Bishop Claude Alexander | What the Lord Requires

Alexander:

None of us were alive to create where we are. But should we hope to ever be anything different, we must each assume the responsibility for it. We must each own where we are and own where we hope to be. It’s not our fault. But it is our problem; it is our responsibility now. This is not about blame, this is about calling.

Claude Alexander, pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Stump: 

Welcome to Language of God. I’m Jim Stump.

Longtime listeners of the podcast will recognize our guest today from previous episodes. Bishop Claude Alexander first joined us on Language of God back in episode 44, when we discussed his early life growing up with esteemed medical practitioners for parents and the role science can play in overcoming racial divisions in America.  If you’d like to hear more about his early life and his experience as a pastor during the pandemic, I’d recommend giving that episode a listen. 

Bishop Claude has been around BioLogos for a while and currently serves on our board. He joins us today mainly to talk about his new book, Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility to Overcome Racial Division, a work he co-authored with Mac Pier. Throughout our conversation, his characteristic wisdom and careful understanding shines through. He also offered a number of practical insights and suggestions for how Christians might lead this country toward overcoming racial division. 

Let’s get to the conversation.

Stump:

Bishop Claude, welcome to the podcast. We’re glad to be talking to you again.

Alexander:

Oh, it’s good to be with you.

Stump:

Well, we talked last on the podcast in May of 2020, which was just as the pandemic was settling in. And at that time, we’d crossed this grim milestone of 50,000 COVID deaths in the US and had just gotten the 1,000,000th positive test result at that time. As we’re recording this now, we have about a million new positive test results every day, over 800,000 deaths from COVID. Do you have any reflection or words of wisdom on these past couple of years of COVID? And the church’s response, or even God’s plan and all of this?

Alexander:

I think, one, this has been a time of great revelation in several regards. One is that, if there was a disease that was tailor made to do damage to a country based upon its lack of discipline, this is it; this is that disease. Unfortunately, our country has not been able to harness the level of collective discipline necessary to abate the disease. That’s one revelation. On the positive side, the immense resiliency, flexibility, innovation of the church, and of the society in general has also been revealed. The speed with which the vaccines have been produced. The pivots that churches and other organizations have made towards digital and engaging people in ways that it had not imagined before. And in ways that have had far greater reach than before. Then I think, again, the revelation of how frail we are, how vulnerable, how mortal we are and the need for a relationship with one greater than ourselves. I think all of those have come to bear.

Stump:

Well, the occasion for talking to you again, here now is the publication of a new book called Required: God’s Call for Justice, Mercy, and Humility to Overcome Racial Division. You co-authored this with Mac Pier, can you tell us a little bit about him and how you came to know him?

Alexander:

Mac Pier is the founder of movement.org. movement.org is dedicated to assisting cities and mobilizing for the gospel. He and I met in July of 2013, in Bangalore, India, of all places. We were attending a Lausanne Global Leaders Summit. During that time, we were able to connect and he shared with me what he was doing that began in New York City — he, Tim Keller, and Bob Doll. So a prayer movement guy, a pastor and a marketplace leader came together to discern how do we leverage the significant investments that God makes in a city congregationally marketplace, Christian not for profits, theological education, all of the investments that God makes in a city who are currently working in silos. How do we create the space and opportunity for them to work collaboratively to address the harsh needs of a city? They started in New York in 2010 and now there are over 200-300 cities across the globe who are involved in this type of endeavor. That appealed to me because Charlotte, while being one of the most churched cities in the country, had not been one of the most collaborative cities as related to church. So I was immediately drawn to that. That’s how we met and the relationship has developed over these past eight years.

Stump: 

You tell some of this story in the book, or perhaps it’s in the section that Mac wrote, but for the benefit of our audience here, too. So how did it come about then that you decided let’s write a book together, that this would be a good way of addressing this?

