Social ethicist Stacey Floyd-Thomas offers a womanist perspective on how humility can go terribly wrong, when it's hung over the heads of the humiliated, marginalized, and oppressed. This criticism of the traditional Christian virtue helps clarify the role of joy as the ultimate virtue of Black life, the centrality of black folk wisdom, and the beauty of black sisterhood. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.
Social ethicist Stacey Floyd-Thomas offers a womanist perspective on how humility can go terribly wrong, when it's hung over the heads of the humiliated, marginalized, and oppressed. This criticism of the traditional Christian virtue helps clarify the role of joy as the ultimate virtue of Black life, the centrality of black folk wisdom, and the beauty of black sisterhood. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.
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About Stacey Floyd-Thomas
Stacey Floyd-Thomas is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Associate Professor of Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University, and is a nationally recognized scholar and leading voice in social ethics who provides leadership to several national and international organizations that educate, advocate, support and shape the strategic work of individuals, initiatives, and institutions in their organizing efforts of championing and cultivating equity, diversity, and inclusion via organizations such as Black Religious Scholars Group (BRSG), Society for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Religion (SRER), Strategic Effective Ethical Solutions (SEES), Society of Christian Ethics (SCE) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR). She holds a PhD in Ethics, a MBA in organizational behavior and two Masters in Comparative religion and Theological Studies with certification in women’s studies, cultural studies, and counseling. Not only has she published seven books and numerous articles, she is also as an expert in leadership development, an executive coach and ordained clergy equipped with business management. As a result, Floyd-Thomas has been a lead architect in helping corporations, colleges, universities, religious congregations, and community organizations with their audit, assessment, and action plans in accordance with evolving both the mission and strategic plans. Without question, she is one of the nation’s leading voices in ethical leadership in the United States and is globally recognized for her scholarly specializations in liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy, and postcolonial studies. Additionally, leaving podium and pulpit, she hosts her own podcast to popularize and make her profession and vocation intergenerationally and intracommunally accessible through The Womanist Salon Podcast.
Stacy Floyd Thomas: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center For Faith and Culture. For more information, visit faith.yale.edu. True joy, being a real thinking person of faith, is not only realizing that the life that you may save might be your own, but it is also to know clearly that there is no divine justice that is not linked to social justice. And that the work of the Gospel, the work of the Church, the work of Christianity, is the work of Jesus. It is the work of knowing that we can save souls without losing our minds or losing or lynching the lives of others in the process. Our work has to be not only salvific, but sane, and lifesaving.
Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa with the Yale Center For Faith and Culture. The novelist Alice Walker, known for her widely celebrated novel, The Color Purple, once wrote, "There are those who believe black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation." And our guest on the show today offers this definition of joy: "Joy is the intrinsic capacity of black people to bear, yet sidestep, the dynamics of their oppression. Thus, joy is the ultimate virtue in black life, which is marked by resilience. Today, Ryan McAnally-Linz interviews our friend and social ethicist, Stacy Floyd Thomas. She is E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair, and associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University. She specializes in liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy, and post-colonial studies, not to mention ethical leadership and management. Now, if you're interested in the perspectives that she shares in the show today, then I encourage you to learn more about womanist theory, and you can learn more about womanism over at Stacy Floyd thomas's new podcast, "the Womanist Salon." The show that she just launched. It explores and celebrates black womanhood and the wisdom it offers. This episode comes in two parts. First, Ryan and Stacy discuss humility, not just as a virtue, but as a vice. You see, humility can go terribly wrong when it's held over the heads of those who are already humiliated, marginalized and oppressed. So Stacy offers a womanist correction to humility. Second, they discuss black joy. The in illimitable resilient, beautiful black joy embodied in the privilege of black folk wisdom and the fierce urgency of now that emerges from the common sense of a black grandmother's kitchen, and the beauty, and abundant life of black joy. Now, if you're interested in these topics, specifically oppressive humility, as well as black joy, then I would direct you to Stacy Floyd Thomas's essay in a recent book that Ryan and I and our colleague Drew Collins, published, The Joy of Humility, the Beginning and End of the Virtues.Now, if you're interested in this edited volume, which contains all sorts of perspectives, from psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and ethicists, then check the show notes for a link to where you can purchase it. Thanks for listening today. Enjoy.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:So, uh, Stacy, thank you for taking some time to talk with us today. I wanting to, partly out of personal interest, and just also, because it seems like an important topic for our day, talk a little bit about humility. I wanted to start by asking what sort of worries you have about how Christians have understood and employed the claim that humility is a virtue. It's one of these kind of classic Christian virtues, but I take it, you see some, some downsides to that, some problems, and I was hoping you could, you could walk us through those.
