself is self-evident and omnipresent, like whiteness is everywhere and it’s American and it’s dominant. In other words, people think of it as interchangeable with the idea of American and it’s the cultural yardstick for national identity. When whiteness is the norm, it is an invisible identity.

MET [23:07] So thinking in terms of whiteness in the law really illuminates the South African immigration fiasco.

DDM [23:12] Absolutely.

MET [23:13] The law is not just a code for us to follow, it constitutes our identity, and it constitutes us as white. So when we think about who can migrate to the US, and the Trump administration is taking this very seriously, There are migrants who can be us, white migrants, and those who cannot, migrants of color.

DDM [23:34] It’s almost like we saw the differentiation between how Ukrainian refugees were treated versus, say, Venezuelan or Mexican.

MET [23:42] This effort by the Trump administration is a continuing effort to bolster the whiteness of the law, by adding legal protection to white and specifically white supremacist immigrants and ridding the nation of non-white immigrants. The law is being used to code which immigrants are acceptable and therefore which immigrants are us. And right now that means we are white supremacists.

DDM [24:03] Yeah, 100% and that’s where the Episcopal Church now enters really the story because for the past 40 years the Episcopal Church has been really in a bipartisan partnership with the US government to help settle refugees. But since January, that program virtually stopped as obviously hardly any refugees have been coming into this country. Staff were laid off, funding like many departments became very uncertain. We all know the assault obviously taking place against many immigrant communities, the assault against the concept of churches as places of sanctuary and even sanctuary cities like our own Rochester, New York.

DDM [24:45] And so it’s in this context that the federal government reached out to the Episcopal Migration Ministry, informing them that because they receive a federal grant, they would be expected to resettle these white Afrikaans, South Africans that had been fast-tracked to be classified as refugees. Now the Episcopal Church has always focused on immigration. It’s deeply committed to helping people and families who are refugees and asylum seekers because as we looked in our immigration episode, that’s central to our faith to protect the vulnerable. However, The Episcopal Church is also deeply committed to racial justice and to truth.

DDM [25:29] And that’s where the problem comes in, right? Because, number one, there is no white genocide. There is no large murder of white farmers. There is no expropriation of their land and this white minority is still part of the wealthiest segment of South Africa which they have inherited through apartheid.

DDM [25:55] So that’s number one. Number two, the Afrikaner community in South Africa has consistently, and this is a generalization of course, but they have, as a general rule, consistently fought the dismantling of apartheid and any idea of a more equitable distribution of resources, particularly land. The Afrikaner community in South Africa continues to locate its identity in this separatist right-wing nationalist movement shaped by Nazism. Now, of course, you get some white South Africans that were part of the liberation struggle, but I’m talking about as a generalization.

(crosstalk)

DDM [26:34] And so for the Episcopal Church, which historically fought apartheid, to now assist in resettling this Afrikaner minority, who have been declared refugees within a few short months, while other refugees who have waited years to have their cases heard, have been deported, put into detention, sent to prison camps, or simply had their application processes stalled, leaving thousands now in limbo. To suddenly now begin to resettle these white South African quote-unquote refugees would be a betrayal of everything that our church stands for. And so the Episcopal Church at great cost said to the federal government that they would ethically not be able to do this.

DDM [27:19] And so they’ve officially ended their agreement with the US federal government. The Episcopal Church will no longer receive any funding from the government and will instead continue working with refugees and asylum seekers independent of the US government. So to watch I think one group of people who are not fleeing war, starvation, torture, be given such fast-track preferential treatment over others who fled the most unimaginable horrors or have been living in refugee camps for years under appalling conditions, I think is just absolutely horrendous. The obvious racism in this whole narrative is unmistakable. White South Africans are termed refugees, but everyone else with a different skin color is called an “illegal” or a “criminal.” South African white supremacists are welcomed with open arms, but professors or students who speak out against a US funded genocide in Palestine are being deported. And so once again we see so clearly that white lives are valued, but black and brown bodies and lives aren’t.

