The Fire, with Danté Stewart

About the Guest

Danté Stewart is author of the book Shoutin’ In the Fire: An American Epistle. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Clemson and is currently studying at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, Sojourners, and more.

Best Books

Shoutin’ In the Fire: An American Epistle, by Danté Stewart.

Danté recommended a whole slate of books, but also invited people to connect with “Black Bookstagram,” a loose collective of Black Instagram influencers, especially: Akili Nzuri (@ablackmanreading), Reggie Bailey (@reggiereads), Crystal @crystalwilki, Nia (@_pagesgaloree), Traci with The Stacks (@thestackspod), Cree, We All Ways Black (@creemyles), and more.

Transcript

[Theme song: “Great Light,” by Deep Sea Diver]

DANTÉ STEWART: I was “all lives mattering” to Black co-workers. I was like, “Yo, white people are getting better. They're learning and this and this, this and that.” And so then one of my co-workers, Mikayla, she just told me straight up, she was like, “Stu, you don't got a damn thing to offer Black people.”

BLAIR HODGES: As a young Black man in the South, Danté Stewart saw dangers lurking for people who looked like him in America, as well as rewards for those who learned to blend into white spaces. And no space seemed whiter than the Christian church he joined in college. Coming up out of the waters of baptism there, Danté envisioned leaving his blackness behind, leaving behind his boyhood baptism into Black Pentecostalism, rising to a colorblind world where all lives matter. But as time passed, as he witnessed more bodies of Black Americans being killed, he felt rage growing inside. An unexpectedly holy kind of rage that prepared him for yet another baptism, this time, by fire. He came through it with something to offer Black people—and everybody else.  

Danté Stewart joins us to talk about his book, Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle, in this episode of Fireside with Blair Hodges.

Three Hebrew boys – 1:20

BLAIR HODGES: Danté Stewart, thanks for joining me at Fireside today.

DANTÉ STEWART: Hey, great to be with you, Blair.

BLAIR HODGES: We're talking about your book Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle. It's a phenomenal book, and you open it up by taking us with you to an August morning in 2020.

I think if we had video footage of that moment, we'd see a guy walking down the stairs, it's morning time, it looks calm, peaceful, you're making coffee in your kitchen, and we'd see you reach over and grab this old King James Version of the Bible, it's black and it's got a rugged cover, it's well-loved, well-used, and we might think to ourselves, looking at this video, “Here's this religious man spending a quiet morning with scripture.” It looks like a calm scene you describe there but you say that on the inside, chaos was ravaging your mind. You felt a gnawing rage and sadness. Right there with the King James. What was happening here?

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah man, first of all, thank you for having me on. And man, like it’s so much of what many people who are religious go through in general, you know, it's just a lot of confusion. It’s a lot of questions that oftentimes don’t yield to answers. Oftentimes, the church is not on the side of making society better. But oftentimes the church is on the side of making society worse.

And so, as I'm looking at 2020, we're not just simply going through a moment in which George Floyd and others are murdered—particularly Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery—we're not just going through a moment where they are murdered. Their murders are covered, their deaths are covered in very public ways. But we are going through a moment where Donald Trump is wreaking havoc within so much of what people would deem to be American religion. And that cut across the board, whether you was in white churches, whether you was in Black churches, and of course, this was a particular problem in white churches. Donald Trump struck a chord with so many people, and really called people to question faith and question what type of country we're in.

But then also when I'm reaching for my Bible, I'm not even reaching for answers. I'm just reaching for stories. I'm reaching for things to keep me grounded in this moment, where I feel as if, once again, we're reminded that Black lives don't matter. And I'm wrestling with this question of, how am I going to walk out in the world as a young Black dude, you know, inside of a church that's oftentimes on the bad side of history, and trying to imagine something better, but also trying to do the work of a writer, to chronicle the struggle, to chronicle better stories that I know so many of us need.

And so here I am in 2020, dealing with all of this, and I'm sitting at my table and I’m at a moment where I just feel so down and discouraged about everything that's going on. And I'm just trying to find some words. I'm trying to find a way forward really wrestling with the question, you know, what does it mean to be Black and American and Christian? and the ways in which oftentimes those realities and identities intersect in some of the most terrible ways possible.

BLAIR HODGES: And that's exactly what we meet right here at the front. As you said, you're looking for stories in the Bible. You're looking for something you can see yourself in. So I wondered if you could read a passage from your book, from page eight, about what you found on this August morning in 2020.

DANTÉ STEWART: Alright, cool. So yeah, so in this moment, man, I'm thinking about my momma and the ways in which I was raised, and how they prepared us, but also so much of what they did not prepare us. So here I go:

“I think of my mother, the ways in which she would conjure up Old Testament stories, making dead bones come alive, turning and twisting words like lyrics from love songs. She loved telling the story about the three Hebrew boys in the fire. The three boys, who endure unspeakable horrors, who had the audacity to live and dance and to shake off the chains, was not just a good story. Their bodies, their struggle, and their surviving was my momma’s own.

“When I think about my momma and how much she and all those Black folk held on to old stories, I don't just see people who courageously shook kingdoms and who preach audacious messages of liberation. I also see people who know what it means to live with deep trauma and still love themselves enough to [care and] believe in their future. I see them like the prophets, trying to shake kingdoms and rock souls and straighten bodies back up again and love us in simple ways that cooled our bodies and cooled our spirits and stopped our trembling.

“To believe in the better, to believe in your future, to shout in the midst of a country on fire, to stare down lions, to shake the foundations of the empire, to make meaning in the face of death, to fail, to create, to live, and to love—this is the stuff of hope. It is not an assent to nostalgia or myths or lies. It is the audacious belief that one's body, one’s story, one's future does not end in this moment.

“The three Hebrew boys that my momma loved to talk about underwent two fires: a physical burning in a furnace, and a prolonged burning set ablaze by empire. These boys didn't simply make it through the fires, somehow just embracing the violence of the empire politely and passively. The miracle was their audacity. The miracle was their courage to stare down terror. The miracle was the revelation that violent empires don't have the last say. Empires may be able to enslave our people, plunder our resources; they may try to destroy both our bodies and our future. But in the midst of the burning, we somehow try to liberate ourselves, again and again, showing something more deep, more honest, and more powerful than the blazing. Empires will not always win. Empires will not always win.”

The power of names – 6:54

BLAIR HODGES: That is such a moving passage, as you bring these biblical figures from ancient times right up to the present. And you point out that these boys didn't accept and embrace this violence politely and passively.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: That's a little foreshadowing of what we're about to hit.

But before you got to this kitchen table, you walked a lot of miles to get to that kitchen in 2020. And your book then brings us back to your childhood: South Carolina in the 1990s. And there are different people back then that had different nicknames for you that kind of symbolized the fact that—I feel like you were kind of trying to find out who you wanted to be back then. Give us a little bit of background about your childhood.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, I think for so many of us, particularly us young Black folk, as I write about in the book, for so many of us, you know, nicknames are not just symbols. Oftentimes they are destinies, and, in many ways, they’re destinies that oftentimes we want to run from. So when I think about the nicknames that I was named, some of them just was like, I hated being called “Vacuum Boy” by my daddy. That was the worst thing ever, because it just reminded me of like, oh, man, I’ve gotta always vacuum. I'm the one that always—I'm playing a game right now and you want me to vacuum clean, and things like that.

But then “Church Boy“ represented something that I always wanted to run from. Like, I didn't want to be associated with the Pentecostals that I grew up around. But then also the name of like, “Stu,” where there was a difference, like, my name is Danté and oftentimes Stu is what people call me. And in my mind, as I look back on it now, “Stu” was something that other people created. Danté, was who I really was, and my story from childhood all the way to today really, is that struggling with the question who I am.

Especially looking at our country, am I somebody who can walk in the fullness of my humanity? Am I somebody who can walk in the reality and the assurance that the same society that I'm living in, the same type of church that I'm experiencing, will not be the same type of church that my son or my daughter will experience?

My son, as he walks in this world, I don't want my son to be afraid that somebody will see him as a threat and try to blame him and shame him or ultimately kill him. I don't want my daughter to have to live in a country, where for many black women—as Kiese will often say, you know, you have to work twice as hard for half as much, where she's living in a society where to be Black and to be a woman is oftentimes to be doubly oppressed the way that many feminists and womanists talk about.

I don't want them to have to live in that society. And oftentimes when I'm wrestling with this identity, I'm wrestling with these names and identity, I'm wrestling with who am I going to be amidst all these voices around me. And all these voices are demanding something different of me. They're all demanding something oftentimes that I don't even want to give.

