Understanding Your Neighbor in the Urban Church

Darrell Bock: 

Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. And our topic today is the Urban Church, Understanding Your Neighbor in the Urban Church. And my guest is Zion McGregor, who is a contributing writer and author to an award-winning book co-known as Urban Apologetics. And you can go ahead and hand it to me here. I'll flash it at the camera. Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel. It's edited by Eric Mason, who is a graduate of the seminary here at Dallas. But Zion is a graduate of Southwestern, showing that we don't show preferences, that kind of thing. THM at Liberty. He's well-traveled, and a church planter at Mission City Church in Grand Prairie, Texas. And Zion, it is a real pleasure to have you with us today. 

Zion McGregor: 

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Darrell Bock: 

Glad to do it. So my opening question to someone who's new to the table is how did a nice guy like you get in a gig like this? So tell us about your background and how you ended up being interested in this topic. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. Born and raised in the African American church and in the Baptist tradition of the National Baptist Convention was called to Ministry in '95 while in college, and along the way just matriculated in my learning and development, went to seminary, met Blake Wilson, my pastor, and through Blake I was able to connect with Eric Mason. 

We began to build a relationship, and just organically really, many of the people that are in the book organically, we were all beginning to be sensitive to what was happening around the country with some of what we'll be talking about with various black religious identity cults. And we would individually begin to read and study. And just organically, Eric Mason reached out to me and asked me if I would contribute. And I've been a part of Urban Apologetics ever since. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. So I mean, normally when we think of apologetics, we think about the defense of the faith and those kinds of questions, but you put urban before the word apologetics and that raises it. Well what in the world does that mean? Let's talk about the urban church first for a second. When we talk about the urban church, what exactly are we talking about and why is it important to understand the urban church and kind of the experience that urban churches go through? 

Zion McGregor: 

Right. Historically, the term urban usually speaks to city settings and whatnot as opposed to rural. We don't know when or how or why, but urban began, as related to the church, began to be code language for black and brown churches. But what really I would say the urban church speaks to are churches that really are engaged in more of the inner city work. And that can be a black church, white church, the ethnicity really doesn't matter. It just for whatever reason has become code. So that's the first thing I would say. So the urban church is really those churches that are in these urban settings that are trying to basically engage the communities with the gospel and as it relates to, is that the right term or whatnot, I mean that's debatable. In my context, we use urban to denote black and brown situations, but I'm sure you will find, like anything, people of all spectrums, some will have a problem with it, some won't. 

Darrell Bock: 

So it really is dealing with inner city issues. And I take it that generally speaking, inner city churches are dealing with a full array of black brown experience in such a way that's a little bit distinct from say the average if we say suburban church that we think about. So talk about that a little bit. What's the nature of that difference? 

Zion McGregor: 

Well, some of the differences with the more urban context is that these are urban contexts where there tends to be a little bit more. First of all, the tax bracket is different. And so the economic situation is one that like with anything else presents challenges to just day-to-day life. These challenges eventually have a tendency to spiral out and cause one to either gravitate toward faith, or have an hostility toward faith and religion because of their circumstances. 

So that's kind of what's at the root of it. We really don't have to go through the various challenges. I mean that's pretty documented as to if you're in a poor community. But not all urban churches are poor. You have an urban context that can be urban and middle class. But the challenges even in the climate that we're living in as the Christianity is in retreat in the West, we're finding challenges in the urban context more and more unique within black and brown spaces. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so even if you are in a middle class church because of your family and background, et cetera, that tends to reach in oftentimes into the inner city? I mean the break isn't total, is it? 

Zion McGregor: 

Say it again. 

Darrell Bock: 

So even if a church is a middle class urban church, because of the family situations that exist in many cases, there's not a total break necessarily from the background that many people have come out of to reach the middle class. 

Zion McGregor: 

Right. What is happening to the issues that we try to address is in those settings, forces come from outside to recruit, for example. So a person will come in and we'll get into some of this, I've got some stories, and they'll begin to just try to proselytize. And then that worldview begins to migrate and spread like a virus into those spaces. 

