Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI190429A
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00:27 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:29 This is a program designed to bring you news, views, 00:32 discussion insights, and up-to-date information 00:35 all on religious liberty and the dynamic surrounding it. 00:39 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine, 00:42 and my guest on this program is Kingsley Palmer. 00:45 I have to remind yourself... 00:47 myself of your name. 00:49 And you told me the meaning of Palmer was. 00:51 Pilgrim. 00:54 And you're a Religious Liberty official, 00:58 designate from the Adventist Church in... 01:02 Arizona. 01:03 Arizona, because I was nearly going to say Nevada, 01:04 the same mistake. 01:07 But yeah, pilgrim is a good name. 01:11 And let's talk about some of your life story. 01:15 You're the son of immigrants, 01:18 and then you've moved from England to the US. 01:22 So in a very real sense, 01:23 you're a pilgrim and an immigrant. 01:27 What does that experience taught you generally, 01:30 and let's try and relate it to religious sensibilities too? 01:33 Well, moving here, came here to study. 01:38 And here at the 3ABN studio in the United States. 01:41 No, I came to the United States 01:44 38 years ago to pursue Christian education, 01:48 to accept the call to ministry. 01:50 And while here, 01:53 I began to develop a broader mindset 01:56 with respect to, 01:57 well, yes, you are an immigrant. 01:59 Yes, you are in an English speaking country 02:02 but part of a culture, 02:04 part of an ethnic group, right? 02:08 Whose stories, 02:10 the history of our community and I say our community, 02:14 because essentially, whether you're born in England, 02:17 and you're from the islands, 02:19 or you were born and raised here 02:22 in the African-American community, 02:24 we have similar stories, 02:25 similar experiences, different locations. 02:29 So that was discovery for me 02:31 in terms of my educational preparation, 02:34 and had no idea that I would be staying here 02:36 as long as I did, but this, 02:38 I spent more time here integrated. 02:41 I can say I'm African-American, bit of British twang 02:45 or what have you. 02:47 Because of few miles back for you as well. 02:49 Yes, it is. 02:51 Do you know your family history? 02:53 Yes, I know. 02:54 We came from West Africa just like every other. 02:56 But two are the West Indies. 02:58 To the Caribbean. Caribbean. 02:59 Some of the relatives were dropped off here. 03:01 That's what I'm finding out. 03:03 And so when I came here 03:06 with a group of other young people, 03:08 back in 1980. 03:09 We were amazed 03:11 to see not just the resemblance, 03:14 but a lot of the food, 03:16 the culture, all those other things, 03:18 and it was just like 03:19 I'm rediscovering another part of who I was, 03:22 or what I belong to in a totally different place. 03:25 That was very, very inspiring, painful too 03:29 because there were some things that were not, 03:32 that we could share stories about 03:35 in terms of what has happened to us 03:37 since we left Africa, the transatlantic crossing, 03:42 and how we were spread. 03:44 Do you... 03:46 Have you been able to recover details 03:48 of how your relatives and some of those 03:51 from the same area were taken or...? 03:56 What I do know and it's interesting. 03:57 And part of this. Yeah. 03:59 It is... At that time very sad story. 04:01 Yes, what happened, you have a group of people 04:03 on a boat taken from Africa, 04:06 families dispersed. 04:09 Some went into British colonies. 04:12 You've got me thinking, 04:13 does that mean they were from the same village? 04:15 Many of them were from the same villages 04:16 or the same areas that separated. 04:18 So what was the dynamic? 04:20 Because there's a variation, there were wars, they were... 04:26 As even in Europe for poverty, 04:29 sometimes people would deliver family members 04:32 to the system 04:34 figuring they couldn't care for them or whatever. 04:36 Other times the Arab traders kidnapped people. 04:40 There was a lot of kidnapping. 04:42 Yeah, a lot of funny things going. 04:43 Yeah, it wasn't voluntary. 04:45 Well, no. Exactly. 04:46 Not by the infusion, never. 04:48 So we're depending on who owned you. 04:50 You got the name of that family. 04:53 Your relatives would be dispersed 04:56 from Brazil to the Caribbean, 04:59 to North America. 05:02 And if you go to any of those places, 05:04 you will see like mind people that look the same. 05:07 But their context and their experiences 05:09 might have been a little different. 