So even if you think about 2020, and all the way up into 2022, so much of this life and reality is facing the truth that there is so much demanded of us that far exceeds our ability to give. And if we let it, so many things, and so many people will exploit us and destroy us if we're not careful. And when I think about these nicknames, I think about how oftentimes they were prophecy. They look forward to the ways in which I gave people myself in ways that were not helpful, that were not honest, that were not good. And oftentimes I failed in very many ways.

And that's the thing about this story that I want people to gain from it. It's like, yo, I'm not the hero of the story. Oftentimes, you meet me in so many ways where I failed myself, I failed other people, I failed so much of this idea of faith, this idea of liberation, this idea of wholeness.

But also, in many ways, it's a story of my courage in the way I found my way. But to find my way I had to wrestle with who I became, who I was not, and what others tried to make me.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you bring up W.E.B. Du Bois, his idea of double consciousness. This is the idea that Black people in America grow up seeing themselves, but also learning to see themselves as other people see them, especially as a predominantly white culture sees them. And you've mentioned a few things like feeling like a Black body is a threat, feeling like a Black body is criminal. And, as you talk about, how Black people grew up seeing themselves and seeing how other people see them.

I think double consciousness could be multiplied. And I think you show this throughout your book, which is, you saw yourself how the church saw you, how your parents saw you, how friends at school saw you.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: And you're also trying to see yourself. So I see this wrestle with identity a lot. What do you think—as a child, you said you felt uncomfortable with that Pentecostalism. What did that religion look like? What was your faith of a child?

Childhood faith and Pentecostalism – 11:40

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, bruh. I mean, it's like tongue-talking [laughs], church all day. I remember back in high school I played sports, it's like going to practice and then going to church all the time, and then being tired. And church, for many of us young kids didn't represent a place to be liberated from, but it also at times represented a place that that was weird and represented loss. And so for many of us it wasn't like a cool thing to be associated with church in general, but Pentecostalism in particular, because they always thought Pentecostals were crazy, you know? Everything was about Jesus and everything was spiritual. And you just was uptight, and just not a good person to be around because you always tried to force your morality on other people. And the way I grew up as a Pentecostal, it shaped this idea of my own unworthiness.

There's something woven into Christian theology, where like, we say this thing: “No one is good, and nobody can be good, and therefore we need to have some goodness from outside of us to make us good.”

I took that for granted for years and never really took into account that when you think somebody else's humanity is not good, then you're always going to treat them bad. You're always going to treat them as less than. And when you’re talking about the kind of multiple experiences or identities that I'm talking about in the book—particularly centered around the intersections of Blackness and faith and citizenship and Americanness, when we’re thinking about those intersections—oftentimes that theology woven into what we think about citizenship, like no one can be good. Black people can't be good, and therefore they must be controlled. People, humans can't be good. Therefore, they must be controlled. Or like the church believed that those in the “world” are not good. Therefore, the church can control.

I think whenever our theologies and our understandings of other people and ourselves is rooted in a belief in people's own unworthiness, then you will always treat them as if they're expendable. We see it this in this country, when we look at George Floyd and Breonna Taylor—I want to particularly talk about Breonna Taylor, and this kind of intersection of Black women, society, and particularly thinking around the church—

BLAIR HODGES: By the way, just to quickly remind people, this is the woman who was killed in her bed at night because police came and were wrongly looking for someone else and ended up just shooting blindly into the room. Just to bring people up—go on.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts. One hundred percent. And so like, when we think about race oftentimes, we think particularly about Black men and the way Black men die. Rarely, if ever, or with the same energy and with the same conviction, do we think about the ways in which Black women and Black LGBTQ live and die.

And we think about Breonna Taylor. To talk about Breonna Taylor and the ways in which oftentimes she was overshadowed by the deaths of two black men—Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd—tells a story about the way that we devalue people's humanity and what we believe other people are worth.

When we think about sexual assault, and the way Black women are treated in churches, that's about what people believe other people are worth. And when we think about Breonna Taylor and larger society, Black women are not just mistreated, but oftentimes they die with nobody representing them, or little to nobody representing them.

Like when I thought about this story I wanted to figure out ways in which I can uncover or reveal continually alongside this long tradition of the ways in which we not just simply destroy people, but we try to erase them.

So this story is, in some sense, me taking back power for myself, but also for other people so that we would not be erased. It’s to say, yo, we're here. We have something to say. And people need to take our reality seriously.

Being Black in white spaces – 15:48

BLAIR HODGES: And the way you tell that story is through your own personal experiences. For example, you talk about how you were a walk-on football player at Clemson University. And here you find yourself pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, as a Black person at a majority white school, you end up finding some refuge in gospel choir. So to hear that the Black church experience was kind of difficult for you, it's interesting that when you got to university, you sought that companionship, you went to gospel choir—

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh yeah, facts.

BLAIR HODGES: —a little group you say of like thirty or so Black Christians. But you're also invited to this Thursday night Christian Fellowship, which is hundreds of people, [laughs] most of whom you refer to as, “very nice white Christians.” This is white Christianity on campus. And now you’re pulled—talk about that tension there at school.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, so Black church for me, it wasn't hard in a sense of, “Aw, this was the worst experience ever.” But now, looking in hindsight, I realized that there were so many limitations within the Black church, especially around wrestling with the Bible, wrestling with God, expanding our faith, and making it a more progressive faith, like really trying to take into account marginalized voices.

So yeah, when I think about Black church, like it was good. Of course, I wanted, looking in hindsight, wanted it to progress and expand ideas about who count and who matter, and what type of theology and conception of God we were embodying. So I was always Black church, even to this day, I'm very much still Pentecostal. I'm very much, you know—I'm a minister. I'm the Tab Global Minister at a progressive Black Baptist Church here in Augusta, Georgia.

And so when I went to Clemson, you know, being a drummer, I had a natural affinity with finding Black spaces. That's just who I am. But also playing football at Clemson University, you’re living in this tension where, oftentimes, so many of us young Black people who were raised in Black churches, or Black church spaces, or Black social spaces, go into these white spaces, and oftentimes, we are invited to assimilate to their way. And so much of that assimilation is wrapped up in ideas that white is right, and white is better, and white is where we should go. Like gospel choir is good to have fun with and express yourself musically. But white church is where you go to get your spirit fed and your mind fed, and where you go to shape and form your life.

It's subtle, but it's so powerful, and so rooted in ideas of white supremacy, that oftentimes so many of us, particularly Black male athletes, would go into these spaces, and we distance ourselves and devalue where we come from. So, like, I love playing the drums, and I love going to gospel choir, but where I went to go get fed and tried to help me think better about the world and my faith was oftentimes in white spaces.

When I walked out that tension, in some sense, I failed at that tension, because in the end, I was someone who believed that white churches was better. And over time, usually, whatever space you're in is going to form how you think about God, it’s going to form how you think about yourself, it's gonna form how you think about other people. And when I looked around in this space, it was like bright lights but dark ambience, white people with acoustic guitars and things like that, and it is different.

BLAIR HODGES: You even said people would say to you, “Hey, you're not like other Black people.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, one hundred percent! This whole idea is like, people think that Black people are problematic and wayward. When I think about Saidiya Hartman's book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, I'm thinking in that language. She says when people look at Black people, all they see is disorder, and they miss all the beauty.

So this idea that you're not like “them” quote-unquote is people thinking that Black people are wayward, are the problem, are a threat. Whatever ways people use to devalue us and disrespect us and demean us, and ultimately destroy us and cut us off from so many opportunities, cut us off from so many things, cut us off from resources, cut us off from being visible. So, it's like literal erasure. And many times this is not happening within the context of the “larger society” quote-unquote. But it is. But this right now particularly is happening in the context of church and religious space.

BLAIR HODGES: The shocking thing to me was that instead of saying, “What the heck is that supposed to mean, I’m not like other Black people?” it meant something to you. Instead, you're like, “Hey, I am the exception.” You actually started to kind of imbibe this a little bit.

DANTÉ STEWART: One hundred percent, because it felt good! Like, it feels good to be celebrated and affirmed and to be praised.

When you feel insecure and you come from places where oftentimes you are devalued, when you start to be affirmed by people, it feels good and you want more of it. If you think about being like an athlete—I was talking to one of my friends and we were talking about performance and things like that and playing football. And he was like, “You know, when I look back on our career, all we lived for, really all we lived for was for coaches and other people to say, ‘I see you, good job.’” And that's just affirmation. All we live for is that affirmation. So when my parents and my folks from back home tell us like, “There's nothing back here for you. You need to go out and get somewhere where you can make it,” we start to believe that. And then we start to associate that this affirmation is us “making it.” This is what's going to make us successful.

