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So welcome everybody to this episode of Cultivating Ideas. Um Today's topic, the the title is Planting Seeds and Blood Stained Soil. The Legacy of early Baptist missions in the Borderlands. Um What a what a

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great title and quite intriguing. Um Looking forward to the conversation today, I'm Reverend Phil Dickey. I serve as the Director of Congregational Innovation at uh Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And it's, it's my joy

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to get to sit here and, and be a part of this conversation. Um Today we have as our guest, Doctor, an J an J Gardo as the, he's the assistant professor of church history

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at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses on the history of Christian thought and race and religion in the Americas. Prior to joining Austin Seminary, Doctor Gardo served on the faculty of Perkins School of

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Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas. In addition to representing A P T S on the board of the Hispanic Summer Program. Doctor Garard also serves as the co-chair of the Latino Latino, a religion

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, culture and society program unit in the American Academy of Religion and Society of B Literature. Doctor Gallardo scholarship re reimagines, the origins of Christianity in the Americas by examining the legacy of figures like Christopher Columbus

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and Bartolome de Las Casas. He is currently working on his first book, tentatively titled Mapping, The Nature of Empire. It narrates How in the wake of 1492 a view of the natural order, informed

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and contested the racial and geographic geographic hierarchies that emerged in the early modern world, which sounds fantastic and I cannot wait for your book to come out. Um I love that, that topic in Las Casas

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was very influential on me through seminary as well. So I'll be interested to check that out today's presentation . However, ventures into new ground. It builds on a paper delivered at Oxford University in August as

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part of the Baptist Scholars International Round Table. A revised version will be published in an edited volume as Baylor University Press next year. Um as as Doctor Garder presents. Um You're welcome to drop your,

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your questions you have in the chat, but really we'll have time for chat or for a Q and A at the end. So you're welcome to just jot them down. So you don't forget them as

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well. And then we'll have an opportunity kind of at the second half of the conversation here to uh or for the presentation, the second half of it to to have a real good conversation around what is

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presented. So without further ado, I welcome um Doctor an J Gallardo to for his presentation today. Well, thank you. Uh Thank you, Phil and welcome everyone. Uh It's a pleasure to be

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with you this uh this muggy uh afternoon. So , um full disc, you know, full, full, full disclosure. Um I am not Baptist , I am United Methodist. And, and so

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, uh, you, you know, when I , when I first uh proposed this topic as a , as a paper for the conference that it was for, you know, the first question that uh

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that I got uh was, you know, why are you writing about Baptist if you're, if you're not Baptist, uh which is fair. Um And the reason is because this was uh the topic of

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the conference was uh Baptist and Global Missions. And so, in order to participate in this conference, this is the uh the topic that I um that I ended up uh proposing and it was accepted.

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Uh Fortunately, so, uh today's talk um builds on, on this uh new research um that I conducted over the last year or so. And um as, as Phil mentioned in the, in the

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kind introduction, this uh ventures into new territory for me. Uh because my area of expertise is really the 15th century, um 15th and 16th century and , you know, I think 1492 and, and

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sort of the, the 50 years before and the 50 years after um and in the Atlantic world. And so writing, uh um you know, uh doing historical research uh on a subject, you know

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, that is really, you know, takes place in the night in the middle of the 19th century , right? In uh 18 hundreds, right? And in the Texas Mexico uh borderlands is um is

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outside of my wheelhouse, right? But uh as , as a um as, as a, as a, as a, as a scholar, as a, as a professor, I'm always uh trying

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to um to learn and to challenge myself. Um and also to, to understand the kind of um the history that, that we inhabit here. So um let me, let me share a little about

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the idea of and, and how I got interested in the subject. And then I want to kind of um give you a summary of the argument that I, that I um that I carry out in

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this paper and um and then uh outline how I made that argument in four, in four parts. Um And so, uh last, you know, I, I first started thinking about OK, uh

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about this subject. Uh Because last year uh a former colleague of mine, a former professor here at Austin Seminary who's now at Baylor um Doctor Joao Chavez uh published a book with Mercer Press, uh titled

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um The Global Mission of the Jim Crow South. And it was a fascinating book, something I had never really thought about. Um And it was basically , it basically traced the, the history of uh

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of Confederates of mainly Baptist, Southern Baptist and other Baptists of, in, in what was the Confederacy um that ended up leaving the United States and going to Brazil in, after, after the civil war

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, so late 19th, early 20th century, essentially . Um And uh he traces how they went to Brazil because Brazil was the last, essentially the last uh country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Um

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It, you know, it did. So, um I mean, in some regions uh even until like 1910, 19. So, um you know , quite uh quite late. And so, um

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you know, he, he traces how they tried to implement sort of a white civilization, white Christian society in Brazil. And uh I thought that was really fascinating. And so that sparked my, my

