Episode 119: Interview with Dr. Jonathan Tran
It was a pleasure to speak with Dr. Jonathan Tran about his new book Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism. Dr. Tran begins with some fascinating engagement with political theory and a history of Delta Chinese, before moving into the metaphysical and theological underpinnings of his positive proposal in the latter chapters. Our conversation focuses on the more theological chapters, but the entire work is very thought provoking.
Timestamps:
6:49- The Unholy Trinity
20:48- Christ-Centeredness
31:11- Racialized Capitalism
44:42- The Metaphysics of Deep Economy
Charles Kim 0:00
Hello and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim with me this week will be Dr. Jonathan Tran, Dr. Jonathan Tran has recently published Asian Americans and the spirits of a spirit of racial capitalism with Oxford University Press. And I was delighted to be able to speak with Dr. Tran about this work. Our conversation primarily focuses on chapters five and six of the book, which is kind of the metaphysical underpinnings of his positive proposal about what to do about the state of the church and America, and its complicity in racism. And as anyone listening will automatically probably be alerted to or attuned to, these are themes that are very different from things that we typically talk about in this podcast. But like I said, it was a it was very eye opening for me to kind of see Dr. Trans political analysis be combined with such an astute metaphysical and philosophical and theological analysis. So we don't focus on the the sort of early part of the book, which is more a consideration of what is going on in sort of the American situation. With respect to racism and capitalism. We do focus on his how
metaphysics and how theology can help us think through even difficult questions of our own age. So I'm sure there'll be lots of questions and things but but I hope that you'll give Dr. Tran a hearing. He has a lot to offer. And his positive proposals have helped me even think about ways in which my my church, the church that I go to can be more active and involved in St. Louis and in the city around us. So I hope that that this conversation will also be generative for my listeners, and that they will consider picking up a copy of Dr. Trans work. We do have lots of interviews lined up. We hope to have Dr. Stanley Hauerwas come on soon. Dr. Mike McClymont, Hannah nation to talk about the persecution of Chinese Christians today in the 21st century. And so yeah, so we've got a lot coming forward on the podcast. And I hope that you enjoy this conversation. Please do rate us review us on iTunes, find us on Twitter or Facebook. And yeah, we appreciate you listening.
Well, you will be glad to know that Nas Ian's is an errand as both come up significantly in the in my formulations. And of course, as does Augustine, as you mentioned in the email. Yeah. Well, and when I had sent you that email, I hadn't read what the I hadn't really read the deep economy chapter where you rely on those guys a lot. And basil says Maria and yeah, so yeah, so I'm excited to you. I've done a ton of these podcasts. And then a number of there's just a bunch of campus visits this semester, but very few people have asked me about the theology and the metaphysics of it. So to me, that's some of the most important stuff. So yeah, well, I mean, that's a that probably is as good a place as any I guess. To begin. I. Yeah. So today on the podcast, we have Dr. Jonathan Tran, Associate Professor of philosophical theology, and George W. Baynes Chair of religion at Baylor University. And Dr. Tran has has a new book out with Oxford University Press called Asian Americans and the spirit of racial capitalism. So I'm very fortunate and excited to have Dr. Tran, here on the podcast. I have not read every single page, but I've read most of it. And this was a big leap for me in some respects, I'm not as I'm certainly not as well read in political theory. And but but I was challenged by it, even from the introduction. So when when I got to read it, I was like, I don't know that this is really up my alley, but then I just felt in some respects convicted and other respects. Curious. And so yeah, it's a wide ranging work of film, political theory, ethnography, theology. You cover a lot of ground and here, Dr. Tran.
Jonathan Tran 4:32
Well, it's an honor to be on here. Chad, Dr. Kim, it'll be hard for me to not call you Dr. QMS. Is my standard. But it's an honor to be on the podcast and on your show with your with your community and your audience. So looking forward to this conversation.
Charles Kim 4:48
Yeah. Well in Dr. Tran and I were just talking about his fifth chapter is on the the deep economy. And so this is sort of a A, you know, maybe more towards the kind of positive proposal aspect of this. And it emerges from what he sees in this Redeemer community church located near San Francisco or in an area of San Francisco, I actually kind of wanted to start with a very well, what I felt like was a very bold claim a very difficult claim to wrap my mind around. And it reminded me when I teach, sometimes I like to sort of set up problems. And I'm afraid that I'll set up a problem that's too big that I can't give an answer. And, and so I'm always like, Okay, well, if I, if I state the opposing view, too strong, or if I, if I state a challenge, too strong, will I be able to deliver? And I felt like you made like a statement that was like, was so significant. And I was like, man, you know, that's, that's a tough one to respond to. And but I, but I appreciate that you were willing to state it because it's something I think does probably needs to be said. But on 195. Doc, you're right. It should be acknowledged, given the chapters attention to specific churches, anti racist efforts, that there's every reason to give up on the Christian church. A tough statement, but you go on, it has not only been a site of racism, but in a significant sense, the church in America is American racism, the church America and racism and inverted Vista, June 20 tatis of a broken world. So that is an inverted, like, sort of image of the trinity or vestige of the Trinity in of a broken world. And I was just I was very convicted and challenged by that part of me wanted to like say, No, that's can't be quite right. But then I was like, but yeah, you know, I mean, that's, I don't know, it's a tough challenge.
