Ep. 15 Terraforming with Propaganda

Sep 30

Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu

Featuring Propaganda

This week, we hear from poet, political activist, and rapper Propaganda. Prop takes us on a journey into how music and art can help form an evolving faith. You’ll be immersed in what turned out to be one part beautiful poetic experience and one part off-the-wall, incredibly profound philosophy lecture. And maybe that’s the magic of Prop: he defies categorization. He leads us through the wilderness to find God, find possibility, find truth in every corner of creation - including Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (you’ll see, we promise). Then Sarah and Jeff have a conversation about finding God in unexpected places, cheerleader movies (in what might be one of our most off-the-rails segues), and learning to terraform - world build - with God.

Now available and streaming wherever you listen to your podcasts.

P.S. There is some more adult language in this episode. Proceed accordingly.

Transcript

JEFF: Hi, friends, I’m Jeff Chu.

SARAH: And I’m Sarah Bessey. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast.

JEFF: This is a podcast for the wanderers, the misfits, and the spiritual refugees, to let you know you are not alone in the wilderness. We are all about hope, and we're here to point each other to God. No matter where you are on your journey, no matter what your story is, you are welcome! We're listening—to God, to one another, and to the world.

SARAH: The story of God is bigger, wider, more inclusive and welcoming, filled with more love, than we could ever imagine. There's room here for everyone.

JEFF: There’s room here for you.

JEFF: Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast! This is episode 15. Today we’ll be hearing from Propaganda, a poet, political activist, husband, father, academic, and emcee.

But before we get started, we wanted to invite you one last time to join us this weekend at Evolving Faith 2020. That’s right—EF2020, the live virtual conference, is finally here! On October 2 and 3 we’ll be gathering live together, with Prop himself and many others. Even if you can’t take off the two days for the livestream, you can still register because all registrants also get access to the video of the conference to watch on their own time until April 1, 2021. So go to evolvingfaith.com for more info, our full list of speakers, and to register now.

SARAH: I can’t even believe that we’re finally here—that weekend is actually going to be happening. All right. Prop is a hip hop and spoken word artist and poet with L.A. flowing through his veins. He is armed with a bold message, and he has assembled a body of work that challenges us and guides us. His ideas stem from where he sits at the intersections of life and identity. He sees how cultures cross and inspire one another. And he's one of those very rare people who can see and embody the oneness of all of us. So not only will he cause you to nod your head and maybe shout a bit, but he will stretch your mind and your heart like all great art does.

JEFF: He’s also a coffee connoisseur and a food lover—except for dairy, and he has vicious and wrong things to say about butter. But I love him anyway. I got to see Prop last fall when I was in L.A. He took me to lunch at this outstanding food hall, where he ordered from a stall where he of course knew all the staff and they all knew him—and that’s one of the things I adore about him, the way he sees and honors people. In fact, Prop is one of the keenest observers of the world around us, of social and political dynamics, of subtexts, that I know. He has such wisdom, which he throws at you in the funniest ways, so that you’re laughing and laughing and then suddenly you realize you’re actually being taught. With his wife, Dr. Alma Zaragoza-Petty, he hosts the Red Couch Podcast, which you can support on Patreon. He’s on the board of a favorite nonprofit of mine, Preemptive Love, which works mainly in Syria and Iraq to build a more peaceful, more just future. And his latest album, Nothing But a Word, is a collaboration with Derek Minor; we encourage you to check it out.

SARAH: Prop didn’t just speak at Evolving Faith that year, even though what you’ll be hearing is his talk. He also performed multiple times. And it was my first time hearing him live. The power and the intensity of those songs was just overwhelming. There were a few moments when he would come onstage and perform alongside Audrey Assad and their unexpected flow made me both cry and holler. Because it was just absolutely remarkable. If you want to listen, they actually recorded a couple of times together, so if you were to go and check out Audrey’s album called Evergreen and look for a song called “River,” you’ll hear Prop there, or you could go to Prop’s album Crooked and listen to the song “Made Straight” to hear another collaboration of theirs. But of course recordings can’t quite capture the live experience, which is another casualty of Covid-19. I miss a million things about life as we knew it before the global pandemic and I certainly do not mean to minimize suffering but not being able to enjoy live music really has been sad and a big loss. But both Prop and Audrey will be back with us this weekend for Evolving Faith 2020 to perform and I am so looking forward to that. They’re going to be part of a Friday evening artist circle along with Amena Brown and Nichole Nordeman. So, friends, join us as we listen to rapper and poet Propaganda, speaking at the first Evolving Faith conference in Montreat, North Carolina.

