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Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sean Watkins. I serve as Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning here at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and welcome to Cultivating Ideas. our webinar series where we invite the best and the brightest, our esteemed faculty here at Austin Seminary to share with us what's on their heart.

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They share their topics, their lectures, their themes, their theology, their scholarship. And so super excited to be able to continue to offer this series to you. And today we have a very rare treat. My sister, colleague, and friend, the Reverend Dr.

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Crystal Silver McCormick, She is an administrative faculty at Austin Seminary in the fields of mission, evangelism, and Latinx studies. She is a Hispanic Theological Initiative doctoral fellow, and, or was rather, because she already has her PhD. And she's been an adjunct professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.

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She also has teaching experience from St. Edward's University, Texas Lutheran University, and the University of Texas at El Paso and Elmhurst College. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ since 2014, Crystal has served as a pastor, as a chaplain, as a director of youth ministries, and an immigration advocate for congregations and hospitals in Texas and in Iowa.

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She serves the UCC denomination as treasurer for the Colectivo de UCC Latinx Ministries and is a moderator for a new church plant in the Rio Grande Valley. And today we have the same honor of hearing from Reverend Dr. Crystal Sullivan McCormick and she talks to us from this perspective of property ownership and Christian witness. So super excited, always excited to learn from you.

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By all means, Crystal, take it away. Thank you for that overly generous. Introduction. I'm so glad to be here with you all.

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I do want to say not just thank you for your time, but also that I want to invite you, if you would like, if you are able, to use the hand raise feature through when I ask questions because I want to invite some dialogue. Or you can use the chat. I'll be paying attention to see if you use the chat feature or if you just want to unmute at times during the presentation.

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I also want to say that I planned this many, many months ago. So it coincides with a lot of what we're seeing right now in our lived experience in the US. But that is, I think, in part why it's so important that we also discuss and reflect on these things. and what our Christian witness has been and should be now, especially with the history that we have in this country as Christians.

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There is the religion of Christianity, but there are different iterations of Christianity across the globe. So there are Christianities plural, even within our own country, And so I want to be mindful of that. And I want to be mindful to say to all of you that also the material today that we can discuss and reflect on together is sacred and it's painful.

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And it isn't easy. It's not just, you know, information. It's heavy information. So essentially like a trigger warning because it's painful.

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It's painful. And we're going to talk about some very heavy things. And so just a reminder on that.

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And I want to close us with an invitation for us to reflect together. This is a journey on what our Christian witness should look like in light of such a weighty, heavy history and with so much violence in the world that Christianity has taken part of. So with that, I want to share my screen. Hopefully I can do it.

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Yes, I can. Okay. Okay. So property ownership and Christian witness may sound odd, I guess, to pair these two.

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But I want to give a special nod, particularly to the work of this scholar, Kelly Brown Douglas, in Stand Your Ground, Live Bodies and the Justice of God. Hers is not the only work I'm using. I'm using Jack Forbes for this presentation from Columbus and Other Cannibals.

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Drawing from their work, one is an Indigenous scholar who writes about the Indigenous peoples' encounter in the Americas, what we now know of as the Americas or as the Americas with Columbus and the Christianity that he claimed to his spouse. And also what Kelly Brown Douglas brings to us in this book, which, this book was published, I'm trying to remember, I believe in 2000, yes, 2015. So a little bit dated, but very prescient and timely, always, no matter what year, what's happening in this country, this work is always very prescient for what is happening in our country and looking at the way that it was shaped.

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And so this book that Douglas wrote is especially focused on the story of Trayvon Martin. And so I wanted to invite, again, the reminder that this is very heavy, but if anyone would like to share, what do you know about the story of Trayvon Martin, whose birthday just passed, I believe last week, the 26th? I can. So Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old boy that was living with his mother at a particular time.

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He went to go visit his dad in Florida and his dad with his soon-to-be stepmother. And he walked to a grocery store to get a Skittles and an iced tea. Arizona iced tea and was walking back home in the rain. And George Zimmerman, who was the biracial, he's half white, half Latinx, and he was in charge of the neighborhood watch.

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He saw Trayvon Martin walking home and as a neighborhood watchman, assumed that this person did not belong in the neighborhood, was engaging in suspicious activity. And he called law enforcement. To report him, police officers told George Zimmerman to not engage with that particular individual, to wait for police to arrive, and George Zimmerman continued to follow him in his vehicle. The police told him to remain in his car.