Darrell Bock: 

So we've isolated three issues. I'm sure there are more, but one is called Hebrew Israeliteism, which may be completely new to a lot of people or Israelism. And then what we might call liberation movements, which tend to also get into class discussions, and then divination and witchcraft. Those are the three areas that we've zoomed on that we want to talk about. So you talk about recruiters coming in. When I hear recruiters, I'm either thinking sports, or maybe the military. You have something else in mind. 

Zion McGregor: 

Right. Oh, go ahead. 

Darrell Bock: 

No, go ahead. 

Zion McGregor: 

So what we have happening right now within the African American context and in the Latino context are what's black Hebrew Israelites. Some camps prefer to be called just Hebrew Israelites. They actually find the reference to being black offensive. They completely reject it. So that should be known. And what has happened is when I say recruit, I mean that because of their worldview and what they believe, they really believe that they are the true descendants of the Old Testament biblical Israelites. And because of that belief, they feel compelled to go out and say, everyone that looks like me, I have to tell them this also. And so they're going out and they're recruiting as a result of that. And that's what I mean by recruiting. They're going out and they're trying to proselytize, it's their form of evangelism. They go to barbershops, they go to blocks on the city, and just wherever they can engage someone, they try to do that. 

Darrell Bock: 

And so what is it that they believe and why is it important to proselytize in this direction in their mind? 

Zion McGregor: 

So what they believe again is that they believe that they are the Israelites of the Old Testament. And there are probably 15 different camps. They continue to splinter, most notably here recently in our culture, you've seen events with Kanye West and with Kyrie Irving, there was a group called IUIC. IUIC is probably the most organized, most disciplined branch of the Hebrew Israelite camps. And they believe, again, that they're Israelites. And as a result, now that's the commonality. And they draw largely from Deuteronomy 28. They read Deuteronomy 28 as a prophecy. Because in Deuteronomy 28 it talks about where Moses, it really contextually begins in Deuteronomy 27 and it goes through 29, but they don't have a very good hermeneutic at all. And so they don't really know how to read the text properly. But from Deuteronomy 28, they draw from where Moses just basically warns them, hey, if you do not abide by the law of God, you'll be put on ships and you'll be carried over into slavery, things of this nature. 

And so they read into that African American history through the transatlantic slave trade, and they just assume that this is talking about us. The transatlantic slave trade fulfills this prophecy, therefore this is who we really are. And this is why they in some cases, hate African Americans, because they completely mentally have disassociated themselves being from that. And so they don't even being referred to as African, they're not African, they're not black, they are Hebrews Israelites, full stop. 

And so from that point on, it varies in terms, the beliefs breakdown. None of the camps hold a Trinitarian view obviously, they all have a oneness, sabellian Arius type view of God. You have extremes. You have very moderate Hebrew Israelite camps that you can dialogue with. And then you have very violent extreme groups. They all would deny that. But you do have that. 

Darrell Bock: 

So what's to be gained from this identity? Is it just the separation that it produces? What's the payoff of understanding supposedly who you are? 

Zion McGregor: 

For black religious identity cults, the real payoff is really a crisis of identity. And we're having this across America, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote an article about a crisis of boys and men in America. Scott Galloway, a PhD out of New York who deals with marketing in digital marketing and digital spaces. He says in his book, Adrift that we have an identity crisis in America. David Gergen, who served five presidents talked about several years ago in an article about an essay he wrote that there was a crisis of leadership in America. For black religious identity cults, it is an identity crisis. And the payoff is I now find identity in this. And so that's the real palp at the root that now I know who I am because of slavery. They don't deny that they've come that way, but they just say, well, we were mixed in with Africans, but we are the true Hebrew Israelites for those who believe it. And we now have our identity because America stripped us of our tongue. America stripped us of our language. 

And so this is really kind of the root really at all of the black religious identity cults. What they all have in common is this sense that when they look at the African American experience in America historically, they feel that that America has raped those who were walked from the interior of Africa to the west coast of Africa, brought over by slave trades and just literally taken everything from them. And so what the payoff is, the belief that I have finally found who I am. And so that's the real payoff, a sense of identity. 

Darrell Bock: 

So I have that sense of identity. I'm just going to draw this out a little more. I have this sense of identity and that gives me self understanding, that gives me dignity, that gives me pride. Is that what the payoff is? 

