Well hello and welcome to the channel in Unit ATM. today. My name is Austin Suggs and I have the privilege of guest hosting today for the channel. I'm a former student of Dr. Armstrongs and the host of the YouTube channel gospel simplicity. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Vince el Bantu, Dr. Vince L. Bantu, earned his PhD at the Catholic University of America and is Assistant Professor of church history and Black Church Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and is the oh honey of the medium school of high note, Dr. Bantu, thank you so much for being here today.
Oh, thanks for having me.
Well, it is my pleasure. I am delighted to be talking about your book today, a multitude of all peoples engaging ancient Christianity's global identity, which is out through IVP. Press, it was a joy to read. In fact, after reading it, I went and recommended it to the professor here who teaches church history for a more global perspective on this and he was excited, he had actually already read it. But it is a great book, and I believe they might be incorporating it. So thanks for your work with that, I'd love to ask. So it's always interesting to learn what it motivated a book because it's a big undertaking to take on writing a book. And so you really want to love what you're talking about. And so you mentioned in the introduction of your book, that the primary concern of the work is the dilemma of people rejecting Christianity, because they perceive that as a Western or white religion, that is not fit for non western, non white people. Now, many people who watch this interview, they may have heard of people rejecting Christianity. For this reason, though, perhaps some others may have less experience or awareness of this, could you share a bit about the experiences or factors that led you to identify this as an area you wanted to research?
Yeah, definitely. And yeah, I think you're right. You know, I think, you know, if, you know, this is a missiological crisis. And an evangelistic issue that, you know, is, is really primarily in the non white world. You know, I think people who are in the white world, or people who are white people, are not as maybe queued in these Lelisa the severity of the issue, because, again, it's not a white issue. I mean, you know, if you're, if you're white, and if you're a Christian, or if you're white, and you're not a Christian, usually, the, the factors that go into whether or not someone decides to be a Christian don't have a lot to do with ethnic or racial identity, and the perceived fit are matched with Christianity, and religious identity and ethnic or racial identity. You know, put another way, a white person is not often going to think about well, does Christianity does does being a Christian, does that match with my whiteness? Does that match with my American or my French or British or Australian identity? That's just not going to be a question that comes up even for a non Christian like, if, if you have someone in those contexts that rejects Christianity and decides not to be a Christian, it's not going to be for most often, it's not gonna be for reasons because they perceive Christianity as somehow antithetical to their German or to their Canadian identity. That's not, that's not going to be really a factor, it's probably going to be more for issues of, you know, philosophical or theological, or even scientific, or cultural, you know, kind of social reasons, reasons of history, you know, different kind of apologetic concerns. And so that's why with evangelism, and apologetic training, in predominately white context and spaces, they usually trained, and in a way to address the issues that are going to come up in that context. And in that space, which, as I've said, is not going to very often be issues of racial or ethnic, or national identity, and the perceived fit with that with Christianity. However, when you come into the majority world, which is not white, the black, brown, yellow and red world, which is the majority of human beings in the world, not only is the question of racial ethnic identity going to come up, but it is the single greatest issue that is going to come up for people around the world that are of color. And it's actually often not going to be very often some of the same questions that come up in the white world questions about, you know, you know, kind of wreck like kind of reconciling scientific issues with issues of faith or, or even just having agnosticism or atheism, those are movements that are actually bigger in the white world. But in the Black and Brown world, the majority world, atheism and agnosticism is not very popular. Most people most black and brown people around the world do believe in the supernatural, do believe in a creator and do believe in the plausibility of the gospel claims. But for most black and brown people in the world, the issue with Christianity is not again is not so much could The things that were claimed by Jesus and in the Gospels have happened. But it's more, it's more the issue of does the Christian tradition and the Christian religion, does that fit with my racial, ethnic, tribal, national identity? And very often the case is that the perception as the answer to that question is no, that if you're in the majority of the world of color, the perception is very much alive, that Christianity does not fit with our people, but it's not in it's not a religion of our people. And very oftentimes, there is another religion that is connected to that people, that that that culture, and it is not Christianity. But on the flip side, Christianity is perceived as a Western white religion, and as an extension of Western and white culture. And therefore, even before we can even get to the claims of Jesus, or the claims of the scriptures, Christianity is often rejected outright by non Christians in the majority world. And it's for that primary reason. And that's why I would say that the the perception that Christianity is a Western white religion, is the single greatest obstacle to the spread of the gospel in the world, and has been for centuries, and I've experienced that even I mean, I go into the book into the history of it, but I've experienced that even in my own life to your question.
Even you know, growing up in an urban African American context, you know, I really experienced that in a major way, especially growing up in the 80s, and the 90s, especially kind of in, you know, kind of in a rough area, we're going up into kind of an apex of the whole gang culture. And so my, my cultural context, growing up was, was one that also was very much foreign to Christianity or to the church. And, and so I, you know, came to know, the Lord Jesus at a young age, and I, you know, was very passionate about evangelism. But even growing up in my context, trying to share the gospel, I could see and feel the massive gap that was perceived between Christianity, this religion, this, this message of hope and faith. And, and especially how it was packaged in terms of worship and, and, and, and ecclesial structure and, and just the whole tradition of Christianity. It just felt in every way, almost foreign. And it was really in every way foreign from the lived culture that I was growing up in, and that everyone around me was living in, in West St. Louis. And so that's what really, you know, again, cued me into the, the need, and the the really the the urgency of this issue, even from a young age.
That's fascinating. And what I really love is the way that you're able to unite history and missiology. In this book, two topics that I think are sometimes looked at desperately, or at least from the perspective of church historians, I think they're often not thinking of the questions of Missy ology, but you show just how important this connection is specifically, because of the pressing problems of the perception of Christianity as the white man's religion. And as it says, across the back of your book, I believe, and as you mentioned, multiple times, a main thesis of the book, is that Christianity is not becoming a global religion, as you might hear people say, but it has always been a global religion, that this isn't something new. And in fact, if we can reclaim this global identity, we might be able to better kind of recognize the fact that Krishna isn't the white man's religion. And I think you show that really well. But I have a question, because I think I can imagine some people might be tempted to say that, even if it didn't start this way, so maybe Christianity started as a global religion. They might see him to say, okay, that might be one thing, but it seems to have become that and its dominant form that over time that Christianity became the religion of the white man. So in other words, to what extent is it true and not true that in some way, Christianity has gone through a period of being the white man's religion? Is that something that we need to wrestle with? Right there?