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George Zimmerman got out of his car and then began to engage in a physical fight with Trayvon Martin. Trayvon beat him up. Because he's a 17-year-old with a lot of energy, and George Zimmerman took out his weapon with a license to carry and using the Stand Your Ground law in Florida, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Thank you.

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That's a very efficient description, I think, of the, not his life story, but the end of his life story where he was murdered. And George Zimmerman was not convicted of this murder, of his child. And I think that's so important to emphasize as well, that he was a child, because for so many news outlets and commentators, journalists, even though he was a 17-year-old boy, he was portrayed, but also spoken of as if he was a man. and he was a child.

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And so it is astounding to think of how he was characterized, not just as a man when he was a child, but also after his murder, there was a lot of news outlets and people jumping and looking to find things that, whatever they could find about his history. his life story, I wouldn't even say it would be accurate, about his history. And one thing that they found was that he had moved schools and presumably that there had been some marijuana use. And so this also made the headlines for a while, again, after his murder.

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And if you've ever heard of this phrase, manufacturing consent, I would suggest to you that this was one way that the media, but also American culture, took part in manufacturing consent for this child's murder, was to go and find somehow, some way to smear this child in order to suggest that what happened to him was somehow deserved, that he he rightfully was killed. And again, as Sean mentioned, Zimmerman was this neighborhood watch person in this community where Trayvon absolutely belonged because his father lived there.

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And he was told not to pursue whoever he was calling in on. And another theme that comes up is that Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie and he had the hood over his head. And this made the news so much as another way to manufacture consent, because people kept saying he had this hoodie as if it made him suspicious. But essentially, this child was murdered because he was black.

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And this idea that he didn't belong, and then even after his murder, the idea that he deserved it or that he did something wrong because maybe he smoked marijuana and changed schools. So deeply embedded in this narrative of after he was murdered and in the trial is this child who cannot defend themselves is this presumption that he did something wrong and that he merited being killed. killed, murdered.

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And it's tragic, but it's also revealing. It's revealing of the violence within our cultural ideas that killed him, that murdered this child, and that justified his murder. And that's what Kelly Brown Douglas establishes so well in this book. I can't recommend it enough.

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You can find it. on Audible, you can buy it in paperback, hardback. But I recommend this book to you because what she suggests in her book is she says, listen, we're talking about Trayvon Martin's story, but I want to take you back to the founding of the United States. And what she says is the founding of the United States are, you know, what we know of is the Puritans, the Pilgrims,

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coming from Europe, England specifically, and in their mind, and what they testify is that they were fleeing religious persecution. And they came here, but what did they come here with? What ideas did they come here with? They came here with the idea that they were establishing a model Christian society.

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and that this was going to be a model for the world. And not only that, but they believed that they were chosen by God to be this model for the world. So embedded in the founding of the United States, which is sort of problematic to say anyway, right? Because we suggest that a country was founded when there were already people here.

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There were already indigenous people here, living here, And this idea of a founding suggests that there were not people here, that the people that arrived here were brand new. It was a barren land. And that is not historically accurate, but it is also a form of violence to erase people's presence and who they are in history.

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And so Kelly Brown Douglas does an excellent job of saying, look, the Puritans that arrived believed that they were an elect of God, and they were going to be a Christian model for the world. And maybe some people think, okay, maybe that's a little harmless. That's not too bad.

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But she's going to tell us more. She's going to explain, well, yeah, not only is this wrong to think this, and this is where we see the Christian idea of the founding of this country really melding with this idea that the US is exceptional. It's untouchable.

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It can't do anything wrong. The nation itself is chosen by God. And this is happening when not only indigenous people are being erased and moved off to their land. This is happening when there's chattel slavery.

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So I'm going to take a minute here to tell you which Douglas says. She says, let me tell you where the ideas of this exceptionalism come from. And she goes all the way back to 98 CE, to Tacitus, what he wrote, something called Germania.

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And she says, doesn't matter what his intentions were, she says, I'm going to tell you how it was used. The way that this text has been used is to say that Anglo-Saxon culture identity is superior. And in this text, you have this idea that the Germanic race was superior, Germanic culture is superior, and that it has the inherent values of freedom and respect for individual rights, a real emphasis on individual rights, democracy, again, this idea of we're chosen to have a mission from God or that we have a mission from God. And they believe that there was this idea of a pure race.

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So it's no coincidence that later the Nazis use these ideas. They draw from these ideas. And it's no coincidence then that the Europeans and the English especially draw on these ideas of a pure race, an unmixed race. a chosen people, and that the idea of democracy and individual rights are inherent to the white race, essentially.