MET [28:30] All right, I’m going to tell you a story that sounds completely unrelated, as is my want.

DDM [28:35] Those are the best conversations.

MET [28:39] But it’s an example of something that reminds me of this. Okay. So I’m going to tell you the story of one of the most notorious Supreme Court cases of the 20th century, at least the last part of the 20th century. It was a case that at the time everybody knew about and had an opinion about and everybody was mad about it for one reason or another. It was one of those things where literally nobody was happy. The case was National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie in 1977.

MET [29:09] So the Village of Skokie, Illinois had a population of approximately 70,000 persons, of whom approximately 40,500 were Jewish, so very large Jewish community in Skokie. On March 20th, 1977, Frank Holland, the leader of the Nazi Party of America, informed Skokie’s police chief that the National Socialists intended to march on the village’s sidewalk on May 1st. So the Nazis were coming to Skokie.

MET [29:43] As a result of media attention and a number of phone calls allegedly made by Nazi Party members to residents with quote-unquote Jewish names, this planned demonstration became common knowledge among Skokie’s Jewish community. The District Court of Cook County conducted a hearing on a motion by the village of Skokie for a preliminary injunction. They wanted to see what they could do to get this regimented. One resident testified that a number of Jewish organizations planned a counter-demonstration for the same day with an expected attendance of 12,000 to 15,000 people and that the appearance of Nazi demonstrators could lead to violence.

MET [30:25] So the mayor of Skokie also testified that the demonstration could lead to violence, and the court entered an order barring defendants from marching, walking, parading, or otherwise displaying the swastika on their person on May 1st, 1977\. So they’re like, no, you can’t do this. You can’t have this march. The Nazi party applied to the Illinois appellate court for a stay of that injunction.

MET [30:53] So there’s a background, I’m not gonna get into court words, but basically there’s a back and forth between whether the Nazis can march on Skokie. And on appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court denied the petition for a stay. And the Nazi party filed an application with Justice John Paul Stevens, who actually referred this matter all the way to the Supreme Court. So it’s the Nazis versus Skokie all the way to the Supreme Court.

MET [31:18] And the court held that Illinois must provide strict procedural safeguards, including appellate review, to deny a stay for an injunction depriving the Nazi Party of protected First Amendment rights. The decision was complicated and it had a lot to do with procedure, but the ultimate end of the day thing is that the court decided in favor of the Nazis. Wow. Yes, they said the Nazis have their free speech right to march.

MET [31:47] Now, for what it’s worth, the march never happened. There was such a lead up and a hubbub to this. When it finally came down to it, the Nazis were like, just kidding, we can’t be here. So the march never happened, but the Supreme Court found in favor of the Nazis.

MET [32:01] And this was a kind of breaking point for the ACLU for a lot of people. They were like, I don’t know if I can support this anymore. But as you can imagine this made a lot of people mad. Because people love free speech, and then they see it in action and they’re like “Oh, I don’t like that.” Because there is free speech and then there is hate speech. Right, now I admit to being maybe problematically in favor of free speech in many ways. I’m May

DDM [32:34] Which if you don’t mind me interjecting, that was part of what the South African president was saying when Trump showed the video of Julius Malema, the minority party, singing the song of Kill the Boers, which was an apartheid kind of, again, symbolic slogan. But again, that was what the South African president was saying. You know, it’s that whole debate of free speech. We actually protect people’s right to say things, even if we disagree with them.

MET [33:08] That’s right. I think you and I have kind of talked briefly about this here and there.

MET [33:12] I’m a fan of protecting things that maybe other people wouldn’t be a fan of protecting. And that’s neither here nor there. But as many people in America find problematic, hate speech is protected here. And we can go into the whys and the wherefores of that sometime later if you want.

MET [33:30] But America has long protected controversial speech, and there’s a whole episode waiting to be done on the question of that. We do that much more so than other countries, especially European countries. But the question is, do we allow or do we help? And I think that is kind of at the heart of this issue.

