 It's been an honor just to be here with everyone, especially in the conversations I've had around the table and to the guest house. And as I prepared to come and share with you all, I wasn't sure what exactly it was that I needed to say. Yes, what was it that I contributed to the conversation? I certainly can't do it. Just to tell you what I think everyone should be doing. You'll get a little bit out of it, but out of that is what we call the anti-baptist community. So I grew up in a place called Northtown, Pennsylvania. Northtown is a kind of a unique place to grow up. It was outside Philadelphia, but it wasn't like the rest of the town. There's this small, urban, multiracial community there. So black, Hispanic, whites, I mean that was just the world that I grew up in. That's what I included. Also I migrated to various schools, spaces, rubbing shoulders, mental health, from all different backgrounds. My particular community, right through our lives, was primarily African-American, but Northtown was not that big. Everybody. And then space. Of course Northtown was kind of perfect, but it was illegal to make it like, oh, so then it started to show, you know, bubble from the rest of the world. And yet, I mean, in a very early age, I saw things going on, even in my middle school, there were like, tracks, like, similar type of schools as well. And, you know, Northtown was trying to keep schools that versed by buses, you know, so we had, you know, white students moving buses to our middle school. But the top tracks always were like almost all whites. And then, you know, everybody was with both blacks. There were a lot of tracks. I mean, so you see how race, how racialized people are in public schools just in this kind of thing. My family, I have two brothers and a older sister, and we got along. That's not true. But I grew up in a family. We loved to be company with Ryan. And every Sunday, we would finally be heading to church. The story of when I was probably four or five years old, I came running down the steps into the kitchen. Preachings of the gospel! I became a preacher. I did. That's where I gained a lot of my identity, the proof I was. This was a community that loved me and received love and affirmed who I was. It nurtured me and it saw in me gifts that I didn't see in myself. It produced me to Jesus. Certainly, Jesus loved people. And they taught me, this community taught me to take scripture seriously. It was through that community that I felt, you know, the sense of calling towards my high school years and wanted to take up biblical studies. And so, working around with all my different options, I found this place called Messiah College in Central PA. It was just far enough and I didn't get a little space, but I knew I could get help if I needed to. So, I found myself in Central PA, a grand film pencil, and I was sleeping freshman year horrified when I got here. Thank you. This might have been the worst decision I've ever made in my life. I got a place in a religious oriented and culture shock. I was still a fairly outgoing person at that time, so I adjusted. I adapted. I did well. I connected with my friends. And I was also a quiet observer of everything that was going on all around me. Slowly began to realize that the faith that I had seemed to be a little bit different than the common faith of the folks around me. Something was just different. I remember one particular chapel. And we had a guest speaker by the name of John Deere, who came in. And this is right after, I was living in 2000, 2000, of course. This is right after the war in 911 on that day. And so, John Deere is speaking correctly against, you know, old, white people, and the patrons didn't know the blindness that the blind has from seeing who Jesus was. They were like, yeah, this is really good stuff. And this is not the stuff that I was raised hearing in my own church for saying, but it just rings true. And while I'm there on the edge and I see like, yeah, it's right. I notice all of a sudden there's this mass exodus that's taking place. There's hundreds of students that are getting up and protests. They're being offended by this sermon and leaving. It was the most abrupt thing I had seen the whole time of the Messiah. I was trying to understand what was going on. What was it about what I had been discipled and informed into that had me have a very different kind of response to what the faith said. I hope to say that at Messiah, I didn't become an Anabaptist, but I did get an Anabaptist seat. Google studies major and I got to study with some folks that challenged me and stretched me and maybe look at things a little differently. But I remember particularly one, I was in my junior year and I found myself in my student apartment struggling, struggling with all the different ways that people justify through the Scriptures, every single one. Everything being justified by the Scriptures. Everyone had a verse. So I just struggled and I prayed over the Scripture. The Bible is there. I'm struggling. How can I read this faith? How can I read this text? I really believe that the Spirit of God opened my eyes at that moment. It was at that moment that I kind of had this what many people call the terminated Christ that the life and teachings of Jesus, what the Scriptures were all coming towards and the lens in which we read and interpret Scripture through. All the books kind of shifts that were taking place. I was wrestling with what it meant to be black in this space. And this was probably still, to this day, one of the most hardest spaces that I had to navigate as a black man. That's the one thing that my church didn't prepare me for. It didn't prepare me how to engage white Christians. It didn't tell me that that was going to be the primary space that I was going to be in stars from. It was on this campus being black. It wasn't simply being African-American because they loved the African students. It was the African-American students on the story that were the thugs that had to prove our humanity over and over