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curiosity and I started looking into, well how, you know, what, what is the, um you know, what, what's the, what are the origins of the Baptist church in, in Mexico

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? And um you know, as a, I mentioned that I was Methodist, but, you know , as a former Baptist, I grew up in a, in a Latino multicultural church in, in

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East L A. Um you know, where, where my immediate family still lives. And so I was, I was uh very interested in kind of the, the, the sort of the origins of

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Baptist in, in Mexico and, and broadly speaking in, in the borderlands. And what I came to find out was that the first Baptist church was founded in 1864 1864. Um And if that date

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sounds um familiar, it's because it was, well , a lot of things happened that year but, um, it, I was right smack in the middle of the civil war, the US Civil War

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and the, the first church was founded in, by, by this figure to my left um, uh a preacher, uh named an Irishman, uh named uh James Hickey who was born in 1800 died

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in 18, I believe in 1866. And um James Hickey um founded the first church. Um And this is a, a photo of it here uh that I'm covering up in what's now um in,

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in the city of Monterrey, which is in northern Mexico, just a few, uh just a few hours south of, of um of Austin. And , and so I started digging around and one of

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the interesting things that, that, that can, that sort of galvanized my, my interest was the fact that he was referred to as an abolitionist, right? Um Scholars, both um writers in his

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own period uh as well as um all of the sort of the historians of, of Baptist uh missionaries and, and the Baptist church in this, in this region um referred to him as someone who opposed

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slavery. Oh, the camera is doing something funny . Let's see. All right, there we go . Um As someone who opposed slavery, as someone who ab abhorred slavery. And so that got me

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really fascinated. Um And what I came to find out was that um while a lot of the scholarship on James Hickey, you know, praised him as the founder of, of the Baptist church, the

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founder of even Protestantism. Uh The he's even referred to by, by uh some Mexican scholars as the f you know, the, the founder of, of the evangelical faith in Mexico or Mexican soil.

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Um N no one had really considered uh with, with any great um detail, the ways that the conflicts over slavery in uh in Texas, in particular and in, in the US um related to um

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James Hickey's missionary ventures and to the, the broader Baptist um endeavors to spread um you know, um evangelical faith in, in uh south of the border . And, and so that basically that, that

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inspired me to kind of like tackle that subject, tackle that kind of uh you know, as a historian, you know, 111 approach uh to scholarship is, is to sort of um address a gap

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, right? I guess sort of a, some uh an issue or a question that, that the historiography, you know, has not, has not uh quite addressed yet. And so that became sort

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of uh my, my focal point and essentially in , in my research, what I came uh to , to, to see and what I argued in , in this paper and the, the, the

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thesis that I wanna kind of entertain for our time today is uh is the following. Um The hm my research essentially traces how an imperialist vision of geographic expansion compelled the earliest Baptist missionaries to conduct a project

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that entailed the violent dispossession of Mexican territory and the extension of slavery westward into Texas. Um That's essentially the, the argument that I carried out in this paper. Um And I did so in four parts

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. And the first part, what I did was uh I, I uh narrated how James Hickey arrived in Texas, right? He was born in uh in Ireland, really close to northern Ireland and how

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he um how he ended up uh you know, coming uh to, to this part of the world . Um He uh the, the second part um examines how the Baptist missions emerge uh within two broader

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geopolitical struggles, the Texas rebellion, which is uh 1919 36 and the North American invasion of Mexico. And so in this, in, in this here behind me, uh now is a map of what

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of the territory that was Mexico prior to um the , the invasion of uh the northern, what's called the North American invasion of Mexico that um essentially uh dispossessed half of Mexico's territory. So all of the

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orange, that was all um that was all territory that was uh dispossessed from Mexico following what's called the , the US Mexico war, the, the North American invasion. Um And of course, this uh

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this occurred immediately before James Hickey got there. And so he arrives, right? As this, this process is um is, is solidifying. And, and so the, the second part um traces uh

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traces these things and explores how the conflicts over slavery and territorial dispossession impacted Hickey's own trajectory. In the third part, I turned to consider the expanding missionary frontier in the mid 19th century. So I look

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at the ways that different missionary societies, particularly Baptist , but even even others um in Philadelphia ba those based in Philadelphia in, in New York City. Um and the senior representatives, how they deployed a

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discourse of geographic expansion to expand their global mission. And um and here you should be thinking manifest destiny , right? The, the idea that God has um given essentially White Anglo Saxon Protestant Americans, the

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, the, the, the the distinguished uh call uh or, or mission project to expand westward. And that, and that basically the uh the US uh should in fact extend from coast to coast and

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they gave them the sort of justification to expand westward . And um and that entailed the violent dispossession of Mexican territory. And so, um and, and so by doing this, uh the third part,

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what I do is I examine uh the impact of us imperialism by showing how Hickey and others relied on the US military to spread the gospel uh in Mexico . And one thing that uh that I found quite