PROPAGANDA: I'm going to go ahead and add a couple of elephants in the room about how remarkably intimidated I am right now. And just sort of the soul care of hearing black and brown women speak, because I was raised by one of those. So it just kind of felt like home just now. And I just really appreciate that.

So I do hip hop and poetry. And it’s an interesting thing about hip hop: Hip hop has never been void of a worldview. There's always been a tone of justice, equality, peace, love, unity. It's always been a part of hip hop. My father was a civil-rights leader. Let me say that more clearly: My father was a Black Panther. So I grew up thinking about the evolution of culture, the evolution of faith, evolution of music, and how all those things kind of play together.

Now, I'm gonna read a quote for you, which is one of my north-star quotes. It's from W.E.B. DuBois. And it says, “All art is propaganda, and must ever be, despite the wailings of its pursuits. I stand in utter shamelessness that and to say, whatever I have for writing has been used and will always be for propaganda, for the gaining the right of Black folk to love and enjoy, and I don't give or care a good damn for any other art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side, while the other is stripped and silent.”

So when I think about evolving faith, and I think about myself, I think about music, I truly believe this: that all art is propaganda. I believe we're all proclaiming some sort of narrative and some sort of truth. And we're creating worlds. We're creating civilizations. For all my science geeks, we're terraforming here, right?

And when you add the concept of the faith to this, you can't really talk about art without talking about commerce. It's kind— or stay in your garage, play your songs, paint your pictures, who cares? Okay? You have to talk about commerce. And if you talk about commerce, you have to talk about a system. And if we're talking about a system, and you're a person of faith, you have to talk about the products and the consumer of those products.

And the reality is, there is a subtext of talking to white people. That's just what— if you're going to make faith-based music, you have to reconcile that. Will white people buy my music? That's got to be the question, right? Is this gonna make people comfortable, right? So I have had to learn something that apparently kind of comes with being Black. And one of those things is being able to be sort of bi- and trilingual. There's a dual consciousness that some of my ancestors would call it, where you have to learn how to speak the language of the dominant culture, and then learn how to speak the language of your own home. Now some of y'all may notice, especially when all my people of color, people that kind of live at different intersections, you know, when your mother’s sister calls, sort of how her tone changes. Let me let me let me let me let y'all in for a second. See, when you speak to my mother, you call my mother, when I was a child, her answer was, “Hello? May I ask who's calling?” Like, that's how she would speak. Right? Unless I knew it was one of her family because she would say, “Hello? Girl, what you doin’?!” Right? Because you code switching. It’s a dual consciousness, right? And you're always negotiating: How much of my realness am I trying to show here? And I think some of y'all in this room have been welcomed in because black people got this thing—we will cancel you. Like you know what I’m saying? You can Google what we mean. Go to your Urban Dictionary, what we mean by cancelling people. But let me tell you something, you in a room, all y'all been canceled by white people. I don't know if you noticed, y'all been canceled. That's why you out here. That's why some of y'all are lying to your friends about where you are right now. You've experienced what we've experienced.