So instead of leaning on the affirmation of where we come from, we oftentimes lean on the affirmation of white people. And that affirmation oftentimes comes with power and protection. So, like, we'll get resources, we'll get money, we'll get deals, we'll get relationships, we'll get whatever, through this affirmation and access. And oftentimes, we don't really ask ourselves, “What are we losing in the process?”

 And that's really why I titled the first chapter “Wages,” particularly, thinking about this white space—what we lose as Black people in white spaces. And oftentimes there's always a cost, and there's always a price to pay. And too often that price is our humanity, sacrificed on the altar of white affirmation and praise.

BLAIR HODGES: And with that you started really identifying with all these white Christians. And you even decided then to join them, to be baptized, which, you had been baptized as a child. And now you're deciding, “Oh, that was wrong. I want to get in these white spaces.” You were surrounded with white people that were affirming your humanity, telling you that you're wonderful, really giving you a lot of love, and you decided to get baptized. And there's this passage here when you were baptized that says, “This was perhaps the most emblematic moment of the way I learned to shut off parts of myself, lest I be ‘that’ type of Black person. It was the lessons of survival that we learned. So much depended on our ability to, as the Bible says, die daily.”

This is a fascinating moment here. You turn this baptism—It's the symbolism of baptism, but what's being buried in that water is your blackness—

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: —like you're trying to “crucify” that blackness. That's how you depict this.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts. And for me, thinking about this section of the book, it's like, I'm thinking about James Baldwin, and thinking about the ways in which Baldwin uses religious terms to talk about the ways in which society oftentimes just destroys us. And so, when people see us, when people see like Black folk, oftentimes people see us as like some type of marketing value—particularly us young Black people inside of white spaces, we’re marketable for white people, just to be seen as less racist, to be seen as more progressive. So there is a death that happens. And there is a death that we are invited into.

But for me, like, I went through two baptisms, you know? Well, really three baptisms! There was the baptism of my childhood, there was the baptism of my blackness going into white spaces, but then there was also the baptism when I finally woke up and read Baldwin, and it changed me and it shook me up so much to deal with the ways in which I failed so many people in so many different ways, just simply because I wanted to be accepted by white folk.

Standing in solidarity – 23:47

BLAIR HODGES: And it took time for you to get there—

DANTÉ STEWART: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: —because now you’re in these white spaces, you're starting to think of yourself as a “Christian,” not a “Black Christian;” you're starting to try to think of yourself as an “American,” not a “Black American.” It's the kind of things I hear from other white people, when they're saying, like, “All lives matter,” and “God doesn't see color.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: You really were converted to that perspective. So your religious views start to shift, your social views are shifting, and you depict yourself—looking back on it, you say, you see you were running from that Blackness. You were running from something that felt scary. You were trying to run towards safety.

By the time Trayvon Martin was murdered, for example, you were at university and you felt kind of distanced from it. Other players on your team are getting together to do something out of solidarity. Other Black players are like getting together for a photograph and stuff. And you're just like, “No, no, man.” What was going on there for you?

DANTÉ STEWART: Yes, so in that moment, like, if I'm gonna shoot it, if I'm gonna keep it a buck, it was about me not wanting to lose what I felt like I had earned. I didn't want to lose that celebration and that affirmation and that protection, because I felt like, yo, I deserved it, I earned it!

So to identify with Trayvon Martin in that moment, for me, was like for many Black athletes on college campuses, where they say like, “Yo, you're going to be a distraction.” And distraction is used as a weapon. Like it’s used as a way to shut off Black activism. It’s used as a way to stop Black folk from asking questions of this community. It’s used as a way to protect white power. It’s used as a way to silence us.

And so, I'll never forget this story that was told by Anthony Reddie over in the UK, it's like this little passed down story, that this professor was giving a lecture on blackness and God. And at the end of the lecture it was question and answer time, and this young black dude stood up, and was like, “Yo, I don't have a question. I just got a statement I want to make. When I became a Christian, I stopped being Black.” And so the crowd went into an uproar. And then the professor waited until the crowd got silent and he simply asked, “When did blackness become so bad that God must save you from it?”

When I think about that question, for me, not identifying with Trayvon meant that I thought identifying with Blackness was bad. And so, the only choice was to run from it. Because it kept me from having to lose in the ways that, many times we were warned—when we go off the white college campuses—we were warned not to lose.

And so I had to be straight. I had to make sure I made no mistakes. Because ultimately our focus was really mainly concerned about us making it. And who could blame them? Who really could blame them in the society that they grew up in, that they wanted their children to experience a world that was much different. But in the process, so many of us ended up trading in what they had experienced and had known to be so true—particularly that this society, and many of the institutions in this society, oftentimes struggled to love us. That what they knew, most true of that inability to love, we oftentimes sacrificed it in order for us to progress in ways that they did not.

And so, when we did do it, we thought we were better than them in many ways. So we distanced ourselves from them. But then, when I think about Trayvon—it wasn’t like George Floyd, because in that moment, people wasn't really thinking about—I mean, in larger society, Black folk have always been standing in solidarity with Black folk and talk about, you know, police and vigilante violence. It’s just that larger society just hasn't been hearing. And Trayvon woke so many people up. But for me, it would take years and years and years before I ever would be woken up to the ways in which this distance was destroying me.

A damn thing to offer — 27:36

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you talk about how things started to shift for you when you learned about another murder. All these murders keep happening, being put up on social media and being talked about publicly, and this was when you learned about the murder of Alton Sterling. You were on your way to Bible study with white people. You're going to the white church, you're ready for Bible study, and you see this footage, and something cracked open for you. It seems like this was another conversion experience for you.

Talk about that moment. Because you say you wanted to express anger and grief. So you still went to Bible study—

DANTÉ STEWART: Mhmm.

BLAIR HODGES: —but you also say you “wanted to stay safe and committed to white Christians.” How were you negotiating that at that Bible study?

DANTÉ STEWART: At this moment, I was fully sold on the lie, you know? [laughs] I was fully sold on the lie that whiteness was right. I was preaching, teaching, and leading in these white spaces, and I was actually comfortable. This was years and years and years of being socialized and discipled, that these were the people I should be around. So I fully invested in that identity. I was not wrestling with it. I was not trying to run from it. I was okay with it. Because it brought so much affirmation. It brought me into places that I never would have quote-unquote “imagined.”

And then when Alton Sterling is murdered, and Philando Castile is murdered, and then Donald Trump happens, I'm preaching, teaching, leading in this white church. And I'm the young Black charismatic dude, who was told, “Yo, you should lead this group using this book by this white man.” So I was like, “Alright, cool.” Like, “Yeah, I'm leading,” you know? it’s what I want to do. I want to be in ministry. I'm leading. So then I'm leading this group, man, but then, this is the first time in life—like even playing football it wasn't the case. Because like, football was still in very much ways segregated, you stay with your people, we gonna stay with our people. [laughs] But this time, at this moment, was the first time that I really started living around white people. And I was engaged in conversations, and heard things that they never would have told us, even though people would say it in public. But like, they talk differently around themselves—particularly about the ways they think about the characters and stereotypes of Black folk.

BLAIR HODGES: Like saying, “Oh, George Floyd's a drug addict,” or whatever, “blah, blah, blah.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, facts. Or like Trayvon Martin, like Alton Sterling or Philando Castile deserved it.

BLAIR HODGES: Like, “He’s a thug.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Like, “If he was doing the right thing, then he wouldn't have been murdered.”

BLAIR HODGES: “Should have complied,” yeah.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, facts. And then even going further to say, especially when it came to like Christianity, like “Black people got nothing to offer.” There was this one situation where people in the group shared this thing where this person was saying, “There would be no Black Christians without white people.”

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

DANTÉ STEWART: Like, white people were the reason why there were Black Christians. Everything about the society and about the church told them that whiteness was right. And that whiteness was pure, and whiteness was divine, and whiteness was sacred.

A painful awakening – 29:53

BLAIR HODGES: And you heard them saying this stuff with you there—

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, facts.

BLAIR HODGES: —thinking that you're gonna be like, “Yeah, of course.” Because a “good” Black person would say that, right?

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts. And in very many ways, I did say that. In very many ways I went along with it. I didn't make no noise. I went along with it. But then it was as I started to deal with Philando and Alton Sterling, and then, you know, my wife, who really showed me who I was in very many ways—

BLAIR HODGES: This was a painful part, Danté, I have to say. This part of the book shook me up a bit.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, yeah bruh, it was tough because I came from work. I was like, in this moment, I was like, “Yo, we need to be unified,” like—

BLAIR HODGES: You were trying to “all lives matter” to Black coworkers basically, right?