Jonathan Tran 6:49
Yeah, for sure. I mean, as your as your readers will know, the, the vestiges of the Trinity is a reference or nod to Augustine on the Trinity, where he talks about these kinds of natural features of our world, insofar as the world is creature have God's imprint on it. And so he talks about this mystique of Trinity. So I tried to take that and then flip it on its head, and say that there's a kind of unholy, natural Trinity, issuing between, say, white folks, Christianity and racism. And I would say that this is one of the less bold claims in the book, because for a certain audience, and I think, and I'd be interested in hearing what you think, but for, say, the broad audience of academic theology, it's more controversial to say something positive about the church in relationship to racism at this point. And it's almost orthodox to point to the church's tremendous failure, such that to eke out an account of hope seems to be the point of controversy. And in fact, that's kind of borne itself out in a number of the reviews, there's a bunch of reviews already online. And people love the accounts of racial capitalism. They're pretty doubtful of my constructive account, insofar as my constructive account, as you know, really centers the church. And it really takes me an entire as you know, an entire chapter to to make that argument. metaphysically that Yep. It's almost like, as I say, it's a statement of faith to believe that the church can do that. And I kind of mean, it's what must be the case, metaphysically if we are to have any kind of hope, on these questions, but in terms of the point you bring up, yeah, I mean, I think the material evidence is pretty clear of the interrelation. Ship. And almost, though the key word here is almost almost inextricable relationship between those three things. Part of my book is to say that they are three tightly related things, but they are not inextricably related. And that is probably a point of controversy for a lot of folks at this point.
Charles Kim 9:05
Yeah, well, and so I guess probably it struck me in some sense, and also for like, the listeners of the podcast. I mean, we almost never discuss politics or political theory. And really, like, I mean, maybe to our detriment, although it was sort of the point of the podcast. We don't really talk about the contemporary church too much like part of the goal of most of the conversations, all three of the guys that started the podcast, and I were all raised in kind of evangelical Christianity, with sort of totally disconnected from the history of the church. And so in some sense, you know, what that disconnection does is and maybe it's been borne out, even in our conversations is make us feel like we can we can avoid some of the pitfalls of the historic church. Well, we're Evangelical, so you know, we can free float away from this, and we don't have to own some of these very difficult moments in church history, which are, you know, just who you know what the story is? We haven't, you know, we have we haven't talked about the Crusades yet. And we haven't really much got out of the pre constantijn world. And so, you know, so that really, and I know you, as a student of power, watts will well at least understand those terms a little, you know, to some extent, but yeah, so anyway, I think it's part of the reason it felt so challenging and would feel challenging, even to my audience, is just that we haven't even talked about this aspect of the church, just to what extent like, you know, the church is complicit in the structures of racism in contemporary America. So I think that's why it felt more shocking for us.
Jonathan Tran 10:45
Yeah, I made it. And now I'll say that I love laying in those spaces where I don't have to think about the contemporary realities. You know, I mean, it's, you know, my primary area of research is in philosophical thought, or philosophical theology. And, you know, the next big project is a project funded by Templeton on natural law and language. And so I'm spending a lot of time these days and thinking about the natural law tradition, specifically during this scholastic period. And there is a certain joy of having being able to think about these things in their most theoretical expression. But then, you know, you find that you can't do that for too long. And then start raising in your mind certain kinds of questions like, you know, during, during the medieval phase, like, for example, the fourth Lateran Council has always been kind of, you know, really helpful analysis of our participation in God's life, right. And it's the fourth Lateran Council that later on is derived from to develop a kind of analogy and an analog, analog Entus and accounting how creatures participate in the divine life. But ladder points of the fourth Lateran Council also have these really unsavory things to say about Jewish people. And there's a historian, literature professor at University of Texas, just down the road for me at Waco, Texas. And Geraldine Hang has argued that the fourth Lateran, and these accounts of Jewishness are really the basis the medieval origins of race thinking. And what is the story? Well, it's it's, as I argue, my book, it's ultimately a political economic story, where the theology gets appropriated to a story about less about Jewishness, and say, issues of, you know, older new covenants and testaments, much more to do with who gets to own property. It's just that the theology gets smuggled in to justify the political economic arrangements, which is largely the argument I make about race in the book. So that's to say, even in my pleasured moments of theoretical reflection, you know, it's not I'm never far from these things. And as you know, I mean, if you think you think long and hard about the issues, driving the very practical issues driving the theological formulations of the early church, they're not far from questions of embodiment, which is very much at the core issue of race. And, and certainly they are not far from political economy. And the gospel as the economy of God is an early church formulation. And that's the that's the contrast story I'm trying to tell in terms of contemporary American racism. So that's just all to say, I totally feel you. And I find that those formulations are wonderful to think through, and they ultimately drive me back to the practical questions.
