The Religion of Race
Sept. 13, 2024
Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett
Guest(s): Dr. Joseph Green, Jr.
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/13/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Isaac Crockett: I want to start our program today by reading a quote to you that caught my attention recently. Here’s the quote that I saw. It says, at the end of the day, we must understand how God looks at humanity and how the message of the gospel tears down the walls of division and brings together all nations tribes and tongues to create a beautiful picture of unity in the midst of adversity. And this quote is on the cover of a recently released book called The Religion of Race, deconstructing a Social Construct as a path to reconciliation and healing. And in it, the author talks about how race has been exploited in concepts of race and walks us through a lot of history and doctrine and very interesting book. But with that, I am Pastor Isaac Crockett, and my guest today with us is not really a guest. He’s also one of our co-hosts on Stand In the Gap, but is the author of the book I’m referring to is the book Religion of Race, and the author is Dr. Joseph Green, Jr. One of our co-hosts here at Standing the Gap today. A pastor, an author, a speaker, businessman, a father, grandfather, all kinds of things. Joe, you wear so many different hats, but thank you very much for making the time to be on this program and for this book that you’ve recently released in the help that it is.
Joe Green: Well, thank you, Isaac. It’s always a pleasure being on the program with you and thanks for allowing me to come and share my heart. That did when I wrote this book.
Isaac Crockett: Yeah, you came out recently, but it’s something you’ve been working on for a little while. In it you say this book seeks to engage and challenge you, dear reader with a compelling question. How have some individuals and institutions used race as a means to gain power, maintain control, and reap profit at the expense of others? And you say that there’s a lot about race going on that really there’s a lot of unnecessary division and on biblical division going on kind of masked in terms that make all of us react certain ways. I can’t wait to get into this book, but before we go into that, Joe, maybe catch us up a little bit on some of the ministries. Again, I said, you’re a man that wears many different hats. It’s one of the neat things all of our co-hosts on this program have a lot of ministries they’re involved with, which makes this so practical, so applicable. But could you maybe talk to us just a little bit about some of the ministry things you do have going on? You are pastoring a church, you’re the director of the Pennsylvania Capital Ministry. You have community initiatives, you have things on a national level. Maybe you could just discuss one or two of those things with us that are going on in your ministry and how to catch us up to date with you.
Joe Green: Absolutely. So of course I’m the head pastor of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as you stated, also the Pennsylvania Director for Capital Ministries. And I’m on the federal 400 years of American History Commission. And also I work in a community with young people, which is really, really something that’s near and dear to my heart. And also lately have been trying to put together these type of engaging conversations around race, religion, and culture and all those types of things as a way to try to bring us together and to reconcile and have us healed as individuals, as a community because I believe it’s the church as a whole. And the Bible tells us that, that it’s supposed to take the lead in helping to bring forth reconciliation and healing.
Isaac Crockett: That is so great. Now you’ve authored some other books. Before we get into the book you wrote that we’re talking about today, do you mind telling us maybe about some of the other things that you’ve already written?
Joe Green: Absolutely. So my first book I wrote was about my testimony and it’s called From Kilos to the Kingdom, A Story of a Life Transformed. I’ve also written a book called The Power of the Original Church, which is a book about church history, wrote several other books including Kingdom Business, which is also a book that talks about race, religion, and politics from a biblical perspective. And so those are just some of the books I’ve written. I’ve written a couple others shorter books, but those are the ones that probably get the most attention.
Isaac Crockett: And if you look up Joseph Green Jr on Amazon, for example, where a lot of people get their books, you’ll find from Kilos to Kingdom, most of these ones you just listed are right there on Amazon as well as your latest one, the Religion of Race, and this is what we want to talk about today. And I’m curious what led you at this time in our nation’s history and where you’re at pastoring and things and you’re so busy, what led you to write another book, specifically this one, the Religion of Race?
Joe Green: Well, this was, I would attribute it to God’s timing and especially because I had been talking about topics similar to this for years. And then when God really placed on my heart to write this book, it was probably about a year ago, maybe a little bit more. And so I had started the book probably a year and a half ago, and I had started the book and then I stopped and didn’t really do much with it. And I’m a writer that’s not very disciplined. I write by inspiration. And so sometimes you’re inspired and sometimes you’re not as inspired, but then the Holy Spirit really put on my heart that look to finish this book. It was interesting because as I went in and finished the book, it was an incident that me and you had talked about, and it really showed how race has taken so much of the public conversation you had in 2020 Black Lives Matter with George Floyd, you had all these other things. And now in the presidential race, that has been a hot topic as well about race. So it was really by inspiration of God, and I think based on what has happened around us, it was definitely God’s timing. So I can’t take credit for that. And I don’t know if we want to talk about that story that I shared with you about the young man who passed, or if we can, maybe we’ll do it later in the program depending on which direction you want to go and Isaac.