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fascinating and Hickey is not the first. Uh but he's, you know, you know, he's, he, he so he's not the first, but he, he's one of one of many, um

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what are called cul cul port tours, uh Cul porters, uh which are basically um agents of either the American um uh Bible society, the American Track Society, um and other, other interdenominational agencies that

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basically recruited money, tons of money to buy Bibles and different tracks, different, essentially Christian literature and then distribute that around the world. And Hickey was commissioned by the American Track Society initially in Southern Texas

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um in the, in the 18 sixties. And um and what they did was um essentially use the US military to distribute Bibles in Spanish throughout Mexico during the wars, the different uh wars of uh that

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, that were taking place. And so these Bible societies welcomed, they in fact, celebrated the fact that the US decided to wage war westward in order to invade and take over. Um what was um

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Mexico's northern territories because that provided them what they called a, a sort of a la they, they conceived of as a, as a launching pad, as a, as a, as a kind of

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a base of operations was actually the term that was used uh for missions in the borderlands and then south of the border. Um And, and central to that was the dissemination of Bibles um through these uh

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uh culprits like James Hickey um by using um members of the US military. And so after I outlined that, that, that um that process, I traced that process. Um the fourth uh section of

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the, the fourth and final section of, of the paper. Um I, I stop and I , and I, and I look at how, you know, I, I pose a question,

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how did Baptist missionaries understand their own work in that time? Right. So we're here, we're talking um you know, 1818 sixties, right? Um Oh, here we go. OK, I'm back

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in focus. How did, how did uh how did Baptist missionaries understand their own work? And um and the um and so, you know, how , how did they conceive of their own project,

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their own mission? And one of the uh one of the um central voices uh that, that kind of captures the, the, the spirit of, of the age so to speak is uh figured by

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the name of, excuse me, of uh Chastain uh James Chastain. And he uh he wrote a book called 30 Years in Mich uh in Mexico that was commissioned by the various Baptists, both Northern and

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Southern Baptists in 1927. So essentially 100 years ago , just under 100 years ago and it was commissioned and, and, and he was, he served as a missionary for, I think about um close

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to 20 years, both in Mexico and in uh Puerto Rico. And he, he would also served as uh I mean, he, he, he , he played a lot of roles. He was

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a, he was an important figure and, and I look at the, at his text uh 30 years in Mexico. Um And, and the reason why I decided to, to, to do that

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, the thing that, that I, that really kind of initially shocked me was how he outlined his um Baptist intervention. And the book is essentially um nine chapters, right? Um And uh and the

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first, the, the, the main bulk of it deals with Spanish colonialism. And so he starts the book with Christopher Columbus. He starts the book with uh with the, the so called Discovery of

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the New World, Hernan Cortez, the Spanish uh co uh conquistador who invaded and took over Mexico City . And he, and he goes actually in with , with, with actually considerable sophistication. I mean

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, citing primary sources, he's drawing on uh even contemporary scholars. Um and, and historians of his own day to show, to essentially paint a picture , draw, draw an arc of a historical arc

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of missionary intervention in Mexico, beginning with the Spanish and essentially being perfected or culminating with North American Baptist intervention. And the one, the, the uh the one um the major distinction that he puts forth

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in his book that I found actually quite uh you know, telling was that unlike the Spanish, um you know, uh the Spanish missionary uh ventures that um that occurred or began in the 16th century.

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Um you know, those were, those were predicated on to what he calls faulty and, and human um foundations, papal authority and uh kingly authority or a royal authority, right? And what he says

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is, you know, essentially the Spanish got some things, right? You know, but they, they, they claim their claim over this territory um is predicated on these two faulty things. Whereas Baptists

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and North American Baptists in particular, we are uh our mission is, is is on something much more uh stable, much more sound and that is the authority of scripture. And so he, you know

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, that's, it's a very, very Baptist uh kind of uh explanation, right? So um essentially what I, what I go on to show is how, how um how Chastain and the, the

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first generation of missionaries after Hickey articulate their own missionary interventions as a neo colonialist project, right? One that is an improvement upon the Spanish uh the Spanish efforts, you know, uh beginning with Columbus Hernan

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Cortez continuing on to the 17th and 18th century. Uh but, but basically predicated on the authority of scripture as, as sort of the bona fide um grounds upon which um military and religious intervention um uh

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abroad is conducted. So, um that's, that's essentially the arc of the, of the, of the argument. Um And of course, you know , for, for us in the borderlands, I

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think that this raises a lot of sort of questions about how we understand um the, the relationship between uh us imperialism and, and missions, right? And different uh Christian agencies and the um the sort

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of the, the, the less than obvious intersections between uh things like um the institution of slavery and um the, the uh territorial dispossession of what was Texas and the earliest um uh Baptist seeds in this

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part of the world. And so, um with that being said, let me, I wanna show a few more images. Um One thing that I , that I, that I show in um that

