Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Seth Price 0:13
Hello, hello. Hello. Welcome back. Thanks for downloading this is the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I am Seth, as always. And I hope that your day today, as you're listening to this ,has been, has been a good one. This week have brought back a guest that was on in the very first year of the show. And in that episode, we talked about a reframing of empire and Americanism and exceptionalism. And we did that through a lens of something I was unfamiliar with called the Doctrine of Discovery. So I had Mark back. And we talked about another text that he just says, kind of ripped open in a new seam on the upholstery, that is my couched views of Scripture. And so I was really challenged by this one. And I think you may be as well, but I was challenged in a good way.
And both when we did the episode, as well as when I edited it, and it was…it was enlightening. So let's do the thing.
Seth Price 1:41
Just to be clear, Mark, you're the first person I've spoken to since I took like a summer break, maybe the second person I've spoke to, so I may be rusty. But the nice thing about this is I'm not a professional. So it's fine. It's fine. (we both laugh)
Here we go. Mark Charles, welcome back to the show. Thanks for spending your early morning with us. I know you usually go out and you do something different each morning, because I watched those often on Facebook or all the places. But welcome back to the show my friend.
Mark Charles 2:07
Yeah, thank you, Seth. It's great to be here. I do normally I go out and watch the sunrise over the Potomac River, right about 10 miles from my house. But because we had an early interview scheduled this morning, I didn't have time to…I'd have to run there and run right back. So I decided to just stay home and sleep in a little bit more of this morning. But it's great to be back with you.
Seth Price 2:26
Yeah, well, I'm glad I can help you get more sleep. That's important. And I'm glad for you and for your family that I could get do that for you. But thank you for, um, for breaking your routine a bit to be with me, I know my schedule is not as amenable as it used to be. So I appreciate you being flexible. It's been…I miscounted the years you remembered better than me. It's been a long time since I spoke with you. And since you've been on the show. Though, I've shared your stuff quite a bit. And I've sent multiple copies of that book that sits right behind you. To many, many people. I don't know if you know this, but there's a level on Patreon where I just send them a book each month. And yours was it not long after it released?
Mark Charles 3:05
Oh, great!
Seth Price 3:07
Yeah, yeah, I switch it up each month, on something that's been speaking to me. So that went out. But you've been doing a lot of things since the last time that you were here. There's probably a lot of people that are unfamiliar with whom you are to begin with. And so I thought maybe if you wanted to just In brief, because again, I'll link in the show notes. So our first conversation on the Doctrine of Discovery and some of that stuff. And so people should do that. But just in brief for people that aren't going to kind of who are you? What are the things that they should know?
Mark Charles 3:33
Yeah, so just let me start by just introducing myself traditionally, so Ya’ at ’eeh. Mark Charles yinishyé. Tsin bikee dine’é nishłį́. Dóó tó'aheedlíinii bá scíshchíín. Tsin bikee’ dashicheii. Dóó tódích’ íi’ nii dashinálí. So in our Navajo culture when we introduce ourselves we always give our four clans and we're matrilineal as a people. So our identity comes from our mother's mother. Now my mother's mother is American of Dutch heritage, and so I say tsin bikee dine’. That, loosely translated, means “I'm from the wooden shoe people”. My second clan, my father's mother is Tó' aheedlíinii, which is “the waters that flow together.” My third clan, my mother's father is also tsin bikee dine’. And then my fourth clan, my father's father, is Todích'íí'nii, and that's the bitter water clan. It's one of the original clans of our Navajo people.
I also want to acknowledge I'm speaking to you today from what's now known as Washington DC. But these are the traditional lands of the Piscataway. So the Piscataway they're the nation that we're living here hunting here, farming here, fishing here, raising their families here, burying their dead here long before Columbus got lost at sea. And they're still here. I've had the honor of meeting some of the Piscataway I've been welcomed to these lands by the Piscataway and so I want to thank them for their stewardship of these lands. I want to also just humbly acknowledge how humbling it is to be living on these lands today. As you said earlier, I am the co-author of a book it's Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. And my co-author is Soong-Chan Rah, who's written a number of other books, most widely known or The Next Evangelicalism, or Prophetic Lament, and we wrote this book it came out on in November of 2019. And it's been, it really is a not only just, it started out as a cultural lament. And it turned into actually after the 2016 election into a flat out rebuke of the evangelical church. And so the book has actually been, it's been selling fairly well, it's been generating a lot of good dialogues, there's a lot of both study groups as well as even seminary classes and college classes that are using it. So we're very pleased with the dialogue it's starting. I’d love of course, to see the dialogue go national, and see it really.