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts! Facts. I was “all lives mattering” to Black co-workers. I was like, “Yo, white people are getting better. They're learning and this and this, this and that.”

And so then one of my co-workers, Mikayla, she just told me straight up, she was like, “Stu, you don't got a damn thing to offer Black people.” And I'm like, damn! Like I really thought, I'm like, I knew I was Black. I'm a Black dude. Like, I'm trying! I'm feeling like I'm Black, and things like that, you know? And I'm wondering, like, okay, what does she mean by that?

So I'm angry, I'm wrestling with that. And then I come home, and I tell my wife, and I'm griping with her. And she tells me, “You're always listening to other people when I've been telling you this the whole time.” And man, it gutted me.

BLAIR HODGES: Mmmm.

DANTÉ STEWART: It gutted me because at the end of the day, I saw myself for who I was. And I write this in the book, that I had loved white people more than I loved my Black wife. And I loved white people more than I loved Black people. I loved white people more than I actually cared about us dying.

BLAIR HODGES: And Danté, I want to be clear, too. Because when you say you love white people, what I hear you loving was the white perspective of Black people being less-than—

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: —and sort of buying into that ideology. And by doing that, you had already been sort of distanced from your wife, because she was reacting to these killings, and all the things that were going on, differently than you were. And you were just sort of floating along, and you depict her as being devastated and struggling it alone.

And she has this moment where, wow, she just tells you what she had seen. Like, “Danté, I kind of agree with them about what you're doing.” And that's your wife! That’s so hard!

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, yeah. It was tough, bro, because it's one thing to face what other people are saying. But it's another thing to face the truth of those you love most, what they saying, and you having deal with yourself in very honest ways. When you're alone, when you're by yourself, when nobody is around anymore. You got to deal with that.

And a part of this book that was so hard to write about, was dealing with the ways in which I failed in such public and terrible ways. And that was something about the way I wanted to write others in my story, bruh, like I had to tell the truth about them in ways that gave them agency. Like I couldn't just tell this story as if I was the hero of the story. Yeah, I needed people to understand, like, so many of us become this way.

BLAIR HODGES: It was confessional.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, so many of us become this way. And so many of us suppress it. And so many of us hurt others in the name of it.

BLAIR HODGES: And by the way, I'd say that these are the Black voices that a lot of white voices want to hear from.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: These are the people that say things that white people have already said. White people, like myself, didn't want to be challenged by Black people. We wanted to hear Black people saying things we already believed, and there are plenty of Black voices in the media today who are willing to do that.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts, facts, that's the challenging part of it, bruh. Especially in telling this story. Because it's like, this story is such a real story that you just going to have to sit with. It’s much like Heavy. And that was one of the books that I was reading.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, it’s Kiese Laymon’s book.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yes, just like Heavy by Kiese Laymon, and Men We Reaped  by Jesmyn Ward, and even like The Yellow House by Sarah Broom—just such visceral and honest stories about the ways in which people fail at love. The ways in which people fail at being whole. The ways that people fail at being free.

But then also, it's also a story about the way people get better, and mature, and change. And this story doesn't end just simply in the ways I felt. It is a story also about the ways that I change. And that's part of one of the main stories I want to tell and want people to know, is that like, yeah, this is what I became, but this is how Black people—particularly Black women—saved my life. This is how they made me change.

Nehemiah and righteous rage – 35:13

BLAIR HODGES: You also talk about how you started reading books. In fact, it was a white guy at church, this person named Drew, who recommended that you read Dr. Martin Luther King's book, and you say you'd never even read a book by a Black person before.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yep.

BLAIR HODGES: So there's this white guy recommending this, and you start reading James Baldwin, and it seems like you're kind of on a trajectory out of Christianity. It would seem that you might connect with a lot of these voices and find your way out. But instead, you're also returning to the Bible, too.

There's a passage I’d hoped that you would read on page 92 here, where you're reprocessing your Christianity, you're reprocessing what it means to be American, what it means to be Black, in response to the things you described happening with your wife and all this. So, let's read that passage there on page 92, if you would.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, fosho.

“Around that time, I was reading the book of Nehemiah. For the first time in my life, I realized that someone in the Bible was angry. My Christianity up until that point had neither room nor language to talk about the ways rage could be a fuel for love and a balm for healing. Christians were not to be angry or enraged at the terrible things going on around us. Christians were meant to just love, and that love never meant marching on the streets, testifying in the halls of Congress, preaching audacious messages of liberation from pulpits. Calls for unity were an excuse for silence in the face of Christian complicity in abuse, injustice, and disrespect. Jesus had been weaponized to keep us silent about white supremacy and anti-Blackness. That Jesus, I had to get rid of him. The sanitized version of Nehemiah’s story, where the rage that he spoke of was seen more as a misunderstanding than a spiritual necessity, I had to get rid of. I started to read his story as my story, my story as his story. The people in the Bible were not just distant figures. They were those who knew the struggle of oppression, fighting for your personhood, and the ever-complex relationship with God in the midst of struggle. I, like James Cone, began to read the Bible through the lens of Black power, Black arts, and the Black consciousness movement. Nehemiah for me had become not just a gifted spiritual leader but a revolutionary. He had become my Fred Hampton. I pulled out my journal, grabbed my gel pen, and wrote: ‘Nehemiah’s rage set them free.’”

BLAIR HODGES: This resonated with me in the sense of also feeling like rage couldn't be a Christian virtue. Christianity is supposed to be kind, and happy, and smiley, and all of these things. And you're finding in the Bible this rage, and you're shifting to this idea of rage—the possibility of rage being something that could be holy, that could be sacred, that could be affirming, that could be powerful, that could be godly. And that's a big shift.

Talk about that shift for you. And it seems like that'd be a scary shift. Because man, I imagine there was probably a lot of rage that needed to be expressed at that point.

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, facts, bruh! And that was the thing, on the real like—That was the hardest part is, I’ll never forget, I was actually supposed to go on staff at that white church. And I'll never forget the pastor having lunch with me, and telling me that “Yo, hey, something came up, and we’re not able to bring you on staff.” And then after that, he was like, “Yo, we was talking and we believe race becoming too much in your life.”

And just thinking about the audacity of a white Christian man in the South telling me, a young Black person, that race is becoming too much in my life. When everything about this church, most of the things are about race, particularly the ways in which white people embody white supremacy and try to erase us and make us silent.

And so like, when I tell you I was angry, like—I'm still angry, in many ways, for the things that—not just me, but so many Black people endured in that space, particularly Black women who was around me in that space. I'm thinking about our friends who was living with us in that church space where, you know, I was enraged at the ways in which they blamed us. I was enraged at the ways they didn't include us. I was enraged at the ways they used us. And so, I needed a place to take my rage. I needed a place to broaden my understanding of theology. I needed a better theology. I needed a better tradition. And for me? Leaving that space, I couldn't just leave that space. I had to leave their God.

So, in some ways, whatever ideas of Christianity I had when I was around them, I had become a non-Christian in their eyes. I did not want their Christianity, just like James Cone did not want the Christianity of white people. Just like Katie Cannon, the Black womanist theologian, did not want the Christianity of white people and the Christianity of Black men who oftentimes make Black women invisible.

I'm thinking about Black feminists. They did not want the faith of white people, and of the terrible ways we Black people embody the same type of faith as white people. I'm thinking of James Baldwin, who did not want the faith of Christianity in general. But wanted to embody a better faith that took seriously developing a better theology that loved Black people, that actually looked at Black life and Black art and Black creativity as sacred and divine, as something that we can use, as something that we can find God in, as something that we can find ourselves in.

I think oftentimes back to this conversation that Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin had, when Nikki Giovanni tells the story of her being at this event. She tells the story of being at this event where a protest was happening, I think, and she was in this moment where—or it might be a celebration and the choir was singing, “Jesus loves me; this I know for the Bible tells me so.” And she said everybody started shouting, and it hit her that, at the end of the day, even as a Black militant and revolutionary, that all she had to offer in that moment was Jesus. And she's not just simply talking about a theology. She's talking about a way of being in the world. And this is a theology. It's a better theology than many of the ways that people practice their faith. And then James Baldwin stops her and tells her, “Baby, what we did with Jesus was not supposed to happen.”

And for me, I wanted to lean into that. I needed a better theology. And that theology meant turning to Black people, because Black people saved my life, and saved me, and made me something that I never would have imagined. And that was somebody who, like Toni Morrison says, was able to grow up Black one more time.

Art, rage, and channeling – 41:47

BLAIR HODGES: Mmmh. And that's a story that you tell in this book. I also wanted to ask as you started to revisit and rethink rage as a religious impulse, has rage since then ever backfired for you?

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeaaah.

