Lisa Fields: Hello. Welcome to the Jude three Project podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Fields. I’m the founder of the Jude three Project. Well, thank you for watching another episode of the G three Project podcast. As always, I’m your host, Lisa Fields, the founder of the G three Project. And today, I’m joined by my friend, doctor
Dr. JP Foster: JP Foster. Welcome, doctor Foster. No. Thank you so much for having me on, Lisa. It’s a pleasure and an honor.
Lisa Fields: Thank you for, joining us. You’ve been on Courageous, Conversation. So some people that follow us are familiar with you. But just tell our audience a little bit about who you are. Yeah. I mean, I’m a pastor
Dr. JP Foster: at Faithful Central Bible Church, where many of you may know Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, which is who’s my pops, led the church for forty years. So I’m I’m his successor. So I’ve been leading the church going on on past three, four years now. I’m a husband, married to Carmen this year, will be married seventeen years. I’m also a father. I have two children, my son, JP the second and my daughter Peyton, and I also teach at Biola University and do a little bit of consulting with faith, film projects. So that’s a little bit about me and what the Lord is doing in my life. Yeah. And I’m I’m honored that you invited me to,
Lisa Fields: do the for for your book.
Dr. JP Foster: Oh, you had to. You had to. Yeah.
Lisa Fields: And we’re gonna be talking about that book today. Tell our audience a little bit about why you wrote the book.
Dr. JP Foster: Yeah. First one is to say thank you for writing the ford. It meant a lot to me for you to do it for these reasons. When I was writing, during my my dissertation and during my doctoral program, I needed more data on what was going on in the black community and what the black us as black people experiencing as far as our faith. Some of the questions that were arising, some of the tensions we’re having, I needed to address those issues and I didn’t have a lot of data in order to do that. Then a then a lady by the name of Lisa Fields and the Jude three project began you began doing some great work. So it gave me more, insight. It gave me more sources that I could use to really kinda pinpoint what was going on. So for me personally, I started out at Faithful Central Bible Church as the young adult pastor. Then we’ve then we’ve had years of building and COVID hit. I started seeing a a shift, about a year and a half before, prior to COVID with, young black men in particular starting to question and have questions about Christianity that they they didn’t have before. When I started seeing that happen, I started having conversations as far as counseling sessions with them. They started asking questions. Man, you know, Christianity, man, was it was it given to us? I mean, what do we do with this faith? So they’re wrestling with with tough questions about Christianity and how it was being perceived in our nation. So from there, it made me start to to really start doing more apologetic series in my bible studies with the young adults. I started talking at different colleges. But for me, I the pain and the burden for me was I’m watching so many black men and black women struggle with their faith. Some, as you know, starting to walk away from not just deconstructing, but starting to walk away from their faith, completely. And I knew the reasons why they were leaving, we weren’t talking about as a church. So I began to talk about those issues. So for me, it was it was not just a political or a, for me, it’s more of a salvific issue. And I think what I’ve realized was the history of Christianity was was narrowed And if they’d had a broader understanding of the history of the faith, the African roots of the faith before Europe and America, they would have a great appreciation for what the gospel actually is. So that’s really it started with a burden that I’m watching so many black men and women walk away from the faith. And the Lord has given me, you know, allowed me to have education and and study to be able to know how to answer these questions. That’s really how it started.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. And I’m I’m glad you, wrote the book because I think it’s so important for us in this day to meet people where they are in their questions, in their pain, in their hurt and confusion. And it’s easy to be manipulated when you aren’t armed with truth. Amen. Amen. Because people manipulate your pain and they can take you any direction