Zion McGregor: 

It gives me all of that. It gives me a new world view. I see myself differently, and now since I now feel that I have a sense of where I come from and who I am, now I can move forward, whatever that looks like. The thing that's interesting, I go back to IUIC for example. If you look at that doctrine, they tend to be like most cults, very shrouded. You have to really get in to learn the deeper diggings. But you will see where Bishop Nathaniel, who's starting to get a little bit more attention now, who's the leader of IUIC, I don't know if he's still now, but he used to be a New York police officer, New York City police officer. But you can see where he has been taking from Jehovah's Witness, taking from the nation of Islam, taking from Christianity, taking from Judaism and just kind of on the fly constructing this theology. And so it's still kind of developing out, I shouldn't say theology, but this worldview. But that's kind of what it all comes to. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, so that's the Israeliteism or Israelism. You said black identity cults. So I take there's more than one. So let me throw in one that we didn't mention we were going to talk about, but just see what you can tell us about it. And that's black Muslims, the whole black Muslim movement. I take it as another example of a black identity cult. 

Zion McGregor: 

It is. It's a black religious identity cult. And to kind of give some framing to that, black speaks of just the universal commonality that they share. Religious is the spiritual distinctive that they subscribe to. Identity is the dignifying characteristics that give meaning in place to the person. And then the cult is that which emerges as the expression of those beliefs. So that's what makes a black religious identity cult. And so yes, the nature of Islam, for example, would be one or the Moorish Science Temple that was established in the late 19th century by Noble Drew Ali. These are examples. You also have Kemet African spirituality, which is a dead religion out of Egypt. So these are some examples. The nation of Islam is in decline. It's been declined because it has aged with Lewis Farrakhan. 

Many people don't know, but Louis Farrakhan's in his late 80s. And so he hasn't made a significant address in 20 years. And so kind of like with an aging church, an aging pastor, the nation of Islam has aged with Farrakhan, and as he's aged, it has lost its momentum it once had. Creation will not tolerate a vacuum. As their pursuit and influence began to decline and wane, it gave space for black Hebrew Israelites to rise, because that movement has actually been around longer than the nation of Islam. The nation of Islam began in 1934. Hebrew Israelites came about in the late 19th century, but they've never been able to get momentum in the African American community until really the internet, more than anything else has played the biggest role in their rise. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the interesting thing of course is that you have a black identity movement that goes in the direction of identifying with names that come out of the Old Testament, and then you got black Muslims which come in a direction that identifies with a religion that has nothing to do with Christianity. But I'm assuming that both of these are pushbacks on traditional Christianity. Am I reading that right or is that unrelated to the way things work? 

Zion McGregor: 

It's a 1A and a 1B. One sense, it is a rejection of Christianity because they believe Christianity's the white man's religion. And the 1B part is again, kind of going back to the way that they see America's treatment of people of color more than anything else is what drives them away from the gospel. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay. So that raises all kinds of questions. Probably it's its own entire podcast, but I'll introduce it now anyway. And that is, it's probably pretty important for everybody to understand the history that stands behind this sense of alienation that exists. Is that a fair statement to make? 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

Because my sense is that whereas this is very real for large portions of the black community, they know their history. They know what they've been through on the one hand, for many whites that part of history is almost like if it exists, it's almost like a thin shadow or a fog. It's not anything that's in focus. And yet it has helped form the dynamics that exist within large portions of the black community in the United States. Fair? 

Zion McGregor: 

Fair. Very much so. Eric Mason said it best, the black church exists because the white church failed to be. And when you look at the rise of the AME church as a result of Richard Allen just not being able to pray, I think today we are mature enough, the culture has kind of caught up a little bit more with the gospel to where we will say who stops someone from praying? That seems absurd now. But we have to understand in this historic context, because of the social dynamic, the social dynamic had the church in the case where it was the tail wagging the dog that we have to police the social standards even in the church. And so you had secular really doctrines of demons as Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1, imposing themselves within the body of Christ and the body of Christ embraced it and behavior changed. 