again, prove that we were worthy of being loved and respected. And the sub-accompanies, the micro-aggressions, the dreams, I have to say, was paper cuts. Each one seemed so minor, but by the end of it, you might get a thousand paper cuts. I did, however, know I was trying to just adapt and have fun enjoying my college experience. I remember taking a road trip with some friends. We had one friend who was from Washington State from a middle of nowhere in Washington State. I didn't really believe him until we dropped him off. We went to the drop-off. That's the middle of nowhere. It was a fun trip. We kind of let go of the world. We kind of forgot about all the problems in the world, which is kind of living in our little fantasy world as we call it, across the nation, right? Some kind of rush more in all these different places. Yeah, it was a fun trip. And while I was there enjoying this kind of free college life, towards the end of the trip, because we left, I got a phone call. I found that my brother had been arrested. What we found out soon was that he'd been arrested. He was hanging out late at night. And I guess a few blocks away, not too far, some crime was committed. And so the cops were out with the jokobot, and the jokobot second time, and your parents only stopped. And they went to my brother and arrested him because he meant the description. Which was, he'd become a black male with a black t-shirt and blue jeans. He had a high description, no confession, no confess. My brother spent several weeks in the process of that search rate. Eventually all charges were dropped because they got hit by an apology. But I got a distraction in the last second. But for me, it was significant. I mean I knew that this stuff happened, but it was a little close to home. And this was the brother he could hear over the day. I don't think people sometimes ask me where twins. But I felt a lot of a new sense of vulnerability that had never felt before. That changed me. And that changed the... I haven't talked about racism, but it changed how I approached conversations going forward. Towards the very things during my last semester, I got a phone call. I don't know if it's one of the households who built the next mental pathway for our church. Well, Pastor Woody called me, because he wanted to come to meet me on campus. So he heard it pretty much. He comes to campus and he tells me about what's going on in their Christian community. He explains that they're an urban, multiracial, and a Baptist congregation there in the city of Harrisburg. He tells me this story about how this church was built. And it was an all-white church, and an all-white neighborhood, and, you know, white-white gang, just like many cities in the neighborhood changed. Most churches in the Gulf, but they remained in how they were struggling in China to become this racially recognized community of the mission of urban. And they're partnering with this, and they can all do the things that they're doing and stuff. And it was actually, we had a great conversation. And so a month after I graduated, there was the Mass of Harrisburg Ramblin Christ Church. And I didn't go because it was an anti-Fat congregation. I was resting at home. I don't want to dig into this additional grace in the church. I figured that we had serious problems, but we've got to work with them. This church was trying to make some room that was going to be the head of the power of leaders in the church. So 205 of us were having American leaders in the church in the process. I would say this church drastically changed when I got here from the last, I was living four years, as in fact, this worship, and just really allowing those who are a part of the congregation to shape the life of the church design. And I still remember long back just the lives. There was a people that blessed me and served me on the shoots of how I understand who Jesus is and what it is to be a follower of Jesus. And it was in this organic, you know, anti-Fat community, I know that this was an anti-Fat community in the past, this sort of thing. It was in this space, it began to unconsciously shape my own faith, kind of subtly, without me realizing it. And at the same time, though, I wasn't necessarily charmed by becoming anti-Fat. If anybody asked me, even while I was there, I meant anti-Fat is not said to know. I was reading, primarily, Black theology, critical race studies, and reconciliation aspects. That's what I was interested in. So I decided that I wanted to continue my education and ended up leaving after four years and heading back to Philadelphia. I went to biblical seminary, and as I just mentioned, that I was going to do with American concentration. This is the first time that, you know, entire education actually was in a classroom, primarily back in America. It's just a great space for me, as we progress through the questions that lead into our community. And yet, there was even a long side of some folks who were really leaving for sister churches, like them from the early on. In this space, I started calling myself an anti-Fat person. I realized I had changed. The community had impacted, left its marks on the information that happened that's taking place while I was there. And I wanted to acknowledge, be honest about my journey, but it also impacted me and my faith. I wanted to pay tribute to that information that took place both on the side and in Pittsburgh. I also began to run into some folks there who called themselves Neil Capats. Our cohort, you know, was black. We would sometimes study another cohort called the Mane Kings, which would have been mostly whites that were in the cohorts. And so, like, that felt, you know, what they were about, you know, mostly when we get into white middle class, highly educated males, mostly from the suburbs who are always kind of engaging and running across. And it seems, this is my interpretation, I don't think it's just there, this is broader, but it seems that a lot of them were coming, getting to there through initial theology first, but then