Dr. JP Foster: you want. I’m sure you see that all the time. Yeah. What what I’ve seen with religions or cults outside of Christianity is they they pull on our emotional strength. So they’re very emotive. So they speak to our pain. You know, they raped our grandmothers. They raped our ancestors. Look, you know, look how the faith has been weaponized against us. Look what they’ve done to us. They enslaved us. And so you have all and this is historical fact. So you have all of these emotions rising up in you. And if you you know, that there’s anger, there’s pain, there’s disillusionment, there’s so many things that’s going on. And if you don’t have the the truth and the history with it, you will you will believe a lie. So was Christianity distorted and misused and abused to dehumanize black people in this country? Absolutely. But that’s not the that’s not the only story. And I think once they have a bigger understanding of the history of Christianity, they’ll understand it’s not a white man’s religion at all. Mhmm. In our current moment,
Lisa Fields: because of white Christian nationalism, that whole argument is even more pervasive on social media. It’s always a viral tweet on TikTok, on Instagram. How would you instruct our people to navigate that space for
Dr. JP Foster: trying to help people? It’s just danger. I I just think it’s dangerous. I think that anytime you take a thirty to sixty minute or second clip, it’s just not enough information. You don’t know first of all, you don’t know who the person is in the video. Are they credible? You don’t know their background or education. And and it’s easy to manipulate someone who has a motive. People make videos and they have a motive behind it. And I think that you can’t just you can’t make a salvific eternal decision based on a thirty to sixty second video. I think it’s just dangerous. Are there some cliff that’ll make you, you know, praise God and whatnot? I’m not saying all thirty or sixty minute clips or sixty second clips are bad. What I’m saying is to make a life decision, a salvific decision, eternal decision based off of a clip, I I wouldn’t do it. I think they should do their research and I thank God that, the Jude three Project and God has allowed people like myself to write to address these issues head on. I would I would I would sincerely ask them to seek out known, well known, vetted scholars that can help them navigate through the pain because we’re not dodging it. We’re not running from it. And we’d love, like you said, to meet them where they are and allow the Holy Spirit to move and work in their lives where they exactly where they are.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. What claims from the book do you want our audience to really think through in this current cultural moment?
Dr. JP Foster: Yeah. Yeah. We’re in we’re in a heavy moment. We’re seeing Christianity be weaponized. We’re seeing a use for power. You mentioned, Christian nationalism. You know, I’ve I’ve sat on different podcasts, and I don’t even know if they’ve been able to give a full definition of what it is. But in our experience, anytime our we start seeing Christianity’s ideology, Trump theology, we’re in trouble. And so I think that that’s that’s the core issue is there’s nothing wrong with having having pride for your country. There’s nothing wrong with patriotism. But nationalism can become very dangerous. And I think when it’s when it’s used and perceived the way it is in our country, it brings us back to peep we we have PTSD and and our and trauma from what what our ancestors and grandparents have experienced in this country. So I would say to what I write to that is you gotta know the full history. So I I divide the book up into three major sections. The first section is bearing the wound. The second one is breaking the chains. The third one is becoming a new body. And in this section of bearing the wound, I gotta be honest with you, Lisa. It’s it’s hard. Bearing the wound is what we don’t talk about and what what they’re seeking. What really happened with this faith? Was it used to weaponize us? Was it used to just to destroy us? Was it we used to manipulate and all those things? So what I would say in that in that sense is bearing the wound is, let’s let’s just address it. Christianity was weaponized to dehumanize black people. It is a it’s it’s historical fact. So I don’t shy away from it. So it the the the beginning is very painful because I I use how Christianity was, distorted and how the slave Bible. Right? You go to the Bible Museum as I did and you walk in there and and I mean, this book is heavier than the slave Bible. I mean, the slave Bible was like a pamphlet, like a church fan, and 90% of the Old Testament was stripped from it. 90%. 