Charles Kim 13:57
Yeah. Well, and that's so it's an interesting point, as well, one of the things in a recent episode with Tom and Trevor, we were sort of talking about, to some extent, like it with, you know, well, in this, we were even doing this before the war in Ukraine, but we can think about the attack on Ukraine, we can think about, you know, I live in St. Louis, and I find that it's easy to ignore the, well, just the violence all around me, if I live in a safe area, I don't have to think about all of the other aspects of life here. Which, you know, the stuff that I'd like to ignore, and I can kind of dig my head in the sand and go to my university and go to, you know, go to home and, you know, I don't have to look at it. If if I if I don't want to, to some extent and but it raises the question for me like what is the good of theoretical philosophical reflection, and I do think it's good, but it's sometimes it feels like a hard question like Why should I continue to ask questions? about the Trinity, or why should I continue to plumb the depths of these sorts of things? When, in so doing, I, you know, I could be doing other things, or I could be considering other questions. And sometimes that weighs on me, it's like, why maybe I should be doing something more with my life than just trying to understand, you know, the early counsels or something and how those play into later doctrinal formulation. So how do you handle that sort of tension between the sort of, you know, maybe the abstract, what feels like abstractions, versus the the Embodied Reality?
Jonathan Tran 15:37
Yeah, this is a great question. I was just talking with some of our graduate students, our PhD students here at Baylor, who are very similar to the really smart PhD students at St. Louis. And they were they were bemoaning, I think the sense that they have as early career academics of needing to take doctrinal questions and then place them in practical and even activists sets realities, as if there's no longer a place for pure contemplation, speculative, speculative reason, reflection on the good, the true and the beautiful. Whereas I would like to say that there has to be a place for that within Christian theology, that I'm not sure what Christian theology is, if it's not, at some point that whether it begins with that, or ends with that, that what we are doing. Through the life of the mind is contemplating God, and the things of God, which have to, by their nature entail things like speculative reason. Now, speculative reason as the Scholastic's, of course taught us are is deeply tied to practical reason. These are non opposite, recurring entities but deeply entwined principles of activity. And so, it's to say that in the same way, my body is attuned to the practical realities around me, it's also attune to the invisible realities around me that can be only contemplated, by way of say, recapitulation or Anabasis, right. In this sense, I'm not kind of Platonism, maybe a middle Platanus these things return us to contemplation. And in my mind, what they do is they illumine the tragedies of our age. So by imagining God, and how God intends the world, then it brings into greater relief. Things like what's happening in Ukraine, and I would, you know, at least in social media, there's a bit there's been some pretty powerful articulations of how Eastern theology helps us understand just how horrific what's happening in Ukraine is, and so these things are not divorced from me. They're mutually inflecting realities.
Charles Kim 17:57
Yeah. Yeah, I think about Augustine has one of his early sermons. And well, actually, it's numbered early, I think it's like sermon eight. But it's on the when the divine name is given in, in Exodus three, and sort of first God explains God's self by saying, The God the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Augustine sort of takes this as God and God's mercy towards us, and then God, and then you move on in the passage, and God gives the divine name. And in that place, it's sort of Augustine is reflection on God in say, like God and God's self. So in that same moment, where you have God's revelation to Moses, God reveals as a God acting in history, you know, that this economy that you're talking about, and then as well, sort of the God and God's self, so there's that contemplative aspect of Christian theology. So yeah, it does. It seems like, you know, the, what the ancients understood correctly, which I think, you know, maybe is more of an indictment on me, or in the ways that I've been educated is to see those as entirely bifurcated, like where you could do one with the at the expense of the other. Whereas for Augustine, and even in Exodus, they're mutually interwoven, or they're interwoven. They're Yeah, mutually dependent.
Jonathan Tran 19:18
Yeah, I mean, that's where the, you know, New Testament witness of the church, and then the attempts to articulate that, in the early form, earliest formulations of the church are both an indication of what our lives should be like, right? It's a way of saying this is what God translated into the world materially, institutionally structurally, relationally. Looks like that's also an indictment in the ways that we fail to live up to that. And so it works as a kind of exam exemplar of our lives, but also a litmus test of kind of how well we're doing at any time. I think one of the wonderful things to think about, you know, then into terms of, say the early church in relationship, say to Redeemer Community Church. One way to think about it is say that, you know, that was the early church, and this is the later church. But in the span of things, we may still be in the early church. In other words, we're still trying to figure out what the New Testament witness has to say about how we are to organize our lives in relationship to the various exigencies in which the gospel is good news. And so instead of saying something like, well, the early church got it right, and then down the line, churches, like Redeemer may not have gotten it right or done, as well as those early models. It may be, you know, 20,000 years from now we realize the Redeemer church was about as early in, its fumbling. And it's in and it's Grace's, as earlier churches.