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I, that I discovered and I have to credit one of, one of my current students, uh David Angulo for um for introducing this map to me . This map is uh was produced by the um

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the, the, it's a, it, it's in the Library of Congress and it was produced by the uh Department of the Interior. Um And it shows uh based on density, the darkest parts uh

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have a higher density of the enslaved population in the Southern States in 1860. So here we're, we're , we're talking 1860 right when James Hickey is in southern Texas. Um And you know, right for

00:23:08.270 - 00:23:19.120

the um the, the US, uh the, the Civil War uh takes off and here you see where the, you know, basically the uh what's this area here is essentially the Mississippi this in Louisiana

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and of course, further further west, I guess I can't point to it but uh is Texas and you see how uh Houston is, uh is very , is very, very dark. And the part

00:23:32.570 - 00:23:45.600

that I've edited and zoomed in is Austin, Austin . If you, if you see there had basically almost a quarter of it, of the population of Austin um of, of this county of Travis County

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, uh was uh was enslaved. And one thing that I discovered in my, in my research was that Hickey um was actually had to flee Mexico. Uh He started preaching in 1856 and he had to

00:23:59.210 - 00:24:12.500

flee Mexico because of the anti protestant sentiment. And that in uh in that area and he came to uh real, he came to, to live in Bell County, which is just 30 about 30 45

00:24:12.510 - 00:24:26.100

minutes north of where um Austin Seminary is today. And um and the more I dug into the history , the more I found out how, you know , the context, right? The because remember one

00:24:26.110 - 00:24:37.590

of the central questions that I, that I began asking is, how is it that, how is it that, that Hickey, you know, is credited to be a uh an abolitionist and to oppose

00:24:37.600 - 00:24:52.230

slavery. But there's very little like actual like of his own. Like there, I can, I had a really difficult time finding any evidence of his own writing uh regarding um his views of slavery or

00:24:52.240 - 00:25:03.560

, you know, abolitionists or, you know, abolitionism, how that influences preaching or his theology or anything like that. But one thing that I did find out was that he relocated to Bell County and

00:25:03.570 - 00:25:19.810

the year that he moved there, um uh there was a AAA slave plantation, a cotton plantation that um that belonged to a very important uh figure in Texas named uh well, it, it was,

00:25:19.820 - 00:25:33.790

it's, it's the Robertson family um that, that immigrated from, I believe, from Tennessee, uh precisely uh uh to Texas from Tennessee was where they were part of the uh like the initial settlers um

00:25:33.800 - 00:25:48.260

that uh were interested in expanding slavery westward into Texas . And um and so this is, these are pictures that I took. Um This is, this is a, this is an image from the Texas

00:25:48.270 - 00:25:59.390

historical society. Um And this is an image of , of the slave quarters of the plantation. Um The picture was taken in 1970. So, hence the quality uh but I took these, these two

00:25:59.400 - 00:26:10.970

photos uh actually on the way to a faculty retreat uh earlier this uh this year in, in, in August after I wrote the paper. Um And this is actually a uh uh uh part of the

00:26:10.980 - 00:26:25.420

um historical uh it's a historic site that's preserved uh by the State of Texas. It's actually one of the, the best preserved um slave plantations in the state. Um And, and this is, um

00:26:25.460 - 00:26:34.490

and so that is something that, that I hope to, to, to, to integrate into my courses uh moving forward because it's, it's literally in our, in our just, you know, in

00:26:34.500 - 00:26:48.720

our backyard and it, and it, um, and this, this slave plantation is really important because the Robertson family, they were, um, they were instrumental in one waging the war of rebellion against

00:26:48.730 - 00:26:57.610

Mexico that or the, the war of Texas independence as it's sometimes called, um, as well as the, uh, the, the civil war, they were part of the confederacy. they were part

00:26:57.620 - 00:27:08.920

of the family, some of the, the, the signatories of that, that, that waged a war against Mexico and then, um, seceded from , uh, from the United States. And so

00:27:08.930 - 00:27:18.190

they played a really important role in that, um , in that process. Um There's the image of , there's a map, um, also, uh from, uh, I believe this one's from the

00:27:18.200 - 00:27:30.930

Library of Congress as well that shows uh, some of the, uh initial, uh what were called settlements or, or uh colonies that the Mexican government , uh allowed for different families, uh American families

00:27:30.940 - 00:27:41.150

to come and come and settle. And this is , uh, um, an image of the house where the, uh, it was called Bible House or Astro Place in, uh, in New York

00:27:41.160 - 00:27:52.600

City in Manhattan. That, um, that did a lot of the fundraising as well as, uh for the, uh, for all the biblical literature and the Christian literature that was disseminated, not just

00:27:52.610 - 00:28:10.120

in Mexico, but, uh around the world in the mid and, and late um 19th century. All right. So um the last image is here and this is actually uh a map from 1502 uh

00:28:10.130 - 00:28:22.820

that illustrates something that Chastain, the uh James Ches Chastain, who I, who I mentioned the historian from 100 years ago uh that he refers to and you, you might not be able to tell.

