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In this episode of The Living Reconciled Podcast, host Austin Hoyle sits down with Rev. Bruce Case, pastor of St. Luke United Methodist in Jackson. Bruce shares his journey from the early days of integration in Brookhaven, Mississippi, to his current role in leading reconciling efforts in the United Methodist Church. Through personal anecdotes and insightful reflections, Bruce discusses the impact of storytelling, empathetic listening, and building cross-cultural relationships.
This episode is a testament to the slow, steady work of reconciliation and the impact of committed individuals working towards a common goal, across generations, and across time.
Bruce's message is clear: love for God, Mississippi, and its people drives his work, and there's a place for everyone in the calling of reconciliation.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters
We would love to hear from you! Send us a text message.
In this episode of The Living Reconciled Podcast, host Austin Hoyle sits down with Rev. Bruce Case, pastor of St. Luke United Methodist in Jackson. Bruce shares his journey from the early days of integration in Brookhaven, Mississippi, to his current role in leading reconciling efforts in the United Methodist Church. Through personal anecdotes and insightful reflections, Bruce discusses the impact of storytelling, empathetic listening, and building cross-cultural relationships.
This episode is a testament to the slow, steady work of reconciliation and the impact of committed individuals working towards a common goal, across generations, and across time.
Bruce's message is clear: love for God, Mississippi, and its people drives his work, and there's a place for everyone in the calling of reconciliation.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters
This is Living Reconciled, a podcast dedicated to giving our communities practical evidence of the gospel message by helping Christians learn how to live in the reconciliation that Jesus has already secured for us by living with grace across racial lines.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the 42nd episode of the Living Reconciled podcast. I am your host for today, austin Hoyle. Unfortunately, our two co-hosts are not able to be here Nettie Winters and Brian Crawford. They are out doing some work today, so just being your prayers for them, but I've got my good, good, good, good friend, bruce Case. Say hi, bruce, hey, austin.
Speaker 3:How you doing. We are good, good, good, good friends.
Speaker 2:We go back a long way and it's an honor to be here A long way, a long way, bruce. You first came into my life I think that was through my sister.
Speaker 3:Right I met your sister before I met you in Northern Spain.
Speaker 2:Northern Spain.
Speaker 3:Austin. And yeah, I was walking along El Camino de Santiago and where thousands of pilgrims walk, you know, every year starts from the border of France, goes all the way to Northwestern Spain, and very few Americans. And somebody, austin, said hey, there's an American right ahead of us and she found out that you were behind her, from America, and she wants to meet you. I said, well, that's great. And so you know the El Camino you're walking, you walk to eight, 10, 12 miles, you stop and then you meet a whole new group of people. And finally I caught up with her and I said when are you from? She said America, that's cool. What state? And she said Mississippi. I said it's amazing, me too. What city? She said Hattiesburg.
Speaker 2:I said, oh, my goodness, I live in Hattiesburg, that's right, and we grew up in Hattiesburg and our family home was in Hattiesburg and everything like that, and so did, and y'all sparked up a friendship after that right, she's the best.
Speaker 3:I mean just such an amazing person. And yeah, and I actually did the honor of doing the wedding. I was there.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, you were there. I had a, I walked her down the aisle and everything. My dad had passed a little bit of time.
Speaker 3:Oh, no doubt.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I guess that's where I met you officially, or did we meet before that?
Speaker 2:No, I think I met you. I met you because when she came back from the states, from her living over in Spain like that was one iteration of her living in Spain she started to go to the church that you pastored, Exactly Hattiesburg. I think that was Court Street, United Methodist.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:United Methodist Church that's fantastic and that was the same time that I had started going to Hawkins United Methodist both Abby and I Abby's my sister growing up in the Baptist church and we both became Methodist at the same time, and I was pursuing the ordination track at that time, so you were you kind of?
Speaker 2:had some dialogue with me. I met you. I think I met you. Actually, I think I met you at my dad's funeral. You taught me one of the most important pastoral skills. The first time I met you, you skipped a long line of dozens of people to go straight to the person you needed to talk to and pray with. You prayed with them and then you left. I did not Because you weren't doing the funeral.
Speaker 2:But you were just kind of that popped in see the person with intention that you need to and then pop out that was, that was it.
Speaker 3:That's cool.
Speaker 2:So that's the first thing I ever saw you do man, wow, yeah. But after that you and I we talked and you just kind of walked me through and talked me through a little bit of the ordination, of what that would look like, and then it kind of just grew, grew from there over the past. God, that must have been 2007.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 2008. I remember we were in the bishop's office and it was by Galloway at the time. Yes, and I remember it was Bishop Hope, morgan Ward and you and Bass, and there were probably several other folks that were just about to get started on the journey of discernment.
Speaker 2:And I can even say some of their names, and actually some of them are now serving churches throughout the state of Mississippi.
Speaker 3:Yeah, lots of good people, including you and Bass, and you know what a strange journey we're all on. It's a and we get to work together. Later on you come on staff at Parkway.
Speaker 2:Hills. Yeah, as your associate when you're the senior.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and so it just what a gift man. You are a good, good, good, good friend.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I definitely appreciate that. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. All right, I want to give a shout out to our program sponsors real quick before I jump into some of the questions for for for Bruce case and kind of give a little bit more about his biography. But our program sponsors, mrs Ann Winters, mr Robert Ward, pastor Jonathan Moore of Christian Life Church and Ms Doris Powell, and our Grace leadership partner is St Dominic Hospital and our unity partners are Atmos Energy Regions Foundation and Brown Missionary Baptist Church. All right, turning our attention back to Bruce case, so, bruce you are, you are currently let's go over a little bit of biographical, just just kind of like birds-eye view. And then I want to talk to you about a current project that you're working on with with another pastor who's who's in the United Methodist Church, dominic Henry, and kind of like y'all are like I guess I don't want to say overseers, but that's the only word that's coming to my mind.