Charles Kim 20:48
Well, that that reminds me, we just, I just interviewed David Bentley Hart on his new book, tradition and apocalypse. And at least part of the proposal of that book is looking at tradition is that thing which looks forward and not only that thing that we're, it looks backwards. So you know, you have people like me, I've been, you know, I have my love and affinity for the ancient world. But But what Dr. Hart is proposing is, is that, that we need to see a tradition as oriented towards the final revelation of God. Now, you know, one, one criticism I might have of the book is that doesn't it, you know, maybe I'm too Bharti in or something, I don't know, I want to see that as revelation of God in Christ. And there's a little less Christocentric language, but be that as it may, it's it is a really helpful reminder that that tradition isn't only that thing that that preserves some past form, but responds to the Divine initiative, always joining us forward to the final revelation. So yeah, so you know, he has that like, sort of idea as well, that, you know, we don't really know how long time will last. But but we should see these doctrinal formulations not as a termination of reflection, but as almost a beginning. And so in again, the early church just being sort of like the beginning of trying to understand how one lives faithfully.
Jonathan Tran 22:11
Yeah, there's a great line in window berries Jaber Crow, where the protagonist of the novel says, you know, gosh, it seems like my questions are never going to be answered. It seems like it's going to take at least my whole life to get my answers. I made my questions answered. And then the response comes back, it may actually take longer than that. You know, the, the ordinary language philosophers Stephen mohale, in his book on granary and Thomas says, you know, he's borrowing here from from Aquinas, but also from the philosophers core diamond and Stanley Cavell, those folks I work mostly on in my work for mu Hall, it's that our concepts won't even find sufficient ground and tell their infinite project stability in the perfections of God. And tell them, we're not even sure what questions we're asking because you don't know the questions until the riddle is solved. He says, you know, it's like any riddle, What's black and white and red on red all over? You only know what the sense of red is until you get the answer newspaper. And so the completion of our concepts has to do with the natural project ability of our lives, that is through our language. And so it's always Futrell. It, we're always going to, in a sense, being pulled towards that future orientation in everything we do in our lives, whether we're aware of it or not. And I imagine that's what Professor Hart is, after, as well. I may be like you and wanting a little bit more materiality between now and the future. And I suspect knowing his work, you know, that there's, there's some of that for him, too.
Charles Kim 23:45
Yeah. And like I said, I don't mean, I'm not trying to be too, like, critical or something on that. It was just, it was, it was actually one of the questions that I didn't get to ask him as much. So I, you know, it was I, you know, just appreciated being able to read that book a little early even to prepare for the interview. So, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of different ways that I feel like we could go in things that I wanted to ask you about. And, I mean, one thing that was sort of you were just mentioning kind of how sort of our theory sort of more theoretical or philosophical investigations can can lead us into, into understanding our own present world. And I would like in your chapter on the divine economy, I noticed you because in part because I've been reading a lot of TF torrents, I have him in my mind, but he focuses, you know, through Athanasius, on the idea of Christ as mediator, so sort of salvation shouldn't be only thought of as atonement in the sense of ending at the cross, but it's Christ mediating is The entire life. And so the like sort of the incarnation is the beginning of thinking of what we call atonement, not just the resurrection. And so I think there's a sense in which part of what you're trying to do in your book is sort of see a holistic view of salvation from birth to death, or you know, seeing Christ as mediating and participating. And or at least offering us a means to participate entirely in the in the the world that God is recreating. So I guess that was more of a thought than a reflection or whatever reflection that a comment, but I don't know if you care to respond.