MET [33:52] It is one thing to say people shouldn’t be allowed in this country. Once again, I can refer to speech law as an example, right? In the early 1900s, there were laws about things like if you harbored deviant political thoughts, you weren’t allowed into the US. Most people, like most decent people, disagree with keeping people out because of their ideas.

DDM [34:13] You know, when you apply for citizenship in this country, you have to say that you’ve never been a part of the Communist Party. I just wanted to let you know that.

MET [34:22] That’s left over from the 1920s.

DDM [34:24] It’s actually pretty frightening, but carry on.

MET [34:26] But most people disagree with keeping people out because of their ideas, but what about helping them? And I think this is the crux of the matter.

DDM [34:33] Or giving a platform.

MET [34:34] Yes, there is a huge difference between allowing and helping. And the Skokie case is kind of indicative of that. The court said you have to allow hate speech, but the controversy is how much do you have to help it? Does it need your protection?

MET [34:47] Do you have to guard it? What is an ethical response? What does equity require? And the Afrikaner situation is a bit more cut and dry in that sense, right?

MET [34:56] They may want to leave South Africa and come to the US. And most people would say if they have the means, you know, so be it. But the problem is not that they want to come here, though I think a lot of us would agree we have our fill of white supremacists. The problem is that we are helping them, and that shows favor. And this returns to the whiteness of the law. By blessing the Afrikaners, we are blessing their ideas, and that is a huge problem.

DDM [35:22] Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s why, for myself, I’m so proud of the Episcopal Church for saying, you know, we’re not going to be your religious window dressing of racism. You know, we’re not going to be your religious pipeline for dishonesty and apartheid-like policies. I think the Episcopal Church is really by making this action shown the truth really isn’t for sale and federal funding cannot be more important than the gospel of Jesus and for me that’s integrity you know that that really is faith and moral courage of which I think we need a lot more of right now in our world.

MET [36:02] Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was a very personal topic for us today. It really reached into some things that we hold near and dear to our hearts. We would definitely welcome some input on this one, so feel free to email us, and we hope you have a lovely week.

MET [36:23] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prophet. find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [36:52] Music by Audionautix.com

In this episode, Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe discuss the difference between reformation and punishment in the prison system.

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Transcript generated by automated process.

DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.

MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.

DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.

DDM [00:43] Hello, beautiful people. Hello, Elizabeth. Hello. So this week, Elizabeth and I want to be looking at the issue of prisons, prisoners, the prison system. And so, Elizabeth, let me begin by sharing my earliest experiences around the concept of being sent to prison.

DDM [01:03] When I was just becoming a teenager and I wanted to start looking more grown up, I went through this very short phase of trying to read the newspapers, actually an in-print newspaper, which it was in those days. And I remember very quickly reading a front page article on our national newspaper on how a man and a woman were being sent to prison because they were in a sexual relationship, but he was black and she was white. And I remember reading this and I was horrified. And I remember thinking, I must have been about 12, 13.

DDM [01:45] And I remember thinking, they can send you to prison for that? And I remember speaking to my parents about it. I remember the feeling, I don’t remember the dialogue, but I remember the feeling of that almost cold horror that sets inside of you. And then, of course, always in the background in South Africa was the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, decades spent in prison for terrorism charges.

DDM [02:15] And then later learning as I grew older of fellow clergy who were anti-apartheid activists being imprisoned even in solitary confinement. And then equally personally, the number of my own friends who’d been jailed for being gay and in gay relationships, which until, I think it was the 1990s, was still illegal and a criminal offense in South Africa. And so I think I learned growing up that prisons are not about whether you are good or bad, but that prisons very often are used as a fear tactic of trying to control our behavior, and that many really good people are imprisoned for doing the right thing.

DDM [02:59] And so I think my perspective on prisons has undoubtedly been deeply shaped by those experiences.