So I gotta negotiate that often. How hard can I push with these people? Right? How hard can I say what I gotta say? Does that make sense? There's this part of you that says, hey, you know, I, I know I'm saying something that's necessary. I know I'm expressing a truth and a story that that other people are thinking. But then there's this part of you that's kind of saying, Okay, am I just is there some sort of like, when you when you add commerce, like I gotta ask myself, Am I really being listened to or am I just participating in some sort of progressive white kind of S&M, kind of like, you just kind of, you just kind of want me to tell you you terrible, you understand what I’m saying? So I gotta like, you know, I'm saying so there's this like, this part of you that's like, what's happening right now? Right? Now, I can only tell you from my own intersections, but I believe this is the role of sort of prophetic art. And what the role of sort of walking in a faith that's willing to challenge constructs. Because I think that's what we’re talking about here. We're challenging our constructs. So if you can make a distinction between an industry and an art, then you understand that we're talking about a construct. Constructs have rules. For lack of a better term, we gon’ call those rules the empire. Right?

Now one of my other patron saints is a fictitious character. His name is Ricky Bobby. I believe “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is one of the greatest social commentaries of all of our time. I think it's brilliant. Bobby had a true north: If you ain't first, _____. I didn’t even gotta tell you— and me and you know, that's ridiculous. His own daddy told him it was ridiculous. You can be second, you can be third. Hell, you could be fifth. Right? This was his true north. This is who I am. He was telling himself this. He was rehearsing this, despite whatever evidence was in front of him. It ain’t matter.

Let me tell you what I learned from white men: There’s really kind of no such thing as no. It's just, Let's figure out how to make this work for me. This is Ricky Bobby. It's just: I will be first. Right? So much so that he convinced himself after the evidently, obviously true there was a greater racer in his life, which was John Gerard. Right? Was a greater racer. And he was trying so hard because he believed so much the narrative he told himself that when his car flipped, he was convinced he was on fire. I'm on fire! Help me, Jesus! Help me, Tom Cruise! Right? Tom Cruise, use your witchcraft to put out the fire. Right? So much so that he created a reality that his best friend, Cal Naughton, Jr., got out his car, ran all the way over there to help that man put out an invisible fire. “Oh God, please don't let the invisible fire destroy my friend!” Think about the phrase “the invisible fire.” That mean that man believe that the boy actually on fire. I just can't see it. He like, Something wrong with me! Not something wrong with Ricky. Something wrong with his eyes.

The stories we tell ourselves, the things we tell ourselves, that create quite a reality and there's an interesting book I would challenge y’all to read. It's kind of dense. But it's by a guy named Peter Berger. His book is called The Sacred Canopy. I don’t know if y’all are hip to it. It’s a sociology book, and it's this idea of how cultures are constructed, right? And how cultures are constructed are there— you can't untie them from how identity is formed. Right? They’re creation narratives. They’re creation myths. And from a sociologist’s perspective, a creation myth, it's not necessarily true or false. It's just what we tell ourselves that shapes our identity. Does that make sense? Not prescribing value in any way. Right? So how we create those things is because you have to think about the way that humans exist. I don't know if there's any other— I know there's not— another mammal on the planet. Every other mammal on the planet is born with everything it needs for survival. Except us. Like, we made these things, we made up language. We made it up. We made up literature. We made up alphabets. We made them up. Really. Ask yourself: What relation does your mother's brother really have with you? Dude has nothing to do with you. But that was such a jolting idea, because you can't imagine a reality anyway else. It's a creation myth. And now it's settled. But that's your uncle. Right? But there’s plenty of humans on the planet that don't have uncles— if you're a child of only children. You ain't got no cousins. This is how it works. But none of us can— You ever thought of that? No, you know why? It's our creation myth. We make culture. We made it up. And then what happens is, culture turns around and makes us. The cement settles. You make these stories. And then they form our neurons. And you know it happens when you’ve stopped noticing it. The second you stop noticing it, it's because the cement has settled. You're now living in a world that this is just how it is.

That explains some of your frustration about what you call the traditional church. Just— the cement settled. You sitting under the cloud of Nixon. Of Nixon that told you these are your four points, that every believer supposed to believe about these four points. That's just a power grab. You just sittin’. This is what sister Sandra was trying to say: You only 11% of the body. This why your brothers and sisters actually believed that the church started at the Reformation. It’s 1500 years before that. This why my brothers and sisters, my Black brothers and sisters, are convinced Christianity is a white man's religion. Do you know what Europe was doing when the church started? Throwing y’all to lions. You know where the church was growing? Libya, Ethiopia, Persia, Mongolia. Mongolia for crying out loud. You understand what I'm saying?