BLAIR HODGES: What are some ways that rage can go wrong? Because I think you make a strong case that rage is there in the Bible, rage can be a religious principle, it can be a call for justice. What about the underside of rage? Some of the dangers of rage?

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things—and this is kind of moving beyond many of those spaces I was in—one of the things I started to realize is like, rage and bitterness and lack of creativity and art are correlated in very legitimate ways.

I'll never forget listening to a conversation between James Baldwin and Maya Angelou. And Baldwin was talking to her, and he was like, “Yo, if you're always resisting, then you cannot create art.”

And I took that very seriously. He wasn't saying that our anger, our rage, is a bad thing as it relates to morality. But he was challenging—or, in some sense, inviting us to kind of think deeply and critically about how that “anger” is stewarded, to use that language. Or, where is that anger directed? Because I want to lean away from—

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, where you’re channeling it.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, where you’re channeling it. So I want to lean away from thinking about rage from a morality standpoint, because I feel like that completely shuts down the conversation. It kind of moves us away from thinking about the usefulness of our emotion.

Now, I'm even thinking about Myisha Cherry, my homie. I wish I’d had her book when I was writing this chapter. And I felt like, as I've been reading the book, and wrestling with the book, like I felt it would have made what I was saying even stronger, but also living in the tension of this question, like: what about rage backfiring and what it does to us?

She's, in some sense, trying to think about rage in a context of anti-racist struggle, but particularly through the language of Audrey Lorde. And so much of Audrey Lorde’s understanding of rage and where it goes—she's not trying to get us to think about morality, as much as she's trying to get us to think about, what are we creating in our anger? Or Baldwin, what are we creating in our anger?

So, for me, as I'm thinking about the backfiring rage, I'm thinking about how, oftentimes, when I'm just simply resisting with no alternative—either alternative spaces, or alternative ways of thinking about the world, or alternative ways of being in the world, or alternative ways of creating art and getting better and maturing—then I'm always centering and reminded of those who harm me. And so therefore, instead of this kind of deep transformation, instead of those silences being broken, I'm being reminded of the ways in which people made me silent by their actions and their power.

So allowing that not to backfire means that I have to channel that rage into creating the art that makes us seen and loved and embraced and protected. And, you know, I was actually recently asked about this in a conversation. Somebody asked me, “Why do we all need to press into rage, resilience, and remembrance as ways to think about true racial equality and equity?”

And I corrected them. I was like, “Yo, for starters, I don't think we can even reach quote-unquote ‘true’ racial equity in our time and this moment.” And I mean, is that pessimistic? Yes, indeed. But, as we look at history, history has not given us any evidence to believe such an audacious claim.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, is it pessimistic or is it based on the reality in front of you?

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts, facts.

BLAIR HODGES: You’re just trying to be a realist.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, I'm just being kind of realistic, or whatnot. But like, if we look at history and look at it from the perspective of our Black story, and thinking about us and the ways in which we use these things, or even the ways they backfired, it does tell a story that Black life is more than just trying to reach a point where others will accept us, or—really more about the ways we live and accept ourselves, even as we push back against this anti-Black world, or even the ways in which we harm ourselves as individuals and harm one another as interpersonal communities.

I think about that backfiring of rage as like, that language becomes exploited. And it almost is characterized by “Okay, like, rage is good. Therefore, like, let's reach for equality,” rather than saying, “Okay, I don't want it to be characterized like that. I want it to be about how we stay tapped into our own humanity.” You know, how do we flesh out our lives as ways, not just thinking about our rage or our emotions as for other people, but being tapped into our own stories that give us meaning, that allows us to express the full range of our emotions.

So, stay tapped into it, but realize that is not the only expression of our humanity, or we shouldn't just simply be reduced to what makes us angry, or what we're responding to, or resisting. But we have other emotions: love, vulnerability, fear, joy, just a range of emotional experiences that can also characterize our lives.

To strengthen you against a loveless world – 47:06

BLAIR HODGES: That reminds me of something you wrote here, this is on page 97, it says: “I began to see that being enraged becomes dangerous when it is not channeled through love. Serious, deep love for ourselves and our neighbor.”

So you've depicted it as a dance. You say: “Love dancing with rage, rage dancing with love, becomes the greatest spiritual, moral, and political task in each generation.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts. And I think of the tradition that I'm writing into, you know? This Black writerly tradition that tried to link what makes us angry and what makes us feel loved. And you can't really have our full humanity without it either. Because you gotta be realistic. We can’t always change what makes us angry, and that's just a fact of life. We can’t always change what makes us angry, or this kind of external world we're living in, or the external factors of our lives. But what we can do is, even as we are responding to, or living inside of a context of things that make us angry, we need not forget to tap into what we already are, beyond the logics of this space.

So like I'm thinking about when I loved white churches, or when I think about the ways in which this country harms Black life or devalues us. So much of the narrative woven in my book, as the epigraph says, “Here you were, to be loved. To be loved, to ever strengthen you against the loveless world.” So in this context when Baldwin is talking to his nephew, and even when I'm writing my book, weaving these narratives of my grandma, my grandfather, my mother, my sister, my brother, my uncle, just Black literature, et cetera—what I'm trying to hold onto is the things that we offer to the world, and the ways in which we've took menial things and made it so much. The ways in which we live within the context of what made us angry, but also, what made us feel loved.

I went back home the other day. Actually, that would have been yesterday. Yeah, it woulda been yesterday, I went back home yesterday, spoke at my Auntie's funeral who tragically passed the other week, and spoke—

BLAIR HODGES:  I'm sorry to hear that.

DANTÉ STEWART: —Yeah, bro. It's been it's been crazy. Over the last few weeks, I've lost three family members. One aunt, my grandfather—who's in the book that people will read about—and my Auntie, his sister-in-law.

I went home after speaking at this funeral, and I went to my granddaddy’s room. And as I'm there, my grandmother's there, my aunts are there, and they're looking through the old things that Granddaddy owned. Then my aunt calls me over here. She's like, “Danté, if you want any of these books, like yo, get one of these books.” And on the shelf is like old school books. I mean, like old school books. Very old. You could tell they're worn, they’re read through, they’re old, et cetera.

BLAIR HODGES: They smell old. [laughs]

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, they smell old, they look old, they feel old. And so, she said, “These are the books your granddaddy had.” In the context of these books, there's a journal that my granddaddy wrote in, and multiple journals, actually. There's a journal where Granddaddy wrote down names, numbers, bills, conversations, et cetera. There's another journal where Granddaddy wrote down scriptures and his own little thoughts on the scriptures. Then to the right and to the left of the journal, you have a book on the history of Western civilizations, you have a book on Great Britain, you have a book on law, you have a book on mathematics and geometry. Oh, it's on applied mathematics. And I'm like, I ask grandma like, “Did Granddaddy really read all these books?” And she said, “Yes, he read them all the time.”

And when I thought about that, bro, and I think about my granddaddy and the life that my granddaddy lived, in the context of him being born in the 30s, being aware of the 40s, being aware of the 50s, being aware of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, all the way to 2015, ’16, ’17, until dementia really took his mind and his memory, my granddaddy was viscerally aware of all of this and did something about it. He went and made sure that people knew their rights. He went and he made sure that people were voting.

When my granddaddy’s funeral was happening and people were offering reflections, they was like, “If there was an issue with Black folk in these rural communities, Ruben was going to be there to tell people that they couldn't treat Black people like this, and he was gonna do something about it.”

But then here was this man doing all these things in public, but also being so deeply concerned about our lives that he feels like everything is recordable. That, for me, bro? Is like, the living, the love, even in spite of what makes us feel angry, and what hurts. There are so many aspects of our lives that's worth loving, that's worth recording, and worth remembering.

Measuring progress – 52:28

BLAIR HODGES: What would he say and what would you say to people who want to say, “Ah, but look at all the progress!”—

DANTÉ STEWART: [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: “Your grandfather lived through segregation, he lived through the failure of Reconstruction, he saw the civil rights movement, he saw Dr. King, and now look how wonderful! Isn't everything wonderful?”

What's your response to that? When people say, “Well, hey, yeah, maybe racism is still kind of around. But aren't you glad this is that we've come so far?”

DANTÉ STEWART: Hey, bro, hey I’m just going to keep it one hundred, bruh. Like, to look at anybody Black over the age of fifty, [laughs] and to tell them, “Look how far we’ve come” is audacious at best, malicious at worst.

BLAIR HODGES: Mmhmm.

DANTÉ STEWART: When people speak of progress—and I write about this in the book, that too oftentimes people speak of progress in the perspective of white people. The gaze that we look at life through is gonna determine how we talk about the life we live.

