Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with guest, Kingsley,
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we were on your pilgrimage.
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That's correct.
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So where are you going?
Where did you come from?
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Again, you'll
have to repeat a little
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and then pick up
on a literal story.
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But I think you're creating
a symbolic structure here
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for the search for identity
and finding of an identity.
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As I'm told West
African ancestry,
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the migration of my people,
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Africans to the
Western hemisphere,
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they're settling
in under slavery.
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From Brazil, to the
Caribbean, to America,
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all one family,
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different tribes,
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but essentially
one group of people.
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And in coming
here to go to school,
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to study for
theology and things like that,
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and living in
those neighborhoods,
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in those communities.
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I have found a commonality
in terms of the struggle,
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in terms of the challenges.
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I've been able to
connect things that I grew up in
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and watch in
England, of all places,
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that the story is very similar
here in these United States,
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you know, in
terms of integration,
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acceptance, fairness, equality,
all those other things,
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it manifested itself
differently in Britain,
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but we had a form of,
you know, that kind of...
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I think in England the
problem would have been more
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cultural
impediments to integration
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or to full acceptance
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where in the US
even in my memory,
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because I came to the
US in the civil rights era.
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They were actual laws
designed to that get hard
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for certain groups,
particularly African-Americans.
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The British didn't make laws.
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That's what I'm suggesting.
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But it was
unspoken. Oh, I'm certain.
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That my father would tell
me that when he got to England,
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there was a list of,
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there would be a
list of individuals
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who they did not want
living in communities.
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And right below just above
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blacks were dogs.
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And so, you understood
or at least he understood
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as an immigrant,
there was a place for him,
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which was
nowhere near the middle,
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let alone the highest.
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And so here I am,
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born into a system
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where you had a grammar
stream in terms of education
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and then you had the
comprehensive stream,
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and most people of color,
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or of other ethnic persuasions
were down at the bottom
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and the expectation was that
once you finished high school,
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of if you did
progress to go on to college,
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the most you could ever
be in the British workforce
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was maybe an
assistant or a supervisor.
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But beyond that, to break
the mold and to move higher,
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that was a no go.
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So and I've saw a
similar thing here.
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And that's improved a
lot in England in the past.
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Well, it has I mean, it
still leaves much to be desired.
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Visibly, I think
it's improved 'cause...
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Well, yes, but you now have
a generation of young people.
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There's my children
and then their children
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who are growing up and
feeling disenfranchised
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because the educational
system is not provide,
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although it's still fairly good.
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The jobs are not
there, there's social unrest.
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In the '80s, they
had the riots going on
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and so on and so forth,
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almost typical
to what we had here
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in the '50s and the '60s.
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I grew up in the
'60s and the '70s,
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so and as I could
compare that journey.
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Let me throw a
real wild card into it
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and I'd like your opinion.
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I know that in the US,
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there's in the
past and perhaps still
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there's a strong sentiment
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in some
African-American communities
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that in spite of the experience,
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or at least the cliche
from the Deep South days
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of the spirituals
and Negro spirituals
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and Christian worship.
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There's sort of a sentiment now
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that Christianity is not
the most natural religion
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for the
descendants of those people
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that in accepting and
advancing Christianity,
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they're sort of
playing along with the game
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and they should
reject the religion
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of the once enslaved them,
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and so the appeal is
very strong for Islam
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or for nothing.
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I remember once interrupting
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a group of African-American
pastors down south,
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I won't say where
but you could guess
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they were in vigorous debate.
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Right.
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Pretty much two
factions divided.
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And when I came upon
them, they shut up like that
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just because I came
around the corner on.
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And I said, what
are you talking about?
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And first
nothing, and then one says,
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"Why don't we ask him."
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So I found that
they were discussing
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whether or not
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Christianity or Islam
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was the most
appropriate religion
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for blacks in America today.
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And that's a
reasonable discussion,
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but it shocked me,
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that here these
were Christian ministers
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of a certain denomination,
they were actively debating.
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So the appeal is very real.
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And I know the
history of black Muslims.
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They're not really
Muslims in the sense
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that any orthodox for
one of a better word Muslim
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and the rest of the
world would accept them.
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It's a very hybrid thing.
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And it's be all and end
all really is a rejection
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and an alternate
spiritual and historic universe
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from Christianity and the West.
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Well, again, if we
think of Malcolm X, right?
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Who in a way
reacted against that.
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Yes, he did but.
That's why he was killed.
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We all know how he started out.
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But I think we need to
remember that, as I said before,
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black people have
always had an understanding
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and interpretation for
our cultural experiences
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in Africa.
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And since we moved to
the western hemisphere,
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as to how we
perceived and understood God.