So the point is, the cement settled. You ain’t evangelize us; we evangelized you! You understand what I’m saying? The cement settled. But you can't imagine no reality outside of that. You know how I know the cement settles? Some of y'all are around my age group. I call myself a OS1 millennial. I'm like the first iPhone millennial. You understand what I’m saying? Which means this: There was a time in my life where I actually memorized phone numbers. Right? Some of y'all remember that time. How many phone numbers you got memorized now? Maybe your spouse's. You understand what I'm saying? That's maybe… Some of y’all don't even know your kid’s phone number. You understand what I’m saying? That's for real. If my phone died and I don't know where my daughter is, we just out of luck. Hopefully her phone on so she could follow the map to figure out how to get home, because I know for damn sure she don't know how to get home. You understand what I'm saying? Because you don’t know how to get home either.

Anyway. We thought— The reason why we don't is smartphones. That's the reason why we all can't memorize phones. We thought we were clearing up brain space. You just filled it with memes— that's all you did. You ain’t fill up no brains. You ain't open no brain space. You just filled it with something else. And now if you put a gun to my head, I couldn't memorize the phone number. My brain just don't work that way.

We make culture. And then culture makes us. So you telling me I get to make the shit up? And it's by the stories we tell ourselves? Right? These creation stories are American creation stories of bootstrapping, and if you work hard, you'll succeed. Like you telling me the dude outside mowing all this grass ain't working hard. You understand what I'm saying? You understand that that story is ridiculous. All of you know that that's not how it works. It's more than that. All of us know. And let me go and speak the language of the empire. All of us know if you can show me some data that proves that an undocumented citizen commits more crimes than a documented citizen, then maybe you'd have a point but there's none of that there. You can't prove that. But you've been told a story that shapes the whole thing.

So that tells me if I get to create the narrative, that mean I’ve gotta tell better stories. I gotta tell better creation myths. And I know who I listened to much more than my teachers was my music. You know how I knew how to navigate New York the first time I been there? I was from South Central Los Angeles. You know how I navigated New York? Rap lyrics. That's exactly how I knew where to go. You know how I learned how to speak Spanish? Salsa. I liked Latin girls. I ended up marrying one. The point was, I wanted to be able to understand what was happening at their home. Salsa. Music shapes our identity. Nina Simone talked about discerning the times. Does that make sense? Right? So if I know I'm shaping narratives, I'm shaping cultures: The first tour I ever did, the first national tour I ever did, was 27 Native American reservations. I went with an artist named Red Cloud. It was the most calibrating experience any touring artist could possibly get. And they would say that things like this—and our sister Kaitlin pointed at it: They would say, “Hey, Prop. You know, in our worldview, human beings can't own land. You can't own land, because you ain't make land. How you gonna own some you ain't make? Do the fish own the ocean? What make you think you own the land?” Right? So they would say, so if that's the case, then the land is a gift. And if the land is a gift, then it's sacred, because it came to us from our Creator. It's a gift. You didn't earn it. It's sacred. And we sharing it, whether you like it or not. We already sharing it, right? That's the way they would talk about the soil—it’s sacred, it's a gift. And then they push me farther, and they would say, “But Prop, you know, you're made of the soil.” They would say things like, “The earth man.” That was their understanding. You are made of it. And if you made of the soil and the soil is a gift and the soil is sacred, that mean you sacred. That means you're a gift. You are a gift. So any bloodshed is tragedy— It’s a gift. We pray for our enemies, because our enemies are a gift. They’re made of the soil. Soil is precious. That is a much better narrative than manifest destiny. Such a better narrative. You don't just wage war. That fool’s a gift. That's a better creation story.