MET [03:07] OK, before I start talking about what I want to talk about, I want to acknowledge that my understanding of the penal system of prisons is not as personal as yours. When I speak, I’m definitely speaking of a very privileged person who, you know, I understand this kind of academically and intellectually and then kind of as an advocate, but I don’t understand this in the same personal way that you do. So feel free to jump in at any point and be like, you know, Let’s talk about this. So I acknowledge that your perspective on this has a lot more weight to it in the individual sense.

MET [03:59] So I just want to want to center that before I even start. But let me give you my kind of my input here. It will not surprise anyone to know that I am a member of something called the National Communication Association.

DDM [04:12] No, it doesn’t surprise us.

MET [04:15] No one’s gasping in shock at that. This is the largest association in America of communication professionals, and many of them are academic. These are people who study, practice, and apply all of the theories and methodologies and practicalities that come with the field of communication. It’s a really big association.

MET [04:37] When we have our conference every year, which of course not everybody goes to, but about 5,000 people show up. I know that’s not as big as some associations, but we definitely take over a whole convention center. It’s a nonprofit organization and a professional one. I’m giving you this background to emphasize it is not a political organization.

MET [05:01] However, it does advocate for practices and policies that aim for healthier and more effective communication. The reason this is interesting today when we are talking about prisons is because a while back, NCA took a stand on a particular issue dealing with the judicial system. NCA was very vocal and has done some real advocacy on the issue of solitary confinement.

DDM [05:28] That’s interesting.

MET [05:30] Yes. Solitary confinement, as you probably know, is the practice of locking a prisoner away so they have no contact with anyone for a particular amount of time. No conversation, no sight, no physical contact. They are completely alone. This can be done for their protection.

MET [05:47] If for whatever reason an inmate is in danger, they may be moved to an area of a prison where they will not have contact with anyone in order to keep them safe. Or, as is often the case, it can be used as punishment. Now I want to let that marinate for a minute. We protect people the same way we punish them.

DDM [06:08] Isn’t that interesting? I never thought of that connection.

MET [06:11] Yeah, there’s a whole conversation waiting to be had on that little nugget right there.

MET [06:17] But this is important to NCA because it is specifically a communication issue. In solitary confinement, you are cut off from all people. You’re cut off from all communication. There is no input or stimuli coming to you at all.

MET [06:33] And this is, in every way, a form of psychological torture. People who are in solitary confinement for an extended period of time pretty much lose their minds. having no contact, no communication with another person for that extended period of time will completely warp your emotional and mental stability. And I was thinking about this, like, I know introverts love to joke about how they’d love to just crawl into a hole and never talk to people.

MET [06:57] And I know priests love to say they want to go off into the wilderness and pray in silence. But I don’t think people realize the psychological toll it takes on us to be completely removed from all communication and stimuli. Because we are, at our core, social creatures. And solitary confinement is different than just, I can’t talk to anybody.

MET [07:16] You are cut off. And to be cut off from that, which is our evolutionary nature, right? Be around people, be stimulated in some way. All of that to be cut off from it is a form of torture.

DDM [07:30] I mean, we’ve watched movies where you see people in solitary confinement, even building relationships with the ants that crawl into their cells, you know?

MET [07:39] Now, there are a lot of studies that confirm this and people can roll their eyes or call me a snowflake or whatever. But honestly, that is their ignorance, not my permissive attitude. This is not a question. For people who take psychology and well-being seriously, this is pretty much a settled issue.

MET [07:57] And people have tried to argue this to the courts and to elected officials and to anyone who will listen. We can’t treat people this way. But you know who doesn’t care about this? The prison system, the judiciary system.

MET [08:11] We have presented all the proof over and over again. Like I said, this is a settled issue. Solitary confinement is torture. But either those in power don’t believe or don’t care.

DDM [08:24] And I mean, we have torture routinely used within, I think, the prison and the military system.

MET [08:33] That is precisely what I was about to say. This is one small issue in the grand scheme of prison reform. It doesn’t even break that high on what counts as a problem, but it is indicative. Because we are talking about psychological torture, and it is just part of the system. Our judicial system just kind of accepts torture.

