Honoring Origin Stories with Pastor James A. White

by on March 14, 2025

We’re thrilled to welcome back Pastor James A. White, who challenges us to think deeply about the stories we’ve been told — and the ones we haven’t.

Who decides which stories get remembered and which are forgotten? How has a Western lens shaped our understanding of the gospel? And what can happen when we truly honor the origin stories of everyone — individual cultures, histories, and experiences?

Pastor White believes that our past holds the key to both understanding the present and shaping a better future. In a world where truth is often distorted or silenced, he calls us to reclaim the power of storytelling — to listen well, read with intention, and resist narratives that erase or exclude.

Drawing from the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman, Pastor White highlights how Jesus intentionally crossed cultural divides to connect with and honor another’s story — a powerful example of wisdom, humility, and compassion.

The conversation calls for greater humility and curiosity in how we engage with others’ stories, especially those shaped by trauma, resistance, and survival, while acknowledging the ways history and power influence how stories are told and remembered.

About Our Guest:

James A. White is the Senior Director of Learning Experiences and the Principal Facilitator for the Center for Social Impact For the YMCA of the North located in Minneapolis Minnesota. James works with a team of leaders who seek to drive sustainable change and transform systems within our communities to ensure everyone has the opportunity to thrive. 

James and his team work with a variety of national corporations, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies by identifying and shifting inequitable systems so that all can thrive. 

He believes that our past stories provide us with perspective concerning the present while at the same time opportunity for innovation that will create a better story in the future. 

He was appointed by Governor Cooper to serve as the Chairman of the North Carolina Dr. Martin Luther King Commission. He has also served as a member of the Friends Board of Directors for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. He is currently Senior Fellow for the Sagamore Institute. A National think tank that is designed to turn innovative ideas into action that will shape policy and transform communities. He also currently serves as a coach and facilitator for several for-profit, nonprofits and government agencies. 

He served as Chapel Speaker for several professional football organizations and teams, including: The Pro Bowl in Honolulu Hawaii, Tennessee Titans, New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons, Cincinnati Bengals, New York Giants, and the Miami Dolphins.

James is the Senior Pastor of Christ Our King Community Church. James and his wife Cynthia moved to the Triangle Area in 1992 for James to serve as a member of the teaching faculty at the Communication Center.  While there, James served as a teacher and trainer in public speaking and in analyzing culture.  He and Cynthia have been married for 37 wonderful years, and they have 3 adult children. James is a graduate of East Carolina University. 

Related Resources:

Episode Transcript:

Rachael: Good people with good bodies. I’m privileged to be here today with my friend and colleague, Dr. Dan Allender, and a returning guest on the Allender Center podcast, James White. We first connected with James through our colleague and mutual friend Linda Royster, and you’ve heard from him on our podcast before. James is a leader, facilitator, coach, and speaker. He serves as the senior director of learning experiences at the YMCA of the North in Minneapolis, and as the senior pastor of Christ Our King Community Church. He’s a dynamic wise, and I would say fiercely kind person who brings not just knowledge, but an embodied wisdom. James brings a deep passion for justice, equity and community transformation, which is something he carries into his work with corporations, nonprofits, educational institutions and government agencies. He believes that our past stories give us both perspective on the present and an opportunity to shape a better future. And so in a world right now where we’re being invited to deny memory, to take in stories that have been co-opted and distorted, erased and silenced, we want to take time today to talk about the power of stories, the power of storytelling, the power of how we read and interpret, and I’m just thrilled James, for you to be joining us in this conversation. So welcome.

James: Thank you, Rachael. And I agree. I think the timing of this conversation is very important. However, it’s really a conversation that I think is part of what shaped history, what shaped the academy, what shaped how we process ideas. So I think we’re going to be talking about something that is rooted in so many different ways, and I would also say you’re talking about something for me that brings back a great deal of memory just in light of some of the work that I do in my life around story and helping people see change, but then the work that I also do even in my sphere as a Christ-follower as well. So this conversation has been an ongoing conversation that really takes me all the way back to my twenties, and we can talk about that more in our conversation together today.