Oh, I think that's a great question. And I think it's absolutely something that we have to be honest about, and grapple with and wrestle with the, you know, as we started with, you know, with saying that this perception, again, it's a it's a crisis, it's a real Gospel crisis, that people perceive Christianity as a Western white religion. And it's a perception that is not true. As we said, Christianity is and always has been a global religion. So Christianity is not a white man's religion in every most important sense of the phrase and of the word and the concept that it is absolutely not. And yet at some at the same time, we have to acknowledge the reality that that the the perception, although false, is extremely understandable. It's extremely understandable that people would see it that way. Because there is there are and have been for four 1700 years, there have been a multitude of ways and still are a multitude of ways that that, that that lie is communicated and is perpetuated. You know, you know, the seminaries and Christian colleges and and denominations and Institute, Christian institutions of the world are are egregiously and disproportionately run by white men. That in and of itself is a theological statement that says that white men know best in areas of theology and spirituality, when we have our Christian institutions that are almost entirely run by white men. The theologians that we read the Bible commentaries and deed, the Bible translations that we read, are mediated through white male eyes, the, the depictions of Jesus looking like a Scandinavian person, the the styles of liturgy, even when we talk about when we talk about
when we talk about high liturgy, or even when we say something is liturgical. I mean, you know, you know, negro spirituals or liturgical so it's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, when people say, liturgical, and what they really mean is something is, I mean, look, liturgy is worship. It's just, you know, worshipping Jesus. And so any any worship music is liturgical, but But what people mean by that is a very kind of Eurocentric European style of hymnal of immunity, that is rooted in European styles, and we can just go on and on church, architectural structures and, and, and the deployment of various European languages in theological parlance, Greek, Latin, French and German, there's so many ways that Christianity is presented as if it is a, as a white man's religion. And, and to say nothing of the fact that probably the biggest example is the way that Christianity was used. And it was perverted. And in, in the Western colonial project of genocide of indigenous peoples colonization of African and Asian peoples and enslavement of African peoples and Christianity was used and even presented as the national or state religion of various European North American powers in the use of these acts of genocide. And, and so, again, it's while it's not true that Christianity is a Western, a white man's religion, these ancient and these modern examples of the ways in which the Western white world and church continues to present itself as the normative expression, I mean, even that, I mean, even Western white normativity is another example. You know, we we put ethnic modifiers in front of things that are not white, but but with things that are white, we just call them, we don't call them anything, because it's the assumption that they're just normal, we will call Black Theology, black or Hispanic theology, Hispanic, or indigenous theology indigenous, or we'll call even a church level I hear people say things like ethnic churches, that that people say, Well, they're in, you know, it's kind of in a similar way that even in broader society, we say things like ethnic food, and what we really mean by ethnic food is non white food. You know, we'll call Chinese food Chinese or Mexican food Mexican. And we'll call it you know, same thing, theology or churches, we will put, if they're not white, we'll put those ethnic identifiers with the understand. And this This is very psychologically oppressive and formative and traumatizing to all of our racial imaginations, because what it's what it is forming, and all of our minds is that black, brown, yellow and red people are racially and ethnically and tribally specific, and their theology and their way of seeing the world is framed by their theme, their cultural perspective. But white people, when we don't put those same ethnic identifiers or modifiers, in front of their ways of doing church, their ways of doing theology, their ways of doing food, their ways of doing whatever, then what that does is it elevates whiteness to this kind of all seeing eye that is free from the specificity of racial, ethnic and historical perspective. And so when we read theology by white men, whether it's you know, Schleiermacher or Carl Bart or or John Piper or, or whoever, we are assuming that this is just the ology this is the, the universal theology and then you know, the stuff done by minorities, that's this, the ethnically specific stuff done by women, that's, that's the stuff that is affected by gender and racial identity. But the stuff done by white men is just universal. And so So again, yeah, there's a lot of ways I mean, we could go on and on but but again, I, I would say we absolutely have to grapple with and be honest about the ways that although Christianity is not a white man's religion, or any man's religion, but it's for everybody, we have to also then therefore show that the way in which it's been presented and is being presented as a Western white man's religion is an aberration from the true gospel of Jesus Christ and the multi ethnic global church that we see in the early church that what we're what we've been seeing for 17 years is a is a diversion and divergence from true Christian Amity,
I really appreciate that. And I knew that in your book, you were not trying to say that people have no merit at all and kind of having that perception of Christianity, a white man's religion. But I wanted to make sure that in the way I phrased the questions I gave you space to present that because I think it could be dangerous to simply say, okay, Christianity, in its essence is not a white man's religion. Therefore, everyone that thinks that has been wrong. And we're just going to move on, I think I appreciate you taking the time, though, to kind of unpack. While it is wrong, as a claim about the nature of the essence of Christianity, it's understandable that people have that perception and part of the work that the reason this book needs to exist in a lot of ways is because that perception does exist. And I think, for people coming at this from any type of perspective, I think many of the people that watch this channel are going to be interested, and kind of that, that great commission that that calling of making disciples of the whole world, and you talk about that in your book. But I think for that reason, if nothing else, that the I cuz I recognize these conversations might be drawing to some people, if they're new to them, that this is a question of missiology. And therefore, we should care deeply about this. And it's a gospel issue, as you put so well, you know, something I love advocating for people, and I know that Dr. Armstrong does so well on this channel is to read widely, because when we do so we can kind of get rid of some of those blind spots, or at least try to, and I began reading your book, the same day that I finished the book, after whiteness by Willie Jennings. And just seeing these ideas come together in ways that I had never thought of, in my predominantly white theological education, it's been such a great experience for me to realize all the things that I haven't seen, and now need to be aware of and do something about. So I really appreciate the work you're doing, I couldn't recommend it more to people, the link for your book will be in the description of this video. With that conversation in mind, you know, you brought up this idea of Western or white normativity. And I think that's really valuable. And I remember the first time someone pointed out to me that we put the label ethnic in front of all these other foods, except for traditionally American white foods, whatever that even means, right? And it was so jarring to me. And you begin seeing that, and you can see it in a lot of places. And the same way. And theology, as you mentioned, it was for that reason, I was curious to ask, you know, in your book, you serve a kind of Western Christianity, the emergent, or so you survey ancient Christianity and the in the West, in Africa and the Middle East and along the Silk Road. And I'm curious, you start with the West, which I think would be common in a lot of books. Was that any? But in a lot of books, that's where it would end as well. Was there any tension for you and starting there, given the goal of kind of highlighting non western, ancient Christian identity?