MET [08:54] And the reason for this is because our judicial system is punitive, not reformative. All over the world, recidivism rates are lower than ours, literally. In almost every developed nation, recidivism is markedly lower than in the U.S. But in the U.S., if you are convicted of a crime, you are almost guaranteed to be convicted of another. Crime is systemic, and that is largely due to our prison system.

MET [09:25] Our prison system makes no effort to reform people. Unlike systems in other parts of the world, it is just a matter of punishing and controlling. And anybody who knows anything about parenting or teaching or just people in general knows that simply punishing and controlling will do nothing to fix a behavior, it will just set it in stone. This could not possibly be more clear than it is right now.

MET [09:56] As we ship more and more people off to El Salvador, and I am specifically saying people and not migrants, because we know we are sending American citizens over there too, we are seeing the pictures.

DDM [10:09] And migrants are people too.

MET [10:13] Yes, 100%. These are not places you send people to get better.

DDM [10:15] No.

MET [10:16] These are places you send people to torture and kill them.

DDM [10:20] You know, Elizabeth, I really like how you differentiated between our prisons as being places of controlling and punishing parts of our population rather than necessarily working on reforming. What’s interesting, this is interesting from a scriptural point of view, that the Torah, which is a part of what we call a section of the Old Testament, actually lacks any concept of imprisonment or punishment. Isn’t that interesting? Like, as I was starting to look at this issue, you know, from a biblical point of view, I realized that, that the early parts of the Torah and the Old Testament literally have no concept of imprisonment.

DDM [11:04] In later Mosaic law, there was a process given if somebody stepped out of line for restitution. So there was always a way in which a person could make something right after they’d done something wrong or they had corporal punishment or you were put to death. Now I’m not advocating obviously for any of the latter, but simply to point out that there wasn’t this concept of imprisonment in much of the Old Testament, earlier Old Testament books.

DDM [11:35] But by the time that the prophets and the kings emerge, we see imprisonment has definitely started. And so we largely hear of the prophets being imprisoned because of the threat they are to the state for speaking the truth and holding power to account. And then if we move into the New Testament, one of the core aspects of how Jesus understands his own mission, and therefore by implication our mission, is to proclaim, and I’m doing quote-unquote, liberty to captives and setting free those who are imprisoned or oppressed. That’s that key Luke passage around which the ministry of Jesus is based.

DDM [12:20] So we see that freedom, in direct contrast obviously with imprisonment, is one of the primary missions of Jesus’s life and work. To create a society obviously where people who are bound in whatever form are set free and to find that way into freedom. Jesus also says that those who visit people in prisons are in fact visiting him. So here we see Jesus identifying himself with those who are in prison and saying, if you want to be with me, go and be with those who are imprisoned.

DDM [12:57] Now this is a radically different understanding of faith than often we grow up with and hear in many of our churches, let alone the broader society. And then of course, Jesus himself was arrested, tortured and ultimately killed by the state. So in the short years that Jesus lived, like the prophets before him, he was arrested, tortured and killed for doing and saying things that the state and even the religion found too threatening and deemed dangerous. And I think very often in our ordinary churches and amongst ordinary Christians, we forget that the Son of God actually died being labeled a criminal.

DDM [13:42] And then Jesus’s ministry and teaching also, I think, gives us theological principles that really challenge the punitive incarceration systems in our society. Because for Jesus, it was always about how to redeem and restore a person rather than being punitive. So for instance, the woman caught in adultery, for which the punishment was death, Jesus instead calls for the community to see their own sin and to choose not to judge her but instead to restore her dignity. The prodigal son is a story about a young man who after a long period of quote-unquote immoral living wants to come home and he’s prepared to come home even as a servant but instead the father symbolizing God restores him as a full son and in fact celebrates his

DDM [14:36] return to the family. So if we go through the Gospels, they are full of such stories. And that’s really not surprising, given that Jesus teaches that the capacity to forgive one another is actually central to our faith. Yeah, sure.

