The Arise Podcast

Danielle S. Castillejo, Margalyn Hemphill
  • 4.5 (15)
  • SPIRITUALITY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

Conversations about faith, race, justice, gender and healing.

  1. Season 6, Episode 29: Rebecca W. Walston and Danielle S. Castillejo - Updates - Voting Right's Act

    4D AGO

    Season 6, Episode 29: Rebecca W. Walston and Danielle S. Castillejo - Updates - Voting Right's Act

    Rebecca 1. On grief, shock, and not trusting white institutions “I don't think shocked is the word that I would use. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, I think we don't trust white people. I don't think we ever have. And I think even when we see something that looks like forward progress, that doesn't necessarily mean that we trust the white privileged supremacist institutions that were the reason why we needed forward progress in the first place. So I don't know that surprised is or shocked is a word. I think I have some grief about the fact that my generation is now facing something that we thought was long over.” 2. On how quickly government moves when Black rights are targeted “If you ask for anything else, the answer is the wheels of government move slowly and the wheels of justice move slowly… But the second you want to strip Black people of something, the second you want to oppress Black people… ‘We can do that over lunch. We can get that done in the next hour. We can undo 50 years worth of voting rights legislation in five minutes.’” 3. On whiteness as an invented category and an exchange “Isn't that the setup of whiteness all along? And when I say whiteness in that, I'm talking about the category white because the truth is nobody who identifies as white is actually like whiteness is a contrived category. What you are is European. What you are is Irish or German or British or Dutch or any other set of categories. And the whole idea in the U.S. sort of experiment is that you would exchange that ethnic specificity, that nationality and the story, the narrative and the identity that is attached to that, that you would exchange it. You would erase yourself. You would shorten your name, change your last name, drop your language, drop the accent, drop all of the cultural markers of your people to join this category called white in the United States.” 4. On the cost of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia “The exchange is always, you get to become us and them is whoever we're othering at the moment. And this belief that in that othering somehow you come out unscathed, uninjured, which is never true, right? Racism, misogyny, xenophobia, it's expensive. It costs money.” 5. On Supreme Court cases and the invention of whiteness “If you follow the court cases at the turn of the century where you have a number of immigrants that are coming to the United States under all these waves and there's a series of court cases, people seeking citizenship… the debate in the courts the entire time is this idea that there's such a thing as a category called white and the people who belong to this category have access to power and wealth and the people who are not in this category will not have access to that power or wealth.” 6. On racism reinventing itself “Racism is smart. Misogyny is smart. Xenophobia is smart. It never stays the same. It morphs and it changes. It reimagines and reinvents itself. It's clever… When you have this period of expansion of rights, it will be followed by a period of extreme backlash.” 7. On the danger of believing civil rights are permanent “I was born into a season where the battles had already been fought and won and the space around human rights was fairly expansive. So my only experience is living in the space of having the rights, the civil rights that we should have as human beings. That's what I know, and it never dawned on me… that in a country that could put the first Black man in office could at the drop of a dime pivot and do the polar opposite.” 8. On power, race, and who gets to belong “In the end it's probably really about power and that racial lines, gender lines, nationality lines are how we have decided to limit the access to that power. And this is the thing: when you get invited into the us category and you think you're secure, you aren't. Because to quote Martin Luther King Jr., injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Just because today you fall in the category of us in the us versus them calculation is no guarantee that tomorrow you will stay in that category.” 9. On loyalty to power “If my connection is only to power, I'm loyal to no one and at the same time I'm loyal to anyone who allows me to keep that power.” 