Dan: Well, I’ll add that I just don’t know anyone who in engagement with almost anything, I know that’s pretty general, but I know no one who can engage some of the most incidental matters, even in the realm of sports, that take me into a realm of thought that you do, James, as we could call you many things, but I would call you erudite, James, a man with a level of wisdom and playfulness and honesty and kindness as you said, Rachael. So I love every moment I get to spend with you and the fact that we get to share you with our audience, James, is just a sweet gift. So when you hear us say that this is a day in which stories are being reversed or denied or catapulted in directions that we wouldn’t be able to actually conceive even weeks, months, or years ago, I mean for the most recent that may have changed by the time we air this, is that I didn’t realize that the Ukraine attacked our innocent ally of Russia as we have reversals of reality, a kind of 1984 language war. I’d just love for you to take us into what you have experienced and where it takes you as you consider that you are a masterful storyteller.

James: So what you just did is very powerful, but this is part of where we are even in what you just said there. So first of all, when you say 1984 for your listeners, we may have to interpret a bit why you referred to 1984, because some listeners are actually thinking possibly of the date 1984, but you are even making that reference is a very powerful idea around story and how we hear and understand story. So for your listeners, it would be interesting for you to say, why did you even refer to 1984?

Dan: Well, this rather disruptive gentleman by the name, last name of Orwell, invited us to imagine a world because 1984 was set in the future as this was being written, as to what would happen if truth no longer had any actual foundation in facticity. What would happen if we lived in a world in which whomever happens to be in power has the right to, in some sense, set the narrative for their own fundamental sustaining and utilization of power. Again, we’re in a world where many of us say we believe the Bible to be true, but when we begin to actually interpret story, story has a complexity to it, and who gets the right, shall we say, to be the interpreter on behalf of others, almost again, a violation of the reform notion of we are all the priesthood, we are all the ones who engage something called the truth. So I’m wandering, but..

James: Yeah, no, no, you’re not wandering because I think in light of what you just said, Orwell’s idea was an idea I remember reading that in high school and thinking, wow, this is an interesting idea. So I’m reading this in the 1970s and this idea, and so wow, this is fascinating. And yet what Orwell was touching on is what happens in most stories of science fiction, most stories of science fiction literally capture the truth in ways that we don’t understand. And so what he’s saying is that in Orwell’s idea that power controls the story. Well, let me ask you one question that’ll help me with my thoughts, and I know I’m supposed to be the guest, but I’m not a guest.

Dan: This is why I want to just go back and go every conversation I end up in a position of going, I just don’t know much. But I love that. Thank you. Ask away, but I want Rachael of course to answer.

James: Absolutely. So here’s the question. So basic question, where does intelligence come from?

Rachael: Intelligence?

James: Yeah. How do we get intelligence? What’s intelligence? Where does it come from?

Rachael: That might be too complex of a question for me to answer in the afternoon.

Dan: Go for it, Rachael.

Rachael: Well, where my brain was going when you were talking is that this feels like a tale as old as time, who controls the narrative and why we need counter narratives at times. I mean, I’m just thinking more particularly as a Christian, where does intelligence come from? This is a tricky question for me because I’m one of those kids who was told that my IQ wasn’t as high as some of my siblings. So where does intelligence come from?

James: And we can go Rachael, with science. There’s not one, but just in our ideas, what is intelligence? How do we determine…

Rachael: Well, I’m going, there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom, right? So in my formative years of training in college, I went to a liberal arts school that really was pushing back against, there’s some way you can arrive at knowing everything. I think, therefore I am..

James: Right. Descartes.

Rachael: …to actually find better questions. And also, I was a biblical studies major, so it was all about one of my favorite classes was Hebrew wisdom literature because I actually left more confounded about knowledge and wisdom and intelligence and back to, I think there’s a real need for humility. So where does intelligence come from? I actually don’t know.