DDM [14:52] We’re to forgive each other in the same way that God has forgiven us. And then there’s that teaching that for those who feel there are sins that are somehow larger than others, Jesus says those who’ve been forgiven much ironically are the ones who end up loving much, but those who are in less need of forgiveness may find themselves less able to love unconditionally. I

MET [15:15] mean, we say it every Sunday, right? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive.

DDM [15:19] Absolutely. So that understanding that none of us have got our lives together, that we all make mistakes, that we all do things that we shouldn’t do. So for Jesus, it’s about forgiveness and about restoring right relationship rather than punishment, let alone imprisonment. Now that doesn’t mean I think that Jesus doesn’t call out sin and ask everybody to change destructive patterns.

DDM [15:44] Jesus at times in the gospel speaks truth to people of groups and individuals in very plain terms. But it’s always calling them to change rather than to punishment; to transform their lives rather than necessarily to be put away from the rest of society. And so throughout the Gospels we see Jesus working to reintegrate those who have been excluded from the community no matter the reason.

DDM [16:12] He works to enable people to come back into full participation in their families or communities, but always with dignity. And the teachings of Jesus, I think, call us to create a different way of living that always prioritizes justice but very much linked with mercy and compassion. So it’s ways that honor always the sacred dignity of every human being, no matter what we have done, and to model that there’s always the capacity for forgiveness.

MET [16:47] So if you have been with us on this journey for a while now, one of the things you will have noticed about Deborah and I is we are very concerned with the systemic nature of things. Deborah and I both recognize, and I think I can probably speak for Deborah on this. We both believe that you can’t treat the symptoms of a problem. Many of the issues that we’re dealing with in the world today are not just an instant that has to be addressed.

MET [17:22] These are things that the root is foundational. So with that, here’s a little story many people know but is worth repeating. For decades, the punishment all over America for possession of cocaine and possession of crack, these were very different punishments. Possessing crack was a much harsher punishment.

DDM [17:46] Can you explain the difference quickly?

MET [17:49] Well, I’m getting there. This is where I’m going.

MET [17:50] Possessing crack was a much harsher punishment than possessing cocaine.

MET [17:56] And that’s the question. What is the difference between the two drugs?

DDM [17:59] Okay.

MET [18:00] Cost.

DDM [18:01] All right.

MET [18:02] Poor people use crack and rich people use cocaine. And that’s pretty much what it comes down to.

MET [18:07] They’re the same drug.

MET [18:08] They’re the same drug, one is just refined.

DDM [18:11] Ah, interesting.

MET [18:12] So if you were caught with crack, you were looking at sometimes decades of your life in jail. If you were caught with cocaine, you were looking at a few months to maybe a couple of years, probably less with good behavior. The result of this difference was catastrophic.

MET [18:29] People of color and other poor people were imprisoned in droves for crack possession. Wall Street brokers got a slap on the wrist for coke. But I cannot emphasize this enough, they are the same drug. One is just the version for rich people, one is the version for poor people.

MET [18:48] And this is one of those things that is so obvious, so blatant. It is hard to look away. There is no denying that poor people and people of color were locked away at two to three times the rate that rich white people were for the same crimes that, like, they were the same crimes, and people of color were kept longer in prison. Anyone who denies this is simply being obtuse, and you can tell them I said so. So, That in and of itself is an indication of how we get to mass incarceration. The law is literally written to separate poor people and people of color away from their families and from their communities and create a prisoner class. Please hear me say that, a prisoner class.

MET [19:38] These are not just people who have committed a crime. These are people who have been rounded up and put into the penal system in an effort to create a group of people separate and beneath those who can afford to do things like cocaine. And it doesn’t end there, my friends. In most places, felons can’t vote.

MET [19:59] So for decades, the judiciary and penal system has been scooping up people of color and poor people and throwing them into a system designed to create a prisoner class out of them, and then spitting them out, knowing them they’ll be back, and denying them the vote.