10. On the present threat and the limits of talking about trauma as past “Probably the way that we were imagining trauma in that cohort was on this idea that the trauma that we're talking about has long since passed and whatever that threat was doesn't exist today in that way. And for that reason, we sort of have the space to talk about the trauma itself and its impact. And I think where we are in this moment is that's no longer true. The threat is present, it is real, it is tangible, and it's bigger and more concrete in significant ways than it was five, six years ago.” 11. On fear, denial, and wanting to put her head in the sand “There are parts of me that still want to put my head in the sand and I've been there since the election and that's legit. There are real ways in which I intentionally do not know the most current set of events because I choose not to know them because I don't want to process that and I don't want to live with the fear of what that actually means.” 12. On how far back the country might go “What happened, what we did in immigration law during World War II, what we did around Japanese internment, all these things… they could literally come for people. You start talking about you're no longer a citizen, everything and anything you own can be seized by the federal government… how far back are we going to go before we can stop the slide?” 13. On keeping it academic in order to breathe “I don't know. I have to keep this academic. Otherwise, you can't breathe through it.” 14. On building again after rights are dismantled “Representative Jim Clyburn came on the line and his comment was, ‘I'm ready to build again.’ The structure that we built for the voting rights and civil rights legislation of the ’60s, it no longer exists in this country. That legal infrastructure… the last piece of it was dismantled by the court in this case. And so he's like, ‘It's just time to build.’” 15. On the emotional labor of rebuilding “What struck me is like, where does he find the capacity to even begin to imagine building again, let alone doing the work of building? You were around to build the first set and it didn’t even last your lifetime. And he's like, ‘Literally, I'm ready to get in a room with the lawyers and the organizers and the people and let's build something else.’ And it stopped me. It shocked me.” 16. On representation and opportunity “Representation absolutely matters, but I mean in the ways in which it matters in terms of what it opens up and what opportunities might be there versus what is not going to be there for the next generation… That means the person that's hiring for the job or the person that's granting internships or the person that is doing the home loan, all those things, who's in place and what's their mindset and their perspective.” 17. On stress, uncertainty, and the future “A future that is far less certain than it was a week ago or a year ago.” 18. On care and family “Spend some time with my kid who's home from school, that's a good thing. I'm going to go to dinner tonight with my family, eat some good food, spend some time with my favorite humans.” Danielle 1. On shock, Trump, and anti-Blackness “I've been thinking about how there's one narrative like Trump hates immigrants and there's the actual truth of I think Trump has a deep hate for African Americans and Black people and he's not hiding that and they're going after that. I guess I was not surprised, but I allowed myself to feel shocked about it this week, to feel shocked that there's so many people that quote or seem good that have gone along with this and amplified it.” 2. On the poll tax and who it harmed “I was thinking it's pre-human trafficking in the United States, pre-colonization, the English did it to their own people. So this was an English thing where I think it was like in the 14th century, they were in that Hundred Years’ War and they needed to raise money for the war. So what did they do? They put a poll tax, like a flat rate across poor and wealthy alike. And of course, when you put a flat rate, it led to a revolt by peasants because they couldn't literally afford it.” 3. On the poll tax in the United States “With the coming of slavery and then Jim Crow and then sharecropping and all of the things that kind of follow in there… you can see how this poll tax here in the United States and the history of Jim Crow, it didn't just hurt Black folks. It took out poor folks, immigrants, like all these folks. For sure. So the idea that these white folks are doing something quote for white people, it's amazing what white folks will trade in just to separate themselves out, just to hurt Black folks.” 4. On proximity to whiteness and power “Connection for white folks to white folks or connection to power or whiteness, let's say connection to whiteness, that will always trump any human rights, any love for neighbor, any connection to legitimate faith. I believe that inherent in the bodily manifestation of this over centuries, that connection to power trumps almost everything else.” Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    35 min
  2. Season 6, Episode 28: Rebecca, Danielle, and Jenny: Settler Colonial Sex and Purity Culture Stuff