Stacy Floyd Thomas:Well, thanks for the invitation. Just to, to be in conversation with you, an ongoing conversation with you at the Center. You know, at the root of my critique, Ryan, is, what good is humility for those who live in humble conditions? Or find themselves confronting humiliating circumstances day in and day out. Right? So my observation is to put in stark relief, the moral implications of how we employ language in assessing life conditions and virtue or vice for its buyable assessment of what is good or just. We can even put it another way, if we say fasting is a spiritual discipline as Christians. How is fasting useful for those who cannot find enough to eat. Do you see that very logic. And so I really love Toni Morrison because she reminds us that we should be leery of language that lures in weight of the bottom line for some, but it becomes bottomed out mindedness for others. Language and the ideas that give them power can privilege the powerful, while simultaneously oppressing the other. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language, all are typical of policing languages of material realities. And they cannot, or do not permit new knowledge, necessary visions, or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas. But this is not mere wordplay. And for some, they might think that's the case, but when we're talking about religion, it literally holds life and salvation and its balance. So we cannot ignore the dialectical tension between normative, ephemeral notions that are produced by a kind of Western, privileged, male-centered normativity. Up against the real life, real lived existential concerns embraced by those who live on the underside, those who live on the margins, or those who actually make up two thirds of the world and the majority of American society. And so, while humility makes sense as a virtue for those who know little about humble beginnings, but for those who have been continuously persecuted, oppressed without, invisible, voiceless, silence, or having been censored, they know humility all too well. Um, so that for me, that's that that's important for us to look at the language that we use around vice and virtue and the, and the moral predicament that it can place certain people in.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So, so let me see if I'm following this. The critique is something that is a salutary, spiritual recommendation and an actual virtue, uh, when it's recommended to people in say a powerful, secure, social location, if it's recommended in the same way, in the same tones, without any sort of contextual rearticulation to people in a humiliating, even oppressed, social location, that's not going to be a virtue because it doesn't tend towards, towards flourishing. Is that roughly the argument?
Stacy Floyd Thomas:That is, that is spot on. So for instance, if we were to think about, uh, Aristotle's notion of proper pride, if we were to look at that within the American context, if the pride and flourishing of white people automatically ends up in translating to the disregard or disrespect of black people, then white pride becomes a vice that makes the virtue of black pride necessary. So when we talk about Black Lives Matter, in normative understandings of virtue, that's a prideful statement, but the statement is being made because they have not mattered. And so the response to self-respect, and just relationship normatively has been rejected as a, as a proud statement. And the rejection of that statement, and saying, All Lives Matter, actually is the vice of pride, which the response or, or critique is being projected against. Black self-respect, which is to say, Black Lives Matter means that black people, too, are made in the image of God. It is not to say that white people don't matter. Let me give another example. I remember in the, growing up in the eighties, when people would say, why do we have a Black History Month? That seems unfair. We don't have a white history month. No, the whole calendar belongs to white people. So do you see what I'm saying? So if you look at it through a solipcystic point of view, it would say, oh, how, how proud it is or how selfish it is to, to, to take ownership of an entire month, right? If you're going to look at it through that white solipcystic gaze, sure. That's what it seems like, but that is in the context of a world where the whole entire calendar belongs to white people. When I go into the CVS that's across the street from my school. And if I'm looking for haircare products for my daughter or myself on the way of, you know, doing the quick stop all the way home. I am not going to find haircare products for my daughter and myself there, which means the students who are, who are enrolled in, and matriculating at Vanderbilt, who are also African-American, they're not going to find what they need there. That the students who are Thai, or who are Chinese, or who are, um, Sri Lankan, they can't go to Kroger and readily find the, the, all the ingredients to make up the dishes that nourish their, their, their palette. Right? And so that in and of itself states that what is needed for your flourishing, what is needed for your day to day survival and maintenance does not matter. So in, in light of those few analogies, what I'm trying to say is that humility, normatively, is a disservice as a virtue. It actually is a, it's a vice, and it's a vice grip that normative Christian theology projects onto it's majority representation or the accuminism or, or the Christian fellowship of the Church.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: And so, whatever you right to take it to this, this kind of idea or a pattern, it's strictly limited to humility and pride, but is a broader methodological sort of claim that virtues and vices aren't abstract universal things, but, but require some sort of reading of, of context and social dynamics and patterns in order to, uh, to make an assessment of what, what would be virtue or vice in this particular case, in this particular arrangement of life, uh, rather than things that you can just identify in advance and then apply across the board. Is that, is that right?