Alexander:

Well, two reasons. One is that Mac keenly observed that one of the barriers in the church, the big C, being able to offer a credible witness in the city is that of racial division. Therefore, whenever there was a movement day expression in a city, especially those in New York, He always programmed race to be addressed. That was fascinating for me to see in the evangelical camp, because at that time, it wasn’t happening. Overall, our relationship has also been in the context of eight of the most racially divisive years in American history. In the back and forth of our conversation and our growing in transparency, vulnerability, and intimacy, Mac said, we need to do a book. At first I said, Okay, whatever. But in the past year, the intensity of his statement increased. Thus the book has been written, and now is available.

Stump:

Right, so the title Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, Humility, obviously comes from Micah 6:8, “what does the Lord require of you act justly love mercy, walk humbly with your God.” Give us a bit of an overview of the book, if you would, the elevator speech for what this is all about.

Alexander:

So the book hinges on basically three points. Number one, each of us has a racial story each of us who live in America. The content of that story may be drastically different in terms of what is present and what is absent, but each one of us has a racial story. That we must know, each family has one, our nation has one, and the three are connected. That the nation’s story is the context for our family story and certainly provides a context for our individual stories. And to the degree that we are aware of each of them, and how they have shaped and informed us, as well as how the nation story has shaped and informed where we currently are to the degree that we are fully aware of that, then we are able to be agents in addressing racial division; to the degree that we are not aware of them at any level, we will not be. The second premise is that the call to overcome racial division is not peripheral to the gospel. It is central. It is not a suggestion but it is a mandate that is explicit and implicit within the Bible. The third thing is that if we are to accept this call to overcome racial division, it requires three things: it requires awareness, it then requires ownership, and thirdly, it requires the exercise of agency. That is our capacity to influence an outcome. There are five levels of agency that we have: there is personal agency in terms of who we are; there’s practical agency, in terms of what we choose to do at any given time; there is positional agency, that is the places where we sit that have influence; there’s political agency, in terms of what we choose to advocate and how we choose to vote. Then I had to find a word that started with P that dealt with economics.

Stump:

Like a good pastor needs alliteration, 

Alexander:

There you go. And that word is pecuniary. That is how we spend, how we invest money. Those are the three hinges of the book.

Stump:

Good, we might come back and dig into that last one a little bit more, our agency and what we can do. But first, I’d like to go back to your second point about how racial reconciliation is not peripheral to the Gospel. I want to be careful in how I say this for some people that might get upset with it, but I think we need to talk about this. We’ll frame it by saying, I think the Protestant tradition, or at least some versions of it, gets a little nervous talking about what God requires of us. Salvation was understood to be by grace alone in response to some of the abuses of the Middle Ages. But that’s morphed today into a salvation that’s understood simply as a personal conversion, and that the good news of what Jesus came to do applies only to my eternal destination. You bring up several times throughout the book that that is an incomplete understanding of the gospel, of what Jesus came to do, of what being a Christian in our world today ought to look like. Can you explain and expand a bit on that point? I think it’s super important.

Alexander: 

Sure. So let’s start from the very beginning. In Genesis chapter 1, where we have the creative intention of God as it relates to the world and humanity given and there’s this interesting formula. In that account, you find the words “each according to its own kind, each according to its kind, each according to its kind.” But when it comes to the creation of humanity, you do not find that, you find a different description, not each according to its own kind, but in the image and likeness of God.

Stump:

So there aren’t different kinds of humans.