But there's the four chapters that I think are the most compelling for people. Actually, the whole book is but there's two chapters on how we got from Jesus to the Doctrine of Discovery. There's two chapters completely deconstructing the mythological legacy of Abraham Lincoln. And there's a chapter and a half, kind of reframing the whole dialogue on trauma, and giving an analysis of Robin DeAngelo's understanding of white fragility, and actually looking into what I would term as the trauma of white America and understanding white people as another group of traumatized people. So it's a good book, it's selling well, I do podcasts on it pretty regularly, almost weekly, if not even more often than that. So, I'm pleased about that. In 2020, I ran as an independent candidate for President United States. And that was an experience in and of itself, the goal of that was to address our nation and the church's foundational level, racism, sexism and white supremacy. And we are trying to build a nation where we the people truly means all the people.
So I've been fairly busy these last several years, since I spoke to you last, trying to continue to lecture on the Doctrine of Discovery, continuing to write and get this information out there. And yeah, I'm excited to talk to you today about some stuff I've been working on for the past year now.
Seth Price 7:14
Yeah, yeah. And I will tell people, so there is an episode from last year from when your book came out that I had worked out with IVP to have both Professor Rah and you want to talk about your most recent book. And then again, because you were running for president, it ended up being a little bit more than what you could do, which is a weird problem to have. So we had Professor Rah on and I can't remember asking him specific questions, and I can't remember the questions now. And he's like, yeah, that's a Mark question. (Mark answers) I can answer it in this way. But that is not. And so most of my questions, were Mark questions. And he's like, let me try to answer these and try to do justice to what I think Mark would say. But, that's a mark question.
Mark Charles 7:57
Yeah, Soong-Chan Rah, he was a fantastic co author. And he made the the intentional choice, the beginning of that process to really center my voice, and allow my voice to be center in that book. And he wanted to bring some of the academic analysis into it, as well as just his own story, cuz he's done tremendous amount of research on race in the church and things like that. And so but there are definite things. And I've had to say in several interviews, that really is a Soong-Chan question. He really, there's several parts of the book where his voice is really front and center (and) there's probably more parts of the book where my voice is front and center. Especially some of the most challenging chapters on Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, as well as on trauma and things like that, where that came out of my own lived experience, as well as my own research and things like that.
Seth Price 8:54
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, it was a good book. And for those listening, you should buy it. I'll link to it in the show. And they want to actually there, they can buy signed copies on my website, wirelesshogan.com. were selling signed copies of the book.
Seth Price 9:08
Really? I may do that, because I gave my current copy, that's all marked up, to a friend to read, with no due date. And I know they're still wrestling with it, because we've spoken about it in the past. And I don't want to ask for it back. So I should just buy another one.
Mark Charles 9:23
I'll give you a link to my website. And they can order a signed copy of the book from me.
Seth Price 9:28
Yeah, well, good. So you reference some of the new things you've been doing. And you have someone that helps you kind of manage your calendar, which is something I envy and they had sent me a few sermons (sermon one & sermon two) that I spent, I don't know about an hour and a half hour an hour and 20 minutes or so listening to. One time less intentional and then the second time much more intentional because I realized I needed to kind of devote a little more. Some things you can listen to in passing and get a lot from and there are other things that you know, you can you can watch a movie and then you can, quote unquote watch the movie. It was on kind of Pentecost, working through the Gospel of Mark, clean and unclean like there is a lot going on there. And I don't know where you would like to start with that. But I will say so much like I've had conversations with other people about baptism or conversations about Easter from people that I come at it from a different perspective and a different lens, that does not happen to be white, American, born in capitalism. You know what I mean? It comes with it from the point of view that is entirely foreign to me. And this was one of those messages. So where would you begin to kind of lay context for what we should talk about?
Mark Charles 10:38
Yeah, so we could go two ways. First there's my whole personal story of how God kind of raised this in me. And really, for the last year, almost for 13 months now. I have been deeply wrestling with some of these questions. It started with the passage of the Syrophoenician woman. But it led into a much deeper analysis of really the entire Gospel story and wrestling with the question of where not only do I as a Navajo man, or a Navajo and Dutch man, but where do white Americans get written into the Gospel story. And as I wrestled with it, and I started…so I was wrestling with it for almost nine months. And then I began teaching on it earlier this year. And as I taught on it preached on it presented it several times, I've gotten better at kind of bringing people into the dialogue without completely freaking them out.
But wrestling with it, and I thought of you, and I thought of your podcast when I was even going through some of this because of the name of your podcast with, Can I Say This At Church? And there is some, when he read the story of the Syrophoenician woman, there are definite things about that passage that you can and you cannot say in church! Because in that passage, Jesus very clearly creates a hierarchy. And he says to this woman who wants her daughter to be healed, and he says, Why would I give to the dogs what was meant to the Jews. And she responds and says, well, even the dogs eat the scraps on the table, and Jesus, I look great, here's your bone. You know, and he heals her. But there's some very troubling language.