Stacy Floyd Thomas:Absolutely. And not only virtue and vice in general, but evil, in particular. So when we talk about evil versus good, right? What is evil? Evil is actually the misuse of the good, right? I mean, if, if, if we were to think about it, um, when we talk about th th the seven deadly sins or, uh, the seven vices, or what Gandhi calls, 'the moral blunders of the world,' there is nothing wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is a gift from God. It is when pleasure is selfishly taken to an obsessive point, where it is not responsible, whether it, where it objectifies the other, and in and of itself ends up dehumanizing the individual. That's where it gives itself over to evil. When we think about gluttony, whether we're talking about the gluttony of spirit, Right? When we might be talking about prosperity gospel and thinking about the spiritual food of the Word of God, or when we're actually talking about food itself, we need food for thoughts, food for the soul and food for the body. But when we board off of it, In a way in which we can not appreciate it in a way in which it just fattens us rather than sustains us in the way we feed off of junk, that that might be full of in volume, but lack the, the, the, the nutrition, um, for our wellbeing. Th that is how a good becomes evil and produces gluttony. So humility plays a key role for those whose norm and context is full of power and privilege, but it does nothing for those who are already humiliated and already existing in humble conditions.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:It's like using the language of self emptying that gets connected to, to humility through, through, uh, Philippians two, where we're Christ self emptying is, is seen as a paradigm of humility to, to empty oneself may very well be the good that is required of someone who's full. Um, but to, to tell somebody who's empty. Empty empty, empty, uh, would just be foolish, would be, it will be not more than foolish, there'd be something whispered about it. Right.
Stacy Floyd Thomas:And just you giving that example reminds me of probably the best womanist, philosophical lesson that I have ever received. It was my first year I was coming home, um, for Thanksgiving break as a first year student at Vassar College. And we had, um, a philosophy assignment where we were just supposed to practice an argumentation around a philosophical conundrum. And I was in the kitchen with my Nana, who was in town to visit from Selma, Alabama. And she was an exquisite cook. She was making biscuits and I thought I was doing a great job just being in the kitchen with her, right? Uh, as, as a, you know, as an 18 year old, who wasn't interested much in intergenerational conversation with the elderly, but wanted to be fed from her fabulous cuisine. But I was taking up residence in the kitchen at the dining room table, working on my Apple II C E computer, that big honking thing that I add all the kitchen table working on an assignment. So trying to engage me in, uh, grandmotherly banter, she said, well, what are you working on baby? And I said, oh man, I just a paper I have to write for class. And she said, what is it about. And then I was like, are you kidding me? And I was like, "Oh Nanna, just, you know, just nothing, just an exercise. You wouldn't understand it." Now, my Nanna, was a brilliant woman, but obviously being the wife of a sharecropper, you could assume that she didn't have a college education. In fact, after having 14 children, she went back to school in her early sixties to get her GED. And so, and here I am at Vassar college, right, uh, taking philosophy. So I, I wasn't even clear if she understood what philosophy was. I definitely wasn't interested in trying to explain it because I didn't full well know myself. And so, uh, I said, well, Nana, I said nothing, just a general exercise for class. And she said, no, no, no. She said, well, indulge me on it. And I said, Nana. And she said, well, first of all, you should be here, learning how to make biscuits for me from me. She said, because Nana's not going to always be here. And Nana doesn't have a recipe to write down. It's something you have to learn by practice and experience. And I said, well, Nana, I don't have time to learn how to make biscuits. And in fact, nobody can make, this gets like you do, you know, of course I was blowing smoke and, and brown nosing there. And so I said, but you know, I'm really