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And so these ideas really proliferate and come embedded in the founders of the United States. So Jefferson, she names Jefferson in his writings, talking about not mixing races, and this chosen people of God. And so his are not the only writings where you can find this, but definitely you can find it in this, the idea of the founders, right?

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A lot of times we will hear people say, the founding fathers, the fathers of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. Well, they had these ideas about this country being exceptional. but also embedded in their ideas was that their vision of this nation was of an Anglo-Saxon nation. Okay, so these are the roots of these ideas.

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And so what we find too is this notion of property being formed. So that the new Puritans, this is their property. This is the assumption. This is our land.

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because God chose us to build this moral Christian exemplar nation. So this is our land, not the indigenous people's land. Because the indigenous people are not human. According to writings, this is historical, this is not an assumption.

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These are in their writings, in sermons, in Christian sermons. The indigenous people are not human. They're less than human. African-Americans brought to what we now know of as the U.S.

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from Africa are not human beings. They are property themselves. And this is so important to remember and to lament that within the Christian tradition, there were people who used scripture to justify owning other human beings. ownership of land, ownership of human beings who were also seen as a commodity, not as humans.

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And so Kelly Brown Douglas wants us to remember that these ideas about African-Americans, Black Americans, and Indigenous Americans, what Forbes would remind us, is they're not seen as human beings. And she says, when you look at Trayvon Martin's story, These ideas you will find right there in the narratives after his murder, in the court hearing, in the arguments used to say, oh, well, he beat up George Zimmerman, so he must have deserved this. Even though, remember, he was pursued.

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Pursued for walking on a sidewalk with Skittles and tea. So it's also important to remember, if many of you may be familiar with this phrase, manifest destiny, that the founding of the US is tied to these ideas that give way to manifest destiny, this idea that it was destined by God for this country to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across this continent. So A lot of times in history books, we'll see the phrase westward expansion, which is really misleading because what westward expansion was, the use of chattel slavery to build up this country, to build up its wealth on the free labor of black Americans.

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And this idea of westward expansion erases what happened to the indigenous people who were ethnically cleansed. And there was cultural genocide through residential schools and other genocide, other forms of violence. But also embedded in this idea was terra nullius.

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So if you're not familiar with terra nullius, That is a phrase that means the land is empty. The land is empty and barren. And this has often been used as an argument for people to come into a land and claim it as their own.

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Terranelles, it's empty. Even when the people are there, and typically it was Indigenous people, and it was considered empty because they were not considered human. So what you see over and over is this theme that white people have the right to property. The Anglo-Saxon race has a right to property, to dominion over property, including black bodies, because black bodies are property in this, what she calls the myth, the Anglo-Saxon myth.

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that is so embedded in the founding of the country. And a reminder that what we're seeing is the formation of what Willie Jennings calls whiteness. And scholar Willie Jennings says, this isn't about white people per se, right? Whiteness is a set of values where one can believe that white people are superior.

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And these values embed themselves in structures and in this culture that we're examining today and systems. And so you don't have to be white to subscribe to whiteness. This is a cultural norm and it's embedded in so much, embedded in us.

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And so it is sinful, it is wrong. And Jack Forbes, I would say, I would suggest he would call it wetiko, a form of madness when we are willing to view a... other people as less.

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When we are willing to view other people as property, it's a form of madness, is what he says. And then we're willing to cannibalize them, meaning take everything they have, their culture, and everything that sustains them. And the sad reality is that Christianity in the US was always going alongside, walking in tandem, married to these ideas of manifest destiny, terra nullius, and of this chosenness. Hey, God chose us to make this nation.

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And so anything this nation does is permissible. It's okay. It's okay for us to kill the indigenous people. It's okay for us to view them as less than human.

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It's okay for us to use human beings as slaves for labor. And so you see manifest destiny in a lot of ways in political cartoons, especially, you know, moving into the 17th, 18th, 19th century. But you see this famous painting by artist last name Gast. This is a 19th century painting.

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And this is Manifest Destiny in art. And so I don't know if you can zoom in and see what is being shown here. But I want you to pay attention, and I'm sure you'll notice a lot of things maybe that I don't notice.

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Oh, sorry, I started it. Is the, where in the painting you can see light and where you can see darker shades of colors, dark clouds. And in those areas, it is the areas that haven't been conquered yet. Those are the areas that have not experienced that phrase, westward expansion.