DDM [20:15] And you know, Elizabeth, I’ve also noticed, because I live in the rural areas, I noticed the same thing happening amongst rural communities. The rate of people who are incarcerated in our communities, and a lot of it just stems from poverty, but the realization, because when we were speaking recently around voting, realizing so many of my friends and neighbors are not able to vote.

MET [20:42] So if you’re keeping up with this, you will recognize this as one of the biggest voter disenfranchisement ploys since Jim Crow. We have written laws specifically to target poor people and people of color. We have put these people in a system designed to keep them uneducated, angry, poor, and likely to commit more crimes. And then we take away their right to vote.

MET [21:05] This is exactly what people mean when they say that things like racism is systemic. There’s no individual white supremacist sitting around somewhere saying, haha, I’m going to make it so most black men can’t vote. Well, I don’t know. Maybe there might be right now, but that’s a whole other story.

MET [21:24] But there are laws in place that were written so that poor black men were imprisoned at undeniably destructive rates while white people who were committing the same crimes were not. And once people of color were in prison, they lost their right to vote. The result is that a huge portion of the black population does not have the right to vote. And if you are sitting there uncomfortably thinking, why does this remind me of Jim Crow or the three-fifths compromise?

MET [21:51] You’re not the only one. The law, the system itself is set up to keep certain communities broken and disenfranchised.

DDM [21:58] No, absolutely. And I think also the free labor or the virtually free labor that emerges. I mean, it’s almost a form of slavery when you see how the prison system is now using people for labor. And I mean, I think also given that the USA has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, this is really, again, another way in which you might say there is not true democracy in this country.

DDM [22:25] And I mean it’s very obvious the more you look at the law in so many of our societies is written to benefit the wealthy and the powerful and always to oppress the poor and vulnerable. And it’s interesting that if there is a time in scripture where we see Jesus truly angry, it’s when he’s dealing with the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time. Because I think Jesus himself was watching in his context how the law was being used to place burdens on ordinary people that they just couldn’t carry. And so in the Gospels we see Jesus actually calling out with anger that those who use the law to oppress and marginalize the vulnerable will be judged in a way that no others will.

DDM [23:11] And I think it’s a good reminder to us as well that not all laws are just, and not all laws are good. Just like the laws against mixed-race marriage were unjust laws, and as people of faith, I think we’re called to stand up and to not obey laws that are unjust, even if that puts us at odds with society or with the legal systems in our countries. And so if you look in scripture, there’s so many examples and critiques of where law and the legal system were literally weaponized against vulnerable populations. You know, the prophet Isaiah says, woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees in order, and this is so interesting, to deprive the poor of their rights, and to withhold justice from the oppressed.

DDM [24:05] So it’s interesting that Isaiah is very clear that there are unjust laws and that laws very often are being created specifically to deprive the poor of their rights, which is what you were speaking about, Elizabeth, and to prevent oppressed groups actually from justice. So the law actually ends up becoming a stumbling block to justice. And I think that really ties in directly with what you were saying about laws being crafted to further marginalize already vulnerable groups in society. And so if you read the prophets, I mean, the prophets call out against these legal systems that have become corrupt, able to be bribed by the wealthy and the powerful.

DDM [24:48] And so the legal systems themselves have become a tool for the wealthy to become more powerful and enriched at the expense of the poor. And so really, in a way, Jesus, in the tradition of the prophets, reminds the people and the leaders that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, meaning that the laws that are given to serve us are there in a way to enable us to come into wholeness and fullness of being, rather than where we are simply being created to serve a legal system. And so I think we see clearly in scriptures that the law itself is not inherently just and our systems of law require critique to make sure that they serve justice and serve the most vulnerable rather than becoming tools for the wealthy and powerful and being used to further

DDM [25:41] marginalize others and strip them of their dignity. And that’s what I think we’re seeing a lot of today in the USA, but of course, in other countries as well, you know, is that stripping of human dignity.

MET [25:53] If you want to hear a historical figure just echo everything that Reverend Deborah said, I recommend you read Martin Luther King Jr.’ ‘s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.”