standing how it was lost. That seemed to be, like, the trend. There's the courage to bring that back to me in my very own ways. But that's a theory. It's my working theory. But I also got these invites to speak at some of these spaces and got to a bunch of other conferences and you went back to concrete. Not being honest, I never felt like I fully fit in those worlds. While I was, again, back in theory, studying my black brother and sister, I started to think about some metadata in the orphanages. And so, and back to the Mane Kings, but I haven't spent seven years in Mane Kings. And unfortunately, either Messiah nor biblical, he didn't believe that Messiah was one of the Mane discipleship. I also began engaging about some fundamental people in Mane Kings. This group was a surprise of black, female, white, Asian, and a faculty. There's all throughout the Philadelphia area. And I'll say, like, I feel like, you know, you're my power. I've come to really value and love such a wide and diverse range of ways that, again, baptism is being expressed in the city there. I've said, I love Jesus. I'm seeking to follow Jesus. Struggling. Oh, struggling. But they're just unique and fresh. It's a Russian language. It's huge, unique. They speak in a pretty shabarous way in the city. Yeah. It's been a life-giving space for me. I've also, mentioned that I belong in Mane Kings, so I have too many places that I can post blogs if I wanted to. But, in the most part, I've been in Mane Kings for a long time. And trying to do so from a Black and a Baptist perspective, how can these two students speak into their everyday life and different issues that have come about. And I've also gotten to the food head meeting all kind of the folks. I'm going to show some of them. I've got the burden that Americans may be having. But, for whatever reason, they reached out to me. They were part of this blog. I agree. But I've gotten to connect with a whole variety of folks throughout the country over Mane and Mane and Baptist. And I've gotten to meet other folks. How do I meet some Black folks that are in the Black church and influence Mane and Baptist? Actually, a lot of them alluded to me that they have no interaction with the historic Mane and Baptist church. But they're not reflective of Mane and Baptist women. They don't identify themselves with those folks. So, they seem to really resonate a lot with what I'm doing because they're trying to get their space where they belong. So, for me, I've been wrestling with these questions and trying to make sense of who I am and the various things that have formed me. I often say that my illness in the KTV program is more about counseling. I mean, working out my own issues. But I've been able to focus on Black psychology and in fact, there's two traditions, there's two traditions that were born in the crucifix effort. You know, right? I mean, it's the social orders that try to literally crush them. They were to re-imagine who Jesus was following in the midst of being told that you can see there's this violence persecutor or a slave holding the Wilson lady bastard. They dare not see other lives. And so, in fact, these two Jesus are non-resistant Jesus and Africans Jesus, that was their close doctor. I think it's their friends, right? They're a liberator and a friend that they can call up and have a trouble with. And so, I want to happily engage with these two traditions and try to make sense of how these all come together. For all the church, how do we mutually learn from one another? Just one way of relationship. But a two-way relationship. So our theme, right, is where culture blurs theology. Hmm. Where culture blows theology. I kind of went back and forth when I like that phrase where culture blurs theology. And I went back and forth. I like it, I don't like it, I like it, I don't like it. It's an interesting way of moving forward. I'm sure I've over-analyzed the way that I'm going to shoot. But I think in thinking about it, I think it does actually provide some help in having some conversation. It's important to acknowledge that culture and theology are always worried. There are no places in which one's theology is not the only way to culture. Everyone's theology is the most of their particular place of time in some form or fashion. Everyone's theology is situated. I think what I didn't like about the phrase was the word culture being there without any adjective before us. That's what I think I didn't like about it. What culture? Ooh, culture. Culture in the culture. Culture in the new show. It's not just about difference either. We can think about culture primarily on the main difference, the celebrated difference. And that's important. It's not the only aspect of culture. And I'll get into it. So I had one of my friends connect to him to get to know me. And so we ended up in the middle of the afternoon at this McDonald's to have some sweet tea and chat. So there we are. We're chatting with Thomas for a little bit. But then he makes this movie traveling the cups and puts it right in the middle of the table. I can't see what's on my side of the cup. And you can't see what's on my side of the cup. I need you to tell me what's on your side of the cup and I'll tell you what's on my side of the cup. So I was like, that's very nice. I said, there's one problem with your attitude. The truth matters. I know it's on your side of the cup. Well, I wouldn't be right in today if I didn't know what was on your side of the cup. I've had to know what white people are thinking in the room. But you haven't had to know my experience. You haven't had to know black experience and black culture. Black pain. Your job is not going to be right in the moment you know about another consciousness in Du Bois. It's also black folk. You don't have to have an opinion about the shifts of hip hop in the 80's and eventually get a job. Right? So there's a way in which, yes this is, you know, different but there's also a hierarchical way in which culture functions and there's power relating to it. It's a