If we look at somebody—and I was literally just talking to Kiese about this, and we were grieving this, like legit grieving, the reality of our grandparents. His grandmother is just few years, ten years older than my granddaddy. I'm almost positive, I think his grandmother's like 92, 93, something in that area. My granddaddy a bit younger. And both of them—and even my grandmother, who is very much in her right mind is going to be 90 this year, very much in her right mind. And you look at these older Black folk, and you see all that they have seen, and you see all that they have gone through. They have to have the same conversations with us, their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, the same conversations they were having in the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s.

If you say progress has been made, we can say, “Yes, on one level.” There's nuance in the conversation. There is progress. But there is no reason to praise, and to be triumphal. Because at the end of the day, my granddaddy and so many Black people die—in biblical terms—without ever receiving the promise of full citizenship. Without ever being given what they actually were due.

These people cleaned white folks’ laundry. [laughs] These people were forced into jobs that white people forced them into. These people did not retaliate the ways white people retaliate against us just for simply being human, and existing as free, and existing as people who just wanted to create life and build life beyond what they were trying to, what others are trying to give to us.

These people did not do that. These people always believed the best about people who failed to believe the best about us. And when I think about progress, I think about my granddaddy, my grandmother, and I say, “Yo, the only answer to that is to feel our hands, look at our feet, listen to our stories.”

What progress?

But then, you know, on the other hand, the whole conversation about progress is, you know—I don’t at least think about progress. I'm not very concerned about progress, because in some sense, progress in the context of this conversation is almost about how others can make better decisions about our lives. When people start talking about progress, that's what they're really talking about. How can white people start making better decisions in society about Black lives?

So, like, progress is, “Okay, we had a Black president.” Okay.

“Black people are in needed jobs.”

This all is in the context of white power structures, white decision makers.

BLAIR HODGES: Like the fact that we're even talking about it in terms of progress suggests the ongoing continuing problem and imbalance of power—

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, one hundred.

BLAIR HODGES: —and lack of justice. It's like, they're not segregating bathrooms right now. There are de facto segregations happening between communities.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts. One hundred percent.

BLAIR HODGES: There's de facto segregation in the way that community resources are spent, in the way Black people have been denied access to generational wealth because of zoning policies that prevented them from getting bank loans and things that white families were able to. So, it just goes on and on.

And I agree, one of the things that frustrates me the most when I hear friends and white people in particular talk about, “Well, we should really focus on the progress,” is it becomes an exercise in thinking we've made it already. It becomes an exercise in self-congratulation, and an opportunity to think that, also, we don't have to really do much, because apparently progress just kind of happens! [laughs]

DANTÉ STEWART: One hundred percent, one hundred. I think about the conversations that we continue to have. I'm talking about my grandma, like, I'll never forget writing an essay on when me and my grandma looked at Amanda Gorman give her poem at the inauguration. And my grandma was like—

BLAIR HODGES: It was phenomenal.

DANTÉ STEWART: She got it, bruh. Even if people don't respect her like that, you know, she really do got it. Like, she got the art and she in the tradition, and she one of us. And she got it.

So I was talking to my grandma, bruh. And my grandma says something—I mean, we was laughing over this joint. And my grandma was like, “Yo, they need to show everybody this moment.” You know, she was like, “Now I done seen some things in my 80 plus years of life,” but she was like, “I ain’t never, you know, seen anything like this.” And she's talking about this context where, like, “I can't believe I done seen all these things.” She kept repeating that. And she talkin’ ‘bout this rut. Like, we've been in a rut the way Black folk talk about, you know, we in a messed up country. We've been in a rut. But she looked with so much pride in Amanda Gorman.

And I think about this whole kind of idea of progress, bruh. It's like, what are the things people have to continually talk about that hurts, and then what makes us proud? I'm thinking about like, that's the norm, that should be the norm. You know, that should be the norm. But then, you know, on another hand it’s like, you know, my grandma gotta be reminded like, even in that there are still names of people, beyond Amanda Gorman’s moment—my grandma, who looks at the news religiously. My grandmother is tapped into newspapers, keeping up with the times, et cetera—the “times” as in the context, not the actual New York Times. But keeping up with the times and things like that, and she has a very intimate knowledge with all of this. And I think, you know, progress is about what we make, and what we have made, and what we have done, in spite of, or whatnot.

But then we have to talk about progress in the context of what we still have to grieve, over and over and over and over again. Like, what’s crazy is this: in the same city that George Floyd was murdered in, Amir Locke is murdered in, the same way that Breonna Taylor is murdered.

BLAIR HODGES: The no-knock warrant.

DANTÉ STEWART: It’s crazy to think about. The no knock warrant. Same city as George Floyd. Same context as Breonna Taylor. But then 2020 done passed. All these businesses done read their books, done made their declarations, but then it’s the structural realities, it’s the power which people have over our lives that's the problem. And that’s the enduring problem.

Journey of faith – 60:49

BLAIR HODGES: As people read through your book, Danté, they're going to see you go on this journey. And as I'm reading and following along, you are journeying through your faith. So you kind of left the faith of your youth, you came to join white Christianity—predominantly white Christianity—and then that became uncomfortable, became untenable for you, you ended up leaving.

So a reader might expect your trajectory to just continue right out of Christianity. You’d left the Black church of your youth, you had this really negative experience in white Christianity. So we might expect you to just sort of exit, but you didn't. And I'm interested to hear you talk about why that is. You're still a Christian today, and what that looks like, and why there wasn't an exit at that point.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah. First and foremost, I want to say those who do exit—I don't want to let my journey be a kind of story of like, “Yo, y'all need to stay.” You know, some people will exit, and some people need to exit. I’ma say that, I wanna say I salute those who be like, “Yeah, this ain’t for me. This ain’t the thing, this ain’t it.” And I want to live in that reality that always is an understanding that my identity is a meaningful identity, but not a totalizing identity.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And I want to add, your book makes that clear too. That comes through.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Because I feel like a lot of times when people start talking about even faith deconstruction, or talk about “growing in your faith,” or giving up faith and things like that, oftentimes, it's like, “Well, this ain't like leaving Jesus.” Well, some people do, you know, and that's okay. And we need to be okay living in that reality.

The reason why I stayed, though, is very much a reflection of just my love of womanist thought and theology, as well as traditions of Black liberation theology, but also the larger Black literary tradition.

I'll start with womanist theology. And I'm particularly thinking about Reverend Dr. Renita Weems, I always call on her name. Because I want people—not only just Renita Weems, but M. Shawn Copeland, Emilie Townes, Katie Cannon, and so many more, you know, Black women who— Wil Gafney—who shape me, and shape my own understanding of myself.

But particularly Reverend Dr. Renita Weems. I was reading a paper that she gave at a conference on theology, and the question was asked, you know, why she hasn't left the Black church, or left the church altogether, or gave up the Bible. And she simply answered that, “I don't want to cut myself off from the conversation that Black women been having with the Bible before me, to think about the sacred text as something that can be liberating from the ways in which racism, sexism, patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all the likes, are woven into theology, and destroy and disrespect and devalue other people.” She said, “I didn't want to be cut off from the ways in which Black women were wrestling with the text and centering their lives at the intersection of Black womanhood, of faith in the larger society that they lived in.”

But then she responded about the church, she said, “I knew that there was still so many Black women to be made free.” And when I read Dr. Weems’s thoughts on this question, but then also James Cone, when he talks about how he found out that the Black Christian experience can be a liberating experience, I also realized that for me, between these womanist theologians and Black liberation theologians, that they had something to say that was beyond the white logic and the white experience, and the white gaze of faith. That there was something central to our experience of our own humanity, to our experience of ourselves, that was worth centering, that Black life is as much a starting point to think about your faith as any other person's perspective. That our context, that our history, that our bodies, that our religion, that whatever we offer and bring to the world is worthy of study, is worthy of communicating, is worthy of receiving as—to use academic language—as an epistemology, to help us name, see, and act within the world.

And so as I sit with them, and really sit with them in some messy seasons of my life, and sit with them in the midst of transition, a long transition, I started to realize that over time, as I started to encounter womanist thought and Black feminism and then Black literature, I started to be given a framework to understand and broaden my faith. To not see Christian faith as a way of power and control. But I started to see and reread these narratives as ways to liberation and love, then I started to realize that, yo, if I'm the only one benefiting from my language of liberation, of my language of faith, and my language of inclusion, if I, as a Black, straight man is the only one benefiting from that language of liberation, then I'm doing something wrong. And my ideas of liberation is actually, you know, exploitation because it's utilizing this beautiful language, this beautiful experience simply to benefit myself.