Dan: Okay. Alright, I’m going to go with the first word that came to my mind, which is probably indicative of being a troubled human being, but my first word is spies.

Rachael: Oh, you’re thinking about literal CIA intelligence.

Dan: Well, and again, how you use the word in and of itself in the context. So in a world like 1984, to keep the disposition of a certain set of convictions requires knowing who’s opposed to that. Therefore, the only way you can find that is by intel. So when you said the word intelligence, I’m going, I think IQ has to do with a fundamental grasp of reality. Therefore the question is, who provides us with intel in our day, people who are not bound by the system because the system is designed to create a certain degree of mimetic desire and therefore conformity and therefore ultimately the commitment to create a structure of making people pay. I’m reflecting if anybody knows a Girardian view of intelligence, but all to say as we get to the bottom line, God.

James: So as you say that, so this is where you say, where in the world are we going? And your listeners probably are probably wondering it too, if this is talking about story, I think we have to go to the very root of who contains and who tells the story and so much of the person who has power, Dan, I love what you’re doing there as far as intel, intelligence because you have a scientific view that believes intelligence, that you’re born with it, that it is genetic, some who view that it’s also because of the social dynamics and the context that you’re in. I think all of those things have some truth to it, but part of who controls the story is how we define intelligence. That’s now I think also part of whose stories we listen to have a lot to do with how we define intelligence. I say all that to say because your listeners are listening to this, and just to be clear, this was fundamental to me in my formation of ideas and my formation of ideas, even ideas of who is intelligent, whose narratives I pay attention to, but then also in my ideas of my narratives around my faith journey, around what does it mean to be a Christ-follower and my theological ideas which come from an interpretation of the narrative of scripture. Now all of that means that I grew up with this fundamental flaw in not understanding where intelligence comes from because most of the people who were “intelligent” that we went to Greek or we went to European thinking, not understanding that as a Black man and understanding story and understanding the full journey of history, not only not understanding again ancient civilization of intelligence that came from Africa that influenced much most of Greek thought and we’ll have an argument there. But then even the journey of the narrative of trauma and pain and 200 years of slavery, which I come from a people that are able to create and live and survive with a level of intelligence that goes beyond what we even have room for in that narrative and in that story. So for me, when we think about narratives and stories, there’s work to be done of even understanding our own journey of intelligence that we have missed, especially those of us who have been influenced by a white evangelical normative biblical idea of theology that we’ve been influenced to miss an opportunity of understanding the power of intelligence that comes out of the trauma of America that we wish to forget. Because we, and I’m going to be we with the Allender Center because we talk about story, huge miss if we somehow come up with the view that story comes out of our own centeredness as well as those who are people who represent majority culture or privileged culture, we miss that the power of story and then you brilliant and the Allender team are brilliant, but really the power of story started in the genius of my survival in existence as an African American man because I come from a community that story is what was needed in order to even have a proper interpretation of scripture. I love, I’m going to say some names and this conversation going to a variety of places, but throughout my journey in my twenties, I began to see how the idea of story, even from my theological framework I felt was being hijacked. Now, I love Hadden Robinson. Haddon Robinson is one of the foremost scholars and understanding homiletics and preaching who did just some incredible work around narrative preaching, but people received it as if it was something new. The reality is now it’s so interesting, Haddon Robinson, and I’m seeing some other names and this again is I would buy Haddon Robinson’s books. I think he has some incredible valuable books, but along with Haddon Robinson, there’s also Calvin Miller and this was a group of leaders back in the ’80’s who began to make this idea that is almost as if it’s this new idea of narrative preaching because most of exposition Bible teaching came from a logic model that suggest that narrative somehow wasn’t useful. And it’s almost as if, and even now we’re talking about stories, but it’s almost if it was something new when my very clarity on theology and why I’m a Christ-follower that believes in the truth of scripture is because of the narrative framework that was given to me even before I started following Christ. But the problem is most educational and theological institutions didn’t honor where real intelligence came from and that real intelligence came from the reality of the formation of Black thinking and Black thought, and the church was a large part of that. That is why when we’re having a conversation about narrative, which is real important, well this is where you would want to study African American history because the first people who were allowed to be storytellers of power and influence on plantations that really developed a high degree of intelligence was the Black slave preacher. And then the intelligence and genius that was there wasn’t just because somehow it was something abnormal, but so much of that came from the Africans’ reality that was there. Again, if you have a misunderstanding of the story of Africa, then you’re going to have a misunderstanding of the story of narrative, period… that you might think that narrative somehow came from this idea. But the oral tradition that you found in African communities that enabled there to be sanity. So you begin to see genius. It’s why people have a hard time understanding Frederick Douglas who never went to an academic institution, but his writings and his speaking were brilliant beyond words because intelligence is not simply formed from knowledge and books, intelligence, which I know you’re going to agree with me here, is formed from your story, from trauma and from the creation of the realities of those… Let me stop because this is supposed to be a conversation.