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So when you see this, you see embedded this belief that people that are not Anglo-Saxon are clouded in darkness. They're not Christian. They're not human. You see the Indigenous people with, you know, spears,

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And of course, what is our image of something pure and holy? This white sort of angelic figure with blonde hair, white skin. She's holding what looks like a lasso. So there's so much embedded.

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Oh, and actually those lines were look like electrical lines over the locomotive were also westward expansion, but this idea that now we're going to build an economic system. So this is rooted in the ideas of capitalism. Now we're going to have a society that with a booming economy.

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But of course, what's missing from that narrative is that it comes at the expense of land theft from the indigenous people and from the benefit of free labor through chattel slavery. And so Christianity in the US as it's being formed is going alongside. It's not separate.

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There are Christians, for example, you can find in the historical records, Quakers who told people who wanted to come to the Quaker meeting house, if they owned slaves, they were not allowed. And others who were abolitionists, So we don't want to erase that history, but what we're looking at and what Kelly Brown Douglas is looking at in her book is how cultural norms got established. So it isn't there were people or white people who didn't believe this.

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It means that they were in the minority. And it means that we were steeped still in a culture that was founded on these ideas. So these are how our cultural norms were established. This is not

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an attack on a people group or a person, this is really exploring how did these cultural norms come to be that Trayvon Martin would be murdered and not be able to defend himself and people would say, that's okay. That's okay. That makes sense. And why it was justified for many people.

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And so I see that someone commented, here's the indigenous people are meant to be perceived as demonic. I think that's exactly right. I appreciate that comment.

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It's because that is the painting, but it's also in writings that indigenous people are seen as demonic and needing to be saved and even saved, I put that in quotes, right, and then Christians baptized indigenous people, it wasn't enough. They had to erase their culture. They wanted to take their dress, their belief systems about the land, about nature.

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So we have a lot of the formation of Christianity in the US, its cultural norms being very embedded with these ideas that proliferate into the stand your ground laws that also Sean mentioned, which in Florida essentially say if, and Florida's not the only stand your ground law state, but if you own property or you're on your property and you feel a threat, you can kill someone. And so George Zimmerman was not, his attorneys did not use that argument, but the judge suggested that they could. And I think that was enough and also compelling for some jurors who then went ahead and found him not guilty of murder.

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And so I want to show you this political cartoon as well because this is around the same time of the Manifest Destiny painting from Gast is this political cartoon that shows similar themes about people who are not white. And it actually says the U.S. must govern its new territories with or without the consent of people, brown and black people, because they cannot govern themselves. This is also attached to the idea of terra nullius, like an empty, barren land, even when there are people there, because, hey, we can take this land because these people don't know how to govern themselves.

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So in this, there is also embedded the idea that we know better. We know better. We are superior. And it's so embedded in the culture that here we're seeing it in political cartoons, paintings.

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But then we can certainly know that if we're seeing it here, that it's in the unspoken ways that the society was formed and has functioned. in law, because of course we had segregation in law up until the 60s. And we had chattel slavery prior to that. And now we see its manifestations continue in similar ways.

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So ownership in Anglo-Saxon culture Douglass says, is also rooted in this idea of natural law and inalienable rights. The thing is, she says, these rights do not apply to people who are not Anglo-Saxon. And what she says, I think, is very powerful to remember is that whiteness itself, which is a concept, becomes itself cherished property.

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She says everything has to be protect this idea that white, that Anglo-Saxons are superior. So she says you're going to see it in laws, you're going to see it in shows, you're going to see it in Christianity. And so part of the history or a large part of the history of Christianity in the US is this idea that Anglo-Saxons are better, and are cherished and have to be protected.

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And Anglo-Saxons themselves, like the US, are exceptional. They can't do anything wrong. George Zimmerman was justified. She says, that's exactly where that idea came from.

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George Zimmerman isn't black, she says, so of course he's innocent. Of course we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt, even though this child is murdered and we cannot hear his side of what happened. Even though The 911 operator said, sir, do not pursue this child.

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And he did. And he had a gun and he's innocent. And this child, all he had was his tea and Skittles, his hoodie. And even in death, he could not be innocent.

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He could not be a child because he was black. That's why people pursued finding he smoked marijuana. Oh, he changed schools.

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So the reality is that Trayvon Martin, as horrific as an example as it is of the manifestations of these ideas, is this is not the only one. This is not the only example. So where is Christianity in all of this? My guess is that you have seen it in many places, whether where you're learning history, watching the news, maybe sitting in church, looking at images in history books, in movies, in songs, in the way that maybe people in our families have or do speak about other people.