pressed to do this. And she said, you have one or two choices. Tell me what your assignment is about, or come here and make biscuits. And I said, okay, Nana, I said, we're just doing a reflective, philosophical exercise, I said, which is basically about the logic people use, how they think, how their mind works. And I said, and it's basically the question is a glass half full or half empty. And she said, well, that's easy. I said, no, Nana is not easy. I said that it's, it's a kind of, you know, conundrum. It's just an exercise. It has no answer. She says it does have an answer. I said, Nana, it does. She said, listen, write this down. And then come up here and cook biscuits with me. I said Nana. And she said, if something is being poured into the glass, it's half full. If something's being poured out it's half empty. Write that down, wash your hands. And come to the counter. I did just that. And I got an, a plus on the paper and my professor ended up writing a journal article based on it. Um, that is the epistemological privilege of the oppressed. It's the fierce urgency of now that Ping talks about that gives a kind of commonsensical, clear minded, exacting, profound, critical engagement of what we just think about theoretically, but other people's lives depend upon it. What had scholars or students wrestling as an exercise was something that was just commonsensical to my Nana. And when she was explaining that to me, I didn't have to repeat anything. And she was, she had not stopped kneading the dough for the biscuits. It was that easy, that convenient and that clear. And so that is why we need not only difference in bodies, but, but difference in perspectives. There's a way within our society when we're talking about language, when we're talking theologically, that we see difference as deficiency. But if we truly do believe that only when two or three are gathered, touching and agreeing that that the divine shows up and there, and that means that we cannot have any reflection or appreciation or apprehension of God outside of that diversity. So there's a way in which, if we can only know goodness and God in diversity, we can only necessarily tackle evil with that diversity as well. And thereby assure a sense of flourishing for ourselves as humans.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:So, I want to take a bit of a risk here and push in on something because I heard you switch a little bit from, uh, an epistemological privilege that your Nana had to, um, advocating for diversity. It's it seems to me that it would be possible to take the ladder and kind of run with it without hearing the full weight of the former.
Stacy Floyd Thomas:That's, uh, that's uh, uh, poignant observation. I just,
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:I want to ask, that epistemological privilege kind of, what is it, where does it come from? And what's the right stance to have when you recognize it?
Stacy Floyd Thomas:When I'm talking about diversity, I'm talking about the diversity that my Nana represents, not just diversity of opinion in general, right? Because I do think that in order to, to have true dialogue, true community and true communion, you, you definitely, you don't have the right to remain silent, but you do have the right to be wrong. And, and you need to be humble enough, uh, in that choosing humility towards those who have power and privilege and silence, other people that they need to be humble enough to hear a more exacting account of the truth. So diversity doesn't just mean different in this case, it means the difference from the norm, because if the norm and the privilege position or power is producing the wrong result, then we need to look at the different factor that might make all of the difference in the way things are done. So it's not diversity for the sake of diversity. It is. It is. Faith seeking understanding and looking for the difference that is necessary to make one better understand what is good or what is evil.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:I I've heard you talk in the past a little bit about black joy as central to the kind of moral understanding that you're looking to, to lift up and to draw attention to. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about what you mean by black joy and how it interacts with this kind of contextual discernment of good and evil and virtue and vice, uh, in a really sort of fine grain down to earth kind of way.