Isaac Crockett: Well, you know, why don’t we talk about that right now and if we need more time later in the program, why don’t you share that with us, a powerful story. Sure,
Joe Green: Sure. So this was, I think it was about six months ago maybe heard this news story about a 16-year-old young man who died. And as I looked in and come to find out, he lived right around the corner from us and we didn’t even know, but he died. And the story was that there was two white kids that was chasing him and harassing him, calling him names, and that he fled from them and got home and died of exhaustion. And I remember seeing the comments that were really horrible about people saying that it was racist in 2024, why are we still dealing with this? These kids are horrible. They should be put away for life and all these horrible things. And I remember thinking immediately, we can’t stop. We can’t jump to conclusions, we have to take time and really get the details of the story.
Joe Green: So the details of the story were the kids were friends and they were actually playing this game called Senior Assassin, which has become very popular. And it just so happened that the young man who happened to be a person of color, his family is from Jamaica, and the two young boys were white who was chasing him, but the young man had sickle cell. And of course with sickle cell trait, if you over exhaust yourself, there’s a threat that you could die. And so he died of exhaustion because of his condition. And the other part of that is he was going to try out for the football team, so it could have happened even during football practice, but I just thought about how everyone immediately gravitated towards this was a racial incident and he was being harassed. And I thought about these two young men who were somewhat innocent or they were innocent, but yet their whole lives could have been impacted by immediately jumping to this whole idea of race.
Isaac Crockett: And your whole book is good about giving us context of the situation that we’re in and helping put our minds towards the kingdom of God and what God has called us to do as believers. And so Joe, I look forward to talking to you more about this. We’re going to take a quick time out to hear from some of our partners and when we come back, I want to talk to Dr. Joseph Green about some more insights in this book that he has written and get some thoughts on these important questions of race and ethnicity and really the direction of our country and of the church in America. We’ll be right back after this brief time out. Welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and my co-host today who I’m also interviewing is Pastor Joseph Green Jr. And we’re talking about the religion of race. That’s actually the title of the book that Joe recently wrote.
Isaac Crockett: Now, Joe, you were describing for us in the first segment how you felt led of the Lord to write this. Something had been on your heart about this for a while, you’d been writing on the book and the Lord really led you to finish it and to get this book out. And as we say in the Old Testament, the story of Esther for such a time as this so timely, your book was released. And then just right after it came out, president Biden has this bad debate debacle and he ends up not running for reelection and basically handing it over to Kamala Harris. And this idea of race and race baiting and name calling, all these things has really come to the forefront of news again. I mean it never really went away, but even more so just to see the Lord’s timing in that is really fascinating. But I’m wondering, as you were writing this, did you have an audience or more than one audience, maybe audiences in the back of your mind that you were thinking of as you wrote this book?
Joe Green: Well, sure Isaac, and that’s a great question. The first thing I want to say is this book is for everybody. So I would like for everybody to go out and buy a copy of the religion of race. So that’s the first thing. But I believe that everyone could benefit from it because I try to put race in its proper perspective and balance it against culture. And so I’ve had people that have read it that were black. I’ve had people that read it that were white and other cultures, and they all have told me what they receive from it, some insight, some perspective that they hadn’t thought about or even some clarity on some topics. And so I think that this is beneficial for anybody because like I said, my heart behind this book and things that I do is for reconciliation and how can we come together and how can we, because this human is one race, really, it’s the human race and that we all benefit when we all are successful and we all have the best opportunities for life. And so I think anyone can benefit from this book in some form or fashion, older, young.
Isaac Crockett: That’s great. And I know I bought it on Amazon and in what you’re describing that perspective and all of that, that’s how I feel about it. I mean, this is something I’ve read a lot about and I thought I know a lot about it, but you went into areas that I thought, oh, I think I know where this is going. And it went deeper and further back than I even realized. And I said, wow, I’ve got a lot to learn about this area. I knew just the tip of the iceberg on it. And Joe, you’ve opened up a whole new window here that I didn’t even think about or wasn’t even on my radars. I highly encourage it. Again, I got it on Amazon, but there may be other places that people can find it. How can we find this? And then also along with it maybe the benefit for those who are listening who are true believers and they have a biblical worldview in mind.