I mean, you could be as evolving as you want. But you know, your ninth-grade science teacher told you the same thing: that you made of the soil. And you know you ain't get past the first page of Genesis for the Lord told you you made of the soil. You understand what I'm saying? So I just it seems like this is a primal, guttural, transcendent truth, you understand what I'm saying? Right? So that's a better story. SoI have to ask myself, where does my allegiance lie? I'm gonna give you a couple examples here. I'm making creation narratives. We are terraforming with our art. Right? So that at some point the cement will settle and I'll never have to say the sentence, You know that dude’s an image bearer, right? You don’t have a right to not honor that person's image bearer-ness. The cement will settle. You don’t have to point at it. Wouldn’t that be beautiful? If we didn’t have to point at it. Right?

A parable I think of, to get into the scriptures, is the parable of the five talents, right? Where the owner of some land hands money out— five talents, y'all know the story, five talents to one person, two talents to one person, one talent to one person. Goes and then he comes back. And I don't know if y'all youth pastor taught this as some sort of loving father thing. But as I'm reading this, I'm like, That's an investment. You know what I’m saying? I handed you some money. I'm coming back like, Where my money? Right? And the guy that had five gave him 10 —flipped it. Guy that had two gave him four. Guy that had one was scared, right? So I have to look at myself in a lot of ways. I'm like, Look, maybe I'm not the five-talent guy. Lecrae’s the five- talent guy, okay? He’s the five-talent guy. I'm more like the two-talent guy, okay? And I'm gonna work the hell out of these two talents, though. Right?

So my thoughts is this: What I look like looking when owner comes back on some, like, I was scared to lose a few Twitter followers? I thought maybe they would stop booking me at their churches. I thought maybe I would lose this thing. Let me tell you something: I love y’all too much to be scared of you. I ain’t scared of you. I'm scared of the investor. I'm scared the investor gonna come back and be like, What, what's the word? We had some earth to form. What was going on here? You, you challenge your constructs at home, but not in front of these people? Talk to me about this. Matter of fact, give me my money back. You understand what I'm saying? That's the story. That's what happened in the story. So I feel like this. I gotta ask myself who I'm engaged to. Who did I marry? Now what y'all experiencing, what this politics session talked about, is what happens when the kingdom marries the empire. And when the kingdom marries the empire, you gon’ fall with the empire. That's how it works. We have examples of what Daniel did. How Daniel lived was like, No, I don’t marry the empire; I just work for the empire. I just happened to be y’all greatest employee. I just made y’all the most money you've made in your life. But don't make nothing in your image. Because if you make something in your image, I'm just going to have to show you something: I'm not made in your image, homie. I'm not bowing to the empire. You can stop paying me, cuz I'm not bowing to the empire. I'm terraforming here.

I believe Jesus was saying the same thing when they asked him about should he pay taxes? He said, Yo, whose image is on this coin? That Caesar’s. That mean that system is made in the image of Caesar. You give to God what’s made in the image of God. Render to Caesar what is Caesar's. You give to God what’s God’s—you made in that image. I ain’t married to the empire. It's all good.

Ask yourself these two questions: You could take the Michael Jackson route. Greatest entertainer of all times— quote me. Put him in a room with the greatest songwriter of all times, Quincy Jones— quote me. Go see the documentaries on Netflix— quote me. Greatest entertainer of all times in Hitsville, USA and the best label, the best city, the best music on the best entertainer. You can’t lose. You can do that. That's working for the empire. Go be Drake, it's cool. Get the greatest songwriters with the biggest budget. Pick that verse, that verse, that verse, and then say the song. That's how the empire works. Right?

Or you could be like Prince. I'm riding naked on unicorns. I wear assless jeans. I play 27 instruments. And I changed my name to a symbol. And guess what? You gon’ follow me. Because I'm terraforming. I'm telling different stories here.

You could do whatever you want. I just know what I chose. I'm going the Prince route. I'm out here terraforming.

If you marry the empire, you gon’ fall with it. Don’t marry the empire. Speak your words.

JEFF: At times during Prop’s talk, I wasn’t sure if I was listening to a talk or being immersed in some strange but beautiful poetic experience or some off-the-wall, incredibly profound philosophy lecture. And maybe that’s the magic of Prop: He kind of defies categorization.