And racism has been so devastating to the sharing of the gospel to all parties, those who oppressed and played a role in dispensing it. And those who are on the receiving end. It's just been very harmful and prayerfully, hopefully the church will eventually come to a place where we can get past the differences just in how we look and see one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. And if we could ever do that and deport ourselves with the love that Jesus calls us to in John 13 verse 34, we would have a greater impact. The country would look different. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, one of the ways I think about this, I was a history major in college, so history is important to me as just a discipline in the humanities. But one of the things that I think I see is that when you understand the history, and when you understand how the history of certain events has wounded certain people and wounded certain communities, that actually is a very important thing to understand about the dynamics of what's going on. I mean, it's created the sense of alienation that leads to this pursuit of dignity. 

I sometimes say that there was such a long time in which black people were not treated as full people and they were almost invisible or seen more as objects than people, that that impacts the psychology of a community. And some of the pushback is involved in saying, I not only deserve to be noticed, I demand to be noticed. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

And in that then you get all these dynamics that gum up relationships which have been produced in part by the history that one side has very much experienced and felt, and the other side is almost oblivious to. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

So that produces the challenges so that handled in the right way, it isn't a competing history, it's a history to be understood and appreciated for what it has generated in terms of now use of figure of speech in terms of shrapnel, in terms of damage that has come as a result of what's taken place. 

Zion McGregor: 

Yeah. African-American history is American history. It is an impossibility to separate the two. We know we're in the midst of a cultural fight over CRT and I have yet to hear a coherent definition. Different camps construct their own definition to suit the argument they want to make. But again, I think for the Christian, it's important for us to understand how history has played a role in the acceptance and rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is at the root of my concern, the root of our concern is that we know that it is not God's will that anyone should perish. 

And so it's important that, as I say in the book, what you believe matters because there's eternal consequence tied to it. And so our goal is to try to make a defense of the Christian faith to the objections held by African Americans because they have said, "Well, if you are a Christian and you are a Caucasian European and you treat me like this, whatever that is, I don't want it." And what we're just trying to do is trying to help them to one, get a proper understanding of what Christianity really is, and how it is supposed to be deported, and to kind of just show that it's not everybody. And so that's part of the effort of what we're trying to do. 

Darrell Bock: 

I see. So really urban apologetics, just to come back to that term for a second, is a way of defending the faith in the midst of these kinds of challenges. Is that right? 

Zion McGregor: 

Yes. It's to the unique questions and objections that African Americans who oppose Christianity have, our goal is to address those questions, give sound intelligent answers, well-reasoned answers so that we can kind of disarm them of the ignorance that really shapes their view. 

Darrell Bock: 

And the same is true the brown church with the marginalization that sometimes happens in a Latino community. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

Okay, well that's helpful. Well, I think that sort of helps us with the black Hebrew Israelite issue. Let me turn our attention to another one which we've labeled liberal theology or Liberation Theology. Now this one's tricky, because it comes from within the scripture, it emphasizes the themes of justice and liberation, which certainly are part of the scriptures and are part of what is taught. It is rooted in a concern that says, the way in which God has built us means that we should be concerned with what's going on around us in the society. The original calling of men and women in Genesis one was to manage the creation well in all its spheres and to walk in a way that honored God and that honored others made in God's image. 

So there's rootage here that is biblical and there's a lot of biblical language that shows up in the conversation. So talk a little bit about your take on liberation theology and on what we might also call a liberal theology because it tends to be selective in what it emphasizes out of scripture, and to diminish some features of the scripture that are also there. 

Zion McGregor: 

So liberation theology as introduced by late Dr. James Cone is one of the fruits of liberal theology. Liberal theology is born out of the Enlightenment from Friedrich Schleiermacher as we know, for those who don't know. And what has happened, in the African American Church, liberation theology is not what it once was. It's been seen by some or the way that over time kind of matured out. It kind of became more of a victimized theology in terms of the thinking. And that's why it really, people outside the American church may think, oh, black churches do liberal racial theology. Absolutely not. I didn't know about liberation theology till I came to seminary, and that's just because it never really took whole because it situated the individual too much as a victim. And that left a bad taste, particularly merging out of the civil rights movement and people finally getting some rights in a sense, now we can do some things that maybe we haven't done. They were not looking for this victimized mindset. And so it didn't really take, although it does linger and there are pastors who subscribe to it and practice it. 