Yeah, I think, um, you know, part of the I think, you know, on one hand, I think two reasons. On one hand, I'm, unfortunately, you know, Western history is, is more known to people, you know, I'll often ask people, you know, even if I'm in a crowd, I'll say, you know, raise your hand, if you've ever heard of Martin Luther, you know, you don't have to know a lot about him or a lot of details, but just if you've heard of him for the name, and everybody raises their hand, or I'll say, raise your hand, if you've heard of Thomas Aquinas or Jonathan Edwards, and everyone's raising their hand, then I'll say, Okay, raise your hand, if you've ever heard of shouldn't have to have a treat, or if you've ever heard of Northside, or if you've ever heard of, you know, he should not have Merv and no one's raising their hands. And, and I'll say, See, even that, right there is white normativity. The the names that are known by just people everywhere in western civilization, and culture is just known by people, even if you're not specialists, just regular folks have heard of Martin Luther. But then on the flip side, even churches, story ins, and theologians have never heard of people like Northside or Zarya, CO, who are theologians that wrote, and were as influential as western counterparts in the same time period. The only reason they're not known is because they're black or brown, and they wrote in non western languages, outside of the purview of the Roman Empire, kind of the dominant western church. And so, you know, I think for that reason, you know, just to start with what was familiar and, and kind of starting with helping people understand, again, it the book really takes as a as a, as a as an as a given that, that, that there is a problem in the world today. And that's that's another reason why I didn't delve in although I'm happy to talk about how about it now. That's another reason why I didn't delve too much into really exploring the depths and the the extent to which Christianity has been appropriated and abused by Western white civilizations because again, this book is taking as an assumption that people have already read things like like zoom, Shawn Roz. The next evangelicalism or or his and Mark, Charles's unsettling truth. work like jemar tisby. And this is really seen as a follow up to people who are at a not at a one on one level in terms of their understanding of racial justice and kind of decolonize historiography and decolonize, the theology, but this is really meant for someone who's at more of a 301, or a 401 perspective, who understands all of it has read things like Dr. Jennings after whiteness, or Christian imagination. And this book is really meant as a follow up to them to first of all, just kind of get it off the way and just start with saying, Okay, well, we all are aware that there's this Western Christian colonial project that has decimated the world for, you know, for millennia now, and I want to now help us understand some of the background to that, because a lot of the work by some of the authors I just named in many more often focuses on the last 500 years, and how it focuses on the encounter between Western colonial if you want to call it Christianity, but maybe we'll say Christendom, the encounter between Western colonial Christendom, and the the lived traditions of indigenous and African peoples, and how we have how those how how the oppression has played out, and how nowadays in the modern world, black and indigenous, and people of color are finding ways to disentangle and even even modern Eurocentric yo descended, Christians are also trying to who our allies are trying to disentangle and decolonize and decontextualized theology, again, this book is, is written for those who are well read in that area. But a lot of times, people in that area, again, are often writing in response to,
again, what has been what has happened in the last several centuries and are more familiar with that history. And they're often not as well informed on history before the last 500 years before the 16th century, and where a lot of Western colonial imagination came from. So in a way, you can almost see the first chapter. And that quick survey of the late antique and medieval origins of Western captivity, almost as like the prequel to something like Willie Jennings is Christian imagination, which really picks up in the 16th and 17th centuries, and continues onward, you can see this as showing what happened even before that, because a lot of times the perception is that in the 16th century, Europeans just got in boats and decided to appropriate Christian Christian Christianity for their own colonial purposes, as if that was just a new idea. And this first chapter is showing, for those who are more familiar with that European history and European names, specifically, the development of how Western Christian and white supremacy was developing even before the 16th century. And then also, another reason this is just my personality, I'm always this the way I work in the way I think I'm always kind of a, I'm always kind of one of these people that likes to get get over with or kind of get through anything I'm not as excited about or not as looking forward to kind of get that out of the way and then save the best for last. And so in that way, I wanted to do the first chapter first and show well, this is this is some of the history we know. And this is how, how Western colonialism, Christian colonialism came to be in the 16th century, this was the foundations of that, from the fourth up until the 15th century, but then it's like, Alright, now let's get to the good stuff, which is really the heart of the book, which is that other side of history that that has been suppressed that we don't know about. That's really for me, the you know, the the middle chapters are really the kind of the heart of the book.
I'm really appreciate you sharing that. And I appreciate you kind of locating this book within a wider realm of other books that people might want to check out. And I'll encourage the team who posts these videos, to maybe put links to some of those books that you recommend as books to maybe read before this, that kind of more of the 101 level before you're getting to this 301 level, I think they'll be able to jump into it. But I think it would be great if they want to check those out, as well. So I'll try to get links in there. for that. I want to get to what you talked about as kind of the the more exciting part of your book. But I think just as one last kind of like foundational kind of yeah foundation to lay here for lack of a better word. I think a brief conversation about Constantine would be beneficial to kind of contextualize where we're going to go from here. And in that section on Western Christianity. You have a section on Constantine talking about the fusion of Roman and Christian identity and talking about this as a very significant development in the history of Christianity, that's going to have great repercussions down the line, and is going to impact some of those later work that you're talking about. But also showing up even at this time. Could you elaborate a bit on this dynamic? And it's significant for how the church developed in the West?
