When the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter” was heard across the world in 2013, Andre Henry was one of the millions for whom the movement caused a political awakening and a rupture in some of his closest relationships with white people. As he began using his artistic gifts to share his experiences and perspective, Henry was aggrieved to discover that many white Americans—people he called friends and family—were more interested in debating whether racism existed or whether Henry was being polite enough in the way he used his voice.
Now Andrew calls on Black people and people of color to divest from whiteness and its false promises, trust what their lived experiences tell them, and practice hope as a discipline as they work for lasting change.
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Andre Henry, All the White Friends I Could Not Keep: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/673889/all-the-white-friends-i-couldnt-keep-by-andre-henry/
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Produced by Bradley Onishi
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What are the connections between purity culture and race?
Why does purity culture work so hard to disembody people, make them feel as if they're not living in their own skin?
And what do these things have to do with each other?
Well, we're incredibly excited to announce our next Straight White American Jesus seminar, Purity Culture, Race, and Disembodiment.
In this class, the instructor, Dr. Sarah Mosliner, who is a leading researcher on purity culture, And the leader of the After Purity Project will take participants through various histories and ideologies as they relate to the racist origins of purity culture, And how disembodiment is a tactic used by white evangelical leaders and others in order to achieve cultural, political, and religious dominance.
Sarah Mosliner is the author of Virgin Nation, a leading scholar on purity culture, and someone who's been studying this topic for over 15 years.
Our seminar is going to run in May, every Thursday, and you can find all the information at straightwhiteamericanjesus.com under the Seminars tab.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and today I have just an amazing guest who has an amazing new book out, and someone who I'm just really thankful to talk to.
And so I'll get into everything in a minute, but I'll just say to start, Andre Henry, thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
So, we're going to talk about your brand new book, just dropped a few days ago, All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep, Hope and Hard Pills to Swallow About Fighting for Black Lives.
It's just fantastic work, incisive work, in many ways, dismantling work.
And so it comes from just years of things you've been invested in and reflecting on.
And so you are, just to tell folks at the top here, an award-winning musician, writer, and activist, a columnist for R&S, which is fantastic, the author of the newsletter, Hope and Hard Pills, a student of nonviolent struggle.
Andre has been organizing protests in LA, where he lives, and studied under international movement leaders through the Harvard Kennedy School.
And his work, and he himself has been featured in places such as the New Yorker and the Nation and on the Liturgists, which I know many of you are familiar with, and many other places.
So once again, thanks for being here, and just thanks for taking the time, Let me, if I might, just start here, asking you to introduce yourself to folks just a little bit.
You know, your story in terms of you grew up in the South, even though now you're kind of in LA, raised in a very Christian context, and then ended up at Fuller Seminary.
So, what is the very short version of a very rich and full life in those years?
Yeah, so, like you said, I grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, in the metro Atlanta area.
My family wasn't, and isn't, you know, a very religious family, but my grandmother was, and she took me to church with her, and I got very deeply involved in the life of the church there in Assemblies of God Church in Decatur.
And, you know, in the book I talk about, you know, what my home life was like, and, you know, why I think that the church was so attractive to me.
So, so I won't, I won't belabor those details here, but I, like I said, I got deeply involved in the church and ended up going to a Christian college to study theology and moved to New York City after that, really feeling like I really wanted to pursue music there, but also ended up working as a teaching pastor and a worship director there in New York City.
Where I started to kind of, you know, I talk about this kind of racial gaslighting effect that had kind of taken over or dominated, preoccupied my common sense.
And it was starting to kind of wane in New York City.
I was there seven years and ended up leaving after the church imploded.
And I ended up going to LA, where I thought maybe I'll pursue theology in the academy, in academia.
I thought maybe I'll be an Old Testament professor, looking for some way to be involved in ministry.
Because, you know, I don't know if anyone's told you, but trying to build a career in music is really difficult.
So I started thinking about Maybe Plan B might be that, teach theology.
And then I realized in the course of Fuller Seminary that getting a job in academia is just as hard as getting a record deal, so I may as well just do what I really love.
But yeah, I went to LA to pursue that degree.
Also, I just wanted to get out of the New York winters.
They're so brutal.
And I also felt like, well, LA's also a good place for me as a musician.
And in the course of my academic career, it was like the height of the Black Lives, or a wave of the Black Lives Matter movement.
And so by the time I finished my degree at Fuller, you know, my relationship to church, to Christianity, all of that had really changed.
And I felt like, well, I was asking the questions like, You know, is Christianity just for white people?
What do I believe about God?
And more importantly than that, like, how can I be involved in some type of direct intervention against, you know, the anti-black violence that we see so commonly in our society?
And I wasn't sure that, you know, anything that I was doing in that realm of theology ministry was that helpful.
So yeah, I think that's it in a nutshell.
Yeah, well, and as you said, in the book, you really do detail this in just a really like rich and complex way.
And so, you know, folks really need to read those chapters.
But you also do something, and I know, as you just said, you kind of felt like leaving the Academy was the best way to be involved in direct action and direct intervention.
But I do appreciate, I will say, as a theology nerd, and as just a nerd in general, I love what you do with the word apocalypse.
And so in the book you talk about how we often use this word apocalypse.
Right, right.
Yes.
a world ending event.
If somebody says it's apocalyptic, it's like, Oh, the world is ending.
Okay.
And you talk about growing up expecting the rapture.
I grew up expecting the rapture.
Same thing.
Um, I, and so the apocalypse was supposed to be the heavens open up and Jesus takes every certain people home and certain people not.
And here you go.
But as you point out, apocalypse means revelation.
It means unveiling.
And the way that you talk about this, this process for you, um, of, of coming to, uh, understand the movement for black lives and be, and, and be, you know, involved in it, uh, in the ways that you are now as a revealing or an unveiling, it was an apocalypse.
And I'm just wondering if you could clue us into that.
It's such a, it's such a poignant way to describe that.
So can you give us some insight there?
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