And now I've been in the church long enough. And I've wrestled with that pastors long enough where I can preach that sermon and still make Jesus look good. But if you really wrestle with it, and if all of us are honest, if we had that interaction with Jesus, knowing his reputation for loving people knowing his reputation for going above and beyond to include people, we would all walk away from that interaction, saying, that is absolutely not what I expected. Right? I would not expect that. But the way I want to approach it today is really by through an understanding of Act 2. So for many Christians, Acts 2, I would say, is one of the best examples of what church should look like. Right? You have this diverse group of people from all over the world, the Holy Spirit has affirmed their identity by actually allowing the disciples to speak the Gospels into their language. And so they are hearing the words of God being proclaimed in their own tongues. They are coming together in unity, they're sharing their possessions, they're listening to the teachings, the disciples are performing miracles and signs and wonders. And this, fantastically, unified community is growing daily. And God is adding to their numbers.
And I think for many churches, they look at that, and we look at that as Acts 2 is like this great model of what church could possibly look like. And so when I was preaching this two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, to a Native American congregation, a camp meeting, a summer camp meeting, at the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, and my first sermon was titled, The Hopes and Challenges of the Acts 2 Community. So the hope is yes, the Holy Spirit is affirming the identity of the people, their church’s growing, they're unified, the disciples are doing miracles, they're being taught and growing in numbers. Those are the hopes of that passage. We all know that. The challenges is they're all Jewish. Everyone in the Acts 2 community is already a Jew. Yes, they're from diverse places, they're from different ethnic backgrounds, but they've all already converted to Judaism. So they all speak the same language, they're all the men are circumcised, they all attend synagogue, they all keep the laws of cleanliness, they all follow the Old Testament Torah. They all have assimilated to Jewish culture. And now they are hearing the story of Jesus being proclaimed, and they're turning to that.
But we have to acknowledge the biggest challenge of the Acts 2 community is it's a highly assimilated body of believers. It's essentially the American church. Where you have a lot of different colors in the pews but they're all Jewish; or here they are all assimilated to Western European American culture. And one of the challenges I think, and when I preach around the country, I actually have to tell white evangelical audiences two things that would surprise most people. I have to tell them that they are not God's chosen people. And North America is not their Promised Land. I also have to tell them, that Jesus wasn't white. He didn't have blonde hair and didn’t blue eyes, he was not European. Because every picture they have of him, right, he is this white European running through the Middle East.
And the other thing I'm realizing now I have to challenge people on, is we have this understanding that Jesus's ministry was inclusive of everybody. And when we think about how do we grow a diverse church, how do we grow a diverse body of believers everyone will go back to the model of Jesus's ministry, because he was the one who loves everybody, and included everybody. But if you look at the interactions of Jesus in the Gospel, and we'll start with a story of the Syrophoenician woman, right, here is a gentile woman coming to Jesus who wants her child healed. And Jesus very clearly says, I'll heal you but you're second in line. And you have to understand that place before you get there.
There's actually only two other interactions that Jesus has with Gentiles in the Gospels. There's the Syrophoenician woman, there is the demoniac, who Jesus goes and he finds this demoniac, he heals the demoniac. But afterwards, the demoniac is begging Jesus to let him follow him. That gospel actually uses the word begging Jesus to let him follow him. And Jesus says, No, you can't follow me. You go back to your own people, and just tell them what God did for you.
And then there's the story of the Centurion. Right? Who has this amazing faith, he says to Jesus, you don't have to come into my house that would make you unclean. And you would have to go through this process of filling as well. Blah blah blah, I understand authority, just say the word. And I know my servant will be healed. Now Jesus is a person who every time he is shown great faith he absolutely rewards it. And for the Jewish people, that he heals, he goes above and beyond, right. He sits and listens to the bleeding woman's story until it's all over. He touches the leper who came for healing. He goes into the home of the tax collector, he sits and talks with the Samaritan woman. I mean, Jesus, when he sees faith, when he sees a chance to go deeper with people he every single time takes it! And he does not go into the home of the Centurion. He doesn't go into his home. Again, this is just a break from his other works. So the challenge right there is we have these little we only have three stories of Jesus interacted with Gentiles and all three of them are at best dismissive. And worse, right out exclusive.
Seth Price 18:52
Yeah, well, it feels like he's doing the bare minimum.
Mark Charles 18:55
He is! But we have to remember right, Jesus did not come to keep the moral code of 2021. Jesus came to keep the Old Testament law perfectly. And the Old Testament law actually required that he'd be separate from the Gentiles…required it. But again, this raises the question, so then where do the Gentiles get included? If they're not included in Christ's ministry? Well, then the next logical answer is Acts 2. And I've actually used Acts 2 for most of my adult life as “here's an inclusive church”. But when you look at the fact that Jesus didn't include Gentiles in his teaching, and now you see in Acts 2 that that whole group of believers were already Jews. So now this, again, this thing has just become easier to understand. So the Acts 2 community is not the inclusive body because it first required assimilation, because they all came from from the Jewish community. So then the next place that we see this is in Acts 10.