Jeremiah Wright was one of them. And in fact, he was a Cone disciple in many respects and those who followed. But when I talk about liberal theology and its impact on the African American church is that what has emerged here now amongst my generation, amongst some, those would be colleagues and contemporaries for myself is more what Schleiermacher and what would come from him and the influence of David Hume Immanuel Kant. That has come to be more and more realized in the black church now, not overwhelmingly, but I would say maybe 10 to 15%, which is for me is a big number amongst African American churches. You're having clergy who are beginning to say things who one, start one with a high view of naturalism and a diminished view of scripture. So they don't realize when you talk to them, the ones I've spoken to, they don't know who David Hume is, but they're echoing a diminished view in the miraculous. 

That's one thing. So a diminished view of the scriptures. Secondly, you have in some of these spaces you have, there are two or three preachers that come to mind within the African American context that are advancing the idea of salvific inclusivity, that Jesus is not the only way to be saved. And they're rejecting the exclusivity of Christ and salvation through Jesus alone. And so now you'll hear them say things like, who's to say that you can't worship our lie and be saved or you can't be a Buddhist. But I hear them say that, I know that they're not well read because Hinduism and Buddhism are non-theistic faith of religions. So they don't even know that part. But that's what I mean when I really talk about liberal theology because it's rising in the way that we haven't heard before. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, the framing that I'm used to seeing and hearing is this kind of, I'm going to go slaves, women, sexuality, that kind of intersection where the inclusivity is not necessarily just religious, but it's also social to some degree, and where the overhang... Liberation theology comes out of Latin America, and it isn't in part of the American context, but what is shared is this oppressed, oppressor, oppressed, right? Binary, which is the major lens through which people approach the space. So you intersect those two things, people who have been marginalized, people who have been pushed to the side, people who've been taken advantage of however you want to express it and put it next to their discovering their identity, discovering their rights, and pushing for that combination with this idea of being inclusive. You put that all together. One, it fits the spirit of our age. 

And then secondly, it obviously is not interacting in a full way with all that the scripture says. And it isn't that the scripture says. And it isn't that the scripture doesn't have a concern for issues of justice and how we operate in our society. It certainly does. But the question is what do human beings need in order to function well in society? And one of the things that they need is to be properly related to the living God and to recognize their need for God in order to put themselves in a position to think outside themselves, interact with other people whose situation may be different than their own. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. To your point about slavery, women, children, that is something that too, to in the 80s, feminist theology first then womanist theology came in the 90s emerged, and they kind of took the philosophy of feminism and they took the blueprint of black liberation theology from Cone and kind of began to build out their own, I, forgive me, I can't call it theology in good conscience, but they began to build out their own philosophy with religious overtones and religious vocabulary over time. But again, what this type of liberalism in the African American context is also tied to, similar to the black religious identity cults is a sense of oppression. This is just a really common thread with frustrations within the African American context and emerging more amongst Latino seminarians and whatnot, and thinkers who are now looking more critically at their journey in America. And they're beginning to talk and write, and it's beginning to expand there as well. 

Darrell Bock: 

So the challenge becomes identifying something that is a part of the history and that has produced its effects, many of them destructive and many of them painful, and understanding the impact of that. Because when you dismiss that impact, the danger is then a person who's been on, how can I say that? On the short end of the stick in terms of that history, we'll say, well, you have no sensitivity to what I've been through at all. 

Zion McGregor: 

Right. I do want to say that with all that we've covered that these are still very much though they're rising, this is still for the African American church, these are still minority spaces. They're not the mainstream,. 

Darrell Bock: 

But they're competing spaces. 

Zion McGregor: 

They are competing spaces. They're absolutely competing spaces. I think it has to be said that the African American church is still overwhelmingly very, I don't use the language conservative, but I will say it's very orthodox instilling values from Dr. Tony Evans to Dr. James Meeks, to Dr. Crawford Loritts, to Blake Wilson, Eric Mason, Jerome Gay, and Brandon Watts, Brandon Washington, all of these others, myself, still preach and teach a crystal centric gospel. We still preach about the triune God, we still preach about family. Tony Evans and Dr. Loritts have done so much in writing and series on family, and that's still the norm overwhelmingly amongst African-American pastors. It is, as I said, black liberation theology going just to touch back on that again was never the predominant view. And I don't think that people know that. And that's why I want to kind of reiterate and say that for those outside the African American context, that has never been the predominant teaching in the black church. 