00:28:22.830 - 00:28:33.470

But if you, if you, OK, so this, this is one of the, the, it's, it's either the, it's historians debate this , but it's either the earliest or the, the

00:28:33.480 - 00:28:47.030

, one of definitely one of the earliest is 1502 commissioned by the um the, the Portuguese Crown to show basically uh where the new world is in relationship to the old, right into, into the rest

00:28:47.040 - 00:29:00.010

of the rest of um mainly uh Western Europe. And you see a line that is that if you look at um a sort of West Africa and you go west where you see that horizontal line, that

00:29:00.020 - 00:29:15.040

is the papal demarcation, it's called the papal demarcation or uh the papal donation. It's also referred to . And that is what uh the line that Pope Alexander, the um the, the sixth um issued

00:29:15.050 - 00:29:30.060

uh right after uh Columbus returned from his first voyage to show the territory that was belonged to, to Spain. Spain uh was, was um uh granted uh was donated by the Pope authority and Dominion over

00:29:30.070 - 00:29:44.210

the territories to the west of that. And uh Portugal had Dominion to uh to the east of that uh of that line. And that line became a very contested border uh to determine the uh the boundaries

00:29:44.210 - 00:29:56.740

of Empire um in as early as 1502. So this is, this is prior to Luther, OK , 1502. Um And so, and this is the uh this is the line that Chastain himself refers

00:29:56.750 - 00:30:14.320

to um in his, when he's given you an account in 30 years in Mexico of, of Baptist um uh interventions in, in the borderlands. So um that concludes my presentation. I'm interested in hearing

00:30:14.330 - 00:30:25.760

your questions and your thoughts and I pass it over uh to uh to my uh to my, my colleague, Phil to uh to get us going with that. Thank you. Thank you for that wonderful

00:30:25.770 - 00:30:34.360

presentation. And just uh this is kind of just open conversation. So you're welcome to raise a hand if you want to on the, that you can do on reactions or just unmute and, and chime

00:30:34.370 - 00:30:41.500

in for the question that you have if you aren't able to speak right now and have a question put in the chat, I'd be happy to read it for you. Um And just to let you know

00:30:41.510 - 00:30:49.360

, we have about 20 minutes, Doctor Guard has to go teach a class right at one o'clock. So we have right at 20 minutes. But if the conversation is still rolling, we can excuse him

00:30:49.370 - 00:30:59.750

and we can keep the conversation going as well. But um the table is open for any conversa or any questions that are, that are present, Doctor Gallardo. This is Carlos Balas. Wanna thank you

00:30:59.760 - 00:31:11.950

, sir for your awesome presentation. Uh given the context that we're in right now. Uh I'm afraid that you may be accused of being in the world culture in Texas and in Florida uh for re for

00:31:11.960 - 00:31:23.030

rewriting history, uh instead of presenting history the way you've done it. I also applaud your effort in expanding the, the uh conversation. Uh Much of the conversation in the US history has been the black

00:31:23.040 - 00:31:33.360

and white. Uh It's, it's refreshing to hear a Hispanic uh speaking up and also bringing the, the, the portion of that uh some of the conversation in the United States has been dealing with the

00:31:33.370 - 00:31:47.320

reparations uh mainly to the African American community. But uh I think uh if they're going to be talking reparations, I think there's a big uh uh event here to be able to open up to discuss the

00:31:47.330 - 00:31:56.760

reparations of the land grabbing that was done to the Mexican citizens, not only in Texas, but all the way to Colorado, to Nevada, all the way to Montana, which reaches up to, to

00:31:56.770 - 00:32:08.860

Colorado. I wanted to ask you, sir, in your research, did you uh by any chance uh include the, the effects of the Monroe Doctrine and also the Treaty of Guadalupe uh and how that

00:32:08.870 - 00:32:20.410

affected uh the uh, the change in, in history. Uh, and my response to, uh , Phil's question, uh, how is, uh , Christianity at the borderland? I see it as

00:32:20.420 - 00:32:30.140

distorted. Uh, many of these mission trips, uh, go with the mentality that we are the , uh, the knight in shining armor and we're gonna go out there and help them and we come

00:32:30.150 - 00:32:40.020

back with feathers in her hat and another notch and a bill buckle. And, you know what we , we really did something for them, you know , but it was much of this missionary effort has

00:32:40.030 - 00:32:59.360

been um uh for self edification and not for the development of the countries that we go to the, the Jose Gonzalez in his book of the History of Christianity. Uh re reports that Christianity, the Christianity

00:32:59.370 - 00:33:14.930

that that reached um uh Rome is not the Christianity that reached the Americas. The Christianity that left Jerusalem uh to, to Rome was uh was the the the genuine Christianity of Christ, loving thy neighbor.