SARAH: Exactly. I think that’s one of those moments when what is happening and how it is happening is actually embodying what is being said. Like he didn’t just talk about terraforming, he literally terraformed something creative and new and different right then and there. We were on the journey with him.

Speaking of which, we had a big Prince love-fest over that weekend. Next week we’ll be hearing from A’driane Nieves and she is a HUGE Prince fan and I’m know that came up a few times that weekend both onstage and offstage.

JEFF: I have to confess that I don’t know a lot about Prince. When he died, they were playing all these different songs of his on the news, and I kept saying to Tristan, “Oh, that’s a Prince song?” or “I’ve never heard that song before,” and he looked at me as if I were a moron. But I guess I blame that intersection of conservative Christianity and Chineseness—it just wasn’t something that made its way into my childhood home. And, relevant to Prop’s talk also, I have never seen Talladega Nights.

SARAH: [Gasps]

JEFF: What?

SARAH: I’m shocked. Who has not…?

JEFF: I mean, my close friends know that I’ve seen pretty much nothing.

SARAH: This is true.

JEFF: But I will say that I have never thought of any Will Ferrell movie as a sociological document. So it says something about the way Prop can look at the world around us and at our cultural artifacts and discern a lesson or a pattern. I love how he interrogates them, and I wish we were all so attentive, although I don’t think we all have the brainpower to execute it as compellingly as he does.

SARAH: Oh, absolutely he’s brilliant. I think that’s the wonderful part of what Prop does in this moment, because in a way it’s not just about Ricky Bobby, it’s about how we can find God, find possibility and truth in every corner of creation and art. A lot of times poets and theologians can be very precious about this - I’m thinking of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her lines, ““Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” But we will talk about trees and waterfalls and even blackberries rather than Ricky Bobby! Or a million other films or podcasts or songs that theologians can sometimes ignore even though - if you have eyes to see - earth is crammed with heaven. I’m actually curious now, given what you just said: What’s a piece of art or film or song that people would be surprised to hear that you clearly find God within? I mean I could talk about Doctor Who and you and I could talk about Schitt’s Creek for days together but what’s one that would surprise people?

JEFF: OK, so I don’t know if this falls into the category of “clearly find God,” but a few years ago, I did an episode on a podcast called Sunday Morning Matinee, in which we talked about the theological lessons of a cinematic masterpiece called “Bring It On.” I actually really love—

SARAH: [Laughs]

JEFF: Are you laughing at me again?

SARAH: [Laughs] No, keep going.

JEFF: I actually really love the movie “Bring It On,” and—

SARAH: I’m sorry, keep going.

JEFF: It’s really disappointing that it wasn’t nominated for any Oscars, and in some ways, it’s dated, but it also has something interesting to say about insiders and outsiders and honestly what repentance might look like. So here’s another micro-example: I really love the early-stage auditions on The Voice, when the judges can’t see the singers, and I spend way too much time watching them, and not even just the American ones. Lately, I’ve gone on YouTube and watched the French ones because I am a big fan of the singer Mika and he was a judge on several seasons of the French version of the Voice and oh my gosh, I can’t believe I am revealing so much about myself right now. I think we just lost a whole bunch of podcast listeners. But that’s okay. That’s okay. I am who I am. Anyway.

SARAH: You are loved, Jeff. You are loved. Even though you go on YouTube to watch the Voice. You’re going to have to send me a few of those. If you tell me you’re going on YouTube to search for versions of “The Prayer”…

JEFF: No, it’s actually “You Raise Me Up.”

SARAH: “You Raise Me Up!” That’s your favorite. That’s the one that brings me great joy whenever you bring it up.

JEFF: It’s a tearjerker! Anyway, the auditions tell me something about this human longing to be seen and heard and valued. And of course I am the one who would overthink and overanalyze the auditions on The Voice, but there’s something strangely moving about a judge pressing that big red button and saying, I want you, and sometimes I think about God delighting in us so much that God presses that big red button and says, I want you, except it’s not for anything that we do or say or sing—and thank God it’s not for singing ability—but just because we are God’s beloved.