40 to 50% of the New Testament is missing. So the slave Bible was literally and legitimately made to subjugate and to dehumanize black people to justify slavery. And I think that is that is that’s what that’s the fact, the bearing the wound. They use the curse of Ham. Ham wasn’t even cursed. So they use scripture to manipulate to manipulate scriptures, to justify slavery with the curse of Ham, to to come to a conclusion that black Africans were perpetually, used for servitude from generation to generation. And so we see and I I laid out how they distorted scripture and how they deliberately used and weaponized scripture to justify, slavery and for their own greed, their gain, and to destroy black people. And it’s a fact. But from bearing the wound, I have to also I I show how this wound didn’t start with slavery because you start seeing it in Jim Crow and segregation. For example, you have Acts 17, you have the Tower Of Babel. They use these scriptures like Acts 17 where God has carved out boundaries to justify redlining and justify segregation that we’re not supposed to be together. I’m like, what Bible are you reading? Have you read the Bible? What do you do with what Jesus does? Jesus goes through Samaria. There’s so many there’s so many things in the ministry of of Jesus that it doesn’t even make any sense. If you read the gospels and you read the epistles, it makes absolutely no sense. But I have to deal with how the scriptures were weaponized, how it was distorted, that’s bearing the wound. And you see this going from slavery to segregation, Jim Crow. You see it going from redlining and it’s it and our current date I have dates like from 2021 to 2024 of black women and black men. There’s a black woman and and she owned a home and she wanted to refinance her house and see how much her house was house was worth and they they lowballed her. I mean they literally almost two times they they they she got two times the amount when she stripped her home from anything that looked like a black person owned it and had a white friend stand in for her. This is 02/2024. So we’re starting to we’re starting to see that this is not just something that happened to us back then. It’s now in systems. So we’re seeing now this distortion and manipulation in systems. Is every system bad? No. Is every system corrupt? No. But it is embedded in systems. Then we start seeing it in mass mass incarceration. We’ve seen how we used used with with crack and heroin. We start seeing now how the the the legitimate charges for black drugs that black people use, the black community use, they were charged at a higher rate, like the sentences were harder, they were harsher deliberately and you it’s on it’s in record from from from Washington that this was that this was deliberate and the book has all of these all these stories in there. But then we got to go to breaking the chains, Lisa. We can’t just stay at the distortions of Christianity. We have to get to a place where we break these chains. So now that I’ve unearthed the truth of what’s happened to destroy Christianity and dehumanize us as Black people, I say we got to be liberated. So how do we break the chains? Lisa, you know this. There’s there was a liberation movement. There’s a civil rights movement. And let me just say it this way. When Nat Turner got a hold of the whole Bible, Nat Turner turned up. It was it was when he got the whole Bible and I think that’s what we miss. That this movement of liberation, this loop this this movement of a of a demand for freedom, when Nat Turner’s like, wait a minute, he’s reading Exodus and he says, wait a minute. And and Moses says, God says, let my people go. He’s now saying, wait a minute. You mean God demands my freedom? Now he knew he was empowered by God that this is that the God God is behind me now, but we’re not, you know, let my people go. We see that. We see the liberation movement. Then we see the civil rights movement. We see, you know, black Christians standing up using the word of God, using Christianity as as a as a way to help us get to freedom. And so that’s a part of breaking the chains is that you have to see that yet was it weaponized? Yes. But we use Christianity empowered us literally to freedom. And I think that’s that’s where you have to balance it. That was it distorted? Yes. But in the distortions, I go to breaking those chains. How do you break those chains and what’s that look like in our lives?
Lisa Fields: Yeah. And I think that’s a holistic a holistic view because you’re you’re validating what they what people are seeing, what they are experiencing, and then walking them from that validation to how do we get from that to truth to freedom. Amen. And, is what so many need right now in this current moment. For those who are in these conversations at the barbershop. Yeah. On the on the court, you know, you’re talking to people, you’re talking across the dinner table. That’s when these conversations get the most challenging Because usually you’re dealing with over talkers and you can’t quite get all the facts across. Or if oftentimes it becomes a battle. How would you advise in in your experience having these conversations? You’re in the heart of Inglewood, so you’re having these conversations all the time. How would you advise what are some wise things that one can do in these conversations when you’re in a conversation with someone who is not letting you get your point across or trying to dominate?