Stacy Floyd Thomas:Um, black joy, well, it's best represented in my, in my mind from a song that's oftentimes sung in the black church that, 'This joy that I have, this joy that I have, the world didn't give it. And the world can't take it away.' Doing the correction to the transliteration of the, the King James Version of Song of Songs, one, five, and six. King James Version says, 'I'm black, but beautiful, oh, you daughters of Jerusalem do not resent me or gaze upon me because the sun has, has chosen to favor favorably shine upon me. But we know when we look at an appropriate transliteration and we see the Newly Revised Standard Version, actually, the 'but' was used to cancel out the 'and' that was intended as a contextual reading of the scripture conveys. So, in the NRSV version, we understand that passage to say, I am black and beautiful. Beauty, which is virtue, normatively understood, in Western notions, even in, in, in Christian traditions, has been the opposite of blackness. So black joy is to say the I, too, am made in the image of God. My life in its physicality and essence is good, uh, and not accidental, nor should be therefore problematized. And I think a wonderful example of black joy can clearly be seen, uh, when we look at African-American women in the United States and we've witnessed their movement from enslavement to emancipation and to the enfranchisement back to enslavement, again, like in, with, with the, the feminization of poverty and the Moynihan 1965 Report of everything dealing with black poverty or the cycle of poverty is blamed upon black women. And now with the enfranchisement again, that we see with the likes of Stacey Abrams, Latasha Brown, um, and doing everything to change the tide of the prospects of, uh, this yet to be United States in securing the rights of, of, of black people and saying that black votes matter and the agency of black women matter, we see that you have black women, whom for having a baby. I mean, even if you're Serena Williams, it can be a deadly activity because of the maternal mortality rate for black women is three times higher than white women or, um, black women remain the group most likely to be single or unmarried or to not get breast cancer as often as white women, but to surely die of it once diagnosis has set in. More than any other group works harder for the least amount of money, um, that yet these women at the same time have, have proven themselves to be the light, that vehicle of joy. I mean, for Stacey Abrams, as an example, to lose the governor's seat, and we can see a lot of unethical activity that took place in order to ensure that she, she would, but most people would go through all of the steps of grief and either, you know, become part of cancel culture, but instead of being defeated and conceding to, 'I did not deserve to win.' She used that instead to ignite her agency, to organize more, not for her own gain, but for people to realize that there was a problem with voter suppression in the United States. And that ended up even when she was, um, seen as a possible candidate, uh, uh, from, from whom, um, of whom, um, Joe Biden was considering as, as the VP pick, even when she was not chosen, that did not stop her resolve in working. It's very clear, I don't believe, that that that ticket might not have won. And it definitely was a difference in, in turning Georgia blue, uh, because of the joy, right? That might've actually come from, not the vice of pride, but the virtue of pride, uh, not from a docile, passive love, but a love, to use Bev Harrison's words that, that, that ignited from anger, uh, at an unjust system, and this is the kind of lesson that we missed in Christianity, the, the beauty of Stacey Abrams, uh, besides the fact that we share the same name, of course, that's a normatively prideful statement, but I actually went to seminary, I went to seminary with her parents. Uh, Carolyn Abrams and Robert Abrams, uh, they were much older and we were at Candler school of theology. And I remember Stacy Abrams being a high school student when I was in my, when I was 21 as a seminarian and the joy the entire family had, uh, even though the children would be eating, you know, dinner in the way of sandwiches as our parents were in study groups at school and all of them piling into this, into the car and, you know, scrapping to make ends meet, but the joy that they felt to be able to be together, to study together, to be doing this work for not just the father, but the, the mother, especially who was the Woodruff scholar, um, scholarship recipient, um, that was seen as their spiritual discipline. So her politics is a kin to Obery Hendricks' notion of the politics of Jesus, that, it's this kind of defiance rather than passively. Toni Morrison put it this way in The Bluest Eye, where she's talking about two little girls who are trying to stand in defense of their friend, who has been humiliated and abused and believes that the