Seth Price 20:05
Well, before you get there…so I assume you've preached this in both Native American churches or indigenous churches, like you just referenced the, the New Mexico congregation, and maybe at a church in DC, or a church here in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I'm at or wherever, like, what is the feedback from that? When you basically say…I mean, because what I hear is, yeah, there's grace but we're kind of a second class citizen. You know what I mean? Which I can, yeah, so what's, what's the guffaw? They're like, what do people do just leave? Do they burn the church? Like, what happens?
Mark Charles 20:43
No, this is why I'm on your podcast, right! Because Can I Say This At Church? Which is, I'm pointing things out that once you see it, you acknowledge, I've always known that was there, but I haven't known what to do with it.
Seth Price 20:57
Yeah. So we don't talk about it.
Mark Charles 20:59
So we don't talk about it! Yeah! And so you know, who how many of us have heard sermons, even deeply challenging sermons about the Syrophoenician woman where Jesus still comes out looking really good. Instead of saying it appears that Jesus held the ethnocentric views of his time. Right, it appears that he was pretty clear of you are second in line and I'm here for the Jews first.
And so again, so what I'm pointing out I…the the most pushback I get from people, is, they immediately begin to think about the implications of this. And, in general, a white audience will have a bit harder time wrestling with this than a native audience from just the limited experience I've had.
Seth Price 21:53
Why do you think that's true?
Mark Charles 21:54
Well, again, I don't have any, if we just look at what… So the native audience has been in boarding schools. They've been mistreated, abused, some even raped in the name of Jesus. Right? And they were told by the people who are doing these atrocities and that Jesus loves you. He just requires you to be this way. And white audiences, again, looking at this passage creates a tension because the tension is well, was Jesus sinning? Was he somehow sinning because you know, of what he did? And it creates a tension of again, where do I get included in it? I mean, I can tell you for most of my adult life, I've envisioned myself following Jesus. And it was really challenging, difficult, to read, honestly, the story of the demoniac where this Gentile is begging Jesus to let him follow him and Jesus says no. Right.
And so putting myself as a Gentile back in that era, I'm like, yeah, there's a good chance Jesus wouldn't let me follow him. I have no biblical evidence that Jesus would allowed me to be one of his disciples had I been a Gentile back in that day. Just like I had to wrestle with the fact that had I'd lived in the Old Testament times, I probably would have had genocide committed against me and my people, because that's what they were doing to claim their promised lands.
And so it's interesting, I'm not even going to say this as a conclusion, it’s interesting that Western Europeans rather than really wrestling with that tension have just made Jesus white. So if there's a tension that says, well, Jesus, if there's biblical evidence that Jesus was not inclusive of people who are not conformed to Judaism, then your only two options are to conform to Judaism,
Seth Price 24:19
or redefine it
Mark Charles 24:21
or to redefine who Jesus is. And so Western Christianity made Jesus white. I'm not offering that as a conclusion. I'm saying it's an interesting observation.
Seth Price 24:30
Because then we get to step in in the place of the Jewish people in this case, and exert that we're now first in line.
Mark Charles 24:37
And I would even argue, and then it allows you to do Christian ministry. By telling other people they're second in line. And so when you have a narrative, like you have with the American church, towards native peoples or African people — African Americans, where there clearly is a understanding Have you are second in line? Right, pointing these things out kind of begins to shake up that whole, you know, pointing out that actually that model Jesus had is not the model we're supposed to be following. So let this gets you into the next part. Let me get to the part where we get included.
Seth Price 25:25
Okay.
Mark Charles 24:28
So in Acts 10, right, God shows this vision to Peter and on it is this blanket with all these animals, clean and unclean, and the command is, “kill and eat”. Now Peter, who's been with Jesus, his entire ministry, has walked and eaten and been with him. He was there in Mark 6 when Jesus declared all foods clean. And Peter definitively says, in Acts 10-never. We've never eaten anything unclean! So he's like, Jesus may have said they were clean, but we've never touched that stuff. We never went there! And again, there's no biblical evidence that Jesus did eat and break bread with Gentiles. It's not in the Gospels.
So while Peter’s pondering this Cornelius’ people come, he goes with them to their house, he walks into their house. And it's interesting that the first words out of his mouth is not “Oh, I remember when Jesus went into this Centurions house”, and set a precedent of we're going here. But Peter walks into kind of this house and he says, I shouldn't be here. You're a Gentile. I'm a Jew. I should not be here.
But he's there. He hears Cornelius’ story. He's beginning to preaching. And as he's preaching, he sees the Spirit fall on Cornelius and his family. And the circumcised believers who are with them were astonished that the Spirit of God fell even upon the Gentiles. Again, three years with Jesus (he) had no clue that the work they were doing was meant to radically include Gentiles. Peter is even again, his worldview is exploding right in front of his eyes. But he actually says, there is nothing to prevent me now from baptizing you. You've been given the same Spirit of God, and I'm going to baptize you. So again, he changes.
What's fascinating is an Acts 11. The disciples, the apostles hear that Peter was horror of horrors, eating with Gentiles. And they are angry at him for Peter goes back. He says, well, hold on, let me tell you the story. He tells them the story. And then the Apostles say, so then even the Gentiles are included! Again, three years with Jesus, they had no clue.