00:33:14.990 - 00:33:27.870

When Constantine came into power, he had this vision and with this, you will conquer uh from that moment on uh the Europeans uh Spanish, Portugal, England, all all that that came into the Americas

00:33:27.880 - 00:33:39.080

uh have brought Christianity with the point of the sword and the source still continues today. Uh but it's not a physical sword, it's it's related in power . So the people who were printing uh Bibles and

00:33:39.090 - 00:33:51.410

things like this, those people are in control of the narrative because they, they have the printing presses and up until now, uh which is, I am so grateful for your presentation because I finally hear

00:33:51.420 - 00:34:01.130

this conversation that I heard in Mexico. When I was a student out there, my parents sent me to study out there uh over 40 years ago, that conversation that you presented today, I heard it

00:34:01.140 - 00:34:12.520

there, but this is the first time I hear it at us. So, congratulations, sir. And again, uh Monroe Doctrine and um AA Treaty . Thank you, sir. Yeah. No.

00:34:12.530 - 00:34:24.180

Uh Well, thank you as uh was it Jorge Jorge Valdez, right? Carlos Carlos Valdez. Carlos Valdez. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So uh yeah, you put a lot of steak on

00:34:24.190 - 00:34:46.640

the, on the grill there. Uh uh But to your, to your question, yeah, here's the thing. Um It's not just who owns the printing presses but who, who is in a position

00:34:46.650 - 00:34:58.300

to um the question is who's in the position to write the store, the, the sort of the , the dominant narrative, right? And, and it kind of, I mean, it goes to

00:34:58.310 - 00:35:07.560

your initial comment uh that, that, that you made about sort of the, the kind of attack on, on woke is, and this is being used as a, as a way to sort of

00:35:07.570 - 00:35:23.190

tar um tar historians and historical analysis that actually that call into question the sort of the, what, what some scholars call the dominant white, the dominant Anglo narrative of, specifically of Texas. And so

00:35:23.200 - 00:35:37.800

one book that I, that I, that really um coincided and it was really, uh sort of inspiring for me was uh forget the Alamo. Um And, and actually uh finished reading after I wrote

00:35:37.810 - 00:35:52.200

this paper. Um but, um it, it basically tries to show how a lot, a lot of the myths and um about Texas, the foun , the foundational myths of Texas are not based in

00:35:52.550 - 00:36:04.410

um historical in history. And they, there's, there's very little to no evidence to, to back them up. And um and so, and one thing that they conceal, so they, they,

00:36:04.420 - 00:36:17.890

one thing that they conceal is the fun, the sort of the underlying reason for um for, for waging war against tyranny. The tyranny that the Texans , the white uh Texan settlers were rebelling against were

00:36:17.900 - 00:36:35.000

abolitionist laws that were um being put forth by the federal, the Mexican Federal government, right? So the tyranny was essentially how dare this Mexican government try to outlaw our, our way of life, our

00:36:35.010 - 00:36:45.300

economic system, uh predicated on, on the enslavement of black people and what they, what they did was was, was wage a war, right? And, and war of rebellion. Hence, um

00:36:45.310 - 00:36:57.600

and, and this goes to, to, and with, to the other point that you raised about the Treaty of Guadalupe and the Monroe Doctrine, I didn't have a chance to go into great detail.

00:36:57.710 - 00:37:08.540

But when I presented this, this paper at at Oxford um Doug Weaver, uh who's uh the chair of the uh the religion department at Baylor uh pointed out that, that Baylor actually has some of the

00:37:08.730 - 00:37:22.610

has in their archive in the rare rare book archive . Um some of the foundational documents for sort of the Texas Republic. And he suggested that I, that I use those to essentially develop this into,

00:37:22.630 - 00:37:35.450

into a full length book um instead of just uh just uh keeping it as an article. Um And that would definitely, uh if I did, if I do do that, that would entail um engaging

00:37:35.450 - 00:37:50.630

the Monroe Doctrine and the Treaty of Guadalupe and the , and the, and some of the um the other things that preceded uh James Hickey in particular. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your question

00:37:50.640 - 00:38:07.890

, Carlos Others. I also drop that a reference to that book. Uh Forgetting Alamo, forget the Alamo in the chat. If you want to check it out as well. Rick, go ahead.