Intersectional faith – 66:08

BLAIR HODGES: It's self-aggrandizement, yeah.

DANTÉ STEWART: One hundred percent. So faith and liberation and understanding of being alive and being human, you know, has to be intersectional. I have to encounter other people's experiences. I have to be able to stand in the world alongside them, even if their experience is not my experience. I say, “my experience is my experience, your experience is your experience,” and there's a mutual love that can be had, a mutual learning, a mutual compassion that can be had when we bring what we offer to the table.

But then the main reason why I did not altogether leave per se, is, I really think, as Dr. Weems said, there's so many more that can be freed within the Black church. And you know, my upbringing is Black church. I am hella churchy. I am very much still Pentecostal.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] They called you “Church Boy” or whatever, right? What was the nickname that they called you?

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, Church Boy! I am still very much a “church boy.” I am still very much tied to the church and still very much—and when you when you hear me talk, when you see me write, when you feel me, when you see me and feel me kinda show up in the world, there are gonna be things that's very familiar to Black church life.

But one of the things Baldwin taught me—that's why I kind of talked about Jesus and James Baldwin— one of the things Baldwin taught me is there is a way to critique the church, as well as remain within it. Even though Baldwin left the church, you know, there are very many ways in Baldwin's literature that the church did not leave him, and in actuality, Baldwin was closer to church than many of the Black and white Christians were that he criticized.

So when Baldwin would say, you know, that “if the concept of God has any validity, it can only make us large and more beautiful, and if it cannot do this, then it's time for us to get rid of him,” he is not only talking about the language that we think about God with, you know, but the ways in which we utilize that language to think about ourselves. He links our theology with our living.

So Baldwin is not saying, “Yo, like, leave this,” but he wants to make it better, because he understands this institution, whatever it is, can grow and be better, and it's a meaningful part of life, even if it's not the total part of life. But then Baldwin would also say that there is not an ethos or pathos, not like those Black tired weary souls declaring the goodness of Lord, so he saw something meaningful in the ways in which the church, and our expanding of this idea of church even now, in this moment when Black people are expanding ideas of spirituality, and we're kind of doing this as human beings in general, we're being more syncretous—

BLAIR HODGES: Syncretic?

DANTÉ STEWART: Syncretic, thank you, I was looking for that term, we’re being more syncretic, we’re taking pieces of others along the way. We’re taking things from the Black Arts Movement, or Black culture, and Black art, but we're also able to look at Islam, and we're also able to look at Africana religions. And we're also able to look at Buddhism. And we're also able to look at Indigenous knowledge and forms of life and thinking about the land, the body, and the divine. And we're trying to figure out how to move and maneuver in this world together.

And so when I think about Baldwin, and the ways in which Baldwin positioned himself in the world—especially within his queerness, his Black queerness, it’s like, there are things about the church I cannot be a part of. But Baldwin, in his Black queerness, in his faith, in his expanding ideas of God, in his love of the beauty of Black life, in the ways he was looking at the everyday power of Black people and saying that there is something sacred and divine and meaningful within this reality, in this love, in this being alive—I do believe that Baldwin was actually church wherever he went.

Like, who could not look at that video in Meeting the Man, and listening to Baldwin talking to the students and saying, “I can't lead a movement, but I can ‘eff’ up your mind,” you know? And then them start laughing in that context, and all of them laughing about this. And it's like an irony. And it's like love. And it's like joy, even as he's talking about this, and joking, but also being real. He was being that type of person that was enjoyable to be around, that made us better. And if that's not faith, then I don't know what it is.

Living with hope in the tension – 70:48

BLAIR HODGES: That resonates with me so deeply. I think that this is what “prophethood” is to me, and this is the genius, I think, of Christianity is that, yes, it's been used to oppress. Yes, it's been used to exploit. Yes, it's been used to advance the sword. It in so many ways has failed. But inside of it, there are these seeds of possibility. There are these elements within Christianity that can turn against all of the bad things that Christians and Christianity has done and call it to something higher. And we see this in the Hebrew Bible, as well.

DANTÉ STEWART: Mhmm.

BLAIR HODGES: This is what Judaism is about. This is what our Jewish sisters and brothers can teach us, is that to be a “prophet” is to be able to be honest about one's own culture, about one's history, and call it to something better, in love. And this is what I'm hearing you describe as you describe James Baldwin—and I agree with you, that he's a thoroughly religious person who could not be “religious” because it was not allowed. And so he was religious in his own way.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts, facts.

BLAIR HODGES: I love that you prefaced this whole section by saying, there are people who have departed from religion or been pushed out of Christianity, who nevertheless maintain a spirit of prophecy, who maintain a call to me, as a believer, as a religious person, that serves as the role of a prophet to me. And I see that in your work, I see it in the people that you're inspired by. And, man, it really energizes me.

It takes me to this idea of hope, and you kind of conclude with a meditation on hope. And here's a quote from you, you say—and this is a really important caution about hope that I love that you put in here. This really stood out, you said: “Offering hope and meaning is a profoundly human task. But it's a profoundly harmful task when it always tells an optimistic story.”

So I wanna focus on that before we go, about what hope is to you, and how we do that without just saying, “Oh, I think everything's gonna be okay.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Mmm. That's good. That's good, bro. And for me bro, this idea of hope that I was trying to deconstruct, I really wanted to bring hope back to the living, bruh. When I read Jesus, or when I read the Hebrew Bible, you know, one of the things about hope that I see that they did, that they embodied, was that hope was not this kind of, “Hey, it's gonna get better in the by and by,” you know? Or, “There is coming a day where you're going to be taken from here and everything is gonna get better.” But oftentimes, hope was a practice and a discipline. Hope was a way one showed up in the world, despite the worst of circumstances.

So for me, as I tried to think about a theology of hope, or a kind of gesturing toward hope as a Black writer, I wanted to say that the hope is in our living, and wherever we are Black and alive, then God is there. Whatever we want to say, the stuff of the Divine is the stuff of meaning. God is in that hope.

And I’ll never forget reading Toni Morrison's Beloved, and that famous section in Beloved, where Baby Suggs is preaching in the clearing, to think about the clearing as this space within the context of the horror of slavery, of enslavement, that even in that place, one could be fully alive, and say, “Love your flesh, for this is the prize.”

And that was the brilliance of Morrison. That whole sermon—it is a sermon—there is something spiritually grounding about how she wrote that text, because I think a lot of times in literary analysis we can kind of distinguish—sometimes to the detriment—the author and the work. Where, you know, sometimes it's like, “Yo, what does the text say? what does the text say? what does the text say? What does the character say?” That's true when you do a close reading of the text and allow the text to speak. But I think we also have to think about Morrison in this moment. Like Baby Suggs is not the only preacher. Toni is preaching as well. Toni is weaving that sermon within that text. When she's writing Paradise, she is preaching through her characters and she's creating alternative worlds for us as people to be invited into, but also to live and dance and grow up in.

So when I think about Toni preaching, and Baby Suggs preaching, and even my book being a sermon, me preaching, trying to preach this message of being Black and alive, and being Black and in love, and being Black and free, and being Black and ordinary, I think the idea of hope, for me, was moved away from being able to call back this doctrine or this dogma, and do what Jesus said when he says, “The kingdom of heaven is like—” he always likened it to something that was familiar on Earth. And so for me as a preacher, as a writer, as a minister, as a leader, I want to point in the same ways for hope. That the hope we so deeply look for, and the meaning that we look for, we can find it in the ways in which we Black folk are alive.

So, when I end the book, I think, if I'm honest, I think the chapter “Breath” is the most important chapter of my book. I really felt as a writer and a preacher I was in my bag, and a sense of, you know, I really thought about people. And the whole premise of the chapter was on suffocation and breathing, and the ways in which we're not just suffocated as Black folk, but we in a chokehold as humanity, and we're trying to catch our breath again.

But then in the end, as I turn to this young, beautiful, brilliant, ordinary young Black sister, I say that's where my hope lies. It’s in the way we show up. It’s in the way we don't give up on one another.

BLAIR HODGES: I want people to know what you're referring to here. Sorry to interrupt, but I just want people to know for sure.

DANTÉ STEWART: Yeah, one hundred.

BLAIR HODGES: Basically, you're scrolling through photos from the protests that were happening after George Floyd was murdered—

DANTÉ STEWART: Yup.

BLAIR HODGES: —and you see this girl on your computer screen, and you refer to her, you say, “There's a beautiful Black baby girl, her piercing eyes full of fear, rage, love, exhaustion.” And as you're looking at this, you see strength there, you know, the crowd around her is chanting: “No justice, no peace!” And when you're looking at that, you said: “At that moment, I had become sad. I had become sad because I knew that no child should have to use her lungs to scream to live, and for those who look like her to breathe.”