    MAY 11

    Season 6, Episode 28: Rebecca, Danielle, and Jenny: Settler Colonial Sex and Purity Culture Stuff

    Danielle 1. On adults needing honesty before they can guide young people “But then that comes back to us and being able to honestly talk about our own experiences as kids and be far more honest about what that experience was. Be far more honest about the spectrums we probably all lie along or the ways we've felt confused or the way we've worked through maybe even contradictions in our own selves that don't feel like they fit and what tools have we used that are helpful, what tools have not worked for us… I think it's a new way of differentiating from us as parents to be able to explore something different.” 2. On colonization, sex, caste, and racial hierarchy in Mexican history “One thing I know about my history and a part of the complex and layered part of Mexican history is that when colonizers came over, the Spanish particularly, they would then send for their families or their wives, but they would also, part of the strategy along with the Catholicism and the Christianity that was brought, was having babies with Africans that were enslaved… part of the colonial atmosphere was to essentially make classes of people based on race. And so you have a Christian monogamous colonizer with this sent-for family also having… either Indigenous folks or Africans that have been enslaved… That was intentionally done through sex under the guise of monogamy.” 3. On anger, violence, and the body “We know how arousing anger is and regardless of your sexual orientation, in our bodies anger is so arousing… as they put certain categories of people into unacceptable other categories, they're literally arousing themselves… essentially getting off on the violent talk is what I think and feel… using the content of the United States and our military as a form of doing that just feels so deeply violating.” Rebecca 1. On sexuality and gender as communal, not only individual “Sometimes we can think about this conversation about sex and sexuality and gender and all of that as this sort of individual choice or this individual expression. But I think there's something to be learned from the idea that it can be very communal and very collective and in that way have communal and collective impact. And I think sometimes we don't take that into account in very real ways.” 2. On young people needing a bigger frame “I definitely have the experience with my two kids of just a general sentiment like the frame that you gave me is not big enough to hold all of the things that my world requires me to hold. It's not. I need a different frame. I need a bigger frame. I need some flexibility in the framing in order to engage the world that is in front of me… Sometimes I think the best thing that we can do as adults in that space is say okay and be willing to knock down some walls and get rid of some steel and put something flexible in that space so they can breathe a little bit and figure it out.” 3. On not confusing authentic monogamy with colonial violence “Does that invalidate monogamy? And my answer would be no, it doesn't… if you're running around intentionally creating babies with the Indigenous people that were there in the place where you have come to conquer, don't call yourself believing in monogamy because that's a boldfaced lie… Christian nationalism is not Christianity, it's something else. And part of what is infuriating to me is the hijacking of an idea or vocabulary or belief that in and of itself is fine and it gets hijacked and applied to something that is a gross perversion of what it was meant to be.” Jenny 1. On purity culture, abstinence-only education, and labels “So much of that… is a symptom of purity culture and the fact that we don't talk about sex. The abstinence-only generations since the ’80s were we don't talk about sex. And it was sort of Nancy Reagan’s idea of just say no was applied to sex. And so consent was not talked about. Sexuality was not talked about. Gender expression was not talked about. And it's not that those things didn't exist… The queer community has always been around.” 2. On labels as both liberating and limiting “Raphaela Fieo from Healing Exchange says labels can be liberating or they can be limiting. And I think it's important to hold both. For some people, labels are really, really important and for some people labels are like, I don't actually want you to try to define me or put me in a box.” 3. On settler sex and Christian nationalism “What would have to happen is the reckoning of white heteronormative Christian nationalism… Kim TallBear is an Indigenous polyamorous scholar who has this article called Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex… they essentially critique a lot of the white sex-positive communities that don't acknowledge the privilege in white polyamory or sex-positive practices when it literally was gender and racial and familial relations often that were used to Christianize Indigenous communities across the globe.” 4. On monogamy, normativity, and honoring difference “Monogamy could be part of that expression and all of these other things also are part of that expression… getting out of this normative thinking of like, if this is the way I do it, this is the way everyone should do it. And rather, okay, this is the way that resonates with me. So if I stay with what feels like the truest expression of my relationship and sexuality now, can that also give me more capacity to honor the ways in which other people are living into theirs, even if it's vastly different than mine?”   Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    1h 13m
  3. Season 6, Episode 27: Danielle, Rebecca and Jenny McGrath - Pope Leo and the President

    APR 17

    Season 6, Episode 27: Danielle, Rebecca and Jenny McGrath - Pope Leo and the President

    "Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth," Leo said during his four-country tour of Africa. "It is a world turned upside down, an exploitation of God’s creation that must be denounced and rejected by every honest conscience." Link here Podcast Summary: Pope Fiction This episode is a sharp, passionate, and often humorous conversation about religion, power, and political corruption in the current American moment. Using recent controversies involving Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Pope Leo as a starting point, the three of you explore how Christianity is being manipulated for political gain and how sacred language is used to justify cruelty, nationalism, and violence. A central thread of the episode is grief and disbelief: How did so many faith communities get here? Rebecca especially wrestles with the collapse of theological integrity inside modern evangelicalism, while Jenny situates these distortions within a much longer historical pattern—empire repeatedly co-opting religion for domination. Danielle brings in race, imagery, and whiteness, asking how white depictions of Jesus shape public consciousness and who gets recognized as holy in the first place. The conversation also moves toward accountability. You discuss public figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizing Trump, but question whether criticism without confession or repair means anything. What emerges is a larger theme: repentance is not words—it is dismantling harmful systems one helped build. Despite the outrage, the episode holds onto resistance and hope. Danielle names the endurance of oppressed people—“We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years and we’re still here.” Rebecca points to truth-telling traditions, especially from the Black church, as carrying moral clarity in moments when mainstream institutions fail. Jenny reminds listeners that these abuses are ancient, but so is the resistance to them. Overall, this is a podcast about spiritual discernment in a disorienting age: how to recognize counterfeit faith, refuse numbness, and keep one’s conscience alive. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    55 min
  4. Season 6, Episode 26: Danielle, Jenny, and Rebecca on Women in Power, Pam Bondi?

    APR 3

    Season 6, Episode 26: Danielle, Jenny, and Rebecca on Women in Power, Pam Bondi?