Jonathan Tran 25:40
Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons I really am grateful to be on this podcast is the book I think, is laden with the ology, and, and pretty tradition, and for those who work in systematics, or even Patristics pretty familiar theology, but it's a book on social theory. And as I say, in the say, in the beginning of the book, you'll only come to realize this later, because it's just going to take me a while to lay out the social theory, which is what I do through my account of racial capitalism, as you mentioned earlier, takes me all the way to the fifth chapter until I get to theology. And some folks in reviews or in podcasts have gotten to those a lot of folks have it. So like when I was at Berkeley, which is obviously not a religious institution, or when I'm one, I'll be at Princeton University, and then a few weeks, they're really interested in the racial capitalism, they're really interested in Asian Americans that they're really interested in the account of race and racism, very, may not be very interested or very unfamiliar with the theology, but for those, for me, those things are working together. So what I what I tried to begin with, in my mind, if not on the book, in the book, is an account of creation as generally related to economy, the economy and creation are similar things that the story of creation is a it's an economic story. It says something about the infinite pneus of God, in God's eternality, God creates, and secretion exist insofar as it exists at all, in God. Now, that's a that's a claim drawn from the distinction Thomas makes between essence and existence. But it's also a claim, as you just said, about the infiniteness of the Incarnation. Right, it happens in God's life. And so you know, as, as the sun is part of the Trinity, so. So what that means is that creation is economic all the way through, it's an expression of the gratuity of God's grace, both in its moment of inception, and its sustenance, and then most certainly, its redemption. This is where I'm with people like heart, but also Milbank, and saying that, in some sense, incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection are simply intensification, already of what already must be the case. And so far as these are Trinitarian relationships. And so then I have this general account of creation is economic, then it's really that backdrop, which I think is really just the story of the church in the first few 100 years. That's the backdrop that then allows me to offer an account of racism as a political economic distortion. My argument, as you know, is that racism is primarily about political economies. And now I want to be clear, when I say political economies, both words matter there, sometimes when I talk about economics, people think I need something separate from politics, or power, whereas any serious account of economics is always political and vice versa. So political economic account of racism is the idea that we live in a world of extraordinary exploitation and domination and equality. A world that were those realities are only growing, and that race fictions were created to justify those relationships. That's a political economic story. My argument there is that we need a wide enough set of concepts to take in the totality or totality of what racism is, which in my book is always structural, systemic. People like to make a I think people sometimes presuppose that racism is primarily personal or individual, maybe even psychological. It certainly is those things insofar as its political, economic, right, we're political, economic creatures. And so, but that is all again, drawn up against the backdrop of a dret general account of creation as as economic or divine economy. From there, then it's just the move to Augustine to say that to what racism is, is as political economy or what I call in the book racial capitalism, is to say that those are distortions of how creation is set up as an economic reality. You know, for Augustine, it's quite literal, literal economic language, privation, predation, of goods that are created and therefore held in common as ways to enjoy God, but creatures in their distorted desires in their say, lack of wheeling, or in the destruction of self destruction of wheeling, turn in on themselves, seek to get from other creatures what can only be procured in their life and God, and that leads to a kind of implosion.
I tried to articulate narrate contemporary racism and race realities, everything from American chattel slavery, to its present articulation, and what I call the aftermarkets, of racial capitalism. These are all effects, quite devastating, of an economic reality, run amok, turned away from God turned in on itself, it's in some sets, the image of Augustine and the pair writ large. So,
Charles Kim 31:11
yeah, I get to teach Augustine's confessions, often for Theo with 1000. And so yeah, those are all themes that that I get to return to with the students. And I Yeah, the other phrase that I was waiting for you to say, and you say in the book often, is the notion of gift, right, creation is gift and to be, you know, to receive others as gifts. And sort of part of what you draw out and tease out that's, that's helpful is the ways in which especially racialized capitalism or racial capitalism, conditions us to look at people as commodities or as things or use that MLK language thing of Fi rather than as gift. And like I, you know, I returned to that again, and again, with the students like, you know, Agustin has to begin with, we must receive our lives as gift, and that that is the beginning. And so and, and we can only do that, because we know that God is as a good God, and as offering us this good gift of creation. It also strikes me, you know, you use the philosopher earlier in the conversation that I don't remember his name, but where you said, we can only know the question after we know the answer to the riddle. And there's some sense in that interplay of under being able to receive creation as gift like, you know, we have to know who Christ is to see that goodness in our world. So we have to know the answer, in that respect of what the goodness becomes in Jesus Christ, to be able to receive our own life as a gift to go back to that beginning. There's that constant, like, back and forth between beginning and end. And so yeah, I don't know, try to think about how to say that any better. But yeah, that's
Jonathan Tran 32:57
exactly right. It's to say that what I say is that if racism is fundamentally institutionally, practically, the use of race fictions to justify political economic domination and exploitation, then we need to do two things, then anti racism needs to be about two things, we need to deflate the power of race to explain things. This is really hard for us Americans, we think race explains things. And so we need to deflate the ability of race to explain things and almost everything as we tend to do as Americans. And then secondly, we need to have different idioms of political economy. And this is where your point about gift comes in. So the primary idiom of late capitalists, or even early capitalist cultures, the primary political economic idiom is exploitation and domination, then gift would be the exact opposite. Now with the patristic. Thinkers remind us is that domination exploitation, are predatory on a prior gift structure. It's not the other way around. This is absolutely critical. So this is where I say and I get this from from the fathers, is that the primary political key of Christianity then is it resistance, as if we're the outliers here, we're this strange phenomenon creeping up on the natural conditions of predation, and domination, rather, predation. Domination is the unnatural thing. The world is gift. That's what creature creates creature names, right? Going earlier to my distinction, and Thomas when you SSH in existence, so we exist as gift insofar as we exist at all. This sets up creation in a gift structure. Right? It's just what it called The Gift structure of Creation, this is my generalist account of creation is economic. And so then what we have is a is a kind of predation or a decline from this reality, towards forms of predation of what against one another Other and so, and what I think the church is, and so far is it's the body gathered around the one body Christ is gift in the same way that Christ gathers the disciples and says, This is my body broken and given for you. That's what God is proclaiming through the church. In its frail, broken bread like way. And so anti racism in my mind claims that it says against a world that wants to eat each other, and use race to justify that practice. It's to say that we are given to each other. And the church as I tried to articulate in this church in San Francisco, is like God placing bread in some pretty for Lauren places in the world and saying, This is my body given for you. It is that up to the church members to give their lives in those kinds of ways, knowing that there is nothing they can that they give that will not will not be returned to them infinitely. And the things to come.