Dr. JP Foster: Yeah. Number one before you get in conversation be informed. You don’t want to be in a barbershop trust me I know you don’t wanna be in a barbershop or a setting where you don’t you’re not informed. So I think, you know, the the research and the tools that you provide, with you three, get informed. No. Learn. Be a learner. You know, you know, because I have multiple degrees, but I’m a learner. I’m a disciple of Jesus. I’m a learner. I’m a nerd. I’m always trying to learn. I’m always trying to study. So I would say a resource like this will help you understand be informed. And I would say there’s there’s two different types of way. I’m gonna use a psych psychological way of of listening, and I’m gonna use a theological way of listening. So my approach is this. The the art of listening. Psychologically that means we make a mistake. This happens in friendships. It happens in barbershop talk and it happens in marriages. Right, in families. There’s art of listening says we need to make sure we don’t make the mistake of listening to respond instead of listening to hear. And I think sometimes as believers, as Christians, because we even even when you have the information, you got the word of God, or you have a resource that can help you, we we we’re like double dutching. We can’t wait to get in and shut what they’re saying down. And if we if we move or act too fast, we missed we will miss the heart the real the Holy Spirit will reveal to you what’s really going on in that person’s heart. So I say just slow down and listen to hear. And when you listen to hear, you respond differently. When you listen to respond, it’s really you’re waiting to get your point across. You’re not really hearing the person, you want to attack them and and you don’t really care what they have going on. When I’ve listened in barbershops, when I’ve listened in college campuses, when I’ve listened to dinner tables, when I’ve listened just anywhere, I want to, I say Holy Spirit, what is going on and reveal to me what’s really going on in this person’s heart? You can’t know if you don’t listen. So I would say start with listening. Now in the body of Christ, Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls it the ministry of listening. That as believers, and this is really when it gets when I get to my third part of coming becoming a new body, because there’s so much division in the church between the black and white church, between white evangelicals and the black church. There’s just so much division and we can’t get there without the art of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s the ministry of listening is that if we’re brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, our first one one of our acts of love with one another is to listen to one another, to hear from one another. Right? I can’t I can’t love you with compassionately or or empathize with you or even aid you without listening to you. I need to listen. So I think those two things have have actually helped me to, literally, people on college campuses have heard me speak, come to the church, this is no joke, who who were disillusioned by the faith and they’ve gotten baptized. They’ve let they’ve come back they’ve come and got baptized. But it’s because I was listening. I wouldn’t scream I wouldn’t I’m not gonna have a screaming match with you. I I I know the truth and the truth will set you free. So I’m not I’m not gonna scream with you to to prove that how smart I am because at the end of the day, screaming someone back to church ain’t happening. It is the love of God that draws people to himself. And I might be or you might be the person who just who’s just planting the seed. Then someone else is gonna come and water it, and then somebody else and it will be the one that helps it grow, and they mature in their faith to be who God’s called them to be.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. No. That’s that’s helpful. And what you’re communicating through listening is that you actually want to be in relationship with the person. Amen. I think so much of our discourse online is fueled by bitterness and to not wanting a resolve. Yeah. Yeah. And not wanting to have that. For those who are listening and they say, I hear you, doctor Foster. I’m I’m they’re reading through the book and they’re like, I just can’t get over the evil’s done. Yeah. Christianity is so good. Why is this even happening? Like, why why could it be used this way if it’s so good? Yeah. It it just seems like it does more harm than good in our community. What would you say to them? Yeah. I say,
Dr. JP Foster: we have free will. What was you what was done in Christ’s name wasn’t Christ. It’s not even the gospel at all. How can I say this? Wicked people, choosing my words words carefully, wicked people weaponized Christianity to harm us. God if you read the Bible, God didn’t do that. And so these, you know, we let the people have free will. They chose of their own volition to use this faith to attack us. But if you read scripture and you understand history, the same Bible that was used no. It wasn’t the same Bible because 90% of the old was gone and 40% of the new was gone. When we got a hold of the whole Bible, we got to understand who God is, when we understand the ministry of Jesus. I’ll give you an example. Jesus says in John chapter four, I need must go through Samaria. I must go through Samaria. So I would say to them, look at the ministry of Jesus. Look at the ministry of Jesus. Jews never went through Samaria. They went around. It was the trip was three times more just to avoid Samaritans. Why? Because Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along. Jesus goes through Samaria, meets a woman, the Samaritan woman at the well, ministers to her, and she becomes what we call an evangelist. Right. And so it’s incredible. It’s important to see that Paul says this in his epistles, right? If you read Galatians or you read Ephesians, Paul says that Christ has destroyed the wall of hostility, the wall, the wall of separation, the wall of division. Christ has destroyed it. There’s no more no more Greek, no more Jew, no more slave, no more free man, no more male, no more free man. We’re all one in Christ. Colossians says we’re all one in one and all. So when you read the ministry of Jesus, he brings us together and in unity. And Jesus says in John 17, Lord I pray, and this haunts me, Lord I pray that they be one. And this haunts me because the next word Jesus says, so that the world will believe that the father sent the son. And so now now when we’re divided, when we’re not living out the the truth of the gospel, we’re not living out Christianity as it is in in scripture, We’re sending a message to the world. Like, right now with Christian nationalism and everything that’s going on and the division between the whites and the black people, Christians in our country, we’re sending a message to the world. What is it, Doctor Foster? That the father didn’t send the son. Lord, I pray that they be one so that the world will believe that the father sent the son. So when we’re so divided like this, we’re impacting the gospel. We’re impacting people believing that the father sent the son. So to me, it’s a bigger issue. But if they understand the ministry of Jesus, they understand that there’s a difference between wickedness and evil from people who have free will and actually the ministry of Jesus.