Joe Green: Well, right now the primary place you can get is Amazon. I’m working on other avenues of getting the book out because again, I would like this to get out. I think it’s an important conversation for us to have, especially it’s very timely, but right now the primary way is that if you go to Amazon and you can purchase a copy of the book, and I would greatly appreciate it. I think it would benefit everyone.
Isaac Crockett: And we’ve had some really interesting discussions this has brought up. I mean even so many of the things with Kamala Harris and her background and things just very interesting, some of the things you see. But you have discussed in the book the Weaponizing of Race, and I think, and you can correct me if I’m overstepping anything, but I feel like that’s something we’re seeing even in the recent debate and then some of the campaigning, especially on the side of Kamala Harris. But in general, it feels like America in 2024, there’s this, what you referred to, and I think I like this term, but I want you to explain a little bit more this weaponizing of race. For those who haven’t read your book yet, what does that mean and how does that impact us?
Joe Green: Well, weaponization of race or weaponizing race is when people use race as a way to manipulate control and to gain advantage over a situation. Like for instance, I remember in 2008 when President Barack Obama ran for office and once he got in the office, there were people that disagreed with him ideologically, and I was one of them. I disagreed with him on a lot of things ideologically, and I remember when he was being criticized, a lot of people in the media immediately stamped that person as being a racist because they disagreed with him because he was black. I think about this current situation with Kamala Harris that when the question was whether she was black or not or whether she was Indian, and people got so much in just outraged about the question, which shouldn’t have been a positive or a negative question, just a simple fact, what does she identify as?
Joe Green: But it’s used in those situations to basically cancel a conversation. And so you can’t question me if I throw out the black card because that means you’re racist. And even with CRT, I believe that we should have, and as you’ve seen in the book Isaac, I give a detailed account of history about slavery and different things like that, but yet I’m not a proponent of CRT because CRT uses race in a way that could be deemed as weaponization in terms like white supremacy. And those types of things are set up to elevate one group of people over another instead of saying, this is the history and this is what we have to do to move forward. We automatically go to white people are evil and black people are victims. And so that’s the way to weaponize it. And on an individual level, here’s a way it can happen. If I’m at my job and I perform badly and I get fired and then I accuse them of fir me because I’m a racist, because they’re racist, because I’m black, that is a form of weaponization as well, and I’ve seen that happen at different times. And so once we identify those things, it move beyond that conversation. It puts us all on a level playing field and we can focus on the actual facts instead of this manipulation tool.
Isaac Crockett: And I love this because you’re going back ultimately back to God’s word and then showing history. And as the old saying goes, all truth is God’s truth. In your book you write, you say the concept of race is not an immutable truth. In other words, that we found this term and it’s been always the same. It’s not an immutable truth, but it is a social construct that has evolved over time. We’ve been doing some apologetic studies and things at our church in a small group, and one of the sad, sad things that you get when you go back a few generations, especially 150, 200 years ago, is that supposed science, they claim that certain people were more evolved than others based on facial characteristics, skin color, which is just the amount of melanin they have. And so therefore, for example, I was reading a story about the Aborigines in Australia, they would actually heard them like animals and run them off a cliff or killed them and skin them and send that back to museums supposed missing links. And these were people, this was killing people to put them in museums in Europe, for example, things like that. And so could you maybe talk about some of the negative impacts that we here in America have gone through as a result of, I think it’s in your book called Scientific racism?
Joe Green: Absolutely. And so natural science was more prevalent before race science came into play. So natural science determined that people’s physical characteristics came from the geography, the place that they came from, which is why people in Sub-Saharan Africa are darker skin because they need more melanin to protect them from the sun, and people in the northern parts have less melanin in their skin, which makes their skin whiter. Even with your nostrils, you need wider nostrils when the air is thinner in Sub-Saharan Africa as you would if you’re in the higher climates where the air is thicker. And so that’s how science determined physical characteristics came from geography. But now when you have scientific racism that became prevalent in Europe and it was basically promoted as a means to justify enslaving of people, they started to attribute characteristics to physical features. And so as you stated, people with darker skin because their features were different, they deemed them as less evolved and also as not as intelligent as other races.