Charles Kim 36:11
Yeah, which I guess that's as good as place as any to kind of think about, like, what Redeemer Community Church does? Well, in the sense of, you know, like, the thing that struck comes to me straight away is trying to use their their profit for the giving, like they offer these really low interest rates, or in some cases, probably forgivable loans to people. And then there's like other structures that they have where the CEOs or the sort of upper level employees only make three times at max three times what an entry level employees going to make. So yeah, so I don't know if you want it 300 times. Yeah, right. Yeah, that if you bring in Picotee on that. And, yeah, so it was sort of I was, well, I guess I have two questions. First of all, how did you come to know Redeemer, I may have missed it, if you told the story of why you chose them, or how you came to know about them. So maybe say a little bit about how you found that church as as an exemplar, for this reimagining of their place in the community, versus, you know, simply reimagining from the sort of typical racial capital way of looking at the world. And then, yeah, then maybe sort of some examples of how they've been successful at this.
Jonathan Tran 37:35
Yeah, well, I mean, the backdrop here is an account of racism that we're racism is premise on a reality where exploitation begets exploitation. And so if racism is race fictions used to justify exploitation, then what you have downstream in our world is exploitation, beginning exploitation. And so I described in the first half of the book, through an long oral history of Christians, Asian American Christians who participate in the exploitation. They don't do so driven by say, racial animus, the racial animus develops as a function of that reality. But they don't go into the self, because they're driven by saying, an anti blackness, it just turns out that way, because of the structures of exploitation, I think this is a much better and more accurate account of how racism tends to work in our society, rather than the hyperbolic ones we tend to focus on and the ones we tend to focus on are things like, you know, the Klan, the red face Sheriff, armed with attack dogs and fire hoses against black civil rights workers, the redlining mortgage agent, you know, where the racism burns inside of her. These are entirely two hyperbolic and what that sets up is forms of on the one hand Kancil culture on the other hands, virtue signaling, where we may not be actually anti racist, but we sure the heck don't want to be considered racist. So the way we ensure that publicly is we participate in canceling and virtue signaling all the while participating, the various structures and systems that work against say black and brown life, housing, education, health care, employment. And so what I want to do is give us a more accurate account of how racism is actually operating and how most of us are complicit in those realities. It's against that backdrop that then redeem what Redeemer is trying to do in trying to deflate racial categories on the one hand, and then offer different idioms. It's against that backdrop that then they present something like good news, and they would be the first to say, as imperfect imperfectly as, as one can do it. Now, I think they're a pretty amazing community. I learned about them through something called the ecclesia project that you may or may not be aware of. It's a group of churches, Catholic and Protestant, across the country that have kind of taken up what some people have called in the last few years, the new monasticism, it's often with that, which of course draws its image of what the church is from the early monastic communities. And so, these are churches often evolved in neighborhoods and communities that have been neglected or not invested in by local infrastructure are disempowered, disenfranchised politically, are on say, the underside of history are certainly on the other side of, of neoliberal capitalism. And these churches in these communities of Christians are trying to give their life for these communities, because they believe these communities is where God is at some of those beautiful things in the world are. So instead of saying, we want to avoid those communities, or maybe in our sacrifice, we're willing to be with these communities. These Christians are saying that some of the most joyful places I can be in the world, and that's where I'm gonna go. And so I learned about Redeemer Community Church through this network of churches in America, doing this pretty amazing work. There, unlike the churches that most of us go to, they're less comfortable, less polished. And, you know, maybe because what they think the gospel requires and makes possible, is a very different kind of life. And this is where the Anabaptist sensibilities as well as the early kind of patristic monastic sensibilities get articulated through these kinds of communities.