Alexander: 

There aren’t different kinds of humans, there’s only one kind of human and that is in the image and likeness of God. If that is God’s created intention, then anything that seeks to deny, diminish or frustrate that is against the created intention of God, is against what God intends and we would call that sin. The second thing that we find both in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 is that God creates humanity in relationship, in community. Because we most fully reflect God, not in isolation, but in community; that too, is the created intention of God. Anything that denies diminishes, frustrates, that is against the created intention and we would call that also sin. Then we see something else happening in the second chapter and that is that God creates a place for humanity in which God places them, that they’re there. So part of what it means to be human is to belong in a place, that is the created intention of God belonging in place and therefore, anything that denies that, diminishes it, frustrates it is against the created intention. Then lastly, then God Commission’s gives them a calling, a vocation, a stewardship because that too informs what it means to be human. And it was equally given. When we look at the created intention of God we realize that the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ and the redemption that is purchased by him is so that we can return to the created intention of God. That’s number one, let’s start there. But then there is this thread that is consistent. When we look at the law that God gives through Moses, Israel is called to be a unique people whose unique way of relating even in how it treats its neighbors would be a witness to the world. It would indicate this is how people who belong to God live and relate. It was never simply individual; it was also societal, collective. Jesus says that He came not to abolish that, but to fulfill it. It was by that standard that the prophets then held the people of God accountable. It is that to which Micah raises up what the Lord requires beyond the cultic practices, beyond the worship, the offerings and sacrifices that they gave. This too is what the Lord requires, that we do justly, that we love mercy, that we walk humbly with our God, so that when Jesus comes and he announces the kingdom of God is come upon you. The rule and reign of God has come upon you. He’s not just talking about individual sense, he’s talking about a collective reality that seeks to make itself known and felt. When he says thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, he did not say in a person, he says on earth as it is in heaven, which is much broader than the individual.

[musical interlude]

Biologos:

Hi Language of God listeners. We wanted to take a quick break from the episode to tell you about the BioLogos resource centers found at our website, biologos.org. You’ll find articles, videos, and other resources curated for pastors, educators, youth ministry, campus ministry and small groups. Help bring the science and faith conversation to the places that are important to you. Just click the resources tab at the top of the page. Now back to the conversation. 

Stump:

That’s a really helpful biblical overview of where this comes out of. I wonder if you might connect to that or apply it more specifically to our current situation, and in doing so, I think I’d like to get you to talk a little bit about systemic racism as the problem that the gospel ought to be addressing. I fear that for too many people, that phrase enters into the culture wars as a kind of Shibboleth to indicate which team you’re on. And I think too many Christians haven’t taken the responsibility for understanding what it even means before declaring that they’re opposed to it. Perhaps you can help us out a little by explaining what systemic racism is, where you see evidence of it, and how the Gospel itself ought to be addressing this right now.

Alexander:

This is where the knowledge of history is so important. I believe that it was August 25, or 26th 2019 marked the 400th anniversary of the transatlantic slave trade in the English colonies of America, so August of 2022 will mark the 403rd anniversary. Now, let’s put that number in perspective. That was 157 years before we declared our independence and became a nation. It was 100 years before the birth of George Washington. It was one year before the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower in Massachusetts. So the very atmosphere into which our nation was born, was one of racialization. It served as the context for how the Constitution in its original authorship could declare the African and its descendants three fifths human. Human enough to count for the number of representatives that one would have in a colony or state, non-human enough to be treated as property, to be mortgaged, sold, invested in, disposed of. That was the rationale.

Stump:

So I fear that too many people hear that and say, okay, but we stopped that right? I think what you’re saying here, though, is that we have too many years of this being the very air that we breathe in this country for it to just go away when the law was changed. What are some of those continuing effects and influences?

Alexander:

Exactly right. Let me just draw a couple of other lines because they help us understand certain things. For instance, people may wonder why there aren’t more black people in Oregon. And one may simply say it’s because black people don’t like cold weather. Well, no, it’s a very specific reason. Because when Oregon was admitted, as a state, into the Union, Oregon was the first state to have an exclusionary law that forbade black people from living in Oregon. 

Stump:

So they said we won’t have slaves, but you can’t come and be around us.

Alexander:

But you can’t come and be around us. That’s right. If you owned me and you wanted to live in Oregon, you had to free me. But at the moment that you freed me, I could not live there.

Stump:

And that wasn’t 400 years ago, right?