Joe Green: Charles Darwin, his book, the Theory of Evolution by Means of Natural Selection, the subtitle of that which most people don’t know is the Preservation of the Favored Races. And so it’s based on race science, which is what they continue to promote, and they promoted black people are less evolved and therefore it was okay to enslave black people. And so for years, people have followed the pattern that race is a real thing and have treated people accordingly as opposed to now more and more people are coming to the realization that this a social construct that has no type of scientific basis behind it. And the last point I’ll make with that is, for instance, people of color, and I mentioned a young man who died who had sickle cell trait, sickle cell trait and sickle cell anemia is more prevalent in people of color, but not because of their race. It’s because when people originated from West Africa, certain places had a high level of malaria in the water, and so the sickle cell trait protects you from malaria. And so it had nothing to do with race, but had everything to do with the geography of where they originated from. When you understand it from that perspective and understand how we have spent so much time and effort separating people because of physical features, it really shows how absurd this whole topic has been and how negatively it’s been used.
Isaac Crockett: And so I’m so thankful in this book you’re putting it back into a biblical perspective because the scientists often get things right. We talk about that in our program many times, even in last few years we’ve seen a number of those instances, but especially in this area. And in your book you say, on the one hand, religion has the power to transcend racial divisions, uniting people under the banner of shared faith and spiritual purpose, and we see that in our love for Jesus Christ. And you say, on the other hand, it can reinforce racial boundaries. And so we want to talk about that. We want to talk about getting it right, getting it biblically correct. When we come back, we want to look at some of these details of what has happened in our country and how as Christians, we can seek unity together in Christ.
Isaac Crockett: We need to take another quick time out. We’ll hear from some of our Stand in the Gap partners. And then right after that we’ll be right back to talking with Dr. Joseph Green Jr. Right here on Stand In the Gap today. Well, again, welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett and my co-host and the person who’s being interviewed today is Pastor Joseph Green Jr. And he’s written a book about the religion of race and kind of going in historically contextually, scientifically, but most importantly even biblically talking about some of the division we have nowadays, how we should be united in Christ and to see that God created us as the human race and be able to look over some of what’s going on and see how the enemy wants to divide us and misuse words and different things. So I’ve really enjoyed reading the book as well as we’ve had already in this program. Joe, you’re giving us some really helpful information there. Before I go back to asking Joe some questions, I’d like to go behind the scenes to our program producer, Tim Schneider. Tim, would you be available to give us some information on things that are going on at Stand in the Gap Media or the American Pastors Network?
Tim Schneider: Well, yes I am, Isaac. Thank you very much. Good afternoon to everybody. Hopefully you’re having a great afternoon. Are you aware that we’re on social media? If you do social media, please consider looking for us, like us on Twitter or follow us on Facebook. And X is formerly known as Twitter, I should say that now for American Pastors Network and Stand in the Gap Radio. Also, we are on bit shoot, so if you do that, subscribe to us there. But look for us there and you can see lots of the content we post on our social media pages. Also, we have two great websites. We have stand in the gap media.org. You can find archives of TV and radio programs, also American pastors network.net. And if you’re over there, please consider signing up for our e-newsletter. We won’t inundate your inbox of spam, but we’ll send you information and things that you might find useful.
Tim Schneider: One time a week, you’ll at least get an email from us and recapping the previous week’s radio programs and some other things. You read a transcript, there’s clips from previous radio programs and all, and that E-newsletter about once a quarter you’ll get an e-newsletter sent out to you concerning prayer request for this ministry. And whenever else there’s something of interest, we will send it out. Like I said, we won’t inundate your inbox with spam, but we’ll send you information that you’ll find useful, especially about this ministry. Also, we encourage you to please pray for this ministry. We covet your prayers and with everything we got going on, we appreciate your prayers for this ministry. And also please consider giving financially no amount too big, no amount too small is too much. So please consider giving. You can do that. Once again on our website, it’s American pastors network.net and standing to gap media.org. So that’s some of the stuff I’ve got going on behind the scenes here, Isaac, and I’ll go ahead and send it on back to you.