Speaker 3:Co-chairs.
Speaker 2:Co-chairs facilitators of the kind of the United Methodist. Work towards reducing racism is caught, and racism for now and but, but, but. First you are the pastor of St Luke, united Methodist Church. I am and you have been the pastor of St Luke United Methodist Church for the past 19, 20 months Exactly.
Speaker 3:Is that is that about right.
Speaker 2:You came in in July of 2022, the same time I started here at Mission Mississippi actually the same month.
Speaker 3:I started with Mission Mississippi.
Speaker 2:And before St Luke you were at Parkway Heights exactly.
Speaker 3:In Hattiesburg, in Hattiesburg, right. So I was there for five years and then, to kind of backtrack, if you're talking about the birds-eye view, I was in Madison for seven years at Parkway Hills, where you know worked and where we served. Before that I was at Court Street United Methodist Church in downtown Hattiesburg. If listeners are familiar with where Sacred Heart Catholic School is, we were right across the street on Southern Avenue near downtown Hattiesburg. It's a wonderfully diverse church, economically, racially, and it was an amazing experience. Before that I was a missionary in Alaska, in Palmer, in Wausilla. That was from 2001 to 2005. And we started a second campus for a church in Palmer, a church that was in Wausilla. That was a wild experience. And then, before that, that takes me back to my first appointment in 1997, coming straight out of Duke Divinity School and that was at Central United Methodist Church in Meridian.
Speaker 1:So I was the associate pastor you were the young squirt.
Speaker 2:I was the young squirt back then.
Speaker 3:I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 2:but you saw that in me and you decided I got to get this young squirt who has no direction in life and I got to give him some direction.
Speaker 3:We don't know what we're doing but I had a good time and had a really wise senior pastor, nick Olsen, who's passed away. But Nick served all over Mississippi. His brother signed the controversial at the time petition that other white Methodist clergy signed about 29. That got many of them kicked out of Mississippi.
Speaker 2:And what Bruce is referring to is the Born of Conviction letter. It was a significant work that challenged, I guess, the white white hegemony at the time, and you had some significant persons. In fact, I think only a fraction of the people retained their entire careers through the United Methodist Church in Mississippi. A lot of them moved elsewhere. They did, they did and yeah.
Speaker 3:So everyone went to California Some went to Indiana.
Speaker 3:And the interesting thing about that is, if you looked at that statement, it seems so benign today. Austin, it was really. It was simply a statement supporting integration in public schools. I mean it's. It's amazing how controversial even something like that was, but it was, and it caused a lot of trouble and they were all incredibly courageous people. It was meant just to go to the Bishop of Mississippi at the time. The Bishop of Mississippi turned that, that letter and all the names over to the Clarion Ledger. When it got published in the Clarion Ledger, excuse my French, but all hell broke loose literally for these for these families.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And for these wives and children, and it was a very scary time. But just you know, like a lot of things, we stand on the shoulders of people who who did things at great cost before us, and that's really the reason we're here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, I mean you had. You had different people. I mean I can. I can't name all of them off the top of my head, but I know you had some significant ones who specifically wrote it Maxie Dunham.
Speaker 2:Jerry Trigg and, I think, one or two others who was actually in the writing room, and then you had a couple of others who were just so profoundly affected, but they, they were even able to turn some of the issues that they were they were facing in the pushback that they faced, and they were even able to turn that into a fairly positive career, even right here in Mississippi. The most prominent example I think that we could probably name be Keith Tonkle, at Wells Memorial, who passed, I think, in 2017. So, just just remembering, remembering our history, you know so you, you are United Methodist and you were born and raised in United Methodist, correct?
Speaker 3:I wasn't, let me, let me. Let me throw one more name out there.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:John Ed Thomas, who, who was one of those rare people that somehow was able to stay and he had a really strong career and did some great work in the ministry all over. So yeah, John Ed can be kind of like Keith Tonkle. He did some really good things in this conference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's amazing. That's amazing. So looking, looking kind of the, I guess, the shoulders of the persons that you're, you're standing on. So this was, this was in the white community that they were having and speaking out in this way, and one of your current projects that you're working on, and I can only assume, bruce, this is just one of your projects. I can, I'm assuming, just because I've known you for a while you probably have about four or five other pretty, pretty compelling projects you're working on, but this is the one that we're interested here at Mission Mississippi.
Speaker 2:We love, we love you and all your projects, but we want to focus on this one a little bit, because in a lot of ways it is that continuation of the story of the 29 ministers who signed the Born of Conviction letter, because any work done now in kind of the intercultural communication, relationship building, empathetic listening, anything along those lines in the United Methodist Church, you just stand on the shoulders of the people who who paved the way, who who honestly got the tar kicked out of them, that's right and a lot in a lot of ways. But we're stronger for it. You know we have to. We have to recognize the people who who came before us to enable us to be able to do the work and the projects that we're working on right now, and so the project you're working on, the overall project, I guess it's a, it's a. It's a. Is it a committee? Is it a? A movement?
Speaker 3:in the.
Speaker 2:United Methodist Church for Mississippi. It's called end racism for good, can you, can you kind of explain a little bit of what, what you guys are doing?
Speaker 3:Sure, it was after. I believe it was in the late fall of 2020. I think I've got the year right and it was on the heels of the murder of George Floyd. I can't remember what month that might have happened. Might have been September, maybe a little closer to the summer. That was a lot of unrest, but on the heels of that just incredible, incredibly horrific event that everybody saw on the TV, you know when we were talking about, I mean, it was, it was, it was shocking to everybody. But you heard especially people of color, particularly mothers, moms saying that I saw my son in that and it just it rattled me. Of course there was the other one, armand.