Your question, what do they do? Well, right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what they do well, is, in some ways, the mirror opposite of what many of us do, poorly, or just as a matter of course, which is, instead of seeking to exploit exploitation, they seek to reverse systems of exploitation. And so what they've done is, you know, most of these folks are educated in elite schools, mostly the University of California system, Stanford University, a lot of them are teachers are electrical engineers, computer scientists, you know, Silicon Valley. And they all started as you know, upwardly mobile professionals, and then they got some Jesus in them. By being in these communities, and realizing God is on the side of the oppressed, and pitch their tents, just like Christ incardinated. God Self in these kinds of communities. And so what they've done is, there's a church, there's a software company, Dayspring partners, that generates income as a for profit company, but they use the money to redistribute monies, to the local neighborhoods and communities. That's what the neighbor fund, the love the micro loan system, you're talking about, most fundamentally through their school, that they've created this community. In San Francisco, where there's serious brokenness in public education, just like there is really everywhere in our country, about, you know, a quarter of the population goes to private school, which is very, very high. And private schools in San Francisco costs on average. Now, this is the average costs about $35,000 a year. And what Redeemer has been able to do by redistributing income is to provide high quality education for the kids in these communities basically for free. Because they believe that what part of the gospel articulates is redistribution, or in the language of duquan, Pastor duquan And Greg Thomas and a book recently reparation, economic repair, if it racial capitalism is fundamentally about theft, than we have debts, and it is part of the demands of justice to repay debts, and so, but it's also it's a good thing to give up to dispossess. And so these are some pretty extraordinary people, mainly because they're doing pretty ordinary things. They think that these extraordinary slash ordinary things are demanded and enabled by the gospel.
Charles Kim 44:42
Yeah, that's really powerful. Yeah, I was quite impressed by their because I we go to a church here in St. Louis. And it was, you know, it was a church that was trying to consider the legacy of like Michael Brown, and Some of the issues in St. Louis, and you know, I feel like we've hit a little bit of a, like, are starting to spin our wheels a little bit like, what do we mean when we say reconciliation? Or what are ways in which we can sort of enact some of these things? So, I mean, even just as here, you talk and reading through some of what the Redeemer community churches doing, I was just, you know, thinking like, you know, what are ways that we can in St. Louis? Do so like, you know, I don't know what it would be here. I don't, I mean, doesn't seem like software is the obvious one for us. Although I guess there is some sort of tech startups here. But yeah, I don't know, just like we're in a, we're in a community where I like I live in this place called Shah. And it's, it was at one point to sort of poor area, it's probably you know, you'd probably use the language of gentrification, and our church is right here. But like, you can go across one or two streets, and it's nowhere near like, the the cost of property is way lower, you know, just thinking about, like, other ways in which we can, you know, we could sort of read, do reparations or redistribution, or, you know, rethink our place in the Yeah, the local economy. Yeah, that is very suggestive and helpful.
Jonathan Tran 46:15
Yeah, and this is where the metaphysics of deep economy or say, God's grace, or gift economy as a general feature of creation, really opens our imagination. I mean, we are not, in a sense, trying to make these things up as Christians, we're rather leaning into a story that the church has told since the beginning. This is actually how creation is set up. In its goodness, at the point of inception, and in its redemption. And so things like reparation, or reconciliation, again, are outliers. They're just the most natural things you do, if Christ has saved the world, like we believe Christ has. And so it's redistribution. Recognize, you know, reconciliation are no different than singing worship songs on Sunday morning. In fact, the sea of worship songs is the rehearsing of the metaphysics. Right, that makes these things natural outcomes to who the church is. This would be the whole question of the visible Trinity's in the world right over it against the very long lasting and persistent witness of the unholy trinity of the Church and its participation in exploitation. I mean, one of the key things I try to do in the book is tell a story where this goes back to your initial question. One of the key things I'm committed to in this book is telling a story where the church is not just a villain, which doesn't mean it's not also a villain, it has often been, but it's not just a villain. And this was what I mean by this is a statement of faith more than anything. It's the belief that God isn't done with the church. And so even in the face of the unholy trinity is that it participates in God is going to take you know, the language, however, was take all the time in the world, to make God's people faithful. And there may be just a smidgen of witness like that maybe like what your church is doing and Shaw, but it's there. And they are, they are signs in our world that God has not abandoned it. And in fact, God is redeeming it.
Charles Kim 48:39
It's hard not to just want to end the conversation right there. I, on the one hand, it would be a nice circle you we talked about the Trinity and all that I did. I knew that you were a student of Howard was I did sort of have the question like one thing that I've noticed like later in his life, he talks, he will talk occasionally about how he doesn't he doesn't people want to know, what does it look like? Some of the stuff that he proposes, what does it look like? I sort of felt like in the second half of your book, you were trying to say it can't like, let me see if I can put some some flesh on this. Like that this? What can it look like? Is that a fair way to I mean, I don't know is that a fair way to look at part of what you're doing is is trying to see how can we enact this?
Jonathan Tran 49:23
Yeah, I mean, this being the gospel and this be Yeah.
Charles Kim 49:27
Yeah, well, either. Well, either way. Yeah, I guess I'm being vague.