Lisa Fields: I love that. That’s that’s powerful because it it brings me back to first Peter three fifteen, the the pillar apologetic for, first. And in first Peter three, he’s talking about how we should conduct ourselves in relationship to people that our most difficult relationships. Yeah. Spouses, the people that are hard to forgive. And then because of the way we conduct ourselves, because of our bent towards forgiveness and restoration and reconciliation Yeah. Then people will begin to ask about the hope that we have. Come on. And so it’s really about our behavior that provokes questions, not our arguments that that bring the questions. It’s the behavior, which is what you’re speaking to. The unification being one, and which is why I believe the enemy fights against our relationships with people that are different from us so hard because it distorts, like you said, how people view,
Dr. JP Foster: the father and the father. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you gotta remember when when it comes to reconciliation, we’re we’re reconciled to God and because of where our rec us being reconciled to God, it should impact our horizontal relationships with everyone else. And so you can you can see that there’s a a fracture or or something broken in someone’s relationship vertically with God by how they handle people horizontally. You can see it. And when people are with God and allow him to be able to heal and to mend and to make them whole, that wholeness shows up in how they love, how they care, how they see other people. And, if you if you see so if you understand your relationship with God should allow you to see the imago Dei, the image of God in everyone. You may you may have differences. You may believe even believe differently, but you should always see the human dignity in black people, white, no matter what your color is. And I think that’s one of the core issues of the distortions of scripture that they had to dehumanize us and strip us from the image of God in order to treat us and dehumanize us the way that they did. But if we’re reconciled to God, it should change the way we see each other because we should always see the Imago Dei in somebody which gives them dignity, worth, and value.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. I love that. And it’s if like you said, it gives us a framework. If people aren’t treating people right Yeah. Then their relationship with God is off.
Dr. JP Foster: Yep.
Lisa Fields: And so Hurt people hurt people hurt people. Yeah. Yeah. What what else before we close do you want our audience to know about your book? What other points that we missed Yeah. That you wanna cover?
Dr. JP Foster: Yeah. I would love for them to understand that this this the gospel of my black skin was specifically a burden God put on my heart, to black readers. So I I make that up upfront when I’m when I’m sharing, I say that this is intentionally towards a black audience, but I don’t two things I don’t wanna be misunderstood for. Number one is that it’s anti white, and number two that it’s only supposed to be read by black people. So I think I have had my white colleagues and scholars and people read this book, and they’ve said, my good. I did not know the wealth of the black experience in America. Some of them cringed. Some of them had to put the book down because they didn’t they didn’t realize. I think it gave them insight to, woah. Now I’m now I’m able to see the black experience in America through a diff completely different lens. So I would say that, it’s it’s deliberately and intentionally written to black readers, and it would it would empower your faith. I’ll give you an example. We talked about that narrow history. I widen the historical gap, make it broader because before, Christianity came to Europe and America, it was in Africa. And so I have a whole section on the African roots. How you you have people like Athanasius and and Tertillingen and Augustine, these black theologians. So Augustine, people know Martin Luther and they know John Calvin, but they don’t realize that he was a massive heavy influence, on them. So when you’re reading Calvin’s institutes and and Martin Luther, like, they received their influence from Augustine. When you look at Tertullian, another I’m going back to North Africa. Tertullian, when you get the he coined the word trinitage where we get our concept trinity from. You look at Athanasius. He was dealing with issues of the incarnation, and what does it mean for Jesus to be fully God and fully man? This is on African soil, and I think that that shows, us in the text before Europe and before America. And so I I dedicate a huge part of this book to show on the African roots that we were already in the book. Africa the Christianity was thriving in Africa way before colonialism and colonization. And I think that if you read this book, you will learn the rich history of what we’ve gone through as a people. Black readers will be so empowered in their faith, like, because they’re gonna learn things they didn’t know about their faith and about Africa and the big role that Africa played before slavery, and then they’re gonna see how the faith was used to empower us, to liberate us, and then the most important is what does it look like to actually be the church? How do we live out the gospel of Jesus Christ since it was distorted so much? What does it look like if you’re Latino, if you’re Asian, if you’re white, if you’re Black? What does it actually look like for us to live out this gospel that we’ve been called to live out by accepting Jesus as our Lord and savior? So I’m excited because I love I mean, it it’s to me, it was an answer to some of the tension I was dealing with, and I know it’ll be a blessing to many of the readers who read it.