only way she can have self regard or beauty is if, as a black girl, she had blue eyes. And these two girls, uh, I think represent black joy, uh, Morrison quotes them as saying, we had defended ourselves since memory against everybody and everything. We considered all speech a code to be broken by us and all gesture subject to careful analysis. We have become headstrong, devious and arrogant. Nobody paid us any attention. So we paid very good attention to ourselves. Our limitations were not known to us, not then. And that 'not then,' that ellipsis is important because if someone allows their Christian development, their identity development, their flourishing to be charted by a gaze that is antithetical to their embodiment. They become incarnate evil rather than incarnate good. So taking oneself seriously when no one else has paid you any attention is a virtue which makes humility a vice. And so that joy, um, is what womanists call, or, that I've named, the four tenants of womanism being radical subjectivity, traditional communalism, redemptive self love, and critical engagement. Or as Morrison's outlining here being headstrong. Traditionally, uh, devious or subversive, arrogant enough to believe that you are somebody that you are fearfully and wonderfully made and to do careful analysis, which is that critical engagement. And that's the, that's the joy of black women. It's the joy, not only of black women in America today who take up these tenets or the ones that I've outlined from my Nana to Stacey Abrams, but it is the joy of the women in the Christian extensive narrative. Many of them that have no names, many of them that do have names. Whether we're talking about Mary in the Bible, where she is at her girlfriend's wedding party, And her girlfriend is about to be humiliated because they've run out of wine. And any woman who knows about hospitality and saving face knows that when you can no longer serve your guests, that you failed in your, your job of being a host. And she goes to her son, she goes to Jesus and says, I need you to turn this water into wine. And what does Jesus say? Nope. It's not my time. What does she do? She doesn't even engage him. She turns to the service and say and says to them, do what he says. She activates because of the arrogance and the assistance to save her friend's face. She's radically subjective, she's traditionally communal, she critically engaged, and she redeems the self-love of what it means to be a woman and provide hospitality. And she gives she, she enacts the power that Jesus assumes he doesn't have. The exact same thing with Mary and Martha. They, they arrogantly, with radical subjectivity, taking themselves seriously and being headstrong, they encounter Jesus. When he's away from home, they encountered Jesus, who they have supported, who they've taken in as an extension of their family, and said, where have you been? Lazarus, our brother you're suppose beloved brother, is dead and you failed. And it's because of their insistence and their anger and despair that Jesus weeps. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead. And we, we don't know if he's weeping because they're angry at these weeping because of what happened to Lazarus or is he, or if he's weeping because of their lack of faith, but it was their engagement of Jesus that makes Jesus weep. We can look at the woman with the issue of blood. Society tells her she's unclean, society tells us she should be shuttered. We probably know now, given science, that she had probably endometriosis, she was suffering year in, year out, as many women do. With fibroids that have gone out of wack. And so she was supposed to shelter in place. She was supposed to keep herself at social distance, lest other people would be offended by her stench and the uncleanliness of what is absolutely natural to a woman's being. And she hears the rumor of this Messiah who was in town, who has been doing all of these wonderful things. And she takes herself seriously, presses her way into the crowd, and touches the hem of his garment. She does not engage Jesus at all. Jesus says, who touched me? Cause I felt power leave out of my body. She was not touching nor figuring she could tap in on the H I M of Jesus. She knew she had no place because the patriarchy, his embodiment represented said, 'hands off.' She was touching the H E M, she was touching, it was her faith. Right? That, that said, if I can just get there, the Seraphinisian woman, whose daughter was vexed by the Devil, right?, uh, who other, um, uh, gospels, um, identify as a Canaanite woman. Right. And we know that the Canaanite people were darker people, Noah curses, uh, Ham's descendants of Canaan, um, to always be subject to the oppression of the other brothers, because he rightfully said, daddy, you're drunk and naked, but. that's another podcast, and another conversation.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:That is a different can of worms.