Alexander:  

That wasn’t 400 years ago. When we talk about trans-generational wealth. Everybody identifies the GI Bill as being the single most important point of legislation that helped develop the American middle class. People will talk about what their fathers or grandfathers post World War Two did or made of themselves. Well, they did and made of themselves because they had governmental help in the form of cash stipends, low to no interest loans on homes, money to go to school. But guess what? That was to the exclusion… 

Stump:

Not everybody got it, right?

Alexander:

Right. Not everybody got it, the exclusion of people of color. Now, the third point, which is most important for us in understanding some of the conversation of this current moment, is that Ulysses S Grant, during his presidency, made a grand compromise. And the grand compromise was this: during his administration, there was immense violence perpetrated against blacks in response to reconstruction in the South. The compromise that was made was that he would no longer intervene. And allow the roll back, the systemic rollback of everything gained by black people, including voting, in order to keep those states in the Union. That’s when Jim Crow rose. And key to Jim Crow’s sustenance was the vote, was putting high barriers for people of color in terms of voting. So, when we see legislatures across the United States, changing voting laws after the 2020 election, not just not just a matter of voter ID, if it was just a matter of voter ID, then they could have passed laws that only dealt with that. But when these legislators go further than that, to either take away totally, or curb, things put in place that we know, increased minority voting, such as Sunday voting, such as early voting, such as voting by mail, from when we see those things being attacked, history informs our response to that. That’s why the knowledge of history is still so important. When you understand, Jim, that for 350 years, the official role of law enforcement in the United States was to keep black people in their place by any means necessary. To, if an escaped slave was caught, bring them back. During Jim Crow, if you were in the wrong restroom, or the wrong water fountain, punish them. When the official role of law enforcement for 350 years was to keep people in their place, do we think that 50 years is enough time for that mentality to be wiped away from everybody?

Stump:

Yeah, that’s hard. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. And you mention discrepancies in transgenerational wealth, there are many other demographics we could pull up. For instance incarceration rates of black people, it’s about five times higher than that is of white people. I wonder how do we explain that? Someone might say, well, black people are just that much more prone to breaking the law, but that’s about as racist as you can be, directly racist, right? Claiming that an entire race has a certain negative characteristic. Isn’t the only other alternative to explaining demographics like that to say that there are systems in place in our society that have been entrenched for decades, even centuries, that led to a disproportionate outcome like that?

Alexander:

Absolutely, in terms of who gets charged, how they’re charged, how their sentence, how long their sentence, all of that plays a role. We can also look at it financially. It’s a proven fact that African Americans can have the same or even a higher credit rating than whites, but get a higher rate of interest charged, not lower. So there are these things that are in the ground and we have to be aware of them. Now, immediately, whenever we have this conversation, an individual is prone to say, but that’s not my fault. I have not done anything like this, etc. I agree, it’s not that person’s fault. And guess what? It’s not my fault, either. It’s neither of our faults, but it is equally our problem.

Stump: 

Yeah, let me ask you about some of this language, because I think it’s really interesting and important for us white Christians, particularly those of us who haven’t been actively involved in oppressing people of color, but to hear that we’re part of a system that has done that. And in this regard, we talked to Jemar Tisby, just a couple of weeks ago about this. And he made a similar distinction between personal guilt for the circumstances today, and responsibility for doing something about it. He said, you might not be guilty yourself of doing these things, but you have responsibility for doing something now to make it better. In your book, you use slightly different language in this saying, we are not faultless as a collective right? Maybe individually, but as a collective, and you invoke the story of Daniel and his prayer of repentance saying we have sinned rather than simply saying they have sinned. What’s the difference between those two ways of characterizing the situation?