Isaac Crockett: Alright, thank you Tim. Well, Joe, in your book, we’ve already discussed so much of it and there’s so much more to go through. We can’t obviously discuss the whole book, but hopefully this lets people’s appetite to go to amazon.com and maybe purchase their own copy of The Religion of Race by Joseph Green. But you talked about weaponizing race and you gave the example of maybe somebody gets fired because legitimately they just weren’t good for that job and they need to get fired. And he says, well, I’m a person of color, so obviously they’re racist or even you pointed at the presidential election and things, it’s like, oh, how dare you ever talk about somebody’s race or this or that. And it’s like, well, can’t we get over that? Why does somebody’s skin color have to be the important thing? Let’s talk about the person’s policies and history and experiences, those things.
Isaac Crockett: But I want to go, you’ve given some of this historical context and you’ve talked about even a misunderstanding of how God created the world led to these wrong assumptions, which led to people taking advantage of other groups and slavery and all sorts of things. But you also have done a lot of history in America even since the Civil War, what things have changed and why things have happened. And it’s not so much racism as it is understanding people’s backgrounds and things. And so Joe, I like in the book, you have a whole section where you take a term called cracker culture and you explain cracker culture. You can maybe walk us through some of this, but crackers is right now in our society considered a derogatory term for a quote white person. But this whole culture that came out of has a historic context. Could you explain some of the negative things we see in our culture that maybe affect now urban neighborhoods and things like that and how that really ties back into what you call cracker culture?
Joe Green: Yeah, no, that’s a great question and one of the things that we have to understand is a part of the biggest problem that we have. A lot of times it’s culture and not race. If you think about America being a melting pot, you have many different cultures that are in close proximity to each other. And so a lot of the negativity comes from different cultures as opposed to them being race. So for instance, the term cracker is one that is used derogatory against white people. It’s a type of culture and it’s from a group of people that came from primarily southwestern Europe or Iris Scott, people that were brought over here and many of them were indentured servants as well. You think about, and you can read this, it’s historical, how they described the crackers that they were loud and boisterous. They were drunkards and the BOUs immoral and all that other stuff.
Joe Green: And so that’s how they are described historically. And so many of them were brought over here as well during the slave trade, and they would’ve been the ones who would’ve been on the plantations and poor neighborhoods and close proximity to black people. And so black people who had been stripped of their culture, and I’m using the term black as people of African descent, they would’ve been brought over here and they would’ve been stripped of their original culture. So the culture that they adopted, many of them was that cracker culture because they were in close proximity with each other. And so when you think about when the migration from the south happened because of the industrialization and big factories and jobs and opportunities in the north, you had white and black people migrating. Most of the black people migrated into urban areas, whereas most of the white people from the south would’ve migrated to rural areas.
Joe Green: And so if you look at the culture of many of the people in the urban areas that we look down on, we may call it ghetto or whatever the case may be, it’s very similar to what people would call the culture of the people out in Appalachia or whatever term people use for them. I don’t like using the word redneck, but that’s one of the terms that they use. Ghetto redneck culture is very similar because it was a culture that was originated from southwestern Europe that was adopted by many people, and even Isaac, a lot of people don’t know this, but blacks in the north looked down on blacks in the south when they first migrated, primarily because they had a different culture. And I’m not trying to say all black people or people of color or people in Appalachia have bad culture. I’m just saying that’s one of the cultures that has stood out over time. And so when we describe it, I want to describe it historically accurate, I’m not using it as in a derogatory way, just simply stating a historical fact. And so when we start looking at things from a cultural perspective as opposed to a racial perspective, then we can get a better understanding of what’s happening and how we can live together and
Isaac Crockett: Survive. That is so helpful and that’s where your book has been a big help in that area showing some of this historic context to it and in these facts. Well, as you went through the American history giving us context, could you talk about as you kind of described, the destruction of the black family structure over the last different decades?
Joe Green: Absolutely. So if you look at the black family that has been weakened tremendously, it was done in a way that through economic oppression and political control. And so one of the things, and it’s primarily because of political control because after slavery was abolished and black people began to vote, they voted primarily Republican, and I think it was Ulysses as Grant was the first person that black people were able to vote for, and he won by 300,000 votes, 500,000 black people had voted at that time. And of course they voted Republican because Republicans were the anti-slavery party. And so then they started in the south with voter suppression because they had become the deciding vote. Now you fast forward it into the sixties and you have the Voting Rights Act and you have the civil rights bill and everything. Then you see another attack on the black community, the black family, and they did it through the war on poverty.