See, the challenge I think we have here is Jesus did not have an ethnically inclusive ministry. That was not his ministry model. In fact, he was quite clear. I'm here for the Jews first. And if there's any scraps leftover, I'll throw a few bones to the dogs. But he was very clear, he actually said it. I'm here for the Jews first. So what we've done, and so now, here we are 2000 years later, and the best church we have is the Acts 2 community minus the miracles, right. It's a bunch of people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, who have all chosen to assimilate to a single culture, so they can sit in the pews together. And why have we not gone further? We haven't gone further because we're using a model that was never intended to be the model. Jesus, I would argue, came to confront power, and to model true leadership, which is to go forth with humility to even accept persecution. That was what he was most adamant about when his disciples got a perverted sense of leadership and a misuse of power Jesus was there to absolutely correct them. And to say that's not what we're doing.
But he was not modeling this inclusive ministry of diverse ethnics and, we didn’t have race back then, backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds. And so we're using this model of Jesus when technically, and Jesus was pretty clear, right? He's like, I'm gonna die and go back to heaven and It's actually going to be better for you that I won't be here. Because then you'll get the Holy Spirit and the spirit will remind you of everything I've said. And in fact, he said, you're going to do even greater things than I've done.
And we see that happening in Acts 11, where Peter does something Jesus never did. He went into a Gentiles home, he broke bread with Gentiles. He baptized Gentiles who hadn't already converted to Judaism, uncircumcised people! Peter ushered into the kingdom of God, Jesus never did that. And so when we take the model of Jesus, and use it for what it wasn't meant to be. So if his model was about confronting power, and we now make it about ethnic inclusivity. Now this justifies us creating hierarchies, it justifies us telling people, I can call you a dog, and still be loving you. I can tell you, you're not qualified to follow me and still be loving you. I can not break bread with you and not go into your house, but expect you to break bread with me and come into my house after you assimilate to my culture, and still be loving you. When, that's actually what the Holy Spirit came to do. The Holy Spirit came. Once Jesus died on the cross. Once he reconciled all things back to creator, once the curtain was ripped that didn't just allow the Jews to now go into the Holy of Holies. It allowed the world to go into the Holy of Holies! And we see the Holy Spirit beginning to throw open that invitation. In the book of Acts.
Seth Price 31:47
I will be right back.
Is this an adequate way to restate that because a thought just popped in my mind? So if we're modeling Jesus we're being modeled away to subversively live in the culture that we live in to push people to uncomfortable places. And then we should further move and discipleship in a following of the Holy Spirit, which is a religion of “yeah these people too. And yes, those people too. And yeah, those people too. And also those people too.” (Mark laughs) Is that an overgeneralization?
Mark Charles 32:41
No, in fact, if you look in the book of Acts and Acts 2 and Acts 9, there is language around the body of believers about they were all in unison, they held things in common. They had this beautiful unity, that's in Acts 2 and in Acts 9. Once Gentiles, uncircumcised Gentiles, are brought into the church that language is not repeated. And, in fact, the church begins to fall apart. Right? Peter and Paul begin to have differences. And this book that begins with this picture of this highly assimilated church after the Holy Spirit does what the Spirit does the book ends with the Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, sitting in a rented apartment writing letters trying to frantically hold this fragile group together. And so it leaves us I would say, with this challenge of A: we're being asked to do something Jesus never did. And B: we're actually being given a task to do that has never been done before. Right! It's 2000 years later and we still don't have this radically inclusive church, that the Holy Spirit paints a picture of in Acts 10 and 11. I think it's because we're following the broken model.
Seth Price 34:04
Yeah. Well, I think there may be another reason I think it's because people want to fund things that they were a part of. But it stops where we become a part of. And after it progresses where I'm currently at. I don't want to be involved with this anymore. Which makes me kind of question the institutionality of the church, just as a whole, like, just as a big C global. Not the congregants of the church, not the body of the church. But the infrastructure of how it actually happened.
Mark Charles 34:38
It’s because it’s an institution. The goal of an institution is to preserve itself. And the church was called to lay down its life why I think it's impossible for the church to be an institution because institutions demand preservation.
Seth Price 34:57
How do I say this? So how is there a church then in 50 years if we live into that model? Or does the church just radically look like something that I wouldn't recognize if I was alive in 50 years? Hopefully, I will be, maybe medicine is amazing, but I probably won't be.
Mark Charles 35:15
You know, I think what's fascinating even right now is what's happened over the past two years with church during the pandemic. Where we have these clear divides of believers going, you know, really, truly demonstrating what it is they trust, and who it is that they're following. And there's a lot of people who have taken this two years as almost a break from deep engagement with church. Right, it's been harder to go when it's virtual, it's been harder to keep kids engaged when everything's online, and they're online for school all day. And I think there's a lot of people who have taken a break. And from (the) conversations I've had, there's a lot of people who feel healthier after taking that break.