Alexander: 

Wow, man, you actually read the book. Daniel is at an interesting point in Israel’s story, because he recognizes that while they are in exile, there is a time when they’re going to come out. He understands that, while he was not responsible for the conditions that created the exile, he is responsible for how they come out. Therefore, he recognizes the need for a repentance, that is not individual, but that is collective. He owns that and says, we. I think it is similar for us, we none of us were alive to create where we are, but should we hope to ever be anything different, we must each assume the responsibility for it. We must each own where we are and own where we hope to be. It’s not our fault, but it is our problem; it is our responsibility now. This is not about blame, this is about calling. For the Christian in particular, if I say that I see myself called to redeeming the world, then within that redemption, this is there also. 

Stump:

Good. Well, let’s move a little more perhaps towards some of these solutions, what our calling might be. In the overview you gave us the five P’s of agency. What else, perhaps generally, and then move to some specifics of can we the church be doing now to address this situation along the lines that you outlined here of what our calling is in the gospel of Jesus Christ to help bring about racial reconciliation? Where do we start? What can we do first?

Alexander:

If you notice, we did not use the word reconciliation, we use overcoming racial division. And the reason why we did not use reconciliation, as it relates to the American context, is because reconcile assumes you were conciled.

Stump:

Explain that one.

Alexander: 

Within the American context, there was never a time when we were whole.

Stump:

So it’s not going back to a situation that we previously had at all. 

Alexander:

It is not going back to a previous state. It is absolutely creating something new and different. That’s a fundamental starting point that we all have to assume, this is not about going back, this is about creating something new and different. That’s one. What we sought to do is to provide case histories, both on an individual and a collective level. So there’s the story of Jack Alexander, a white entrepreneur, whose coming to terms with his own accountability has led him to personally invest in black entrepreneurship as well as the one race Atlanta movement. That’s a story of someone who has expertise in a given field, seeking to support those growing in that field, as well as becoming personally involved in a movement that seeks to address it in the city where he lives. That’s example one. The second example is that of several cities in Virginia, the 757, that being Norfolk, Williamsburg, and Hampton. How these three cities came together to address it on a city level. That’s the second one. There is a role that city movements and individuals and churches within city movements can play in moving the needle in various specific areas of education, economic development, and housing. The third is the story of Khary Bridgewater, whose background in philanthropy and social systems has moved him now to seek to address the matter of access to capital for individuals in business. There are some takeaways from these stories. One is the ask is not for you to operate outside of your sphere, it is to look with it your sphere of expertise, and influence, and to see how you can be an agent of change within your given sphere. That’s number one. Two, how can you be a part of a collaborative work that takes your expertise and adds to it to others in imagining how your church, how your community, how your city can be different as it relates to these things. Now, what that necessitates is a willingness to become informed and to give yourself to a better knowledge of where your church may be, where your community may be, where your city may be. In giving yourself to that pursuit of information, then you begin to see how you can be involved.

Stump:

With regard to your first point about your sphere of expertise, our audience at BioLogos, as you know, is primarily composed of Christians who are interested in science. Is there any specific role that such people and their expertise in science might have to play in this?

Alexander:

Oh, absolutely. One, science helps dispel myths. Or at least it tries to [laughs]. It tries, it tries, it tries. That is one, and it’s crucial, it’s a vital role.

Stump:

And particularly with regard to race that science has addressed, that these are not real biological distinctions we’re talking about, but constructs of our societies.

Alexander:

Yes, fundamental. Absolutely fundamental. I think the second thing is, and what BioLogos, particularly as an organization can do, is to amplify the voices of people of color. For them to be seen and therefore for young people to see themselves proficient in these and therefore be inspired to pursue. That’s a second. I think the third thing is the role in addressing disparities and advocating for ways and means of addressing those disparities. I think, lastly, what can be done is being able to partner with organizations and institutions of trust with in the African American community in particular and those institutions of trust within the communities of color in general, that helps to create the pipeline for engagement across the aforementioned areas, that helps move the dial.