SARAH: I didn’t know I could get so teary over a big red button. Ugh, that was lovely. I have to admit I was not really expecting a cheerleading movie. I’m just feeling very blessed right now. Just very, very blessed.

JEFF: You do know that I’m gay, don’t you? I think a cheerleading movie and The Voice are pretty on-brand. Though Pretentious College Student Jeff wishes I had named some obscure French existentialist film that we could talk about in black turtlenecks while smoking cigarettes.

SARAH: Are you kidding me? We can absolutely be pretentious and talk about cheerleading movies. That’s our next project together: we’ll wear black turtlenecks, smoke cigarettes—French cigarettes—and talk about trash movies with all the seriousness of the Actor’s Studio. I look forward to our tens of subscribers! I’ll get ferns! You can grow a beard. It’ll be great. My only condition is if you get to include YouTube videos and Bring It On, I get to bring 90s rom-coms in our repertoire.

JEFF: Okay, if you’re going to wait for me to grow a beard to do this, it might be a couple of decades. God did not give me the blessing of facial hair. Sarah, is this our weirdest episode yet?

SARAH: You know, listen, we’re so far off the rails at this point, I just think we need to bring it back.

JEFF: Okay! Back to Prop. So I was really intrigued by what Prop said about working for the empire but not marrying the empire. And he cites the prophet Daniel as a biblical example, but I also thought of Jesus and his counsel to his followers to be shrewd. Which is not, I don’t think, my specialty.

SARAH: No, I think we’re probably a bit too earnest to do that well. But one of my favourite sayings of Jesus—and I say that about all of them and I mean it every time—is that moment when he said to the disciples to be “innocent as doves, wise as serpents.” I think there is something there about keeping your heart and motives innocent even while being highly aware of the empire and the cost of doing business within it. I think the temptation is to be one or the other and again we’re called to exist and embody something beyond the duality of either/or. And so to me that means I can be idealistic in my motivations and in my posture and in my heart while still making wise and shrewd choices based on the realities of our times.

JEFF: I think I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said “motive matters” on this podcast. And I think it’s relevant to one of the other things Prop brought up in his talk. So this was two years ago, right? And it’s interesting to me that he introduced many people in that room, in the Evolving Faith audience, to cancellation, and now, in 2020, cancel culture has become a much more widespread thing. Honestly, I had forgotten that Prop named the evangelical church kind of as forerunners in canceling people. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. And that really grieves me, because my theology tells me that nobody is ever beyond redemption, nobody is ever beyond love, and nobody therefore should ever be canceled.

SARAH: You know, honestly? I can think of some people I’d like to cancel. You’re not allowed to bring up depravity right now.

JEFF: Sarah, I didn’t bring it up! That’s the gift here. You did.

SARAH: I will cancel you. I think it’s remarkable to think that he brought that up two years ago as a forerunner for what was happening and now here we are, starkly in the moment of cancel culture. It’s on everybody’s mind and everybody is talking about what it means and the implications of it. I do agree with you that we are too quick to cancel but we are also too quick to claim “we’ve been canceled” when it’s usually just consequences. But one of the things that Prop said there in that context is something that has really stayed with me, and it’s when he said, “I love you too much to be scared of you.” I think that’s a good word for a lot of us who are scared of being canceled or who are scared of speaking out against injustice or at this political moment in their family or their community or to pay the price of truthfulness. We need to love people - maybe particularly our enemies - enough to not be scared of them.

JEFF: I think that’s really true. As our resident Enneagram 6 and expert on all things related to fear, I completely agree with that, even though it’s really hard, because I know how fear has this way of self-replicating, especially in the presence of people or even institutions whose blessing and totally conditional love we want. And speaking of fear: One thing I’ve been thinking about is that I too would like to go the Prince route, except without the assless jeans. I’m sure you’re thankful for that image, Sarah. I would really like to ride a unicorn too, but again, with clothes on. I like clothes.