Joe Green: And so what the LBJ and the War on Poverty did in order to gain loyalty from people of color was he positioned the welfare system in a way that was meant to help on surface. It looked like it helped black people, but it really degraded the black family because it replaced the fathers with the state. And so as you know, the welfare system originally, if it was a single mother, she couldn’t have the father in the household. And so it really helped to weaken the family structure because if you look at statistically from 1865 to the 1960s, there was only a 22% out of wedlock birth in the black community from the 1960s to present day. That number has over tripled, and so over 70 plus percent of black children are born out of wedlock. And so LBJ is quoted in his unofficial biography with saying that we have to get the black people, and he didn’t use the word black, he used a derogatory term that I won’t use. We have to give him something not enough to make a difference, but enough to make them think we care and we’ll have them a voting Democrat for the next 200 years. Patrick Moynihan also had written a report during that time that he recognized the war on poverty would be devastating towards the black family, and we see those that happened, but it was primarily done for political control and it has worked for the most part because black people have been overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic Party for 60 years now.
Isaac Crockett: And Joe, as you wrote about that, and again, there’s more detail in the book, what an appropriate thing for us to be thinking about as it feels like more and more and more we’re hearing people, well, what is the government going to give me and wanting handouts from the government not realizing that the government is not just giving it out for free. There are strings attached, there’s control involved, and as you said it, they replaced the parents, they replaced the father with the government, and that is not biblically what God has set and ordained, and that’s where we get into trouble. I want to talk some more about that and then wrap things up with some final thoughts when we come back talking with Dr. Joseph Green, Jr. The author of this book, religion of Race, as well as Pastor and co-host of this program. So we’re going to take another quick time out.
Isaac Crockett: We’ll be right back on Staying in the Gap today. Again, welcome back to our program to the last segment we have, and if you haven’t been able to hear the whole program, you can go back on our app or on our website, social media and listen to the whole thing. And if it’s something you want to listen to again or maybe share with somebody, we even have a transcript that will be available soon that you can read it or send off parts of it. It’s I think been a very helpful program with my co-host and friend, Dr. Joseph Green, Jr. Author, businessman, pastor, many, many different things that you do, Joe. So you’ve been talking to us about the religion of race. That’s the title of the book. You got into really a lot of the politics of race, some of the history of what has happened, what has transpired.
Isaac Crockett: And I want to go back to the quote that I think we started with quote from your book cover, and it’s this, at the end of the day, you write, we must understand how God looks at humanity and how the message of the gospel tears down walls of division and brings together all nations tribes and tongues to create a beautiful picture of unity in the midst of adversity. Joe, could you go into a little, some of what you talk about in your book there and what you preach about, but how does the gospel of Jesus bring unity in our nation or for that matter to any culture?
Joe Green: Well, yeah, absolutely. So we know what the Bible says. It says in the book of Acts from One Blood, God created all people that live on the face of the earth. So we all come from God. We have common Fathers through Adam and through Noah, and we, and God’s intention was to preach the gospel to everyone, to reconcile people together. Now, the interesting thing about it is most people know the Great Commission was preached the gospel to all nations. Now that word in Greek is the word. Ethnos is where we get the word ethnicity. So God has never separated us by race, but we were separated by tribes or I should say ethnicities, nations. And the only way he judged a nation was whether they followed his commandments or not. The civil rights movement was about being judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin, which is how we should judge each person, but the message of the gospel to preach the gospel to all nations, which means all ethnicities is because God wants to bring the human family back together in Christ. And when we focus on that as the body of Christ, then we tear down the walls of separation. We override pride, the racism and weaponization race and all that other stuff, and we bring together the great picture of unity in the midst of diversity. God doesn’t make us unified and uniformity. He doesn’t make us unified in spite of diversity, but he wants us to have unity in the midst of the human diversity, which is all nations coming together.
Isaac Crockett: What a beautiful picture too, of what heaven is going to be like because when we get to heaven, we’re not going to be discriminated against who looks like this or that, but we’re all going to be there to give glory to the Lord and so to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, we’re looking heavenward and we’re not looking at skin colors or languages or these different things that you’ve talked about have been used to weaponize, which ultimately as you’ve showed us, it’s been used to divide us. And I think the enemy would like to divide and conquer, and when we stay united as a people, as a nation, but united as the church of Christ, as the kingdom of God, it gives us true strength. Well, Joe, what can somebody listening to this program do today to make a difference? Maybe bringing a unifying belief to their family, bringing unity to their neighborhood, to their church, to just their overall culture and community of where they live. What can we do to take steps personally, individually, as well as congregations and families to bring about unity at a time where it feels like we have a lot of division or those who like to divide us going on?