Oh, definitely. And I could just I mean, yeah, just quickly summarize that in the first, you know, part of the book and as we were just talking about, you know, in the 16th century, European powers have felt that in close alliances with the church, the specifically with the kind of the Western Church, centered in Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, felt that Western and white powers political powers We're, we're God's vicar or we're God's representative on this earth, and had carte blanche authority to go into black and brown and Asian context and oppress and colonize and commit genocide and that God was approving of this. And, you know, again, we see this terrible, horrific marriage of white supremacy and Western colonialism with a particular version, or I would say, perversion of Christianity. And we see the the origins of this again, it wasn't just something that popped into European people's heads in the 1500s. But this was something that was well in the works for over a millennium before that. And yeah, it all started with Constantine. And in the book, I go through three major themes that really laid the groundwork, or really three major eras that lay the groundwork for Western oppressive colonialism that really comes into its full flowering in the 15th and 16th centuries. But the first step of that is, as you mentioned, the the so called Christianization of Constantine, because before that, before Emperor Constantine, in the early three hundreds, allegedly became a Christian and allegedly Christianize, the the Roman Empire, I mean, it's a lot more complicated than that, because there, you know, even his own faith was questionable. Even the nature of his Christian faith, if indeed he even was a Christian. But one thing that is clear is that Christians in the Roman Empire felt that he was a Christian, that he, a lot of the Church, which had just gone through a severe persecution, just a few years before I felt, were really excited about the idea that Christians were being supported. And he certainly supported Christians and ended the systematic persecution of Christians. But whether he himself was a devout Christian is a is a larger question. But the but he, you know, at that time, during his reforms in the Roman Empire, and especially his involvement with a one of the first Roman imperial councils at the Council of Nicea, where doctrine of Jesus's divinity was reaffirmed, it wasn't created at that time, but it was reaffirmed because there was someone who was challenging it. You know, there was at that time, there started to be a lot of ways in which Christianity as it developed in the Roman Empire, again, we always have to be very careful about again, putting modifiers in front of everything, that that's, that's a way we can avoid, normalize, because sometimes we'll talk about early Christian history, and we'll say, the early church or early Christians or things or early church councils. And and we won't, you know, that's another way that we will accidentally continue to advance Western supremacy and normativity. So I'll often say well, in the Roman church, or one of the early Roman councils, because again, there were Christians in the Persian Empire, Christians in India, Christians in you know, other parts of Armenia, that were not beholding to what was going on, in the Roman Empire, whatever the Council of Nicea or Constantine was doing. And that were, in many ways developing independently from Roman Christianity, which would later develop your influence European Christianity. But yeah, it but in the Roman context, this was the first time that you had a, an empire that especially on the same on the level of the Roman Empire, that was seen as this Christian empire, Armenia was a Christian nation, even before the Roman Empire. But the Roman Empire was really kind of this the other major superpower in the world at the time, the other being the Persian Empire. And so now that it was presenting itself as a Christian empire,
and also it was beginning to take on a lot of Roman culture, even the way that the diocese and the way in which, you know, church structure was was, was starting to be reformed was in many ways modeled after Roman government, and even military structures, and even language of you know, cathedrals and, and things like this came from Roman political and military language, and even theological concepts of orthodoxy like the council Nazi was, you know, reaffirming the idea that Jesus is God, but they use this term home OCS. And this is a term that really comes from the south from scripture, but it comes more from kind of Hellenistic thought, and was used to frame orthodoxy. And so we see the beginnings of, of Christian of this kind of dominant Christendom, that was closely linked with, culturally, linguistically, politically, was very much linked with the Roman Empire. And and you also saw the earliest examples of that becoming a problem for Christians outside of the Roman Empire, especially in Persia, because the kind of the perception of the Roman Empire being a Christian nation, led to the persecution of Christians in the Persian Empire, because the Persian emperor, or Shah was the enemy of Constantine and the Roman Emperor for a long time, even before this, and after, but before this time, Christians in the Persian Empire were not persecuted because Christians were everywhere. In fact, before this time in third century, Christians in the Persian Empire, talking about modern day Iran and packed with parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, they were actually living more comfortably than Christians in what's now modern day Europe, where Christians are being punished rooted in Europe, in the third century, they were actually a lot more free, in modern day Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan. But the situation flipped in the fourth century. And that was largely because Christianity was now being presented as this Roman religion. That that that's that was really the genesis of the dilemma that we're still facing today that we've already talked about the that was when Christianity became associated with a particular geo cultural identity and region, which it had not before. Because again, before the fourth century, it was in every part of the known world or most of the known world in India, North Africa and Europe and the Near East and Persia and Central Asia, it was it was all over the place. And but going forward, this is not only when it became perceived of as being associated with a Roman religion. In fact, even for example, as as one specific example of that when Christianity came into Georgia, which is another nation near Armenia in the Caucasus region, and Silicon Valley Christian nation today, when the mission when the first missionary came to Georgia, the Georgian King referred to Christianity as the Roman religion, because this was just a few decades after Constantine's alleged conversion. So this started to develop a concept of Christianity being a Roman religion, that would later develop into a Western or European and a white religion, as as people following Constantine's time, would also model similar ways of fusing Christianity in its western practice, or expression, with the political and military will of the Roman Empire and later Western European powers. As the Western Roman Empire fell, you had the emergence of, you know, Western Christian nation that would become France and Germany and England, that also modeled themselves after Constantine, the most famous example of Charlemagne, who also saw himself as a new Constantine centuries later in the ninth century, but also began to use Christianity in the Carolingian dynasty to oppress even surrounding European people groups. So even the same colonial practices that European Christians would later use in African and indigenous nations around the world, centuries later, was already being practiced on European people groups in the ninth century. And also you had a again a particular expression of Christian faith that was expressed in European or Western concepts and that that really took off in a major way ethics at another Roman church council, the council of couse Eden, which was a debate over how to talk about Jesus's humanity and divinity. And the definition at the council calcein in 451, was that Jesus was one person and two natures. And even though the distinction in the Greek language between a person and nature like one person having multiple natures, this was a very kind of Hellenistic Roman way of approaching the, the, the, the Immaculate Conception and the hypostatic union. That was unique to that context, but it really was not favored or agreed with in most of the churches and Christians in Africa, and in the Asian continent. And because of that, that after 451, this was the major first major schism in the history of the church, where the, the Christianity that was dominant in the European continent, became separated from, from the dominant Christianity in the African and Asian continents. And not only that, but the, the Christianity that continued to develop in the European continent. In the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, began to strongly oppress the Christians of Africa and Asia, and trying to force them to have that same kind of theology of one person, two natures. And, and but at the same time, nonetheless, a lot of the African and Asian Christians were resisted and rejected this particular Caledonian theology, if you will, and develop their own indigenous forms of theology and orthodoxy, but that was seen as as as heretical and, and soon, like, will not soon but in the seventh century, the rise of Islam was kind of a double whammy for the Christians of Northeast Africa, and the Middle East that that strongly inhibited their missional impact across the African and Asian continents, on top of the fact that they had been excluded and oppressed by Western European Christians. Now, that didn't stop the missionary efforts. And in fact, we can get into this, but Christians continued to do missions and Christianity spread across the African and Asian continents, nonetheless, but not to the extent that it was and would have continued to spread because of the rise of Islam and the and then also the, even before the rise of Islam, the suppression of African and Asian Christianity's by the European Christianity, which in turn, as we just said, on while while African and Asian Christianity was being minimized, not though not fully extinguished, because many of these communities are still around to this day. But while they were being minimized, European Christianity was was ascending and even the rise of Islam also engendered The kind of the ascendancy of European Christian nations like the Carolingian dynasty that we talked about. And so that's, you know, yeah, I would say that's just kind of I know, it's a lot. But that's, you know, kind of just maybe a quick summary of the first chapter, again, how this, this rise of Western Christendom that eventually led into the same, the same kind of,
you know, I guess, Western Christian imagination that saw itself as the, the guardian of Christendom that, that that Charlemagne continued, that also led into the crusades, and then later on into the transatlantic slave trade in western colonialism, which, which, you know, as I talk about some of the papal bulls in the 15th century, were drawing upon the same mentality of the crusades in the 11th and 12th. And 13th centuries of being this kind of Western Christian Guardian against, you know, the the alleged reason was against this Islamic power to the east. But that also meant the decimation of indigenous peoples in the Americas and in Africa, and in the colonization of peoples in Asia, many of whom actually already had Christian traditions that were that were ignored or suppressed by Europeans of the 15th 16th centuries. But again, that all of that mentality of being this western or being this Christian empire, that is this kind of sole representative of God on earth, is that developed in the transatlantic slave trade during the Crusades, during the Carolingian dynasty, during the ascendancy of Western Christian superpowers, going back to the late antique and early medieval period, all of that really does have its genesis in the alleged conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, which is the first time that you have kind of a Western Emperor kind of hijack or take hold of the Christian Jewish Christian tradition, and use it as it really used it in the purposes and use it in the service of that particular empires, military and economic expansion.