But then you say, “Then I remembered, that was the hope.”

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: “That was the hope, her Black body, caught between danger and deliverance.”

She kind of becomes a living gospel to you.

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, one hundred percent. One hundred percent. And I think, you know—and I get this from Jason Reynolds, taking the lives of young people seriously as how we think about the world. And she lives in the tension. She lives in reality. Like, no child should have to go in the street to declare that our lives matter. But she is there. And because she is there, we have to account for that, and we have to make meaning out of it.

We don't make her whatever we want to make her, for she is human being. And she gets to create her own meaning. But we writers, what we do is we take the stuff of life, and as Toni Morrison said, “we try to translate sorrow into meaning.”

So when I think about this young girl, I see love, hurt, pain—but audacity. Like, Black audacity, to say, “I am going to shout and march and scream for you. [laughs] You’re gone, but I'm still here and remain. And I think about our future. And I think about Black futures.”

Black futures and hope are wrapped up in one another. And it's all wrapped up in the ways in which we show up, but also imagine what life can be for ourselves. Not just right now, but tomorrow, the next day after that, and generations to come.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Danté Stewart. He's author of the new book Shoutin’ In the Fire: An American Epistle. He received his bachelor's degree in Sociology at Clemson. He's currently studying at Chandler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

All right, we're going to take just a quick break and come back for one more question. It's our “Best Book” segment. This is when you get to recommend something to everybody. In addition, you know, I'm recommending Shoutin’ In the Fire. Let's see what else you've got for us.

We'll be right back with Danté Stewart.

[BREAK]

Best Books – 81:25

BLAIR HODGES: We're back with Danté Stewart. Today we talked about his book Shoutin’ In the Fire: An American Epistle. It's a fantastic book.

Danté, it's great to be here. I really appreciate you doing this. And now it's your turn to recommend something. This is our “Best Book” segment. So, what have you got for us? What do you want people to check out?

DANTÉ STEWART: Okay, I got to show love to the fam. So y'all gotta read everything by Kiese Laymon. But what I am reading lately, though, is Long Division, and that joint—I mean, Long Division got me crying, bruh. [laughter] I mean, it's just a funny, funny book. Like it's a good book, a real book, but Kiese wove some humor in there that I like.

And I very much like Mateo’s book, Black Buck, you gotta read Black Buck by Mateo. You gotta read The Prophets by Robert Jones. You gotta read The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw.

BLAIR HODGES: That’s on my list. I have not got to that one yet.

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, bro. Like no, that book is major. The Prophets and Secret Lives of Church Ladies is just, I mean, they're major, they're beautiful.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Kiese recommended The Prophets. That was the one he brought up.

DANTÉ STEWART: Bro, amazing, amazing book. The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, by Maurice Carlos Ruffin.

What else? Oh, also, you know, The New Yorker came out with that anthology of essays, The Matter of Black Lives. And I've been going back in the day to John Edgar Wideman and reading a lot of his stuff. And Jason Reynolds. Oh, Ain’t Burned All the Bright. Everybody gotta read that.

BLAIR HODGES: Danté! That’s like twelve recommends, man! [laughs] You’re going for it.

DANTÉ STEWART: I really think Ain’t Burned All the Bright. Like, I gotta done read a lot of Jason Reynolds, but Jason Reynolds is in his bag in that. But then also like, bro, I'm gonna say these last few books, because I care very much about people knowing and reading as much Black literature as possible.

People have to read Children of the Night, edited by Gloria Naylor. It’s a collection of short stories. The best short stories from 1967 to present. You gotta get Baldwin’s collections from the Library of America.

BLAIR HODGES: I love that book.

DANTÈ STEWART: Get any Black person’s collection from the Library of America. I mean, whether you talking about Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Baldwin—get their collection.

Read everything by Toni Cade Bambara that she has to offer: Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions, and Salt Eaters, Gorilla, My Love, the whole nine.

Read Alice Walker's The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, but then In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, you gotta read that joint.

What else? Maya Angelou’s memoirs. Bruh! Maya Angelou’s memoirs, like you gotta read every single last one. I'm trying to collect them! [laughter] The one I just got by Maya was The Heart of a Woman. I just picked up The Heart of a Woman, but then there is another one somewhere around here. It’s somewhere around here. I don't where it's at.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs]

DANTÉ STEWART: But then I also gotta show love to Imani Perry. Read South to America. Read Breathe. Democracy in Black by Eddie Glaude. Read Begin Again by Eddie Glaude.

BLAIR HODGES: Begin Again. That book was incredible.

DANTÉ STEWART: Bro, it’s so much! And yeah, read June Jordan. Read Myisha Cherry. Read Jesmyn Ward. Like everything by Jesmyn Ward. You got to read everything by Jesmyn Ward. But then also read Elizabeth Alexander and Kevin Quashie. Get some Black theory and Black Studies, and things like that. And read Fred Moten. And read Lewis Gordon. Read Frank Wilderson.

Yeah, there's just so many books. I'll stop there though, bro. There's just there's too many. There's too many books.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I like it. I appreciate that because until the past probably six years or so, most of the books I'd read were by white people. The vast majority of the books that I'd ever read were by white people. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago when I was looking through—I have a Goodreads account so I can kind of see all the books I've read, I keep track of it, and it really stuck out to me how constrained my personal library had been, and it wasn't until I really started reading all this that I realized how impoverished my reading had been up to that point, and how much I had been missing out on.

DANTÉ STEWART: No, I feel it.

BLAIR HODGES: So you mentioned a lot of books but frankly, we've got to get more people into the into the canon of Black writers.

DANTÉ STEWART: Oh, one hundred percent! And bro, if you are connected to social media in any way possible, you need to be on “Black Bookstagram,” like Black folk doing book work on Instagram: Black Bookstagram. Melanated Reading, Pages Galore, Akili Nzuri [@ablackmanreading], and Reggie Bailey [@reggiereads]. Crystal [crystalwilki], and Nia [@_pagesgaloree], and Reggie, Traci with The Stacks [@thestackspod]. Cree, We All Ways Black [@creemyles].

I mean, you just got so many Black bookstagrammers that’s just doing beautiful and incredible work and they are centering Black literature and have been doing this for so long. I really think they’re the major key to so many Black books and Black lit. Like I go there to learn. They're my friends. I love them deeply. I am inspired by them as a human being and a writer. I want to read as well as them. They just love us so well. And people need to be on Black bookstagram, like, forget all my recommendations and go there. Go to them. They got the recs. They got the plug.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah. What an incredible time to be to be a Black writer and to see, I mean, it's another renaissance right now. So.

DANTÉ STEWART: Facts.

BLAIR HODGES: All right, Danté, thank you so much. And by the way, you're part of it. It's wonderful to have you as a guest with such a powerful, just a powerful, phenomenal book. And I thank you for writing it. I enjoyed it so much.

DANTÉ STEWART: Thank you, bruh. I appreciate you having me. And to those who join you continually week in and week out with every episode, I want to thank you as well, because it's not easy, you know, to show up continually and to support and to continue to engage and be there for Blair, and I want to thank you. And I want to encourage you to keep on looking out, and keep on sharing, keep on listening, and you never know, maybe one of your favorite writers will pop through. But more than that, Blair is doing actually great work. And I want to thank you all, the community, for showing up for him.

BLAIR HODGES: Thank you. Well, I'm talking to one of my favorite writers right now. So thank you very much.

DANTÉ STEWART: Thank you, bro. Appreciate you.

Outro – 88:29

BLAIR HODGES: Fireside with Blair Hodges is sponsored by the Howard W. Hunter Foundation—supporters of the Mormon Studies program at Claremont Graduate University in California. It’s also supported by the Dialogue Foundation. A proud part of the Dialogue Podcast Network.

Alright, another episode is in the books, the fire has dimmed, but the discussion continues. Join me on Twitter and Instagram, I’m at @podfireside. And I’m on Facebook as well. You can leave a comment at firesidepod.org. You can also email me questions, comments, or suggestions to blair@firesidepod.org. And please don’t forget to rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts if you haven’t already.

Fireside is recorded, produced, and edited by me, Blair Hodges, in Salt Lake City. Special thanks to my production assistants, Kate Davis and Camille Messick, and also thanks to Christie Frandsen, Matthew Bowman, and Kristen Ullrich Hodges.

Our theme music is “Great Light” by Deep Sea Diver, check out that excellent band at thisisdeepseadiver.com.

Fireside with Blair Hodges is the place to fan the flames of your curiosity about life, faith, culture, and more. See you next time.

[End]

NOTE: Transcripts have been lightly edited for readability.