Darrell Bock: 

And now I'm going to problematize this a little bit, but the role of sometimes some segments of our media are to pick up on those outside voices and lift them up and give them more attention. And the voice, even though it's a minority voice within the community, becomes a louder voice. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. Yeah. Especially in the climate that we're living in with age of sound bites, it can be seen, I remember when the Jeremiah Wright snippet was leaked, when then Senator Barack Obama was running for president, you would've thought that that was norm everywhere. Now what he said, have I heard that before in my lifetime from the pulpit? Yes. But it is not the norm as people would think it is. And the way that it's expressed and framed. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. The way you ended that's really important. I mean, on the one hand, the entirety of the black community has had to deal with this history and what it's meant for the African American community through its history. I've heard, as you've mentioned, Tony Evans and Crawford Loritts and Eric, I've heard them speak to this directly, but how they frame it is very, very different than the framing that you get when it's coming out of a James Cone, for example. And it isn't just to say this, it isn't that there are observations that James Cone is making about the nature of this history and what took place that can be ignored, that it's there, but then how you frame it, how you spin it, how you present it, what you think the way out of it is, all those kinds of things, those are other conversations. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

I often say when we get into this space, it's one thing to analyze the nature of the problem. It's another thing to think about what solves the problem that we find ourselves in. And that sometimes the analysis of the nature of the problem is something where we can get at least more agreement on than perhaps what the solution should be. And it's the solutions that produce the debates. 

Zion McGregor: 

Yes, absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

And sometimes when we don't distinguish that, when we treat it all as one, we actually mess up the conversation. 

Zion McGregor: 

Right, absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

And you know mentioned CRT earlier, that's one of the things that's happening I think in the CRT discussion, is that one, you've got people using the term in very different ways, with different meanings. For some people it's a positive term. For some people it's a negative term. It's like the term woke. For some people, the term's positive, some people the term's negative. And then depending on that starting point, you literally can be talking past one another because you're not talking about the same thing. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. And I think that's one of the byproducts of post-modernity, and when you start talking about the populist secular new age, live your truth, and people don't realize how dangerous that is, and do you want the pedophile to live their truth? Is that the kind of society we want? These are hard teachings, and we could go into other things, I mean, do you want the serial killer to live his truth? That's how extreme, that may seem extreme, but that's how it begins to spiral out. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, once you lose a sense of what's true and what's false and you lose any effort to pursue common ground, that's where you end up, it's like the absence of honor and shame. You lose a sense of honor and shame when you dissolve standards. That's the result. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. 

Darrell Bock: 

So those are two of the areas. The third area that we want to have, I'm trying to manage our time here is something completely different. And to me, when I was thinking about this and how to approach it, I was thinking divination in witchcraft in that whole area, the way in which the spiritual world is perceived in the urban church reminds me of trips I have taken to parts of the world, say Guatemala or Haiti, where I see these, I don't know what other word to use, this kind of syncretistic view of the spirit world at work. 

And I saw things in Guatemala that I would never see or rarely see in the United States, but they've been imported in one sense, or at least are part of the same world as that is. Because once you get to the point of the rationalist says, well, none of that, you're just in a fantasy world. But then theology says, no, there are spirits, they're real, there are challenges that are real. And so now the question is, all right, now how do I balance this? So talk a little bit about the role of divination in witchcraft in the black church. 

Zion McGregor: 

So it's not necessarily present in the black church, but in the black community, it is one of these fringe marginalized movements that's beginning to get a little of attention, mainly amongst African American women. There is for whatever reason, and similar to the black religious identity cults, and it falls into that space in that when you ask what led you to this, identity always comes up, a connection back to the spirit realm that for them has not been stained by the fingerprints of white people. And then also it's tied to what their lived experience thus far has been like nothing else has worked for me. 