Speaker 2:Arbery, armand Arbery, armand Arbery.
Speaker 3:Armand Arbery, who was also murdered in cold blood, and we saw that on video too. That happened before that, and that was really disturbing as well.
Speaker 2:And Breonna Taylor, yes, around that same time. So those three significant persons, it's crazy. Trayvon Martin was, I think, five or six years before that. So you had, you had all these. So I mean in a small amount of period, in a small period amount of time, you had all of these significant murders.
Speaker 3:The advent of the iPhone too, right. So now you're getting more and more stuff on iPhone thanks to that technology, which is sort of proving what many people in our community have said has gone on for years. And so here it is, in front of everyone. Well, our bishop at the time, bishop Swanson, who was was the first African-American bishop in Mississippi called the advocacy team together. Now this is just a committee of of people, advocacy for women, um, um commission on race relations and other advocacy groups, and I happened to have been on that because I was a part, I was peace with justice, which is more general kind of thing, just um sort of a watchdog what's going on in Washington, what kind of law, what kind of policies being made and and how can we alert um United Methodist. So that that was my chair.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I was a a para, a para UMC organization, not necessarily a caucus group, just a just a informal group of I mean formalized, but informal in terms of the structure of the denomination. Right, that's right yeah.
Speaker 3:So we were meeting with Bishop uh, with the Bishop at the time, and he said we really do need an initiative. We, we, we've got to respond to this in Mississippi. What are we going to do? And of course we did. We thought that was the right thing to do. And, um, he asked me of course I'm a white person. And he asked um, domeni Henry, reverend Domeni Henry, who's on staff at Anderson United Methodist church and he's also at Heinz. I believe he is at Heinz. He certainly is doing some campus ministry, doing some things at Jackson state as well. He's another guy that's got a lot of irons in the fire and he asked both of us to co-chair the initiative.
Speaker 3:Now, at that point we didn't know what to call it or what to do, but we got together and we, we invited some other folks around the circle. What should we do? What would our mission even be? And it probably took us we tried not to rush through it, austin. We didn't want to drag our feet, but we also didn't want to go so fast that we weren't really thinking carefully through what we were trying to do. So it took a few weeks to come up with our mission and we sort of hammered it and honed it and got different people to look at it um from. You know different diverse folks, men, women, black, white, et cetera and we came up um with, uh, the title end racism for good. Sometimes you might call, you might see, er 4G end racism for good. Of course there's a little bit of a double meaning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was about to ask what's the meaning. Is it for good, as in finalizer? Is for good, for the good of both.
Speaker 3:Okay. So we were saying, look, while we are ending it, finalizing it, you know, while we are trying to eradicate it, um, we're still. The work is ongoing and we're doing it for good.
Speaker 2:So it's, it's, it's, uh, it's. It's not just deconstructive, it's also constructing something else in its place. Very much so.
Speaker 3:And the mission statement will will even give more away to Austin. Our mission statement was is this it is in racism for good, is a movement of United Methodists and others who are learning, celebrating and acting until every heart, every church in every community is freed from the sin of racism. So the so sort of kind of broad enough to give us some room to figure out what to do. Now, none of us were getting paid for this, so you know, we were all doing our job. So it's not like we could do everything we wanted to do, but we were trying to do something that might be for the good of this world, specifically in Mississippi and all of our communities. So, um, that first year we um we partner with Kellogg Foundation. They had recently trained um some folks at, uh, at mill saps to lead racial healing groups. We thought that might be the first step, just to just to take some steps toward and a lot of that. Austin is storytelling, empathetic, listening, you know, um getting um people of all colors in one room and just getting them to see how much in common we have. And we knew that in Mississippi, cause you know we miss if you fall. Don't like to talk about your stressful stuff, that that, that that might be a lot of people's first time first, first, first go and having meaningful conversations around race. And we thought it was a really good small step to do that and it was during the pandemic. So we set up zoom accounts. We got 65 people trained in every district.
Speaker 3:At the time the United Methodist church had 11 districts, so so we got people trained and we encouraged them to start circles in their area and we made all 65 people to partner and promises that that they would lead um to racial healing circles. You could do as little as one 90 minute deal and you're done. Sometimes you do two or three, but it all revolved around people getting to tell their stories and, interestingly enough, none of the questions were about race, but it always went there. You know, like, tell me a time when you stood up for someone else. Tell me a time when someone um assumes something about you. That's not true. You just ask those questions and you know. You know race is going to be a part of it cause. Race is like to me, like racism is like Greece.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a little bit on everything right, yeah, especially when you get someone like that many different type of people in the same room and you ask pointed questions without even necessarily asking questions about race. You're just asking them to say, hey, this is what it's like to be me, that's right.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, and you set, and you set a lot of rules. It's a lot like in Methodist parlance holy conferencing. Don't ask questions to try to be right, don't ask dishonest quick yeah, nobody's here to get fixed. That's good, Just you know, and so what you did is you set these rules where, where it set up a safe environment, and it was amazing what, what came out of that. So that was the first year and we we got over 700 people to experience that all across Mississippi. Um, during that time, interestingly enough, I was.
Speaker 2:I was part of one of those. My wife. My wife participated in spring of 2022.