05:12 But the stories that are comparable, 05:15 and that's what I've discovered in the last 38 years here 05:22 that I have a natural connection. 05:23 Do you know what religious identity 05:27 those ancestors had when they came? 05:29 It's kind of hard to know 05:31 because you had a combination of missionaries 05:36 going to Africa. 05:38 That's why I'm asking the question. 05:39 Yes, you know, and depending on where they came from, 05:44 and what they shared. 05:46 You had a sense of, 05:48 you kind of bought into their theology. 05:52 But a lot of people don't know that people of African descent 05:56 have known about God, 05:58 understood who He was 06:00 albeit in His different manifestations. 06:05 So it wasn't too and it was not too uncommon. 06:08 Okay, we have served Jehovah from biblical times 06:12 right up until now, 06:13 but now this new religion, this new Christianity, 06:17 this age of enlightenment, we accepted it. 06:21 In fact there's a saying 06:23 that when some of the missionaries 06:25 and this is not for everyone 06:26 came to Africa, 06:28 we had the land, they had the Bible. 06:32 When we left Africa, right? 06:35 When they left Africa, we were left with the Bible. 06:39 They got the land. They got the land. 06:41 So we've seen these interesting trends, 06:46 transition but to your question 06:48 when you say what religious... 06:51 We had indigenous religions, but we also have... 06:53 Well, I had to ask you a question. 06:55 You know, it's the general historical assumption had been 06:58 when I was a kid studying all of this. 07:00 These were animistic religions in Africa, 07:03 but I know that's not true, 07:04 there was a combination as today, 07:06 animistic religions, 07:08 some peripheral connections with Christianity, 07:11 but I think that was minimal at that point. 07:13 Yes. 07:14 And even Islam though was represented 07:18 in the background of some of these peoples. 07:20 Yeah, they spread. 07:21 Islam was probably more 07:22 in the eastern part of the continent. 07:25 Christianity because of geographically speaking 07:27 but was used as a tool... Yeah. 07:30 To unfortunately 07:32 to kidnap, and separate, 07:37 and then we had variations of it 07:38 when we came to the Western world 07:41 and interpretations, misinterpretations, 07:44 miss applications, 07:46 which unfortunately 07:48 kept us deprived 07:50 and there's the rest of it as you will know. 07:53 They say it's history, 07:54 but there was a common understanding 07:57 that we understood who God was in the mix 07:59 of whatever else we believe. 08:01 You know, well, you know very well 08:03 and you're explaining, 08:04 you know, slavery and the whole trade 08:08 operated at the periphery of religion. 08:12 Arabs were involved in one end of it, 08:15 Christians at the other. 08:16 So there's nobody gets off Scot free on this. 08:19 No. And it's a very sad thing. 08:21 But removing that, that religious element, 08:25 it strikes me 08:26 that in the modern world hardly anybody 08:28 really can know definitively where they came from 08:32 and everybody's in the people groups 08:35 they represented, 08:36 we've come a long way to get where we are. 08:40 You know, our church was much fixated in its early era 08:45 in trying to decipher which of the 10 Germanic tribes 08:49 made up the history 08:51 or the modern nations of Europe. 08:54 Because even within recorded history, 08:56 Europe was made up with often ravaging tribes 08:59 that displaced another 09:00 and violently did this and that and the other. 09:03 And in recent history like 09:06 you know my mother was born 09:12 very shortly after her mother left Scotland, economic issues, 09:16 you know, the enclosure acts in England, you know this. 09:18 I mean the grinding poverty of working people 09:22 in England was unreal, 09:25 and when they were driven off the land 09:28 which they barely scrambled a living off, 09:31 hardscrabble living in better times 09:34 and, but with the Industrial Revolution, 09:37 public lands were fenced off 09:38 and people have no way to get any living 09:40 and they were off, 09:42 floating off on the seas for another place. 09:44 We've all... 09:46 I think mankind as a whole 09:47 has been a lost wandering generation but... 09:52 And mistreated a lot, 09:54 but slavery is as a unique wrong 09:55 against humanity. 09:56 Well, you know, you had a choice if you couldn't, 09:59 you know, the Irish famine of the 19th century. 10:01 I was about to mention that, Potato Famine, 10:03 that's where US then affected for a lot of those. 