Berkley Center

Jamie Gates: So, when I was eight years old, my parents took me to South Africa, and for most of my growing up years, till I went to college, I grew up in South Africa. So, I guess I grew up within the church but also as a transnational migrant who lived with one foot in the United States and one foot in South Africa. And for me, that gave me a lens on both the church and the country of the United States, probably that's a little different.

Rodney Scott: I grew up in Indiana. I was a farm kid, but I grew up in a Christian family, very strong Christian values. Attending Sunday church in the morning, going home just for a few hours to eat, going back to church in the evening. If the church doors were open during the week, we usually opened them and we usually closed them. And then when I was 16, a little family disruption, my dad's job moved us to Nogales, Arizona. So, the next thing I knew, I was living on the U.S.-Mexican border and going into Mexico on a regular basis just to eat. My high school was less than a mile off the border, that summarizes how I grew up.

Jamie Gates: I can remember the dinners at my parents' table, where white farmers and Black pastors would sit together for the very first time, we had this big round table that we sat at. And I can remember tracing my finger in the patterns of the table while a white farmer and a Black pastor are sitting together at the table for the very first time. 

I had no clue how important that dinner was at that particular time or what change it was making or even that it was a threatening gathering, that my parents were just being hospitable and bringing together their two worlds. Because I lived in a white town and we went to church in Black communities.

Rodney Scott: So, it was the first time that I really thought about the fact that our country butts up to another country with a completely, totally different set of rules, and I started being exposed to even different cultural norms and stuff like that. A lot of it, again, going back and forth, to eat and to spend time with friends, seemed very much the same, but when you pulled the layers back, you realize it was very different.

Jamie Gates: So, coming back from South Africa to the U.S., a whole bunch of things struck me as odd. So, I did notice that in some churches, they had the Christian flag and the American flag in the sanctuary up front, sometimes in the hallway or in the narthex. But I was a member of a Black Nazarene church in Kansas City for four years, they didn't put flags in their sanctuary. I talked to the pastor about it, and there was a real sense in which he was certainly patriotic, but he was also deeply concerned that his community, in particular, didn't participate in all the benefits of what that flag stood for, while they paid a disproportionate weight of the costs.

Rodney Scott: I think as a younger adult even but definitely as a kid, I would look up at senior leaders in the United States and just assume that they had everything aligned with-

Jamie Gates: They got the benefit of the doubt.

Rodney Scott: They got the benefit of the doubt and then now, I'm very cautious to align with the beliefs, the foundational principles of the country and not individuals, much more than before, that would be the evolution.

Jamie Gates: I'm a sociologist now, I'm a cultural anthropologist by training, by education. I teach in the Department of Sociology and I'm Christian, and it was a Christian sociologist, Hendrik Verwoerd in South Africa, who was the architect of apartheid. And while they were overtly worshiping Jesus just like I did, singing the same hymns, singing the same songs and yet, they were Christian and they were racist deeply at the same time. So, I'm not necessarily talking about mean and evil people. I mean good, upstanding people who were the leaders in their community, and I think would generally be Christian and be particularly gracious around most things but there was this blindness. And in part, it was their Afrikaner nationalism and it was their South African nationalism that was blinded to be more white than to include everyone.

And I was a part of that and it was part of me, and I think it's a part of our life in the U.S. When we say, "America is great," we mean a particular version of America and that particular version is often like it was in the 50s maybe: a white and rural and nobody locks their doors kind of neighborhood-based faith. But that time was not particularly good for a good part of Americans who didn't share that, that rural and white experience. I even think about the U.S. in those ways now in retrospect, it's hard when you're immersed in it. I think we're conditioned by ideologies without even knowing we're conditioned by them.

Rodney Scott: Yeah, we've had that discussion before, and I don't take a specific position on it but it doesn't bother me like it bothers you. It does bother me actually that it's disappearing more and more because that is the foundational principles this country was built on. And I think this is a really... And we'll get to this more but this is why I enjoy these conversations because I've done similar to you. I go back and seek guidance and even within the Nazarene Church that we both belong to, there's division on that discussion, but it's civil dialogue, not a negative type of division.

Jamie Gates: I don't think what we've accomplished is enough because the Kingdom of God is not here in its fullness yet. And I do think there's a lot of room for building further bridges, for better interactions, better understanding in the way that policies are rolled out. We need to have a much longer conversation. Maybe this dialogue in and of itself becomes a space where others can say, "You don't have to bite at each other. You don't have to lead with the foot of anger." I say that cautiously because people who've been victimized actually have anger and maybe only anger as a lead foot or people who are afraid or scared.

Rodney Scott: One of the reasons that this relationship is so important to me and others that you've put me in contact with, it's to have that communication if you will. In this job, you do very quickly realize that evil does not have the face you thought it was when you were a kid. If you're not cautious, you can start seeing evil everywhere.

Jamie Gates: I think maybe we can come together at a space where fundamentally, our relationship and our faith helps to push away fear, helps to find that level of engagement where your first foot forward isn't fear.

Rodney Scott: You have to talk to people that you don't necessarily agree with and not be afraid of the dialogue, and I think this conversation helps break down some of those echo chambers. If nothing else, it does mine.

Jamie Gates: I think we're fully on the same page with that, breaking down the echo chamber. It's an important reason to be here today.

Rodney Scott: Thank you for being here, Jamie.

Jamie Gates: Thank you, Rodney.