Speaker 3:Yeah, indeed, and so sometimes book, book studies came out of that and some other things came out of that. So that was kind of year number one. That was our focus. So year number two, um, was um. Then we wanted to celebrate um people in organizations like Miss mission, mississippi, you know, and and others. We wanted to celebrate people in organizations that were actually doing things. Sometimes we just assume nobody's doing anything. There's a lot of people doing a lot of stuff, oh yeah, and and just like y'all are doing some amazing stuff here. And so what we did was is we got people um and um.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm going to blank on their names and I hate that, but there are two amazing women here in Jackson that, before the pandemic, would bring in young, uh, 12 year old African American boys from all over the country and their whole goal was that week let's counter what they see in the media, how they're portrayed, right, all these generalities, all these stereotypes. So these young boys come in from all of the country right here in Jackson and they write and they create and they do all these amazing things that show them that they are way more than what the media is trying to make them out to be At the end of the week. They even get to write and they publish a book every year based on what they write. So they leave this place as authors, isn't?
Speaker 1:that awesome.
Speaker 3:Wow, now we had her. We had a dynamic woman named Jacqueline Patterson who works for the National Office of the NAACP. She is environmental justice and again, this was great for me because what I learned was that if you've got, if you're white middle class, middle upper class even things like environmentalism, it's just kind of an abstract idea. It's like, oh okay, wait. So we rose a degree and a half big deal, but what she showed was that it affects poor people and people of color exponentially more than white people. So she showed refineries beside public schools, all black public schools. They don't have a political clout to say we don't want a refinery, right, we don't want smoke blowing by our track so that kids develop asthma.
Speaker 3:And she talked about poor white people. In West Virginia they're blowing off mountains for coal and that is causing all kinds of stuff Cancer alley between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, all the chemicals being dumped into the Mississippi River, people getting cancer. And what she said was a Native American reservation. Not too far from Los Angeles, california, they were sold a bill of goods about an electric grid, a power plant that they were gonna make there. Everybody's getting cancer there and they're not even getting to draw power from that. So, they're getting exposed to that.
Speaker 2:And so-. So all the drawbacks and none of the benefits.
Speaker 3:Yes, so she showed a picture to me as a privileged white male in Mississippi. It's like, oh my gosh, this is a justice issue and there's a lot of stuff going on in Mississippi that does affect poor people and people of color way more. That has to do with where people dump chemicals, what people do, where people that don't have as much money have to live, and so it's a justice issue. Anyway, had Brandon Jones Southern Poverty Law Center, who talked about voter suppression. You just have to make it a little bit harder for people to vote. Was that gonna affect more? You guessed it. All that kind of stuff. So basically, it was like a period of learning and celebrating. You know, we weren't afraid to tell the truth, but we also wanted to celebrate because, again, there is a lot going on. So draw from what people are doing today so that you can make a difference. So that's another thing. Now, this last year, now I'm getting to Freedom Trail Revival, Austin. It's taken me a while, but I'm getting to it.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, it's good, I like the full.
Speaker 3:Look at it, man, good, good. So now this last year, dominique and I were like what are we gonna do now? You know I mean so what are we gonna do, cause? Bishop Swanson said this is a marathon, not a sprint. He said don't do this. If you're gonna do this for six months and quit. He said we've seen that, don't do it.
Speaker 3:And so we're trying to figure out what's new wind Reverend Sue Highland and Reverend Haven Boyd Sue is at Wells United Methodist Church, havens at Parkway Hills. They came up to Dominique and myself and they said okay, we got an idea. I was like, okay, what Cause? We don't know what to do this. You know, what do we want to focus on? They said we need to do a Freedom Trail Revival and we need to do worships all across this state to bring white, black, brown people all under one roof and to worship together. You know, we're Christians, we're Methodist, we're Baptist, we're Presbyterian, whatever we. Now we need to look to God and get together and worship. If we're gonna do this Cause, if it's all about us, we're gonna burn out. I said y'all, thank you. It was like manna from heaven, austin, because we were like kind of desperate for what is the next thing? And it was so. It was such a breath of fresh air to be able to get that from someone else and so I said, great, but y'all better help. And they did.
Speaker 3:And then Dominique, and then we got Zach Beasley up in Holly Springs, ricky Georgetown, who taught at Russ College he's back in Texas but he was part of Early Conversations. I called Scott Wright in Greenwood and Scott got preachers a really good diverse group of preachers there in Greenwood, and so we all got on a Zoom and we sort of dreamed about where these would be and what they would look like. And I'm happy to give you the dates later. But this is sort of what we decided. We were gonna worship in Greenwood and that's February 3rd, so we've already had that one. We were gonna worship at Russ College in Holly Springs and that's a great, historically black institution that's got a wonderful story about how it got started. And then we're gonna do one April 6th right here in Jackson at Wells United Methodist Church. We're gonna do one May the 4th at Historic St Paul's wonderfully amazing black United Methodist Church that has some good civil rights routes, freedom school routes there. May the 4th we're gonna be there.
Speaker 2:You said that's gonna be in.
Speaker 3:Gulfport? No, that's in Hattiesburg.
Speaker 2:In Hattiesburg. My bad, that's in downtown Hattiesburg.
Speaker 3:No, that's okay. The final one our Bishop, bishop Sharma Lewis, is gonna preach at and she's been so supportive of this, by the way. She's our new Bishop, amazing, dynamic leader. She's gonna preach the last one, and the last one is gonna be June the 15th at Gulfside Assembly.
Speaker 2:That was the Gulfport one. Okay, because I knew you guys made it down on the coast.
Speaker 3:I was just trying to remember where, and so what's interesting about that, too, is that it's four days before Juneteenth and so it's right there, so we're really gonna think about how we're gonna celebrate that it's Katrina wiped out the buildings. It was really the first beach that people of color could swim in, and they were protected because they couldn't use the white beaches.
Speaker 2:Well, the Gulfport Assembly that has a historically black roots too, Does it. A seashore assembly does it. Is it seashore?
Speaker 3:No, that's it. That's the one I'm talking about Gulfside Assembly, gulfside Assembly, that's the one.
Speaker 2:I get my. I've been outside the Methodist world for about as long as you've been at St Luke man. So my memory of the specifics of names of stuff has just left my head.