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Now, you have to remember
that the British at that time,
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while this was all
going on, in Africa,
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brought a
certain kind of religion,
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Protestant, actually,
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and so taught certain people
from Africa in their colonies,
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a certain way of worship.
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It was a little
more conservative, right?
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But we still had those ways
in which we would communicate
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what our experience and our
theology through experience.
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Well, it is...
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That question was in element
of religious imperialism.
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Right, it was.
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And part of the answer,
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I think is to
disengage or disconnect
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the faith from the imperialist
or the cultural trappings.
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Right.
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It's the only
way you can survive.
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Well, that's true,
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but not at the expense
of you losing your own,
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ride your own identity.
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And so here you had...
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We've always been,
no matter where you go,
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you will always find
elements of the same thing,
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be it in Jamaica,
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be it here in the
United States or elsewhere.
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It's interesting how
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that is still
pretty much in place.
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And so when you have people
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that have come from
the continent of Africa,
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who've been more
conservative or more Protestant
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in terms of their dialogue,
in terms of what they believe,
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and you got
this more expressive,
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you know, the gospels,
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the Negro spirituals
and all that expression,
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we are very expressive people,
no matter where you find us,
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and interpreting our
experience or our pilgrimage
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to what we have seen
and what we've been through,
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it's a little
more, less conservative.
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And the conflict
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and we've had to
do that to maintain
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and to sustain our identity
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theologically,
socially, culturally,
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but it all comes together.
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I have found that
there are more similarities
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than there are differences.
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And I will say this, sometime...
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This is what my father told
me when he left the Caribbean,
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went to England,
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and he was taught to
view people from Africa
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as being lower,
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the Dark Continent as it were.
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And it wasn't
until he got to England
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and began to meet
with and mingle with,
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we even had families
that lived in the same house.
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And we understood,
wait, this is your story,
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this is my
story, here's our story.
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And move on from there.
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Same thing has happened here.
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And
unfortunately, we all move on.
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Like I've gone back to Australia
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to live for a
while and I enjoyed it.
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But in some ways,
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it was a different
Australia and I was sort of,
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somewhat of an outsider.
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And I'm sure that
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African-Americans for
one of the better term,
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these terms become
less acceptable, I guess.
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In the US,
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they don't necessarily
have a strong affinity
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with people in
Africa as they kmight want,
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because they've
been culturally changed
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in many, many and various ways.
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And intentionally divided.
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Yes, I thought
it was intentional.
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But most of it, I
think a lot of it was
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and that's why you,
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you know, the
meeting of the mind
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saw the comparison
or contrast of how we do
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what we do in terms of
how we experienced God.
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But the good part
of this is that, yeah,
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God can be rediscovered.
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He's not owned by any culture.
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Thank God for that. Yes.
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And we might be quite shocked
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to discover the
culture of heaven
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that's probably
radically different
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from all the earth ways.
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Well, it's got to be better
than what we've got down here.
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Yeah, but thanks for
sharing your pilgrimage.
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Yes, I'm still on it.
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Yeah, well, we're all on it.
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It's like someone once came
into a town and asked someone,
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"Have you lived
here all your life?"
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And they said "No, not yet."
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So... Yes.
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So any parting words on your...
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My journey to the
United States since enabled me
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to understand who I am
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and connect with the
community guys, now serve,
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and I'm thankful to
God for all of that.
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I'm still on that journey.
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Growing up in Australia,
I often remember singing
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along to the song,
land of hope and glory,
00:10:56.72\00:11:00.19
mother of the free.
00:11:00.22\00:11:03.16
Very many people think of
their homeland as a mother.
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Although Germany, I
guess the fatherland.
00:11:07.16\00:11:09.93
But there's a source of freedom
00:11:09.96\00:11:12.17
that we often
ascribe to the country
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and to the home
and half and so on.
00:11:14.30\00:11:16.67
But it's worth
remembering in this modern world
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where we've all come from
somewhere else by and large,
00:11:18.97\00:11:21.78
and the world is still
an ongoing melting pot.
00:11:21.81\00:11:25.21
And differences
are being broken down,
00:11:25.25\00:11:27.38
right, left and center,
that the source of our liberty,
00:11:27.42\00:11:30.39
the source of our
freedom can't be the land,
00:11:30.42\00:11:33.05
it can't be even a people.
00:11:33.09\00:11:34.86
It must be a God.
It must be a principle.
00:11:34.89\00:11:37.89
And that principle,
the freedom of conscience
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that we cherish so
dearly needs to be defended
00:11:41.40\00:11:44.70
and recognized for such a
transcendent thing as it is.
00:11:44.73\00:11:49.64
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:49.67\00:11:52.64