Rachael: You can keep going. Well, all I was thinking about, because again, I don’t know how many people know this is I was thinking about because if we’re going to talk about even the Christian story and who owns the story in some ways, who gets to say this is the story is that those Black preachers who are enslaved on plantations are also being given Bibles that have huge sections of the story of God taken out because it’s too liberative, it’s too exposing of these oppressive systems and yet the story remains. So that’s more what I was thinking is there’s an embodied oral tradition and a spiritual wisdom and intelligence that is still that counter narrative. As you and I have talked, that corrective story is still being told even when people are weaponizing the story of God in a way to try to change the narrative.

James: So let’s call that then let’s put a name on it. It’s called intelligence. It’s called brilliance that you brilliantly are able to take a distorted message and because you come from an oral tradition, and then this is as well, we also have to be careful. This is where story becomes important. Many Africans had theological frameworks that were Christian frameworks before.

Rachael: Before, yeah.

James: So understand if we just would read, and this is what’s so fascinating, why story becomes important because we read the Bible, these lenses of just one particular story, but if you would read the Bible carefully. Start with the Old Testament in Egypt, just pay attention to a little bit of geography, pay attention to some words and then…

Rachael: Well, the first convert to Christianity was an Ethiopian person.

James: The Ethiopian Coptic church still goes on today. So again, part, and that’s why this intelligence point is because we look at the slave preacher and we want to say it was magical. No, it was just brilliant of the first place where someone could look at words and begin using words with double meaning, begin helping the person understand and interpret structure and ideas. And this is the brilliance of what we do at the Allender Center helping you see that your story can penetrate through some of the false structures and ideas that you’ve encountered in your life. And so it’s taking the origin story which many had and being able to interpret and say, that’s not true. But what we’re going to do is we’re going to create a different language. We’re going to use what is being given to us and now create the real story and the Christ and the Bible that’s supposed to enslave, the brilliance of that is we can see the narrative arc of it and see that there is resistance there. And so a book used to enslave is going to become a book with true intelligence of resistance. If someone says for example that Christianity is a white man’s religion, that’s a very unintelligent, that is not a very intelligent response to even think that. And what’s unfortunate is we don’t have an answer for it and we don’t have an answer for it because we often don’t see the real genius and brilliance. And so unfortunately we’ve created institutions, we’ve created structures. You talk to most people in most what I would call Biblically conservative and “the seminaries” that we should go to if we are conservative in our thinking and even using that word, most of them, you’re not going to find faculty who are going to go and look at these things and then we don’t understand the oral realities and the bow of oral tradition story. So it’s a very difficult thing for people to understand, but it’s the root. What makes this important is we’ve got to go to, but what’s the origin story? And then we have to begin to understand that origin story comes through a variety of people’s stories. And very simply, it’s not that I want to change the story of America, but the power would be what’s the origin story of Indigenous people who were here? There’s an origin story that just might happen to interpret, again, manifest destiny as massacre. Who would happen to interpret once again boarding schools as brainwashing and reprogramming rather than somehow giving children hope and civilization to be civilized. So this is where it becomes important as we’re doing this work to have the humility to be able to honor the origin story of others. Again, if I read the scripture correctly, Jesus in John chapter four, as he engages a Samaritan woman, he’s honoring her origin story. He may not agree with it, but when you read that exchange, Jesus is able to engage and connect because he is honoring her origin story. And you see that in the dialogue and in the conversation.