Speaker 3:No, that's no problem that's the Gulfside Assembly. So we're gonna put up a tent and our bishop is gonna preach, and so we've got five different worship committees, because what we wanted to do, austin, was to honor the locale. We wanted to bring up the names of people who were pioneers and who were before their time, just like the gang of 29 who signed that. We wanted to born of conviction, and so I can only speak to one of them, because it's the only one that we've had so far. But I can tell you that Greenwood, the Greenwood worship was amazing and Reverend Domeni Henry was the preacher and he preached a beautiful sermon and it was very powerful and the liturgy brought up local people that I had never heard of, who were just, who did some bold things, white and black people who were way ahead of their time.
Speaker 3:They took me on a tour. I went to where they found Emmett Till's body, which was a very somber, poignant time for me. We went there and of course they put up new signs that were bulletproof, because the signs kept being shot down. And then I went by a few other monuments. I went by the place where young Emmett Till had been accused of whistling at the womb in the grocery store there and it just. You know, the thing that I think about is that Emmett Till would be about my dad's age if he was alive. So I mean, this didn't happen that long ago, and so it was just. It was very impactful and the worship was very well done and we had some local folks come in and sing and it was ecumenical. There were many Christians from many different walks of life and they really really participated.
Speaker 3:So one of the things, one of the highlights to me, is that Domeni gave about 10 people a crayon or a crayon, and he said I want you to write in the middle of a sermon, I want you to stand up and I want you to look, ask your people on your pew, what do you have in your hand and what kind is it? And so I had one in my hand, so I stood up. That's a crayon Okay great. And it's orange Okay good. It's a crayon over there. You know that's pink, okay good. And Domeni said I want you to see, want you to note that you all saw color, and that's okay. In fact, that's a good thing. Don't ever say you don't see color, he said, because we all see it. That's all right. The thing to do is to say I see your color, I honor it, I honor your story. What can I learn from you?
Speaker 3:What's your story and how can?
Speaker 2:I do better, exactly. It's also good to know that just because someone has a color, we don't know their story a priori. We don't All we have to do like I don't. I mean I have to, for you and I, bruce, we're the same color, but I have to ask you to share with me so that we can do a relationship, so I can understand where it is that you're coming from, you can understand where I'm coming from and our own experiences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah that's just a good way. You know, that's a good thing to remember when we're kind of sparking those relationships.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So you had this great event up in Greenwood and you were telling me before the podcast that you had and you gave me a number, but I forgot it so many people from just outside the Methodist Church you had a lot of. I mean, I think you said the Catholic priest was able to show up and just a lot of other people. So this was a. I guess it originated in the Methodist Church, but it became something that was larger and interdenominational right, no doubt we wanted to be that way.
Speaker 3:We want everyone to feel welcome because we're certainly honoring we're not just honoring Methodists, we're honoring all kinds of people who've done amazing things.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, we had a church of God in Christ, we had Pentecostal, we had Catholic, we had Baptist, we had Presbyterian, we had Methodist. So just for listeners out there, please know that if the Freedom Trail Revival comes near you, we want you to be there, we want to celebrate you and you bring your story and it's delightful, it's freeing. Our hope, austin, is that people leave these worship services energized to stand up to racism where they see it and to do small but significant things to push back, but also to boldly witness to their faith and to be good news in the midst of this wonderfully diverse culture that we have, where God created all kinds of people and this is God's idea of a good time and our diversity in our state is a strength that's not a weakness. We've got so much more going for us than against us if we can do what Mission Mississippi says to do get to know each other and to build relationships that are greater than denomination and race. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much, bruce.
Speaker 2:So three stages. Thus far, you've got the Stage 3 planned. You're rounding the corner on that, probably thinking about what you guys need to do for Stage 4, you probably have brainstorms already probably, maybe slightly and just like what are we gonna do next? So that's pretty exciting, gonna love, excited to hear about it when y'all are able to make those types of plans. Living reconciled is a work of Mission Mississippi but it is not our only work.
Speaker 1:From days of dialogue and prayer meetings to consultation for schools, businesses and churches, mission Mississippi is eager to help you, your team, your church and your community live reconciled Every month. Join us for our weekly prayer breakfasts on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6.45 am, our bi-weekly statewide convention meetings on Fridays at 10 am and a focused time of prayer on the third Thursday of the month at 7 am. To get details on any of our upcoming events or to learn how you can invite us to your church, business or school, visit our website at MissionMississippiorg and click on the Events button or call us at 601-353-6477.
Speaker 2:For right now, I kind of want us to segue into a little bit, talking more about the future of the community and about your own journey and what we call it here. Mission Mississippi is a reconciler. Your own journey is just kind of being developed as a reconciler and because I know you, I know that that started on the streets of Brookhaven. No, tell them about it.
Speaker 2:So I want to just tell me about that a little bit, about how some of the significant issues of your childhood, some of the things you experienced there, maybe even some like one or two significant happenstances in your ministry that kind of caused you to go down the trajectory that had you kind of chairing this work that's being done in the Methodist Church right now.
Speaker 3:Thank you for asking. Yeah, the main streets of Brookhaven? No, it's. You know, brookhaven's a lot like a lot of other county-seat towns in Mississippi. And so when I was three years old, my family moved back to my father's hometown where he grew up and he was born and raised in Brookhaven.