That was fantastic. Thank you so much for that summary. And it's just so evident how much research has gone into this and your command of all of it to be able to kind of give a summary of a fairly large section of your book. And that amount of time, I really appreciate the the depth that you're able to go in there, and quick manner for the audience, I think that's going to be very, very valuable for them. And you already anticipated where I want to go next, potentially, maybe because you have the outline, but also, because I think it's the flow of your book. But as we move into what's the next section of your book, and just for the viewers, again, we're not gonna be able to cover everything, you should really get the book, we're going to cover a couple key points here that will kind of whet your appetite. And then I think I would really recommend you go check it out for yourself, but where you move after your survey of kind of Western Christianity is into African Christianity. And you talk about one of the major controversies of the church that really shaped the church from then on out in a lot of ways. And that is the Council of house Eden, as you already said, and that schism that occurs because of that. Now, I don't want to jump ahead, but I kind of do for the sake of the readers to kind of get one of the main ideas of your books, and that is the the kind of requirement or maybe requirements, not the right word, but kind of the value or the need for indigenous leadership in the church. And in this section you talk about after the council house Eden, you have the Roman church trying to impose Caledonian bishops in places that aren't, that didn't affirm the Council of Calcio didn't have their own bishops already and how this really failed and is a case in point for why you can't impose outside leadership and you need indigenous leadership. Now, you're the one that wrote the book, and you can explain it a lot better than I can in that short summary. So I would love for you to show kind of how this is a paradigm test case for the importance of indigenous leadership.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, that's Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, as you pointed out, you know, maybe kind of yet tying in the conclusion with or, or seeing the, the book through the lens of the conclusion that in the, you know, in the conclusion of the book, or do some missiological reflection, as you mentioned, you talk about kind of two main pillars, that are really necessary for the growth of the gospel in a particular culture. And as you mentioned, one of them is indigenous leadership, that, that the church movement has to really be led by people who are indigenous to any particular culture, and also that the other one being contextualization, that it has to be expressed in contextualized formats. And, and, and, and yeah, I mean, you know, one of the ways that we see that play out, I mean, there are many ways, but maybe just as one quick example, and we can get into some other ones. But looking at Africa, for example, we talked about the early church in Africa. And it's interesting, because on the continent that we now call Africa, from the beginning of of the earliest period of Christianity. There, Christianity was was the dominant religion in all of the kingdoms of ancient Africa, because on the continent we now called Africa in this time period, the country urbanize kingdoms really consisted of four major areas, one, which is Roman North Africa, modern Tunisia, the coast of modern Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco. And then, which by the time of Christianity were all provinces of the, you know, kind of the, of the Western Roman Empire were Latin was the dominant language. So you had Roman North Africa as one yet Egypt. And then you had and then south of Egypt, in Sub Saharan Africa, outside of the Roman Empire, you had Nubia and Ethiopia. Now by the, you know, at the very beginning of Christianity, Egypt in North Africa, had Christians all over the place. And by the second and third century, Christianity was the dominant religion in these places. Ethiopia became a Christian nation in the fourth century in the three hundreds independently, and the various kingdoms of the region called Nubia also embraced Christianity in the five hundreds in the sixth century, also independently and freely. And so Christianity was all over, basically all over the continent of Africa, and it was the dominant religion and in the case of independent Sub Saharan African nations, it was the national religion, and it was that freely and freely adopted without colonialism or slavery or
enforcing it. And, and also, as you mentioned, now, Christianity really declined in the especially after the rise of Islam in North Africa and North African coast. But the places in the Nile Valley, Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, Christianity was the dominant religion and stayed that way for hundreds of years. But and not only that, but it was specifically the the myalgia Zeit expression of Christianity, which means one nature and so the Caledonian expression which was dominant in the European continent, which was, which was, again, the belief that Jesus is one person in two natures, that was attempted to be imposed on Africa, especially specifically Egypt, which had strongly rejected the Council of calcium going all the way back to the council at 451. It was also the dominant faith in the Near East and places like Syria and Arabia, as well. But but but in Egypt as well, it was it was the dominant faith that Jesus is one person with one nature. And that's where you get me a physicist, one nature. And so you get this name, the AF aside, or it's often kind of more pejorative term that comes up in most western church history textbook, which is manof aside, but the Mi F is I, Christians of Egypt also spread into Nubian Ethiopia. And there was kind of an African Alliance where Nubian Ethiopia were actually even though they were independent, Sub Saharan African nations, they were ecumenically, connected to Egypt and the Pope of Alexandria. So really, the pope of Alexandria wasn't just the pope of Egypt, but he was really the pope of Africa. And that, you know, Nubia and Ethiopia. Were under independent African kings, but their churches were under the church of Alexandria, even after the time when Egypt became under Islamic dominance in the six hundreds. And so, this, you know, this is the, the the faith that continue to grow in Africa, going forward. And, and, and, as you mentioned, in Egypt, in particular, which was part of the Roman Empire, politically, but had its own church structure after 451. There were all of these attempts by the Roman Empire, both the Roman emperor and military generals and soldiers and Pope's from Constantinople and Rome, have tried to impose Caledonian theology in Egypt, which just only made the Egyptian church rejected all the more strongly and continued to embrace their own indigenous form of Christianity, which was the Meopham expression that and it's interesting. I mentioned how Nubia became a Christian nation in the sixth century. But actually, the way it became a Christian nation was all tied up in this kind of international and theological debate over over the natures of Christ. There was a Roman Emperor named Justinian, who was the most prominent Roman Emperor in this in during the Byzantine period. And he was Emperor for much of the sixth century. And, and, and, you know, was very influential leader in the sixth century late antique world. And he was really trying hard to expand the Roman Empire, anti united, and part of that was him, also expressing and really enforcing the Caledonian view of Christianity and trying to impose it in Egypt, as well as in Syria in Arabia in some of these other places, and having one United Faith throughout the empire much of the same motivation for for example, Constantine convening the Council of Nicea. And so now, you know, Egypt was strongly resisting Justinian just like they had resisted Marcion and pull carry and people 100 years before him, but they Justinian actually attempted to send missionaries into Nubia, Egypt southern neighbor, and try to bring Christianity into Nubia. But not only Christianity, but the castle donation to nature Christianity. Well, Egypt found out about this and they actually sent missionaries into Nubia first and Nubia actually rejected the calcitonin expression of Christianity of that Emperor Justinian was promoting and they actually embraced The media side of the one nature Christianity that was dominant in Egypt. And so there was, again, this map is I coalition, all along the Nile Valley, and, and that we continue to that we continue to grow. Now another thing though that's interesting about Nubian Christianity is that, unlike Egyptians or Ethiopian Christianity, for example, Nubian Christianity, never, it never really kind of found its own footing, just culturally, linguistically ecumenically. But it was really largely going back to that original example of how Christianity came into Nubia. It was very much dependent upon Egypt. And, and even even for, for example, even though this was a Christian newbie, it was a Christian nation for 1000 years. And it was a literate society that produced lots of literature. And yet, there was very, very little literature that was produced in newbie that was actually in the Nubian language, but most of it was actually in Greek, or in Coptic the Egyptian language. And the styles of churches and monasteries was really just kind of modeled after that which came out of the Byzantine world of the Roman Empire.