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Maybe the way that... Our country speaks about itself, both historically and now. Where do we see Christianity being in line with all these things? And where do we see Christianity saying, this is not who we are, this is not what it should be?

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I think those are important questions to consider. Christianity in the US has become and has always been, I would say, some of its iterations, right, because there are many Christianities, has become indistinguishable from civil religion. So if you've heard that phrase, civil religion is basically saying this is a set of beliefs, rituals, and symbols that are shared by a community.

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And in the study of sociology, we would say American culture's social life is a great example. And that's why a lot of people who maybe aren't very religious, they're not Christian, would be quick to say, but the U.S. is God's chosen nation. It's special.

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It has a unique destiny. It's exceptional. And maybe what they don't realize is that they're also espousing these ideas that are rooted in this idea of the Anglo-Saxon myth, that Anglo-Saxons are superior. Because what it gives way to is looking at a child like Trayvon Martin saying, I can't give you the benefit of the doubt.

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I can't give you the same benefit of doubt that I would give a white person because these ideas are so embedded in our culture. I would suggest it's like swimming in water where in order to resist these ideas, we would have to swim against the current. So we have to consider where do we see these ideas in real time? I think that is a very prescient question for us now, as our country makes English the language of the US the only language.

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And as immigrants are targeted, we see more manifestations of these ideas that are centuries old. And so they may be centuries old, but they are just as powerful and potent. And so a lot of times Christians say, hey, we have to worship Jesus.

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But what they're worshiping often is this idea of the US being exceptional. They are protecting what Kelly Brown Douglas says is, that cherished idea, the Anglo-Saxon culture. And so centuries old, but still very much alive.

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And I say all of these things, I bring Kelly Brown Douglas's work and the work of Forbes, who again is an indigenous writer, no longer with us, but emphasizing what indigenous people experience from people who call themselves Christian is that we have to face the reality of what these works remind us of. And point to is that Christianity in the US, whether someone is white or not, they have seen or experienced or been taught of Christianity has been fused with Anglo-Saxon identity and Anglo-Saxon culture.

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And so our churches, our culture, they're steeped in it. So that means that we should be asking ourselves if we are interested in what Jesus's gospel message is, which is a vision of God's kingdom in the world, where everyone has a seat at the table, an equal seat, where there will be no more violence, then we have to denounce these ideas. These ideas are violence in and of themselves.

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They're forms of violence. Because as Douglass argues so well, they murdered Trayvon Martin and they didn't stop there. They justified his killing. Because as she notes so well, only Anglo-Saxons should be able to own property and be given the benefit of the doubt.

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And that's what stand your ground laws do. That's what they're embedded in. So the question is, where do we see these ideas? In our churches?

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Another question is, where do we see them in ourselves? And what does repentance and repair look like? Repentance and mending the world beyond what we feel. Sometimes when we do these reflections and looking at our history honestly, people feel guilt, or people feel angry, or defensive, or sort of

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I don't know what to do. I can't do anything. Or maybe sometimes in churches, we feel like if we do the confession every Sunday, that that's quite enough to do repentance and repair. And I think the question for us as people who care about the gospels, who care about spiritual truths, who care about a just world,

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whatever our faith tradition is, our beliefs, is what does repentance and repair look like beyond how we feel? Not our guilt, not our defensiveness, not just, okay, I confessed and I said sorry, or I'm informed, but what does that look like in real time? What does that look like for churches? to explore where do we see these ideas within us and how do we counter them?

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How do we live in different ways? And I think really that this is what I feel that writers like Forbes and Douglas invite us to do. Because certainly that's how she closes her book is with the Christian moral imagination about what can be different, because Trayvon, like Jesus, she says, was lynched.

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And how can we live in ways where this doesn't happen, where we fight these ideas, where we fight them within ourselves and within our communities? And how do we have a moral imagination to cast visions for something different? I certainly don't imagine I have it figured out. I would suggest that we do it in community.

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And I would suggest to you that this is in part why works like Douglas's work and making the connection to Trayvon Martin and the long history of the Anglo-Saxon myth around property and property ownership are so important for our Christian witness. So I will stop talking as I talked a lot. And I thank you for hearing me. And I hope that, we have a conversation and answer questions or discuss what comes up for you all.

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Alrighty, Reverend Dr. Crystal Silver-McCormick, as always an Old Testament prophet. Thank you immensely, Crystal, I thank you for sharing with us on property. ownership and Christian witness.