Rachael: Well, and he also has an awareness that his origin story is connected with her origin story and that there’s something dynamic here…

James: Right? Because if Jesus was today and we didn’t do history, then Jesus wouldn’t even be able to have the conversation because in order to have the conversation, you got to understand the Assyrian, and you got to understand that really Samaritans in some ways come out of Jewish people once again who had been taken into Assyrian captivity. So without history, the origins, the story doesn’t make sense. And this is where I’m very disturbed that sometimes Christians, a Christian can’t afford to not honor history in order to even understand their current story as well. It doesn’t make sense. We’re people who say that what happened a years ago has prevalence today, and yet we say what happened 200 years ago? We just got to get on with that. That doesn’t even make sense.

Dan: Well, it’s an effort to erase, therefore we’re right back to who has the magisterial power to say an event has power and an event doesn’t have power, or again, how we come to interpret. But I’d love for you to take us into John 4, where that passage came to mind for you even in this discussion.

James: Yeah, it’s so interesting. That was one of the first passages where, and I taught that passage, man, this was back in the early 2000’s, no late, early 2000’s. I’ll never forget I was, and this is when we were in a period in our country where many of us who were Christ followers, it was real big, this idea of racial reconciliation at that time. You also had the late nineties, the Promise Keepers movement, very much a part of it. Everybody was talking racial reconciliation. So I had to speak at a conference and this was a conference of a conference called the Impact Movement, and I was a speaker at the Impact Movement. And one of the things that was interesting is you also had the regular conference at that time that Campus Crusade had, predominantly white, well, I was a keynote speaker that night before we were going to bring both of those conferences together. And I did this message on Jesus had to go to Samaria. And what was interesting is even in reflecting on it, and so I looked at the text and in John chapter four and saw in order to have integrity to what was said in John chapter three, this wasn’t just a casual journey. And then even in studying this, begin to see that one, the historical framework of this text has often been missed because Jesus goes as the Christ of scripture who really gives tools of what real reconciliation would look like, Jesus does not go into Samaria from a place of privilege in his story. Here you have Jesus who is God in flesh. And John records that Jesus goes and the Bible says this, and Jesus being weary from his journey, he asked the Samaritan woman, give me something to drink. So here’s where history and understanding culture becomes critical if you’re going to interpret the scripture correctly. Because first of all, Jesus is tired. The one who is living water is thirsty. So even in studying that it challenges even the way I see Jesus because often I think we misinterpret narrative because we even read the Bible from a position of heroic appeal rather than human dynamic reality of what the Bible comes to give us our humanity not to make us heroes.

Rachael: That’s right.