And there was even problematic racially problematic paintings that were decorated all over Nubian cathedrals and churches and monasteries, which depicted black people as either as just the people of Nubia, which is fine makes sense. That's what color they are, or even, in some cases, even depicting black skin and black people in very negative ways as Pete as being morally debased, or even associated with demon, or demonic principalities, and on the flip side, portraying Jesus and Mary and angels and biblical figures as very white skin. And so there's a lot of different ways in which Nubian Christianity was not very contextualized. And also was very much dependent upon Egyptians leadership, rather than really cultivating more of its own indigenous leadership, to the degree for example, as was done in Egypt and Ethiopia, now, Ethiopia also was under the Alexandria patriarch, but there was a lot more examples of Ethiopian leadership actually asserting itself and even at times, rejecting Egyptian leadership, and cultivating its own and talking about paintings. In fact, some of the earliest paintings from Sub Saharan Africa are Ethiopian Christian paintings, where Jesus and Mary and angels are portrayed with black skin and African hair, celebrating the beauty of African culture. And in Egypt and Ethiopia, unlike a newbie, they had their own language, they did theology in the Egyptian or in the Ethiopian language get is, and there. And again, Taka is one of the first things written in that language, if not, the first book actually was the Bible. So another way of saying that, and I mean, because just to show the, the significance of that is that Git is is the oldest, and still the only really in use Sub Saharan African writing system to this day. And so the oldest Sub Saharan African writing system of any African culture, that's and the only one that's still in use today. The first thing ever written in it was the Bible. And it just shows again, how the Word of God and the gospel has been at the core of African identity from day one. And so whether it's with language or architecture, I mean, some of these, some of the most beautiful structures on the continent of Africa are the churches of Lalibela, which are monolithic, or churches carved into the ground out of one stone that go back to the 12th and 13th centuries. And so, you know, whether it's architecture or artistic depictions or or liturgy, Ethiopia has its own style of worship, called the day with music that St. Paul read, invented in the sixth century, whether it's liturgy, architecture, language, artistic depictions, whatever the case may be, Egypt and Ethiopia, there are many examples of which, to the degree that they really contextualize the Christian tradition for themselves, and again, really rejected in many ways, the dominant traditions of Europe, and embrace their own traditions and styles and culture, and also had their own indigenous leadership that they were promoting and not and rejecting this attempt at imposing. And then on the flip side, you know, again, there's many examples of many ways in which we can see that that wasn't the case as much in Nubia, or in Roman North Africa, the churches of where Augustine, enter Tolian had lived centuries before, but that in again, in the same way, there's no for for all of its prominence in North Africa, Christianity was the dominant religion in North Africa from you know, the first up until the seventh centuries, and yet, every single thing that was written by Tertullian Cyprian, you know, Augustine was all in Latin, there was nothing that was written in the indigenous language that archaeologists call typical Punic or as the indigenous people of that those lands today called Tama zeal. There was nothing written in those languages and, and again, architecturally and, and even ecumenically. You know, Augustine was was even suppressing kind of movements that he saw to be more indigenous in North Africa, the donatist and expressing Christianity that was more and really imposing Christianity that was connected with the Bishop of Carthage and also that of Rome. And so, you know, in the formation Your ancient kingdoms of Africa, North Africa and Nubia. There's a lot of ways in which you could really see that there was less of a contextualization and less of a supportive indigenous leadership. And so therefore, it's not surprising that, at that in those two regions, even though Christianity was present for centuries, in those places that it does not survive to the present, that the ancient Christianity is of Nubia and North Africa, are extinct. These are extinct Christian traditions. And on the flip side of that, you see in Egypt and in Ethiopia, these are much more highly contextualized expressions of Christianity that have more of a higher degree of indigenous leadership. And that's why even despite centuries of, of Islamic oppression, especially in Egypt, and centuries of European colonial intervention, and oppression on the African continent, that these two these other two examples of ancient African Christianity's have survived to the present. And in the case of Egypt, it's the largest Christian tradition in the Islamic world, the Coptic Church. And in the case of Ethiopia, it's, it's still a predominately Christian nation, and is still to this day, the only Sub Saharan African nation or the only black nation on planet earth that has never been colonized by a European power, and has been predominant Christian since the fourth century. And so that little, I guess, case study of just of Africa, really kind of helps to tie in the missiological principles of showing why it is so important that that Christianity ism, that is it is contextualized, in a particular context, and that it's really led by indigenous leaders, and that have their own indigenous structures, and not under a colonial power. And this is, I think, important for us today, because as we are looking at the growth of Christianity around the world, and we're getting excited about it, I think there's, there's reason to be excited about how Christianity is now in the late 20th and 21st century, is exploding and spreading into other parts of the world that it hadn't before. But we also have, I just want to issue a word of caution, that, that it's very often a very kind of Americanized, westernized, whitewashed version of Christianity that is often being promoted and is being celebrated and spread throughout the world. And we have to be very cautious about that. Because again, with Nubian and North Africa, we're looking at places that were Christian nations for millennia, and now are extinct. And so, you know, we want to be playing the long game and we got to think about not how can we get as many converts as possible and utilize the kind of the, the lure and the appeal of American western globalization as an as a as a vehicle for spreading Christianity, we have to make sure that we really dig deep and plant the seeds of the gospel deep, and really empower and step back and empower indigenous leaders to express contextualize versions of Christianity, even if that's different from or doesn't line up with our exact concepts of, of orthodoxy or the way we express orthodoxy as what happened at the Council of calcine in 451.