MET [26:06] Because let us remember that an unjust law is not a law that we are called to obey. So Reverend is not a Deborahlone. Okay, branching off from that though, one of the most horrifying debates going on in America right now is the debate over due process.

MET [26:31] And this definitely relates to what we’re talking about in terms of what laws do you obey, right? We are rounding up people every day and shipping them off to prisons, quote-unquote, which are really death camps with absolutely no hint of any kind of due process or legal process. Now there are some people who think because they might be criminals that is okay, but I want you to think about that. We don’t know if they are criminals.

MET [26:55] They might be criminals. The only way we would know they are criminals is if they had due process.

DDM [27:04] Isn’t there that thing in America, you’re innocent until proven guilty?

MET [27:09] Yeah. So what is happening right now? is the U.S. is running rampant through the country, taking scores of people into custody on suspicion, shipping them off to foreign death camps, and never even bothering to find out if they did anything wrong.

DDM [27:24] It’s kind of frightening.

MET [27:25] Yeah, I was about to say, if that doesn’t terrify you, then you live in a world of either privilege or obliviousness that I truly cannot comprehend. The prison system is about to be overwhelmed by people, mostly brown people, who are just there because maybe they look like they have done something wrong. The prison system is becoming a babysitter for anything or anyone the establishment thinks doesn’t belong in public. And right now that means anyone who is brown or increasingly anyone who has published something like an editorial or put too many negative social media posts up.

MET [28:05] Let me give you an example. There was an incident not too long ago right here in Rochester where a middle class white guy, family man, an active Lutheran, answered his door and found the Department of Homeland Security there demanding to know about his social media posts. These are not safe times and the penal system is the end game.

MET [28:29] So the due process debate is important because the whole point of due process is to ascertain if somebody deserves punishment. We are skipping that now. We are going straight to punishment. There’s not a procedure to determine if somebody did something wrong.

MET [28:51] People are just being selected and thrown into the prison system. And as I have noted, the prison system is unforgiving. It is getting even more unforgiving as we make deals with foreign powers who have even less regard for human life than we do, and we ship our prisoners to these concentration camps. And please don’t blanch at that.

MET [29:12] We need to call them what they are. Okay, I am not trying to talk to you like a child, but I really need to make this clear. Due process is the only thing that separates an innocent person from the harsh reality of the American penal system. And the American penal system now includes concentration camps.

MET [29:32] Due process isn’t a thing anymore. Conclusion, there is nothing keeping innocent people out of concentration camps. Do you get that? Do you understand how important these issues are?

MET [29:44] The prison system isn’t just a bad situation, it’s a destructive force to democracy right now.

DDM [29:49] Yeah. And you know, Elizabeth, I think scripture would remind us that really none of us are innocent, and no one either is a criminal. You know, we are human beings making choices in a complicated world. All of us, I think, are called to try to speak truth to each other, to always look, as Jesus says, first at the log in our own eyes, and perhaps to focus more on where our own lives have become destructive.

DDM [30:19] and to be constantly practicing that discipline of being able to change ourselves, to forgive others, to always be working for the hope of the re-establishment of relationships that are just and healthy. And for those who wish to follow the teachings of Jesus, if we are to see Jesus in the face of those being imprisoned, We are by implication not only to treat them humanely but actually to see the face of God in them. Part of our faith practice should be to visit those who are imprisoned to make sure that they don’t become isolated from the rest of our society. We’re to actively work against current prison models because the freedom that Jesus calls for is the opposite of caging human beings which as we’ve said is really inhumane in of itself.

DDM [31:09] And our model should always focus on restorative justice and the potential of forgiveness rather than that punitive retribution. And so I think the ministry of Jesus actually asks us not just to reform prison systems, but to radically rethink the concepts of justice, human dignity, freedom, restoration, forgiveness, reconciliation, and as you say, Elizabeth, even ultimately democracy.

MET [31:55] Thank you for listening to the Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church.

MET [32:20] Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.

DDM [32:24] Music by audionautix.com