Stacy Floyd Thomas:Right, so the Seraphinisian woman goes to Jesus on his second holiday, the disciples are telling her to get away, right? But she says to Jesus, you know, my daughter is vexed by the Devil and Jesus says, I am not here for you, but, but for the, the, the house of Israel, and she says, uh, huh. And then he said, you know, it's not fair for the dogs to eat at the master's table. Jesus in effect, in fact, calls her a dog. He lets her know what the, the stereotype, what the statistics say, what the contextual read, what the normative gaze is of this woman who is out of place out of time and out of her mind in making a petition of Jesus. And when he says that, she says, okay, sure, but I need help for my daughter, and even dogs get to eat crops. And when she says that, Jesus says, how great is your faith? Let it be unto you, even as that will. And we, and there are several stories like that in Jesus' encounter, the woman with the alabaster jar. I mean just several, several, but anytime Jesus or the desciples encounter a man with a problem, the man at the gate beautiful. The man whose son was falling in the fire in the water. I believe that my discipline, you know, there was always some huge exchange, some huge philosophical account, right? Like the paper I was trying to write, the women were more like my Nana just, you know, get it and move on. Because you have so many things to do. Life is held in the balance. This is not some, you know, uh, Nicodemus exchange, right? This is not some, the man who's at the gate beautiful for 38 years. It's just, he's continuously talking about what people did to him and how, you know it's like, do you want to, do you want to be well or not? Jesus has to engage in some philosophical banter, debate, pleading of men in the text. Men who, I guess, are entitled in some ways to what, to the miracles Jesus is to give. But the women, unnamed, the women who, who gave life and the women who were there when his life was taken by state sanction, lynching, and violence, the women don't engage in the philosophical banter. They insist with pride in the name of love that something has to change. And so they're what others might call sinful or viceful and being out of a place, and actually the correct use of love is actually filling the glass that is empty.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:You know, we've got, we've got listeners coming from a bunch of different social locations. And, um, I wonder if you'd have any closing advice for, for them, for, you know, in, in all of those kinds of differences of location, uh, for discerning the implications of Jesus' life and ministry and these kinds of interactions that we see in the scriptural texts that you were just talking about for how they ought to live, what, given that it's not, uh, on your account, just like finding the list of virtues and then going after them. Um, but a really fine grained, hard analysis, difficult sort of contextual thing to do to read the situation and with the care that it's due, given all of that, um, how do you, how do you go, how do you start discerning?
Stacy Floyd Thomas:To be clear, I mean, obviously I'm coming from my social location as a black woman. I've given examples of many black women, but I am not saying that to know joy or to know Jesus or to know the good one has to be a black woman. That's not at all what I'm saying, but what I am saying is that to know true joy, and to know good, one must view the objectification of others as sinful, and as a vice. And that is what Jesus did. It, it has been accepted as a evangelical parlance and universalized, uh, way of living to ask the question, what would Jesus do? And what did Jesus do? Jesus was always doing the work of setting the oppressed free. Of giving sight to the blind, of giving food, rather than sitting on the fast of those who were hungry, of calling everybody to accountability when people only see sin from one perspective and saying, let's use the, the act of grace, in knowing that those without sin do not exist. To know joy, is to be certain in one's thinking, doing, and being, that your joy does not exact oppression from another, rather that you joy brings joy and abundant life to all who have engaged you, no matter where you are on the road to salvation. True joy, being a real thinking person of faith is not only realizing that the life that you may save might be your own, but it is also to know clearly that there is no divine justice that is not linked to social justice and that the work of the gospel, the work of the Church, the work of Christianity is the work of Jesus. It is the work of knowing that we can save souls without losing our minds or losing or lynching the lives of others in the process. Our work has to be not only salvific, but sane and lifesaving.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz:Well, Stacy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. It's been a real joy.
Stacy Floyd Thomas:I always enjoy it, thank you so much.
Evan Rosa:For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center For Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured social ethicists, Stacy Floyd Thomas, and theologian Ryan McAnnally-Linz. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edited and produced the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu. We produce a new episode every Saturday and you can subscribe through any podcast app. We're grateful that you're listening to this podcast. We're passionate about making this work consistently accessible to people who are genuinely concerned about the viability of faith in a world wracked with division, contested views about what it means to be human and what it means to live life well. If you're in a position to support our show financially and are looking for some year end opportunities, please consider partnering with us. We rely on the generosity of individuals like you to make our work possible. And if you're not, please continue listening and engaging the content. Let us know what you're interested in. We're grateful that you're listening, but if you can give, if you're truly passionate about supporting podcasting that's all about pursuing really living lives that are worthy of our humanity, then consider a gift to the Yale Center For Faith and Culture. Visit faith.yale.edu, slash, give, or find the link in the show notes to make a year-end contribution. It's our joy to bring these shows to you. We'd invite you to bring that same joy in supporting this work. As always, thanks for listening, and we'll be back with more next week.