Stump:

That’s really helpful. You yourself are involved with a dizzying number of organizations and projects to try to address these issues. And you’re not at the beginning of your career, but I think it’s fair to say you’ve got a got a number of years left here in working toward this. I wonder if you might reflect a little bit, prognosticate a little bit, where you’re sitting down here and a couple of decades toward the end of your career, what do you hope to see the situation looks like by then? And not just hoping in the sense of wishful thinking but grounded in the reality of the way things are, but also with some of these hopeful signs that you’ve seen in directions that things might go, organizations that you’re involved with that you know are doing good work. What might this look like? What do you hope at the end of your career, you can say, yeah, this is where we’ve gotten to now?

Alexander:

I would hope that by that time we will have lessened the gap of perception of the importance of this issue. There was a poll taken last year where 83% of blacks but only 27% of whites saw the matter of race as an important issue. I’m hoping that by the end of that time, one, that gap will have been lessened and, more importantly, the need for even asking that question will have significantly diminished. That’s my hope, one, that the gap of perception will be less and more importantly, that the significance of the question will have diminished. That’s one. Secondly, my hope is that we will have seen ourselves as being called to each other in a greater degree. Until we see ourselves as called to each other, we cannot fully fulfill the call to the city or to the world because there will be a continued discrepancy. The thing that made the early church’s witness to the world so impressive, was not simply the content of the message, but it was the way in which they lived together, how they served and cared for each other, because they saw themselves as called to each other. That’s the second piece.

Stump:

They’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Alexander:

By our love. There you go. I think the third piece that I would hope would be the case 20 years from now is that the appeal to fear and racial animus will be less of a politically effective tool in America because we will have so changed in how we are. I think lastly that my grandkids will not experience some of the isolation and acts of dismissal that my kids and I experience, that my grandkids will live in a different place. Those would be the things that I would hope for.

Stump:

May it be so. Well, we are so grateful for the time and energy you’ve contributed to BioLogos and to helping us understand some of these issues, particularly through the lens of science, and what we might be doing and look forward to continuing that relationship. What are some of the next things on your schedule that you’re looking forward to, projects that you’ll be throwing yourself into?

Alexander: 

That I’m not that are not dependent upon COVID, right? One we’re in the midst of building an affordable senior citizens Residential Complex in Charlotte, so I’m excited about that. It is an interesting time to be the church in that we have to reimagine ourselves in light of COVID. But for a person who is creative and imaginative, that’s a great time to be, if you embrace it as such. How do we continue to leverage technology in the ways in which we engage disciples and grow individuals, not just who are proximal to us, but those who are distant from us, yet who claim us, and whom we now claim? That’s an exciting possibility.

Stump:

It has really interesting application for what we were talking about earlier, of being people of a place, the definition of what it is to be in a place has changed with this remote technology.

Alexander:

Exactly. I was made aware in a recent conversation of the metaverse. To one degree, I knew a little bit about it through Oculus, the game. When you look at what is being created on the one hand, it can be daunting, right? Because you think of implications. But in another sense, there is opportunity. I think, for me, as a pastor, whenever, especially technology pushes the boundary, there is that which is daunting and requires our most serious thinking. Yet there is opportunity, which engages with which engages our creativity and our imagination. It’s not either or, it has to be both and yeah.

Stump:

Well, again, this book is called Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy, and Humility to Overcome Racial Division. Please, everybody, go get a copy of it, read it, take action along the lines that it advocates. Thanks so much, Bishop Claude, for talking to us again. I look forward to the next time.

Alexander:

Thank you, Jim. It’s been a pleasure.

BioLogos:

Language of God is produced by BioLogos. It has been funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, the Fetzer Institute and by individual donors who contribute to BioLogos. Language of God is produced and mixed by Colin Hoogerwerf. That’s me. Nate Mulder is our assistant producer. Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder. 

BioLogos offices are located in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the Grand River watershed. If you have questions or want to join in a conversation about this episode find a link in the show notes for the BioLogos forum or visit our website, biologos.org, where you  will find articles, videos and other resources on faith and science. Thanks for listening.