Seth Price 36:14
Yeah, absolutely.
Mark Charles 36:16
They're feeling like, it's been nice to not go into this space, where I have to defend my humanity at a deeply spiritual level. So part of me is wondering is is what's even going to come out of what the church is going to look like, after this pandemic? Have some of these the seeds even been able to be sown a bit deeper during this pandemic while what we typically thought of as church, which is a building with a 75 minute service and weekly program list. Now that has changed radically. And I think there needs to be…I think that the pandemic can even help us even define what we understand the structured part of church to be. And I think there's a lot of people who have found that they've been able to maintain relationships with believers during the pandemic while the structures of the church have not adapted well and have not been feeding people near as well as is necessary.
So I don't know, I think I'm hoping we're gonna see a real transformation of the church as we come out of the pandemic,
Seth Price 37:33
I'm gonna, I'm gonna stretch this further than you may want to go. And so feel free to punt the question if you want, though, I can't edit it out of the video. I don't care to learn how but I can edit out the audio. So thinking of a church structured around “and them too…and them too”, if I give names to those “and them's” and we think about the church that you and I are part of today. Like, how do we intentionally conversate and move the church forward on inclusivity or even honestly coming to an agreement on a definition of terms on LGBTQ inclusion and racial inclusion and power and money and politics and everything that the pandemic is exacerbated or even science and, you know, vaccine, not vaccine, climate deniers, climate, not denier. You know, like, how do we begin to even talk about that in a way that pastors feel as though they're allowed to, because all of them have homes to pay for and lights to turn on? Like, how do you navigate those two?
Because it sounds easy to say, yeah, we just include people, let's do this thing. But I don't…I don't know if I was a pastor, or someone in leading a church, a treasurer, or something like that. Like, I don't know how I would push that forward.
Mark Charles 38:51
So I think that the key for this is right, this is not just another book topic. This is not just another thing to teach on. I think this lays a different set of expectations of what we're looking for God to do. Right? In Acts both 2 and 10 it was the Holy Spirit that initiated this radical inclusivity, right. The Holy Spirit in Acts 2 did not need to allow the disciples to speak the language of the nations, everyone there already spoke Hebrew. And they were used to hearing the works of God proclaimed in Hebrew. And when they heard it in their language they were amazed because they were for the very first time hearing the God of Abraham and his works being proclaimed in their own language! They had never experienced that before and they didn't know what to make of that.
Again, in Acts 10, the Holy Spirit initiate to Peter and says, “Eat these animals that even Jesus never touched”, go into this home a place where even Jesus never brought you baptize these people who even Jesus didn't baptize. And I think what it's been doing for me is it's been changing my expectations of what I'm looking for the Spirit of God to do.
Again, I think, we can only have faith in something that we have an expectation for. And if our expectation is that inclusivity looks like Jesus model of ministry instead of the Holy Spirit's model of ministry, I'm going to have different expectations. And so what I want to do is I want to begin to change people's expectations. And even challenge them of yeah, I think even Jesus understood the limitations that he had because he was a Jewish Messiah. Right. And that did not allow him to go certain places and interact in certain ways and do certain things. And we saw those limits very clearly, I think it demonstrated, even what Paul says, which is the law is a curse, it's not going to save you. It's only going to condemn you.
You know, Jesus. Absolutely. And I would agree he kept the law perfectly. And even that did not allow him to radically include the Gentiles. And so, rather than even teaching this, well, I want to begin to change people's expectations. And I want them to begin to expect the Holy Spirit to blow the doors wide open. And even against their own will, right! Even against what they want or expect. I mean, Peter was there I'm sure I'm sure if you were to give him the choice, hey, Peter, you want to go baptize a Gentile and bring them into them? This body of believers would have been like, um, you know, I'll pass on that today. But the Holy Spirit is the one who initiated it, and is like, no, this is what we're gonna do!
Seth Price 42:33
I'm gonna pass on that today.
Mark Charles 42:35
And so actually what this has done is A: it's been changing my expectations, and B: it's been changing how I pray and what I'm even expecting of God. Because one of the things I'm saying to God much more regular, I love the model of prayer of the leper who came to Jesus. And he said, if you are willing, you can make me clean. He lived his whole life as an outcast. He lived his whole life having to yell unclean, unclean. He lived his whole life being treated as a second class Jewish citizen. And he came to Jesus, he had heard his miracles, heard what he had done. And he said, I have every confidence that you have the authority, you have the power to heal me. I don't know if you have the character to heal me. If you're willing I know you can do this. And Jesus was indignant. He's like, What do you mean? And he actually reached out and touches the guy, again, he's Jewish so he's being radically inclusive. He touches the guy and says, I am willing be clean.
