Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendrick's Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And my guest in Brandon Washington, who is a pastor in Denver, Colorado. Whenever I say Denver, Colorado when I'm in Dallas I go, "Man, the environment around Denver is completely different than the environment around Dallas. Dallas is flat and boring. Denver's beautiful with mountains." I mean, so I'm jealous. 

Brandon Washington: 

It's among the reasons I stayed here. Moving to Denver was the first time I experienced four distinct seasons. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah, well Dallas has- 

Brandon Washington: 

Those people in Dallas, it's two maybe. 

Darrell Bock: 

Dallas has two. Summer and getting ready for summer. But anyway, yeah, and Brandon is pastor at the Embassy Christian Bible Church in Denver and he also holds a master's degree from Denver Seminary where he studied systematic theology and apologetics and ethics. I mean, what a combination. And you did it so well, they asked you onto their board of trustees. 

Brandon Washington: 

Yes. 

Darrell Bock: 

So thanks for being with us. He's written a book, I have it here, called A Burning House, which tells you we got a hot topic. And it's redeeming American Evangelicalism by examining its history, mission, and message. So obviously, we're going to be talking about racial perspectives in the church and what God is doing amongst us in these days. And it's been a challenging period. And so, I want to frame this a little bit, Brandon, by opening up and saying that just because you occupy the same space, just because we all walk into a church and we worship the same God, doesn't mean that we see that space in the same way. And your book is an effort to try and write in such a way, in a sympathetic, gentle, but direct way about how many Black people see the space of the church which they share as Evangelicals and primarily with the white majority of Evangelicalism. 

So first of all, I just want to commend you for undertaking that task, and the challenge that it represents. But secondly, I want to ask you, as a way in, tell us how you got to this topic and why is it that you decided that this was something you wanted to speak to? 

Brandon Washington: 

Very good question. I became a believer in the mid-'90s. It was 1997, and I am from Dallas. Born and raised in Dallas. 

Darrell Bock: 

Oh, wow. 

Brandon Washington: 

Yeah. So my introduction to the faith was heavily influenced by… Well, much of my understanding of the faith was heavily influenced by a local radio station, that if I were to mention now, everyone would recognize it. And my pastor was Dr. Tony Evans, and that gave me a flawed… it was a skewed sample size regarding seminarians, because until I left Dallas, every seminarian I knew was African-American. There were dozens of them at the church, because of who the pastor is. I received this perception from them of what seminary is, but it was a flawed perception. 

I left Dallas and moved to Denver, first, because I wanted to leave home. And the other reason was, I did not want to be a pastor, I wanted to be a professor of philosophy, and that's why I chose Denver Seminary, which at the time had a program in philosophy of religion and ethics. And I realized how skewed my sample size was, because there were so few, relatively speaking, the Black student population was significantly smaller than the overall population. And I noticed, when we were in class, that our questions weren't the same. Our theology was the same, but the practical application of the ideas was not the same. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the contexts were that different? The context of student experience was that different that it was generating different kinds of conversations about how to think about ministry? 

Brandon Washington: 

Absolutely. The questions we asked were along the lines of how is this going to nurture wholeness in our community, where we lived in the time, which is in Northeast Denver, which was historically, is historically, an African-American community. And I had classmates who told me that such questions are off the mark, to stick to the gospel. And I always wondered, "Well, why is the gospel not relevant to these questions? Why does the gospel have no bearing on these concerns?" So I noticed that we shared orthodoxy, our ideas were the same, but our orthopraxy, the application, the embodiment of those ideas, were often just askew of one another, enough to be loud. Enough for it to be a stumbling block for many students of color. 

So I wanted to address that distinction and the specific moment when it came to a head was the conversations I had around the death of Trayvon Martin. And the idea that people who received the same theological education I did, who were telling me that the gospel and some of the other fundamental aspects of our faith have no bearing on that moment. That was troubling to me and it made me realize that we are in the same house, but I walked away from those conversations feeling like a guest, an unwanted, sometimes, guest, instead of a family member who was in the household that we all share, the family dwelling. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, well you've opened- 

Brandon Washington: 

So I want to visit that distinction. 

Darrell Bock: 

Go ahead. You've opened this with a metaphor that I like to use, which goes something like this, I equate the church to a blended family. A blended family, they're not biologically related to one another, but because of a second marriage or a death, there is a second family that is put alongside the original family and they have to blend together. And all those relationships have to be fixed. In a practical space, people who study this say it takes five to seven years for everyone to work out their relationship to one another, if they get there. Okay, if they get there. 

Brandon Washington: 

If they get there. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so, the church is like a blended family. And the other metaphor I like to use is God has adopted all of us, but we have not adopted each other. Okay? So that's another way to think about the same image, that we share space, we even share the same set of… well, I'll say it this way, we claim to share the same set of theological beliefs. Okay? But the application of those beliefs, because of the different spaces that we live in, doesn't work out to surface the same kinds of issues and problems, and sometimes we don't recognize the issues and problems that someone in the different space is having to deal with. 

Brandon Washington: 

Right, right. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so- 

Brandon Washington: 

I have a- 

Darrell Bock: 

Go ahead. 

Brandon Washington: 

No, I have a mentor here who says that empathy is essential to applying the gospel well, and he says empathy is nearly impossible without proximity. So we have to be in the same space, but we have to do it empathetically. I'm not trying to copy you, but I'm trying to appreciate you and appreciate how you see the same circumstances, which will potentially shape how I apply the gospel to those circumstances. 

Darrell Bock: 

Exactly. And then, I think the other issue that you've raised in your introduction is that… I'm going to say it this way, is our gospel big enough? Is our gospel big enough to incorporate all the spaces that the people occupy who come into the shared space of the church? And sometimes I think our gospel isn't big enough. I actually have a historical explanation for why this challenge exists. I'll go ahead and share. It works this way, that Christianity was seen as very holistic up until the point of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. You had state churches. Okay? And whatever you think a state church is, the fact that you had state churches says Christianity is designed to apply to every public space. Okay? And then, you had the abolition movement. Okay? Which certainly was, in the way we tend to frame things now, more political than theological, although I would say that, "No, that's not the way to read the space," but that's what happened. 

Anyway, so what happened is liberals came along and they said, "Ooh, we like the Christian ethic, but we don't necessarily buy the theological story in the Bible that's underneath it," and they split the two apart. Okay? Conservatives came along and they said, "Ooh, we like that deal, but we're going to flip it." Okay? "We like the theological side of it, and we're going to defend this to death, because the Bible's being challenged. And everything that's over there, that has nothing to do with the Bible, nothing to do with the gospel, et cetera, that's its own separate space." And then, my next line is, what God has joined together let no man put asunder, and both side pulled it apart. And in pulling it apart, then when you go back to try and put it back together and say, "What is that relationship between these two pieces?," you end up in a discussion where, "Well, wait a minute. Does that actually belong together or not?" 

And so, people don't see how this could possibly belong together, because we've pulled it so far apart from one another, and then we've labeled it ideologically rather than theologically, and when we do that, we dissipate how big the gospel is, because the gospel not only is designed to save us, it's also designed to reconcile us. 

Brandon Washington: 

As is your way, you articulate