00:38:13.310 - 00:38:23.340

Still, still muted. Rick, let me see if I can there. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. OK. I guess what, what, what caught my ear was

00:38:23.350 - 00:38:43.560

the, um you know, who, who controls and who dominates the, the, the, the news media and, and, and the narrative and um you know, um back, back in the

00:38:43.570 - 00:39:00.430

fifties and sixties um westerns series on TV. It was very popular. It's the myth of the old West Americas can do anything and, and so forth . You know, there was this myth and it

00:39:00.440 - 00:39:20.250

was used, I believe as propaganda. The myth of the old West was propaganda for white Americans. And, and, and I, and I wonder how do those that we have? We, cause

00:39:20.260 - 00:39:36.760

I'm white, we, um, have used in the past to profit from and to benefit from and even used God who tells us you're not supposed to do this stuff. uh as, as, as

00:39:36.770 - 00:40:05.100

a basis for um propagandizing uh this idea that we can do what we want because it's in some way , were chosen. And uh you know, I think Rupert Murdoch owns many of the um news outlets

00:40:05.110 - 00:40:15.310

in our country. And so how, how, and I don't know if, you know, if there doesn't have to be an answer right now. But what I wonder is, how do, how

00:40:15.320 - 00:40:31.010

do people who are woke? And I don't find that as uh uh a derogatory word because that if I'm not woke, then I'm asleep. And so what do I wanna be awake or asleep? And

00:40:31.020 - 00:40:53.570

those of us who are awake, how do we , how do we start obtaining or, or getting into the mainstream news media where the truth can be told on a broader scale? That's a, that's

00:40:53.580 - 00:41:02.910

a doozy. And I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that, but I do think, um I do think that you put your finger on something really important that as you know, as a theo

00:41:04.040 - 00:41:15.690

as a theological educator. And, and for those , those, those of you students are also involved in theological education, whether at the local parish level um or, or in the seminary in the,

00:41:15.700 - 00:41:32.330

in the classrooms. One thing that, that constantly comes up is actually uh something that I learned when I was in Divinity school. And that is that at the heart of um the imperialist project post 1492

00:41:32.340 - 00:41:55.150

is the theological idea that white Western European Christians have surpassed, have superseded Israel as God's chosen people. That, that heretical idea is the seed out of which various waves and phases of colonialism over the last

00:41:55.160 - 00:42:13.880

500 years have continued to, to develop and to and to and to expand. And so I think that that's um that way of thinking uh in is alive and well in many of our churches and many

00:42:13.890 - 00:42:30.300

of our textbooks and many of our sermons. And so I think that being attuned to that um in and, and, and trying to uh trying to expose that for what it is um is part of

00:42:30.310 - 00:42:46.190

part of a, it's gotta be part of the solution. Thank you. Thank you. Mhm Thank you for your question. If no one, if somebody jump in, if they have a question,

00:42:46.200 - 00:42:57.700

but I'll build on that just a little bit. And the idea of if, if the Baptists felt like they were evolving their authority, imperial authority from kind of Papal, the the the crown, if

00:42:57.710 - 00:43:14.810

you will to scripture, do you see that there's a next evolution taking place in the ever evolving imperialism that is happening worldwide as a good Methodist, right ? You know, a Methodist here, like if

00:43:14.820 - 00:43:27.570

is this is a tradition, is it reason, is it experience, right? Like what's like is there the next evolution? You know, the short answer is, I don't know, I think that's

00:43:27.580 - 00:43:37.090

an excellent question. And I think that that is , that's a question that I would, I would , I would, I would punt, I would , I would toss the ball over to uh to

00:43:37.100 - 00:43:51.570

the Myos and the, the folks doing uh uh global Christianity. But I think that, you know , one thing that is, that is certain is that the, that the imperialism that that started,

00:43:51.580 - 00:44:02.600

this is no longer what's the dominant sort of imperial system or of, of power today. And, and so we have to, we have to turn our, our critique and our attention to sort of

00:44:02.610 - 00:44:17.670

global capitalism and the way in we, in the ways in which that um ends up sort of laying down the terms upon which civilized Christianity can, can develop. And so one thing and I actually is

00:44:17.680 - 00:44:28.610

connected to this history because one of the things that I learned in, in my research and this here , I'm, I'm Dr uh I learned from a historian uh long time historian at the University of Houston

00:44:28.620 - 00:44:50.570

John Hart, um who basically shows how the, the boards of JP Morgan Chase and uh JP Morgan and Chase Bank and, and Citibank um funded uh sent, funded all kinds of politicians in Congress and

00:44:50.580 - 00:45:06.310

different propaganda efforts to um promote the idea of Western expansion precisely uh in, in order in, in the build up to the, the North American invasion of Mexico. Um because they saw it as prime

00:45:06.320 - 00:45:17.970

real estate to, to build railways uh westward and it's northern Mexico and in order to, to further their, you know, their, their economic interests . And so, you know, the thing is

00:45:17.990 - 00:45:30.410

that the missionary societies echoed and, and built on that and, and, you know, promoted the kind of the benefits of ba basically capitalist growth in the, in the mid 19th century. And so

00:45:30.410 - 00:45:38.650

did so so did uh members of the ruling class in Mexico. So don't, you know, it wasn't just one sided um because they, they, they saw, they saw it as, as beneficial