Many of them, ironically within our context, come out of the Episcopal and Catholic church that we're finding that are beginning to take interest. When you ask them, well, what was your background growing up? You'll say, well, I was Episcopal or I was Catholic. You don't hear as much Baptist or Methodist, though there are some that will say, oh, I came from the Baptist church, or I came from AME church. They're rarer. But you'll hear Episcopalian, Catholic, and you will hear that they're coming out of usually apostolic churches also. Which tend to have what W.E.B. Du Bois called the frenzy, just the charismatic worship. But for them it was always something deep for this prophecy happening and whatnot. And that just kind of helped play a role to lead into other things. Well, 

Darrell Bock: 

I think what I'm hearing that's consistent across all this, there is an acceptance of, and two, a recognition that dealing with the reality of the spiritual world is a part of religious experience that has to be taken seriously. And then the question is, all right, how in the world do you get your hands around this and understand what's going on in areas where all the forces that you're talking about are unseen? 

Zion McGregor: 

Yeah. To your first statement, that is very much a large part of it because when you look at, or if you talk to someone in these spaces, candles, crystals have become popular, burning sage, creating potions. And a lot of this ultimately is for many of them to one gives them, again, a sense of identity, but also they believe that this praying to ancestors, 

Darrell Bock: 

There's a way of getting some control 

Zion McGregor: 

In your life. There's a way of getting control and changing your reality. So if I drink a potion, I can get this person to love me that I want to marry, or I can maybe have money come my way. So all of this, and that's what makes it witchcraft, divination, is that they're trying to find a way to have an experience without God. They don't necessarily think of it quite like that. Because they talk about ancestors and spirituality, but they're really trying to move in a way kind of like those at the Tower of Babbel, we're going to make our name great without God. And that's kind of what all of that space attempts to do. 

Darrell Bock: 

So you're saying this is part of the reality on the fringes of the urban context outside, mostly outside the church, but it's all these things that we've described, and this is maybe the way to land this plane, all these forces that we described put pressure on the church in terms of how it represents itself in the midst of this environment. 

Zion McGregor: 

That's exactly right. And the challenge for the church is to, unfortunately not enough churches are seeing these as a big enough threat. We're not responding fast enough. A little known fact that in 1974, for example, a Hebrew Israelite went into a church, shot a deacon and shot a woman in Oregon. Her name was Alberta King, and it was Martin Luther King Jr's mother. He was shot, she was shot and killed by a Hebrew Israelite. This is the kind of, and I think back, that was 1974, where was the AME church? Where was the Nash Baptist Convention? Where were these churches to say, to not treat it as a one-off in fringe, but to say, wait a minute, what is it that this person believed? Because in his deposition he said that my beliefs in Hebrew Israelism led me to my actions. Because he wanted to punish her for giving birth to Martin Luther King Jr. But again, the thinking behind it, the worldview behind it shaped it. So this can get dangerous. 

Darrell Bock: 

And when you're saying the churches aren't taking this seriously enough, what you're saying is predominantly the Black Urban Church isn't taking this seriously. Now this is an issue within the community they need to be aware of, but I'm thinking in the back of my mind, well, if the Black Urban Church is being slow to respond, the rest of the church is probably even less aware of what's going on here. 

Zion McGregor: 

I think that one of the problems that we have is that we do not think Christianly about our corporate identity. I think an assault on a church is an assault on the church. This is my conviction and the circle that I run in, it's not merely... Christians should be alarmed at the assault on the body of Christ, the assault on people who need the gospel. It should be the business of us all to prioritize at least making a defense of the faith if we're not evangelizing, which if it wasn't for church plants in America, all the data from Nam to Barna to Pew Research, if it wasn't for church plants, the gospel wouldn't be shared in America. Church plants lead in that area, but the issue that we're facing within the African American context, in Latino context, Santa Maria is a issue for them that's growing. 

But if it's long, as long as it's looked at as that's your issue and not our issue, it will continue to be a growing threat. And what is beginning to happen. One of the tactics, and I just want to share this, IUIC has been conducting since Easter of this year, what they're calling a church blitz, where they're targeting churches and they're going outside the churches before the churches are dismissed, and they are bombarding them with, they're trying to get people pamphlets, they're trying to talk to people, they got loud speakers and they're trying to, what are you doing here? You came out, and they've hit locally- 

Darrell Bock: 

That's how the recruiting works. 

Zion McGregor: 

That's one aspect. But the part of the Blitz one is a marketing stunt, honestly, because they record, they use their cell phones. 

Darrell Bock: 

To just get attention. 