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So as always, if you've got questions about the lecture, I want to invite you to be able to drop those in the chat if you're able to and you want to ask those questions audibly. I'm going to ask you to use the raise your hand feature there at the bottom where it says react on the Zoom features. You can raise your hand.

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I want to invite you to turn your camera on and then also unmute. We'd love to be able to call on you and then you can go ahead and ask those questions. Crystal, I think as we folks are generating ideas, thanks for presenting Kelly Brown Douglas to Stand Your Ground, Black Bodies and the Justice of God. I remember when I read that one, I guess almost 10 years ago now and

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I feel like she articulated masterfully a lot of the things that you highlighted and reflected on. I think one of the things that was striking to me was her brilliant articulation really of a theology of land and the way in which land was placed over human bodies. And so I think probably my question is, I've wrestled with it over the years. How did that broken restructuring take place?

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I think there's something in me, I think, that's still at its core. I think when we look at what's happening in society right now and kind of racism overall, I think I always see people as people and always see people as infinitely valuable. And then, you know, property and land and kind of all these other things that are not alive. Just on that social hierarchy, just land has never been above people.

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And so What do you think, what are some contributing factors that, and kind of the origins of whiteness, because not all white people feel that way, but then kind of in the origins of whiteness as a society, how and why do you think property is esteemed so highly and then everyone else that is outside of a European or a white context, cultural context, is just devalued? Any additional thoughts on that at all as folks are ready to do their questions? And then Rick, we'll go to you next.

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I think that's a great question. I think, so two things. I think that part of Christianity in its formation, European and Euro-American iterations of Christianity, not all of them, but the dominant norms, became really attached to domination. And I think ownership of property

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is part of that. If I own property, it's like, I dominate this, I have this, it's mine. But I think that's where indigenous, that's the second part of what I want to say is I think indigenous perspectives are so helpful is that the land is someone to be in relationship with.

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And it's not, right, a lot of Indigenous people say there isn't a word for I own this. Who owns a sun? Who owns a sky? Who owns all of this?

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It should be shared. And that is radically different than an idea or ideas embedded or founded on domination. So I think that's why Indigenous perspectives, I think, are really a good reminder of not living and thinking in ways about domination.

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This belongs to all of us. How do we share it when it's alive and sustains us and belongs to all of us, not just a few of us? Yeah, it's such a great point. I think history records indigenous folks.

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When the Puritans and Quakers and Pilgrims came over, they bought Manhattan Island for like dirt cheap. Like I think it was anywhere from 25 to 100 bucks. It was very cheap. And the indigenous folks laughed when it first happened because as you mentioned, they have no concept of land ownership.

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It is all shared. And so obviously Europeans purchasing the land got very excited. And then we'll immediately see some of those cross-cultural conflicts that continue on today. So thank you for that immensely.

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Rick, by all means, sir, take it away. What's your question? Well, I want to ask a question. understanding that I, I was raised in this that type of theology.

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And, and understanding that I mean, culturally, personally, I mean, at all levels, I was gaslighted, and I was indoctrinated. And we all have. But people in my father's man, they believe that it's biblical, that it's scriptural.

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And I can't find anywhere as an adult, even just reading the four gospels, where these ideas have any biblical structure or support. So what passage, is there a passage, just one passage? I'm sure there are many that they use, but Can you tell me a passage that is used that supports their idea of this white supremacy or this being Anglo-Saxon or being Northern European or being dramatic makes them superior or us superior?

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I think it's not scripture. I think it comes from first the idea that Anglo-Saxon is superior and then looking at scripture, and I think that's exactly what the majority of the Puritans did, is they already had this idea of superior. And then they read the Hebrew Bible is what they point to a lot, right, is when the language is being used about God's people.

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And they're like, oh, that's us, because then they believe they supplanted and called themselves the new Israel, the new Jerusalem. Yes, I go to South Texas and preach quite a bit. And there was a church where I served at for several years.

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And one of the members asked me that same question, that since the Jews rejected Christ, does that now make Americans the new chosen people? And I didn't say WTF, but I wanted to. And, you know, try to explain that, you know, we're all God's children. And God, God loves us all the same.

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But I don't know. I mean, You know, it's a white man in his 90s. Well, I think the point is.

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And I understand that, you know, they come, they're reading the scripture through this perspective. They're not drawing this out. But what's what do they use or what passages do they read that they interpret in this way? I think I'm noting and I appreciate your questions and also I think being very authentic and sharing, you know, from the very beginning.