00:45:38.660 - 00:45:52.900

as, as, as having uh an opportunity to , to establish monopolies or to, you know, for the business interests. And I think that in many ways that continues to be um a very uh

00:45:52.910 - 00:46:02.490

sort of set the terms for the, the kind of the global system that we inhabit today. So I think that would be, I think the kind of the, the analysis would have to turn that

00:46:02.500 - 00:46:24.840

way. Doctor Greer has five more minutes if we have another question. Anybody else have a question? I have a different kind of question uh for Doctor Gallardo. Um I'm wondering when, when Baptist missionaries

00:46:24.850 - 00:46:43.440

were um trying to convert uh their Hearers to their , their uh version of uh the Christian faith, were they more concerned about luring them away from the errors of popery? Or were they more concerned to

00:46:43.450 - 00:47:08.080

sort of give them a um uh a, a racialized hierarchy of the world and explaining to them? Uh There, there are relative subordination to uh the white missionaries. That's an excellent question. Um It's

00:47:08.090 - 00:47:21.690

actually both. So in, in all of pretty much in all of the, the missionary literature, the the evils of, of popery, of, of basically of Roman Catholicism. And you know,

00:47:21.700 - 00:47:34.650

that is that is ubiquitous in the, in the Baptist literature and, and missionary sort of missionary literature in, in general in this period. So um Henry Morehouse who uh was uh like the, the

00:47:34.660 - 00:47:49.570

General Secretary of the American Bible Society. Um And he's actually the Morehouse that Morehouse College in Atlanta is named after. Um he um he, you know , he uses this language a lot. So that

00:47:49.580 - 00:48:00.240

is definitely, that is definitely there. But part of, part of what I think at, at least from what I've, what I've seen, what I in doing the research for this paper, what

00:48:00.250 - 00:48:16.080

I saw was that the kind of the racial imagination of white supremacy was sort of integral to was was sort of AAA subtext was sort of, it was integral to the kind of missionary um efforts, right

00:48:16.090 - 00:48:30.720

? Have sort of let, let us let because the the kind of the the logic was become more like us and by becoming more like us, you will, you will, you will, you will

00:48:30.250 - 00:48:45.270

um become more like what God wants you to be , right? And so the kind of the white ideal was still, was the sort of uh was , was, was the template on which um both

00:48:45.280 - 00:48:57.820

in both, in terms of the, the racialization . And you see this in, in, in the laws that passed in Texas after Texas went from being um uh part of Mexico to its own Republic

00:48:57.830 - 00:49:10.030

and then subsequently part of the US and then, and then a confederate state. Um You see this in the laws that were passed there and, and this is actually what surprised and, and um really

00:49:10.040 - 00:49:22.470

undermined a lot of the uh the Tejanos, the , the, the Mexicans in Texas in Texas prior to the War of Independence that they thought that they were going, going to be equal citizens along with

00:49:22.720 - 00:49:36.940

, you know, the, the white Texans. And when, when they gained, you know, independence from, from Mexico, um the laws that were implemented um took their land away, exclude them

00:49:36.950 - 00:49:50.870

from all kinds of positions of power. And it , it implemented um a whole racial hierarchy. Um and, and slavery in, in what was Mexican territory in Mexico, white, sort of the white

00:49:50.880 - 00:50:04.870

dominant class didn't have the same, the same power , right. But, and that's why I think that, that, uh but where there, where there's continuity is in the kind of the economic and

00:50:04.880 - 00:50:22.800

, and uh and capitalist systems that sort of um restructure the borderlands into, into um what we see today. Well, friends, if you'll join me in either plotting, shaking, whatever you want to

00:50:22.810 - 00:50:30.270

do to get to give a, a gratefulness to Doctor Gallardo. Uh We are indeed grateful for your presentation and for all the research you've done. And uh sounds like you got a lot of work to

00:50:30.280 - 00:50:37.870

do to, to finish that book then to, to turn it into a full book, right? No, no pressure, no pressure, right? Yeah, no pressure at all. Well, thank

00:50:37.880 - 00:50:49.240

you so much for your time and uh for everybody who's joined us again for cultivating ideas next week, we'll be back here at the same time. December 7th, Professor Margaret Amer, academic Dean and Professor

00:50:49.250 - 00:51:00.590

of New Testament studies will explore who was the Ethiopian eunuch. In acts eight. We read about an Ethiopian eunuch, an unnamed pilgrim to Jeru Jerusalem who appears in Luke's story of the church and then disappears

00:51:00.600 - 00:51:08.260

after an encounter with Philip. So who was the Ethiopian eunuch? And how does their role fit into the story of faith? This Bible story takes us to the story of the eunuch as a story of

00:51:08.270 - 00:51:16.560

exile, slavery, homecoming, and the witness of the early church. So again, um same link , we're back here at the same time. Next week, we hope you'll join us then. And

00:51:16.570 - 00:51:19.770

once again, Doctor Caro, thank you so much