And I found myself praying to God, that way. I'm like, God, I have a Bible full of stories of you standing up boldly for the least among the Jewish people. I have church history, 2000 years, of you at least allowing Western Europeans to act with impunity. I have very little evidence, God, both biblically and historically of you taking a bold stand for black and brown people who aren't Jewish. I have very little evidence. There's a few stories here and a few stories there. But I have very little evidence of you taking a bold stand for black and brown people who aren't Jewish; even though I see clearly this is the trajectory going all the way back to Genesis. And what we see in Act 10 and even the the vision in Revelation, that you have this idea of reconciling all of creation, everyone back to you. But you have to stand up and do this.
And so I'm asking God, how long the Lord? I believe you can do it. But I'm waiting for, are you willing to do it? And so, my prayers have radically changed in the past year. And I've also begun to realize that, again, the myths of the church, right? Evangelicals believe they're the Jewish people, they have a covenant with God of Abraham, and that they're written into the story there. And so they interact with God like Jewish people. For most of my adult life, I believed I was a disciple of Jesus and I've had to wrestle with the fact of how I'd been alive back, then he probably would have not let me follow him. He might have healed me or giving me what I wanted if I would have shown I understood the hierarchy. But he probably wouldn't let me follow him.
And so I've been acknowledging that, yeah, I get written in, you as a white person, get written into the story in Acts 10. And what's fascinating is that after Acts 10 is where the church begins to fall apart.
Seth Price 46:17
Because it's inclusive?
Mark Charles 46:19
Now that it has uncircumcised Gentiles in it, it begins to fall apart. And we, again as I said earlier, this book ends not with a coming full circle of now we have this radically inclusive of an ethnically diverse body. But we have the Apostle to the Gentiles sitting alone in an empty apartment, writing letters to hold this fragile thing together. Almost leaving us with the challenge of “are you the reader of these words willing to go out and be used by the Spirit to create this radically inclusive body of believers?”
Seth Price 47:02
Yeah, it almost makes me want to make that if I get second, I'm probably got the verse wrong. 2 Corinthians like 3:17 (or 16) that one says “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there's freedom” almost makes you want to say where the Spirit of Lord is there is inclusion?
Mark Charles 47:15
Absolutely.
Seth Price 47:17
I don't know enough Greek to know if I can do that with the text. I'm actually going to text somebody in a minute, because that has popped into my head multiple times, as we've had this conversation.
So I have two other questions for you. And then I'll give you back to your missed sunrise. So outside of this I've begun playing on this shows name. So what are some of the things in brief that you're like; yeah, if the body of the church not necessarily the ministers, although, yes, of course, the ministers. If the body of the church does not talk about “x”, there is no future for the church? Like what are those things that people feel as though they can't talk about, in your opinion, that must be wrestled with in a public forum in the church and like lead from you and me not as the Minister of a church?
Mark Charles 48:02
I think we have to absolutely wrestle with the fact that Jesus's model of ministry was beholden to the ethnocentric views of his time. And that he did not challenge those views. I think we have to acknowledge that so that we can acknowledge the Holy Spirit is the one who radically brings in this teaching. And the Holy Spirit is the one who radically begins to do this. You know, the longer that we try to, especially this the story of the Syrophoenician woman, the longer that we use that story as a picture of Jesus' loving ministry and inclusive ministry, it's only going to perpetuate the inclusivity that we have in the church today.
So we have to acknowledge that Jesus wasn't modeling an inclusive ministry, an ethnically inclusive ministry, for us. He was modeling dynamics with power. He was modeling servant leadership. He was modeling, being humble and submissive to the spirit in the will of God. Which means we have to wrestle with how attentive are we to the Holy Spirit? How attentive are we too you know, this is what to Jesus’ credit, right? Yes, he never went into a Gentiles home. He never broke bread with Gentile people. He didn't allow Gentiles to follow him. But to his credit, when his disciples saw that this was what the Spirit was doing they jumped in with both feet!
I think Jesus, one of the things that he modeled beautifully, is waking up in the morning, praying to his father in heaven, getting guidance from the Spirit, and then allowing that to shape and mold his day. And so when when Peter saw the Holy Spirit fall on the Gentiles yes this radically challenged everything, even what he saw in Christ. But he's like, if this is what the Spirit of God is doing what's to prevent me from baptizing them? So I think that's one of the things where the church has to begin to really wrestle with that.
And I think we also need to wrestle with the fact that yeah, because we have this incomplete view, we're actually trying to build something that we're trying to build and assimilated church. Which is not what the Holy Spirit is about.
Seth Price 51:04
Yeah, that doesn't need to be built.
So last question, this has become my favorite question, Mark, over the last two years, and I don't think I asked this of you the first time. So when you as a person try to wrap words around what God is or what the divine is, or whatever that is, like, what do you say to that?