    Danielle “When it comes to defending my kids, my husband, my community, my family members—even if I don’t like you and I thought it was unjust—I could really step in and kick some ass. But when it comes to myself, the shutdown is so strong. I almost want to fall asleep.”   Rebecca “There’s a reason why you can be so passionate about justice—because you know what unjust feels like and looks like and sounds like. Whatever we have to do to survive that stays with us. And we can simultaneously say, ‘I won’t ever stand by and watch somebody I love feel what I felt.’” Jenny “I think part of it is how I’ve been socialized as a white woman—you are supposed to be demure and look out for the betterment of other people. And even when women speak up about harm, they say, ‘I didn’t want this to happen to another woman.’ And that’s good—but why isn’t it enough to say, ‘This happened to me, and it’s not okay?’ It’s like we need a surrogate to make it permissible to tell the truth.” Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    55 min
  5. Season 6, Episode 25: Jenny, Danielle and Rebecca: Iran, Dolores Huerta, and Women

    MAR 20

    Season 6, Episode 25: Jenny, Danielle and Rebecca: Iran, Dolores Huerta, and Women

    Episode Summary Trigger Warning: We should mention that parts of this story might be disturbing for some of our listeners. Dolores Huerta reminds us of the risk still carried in speaking: “I think that women when they do come forward with their stories, that they instead of getting the kind of support that they need, to get attacked, I mean, or they're not believed that we've seen this happen throughout history, and so I think we'll just have to deal with that if it does happen. Hopefully it won't, but if it does, we'll just have to deal with it… have you spoken to the two women who were girls when they were assaulted by Cesar Chavez?” From Latino USA Podcast In this episode, the hosts move from a light, relatable moment—caring for an anxious rescue cat—into a deeply layered conversation about power, harm, and the complexities of accountability in both personal and societal contexts. Prompted by emerging allegations surrounding civil rights leader Cesar Chavez, the conversation explores a painful and recurring question: how do we reconcile meaningful social contributions with personal harm, particularly when those in power abuse their position? The hosts reflect on the exhaustion of witnessing repeated patterns of powerful men causing harm, and consider how systems of power themselves may shape or even encourage these dynamics. Drawing on psychological frameworks like the Stanford Prison Experiment, the discussion examines how dominance, hierarchy, and culturally defined leadership traits may predispose individuals toward harmful behavior. Danielle introduces her theory of “white attachment” as a hierarchical rather than relational system—one that prioritizes proximity to power over mutual connection—resulting in cycles of exclusion, trauma, and disconnection from belonging. The conversation expands into a broader critique of Western constructs of identity and belonging, particularly the idea that access to power and resources defines inclusion. Rebecca frames “whiteness” not as an inherent trait, but as a system organized around who is granted access and who is denied it—often requiring individuals to sacrifice parts of themselves to belong. From there, the hosts explore the instability of belonging in American systems—where invitations (to citizenship, safety, or care) are often paired with betrayal. This tension is linked to intergenerational trauma, migration, and the lived reality that safety is never guaranteed, even when promised. A central theme emerges around accountability: what it is, who enforces it, and whether current systems are capable of holding harm in meaningful ways. The group critiques institutional failures—from government to churches—and wrestles with the limitations of both punitive and individualistic approaches. In contrast, they reflect on community-based models of accountability, including restorative practices observed in Ugandan communities, where harm is understood as collective and healing involves ritual, reintegration, and shared responsibility. This raises a core tension between individual justice and communal repair—especially in cases of sexual violence, where harm is both deeply personal and socially embedded. The episode also highlights: The cost of silence for survivors, particularly when speaking out threatens community stability The lack of accountability for perpetrators, even when evidence is public (e.g., Epstein cases) The need to shift cultural responsibility from protecting victims to shaping the behavior and accountability of men The failure of communities to address early warning signs of harm Throughout, the hosts resist easy answers. Instead, they hold the complexity of these issues—acknowledging the difficulty of balancing justice, safety, belonging, and repair in a world where harm is both systemic and deeply human. The episode closes with a recognition that while no clear solutions were reached, the conversation itself reflects an ongoing search for more honest, collective, and humane ways of addressing harm and accountability. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    48 min
  6. Season 6, Episode 24: Jenny, Danielle and Rebecca on Epstein, Iran and White Women

    MAR 12

    Season 6, Episode 24: Jenny, Danielle and Rebecca on Epstein, Iran and White Women