SARAH: Me too. I like when people wear clothes.

JEFF: Big fans! The Evolving Faith Podcast: pro-clothing! And I guess going the Prince route means I get to do it with clothes on, because I get to terraform, to tell a different story, to tell a story my way. And I’m so thankful for this exhortation, because for much of my life, I’ve been told the way the story should be told. So recently, I confessed to a small group of friends that I’ve only begun to dissect the ways in which white supremacy is knit into the way I have been taught to preach, the way I have been told I should write, the way I choose what stories I tell, the way I tell those stories. And here’s the hard thing: I know that when I write about my culture and my people, the pageviews and the retweets always go down, unless I’m offering a recipe for my grandma’s fried rice or my mom’s egg and tomato. But if I’m talking about the way Chinese people see things, as opposed to cook things, there’s like almost zero interest. Because we live in a culture that does not value stories from all cultures and perspectives. But how is that going to change if I’m not going to be brave enough to terraform, as Prop says, and tell a different story? People can’t read a story if it never gets written.

SARAH: That’s good. You know, Prop’s exhortation to tell better stories—maybe it also means we need to hear better stories. We need to be listening. Sometimes we’re so worried about telling our own story, we never stop to listen to someone else’s story, particularly if it’s different than our own. I mean, just one of the functions of white supremacy often is just the fact that those voices are often centered and those stories and experiences are centered more often. So that connects with one of our shared priorities or values - naming what we’re “for” not simply what we’re against. I think that’s what terraforming can be for us. We’re not simply terraforming our own stories; we’re also terraforming how we receive and respond to other stories, to one another’s stories. We can name what we’re against all day long—the list grows longer constantly given our day and age—but this idea of contending and wrestling for a creation story that is life giving I think is really worthy work. Not all of us are rappers or poets or even what would traditionally be called an “artist,” but we are still creators. We’re co-creators with God, called to participate in the redemption, not just by how we tell stories but also how we receive them. I think Prop’s words here about terraforming are a beautiful way of calling us to that work of co-creating the kin-dom, that shalom, of God.

SHARON: Hi, my name is Sharon, and I’m from Nevada. And I’m cultivating hope in the wilderness right now by reading and sort of prayer journaling the imprecatory psalms. Those are the psalms that David had written where he just kind of went batshit crazy about all the horrible things that he wanted God to do to his enemies. And why that gives me hope is because it sort of gives me permission to rage against things that have been done to me, things that have been said to me, and also done and said to the least of these, the marginalized groups that sometimes it’s time to be sad but sometimes it’s time to get really, really angry and say, Hey this is not okay, and this is what I want to happen to them, but totally surrender that to God. I just love how David in those psalms sort of gives us permission, David being a man after God’s own heart, and God never disciplined him for those prayers. He disciplined him for raping Bathsheba and killing Uriah, but he never disciplined for the imprecatory psalms. So that gives me hope.

JEFF: Friends, you can find all of the links mentioned today, including info about Propaganda and his work in the world as well as a full transcript in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. Keep an eye out for—or better yet, pre-order—Prop’s new book, Terraform: Building a Better World, which is due out next year. You can sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com and follow me on Instagram at @byjeffchu. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, the world’s most enthusiastic podcasters, along with Lucy Huang. Thanks to Audrey Assad and Wes Willison for our music.

SARAH: You can find me at sarahbessey.com for all my social media links, my newsletter, and of course my books. Join us next week as we listen to another double-header of an episode, with A’driane Nieves and the aforementioned Audrey Assad. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast, friends. And until next time, remember that you are loved.

Sarah Bessey

Ep. 15 Terraforming with Propaganda

Hosted by Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu

Featuring Propaganda

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Show Notes

Propaganda

Other links mentioned in the show:

Transcript

Ep. 16 Art, Embodiment, and Healing with Audrey Assad & A’Driane Nieves (E)

Ep. 14 Wonder, Welcome, and Communion with Kaitlin Curtice and Jonathan Martin