10:05 But at least they had a choice. 10:07 We didn't have a choice. Right. 10:09 And that's the sad thing is and the elements of that, 10:12 I still felt an experience. 10:14 I see it as a pastor, 10:16 as a community leader every day, 10:19 which feeds into what I was saying 10:21 before about public affairs and religious liberty. 10:24 They both work together very, very well, 10:27 when properly applied. 10:28 However, 10:30 there are realities 10:31 that have come from systemic racism, 10:34 slavery, 10:35 that we find ourselves, not just us, 10:37 but other people, even of other religions 10:39 and other ethnic persuasions. 10:42 Yeah. 10:43 Are the same, so that's very real to me. 10:45 Yeah. 10:46 And being a pilgrim in America, 10:48 it has been eye opening for me. 10:50 It has been emotional for me. 10:52 It has been transformative for me in my ministry 10:56 in doing what I do. 10:58 Yeah, and you know, 10:59 I was trying to draw a little parallel 11:01 but not on the... 11:02 Not an equivalence. Right. 11:04 But the comparison 11:06 that I think a lot of people in the Western world 11:09 are basically dispossessed wanderers... 11:11 Oh, yeah. From their origin. 11:13 And it's very hard for people descended 11:17 from slaves to sort of recover a sense of self 11:20 and identity in origin, but it can be. 11:23 Most people don't think about it, 11:25 that's the problem. 11:26 But when they tried, they don't have it. 11:27 In the US, 11:29 I think it's suffering from part of this, 11:31 back to my preoccupations with the Europe. 11:33 In England, there's a sense, 11:35 in Europe there's a sense 11:37 of even a few might have come and gone 11:38 but this is a permanency. 11:40 You mentioned parliament in another program, 11:42 goes back 1,000 years. 11:44 Don't have that in America. 11:45 So what do you substitute sort of mythical, 11:51 sort of sense of destiny, 11:53 and that's comes and goes 11:57 but that the US is very struggling 11:59 to create the sense of who they are. 12:02 The Europeans don't know, when I studied US history, 12:05 this huge denial of the role 12:07 of convict settlement in the US. 12:10 Australia can't deny it, in fact they glory at it. 12:12 So the British set that up as you well know. 12:15 Yeah. Botany Bay and... 12:16 Right. 12:17 And it's not the majority of Australians 12:19 never was nor in the US 12:21 but the US doesn't even seem to know 12:23 that part of its history. 12:24 There was gross in humanity, 12:26 class struggles and all the arrest people sent, 12:29 some for their life but generally for just term 12:31 and that's the huge distinction 12:33 between slavery and the convict thing. 12:36 For 10 years you were treated like dirt and an animal 12:38 and killed at will pretty much but once that was over, 12:42 then you get a bit of land 12:43 and you could have other lay for them. 12:45 But they did something else... 12:46 But it created a sense of disposition, I believe. 12:49 There, you know. 12:50 Like there's that song, you know, 12:51 farewell to all England forever, 12:53 it's Botany Bay. 12:55 Well, I know, we used to sing the song in school 12:57 about Botany Bay, till I found out what it was. 13:00 But here's what is interesting, discovered in my discovery here 13:04 is that black people came to the United States 13:08 long before the Europeans 13:10 step foot in the US as we speak, as we know. 13:16 And then subsequent generations, 13:18 of course, were enslaved 13:19 and then the other things that we had talked about. 13:22 So we've always had, 13:24 and I think that's with any group, 13:26 some idea on who we were as human beings, 13:30 believing in something greater and bigger than ourselves. 13:34 And that is why you see that in the... 13:38 Particularly when it comes to worship and expression 13:40 and how we see society through our lens. 13:42 Remember, I was talking about it 13:43 in a previous program, 13:45 about our perception or understanding 13:48 and the application 13:50 of what public affairs and religious liberties means 13:53 as far as a public affairs activity, 13:57 it's the community, 13:59 it's the God 14:00 in the form of Jesus doing certain things 14:03 across all lines, across all groups, 14:06 and engaging with the public and at the same time, 14:10 having this wonderful message 14:12 that we have based upon prophecy in Revelation 14:17 that pulls us together. 14:18 Good point. 14:20 We'll take a break now. 14:22 And so stay with us, 14:23 and we'll be back to continue the pilgrimage. |
Revised 2019-04-15