hegemonic reality. It has to be named. That has to be called. But as precisely as that, I'm going to decide I like the phrase again. I don't think the word is a fair culture whereas it got to be an open philosophy. If you're at the top last playing, Grand Bois, Krav Maga, this is probably a reader's response. I'm sure this is not the intense of the original writers like Krav Maga's play. But where culture learned this through that was the question of where a social location of situatedness within a society that is hierarchical, a particularly heavy place of locations of power that I think our discussion around anabaptism can have some importance in it. Now of course, the other question is about where the culture learned this theology from anabaptist theology in this particular setting. What anabaptism? There's never been any anabaptist's theology, right? These anabaptisms or both historical and contemporary, you know, historical, you know, you see, all these are unmoderated on one hand and this magisterial understanding of what's actually the one they gave back to them they also had this very magisterial understanding of the social order and he didn't want that disrupted. Very different than the relative to the breaking off whose the very church is a critique against the social order. Very different understandings. Contemporary anabaptists as well and multiple anabaptists understandings of what it is to be anabaptist. What is anabaptism? And what I'm trying to suggest is not that we need to have sort of a modernist unifying perspective that everyone must agree on but at the same time I think we don't have to be honest about what do we mean when we say anabaptist. Not just pretending that all hands are in maybe all hands are not in. Right? Maybe some of our visions are conflicting. I think we need to have an honest conversation about what do we mean when we say anabaptist. Certainly if you know what I'm talking about I'd rather be Christ or some brother than a brother hall and with an each group and you've got multiple with an each of anabaptists we're very that first group that first expression of anabaptism and again I don't think it's necessarily a problem we must also realize that not everyone that embodies anabaptist faith in Christ is doing so in a complementary fashion. So what's been talked about a lot is that I've got some thoughts about what's the relationship between the anabaptist and the real anabaptist that's what we're doing. We want to have that conversation and I have my own thoughts I really believe that both you know anabaptist movement we call it that and the midnight church must engage with another both critically. I'm not a fan of the new kids on the block or the saviors of anybody I really don't see films that way and I get concerns of laughing when we have that kind of conversation in which the new anabaptist of the city is a fun and particularly problematic because of my own experience of what I've seen I think that there needs to be a mutual engagement and dialogue because of what we're finding particularly I'll talk about my own experience of what I've seen in the new anabaptist space it doesn't quite fit quite the same as what Greg Moore was calling about my own experience and his church taking exception there's always exceptions to the rule but I've seen that the new anabaptist space is a very white space very white space and uncritically so not weird necessarily of what they're bringing to the table so they're very conscious of men in a culture but not very conscious of their own culture and everyone has a culture everyone is socialized right and so jumping from evangelical world to the new anabaptist they still bring in also some cultural perspectives what is the baggage that they bring to the new anabaptist particularly as it relates to race I mean certainly sure there's ways we can critique the men in our church but but the evangelical church has some serious baggage to work through still as it relates to race and racism in our church I don't think we can just assume that everything they bring to the table is just something that we should assume and follow the line it needs to be a more dialogical, more critical engage I've been in spaces where I've seen this past fall someone tell me already know this past fall I was in diagonal with some anabaptists who were organizing events and it was centered all around white men and if you regularly went into how to get a diverse group to this event and I'm like well let's break up the decision making power this is excellent women and some people of color at the table that'll be a good start and let's not censor everything around white men they weren't willing to do so one of the reasons like that was because these are the people that are leading the conversation and my only response is leading your conversation your multiple conversations taking place I've been in a lot of different anabaptist spaces and this is the only space where I submit only being led by white men it's the only space no women of color were even participating in the event at all at the tea store I decided to workshop there I joke that I won the lottery I got to speak for black women but I chose well it was in September it was literally a week prior it was the black men and white women rock conference right and in two weeks it could be an urban mass symposium in Zilly which was again extremely diverse so we had these pockets happening in the men and white church where there is space for people of color right and I don't think all women are going to take credit for their pockets they're going boom but there's things happening there's some real stuff happening and I've noticed that it happens there's way too much space it'll need to we pay attention to some of the issues the struggles in the men and white church through the 20th century there's some lessons that women church has been wrestling throughout the 20th century there's a lot of fear and a lot of reflection I don't think it's healthy for them to just see themselves as the new