Speaker 3:My mom grew up in Birmingham and I almost have to start with my mom first, because she grew up in Bull Connor's, birmingham, and she grew up in a Baptist church there. They weren't terribly active, but what she saw on the streets and what she saw from political leaders at the time really turned her off from Christianity and she thought how can people be so destructive and horrible to each other and then call themselves Christian? Now, this was 16th Avenue Baptist Church, the bombing, the children that were killed I mean, that's when she lived in Birmingham and that was the Birmingham she grew up in. She just about given up on that and just was really disenchanted with religion. Until we moved to Shreveport, my dad was in the Air Force. I was born in Bozer City on the Air Force base, but they started going to first United Methodist Shreveport and Austin. There was a preacher there by the name of DL Dykes and DL was way ahead of his time and she was so drawn to how he preached and what he preached that he preached deeply, from the deep wells of this deep love of God but also deep sense of justice, and it really I would say that it was her second wind in Christianity. So by the time my toddler self, my two older sisters, my mom and my dad and I moved back to Brookhaven. This is in the early 70s, so we go back into just the first few years of integration and Brookhaven integrated had problems but there were some good things too and but it was very stressful.
Speaker 3:Of course I didn't know that at three and when I was in the first grade in 1976. I did not, I didn't know what was going on. But looking back on it, austin, these were new groups of teachers. They probably had fewer jobs. I'm sure I know, I'm sure, I'm pretty sure, who got scapegoated are teachers of color.
Speaker 3:I remember the Henderson twins who taught me in the fifth grade, or one of the Henderson twins, and I remember she dressed to the nines. She was a was and is a beautiful woman who dressed so professionally. She looked like she was walking out of a fashion magazine and she was uber, uber structured and in a way that I needed, you know, and I learned a lot from her. And I had other teachers of color, black teachers, in the public schools, so many of whom were amazing teachers. And I didn't pick up on this now, but I look back on this. After George Floyd I wrote the Henderson twins and I told them how much I appreciated them, that I'm some bratty white kid, spoiled white kid, walking in, and I had no idea how perfect they had to be to be teachers, you know, in an early integrated school system in the deep South, and how hard that was and how stressful that must have been. And so now I look back on it I see that, you know, being a child of an early public school system, heightened, you know, almost gave me a little bit of a cultural sensitivity because we were half white and half black. So it was right it's cut right down the middle. We almost exactly my graduating class 1988, in Brookhaven High was literally exactly half black, half white.
Speaker 3:So within my mother began to do some work in the church with the United Methodist women, and I'm sure this is true for a lot of denominations, but women's groups in the United Methodist church were always way ahead of everybody else. They talked about stuff that nobody else wanted to talk about and they actually were more integrated earlier than anybody else. So when my mother was a district president in Southwest Mississippi and we went to district meetings, guess where she had most of them in black churches. So she would put me on her hip when I was six years old and I would be eating M&Ms in this beautiful black church with these amazing women, black and white, doing amazing work and I think looking back on my mom's deceased now, so I can't go back and ask her, but I think that was sort of almost a subversive way to open up the eyes of the white women in the district to go. You know, we're all one body here, we're all equal here, we're all children of God, so let's deal with it, let's get to know each other. So she was kind of doing mission Mississippi were. So she was doing racial reconciliation in the 70s in Brookhaven and that was kind of risky but she did that. So I think my mom really shaped me. The Brookhaven public schools and some of my teachers there shaped me.
Speaker 3:I was always in athletics. I played football at Brookhaven High. I was skinny and couldn't do anything but kick the football because anything else in my life would have probably been over. We played Provine, callaway, murrah, you know, warren, central Hattiesburg anyway. But again, begin that football environment. And then I was a manager on the football team from Mississippi State from 88 to 92. So here again, that was my culture within the culture. And my culture within the culture was there were more. I was always in more of a black environment in that culture and again, I think God used that to help me better understand. I knew people, not as like stick people or felt on a thing or you know. Then I realized, oh wow, you know, there's a lot of diversity within this culture, this subculture. People don't do the same things, they don't. You know, I ran into people who hunted.
Speaker 2:I don't hunt, but I ran into African you know, I love how you said I don't hunt, I don't hunt you, just you went real Mississippi. I don't hunt, you went real Mississippi.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So, like you know, you've got all this. So it helped me to appreciate that nobody's the same in one culture and that nobody's thinking the same, and I think that helped me as a minister. God used that to help me as a minister. So when I, after my calling to go in the full time or day ministry, those early experiences kept drawing me toward where is God reconciling? You know, wherever I've gone, whether, whatever, doesn't matter what kind of church I'm served, I'm serving, but what does that look like? And it looks different.
Speaker 3:Now I will say that, like, as you mentioned, court Street, that was the most racially diverse church that I've ever served On Sunday mornings. It was truly diverse. There was nobody. It was like nobody had a, nobody had a. I mean nobody, just so many different walks of life. It was also a recovery church, not everybody, but there were a significant amount of people felt accepted there, people that were dealing with addictions. So all that to say that that was an incredible place. That taught me more, also my piece of justice work for the denomination.
Speaker 3:I really learned a lot there in another places about systematic oppression, systematic racism, how you know, like, yes, like one arm is, build relationships, listen to stories, get to know people, because you can't, you can't love people, you don't know, let them get to know, you let them to see, you know, and then and then so you're building, you know you're building relationships like it's like one woman said you know we're really not gonna change a whole lot till we have, until you make friends, until somebody of a different race is sitting at your living room table, she said, and she said not serving you Exactly, but sitting with you and you're talking together. She said we're not gonna. So that's, I think that's one part of it. And then the other part of it is that justice issue. Right, justice is organized love is what I like to say.
Speaker 3:Justice is looking into, looking into systems that are invisible. And you know, I think about this is that any, any law or policy that privileges one group of people over another is not sustainable and it's going to continue to do harm. And so, you know, think about looking at all that. You realize, oh my gosh, you know, if you're running downwind me, I'm a male, I'm white, I mean, it is what it is. I'm running downwind and it's still in 2024, the unwritten rules and the written rules favor me. You know when you're, when you're running downwind, you don't hear it right Cause you're running with the wind. And then for some of my friends who are not white in male, they're running against the wind, and how can I confront, expose or maybe improve, improve public policy that is doing a lot of harm, that people don't know? And that's, that's part of what I think.