    Jenny (00:02): I think is actually thought provoking. I've seen some conversation around the idea that there was this intentional move to make white women the face of this administration and to do it in a way that is you're woefully unprepared. You maybe even are intentionally ill prepared to take the fall and that that is not a new dynamic for white men. Rebecca (01:03): She really can't talk. Jenny (01:06): Okay. I'm sorry. We had just talked, so I was not prepared for your voice to sound like that. It sounds great. It sounds great. Yeah. (01:28): I know. I know, but I still wasn't ready. I'm sorry, friend. That sucks. You sound really sorry. (01:53): Yeah. No, I like this, Rebecca. I feel like this is so much about what I've been researching and writing for my book is what I'm calling the anatomy of a missionary and looking at how white women were set up as soft power for imperialism and the gender social role that white women serve abroad. I think we're experiencing now what Emma says calls the boomerang of imperialism. And so the roles that white women have taken on in the global south for 50 years plus, we're now seeing those higher levels of power, but it's not actually ... It is levels of power, but it's mostly levels in proximity to male power that are still above those women. So they're always going to be on the sacrificial block whenever they need to be more than the white males in those positions would be, is what I think. (03:05): I would call it a position of power so long as the performance is enacted to suit power. And I just read this really great article from Carrie Twigg about how Christine Nome essentially got fired because she couldn't perform on TV well. And Trump is looking to continue to build his media empire and use propaganda to get people to continue to stand behind him, and she didn't perform well. And so it is power so long as you don't mess up, but the second that you don't align yourself with the way that power wants you to. So it's a really precarious power, I would say. Rebecca (03:56): See, I would even say, I don't think that's why she got fired. I would say that- And there was no move to find someone that's actually qualified, who had a snowball's chance of performing well on the world stage. So that's why I'm like, I don't think it is as simple as she didn't perform well. She was never going to perform well. And you knew that when you picked her. And so to me, I'm like, what's that choice actually about? It's the same thing now. I heard on the news recently that (05:09): Erica Kirk just got appointed to be the chair of the Air Force. I don't know. Some committee, some task force that has something to do with the running of something to do with the Air Force. And all of my apologies for not getting this particular thing specifically right. But my thing is, what do you know about armed forces? Nothing. It's not like you're a former retired Air Force, whatever. You're not. You know nothing about any of this. So again, you're picking someone from jump, blonde-haired, blue-eyed female who is ill-prepared from the very beginning for this very public face of a very armed forces in the middle of a war and your pick is Erica Kirk. Really? What's that set up about? (06:25): I'm just saying when it goes left and it will, just like what happened with ICE, it's going to take this turn for the worst that you won't actually recover from. Now you have a sacrificial lamb. You can say that somebody lost their job over this and it makes it look like you are doing something to address a grave wrong and you're not. (07:12): And the sad part is that I saw something recently where Stephen Smith, that sports news guy has made this comment about Kamala Harris, like if I hear her say one more time, she told you so. And the thing that I think is interesting is like, you do have these women, in this case, a black woman, who actually has the credentials to weigh in on something in proximity or juxtaposition to these white women who don't have the credentials. And what is that about? Jenny (07:56): Well, again, I think it's part of that world and the role that white women have taken on, where it's this double bind where I would say it is privileged and power, or maybe privileged without the power, but it is still sacrificial and it always will be. And I think of like the qualifications, the men, many of them aren't qualified for the roles that they're taking on, but they're likely not going to be sacrificed in the same way that the women will. And I think part of that structure is the cult of domesticity, that white women represent this demure, trad wife aesthetic. So if you get these purity culture-esque white women up there, it's going to make sense in the psyche of people that have been conditioned in Christian nationalism to see this as innocent and pure and good and not question the impacts that those women are actually having in the decisions and the actions that they're doing. Rebecca (09:14): That makes a lot of sense in the case of Pam Bonding particularly and Danielle's going Epstein, Epstein, Epstein in chat. It's about the third time. Now it's in all caps, right? (09:38): Yeah. I think it makes a lot of sense in the case of Pam Bondi in the role she took on in the Epstein hearing and her just like, "No, I won't turn around and look at these women. No, I will not acknowledge." And if in the American psyche, that face, that voice, that body saying there's nothing to see here is acceptable, then we don't have to have this conversation anymore. Rebecca (10:16): Yeah. And I'm not sure anymore quite what to do with the Epstein files. There's a lot of energy around all of this is a distraction from that. And I have a hard time in my mind trying to figure out what is in it that is so bad that you would start a war so the story doesn't come out. What I can imagine is like, "Yeah, well, that isn't new and it won't surprise anybody." So what is there that I can't imagine if that's even a fair sort of frame for this? (11:08): I think people are getting lost in the binary of it's the Epstein Files or it's something else. I think it's absolutely that in part. And what is happening right now has been a fever dream of the Christian right since at least the 1970s and apocalyptic readings of the Book of Revelation and certain interpretations that have said, "If Israel takes over all of this land, then Jesus is going to come back," was the rhetoric I grew up with. After nine eleven, it was like most exciting that war was breaking out in the Middle East because this meant that we were ushering in the kingdom of God. And so that is not, not part of it, right? When the military gets sent these letters saying that God has ordained Trump and that    Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    45 min
  7. Season 6, Episode 23: Jenny, Danielle, Rebecca: Christian Nationalism and this Moment in Iran

    MAR 5

    Season 6, Episode 23: Jenny, Danielle, Rebecca: Christian Nationalism and this Moment in Iran