James: And so when you read this John and you see that Jesus is human, and that hit me that Jesus is thirsty. Now here’s the other thing that’s fascinating. He’s at noontime. He sees a woman at the, now Jesus in his background understands the leadership rabbinical tradition. You’re not going to talk to a woman at noontime where it can be public. So Jesus goes and he has a conversation with a woman who’s also there at an awkward time. And Jesus asks her to do something: give me a drink. Now here’s where background and story becomes important. He’s asking a Samaritan woman to give him a drink, and he’s a Jew. Now, extra-biblical sources lets us know that Jews believe that Samaritans were cursed. They also believe that Samaritans, also women, were especially cursed. And so here, Jesus. And at that time they didn’t have Tupperware or Dixie cups or paper cups. So if he’s asking her for something to drink, Jesus is willing to put his Jewish lips on a Samaritan cup. And so Jesus is showing something I never saw in our reconciliation work, and that is I’m approaching this person first, not because I’ve got something to do for them. Most of our reconciliation work was we expected White leadership to somehow give us, do things for us. And because you have the economic power, Jesus is the exact opposite, even though he’s the one who is power, who is strength, he submits and humbles himself. Side note, how many people ever went to a neighborhood or dealt with someone knowing that this person has something to give me? And did I approach from humility or did I approach from my philanthropic dollars, which made it seem like I’m going to do something for you? And so Jesus enters in from a place of humility. That part of the story was powerful for me, Rachael and Dan. But then not only that, how he engaged during conversation, he does it in a powerful way of telling the story a metaphor. If you knew who you were talking to, I can give you water to drink. And she said, okay, look, give me this water. Now the other thing too that she acknowledged, which is also important, how could you being a Jew talk to me, a Samaritan woman? So Jesus didn’t engage in minimization.

Rachael: Wait, can you say that again?

James: Minimization?

Rachael: No, I’m just saying, can you say Jesus didn’t engage in minimization again just for the listeners in the back.

James: For them in the back, Jesus didn’t engage in minimization. Minimization is where we minimize culture. Minimization is this false idea that we don’t see race, we don’t see difference. And as a matter of fact, it’s the false notion of a colorblind Jesus. So when I read that I said Jesus didn’t minimize who he was or who this other person was because we do know that in God’s kingdom there is no race. And in God’s kingdom, there certainly isn’t any false racial construct. But there is ethnicity.

Rachael: That’s right.

James: One of the side notes is when you really look at Revelation chapter five, and it may seem like I’m all over the place, and you look at God’s kingdom and you look at those who are around the throne, it says, be people there from every nation. Well, this is where comes in. The idea of being White is a sociological construct. There is no such thing as a White person, just as there’s no such thing as a Black person. In many ways, Blackness was created out of a response to this idea of Whites. But here’s what’s going to be fascinating. When we go to heaven, we’ll be representing in our ethnic group. So when I go to heaven, my true African origin and some of the European dynamic is who I’ll be with around the throne. When you get to heaven, they ain’t going to be any the White people around the throne. So all those 90 years of Jim Crow that we practice of separate but equal heaven is not going to be a place. And if you only identify and thinking that you don’t have a culture as a White person, you might be a little lost when you get to heaven because you’re going to be restored to who God made you in your nationality. But this false construct of Whiteness will not exist in the kingdom. That’s just a side note.

Dan: Oh, side note. Oh, give me a break. Just as a little side note by the way, as for your eternity, that’s where you begin to play with what scripture requires is a way of thinking about, again, revelation five. And you have even more so the reality that Jesus in the midst, the center around which all ethnicities will come, still bears the reality in Revelation five of the wound of the cross. So the intersection of our woundedness and his glory are calling us into a level again of we don’t obscure the past, we don’t erase it. The actual marks of the cross remain in his glorified body for eternity. So we can’t forget, but we also don’t remember, and we don’t remember because a sentence like there is no White people in front that sounds…

Rachael: Pretty sure there’s no White people in the Bible either because there were Greeks and Romans and the beginning of this Western worldview. But I don’t think at the time, there was definitely privilege. But you don’t hear about any White people as far as the construct of Whiteness…

Dan: So again, back to as you play with this intersection, this interaction between Jesus who in some ways is creating a story,

James: Yes 

Dan: But also helping her interpret the story he’s creating in the moment.