Yeah, that's so fascinating. And what I love about that is that not only did you tie in that idea of indigenous leadership, but it also connects to the second conclusion of your book, which deals with contextualization. And it's fascinating to see how the areas that were able to contextualize had a more long standing kind of tradition of Christianity and a lot of ways, specifically there with Ethiopia, and how the Bible was the first thing written in that language was just a really interesting thing for me to come across, which also gets at that idea, again, of Christianity not being the Western white man's religion, which is kind of the main burden not only of this interview, but of your book as well. So I really appreciate what you did there, our mind viewers, again, there's lots of sections in the book, we won't be able to get to all of them. But I want to ask one more question that I think will help get at a really important dynamic when we talk about the the place of Western Christianity and how its interacted maybe with other. Other localized Christianity's as Western Christianity is. And you point out in the book that it's often suppose that the concept of Orthodoxy, which has come under fire in recent years, is a Western construct used to impose uniformity and control. However, in your survey of history of the history of Christianity in Africa, you demonstrate that Orthodoxy is a concept native to African Christianity. There were many African Christians that really were defenders of orthodoxy. Could you walk us through the significance of this for how we understand the development of the church specifically, as we see them kind of taking on and contextualizing the gospel, but also being very careful to kind of maintain the orthodoxy of the faith? Does that make sense? Mm hmm. Oh, definitely.
Definitely. Yeah, I think I think that that that is another one of those great examples of how we're seeing in our day, in some ways, some understandable critique or decolonizing or decentralizing of historiography and theology, where we have that again, there are there have been ways that orthodoxy has been used to oppress and to dominate people the very concept of there's one right doctrine are one right faith or correct faith, that and that, that absolutely has been used, you know, in the inquisitions. And, and again in the crusades, and, and, and even in the history of, you know, indigenous boarding schools and you know, North America and so many examples of, of how, you know, especially in the West, that, that, that orthodoxy has been used, you know, as a as a mechanism of oppression. And, and I think that absolutely has to be acknowledged and lamented and also and condemned as well. Because again, we see nowhere in the scriptures, while we are called to, to give an answer for the faith that we have and and to, and to really defend the faith and contend for the faith that nowhere are we commanded or are called to dominate or oppress or go into other places and force Christianity are forced orthodoxy on other people. So again, what has happened primarily in the western conceptions of Orthodoxy is again a derivation from biblical mandates. But at the same time, we can't go to the other extreme and act like Orthodoxy in and of itself was a concept that was invented by colonizers or oppressors. But again, we see already the concept of Orthodoxy in Scripture, again, that there that Jesus is the only way truth and life and no one comes up either except through Him, and that there's nobody that saved under heaven except by the name of Jesus. So there there is a concept of being one right truth, and that there are wrong truths or belief systems that don't lead to salvation. We see that in Scripture that that is promoted by Jesus and Paul and Peter, and James. And these people who are part themselves of a colonized people, the Hebrews are colonized by the Romans. And yet they're the ones that are on the underside. They are the subaltern in terms of colonization, and yet they're promoting this idea of orthodoxy. And that concept of orthodoxy continued to spread along with Christianity, in every direction, in Europe, in Africa, and Asia, South Asia and East Asia. In the Middle East, it was everywhere. And so Christians all over the place, not only in the European context, which again, we don't really see oppressive kind of theologies that are that are trying to conceive of Christianity, as again, I would say the genesis of oppressive Christendom is the image of Constantine seeing the sign of the cross in the sun and saying that he was called by God to conquer in the name of the cross that that's really the genesis of kind of oppressive Christendom. But even before that, again, that's in the fourth century. Before that, and after you had all kinds of Christians that lived in situations of oppression and marginalization, and they themselves advanced the idea of orthodoxy. You know, the the Christians of Egypt and the Christians of Ethiopia, Nubia, they advanced and strongly advanced account of orthodoxy. In fact, in the Ethiopian language, the word Orthodoxy is the word retard. And so there's an there's an Ethiopian word for this concept that is just as old as the concept of the Greek term orthodoxy.
And then along the Silk Road, and in the Near East, you had Christians that were very much the minority. You had Christians like Timothy of Baghdad, and Yahia Inoty. And, and, and theater, ABA. koora, some of the earliest Christians in the Near East who wrote in Arabic, lived under Islamic rule. And, and they were themselves the marginalized and the oppressed, and yet, they strongly advocated for the truth of the gospel, and the truth of the Trinity. And, and, and yet, they were not using this to oppress anyone. And then on the same, on the same token, going all the way into along the Silk Road as Christianity spread into Asia, you had Christians who were spreading Christianity, or as it was called, in China, the Jing Zhao the way of light, but they were doing this right alongside Manichaean people who were were a heretical movement that actually saw their leader money as the living embodiment of the Holy Spirit and the heavenly twin of Jesus. So they're, they strongly the Christians of Central Asia modern day it was Becca, Stan, Turkmenistan, and Northwestern China. Were living side by side with mannequins. And in fact, in some cases, the mannequins were actually the ones dominant, especially in the weaker, the weaker empire in the ninth century. That was a mannequin empire. And but yet Orthodox Christians were in that context as well. And they were they were the ones that were in the minority. The Christians were, and the mannequins were actually dominant, but they were still writing texts and writing and doing apologetics with the mannequins arguing that Jesus is God and arguing against doctrines like the eternal existence of demons and the devil and of human souls. And so again, in all contexts, in all places, the idea of orthodoxy has been very much defended and framed in local contextualized ways. And by no means Can we say that it's an invention of Western colonial powers and so yes, we need to reject Any attempt at imposing an orthodox belief through military or economic might. And yet at the same time, we can't throw out the baby with the bathwater, we can't throw out the concept of orthodoxy. And it's also important remember that the concept of orthodoxy was not invented by, you know, Christians in the west or in western white Christians. But Christians in Asia and Africa also had had this concept and believed in this concept of orthodoxy that originates in the scriptures.