Joe Green: Well, and that’s a great question, and I always say that we have to be intentional about what we do. If the message of the gospel was to preach the gospel to all nations or all ethnicities, we have to be intentional about it and look to connect with people that don’t look like us necessarily. Isaac, I think we’ve talked about this before. I think about how many times we say preach the gospel to all nations. We might go to China to preach the gospel or Africa or South America or Europe, but when we think about it from an ethnic point as opposed to a country point, how many ethnicities or how many different cultures are you in close proximity with? I know my neighborhood is very diverse where I live in now. And so I could be intentional in reaching out to people that are from a different culture than I am a different skin tone from I am and learn of their culture and learn. How can we unite in Christ because the kingdom of God is built on the principles of the kingdom of God, not based on people’s ethnicity or identity or anything like that. When we stay focused on that and strengthening families and strengthening the culture of the kingdom of God, which is a culture, then that’s how we can start to build a world that’s in alignment with not only God’s will, but the kingdom of heaven as you stated, because that’s what heaven’s going to look like.
Isaac Crockett: Amen. Well, Joe, what would you say you’re pastor and you do a lot of talking and helping training leaders, a lot of leadership training and pastors are leaders, shepherds of the congregation. What would you say to a pastor maybe who’s listening, who is looking for ways to bring unity and to glorify God in that way to his church? What kind of advice would you have to a pastor? And really this could go I think to all leaders, ministry leaders as well as other leaders out there?
Joe Green: Well, I would say first of all, we got to make sure we’re never preaching a race-based message, a race-based gospel. We have to be intentional to understand that we all come from the same place. We all come from God, and that our job as a church is to lead the charge to bringing forth the human family. We have to be careful because a lot of pastors are using very racially based messages. We have looked at the body of crisis being very diverse, even though I think it’s coming together now because for years it’s been a black church and a white church and Hispanic church. But when we start to believe that it’s only one church and that’s the body of Christ, it’s made up of many members, then we should be more intentional about coming together and even coming out of our comfort zone. One of the things, I grew up in a black church and when I would go to the white church, they worship differently.
Joe Green: We might have worshiped on the downbeat, they might worship on the upbeat. But when I began intentional about learning how to worship in a different way that I was used to, that helped a lot to bring us together because usually we were divided mainly by culture, more so than race. And in churches, a lot of times it has to do with the music or just how people express themselves. And we start to look past that and look at we are one church with one Lord, one savior, and one spirit. I think we’ll do very well, and it brings us power because the Bible says when brethren dwell together in unity, there is a commanded blessing. So I thank God that he’s given us the tools and he is also given us the insight on how we can build his kingdom up.
Isaac Crockett: That’s great, Joe. That is wonderful. And in your book, one of the scripture passages that you go to really to end the book, to wrap things up is you go to Colossians chapter three, one of my favorite passages in Paul’s writings, and he talks about being compassionate and kind and humble, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. And you quote from verses 14 and 15, he makes some really great points. And in that it says, and above all these put on love which binds everything. Or we could say everyone together in perfect harmony and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful and it goes on. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Joe, just some wonderful, helpful advice and biblical challenge to us in this book, the Religion of Race. Thank you so much for writing it. Thank you for being on the program with us today.
Joe Green: Thank you so much, Isaac. And again, I think this is not only an important conversation, but this is an conversation that should be led by the body of Christ, based on the principles of the kingdom of God and building up his body.
Isaac Crockett: Amen. Well, let’s pray. Our heavenly Father, we just thank you for the work that you are doing, and we pray for unity amongst your people. We pray for a perfect harmony and true peace, patience, forgiveness, humility that this nation might be strengthened by coming to our knees and asking you to work in us, to forgive us, and to bring about true everlasting peace and not this division that the enemy would like to see. We pray these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ or Savior. Amen. Well, Joe, thanks for being on the program with us, and thank you for listening to this. Please pray for us here at the American Pastors Network and stand in the gap media. We appreciate you listening, and we’d ask you if you enjoyed this to share this program with other people. On behalf of all the team behind the scenes, Tim Schneider and the rest of the group.
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