    “El mexicano frecuenta a la muerte, la burla, la acaricia, duerme con ella, la festeja, es uno de sus juguetes favoritos y su amor permanente.” ― Octavio Paz, El Laberinto de la Soledad Lindsay Graham: https://abcnews4.com/news/local/after-laying-out-a-similar-plan-11-years-ago-lindsey-graham-hails-trumps-iran-operation https://youtu.be/wjGgrU8g30c?si=Bly_wZswHLJr8gpw Danielle (00:04): I saw this thing from Lindsay Graham, this clip, and he was saying what we're doing in Iran now is going to ... And Lindsay Grand is a senator here in the United States. And he said he's going to ... What we're doing in Iran, quote, doing, because they're not calling it a war, they're calling it a special operation. He said is going to set the tone in the Middle East for the next 1000 years. And so you can go into your eschatology and your theology after this, Jenny, but he also then proceeded to say that this is a matter of which religion is going to be predominant in the planet. And they talked about Islam and they spoke about Christianity in those terms. And yeah, I wonder what comes up for you as I even just say those brief few sentences about theologically how we grew up or the frame you come from. Jenny (01:03): So much. I mean, so much. I think about how skewed and biased the interpretation of Revelation was in the world that I grew up in. And it was always like fear mongering, like barcodes were the mark of the beast. And then I know people in that same world that said that COVID vaccines were the mark of the beast and just like all of these things. And the mark of the beast was literally the numerical definition of Caesar Nero. It's nothing like we say it is. It was apocalyptic literature that was speaking to the time for a very specific purpose. And yet it has been co-opted. And I really appreciate this book from Bart Erman called Armageddon, and he breaks down the entire historical context for the Book of Revelation and then what has happened to it. And I was thinking about, I was nine, 10 years old when I watched the movie Left Behind with Kirk Cameron and I was terrified that the rapture was going to happen. (02:16): And it was only a year or so, maybe it was even in that same year that I watched the two planes hit the world Trade Center buildings on my family's television. And it was the same television I had just watched Left Behind on that year. And so in my little nine, 10, 11 year old brain, I was like, oh my God, those pilots got raptured and me and my mom are here in our living room and that's what happened.That's how quickly and how much that was associated with my consciousness and what I had been conditioned to. There's many more things that come to mind, but those are some of my first thoughts. Danielle (03:00): Well, even into my young adulthood, and maybe even now, it's been so ... We had to watch when I was little, we went to church and we watched these scenes of the United ... The rapture had happened. And then if you were left behind, then what would happen to you? And the only image I remember from these movies, and I should look them up, is people confessing Jesus because they wouldn't take the mark of the beast. And then they ... I wasn't even in kindergarten, so they put their heads through this guillotine and then they snapped down and people were beheaded. So I remember watching that at church and then at some point coming home and dreaming that the devil was in my room and then running outside and no one was in the garage. So I thought I'd been left behind. And oddly enough, even though I have moved away from that belief entirely about the rapture, if I wake up and everybody's gone or I'm not expecting it, even to this day, something flashes in my mind, "Oh, I wonder if that happened. (04:11): I wonder if I got left. I wonder if I didn't make it. " So those things have a lasting impact. Jenny (04:18): They do. They really do. I mean, I often think about ... So nine eleven happened and then that following summer, me and my mostly white dance studio from Colorado Springs was dancing at the Colorado State Fair to the song Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue. That's literally about bombing and destroying lives and people. And we were doing punches and kicks in these old Navy American flag t-shirts. And it was, again, this fusion of fear of the rapture with this belief in if Israel takes over all of the land around Palestine, then Jesus is going to come back. And I was so conditioned to be excited about the death and decimation of hundreds of thousands and millions of lives of people. And it is so devastating and infuriating to me to think about the rhetoric of those jihad terrorists over there conditioning children for war. (05:31): When I was literally being conditioned for war and the holy war and believing that I was on the side of God and these other people were on the side of Satan, it leads to so much dehumanization and harm. I hate it so much. Danielle (05:50): Yeah. It's almost like apocalyptic or ... I come back to the Handmaid's Tale and it ... Have you watched much of it or any of it? Okay. Well, a lot of people, I won't tell you, but it starts off with like, you don't really know what's happening, but they're escaping in their car, this family of three. And over the series, it flashes back so you get more of the story. But as it flashes back, I began to feel like, "Well, why didn't they get out sooner? What stopped them from leaving sooner? What was it? " And you see this progression both of this story about our Congress losing its powers or seeding its authority to a leader. And when I watched the movie, it was before this elect ... Well, watched the show. It was before this election and kind of during last year a bit. (06:54): But in my mind, I'm like, "Well, how did that happen?" And then as you watch the Senate vote, literally, and they don't vote to reign in war powers for Trump, you wonder what is happening? It's like not every president, but for this large scale of attack, there's no precedent for a president bypassing Congress and shooting the shit out of something, some other person in this scale and not having Congress involved. I mean, for all of Bush's faults and failures and horrors and lies, I mean, he did try to pitch it to Congress. (07:33): And so I'm not a Bush fan anyway, but sometimes I'm like, "Well, that was even better." But then you mix that with Doug Wilson of CREC and Pete Hegseth talking about Armageddon and we're doing this for Jesus. And then it just becomes almost impossible to untangle with people who believe that way. Yeah, Jenny (07:59): It does. It does. And the more I learn about Christian nationalism, the more this has been in the works for the last 50, 60, 70 years. And so we're seeing it in a huge, drastic way, but Bush and others that were elected from the moral majority were all part of that really long game plan to get America back to this very white, patriarchal, heteronormative view of Christianity, which in my mind isn't actually Christianity. It's not a historical version that the brown Jewish man from Palestine promoted. It was the bastardization of that when Constantine created this marriage between military and state and Christianity. And I think since 300s, AD, there's been this snowball that's just continued to grow and grow and grow and we're seeing it play out right now. (09:25): Yeah. I noticed that it puts me in quite a dissociated state, which is very familiar to me. And I think that's largely what my childhood was, was being dissociated and actually thinking that that was a good thing because this life meant nothing.This was all a means to an end until heaven. And so then even as I say that, I feel grief because I've come to feel that this life is really, really significant. I just watched this beautiful documentary called Come See Me in the Good Light about the poet, Andrea Gibson's Journey with Cancer. And it was such a profound image of how meaningful relationships and love and life are. And I didn't know that in this Christian nationalist world. Relationships were always a means to an end to something. My own body was a means to an end to something. And so it takes a lot of work for me to drop back into my body because of this conversation and because of what's playing out in our world. (11:21): And that's really real. Danielle (11:23): Yeah. I just went through that first module of SE training. So I'm all over the language, Jenny. I know what you're talking about. Well, talk to me a little bit about an escapable threat then. When you say that, I think most people think, oh, and then their minds are twirling. I know my mind was when I first started learning about it, and it resonated a lot for me, but walk me through how you think of that for you. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    56 min
  8. Season 6, Episode 22: Danielle, Rebecca and Jenny

