This guide is for the person who loves someone persuaded by Dr. Umar Johnson and wants to be ready for that conversation without turning it into a contest. Its claim is simple: the order in which you say true things matters almost as much as the things themselves. Pastor Jerome Gay, in a Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields, models a particular order. He affirms what is good first, then places identity under the Creator, then corrects the history, then concedes what is fair, and he does all of it as someone who has done the reading. Over one week you will rehearse that order and build the reading habit underneath it. You can work through this alone in four or five short sittings, or with a group across two meetings.
Many of the people drawn to Johnson are not strangers to Christianity. Lisa Fields asks Gay specifically how he approaches people who have left Christianity and adopted Johnson’s thought. Gay’s account of why people leave matters for everything below. He points to a church that pictures Jesus and the African church fathers as white, tells its history as though it begins with European Reformers, and lets television prosperity preachers stand in for the whole Black church. Someone raised on that version heard a thin gospel. Your task is less to defeat their new view than to offer the fuller account they never received.
Before you read anything: write your first three sentences
Picture a specific person, or a composite if no one comes to mind, who tells you Christianity is a white man’s religion and that Johnson has opened their eyes. On paper, write the first three sentences you would honestly say in response. Do not polish them. Write what you would actually say if the conversation happened tonight.
Set the paper aside. You will come back to it at the end of the week. If you are in a group, no one has to read theirs aloud, now or later.
Read 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 slowly
Gay grounds his answer about identity in this chapter, so start here before you hear his argument. Read the passage twice, once quickly for the flow and once slowly with a pencil.
Paul writes, “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Corinthians 5:16). The phrase “after the flesh” means judging by outward, merely human standards. Then: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). And then the line Gay points to: “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Work through these observations before moving on:
- Who is Paul writing to, and what is he defending in this part of the letter? Skim the surrounding chapters if you need to.
- Circle every word that has to do with reconciliation. Who does the reconciling, and who receives it?
- An ambassador speaks for a sender. In verse 20, what posture does Paul take toward his hearers? Notice the verbs “beseech” and “pray.” Is that the stance of someone winning an argument?
- When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:16 that believers no longer judge anyone by merely human standards, does that erase a person’s background, or change what that background is allowed to decide about them? Write down which reading fits the passage better and why.
Keep your answers. They will become the test for everything Gay says.
The order Pastor Gay models
Gay never presents his approach as a numbered method. Read across the interview, though, and a sequence appears. Each step makes the next one possible.
First, affirm what is genuinely good
Asked how he approaches people who have adopted Johnson’s thought, Gay starts with cultural pride. He says, “I don’t want to demonize culture affinity.” When someone tells him they care about Black businesses and Black empowerment, his answer is that he does too, as a Black man leading a predominantly Black church. Later he states the principle plainly: “affirming blackness doesn’t mean anti whiteness.”
He does not say this to set up a trap. He means it. He even agrees with Johnson that Black parents should give their children homework every day. Affirmation that is only a tactic will be detected. Affirmation that is true earns you the next sentence.
Second, place identity under the Creator
Only after affirming does Gay take the next step: “our identity can’t be within our ethnicity alone.” His reason is about purpose. If there is a Creator, he argues, human beings exist for that Creator’s glory and not only for their own economic, social, political or even spiritual empowerment. This is where he cites 2 Corinthians 5 and the language of being Christ’s ambassadors.
Compare this with your notes on the passage. Gay is not asking anyone to care less about being Black. He is asking which identity gets the final word.
Third, correct the history
Gay then addresses the claim directly. He names Augustine of Hippo and Athanasius as African church fathers and says that African believers taught Christ well before the transatlantic slave trade. He also lays the blame where he thinks it belongs: many white Christians, in his view, have been silent or complicit by highlighting only white contributions. Lisa Fields calls church history the greatest apologetic here, describing it as “telling the truth about what happened.”
Fourth, concede what is fair and still hold the line
Gay agrees with Johnson’s critique of specific ministers who pursue private jets instead of investing in their communities, and he calls health and wealth teaching a false gospel. He also names the double standard of honoring slaveholding theologians while dismissing imperfect Black leaders. Then he refuses the overreach: “When you make proponents of the prosperity gospel, the norm, as opposed to the anomaly, you make the black church look bad.” His rule for any critic is “if you’re gonna critique our faith, you gotta critique it accurately.”
Running under all four steps is a posture toward the person himself. Gay says of Johnson, “I’m not against the brother,” and adds, “I pray for that brother salvation.”