Speaker 3:It is, at least for me, part of my calling is is to look at that, and I'm I'm kind of a policy nerd, and so I do. I do enjoy enjoy is not the word. I'm very interested In what's happening in our capital, in Jackson, and what's happening in Washington DC and how that affects all people in Mississippi.
Speaker 2:And it does. Yeah, and I and I love, because what you're talking about is running downwind, running, running upwind and and it's something our president, brian Brian Crawford he always talks about weighted advantages and that and that in all, particularly in Mississippi. You're right, we have a weighted advantage of, you know, of being being white and male.
Speaker 2:Where we, we, we do it's. It's kind of been encoded in our, in our cultural expectations. As you know, as the particular culture in this geographical area has advanced in the past several hundred years, particularly in the past 60, particularly in the past 30. Really, as as kind of the, you know, the, the gen generation X, x generation, which you're part of, has, has, has grown as one of the first generations that was kind of born after segregate, after segregation, after the civil rights legislation that has passed. So you have, you know, so you have no memory of what it was like really, what segregation was really like, no, no memory of that. And so we we have that kind of weighted advantage. But but you know, brian also says that you know there's other weighted advantages for him he's incredibly good at math, right and a lot of cultural situations in in our area that we have those weighted advantages and I think I think it's real interesting that you're kind of bringing bringing that out as a something that has helped you to understand, has educated the work that you do.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I just, you know, that's that's, that's that's good that you're able to see that and that also kind of. Do you have anything more that you need to say?
Speaker 3:about your biography. Well, real, quickly on that, because it's so fascinating to me. A lot of people are so sensitive to that that they feel almost like they're being accused, or should feel like. Sometimes, when you bring that up, when I bring that up to my other white male friends, they're like, well, I can't do you know. You know, it's almost like they feel like they're being indicted.
Speaker 2:And when.
Speaker 3:I tell them I was like this is not about you, this is not about self-flagellation.
Speaker 2:I mean.
Speaker 3:I'm not here telling you you're a bad person because of that. What I am saying is, at least for me, I have a responsibility you know, to recognize that and to do everything I can to level the playing field, because that is a weighted advantage that shouldn't be. You know, and what's interesting is in a more equitable world we all win.
Speaker 3:Just imagine, you know, if you could go back in time a hundred years and have, and have, you know, done greater reconciliation work and been able to help. Maybe our country become more closely to what it aspires to. Be right, all men are created.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what it says it aspires to be. Yeah, if we've been truer to that a hundred years ago.
Speaker 3:I wonder, if twice as many people do in research, might we have found the cure to cancer. You know, if you know what. I'm saying so it's like we're cheating ourselves, because anytime you're putting in people down, it's the world suffers.
Speaker 2:We're cutting off, you know. I mean just just talking about advancement of a human species, or maybe let's put it this way, not advancement of human species, advancement of Americans. Let's just say that. You know, with segregation you are pretty much cutting off. You know, I would say what? It was probably 30, 40% at the time of the populations, intellect contributions, right. So that affects all of us and that's kind of what I'm, that's part of what I'm hearing you're saying and also, let's be honest, to a degree, that part of the cultural climate that we have in this world. You know, I can almost understand when people feel an indictment just because there is toxicity, and oftentimes these conversations do come with a certain degree of toxicity with it and does come with a condemnational tone and not something that is focused on redemption and reconciliation, which we in the Christian world who do this work, it's different of that. We try not to have that toxicity.
Speaker 2:We try to create that environment that we can listen, create environment like what y'all had in Greenwood, where you're able to have, you know, 80 plus people from all these denominations and from all these races be able to come and worship with one another.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:You know, and I'm thinking this, I think this is a pretty good segue to kind of the third part, the final part of the podcast, because one of the things I've noticed about you is you do have that capacity to be able to kind of step into that space with with, with other people who are in predominantly white spaces, and and be able to confidently and competently have discussions about race, and you're able to do it. And this is just something I've been able to observe about you having worked with you.
Speaker 2:Having been in your, your employee, I've been able to see you're, you're able to have that conversation in a way that is I understand it to be disarming that you're, you're able to stay true to the convictions that you, that you have and here's the most important thing you're able to have the relationships. After you've had that conversation, your relationships have remained intact for the for the most part. From what I've seen, I'm pretty sure you can probably think of you know, we're pastors, we have people you know may have have reasons all the time to break fellowship with us, but for the most part, one of the giftings that I've seen in you is that capacity to have that relationship and that, or have that conversation and have the relationship remain intact. So with with other white people and I mean there's there's a lot of benefits to that. I know that there's there's there's certain training methods that say that white people need to kind of have a conversation amongst, amongst their own, before they have a conversation with a person of color.
Speaker 2:I've also heard it that persons of color there's certain one are certain persons who are just like, yeah, I can have the conversation, I'm good, I'm good for it. There are others who are just they're, they're, they're exhausted, they don't, you know, they don't, they don't have the bandwidth to handle constant barrage of questions. So there's a significant, there's a significant benefit of having the particular giftings that you have, bruce, of being able to have that conversation, have that relationship remain intact with other people for the most part. So I just want to say I mean I'm rambling at this point, but can you, can you insert anything? Can you kind of give your perspective on that? Any situations Maybe say no, austin, I ruin all my relationships.
Speaker 3:No, or Well. First of all, thank you. I mean I really do try to work hard to to have disarming relationships and, you know, disarming conversations with other white people. That is not condescending, because that doesn't work anyway. I mean, no matter what, where somebody is condescending or or trying to win the argument, it just I have found that that really doesn't chip away. You know, what's interesting is is a lot of times what I, what I, you know try to do, is storytelling. You know, storytelling is disarming.