That's fantastic. I love the nuance that you bring to that there, because I think it's so often tempting for us to do just that, to throw out the baby with the bathwater, to see one problem and then maybe overcorrect. To say that, yes, orthodoxy has been imposed in bad ways, therefore, Orthodoxy is bad. And what you're saying here is Hold up, like, let's make sure we make good distinctions here. And I think that's what good scholars do. And that's what we should all be aiming to do, whether we see ourselves as scholars, or just people trying to be honest with historical data, and also to try to make sense of how we can do missions Well, which again, is the context of this whole book. It's that missiological emphasis on how do we reach people that are have the perception of Christianity as the white man's religion and your book is just a fantastic tour de force of going through the kind of a survey of ancient Christianity is global identity, showing that Christianity is not becoming a global religion, but always has been. And so thank you. So, so much for your work, this has been an absolute treat, and I can't recommend enough that guests go out and pick up your book and learn more about some of the sections that we weren't able to cover. I think there's some fascinating things on the section on Middle Eastern Christianity, you kind of touched on some of them there, and the defensive orthodoxy and different places, and the movement of Christianity along the Silk Road, all just really fascinating stuff that I, I couldn't recommend people check out enough, I want to close by asking you this. At the very beginning of your book, in fact, you give people you or you give the church rather two tasks, one is deconstructing Western white cultural captivity of the Christian tradition. And the second is elevating non western expressions of Christianity. Now, I always love giving viewers some homework, some inspiration to go out of the episode with and so as people walk away from this, and they've gotten to learn so much, and hear a lot of things that maybe will challenge their thinking, or hopefully broaden their horizons, what would you recommend they do to take up these two tasks in their own church context? Whatever that looks like?
Yeah, I would say, you know, again, the, you know, I would say that the the deconstruction of kind of Eurocentric, white normative Christianity is work that needs to continue to happen again. But that's not a call to reject all of Western or white Christianity, because there's a lot of good and valuable things. So I think we have to do, you have to have, as you said, he wants to approach we need to deconstruct and resist the attempts at this kind of Euro normative expression of Christianity. And, and really, you know, but also we, there's a lot of things in Western Christian, we need to embrace and at the same time, we need to also elevate those aspects of Christianity that come from the margins, they really bring them to the center. And I think there's a million ways we could do that. Even with reading, even with reading different theologians, reading theologians of color, and women, theologians, and historians, and Bible scholars, and bringing those resources into our lives, you know, who is framing our thoughts of it, really making sure that's a diverse group, making sure that in, in sermons and in classrooms, and in the church and in schools, that we are making sure we have a diversity of readership in who we're assigning or asking people to read, and that we have a global focus and, and also visiting church traditions that are not in our denomination or not in our certainly in our racial, ethnic kind of context, but, but going into those places, and being mentored by pastors and leaders, who are women and men of color, and and especially, that are being a part of historically black churches, indigenous churches are some of these heritage communities, the so called Oriental Orthodox communities and, and really visiting and being mentored by and building relationships with people, you know, watching podcasts or, or talks from, again, not only from leaders of color, but even I would say, from platforms of color. Not, I think both are good, but especially, you know, look really trying to connect with resources, that I mean, a great one, at least on a for my context that comes to mind is the Jude three project. That's a great, just fabulous, indigenous run contextual resource that brings theological and biblical questions in the black community to the forefront. And that's just one example. Another example I'll throw out there is the is Nate's an indigenous Learning Community, which is another great example of indigenous theological expression that's contextualized and in Honestly, run. And so I think again, there's a million ways but I'll and also actually, I'll throw this out as well, you know if you can get the book multiple peoples and become introduced to some of these histories and stories and names that a lot of times are not known. And and I would say go further from from that point and try to read some of these authors in their own writings read some of these ancient theologians of color who wrote in non Greek non Latin languages. And a great way to do that is actually a friend of mine, Jamie Walters just released a reader called a history of Eastern Christianity. And I think it was Eerdmans or I believe, I can't remember. But um, but yeah, it's called a history of Eastern Christians. Was it a history shoot, I can't remember I think it's called Eastern Christianity a reader. And it's basically a compilation of primary texts in English translation from like, Coptic get his Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, various, you know, many of these same people in same communities that I cover in multiple peoples, some of them in their primary readings are, are in this reader. I'm actually working on one similar to that myself without that, but that's a couple more years out with University of California Press, but definitely get the one that just came out, I think, like last month, and you can end either either from that or there's other publications of people like F from the Syrian, or Shenouda of a tree. or Yes, Nika cope, some of these early, you know, the life of a lot of patrons, there's some of these early African and Asian theologians that have been translated into English language that I would definitely also recommend reading and, and even bringing into your liturgy, bringing into your worship, you know, bringing into your Bible studies. And, and, and yeah, in with artwork on the walls, you know, whatever the case may be, I mean, again, we could just go on, but in any way we can, through reading, and also through relationship, that I think we really need to promote expressions of Christianity that are on the margins, especially those that are completely indigenously run, and that are committed to contextualizing the gospel to the culture of those marginalized communities.
After Bantu, thank you so much for all of that those are going to be such valuable resources to the listeners. And again, I'll try to get those links put in the description of this video. So that's nice and easy for people to go ahead and check some of those out if they're interested, which I'm sure they will be after this conversation. Thank you again, for your time today. And thanks for all of you who watch this sometime in the future. For your time i know i nor the team and unit taught them today. take that lightly. So thank you all so much. I encourage you if you enjoyed this conversation you want to see more be sure to click subscribe. Leave a comment down below letting us know what you thought. And of course, be sure to check out Dr. Bond twos book a multitude of all peoples. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.