Lisa Fields: Yes. I love that. And you also have a book that just came out, a little under a year ago as well. Yeah. Finding Freedom in Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Finding Freedom in Jesus. Which I think would be a good follow-up after one. Oh, yeah. Tell our audience a little bit about, the the reason, that book well, just a overview of what that book entails
Dr. JP Foster: and how it would be a good follow-up for you as you read this, The Gospel of My Black Sea. Yeah. So once you get to the end of becoming a new body thanks, Lisa. When you come become the new body, it’s how do you live out the gospel? Well, my other book is called Finding Freedom in Jesus, the 21 attributes of your identity in Christ. So the the book is in intended to root us in our true identity. It goes through 21 attributes of what it looks like to to live and love and and look like Jesus. And so it’s transformative. So many people today don’t know you if we’re if you ask them, we’re in a season of biblical illiteracy where people don’t fully know what it means to be Christian. They don’t know the scriptures. They don’t even know what it means to live it out. So this book deliberately, allows us to see our identity in Christ. I’ll give you an example. It goes through let’s look at an example, loved. What does love mean in the culture? Like, what does the world how does the world define love? How does the Old Testament define love? How does the New Testament define love? And how do we have a concise definition of what it means to be loved biblically? And then we go ask reflection sections that you personally can dive into to transform your life or you can do life groups. And I’ve had pastors do sermons through the book. So it I’ll say it this way. You can’t read all 21 chapters and be the same person you did afterwards. It’s transformative. Absolutely transformative.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. And I love the example you gave of of defining love the biblical way because culture has so distorted.
Dr. JP Foster: Yes.
Lisa Fields: Love. And because we we know God is love, it gets conflated and and distorted and warped in various ways. So I think it’s important to define the terms because often we’re using the same language and meaning different things and creating a discourse around something that doesn’t have rootedness in the same definition, and we miss each other in conversation.
Dr. JP Foster: Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you’re if you’re like you said, if you’re a black reader and you’re disillusioned on you, you’re you’re wrestling through what it means to be fully black and fully Christian, do I gotta leave my Christianity my my blackness at the door to be Christian, you wanna read this book. It’s gonna teach you how it is to live up. You can that you can be fully black and fully Christian and that that God loves you exactly how you’re created. You wanna know how to be liberated in your faith and look more and more like Jesus, finding freedom in Jesus will absolutely transform your life. Yes. That’s awesome. Tell my audience how they can get in contact with you once again. You can get in contact with me on Instagram. Also also streaming platforms is I am JP Foster. So it’s just literally, I am JP Foster. That’s on Instagram and my website. Everything is I am JP Foster.
Lisa Fields: Yep. That’s that’s the easy way. Well, thank you, doctor Foster. This has been a rich conversation. Make sure y’all get his book. It’s available wherever books are sold, both of the books. And thank you for for joining us. Remember, you can catch all our past episodes at g3project.org by hitting and, there’s or go into our YouTube channel. We cannot do what we do without generous support from people like you, so consider becoming a monthly partner or one time giver at g3project.org by hitting that donate tab. And until next time, grace and peace and God bless.