Mark Charles 51:25
I feel the most close to God when I am sitting outside 5:30-6am in the morning, watching the sunrise. I've already listened to the news that morning. I know that crises going on around the world, the droughts, the fires, the deaths, the wars. And I'm watching this piece of art, not being shown to me, but being constructed in front of me. I see the shades turning colors of the sun, I see the river flowing, I see the seasons changing, I see all these things. And my response, the first response out of my mouth, no matter what news I've heard that morning, no matter what's happened the day before, when I see those things, the first response out of my mouth is one of gratitude for a new day and for another day. And I understand God very clearly as a creator. And I understand that ultimately I don't have nearly as much control as I would like to think I have or that the world will tell me that I have.
And acknowledging that there while watching the sunrise on a regular basis it helps put me in my place. And you know, one of the things I've done the first chapter in the introduction to our book, I have two pages talking about the experience of watching the sunrise. After my campaign for president in 2020, where the conclusion was the nation definitively said to me, we don't want to deal with these issues. The Press didn't want to write about them, the candidates didn't want to engage with them. The nation is like, yeah, we don't want this, there's a remnant, a few people, but the nation by and large, we don't want to talk about these things. And so what I've begun doing since then, is I'm continuing, I've gone back to watching the sunrise. But now I'm live streaming the sunrise. And I'm doing that intentionally because part of the reason I'm where I'm at today in my understanding, and even what I'm fighting, what I'm working towards, came from watching the sunrise. And so I'm live streaming my sunrises in an effort to invite people and even disciple them into a worldview that understands there is a creator and we are not ultimately in control of everything. And we we need to acknowledge that.
And so, yeah, so I've been doing this and you know, I may who knows I may run again in 2024.
Seth Price 54:42
Do it.
Mark Charles 54:44
But right now I'm trying to lay the groundwork of like, Yeah, this is not just an educational problem. This is not just, you know, a trauma issue. There is something fundamental that our our nation doesn't understand which makes them unwilling or unable to look at our own history. And watching the sunrise helped me to get to a point where I could look at those things better. And so I'm literally inviting the nation several mornings a week to join me to watch the sunrise. And hoping that I will actually see some fruit of that if I do decide to run again in 2024. I'm going to continue to try to engage this. I don't know the exact next steps. But I know this is part of the groundwork that needs to be laid before we can really engage it at that level again.
Seth Price 55:35
Yeah. So where do you want people to go to do the things that they should be doing? And and I'm going to say, I'm going to link and I'm gonna have in the show notes, the link to both of the sermons, part one and part two, because I think, and for those listening, there is a lot in those that Mark didn't discuss. There's a lot of stories in there about your family, your upbringing that you didn't discuss a lot of other things that are weaved in there that that give a lot more meat to what we've gone over in brief. And so those are going to be there. And you really should listen to them. And I'll share them as well. But where do you want people to go to kind of engage in to do something like where where would you direct people to if they hear this and they're like, yeah, I want to, I want to get involved in something in this vein.
Mark Charles 56:17
Yeah, I would invite them first of all, to, you know, I'm very active on my own social media. And so I'm trying to do several things. I'm live streaming the sunrises I host several times a week, what I call my second cup of coffee, where I just get online and try to give a paradigm shift for the things going on politically and socially and economically around the world, and in the US. I'm also trying to start a sermon series are a teaching series on my YouTube channel that I'm calling are Decolonizing My Faith where I want to begin teaching about these things more regularly to not work with the institution of the church, but to work with what I'm beginning to call the remnant. Right, the people who are like, yeah, I'm not being fed. I'm not having my humanity affirmed in church.
I still know God, I still trust God is to believe in God. But church is more of a hindrance to me to that than a help. And so I want to help people to decolonize their faith so that they can meet their all that I'm doing on my social media. I'm doing a weekly book study, chapter by chapter of our book Unsettling Truths. So these are the places where I'm trying to put as many of my many resources out there in real time, as I'm engaging with this, as I'm teaching on these things. And I think the thing I'm most encouraged about is, especially this stuff we've been talking about today. A lot of people are, I’m not sure if agreeing is the right word, but a lot of people are acknowledging that there is absolutely something here. And there are things that we as Christians, but even the church needs to begin to wrestle with, because it's very clear that whatever model it is we're following, it's not working. It's not working. And it's been 2000 years. And I personally would like to invest myself in something that works.
Seth Price 58:20
Good. Good. Good.
Mark thank you so much for your time this morning. Very much so. And for the again, the breaking of your normal routine. I'm aware of obvious, especially now, how important that is to you. So I do appreciate your time very, very much this morning. And, and yeah, man, it's a pleasure to have you back.
Mark Charles 58:35
Thank you, Seth. I really appreciate it. Online I'm wirelesshogan on most social media. On Facebook, I have a verified account. Mark Charles Wireless Hogan is my my professional page, Twitter, Instagram, tik tok, and YouTube, engaging all those places. And so I encourage people to follow me under wirelesshogan. And yeah, join this conversation. I'm excited.
I think the thing I'm most excited about is, I really want to see what the Holy Spirit does. I want to see the Holy Spirit begin to press these issues, and challenge and even being to deconstruct some of what I would say are the institutions of the church that are clinging to this older model that isn't working. Yeah.
Seth Price 59:30
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