Jonathan Tran 49:31
This gets into long standing debates about how we read Agustin and specifically how we read the City of God. I think, you know, one of the one of the ways we've read the City of God is to say that part of what redemption looks like is an enactment of Christianity within the politics of the world's orders. Another way we've read it is as a strict division between mean, good news and the world's political orders. What I tried to do in my account of deep economy is to offer a metaphysical ecology or an ontology, where it makes less sense to make strong divisions between those two things. And I think this is trying to fill out some of the ontology that Howard was kind of worked on for decades. I mean, you'll know that the the last words of the book of the book are the church being the church, and anyone who's read Stanley powerwash, they would know those power losses words, I mean, how or was otherwise turns up very little in this book. As you said, I'm a student of power West. And you know, my own biography is, I grew up outside of Christianity, and became Christian about age 20. and fell in love with its picture of political community. And thought it was and still believe it is the best thing since sliced bread. What so when I, you know, when I discovered, however, was it was, you know, discovering of inclinations and intuitions, I wished could be articulated and found that some dude had been doing so for decades. So I studied with Howard loss. And you know, these were heady days at Duke, where Duke was kind of setting a lot of the theological agenda in America. And everyone was talking about, you know, the definitive article article, the church, so much so that they were nervous about, say, Protestant and Anabaptist version. So there's a lot of conversion to Catholicism and orthodoxy. So when I left Duke, in 2006, I was a thoroughgoing Howard wauseon. And it was all about, quote, the church and I didn't care about things like the academy, insofar as the academy wanted to talk about religious studies and not the church. Well, you know, that I started reading folks like Stanley Hauerwas you know, my other Stanley I'm sorry, Stanley Cavell, who's my other? Oh, yeah. And Cavell thinks that we both are communal creatures. But we're also alienated, estranged from our own communities and senses of community. And so I kind of moved in other directions for years. But in the in the crafting of this book, I realized how much I had returned to how our losses account at the church. And this is an account of the church that we're, you know, going returning to Augustine, we are a pilgrim people, you know, using power loss and Willa months image of resident aliens, which means where Jeremiah 29 prayers, we pray for the good of the city, we pray for the good of where we are, we bless you know, the language of Scripture, we bless those in the world that God puts us in the path of, and we wipe the dust off our saddles against those who won't have us are not interested in us. But we are most certainly in the world. And if we are saved people in the world, that that's going to look like things. What's it gonna look like? Maybe Berkeley computer engineers, using their gifts for a software company in, you know, certain parts of San Francisco. But we're also not of the world. We understand. We are a pilgrim people in the same language of Buddha Hall where riddling people were pushing towards the consummation of the riddles. And we don't believe that those riddles can be solved entirely in this world. And so were people on the move, even if we're also people who settle in neighborhoods and communities. And so this kind of imagery that I take from Augustine is very much the kind of theological picture that informs my accounts of Redeemer. And all these Ecclesia project churches as pilgrim people, blessing those in practical ways, refusing the literal exploits of the world, and trying to be bear witness to what the world is, in its truthfulness. One of the things I say is that, you know, and I get this from Bonhoeffer is that you can only feed the reality of the world accordingly, by living in it. That's one of the parts of it right from the from the perspective of racial capitalism, what I've portrayed in Redeemer is not simply absurd, but obviously absurd. You know, who would live that way? Obviously, the trajectory of the world is upward mobility.
And, well, it's only by living in a very different world that the hermeneutics opens up. That No, that's not the best way to live. It's not going to bring you the greatest joy, the greatest forms of relationships and friendship. It's not going to fulfill us not going to get you up in the morning. And so, but you can only see that by doing it, and that's why the Gospels is such an interesting thing in the new time. Isn't it right? It's the disciples going back and forth between seeing the world as Jesus sees it and seeing the world as they see it. Constant hermeneutical wrestling match, which side of the story? Are they gonna end up? And you know, the good news, of course, is it's not up to them, the Spirit enables them to see. Right. And I think that's what I'm hoping people see in the second part of the book is, here's a lens of how the world actually is, no matter the lies of racial capitalism, no matter the lies of race language, and its fictions and its exploitations.
Charles Kim 55:32
Well, Dr. Tran, thank you for coming on a history of Christian theology, I have really learned a lot, even from this conversation. And I'd suggest to all my listeners, you know, there's so much more in the book, we I, you know, part of partly Dr. Translite, but focus more on kind of five, chapters five and six. But there's a lot of interesting history about the Delta Chinese about the ways in which that illustrates sort of the difficulties of the binary racial language that that's often employed. And yeah, some challenging stuff that I sort of took his orthodoxy. You know, like, how the Irish became white, you know, stuff like that, like, I just, you know, there's a lot of a lot of thought provoking stuff in here, but I appreciated being able to talk with you about the sort of metaphysical underpinnings so really appreciate you coming on.
Jonathan Tran 56:25
Thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure.
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