Test the order before you trust it
A fair question: isn’t leading with agreement a softening move, a way to lower someone’s guard? Spend a few minutes with that objection rather than dismissing it.
One way to test it is to ask what would happen if you reversed the order. Imagine opening with Augustine and Athanasius before saying anything about the person’s pride or pain. The history would be just as true. But a person who left a church that felt like it erased them would likely hear it as one more attempt to talk them out of their heritage. The correction would confirm the very thing it meant to answer.
Now imagine stopping after the first step. You affirm Black pride, agree about prosperity preachers, and never reach identity or history. That conversation feels warm, but it hands your friend nothing they did not already have.
The order is not a trick, because each step is something Gay actually believes. It is closer to what Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:20: an ambassador who pleads, carrying a message that is not his to change. Write down whether you agree, and what in the passage supports or complicates your answer.
Also test the concessions against Galatians 1:8: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” Gay uses this verse against prosperity teaching. Notice what it implies. The standard for judging a preacher sits outside the preacher. That is why Gay can condemn hypocrisy among famous theologians without surrendering the faith, insisting that “only Jesus was the perfect one.”
The reading habit underneath the posture
Gay’s posture depends on something less visible: he has read. He is blunt about the alternative: “people aren’t reading,” and many are “Google experts or YouTube experts” instead of doing the work. Lisa Fields describes the same pattern. When she asks people for their sources, she says, “And they’ll point you to a video they watch.” Gay’s aim is that we’re not just repeating what someone else said, “but that we’re doing the research ourselves.” He applies it at home too, telling his children, “you have to read every day.”
Notice what Gay recommends when Lisa asks for resources. He does not point only to Christian rebuttals. He says that since Pan-Africanism is an ideology, you should read its own thinkers, naming W. E. B. Du Bois and especially Marcus Garvey, whom Johnson quotes often. Alongside them he suggests Free at Last by Carl Ellis and How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind by Thomas Oden. Reading the movement’s own sources is part of the posture. You cannot fairly answer a view you only know secondhand.
Practice: one source from each side this week
- Choose one primary writing connected to Pan-Africanism, such as a speech or essay by Marcus Garvey, and one serious source on early African Christianity. Read at least a chapter or a full speech of each, not a summary.
- From the Pan-African source, write down two things the author wants for people of African descent. Mark any you could honestly affirm as a Christian.
- From the history source, write down one name, place or development you did not know before, and note where the author got the evidence.
- Finally, write down one claim about Christianity, Africa or the Black church that you have repeated without checking. Look it up this week. Record whether it held up.
The last step matters most. Gay’s demand that critics critique accurately applies to Christians too.
Practice: restate before you respond
This exercise works best in pairs, though you can do it alone by writing both parts.
One person explains the strongest version of the case against Christianity they have heard: the faith reached many Black Americans through enslavers, the church presents a white Jesus and a European history, and a people seeking dignity should leave it behind. The other person may not respond yet. Their only job is to restate the case until the first person says, Yes, that is what I mean. Then the listener answers using Gay’s order: first a genuine affirmation, then a sentence about identity, then one historical correction, then one honest concession.
Switch roles. Afterward, discuss which step felt hardest to say sincerely. If you are leading a group, watch for two things. Some people want ammunition for a debate; gently turn them back toward the person they are trying to reach. Others are quietly unsettled because parts of the critique ring true. Let them say so without being rushed toward an answer.
Questions for discussion
- In your own experience, did the church you knew tell its history as though it started in Europe? What effect did that have on you or people you know?
- Gay affirms specific goals of Johnson’s movement. Which of those could you affirm without reservation, and which would you want to qualify? Why?
- In 2 Corinthians 5:16, Paul says believers no longer know anyone “after the flesh.” How would you explain that verse to someone who suspects Christianity wants them to forget they are Black?
- Gay says the double standard toward slaveholding theologians “should be addressed in love, but it should be addressed nonetheless.” What would it look like for your church to do both?
- Where do your own answers to hard questions usually come from? What would change if you held yourself to Gay’s standard of critiquing accurately?
- Gay speaks of Johnson with respect and prays for his salvation. Is there someone you find it hard to speak of that way? What makes it hard?
Return to your first three sentences
At the end of the week, take out the paper from the first sitting. Read your three sentences next to your notes on 2 Corinthians 5 and the order you rehearsed. Which step did you start with? Which did you skip? Did you say anything you would now want to check first?
Write three new sentences. They do not have to be clever. They need to be true, in the right order, and spoken by someone who has done the reading. Then carry one question into the conversation itself: what did this person never get to hear about Christ and his church, and am I prepared to tell them?