Zion McGregor: 

They're just trying to get attention and kind of expand their brand just here locally in Dallas, they've gone out to the Potters House, they've been out to several churches in Dallas Fort Worth. There's actually a video. They went to Oak Cliff, but the ministers of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship came out and met them and they left quietly. But that's a church, that's a rare case. The discipleship when the Dr. Evans is probably a different kind of discipleship than in many spaces, and they were well-equipped, the ministers, and they were able to handle it quite well. But this again, has to be, and I just wish this was across the board that the church, if we would just see, not see your problem, my problem, but our problem, I think that America would look drastically different than what it does right now. 

Darrell Bock: 

And part of that involves conversations like the ones we're having of just becoming better aware of one another, by which I mean in particular, people who are in predominantly white churches, having a better understanding of what the minority experience is, that just having a sense of the issues that each community faces that are challenges for it and challenges for believers in those communities that may not be at all anything I might face on a regular basis, but that I absolutely need to be aware of in order to understand what my brother or sister in Christ is going through. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That just has to be, as you said, conversations that have to happen. But the problem with that is though we've been saying that since pre-Emancipation proclamation. 

Darrell Bock: 

Which means that the one with ears needs to let them hear. I mean, I often say that the first step in good conversations is to actually do a pretty good job of listening. And so sometimes we go into a conversation wanting, well, I've got this content that I want to make sure you get, but before I get to that stage, it might be better for me to stop and listen and get a reading on what's driving you and why, so that I'm in a better position to actually be responsive rather than demanding, for example. 

Zion McGregor: 

Absolutely. I think just one solution is something that, I don't think it's ever been the norm in America amongst the church, but I think that every African American pastor, and every Caucasian pastor needs to have a real relationship with their counterpart, I don't care if you have coffee once a month and agree to have peaceable, and there'll be times when you disagree, but to be able to have all conversations on the table, we can talk about anything. Let me hear you, and allow me to be heard so that we can then prayerfully hopefully, guided by the word of God, come to solutions that benefit the body of Christ ultimately. 

Darrell Bock: 

Yeah. And those conversations are important. I mean, this is something we've worked to try and promote at the center, to try and get people in dialogue to do several, we've tried to do several podcasts like this where we've had these cross community conversations really in many ways, and to try and listen for what it is that is initially unfamiliar. Because what a lot of people do when they meet with unfamiliarity is, they step back and say, "Oh, I don't know if I want to go there and take the time that it takes to get familiar with this and to have an appreciation for it," that kind of thing. And so there becomes a silence that actually is debilitating. 

And so part of what we're trying to do is to say, no, these conversations are worth having. These are things worth being aware of learning about, et cetera, because there's a segment of the body of Christ that's directly impacted by what's happening, and it's important to understand where that impact is coming from, what the challenges are and how the gospel speaks into it. So in your mind, so to wrap up. If you were to say, so how does the gospel speak into this in your mind, how would you say or how would you describe what the calling of the church should be in the midst of these challenges? 

Zion McGregor: 

I think the calling of the church should be what it's always been. That's a call in Ephesians 2 for us to be one man. For every one passage that Paul writes about justification, there are five passages on unity. And Ephesians 4 comes to mind, a whole chapter where he's driving home the point of how important unity is. And as long as there is division in the church, it's just going to continue to be a challenge. But the gospel calls us to see one another the way God sees us, and to deport ourselves with the type of agape love that enables us to be living sacrifices for my brother, my sister. That's why the Bible has all that familial language of family. And wherever there is a need, as we see in Acts 2 and 4 that we collectively work to meet that need to solve that problem, that's what the gospel has always called us to do. We have failed as the body of Christ over almost 2,000 years to rightly and consistently deport ourselves in that manner. 

Darrell Bock: 

Well, Zion, I want to thank you for taking the time to come in and talk with us about issues that are unique to the Urban Church and the challenges that faces. We thank you for the kind of ministry that you're trying to plan in churches and others like you. We thank you for the work that you're doing, and we really appreciate you taking the time to be with us on The Table. 

Zion McGregor: 

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. 

Darrell Bock: 

And we're glad you could join us on The Table. We hope you'll join us again soon. If you want to see other episodes of The Table, we have over 500 of them. voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast will take you to the list, and we hope to see you again soon.