James: Yes. And as you say that, notice his gentleness in doing that even as he confronts her with her truth, as he confronts her sin, he says, first go tell your husband… Jesus knew. But you look at how gentle, and this challenged me even as I engage with people who are not followers of Christ, is the gentleness of entering in the conversation. He says, yeah, you’re right. You don’t have a husband because you’ve had one, the one you’ve had five, and the one you have now is not your husband. So you just look at him during that moment and she says, look, I perceive you’re a prophet. And then he goes into even deeper the theological history. So you notice how Jesus is brilliant. He starts off with social norms, so he does sociology, psychology and theology all in the same space. And so one of the realities is often when I begin to read Jesus more clearly, it’s also helped me with understanding stories today. And it’s frustrating, especially in being a follower of Christ. Most people are angry with a constructed Jesus from a false narrative than the real Christ of scripture. Most of what people are frustrated with. And the thing for me, and even when I listen to deconversion stories, I go, make sure you’re leaving the right Jesus, because some of us are leaving and are angry with the wrong Jesus. Look, you can disagree with me, but at least disagree with the real Jesus, not the Jesus that has been perpetuated and has really the story and narrative been told in a way that is an American framework that really misses… It’s a false hermeneutic and much of what we’re dealing with is an improper hermeneutic that comes from a bias story or a story that we tell of power.

Rachael: What that makes me think of, just to give people even a small example, is in my undergrad, because I was at a Southern Baptist liberal arts school and my professors were taking all these southern Baptist kids and giving us hermeneutical skills to actually resist the theological frame we were being given, but in subtle ways that we could actually metabolize and tolerate and have paid off in dividends down the road. Small example, in one of my western civilization classes, the professor basically inviting us to understand Rome, the Empire, Rome, and then taking us to the scripture talking about the power structures of the United States of America since we were talking about how our democracy and republic was inspired by Rome and the stories, and he was like, so in scripture is the United States of America, Israel and the people of God or the Roman Empire? It’s like one of those existential crisis moments. As a young person in, I would say exactly like you said, a bad hermeneutic, having to have a huge hermeneutical shift, like a corrective shift to understand how I’ve been shaped and how I’ve been shaped to read scripture. I’ve actually missed the people I most align with in a sociological frame, and I’ve read myself as the oppressed people. So just again, when I look back on that time, I have a lot of gratitude that there were people saying in ways that have had huge dividends down the road, given me tools to begin to find the right Jesus, like you’re saying, to encounter a more true Jesus. Yeah.

James: It’s so funny you mentioned you go back to your professor, I go back to the black church that I grew up in, that there was this season where I actually had the audacity to think that it was anti-intellectual, and it’s because I didn’t have people doing what we’re doing here in this conversation. So I see the genius, for example, and you’re talking about it in 19…

Rachael: Well, and I want to just say it saved my life. So I also think different needs for different communities because they were saying, you are being told from the height of the academy, this is the way to see, and we’re going to subvert in a way that I would not have gotten in my White church.

James: So lemme say this because this is something that really hit me just a couple of months ago in the church I grew up in, again, most people say that the Black church was anti-intellectual because there wasn’t this certain form of expositional preaching, et cetera, but there was some things that I had to remember. Again, I grew up in the early 60’s, so you’re talking about a time when Jim Crow is still separate, is still there, very much so remember the desegregation of school systems. But what they did every Sunday, and it used to bother me some of the repetition, but part of the repetition was intellectual genius and knowing that the songs were also songs of resistance as well as songs of renewal and refocusing who I am in Christ. So for example, every Sunday and even if people couldn’t sing, they would sing Holy, holy, holy. And I’m not a singer. Early in the morning, my song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy; God, in three persons blessed Trinity. Now, there was couple things there that first of all, the theological depth of understanding the trinity, and there were people in the church who many at that time, some had never been to school, some… So you had illiterate people and then you had brilliant people. But here’s the other brilliance in that this was the resistance. Why is that the first song every Sunday? Well, because holiness means I’m set apart. And part of what people were doing in that congregation is saying, I’ve been in a Jim Crow world. There’s some people who were still working on farms and maids, but they’re saying we’re now coming into a moment that has been set apart that is culturally different than anything you have encountered. So the song and the music was to create a mindset to shift mental models. It wasn’t just the song, it was resistance because this place is holy where every other place you’ve been this week is not a place that’s set apart for the God who loves you in a way that he’s given you a life for you. That this is a sacred moment. Well, that was telling a narrative and a story to shape your sense of wellbeing and hope in a space to help you learn to engage no matter what your background might have been. That’s the genius and the intellectual savvy reality of the Black church as a whole.