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I really appreciate that and being very vulnerable because I think this is how we undo these things, right, by being honest with them. And as you said, we all have this. And people that we know, that we love, that we've served, care about, internalize these ideas.

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And that's what they've been given as synonymous with Christianity. And I also appreciate what Tim has put in there is that there were interpretations of the sons of Noah that made them into races. I've also seen that in some iterations of Mormon tradition and this idea that the races were, you know, put into a hierarchical fashion That's been used.

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But also, I think, just what Columbus did, right, when Columbus landed in what we now know of as the Americas, prior to his arrival in Europe, there was a religious hierarchy. So it was, you know, the Christians were at the top of that religious hierarchy, and Jews and Muslims were not, and were grossly mistreated, to put it mildly, by Christians. And when they came to the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade started and using indigenous labor and seeing brown people as less, they created a racial hierarchy where Europeans were at the top and indigenous and black bodies were at the bottom. And then mixed race people were, you know, in between the top and the bottom.

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So As Christianity came to the US, both in North America and what we now know of as Latin America, you see a racial hierarchy, I think, which is a lens through which everybody started interpreting scripture. And that's why a lot of the situations you see here in the US around race replicate themselves all over Latin America. Black bodies are not safe in Latin America.

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Whiteness in Latin America is still at the top of that hierarchy, and indigenous and black bodies, Afro-Latinos are at the bottom. because these ideas about racial hierarchy were introduced and are still embedded in Christianity over there. So I would say that people can use a number of verses, just like the slave owners used the injunctions to slaves in the New Testament and Hebrew Bible to justify slavery. I think that because the racial hierarchy was introduced to the Americas,

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that people just use scripture to perpetuate and justify those racial hierarchies. Thank you. That's a great point. Yeah.

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Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Rick. Excellent, excellent, excellent question. Yep, by all means.

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Retired, but the prelate, the apostle of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has returned to grace us with his presence. Timothy Lincoln, hello, sir. Good afternoon. I guess I have kind of a going forward question.

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As a matter of affirming the dignity of people and making our country a better place, Should we use our energy to try to critique the whole idea of property and owning property? Speaking as someone who owns many things. Or is it more important to work on delinking the notion that in any sense human beings made in the image of God can be construed as a

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as property in the same way that Trayvon Skittles and Hoodie were, you know, things that he owned for a while. So that's my question. No, I appreciate it. It's good to see you.

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I think it's a wonderful question because I don't know that, I mean, Okay, being strategic looks different in different spaces, I would suggest, in helping people and ourselves, myself included, to learn and unlearn. And maybe, pointing to property and property ownership or tackling that is maybe not the best strategy. I think that what Douglas does is to say, I want to show you where these values come from around property ownership.

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and specifically around the stand your ground laws. And she said, because they didn't just come out of nowhere, right? They go all the way back to the way Tacitus was interpreted and used by the Nazis and then by the Puritans. I mean, so all these people using it to justify racial superiority, which is what these stand your ground laws do, because you don't successfully see, right, black Americans being able to use these stand your ground laws.

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So I think your question is, important, and I think your point is well taken, that we should tackle these things by talking about human dignity and everyone being equal, but we don't have to do that through property. I just think that Kelly Brown Douglas's, her work is so insightful in that I don't know that a lot of people would connect property ownership to this American myth around, or the Anglo-Saxon myth, which I think helps us see it helps us to have a lens to see where we see these things pop up in our churches and in the news and in our government and things like that, which I think equips us to find strategic ways to counter it and to find it within ourselves too.

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So I think in that way I find it helpful, but I think you're right. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to go out and attack property and make a whole study group on attacking the idea of property ownership. that can come later, or people can find out on their own. They'll make the connections on their own.

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But really is what we're tackling is whiteness, the idea that white is superior. Yeah, right. And I guess I think that whiteness can operate as a damaging set of assumptions, even if you sort of drain out some of the property rights kind of dimensions of it.

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I mean, although, I mean, I understand, and Dr. King talked about the, and others, the wages of whiteness, this kind of this link of thinking about racial hierarchy as sort of like a monetary scale, So I understand, because it's comparable, it kind of sounds like value, and that kind of sounds like money, and that kind of sounds like being worth more and all that kind of, all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's probably difficult to disentangle all of that.

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But as someone who made a good career working at a seminary with a big endowment, I have to say that I'm not immediately going to press the button to that the seminary should sell all of its property. I mean, there's also how one is a steward of things, which is also, all biblical concepts are problematic, but a lot of biblical concepts can be used redemptively, I hope. So, you know, it's just, I mean, I've taught using her book and it is a very helpful book and it's still timely 10 years later for sure.