    FEB 19

    Season 6, Episode 22: Danielle, Rebecca and Jenny

    Jenny (02:14): I have been thinking about conversations that I've been having and things that I've been seeing lately about this new found anger and rage for MAGA friends and family members. And I think this facade of hope for a long time that I had been called Hyperbolic and I'd been saying I was overreacting or I was paranoid, and then when things continued to escalate, there was the sense of, okay, now they'll see. Now they'll see. And really feeling like there's pretty much not more that could happen that would lift the veil of where we are in this current moment. And so then to still have family members not rejecting Trump, not rejecting Christian nationalism, not rejecting white supremacy, it has been really challenging to think through what does relationship mean right now? What does it mean from a privileged body too? I'm really hesitant, and Danielle and I have talked a lot about this, that it's a very white thing to be like, ah, I'm just going to not talk to you and I don't feel like that's necessary. And if people are saying, you just need to not talk about politics with me, what does it look like to hold my own integrity and be in relationship with people in this moment? I am struggling to know what that looks like and how to do that. Rebecca (04:20): It makes me think I'm getting ready to do, you guys probably saw this, but I'm going to do starting Monday, a group with Jen Murphy, and the name of it is Rebuilding Hope. And I think Hope has something to do with what you just said, Jenny. I am not sure how it plugs in, but I do think there's, what I hear is what do I do? Do I just give into the, they're never going to get there, and what does that mean for our capacity to stay connected in any way? Or do I still hold something of this hope that might even feel foolish in this moment of someday? Maybe somebody's going to get there. (05:18): And it reminds me a little bit of, I probably said this before in here too, there's a podcast between a conversation between Tahi cos and Ezra Klein, and in some ways they end up talking about this question of hope, although I don't think they use the word necessarily, but one of the questions that Ezra Klein it keeps asking is like, why do you keep putting everything in this long historical arc? Every single thing that we're talking about in this moment is sort of this question to Tanya. She comes like, why do you keep putting it in this long arc of history? Because that feels too heavy. It's too much, right? That's too dark. And in part I think at least the way I interpret coats as an answer is because that's where you access this kind of hope that over the long arc of history, something will shift and bend towards something that feels like justice. And that's sort of bringing Martin Luther King into this conversation about the long arc of justice. But I think Coates's answer is something of that's where we gather the capacity and the strength from the past in order to actually stay in the present with the kind of insistence for something good to come out of all of this. So I don't know, there's something in that sort of narrative and that history that I want to borrow from to say, unfortunately, this is not a new conversation in this country. (07:13): It feels that way because it's new in my lifetime. It's new in our lifetime, it's new in our generation, but it's not actually new to the country. And when you look over time, there has always forever been this strain of Christian nationalism and white supremacy, and yet we are still here and we are still here with moments like Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl still happening. And so I think, at least for me, in part, the answer to your question is I have to borrow from that space in order to have the capacity to stay in this one. And it occurs to me that I was born in the seventies post civil rights legislation by the time I was in high school applying to college, affirmative action was the law of the land (08:21): I have lived in. We have lived in the harvest of someone else's labor. We have lived in a time when rights were continually being added to the conversation in our lifetime, women could vote in our lifetime. Women can own property, they can have credit cards, they can hold all of these things. And this is the first time in my lifetime I have lived through a retraction of rights, a retraction of oxygen, a retraction of space, and it feels excruciating, but it's not the first time this country has been through that kind of rhythm and our ancestors survived and we will survive, right? At least for me, that's maybe not an answer to the question of how do you relate to your family? But it's the only way I have to go with it is to just say, somehow we will actually survive this. I don't know how, and I dunno what will