Dan: Well, and the thought, I never had it until this moment that you’re being set apart already, but in a way that is deeply profoundly unholy and you are set apart in a way that is in fact the richness of what it means to be a man and a woman of utter complete dignity made in the image of God. So right there, it’s just an example what it’s like to be with you, James. The reality of how the system works in a way, even if you think you are not part of the system, the sense of being in the milieu and the waters of how every power structure wants to determine how you read other stories. In this case, you’re inviting us into the possibility of, as you put it so well, Rachael, that are we the people of God or are we Egypt and where we begin to name the structures of oppression of isolation and exclusion, we’re already in the realm of trying to, shall we say, look at how 1984 plays out in the year 2025. So as we come to, again, I don’t think there’s an “ending” to this conversation, but when you engage this wild, rich, brilliant woman engaging with Jesus, and you name the reality of how radical his engagement with her is, what do you wish to become as you see her?

James: Wow, when you say that part of, for me, it’s really why I am doing sort of the work that I do, because I think this is part of what changes our world. When you really begin to see that there’s such a deep understanding that wasn’t just for that moment, but it was God’s redemptive plan even for the horror and tragedy of Jewish people who had been conquered by the Assyrians. And even though there was a hatred that was there, now as you read your Bible, you begin to see even that which was tragic will be used for triumph. And so this isn’t the only time you see Samaria. Jesus even will tell narratives and stories to keep bringing back up a wound in the story of the Jewish people. What does he do to talk about who he is, he tells the story of the good Samaritan. This isn’t the last time you’re going to see Samaria as well. Because when you see once again Pentecost and the movement that God has and his plan for his disciples to really be about building his kingdom on earth, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, uh-oh, that word is there again and Samaria and then the uttermost parts of the earth. So that story sometimes that we wish to erase often is the story of where we find life and genius, and that’s where true creativity and innovation comes in, because often that which we think we should throw away, we begin to see, we begin to see the genius that’s found when it’s there, and that’s the beauty. That’s why I love being a Black man, because I come from a story of people who were intellectually brilliant, who had genius, but the trauma and tragedy forced innovation. In order to navigate through a Jim Crow world where you could be murdered in a sundown town, you create a green book in order again to navigate through, once again a movement and how do we even have a movement even though we’re outnumbered, outmanned and Hamilton talked about that. Well, the brilliance of not just Dr. Martin Luther King, but the brilliance of civil rights workers taking the ideas that Howard Thurman was exposed to with Gandhi and having a nonviolent movement that somehow would still help America see its flaws and its democracy. That’s innovation. How in the world do you create a church framework with Richard Allen and others when it’s a framework that would be built, that’s innovation. Even when you begin to look throughout history at music, innovation, Kendrick Lamar is part of the legacy, I believe, of the innovation of the communicated genius and narrative of the Black church. What he did on Super Bowl Sunday is he gave you in just a few minutes a narrative that went everywhere from, you thought it was just a diss song about Drake, but really he was making a statement about America and again, Black, brilliant manhood that was in America. But if you don’t understand the genius that happens in story, because what Kendrick was simply doing is what again, many have done since the very beginning where messages could not be heard. The last thing, here’s the last thing. At the end of that story, Jesus now brings his disciples into Samaria and they stay there several days. So when you talk about it, then maybe what I get from the Samaritan woman as well for my life and hopefully for the Allender Center and hopefully for you all’s life, may we be a constructive disruptive technology. In order to bring change, any company, any organization has to have a disruptive technology, but the key is, may it be a Holy constructive, disruptive technology. Jesus created that kind of disruption for a purpose and plan that we’re still living, that we’re still encountering today.

Dan: We’ll have you back again, dear friend. Thank you.

James: Thank you.