benefactors or the saviors running by girls not to say that they don't bring something into the conversation they do, absolutely but it's got to be a mutual exchange that people are all in I was at an Hope for the Future I was invited to speak on Friday and so I wanted to just be there and surprise a couple people that I actually knew that was there from here on some of the stories some of the pain and frustration men and white people of color in the men and white church and the various challenges they faced in particular as it leads to control over the men and white space of institutions at the very top it seems to be the strong or just how dominance that refuses to let go and share life with those who join this church the perpetual overseers of what it means to be a men and white that's the left work so yes, on one hand men and white church is 20% men and white and that's the right work but on the other ethnic men and whites of practice prioritize the names and insiders and be defensive over the tradition and I'm not going to suggest that men and whites discard their traditions I don't think the problem is that's not the problem the issue is can we enter into a mutual relationship in which people that come into the church actually shape and shape and transform who we are collectively and mutually it's a two-way relationship and that's what the pattern happens is that in the men and white church this is a colonizing kind of way of being expecting everyone to assimilate so it's one way so we're seeing that people are willing to come in and receive but it doesn't seem to be functionally both ways so that what is men and white should be changing constantly we should not have this conversation so we certainly have to be moving with this privileging of ethnic federally heritage in the church it's my thing to recognize who we come from it's great to be telling stories of who we come from it's a whole lot of things to be privileging people based on the history but that seems to go very against what most of us say we love about men and white it's voluntary so what I see in one of the channels of the men and white church is a minority mentality because of the distinctions of men and white but not only up to also the simultaneously that men and white have assimilated into the ethnic culture that all the benefits of being white in the American culture is right minority mentality in one hand and yet assimilating and benefiting from all that goes along with being white in the downing culture as well and so my that doesn't seem right my I mean, certainly in that community that works but my my fear is that a large portion of together that movements, leather sex is turning its eyes towards the most privileged in our society as the kind of voices which we want to separate everything around and in doing so turning our backs away from the most vulnerable in our society so I've come to a term called Blackism I don't know what Blackism Blackism but I don't see my stuff necessarily as the floor coming it's just naming ethnic minority and actually many of you should know that in 1976 he was brown for the men night church and he had a challenge for the men night church he saw this steady move to assimilating into the downing culture and so he went to a distinct man night church from an baptism he challenged so while the men night church is assimilating into the downing culture Black overcatchin' hell we're an instrument in the 70s men night church recapture and will actually refund their more faithful expression and then have to tap into the Black theology of that movement that was going on and the struggle against the injustice that was going on in society and he did believe in mutual but coming together but he said men night church especially moving mostly in the downing culture can find a vision for ethnic baptism rooted in the concrete life of oppressed marginalized people and then doing so can rediscover an ethnic Baptist witness for today that mirrors more how they talk about ethnic baptism in the past that the very lives was a critique against the social not an affirmation of this that's about many of us many folks have been to that so I think in a baptism of Neo-Anchor he said completely their analysis of assimilation and complicity of the social order devastating the lives of those on the margins and so I believe that Jesus himself who's leading who's always been Jesus who came alongside stood with the Samaritans and vulnerable women and for the poor identified with them and this Jesus that is also leading us today in presence and calling us being us to come and it's this Jesus that is subversive I always I don't know my favorite past I always talk about Luke 13 31 and 35 the parents is kind of one Jesus that Herod was a hero he said go tell that fox I I said come on the ground healing and the storm those who are broken and hurt this is the Jesus that the spirit of the Lord is a common because he's known to me for a good news to the poor right to release the captives to let the oppressed go free thank the year to those so that's the vision this Jesus has called us to a new life reconfiguration of social relationships a new embodiment a struggle against the social order that kills especially black and brown life so anyway I'm running out of time I really believe that's the power of the culture but then also particularly I do my work the baptism in my proposal I think I meant that church more than the black church I think you're right I think you're right I do think I think you're right but I do think that there's something there there's really a dialogue but it doesn't mean I'm talking about black that's the life story of my experience but it's whatever oppressed communities are in your neighborhood in Canada not coming alongside the indigenous populations they're in Canada Hispanic brothers and sisters in your community coming alongside them I believe that's part of discipleship following the Jesus that if you got your eyes on him you're off to me get to your eyes on those who he had his eyes on