be left when we start the process of rebuilding, but I have to borrow from that history to feel like I can breathe on a Thursday morning. Jenny (10:08): Yeah. I think that's part of what I am thinking of, and it's almost this existential, what is relationship if we can't see reality, if we can't acknowledge reality, if you're asking me to swallow my own reality and this collective reality, and I think it feels connected even to what you were sharing, Rebecca is like, there's something I feel particular in this moment where as far as I know, I don't have personal ancestry of resistance. I have ancestry of complicity. And so what does it look like to draw from the past with white ancestors who chose to assimilate to adopt whiteness rather than work against it and resist how we got here? Because it is like I don't want to appropriate the civil rights movement and I don't want to appropriate these resistances that I have so much respect for, and they weren't my collective or my ancestral resistance. And so I feel that even in this moment where there's this tension with my white community, my white family, the white spaces, I know it feels like there's so much tension there. I think Rebecca (11:45): Mean, the thing that I would say is that when I say the word ancestor as a black American person, I don't actually mean bloodline. And even if I did, I likely couldn't prove it because the records are either lost or weren't created. You can only go so far back before lineage because of the slave trade is not reported as people is reported as property. And so you can't track it past, once you run into slave owner, you can no longer track bloodline. I think what's true in collective cultures is this very broad collective tissue that means blood or not. (12:53): You are family that means blood or not. There is a recognition of some connective tissue between us because of our shared collective experience. And so I have no freaking idea if I'm related to Rosa Parks, I'm probably not right. But when I say that I'm borrowing from the strength of my ancestry, I'm still borrowing from her narrative and from what her contribution to our collective narrative. And so I think one of the things that I have noticed in my sort of limited lifespan is that when I say the word ancestry to someone who is white, they hear something very different than what I hear when I say that word. And so I don't feel the restriction of only being able to borrow from the story of people in my bloodline. I feel permission to borrow from the larger, wider collective that is the black American experience, that is the African Diasphoric experience. (14:08): And I would say I even feel permission to borrow things from other cultures. And I say this to Daniel all the time, I'm going to steal that from you, right? I'm going to borrow that, right? And I will give credit where credit is due. I will say, I'm borrowing something from the Latinx experience. If you watch the black interpretation of Bad Bunny, literally there's stuff on social media that's like, why do you care? We're not Latinx. And then it cuts to this clip of this, I don't know what it's, it looks like Bad Bunny in a tiny desk concert, but behind him is this black African drummer who's going off. And then the answer is, because I feel this music in my soul. So you can hear that we are intentionally borrowing something that feels familiar to us because we feel permission to borrow it. (15:13): And then there's a lot of conversations in the black community about Bad Bunny that's like, I don't need to understand Spanish to feel what cultural pride looks like, and I'm down for that all day long. But you can feel that sense of, I feel permission to borrow something that feels familiar. I won't name it as borrowing, so I won't appropriate it, but I do feel that permission. And so that's probably what I would say to you, not as a pass for what might be true in your actual blood lineage, but I think that there's a strong strain of resistance for people of European descent around race and racism in this country. It's buried and it's untold for probably really intentional reasons, but it's there. And what does it mean to actually be given permission to give yourself permission to borrow from that and to name it as, I'm actually going to pull something from someone else and I'm going to borrow their collective strength. I'm going to add it to mine so that we could go in a different direction. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.

    40 min
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About

Conversations about faith, race, justice, gender and healing.

Information

  • Creator
    Danielle S. Castillejo, Margalyn Hemphill
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    136
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2019 - 2021
  • Show Website
    The Arise Podcast