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But I'm just wondering about, Lacking time machines, we don't have the ability to undo these things. And once you know about good ideas and bad ideas, you kind of, in my case, you have to wrestle to try to unlearn the ones that need to be unlearned. But there's also some other things that need to happen that I guess aren't, to me, don't seem to be informed by simply unlearning the bad.

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Ideas. I'll stop talking now. Danger of having time on my hands. No, it's very helpful.

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I mean, some great insights. And I mean, I think you raised something important, which is, okay, if we were to take the seminary and say, sell all your property, we have not done a lot of things that we can cast moral visions for. We don't know what they look like in some ways because we've never tried them. And so I know that there's, for example, I think the presbytery of the Cascades gave some land back to the indigenous people.

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And so as things shift in our culture and in our time and place, we can cast visions and maybe try things that we haven't. And that always requires risk, but I think it definitely, and it requires a communal effort. And I want to note what Estella pointed out, which is really insightful and important is that we have to start with ourselves.

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We absolutely have to look within ourselves where we see whiteness manifests itself and where we see these things, spirit of domination, thinking we're better, things like that because we absorb them, we internalize them. So But I think it's a time that we're being called, always being called to say, okay, you've not tried this, so what can you do and what would that look like? Yeah, I think it requires risk and maybe we should try some things.

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I don't know what it would look like, but we do that in community. We are out of time, but we're going to go over by a couple of minutes because this is a great discussion. And Ms. Jeanette West has raised her hand and wants to be able to ask a question.

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So give the last question to her and then we will wrap up and conclude for today. What I wanted just to make a comment, I guess more than anything that I'm a Czech background, Czech and German background. And I grew up with a lot of my relatives and my mom and dad especially, they had, they were, They had experienced a lot because we were actually Moravian background, and a lot of people just assumed we were Bohemian, or a lot of my relatives were Bohemian, and that meant that we were more of the gypsy type and that we were a whole different, almost race, so to speak.

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And especially in settling in central Texas then, where a lot of my relatives had settled, there was a lot of times, a lot of disrespect that they experienced. And I know there was a lot of even, I would just say, plain old hate that was developed on my relatives towards some of the others because there was such rejection, of them being workers of the land or they were being woodworkers or tailors or, things that were more common. So just kind of a comment to add to the mix.

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Thank you so much for that. Very, very, very grateful for it. Yeah, this is a great place, I think, to be able to pause. Thank you all so much, one, Dr.

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Crystal McCormick, for your wonderful, wonderful, wonderful lecture and the engagement from our participants today. Thanks for all the folks that gave reflections and asked questions. And I think just to be able to conclude, as Crystal was mentioning before, just talking about these notions of race and white supremacy and land ownership and what it means for us to be the people of God. I think even in our discussion there, one principle is starkly clear.

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We've had discussions about this really since the founding of the nation. It always comes up to that point to, if we change, This is going to cost. This will be costly.

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We see the systems that are in place, the ways in which they work and they serve. They do benefit some and they do hinder others. What does it mean for us to be the people of God? We've gotten to the literary performance where we've written things down.

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We've had discussions for things. But again, I think as Timothy mentioned it before too, right, there are consequences of that. How do we talk about restructuring land and economics? That conversation is yet to happen in the United States.

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We've always come up to the brink of these conversations of humanity and dignity. But I think the next step for the United States is it will have to be costly. It will have to cost people who have had power and influence and finances for centuries.

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True reconciliation is not cheap, just like grace. It is going to cost us something. And we have yet to have a generation to come on the earth to say, what will it take to make it right? We've had generations that have benefited from power and privilege, and we've had those that have been harmed from it tremendously.

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We've yet to have a generation to come on and say, what will it take to settle this score and make it right? And so hopefully these types of discussions. that we have here in Cultivating Ideas. And the scholarship from our faculty at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary can push that conversation forward.

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Our next Cultivating Ideas will be on March 20th. I'm very excited for that one. It was my ethics professor from my MD of years at Fuller Seminary, Reverend Dr. Charles Christian.

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He will be talking about the body and ethics of diversity. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful professor. He's a white guy that got his PhD in Johannesburg, South Africa when apartheid was ending. So

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the pearls. He's got a wealth of wisdom to be able to share. Super excited for that. Crystal, thank you so much.

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Tim, great to see you again. Blessings, everyone. Have a fantastic week. Take care, and we will see you March 20th.

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Bye, everybody.