Speaker 3:Somebody might make some sort of crash, generalization about a group of people and sometimes the response is not gosh, that was stupid, but it could be. Hey, you know, let me tell you a story about you know, back in Brookhaven one time I had, and just sort of letting the power of the story and the witness do its work, knowing that you can't fix anybody anyway, but you can continue to be yourself. You can't curse the darkness but you can light your own candle and and so so that's a big thing. Another thing is funny that you say that about. You know, I have found that some of my African American friends freely, you know, love talking about it and others that kind of wears them out and to to be kind of a kind of to practice some deep empathy there and to know when to be silent and when to use words and just when to be there. And you know that's been good.
Speaker 3:Just a quick story about you know. You know it was after George Floyd and this was a. This was one of our groups that we did and there was a this Marine from Georgia, a military guy, african American, and it was really really neat, nice, and I was invited to be a part of this. This wasn't really even a racial healing circle, so much as one of my friends in the military said. I want you to be a part of this and I was just sharing a story about how one of the crazy stories in Lincoln County is that you know, when I grew up and you kind of grew up in this sort of you know a among you know anywhere in the South I'm sure it wasn't just Lincoln County, but you know there was just a sort of this people were pretty loose with their tongues and would say really crass and careless stuff and I remember one of the things that so many white people said was you know, right, when you walked in and there's a dog and they'd say you know, my dog doesn't like black people Sometimes they would use worse words than that but my, you know, it's like, even as like a kid.
Speaker 3:I was like that's a strange thing to say about your dog, and so I shared that in that group. I said I was so weird to sing I heard that over and over again how their dogs didn't like black people. And so this, this guy who was Marine and happened to be African-American, he started laughing.
Speaker 1:I said why are you laughing?
Speaker 3:He said we said the same thing about our dogs and so we would laugh, because the only white person they would see usually was the male man. And he said we joked about the same thing and so it was kind of funny, like how sometimes he would. I mean like it just kind of horrified me that these were the things I was exposed to, because, you know, racism is taught right.
Speaker 3:Right, right, you know nobody's born racist, we're taught it. And even race itself is a construct that we've made up, you know anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's real.
Speaker 2:That's why we had to deal with it 1600, 1600, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But? But the other thing too is that I have tried so hard to read like in the past five or six years I've tried to read black authors and to me that's a great way to learn for my white listeners out there. If you're not sure who to talk to, you know even. If you are sure who to talk, to educate yourself. The new Jim Crow cast cast yeah, but Isabel Wilkinson.
Speaker 2:by the way, we were reading that as a staff. That's awesome, love it, love it. Sorry, I didn't mean to.
Speaker 3:No, my grandmother's hands before the Mayflower white rage. These, these are. These are awesome opportunities to jump into the skin of someone that's not of your race. And just because reading is listing right and every one of those books in the, in the other ones that I read one time in, I also read a book. It was through, it was.
Speaker 3:I read it during Lent one year. It was just by a black author from a seminary. It wasn't necessarily about race, but I just was trying to. You know, I just I was intrigued and I wanted to and, you know, wanted to grow in my readership from these amazing black authors. Look, I just read one when the word is passed, or how the word is passed, and it's about it's written by an African-American author, clint Smith, from the Northeast who's who writes about historical sites and what stories we're telling about them and what stories we're not Whitley Plantation, angola, new Orleans, monticello, wall Street and his and his apologue. He starts talking about his grandfather who lived in Monticello and in Monticello in the 30s and 40s. If you wanted to get an education past the ninth grade, you took a bus to Brookhaven and you-.
Speaker 2:That's about an hour away, just about.
Speaker 3:And you lived at a boarding house right on the cross the street from Alexander High School and I'm like he's talking about my hometown and he's bringing up some pretty hard stuff, very hard stuff. But I'm thinking I'll walk through the halls because after integration it became Alexander Junior High School, and so what I would what I usually encourage my white buddies to do is to read just read from a, from a black author, author of color. There's a lot of good stuff out there and and so that you don't have to lean on somebody, so that you're doing some of your own work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's important, and that is that is very, very important. All right, bruce, we're right above, right about of an hour right now. We're about to wrap up, but I'm going to give you just the final, the final. Say anything on your mind, anything that you would just give your left arm to let our listeners know, and you're left handed.
Speaker 3:I am left handed. So that's a significant giving of an arm, exactly.
Speaker 2:So summarize, man, anything you'd like to say, kind of your parting words. Look.
Speaker 3:I love Mississippi. I'm here because I choose to be here and and to our listeners out there, I'm going to assume that almost everybody listening loves the state. You know, we love our food, we love our culture.
Speaker 3:We love our food we love our music, we love our writers, we love I mean, you know we've got problems, but when I, when I come out of, go out of this state, like I don't like other people talk about my state, you know, and so, and so, what I just encourage our, our leaders is and the listeners is just man, this is one way that you can love Mississippi. Keep doing the slow work of transformation, which is one relationship at a time, one book at a time. Continue to be curious and don't give up, because we know that the long arc, of long arc of God bends toward justice and we are on the right side and and and God is walking with us. So I'm just being encouraged Don't let anything get you down and keep working, because it is great work. Wherever you are. Figure out a place to be a reconciler and you'll be doing holy work.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. This has been the Living Reconciled Podcast, episode 42,. We're with Bruce Case and we're signing off, god bless.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining Living Reconciled. If you would like more information on how you can be a part of the ongoing work of helping Christians learn how to live in the reconciliation that Jesus has already secured, please visit us online at missionmississippiorg or call us at 601-353-6477. Thanks again for listening. Give this video a high five.