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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Back with us now, one of our favorite guests who we first connected with at the beginning of the pandemic and has since been here five times, both comforting and energizing. She is Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village.

Reverend Lewis has been with us for our Easter observance of the air last year when people couldn't gather in person, again for our end-of-year holiday party of the air. Also about the art and music of Juneteenth and on the somber occasions of our 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks coverage, and our reading of the names of New Yorkers who died from COVID. You may also remember that Reverend Lewis' historic church, Middle Collegiate in the East Village, was in the news itself last December after a fire destroyed a good deal of the 130-year-old structure.

Now, I'm delighted to tell you, Reverend Jacqui Lewis has a book it's called Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World. She also hosts the podcast called Love. Period. Reverend Jacqui, you've been important to our audience these last 19 months. Welcome back to WNYC and congratulations on your book.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Brian, being in the studio with you is like gathering with an old friend. Thank you so much for this invitation. I appreciate it.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the title, Fierce Love. What kind of love are you describing as fierce?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Oh my gosh, Brian. Rule-breaking kindness, ferocious courage, the kind of love that made people wade in the fetid waters, I would say, in New Orleans, after Katrina. The kind of love that made Dr. King march with those sanitation workers even though he knew he was under threat and ended up losing his life. The kind of love that makes a mom or a dad protect their child no matter what or a stranger grab your elbow and pull you back from the curb so you don't walk out into the street.

We know what it feels like, and I'm just calling it fierce because I think it is powerful and potent and I think it's determined and persistent, and I think it's what we need in these hot mess times.

Brian Lehrer: That phrase you just used from the subtitle of the book, Rule-Breaking Kindness, that might seem like a contradiction to people. When does kindness, of all things, break rules?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Oh, that's good, Brian. I like to call Jesus Rabbi Jesus because he was Jewish and was teaching all the time from the Jewish scriptures. When someone asked him, a scribe or a rich person said, "What's the biggest commandment?" Jesus said, "To love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself." He was grabbing scripture, from Deuteronomy and Leviticus and making one law.

The story He tells to prooftext what love looks like is a Samaritan who ends up saving the life of a man beaten on the street. A priest walks by and doesn't stop and lots of people judge that priest, Brian, but I think the priest knew that it wasn't [unintelligible 00:03:24] to go over there. He was on the way to temple and couldn't do it. A temple worker went by, didn't stop.

The Samaritan stops and the Samaritan is a mixed-race person that's not really a friend to the Jews and in some ways, he's breaking the cultural rules, Brian, when he stops to help this person. I got saved by a Canadian woman after a car accident when I was a young person and she broke the rules. All the norms, like a woman, white lady helping a strange black lady, putting a stranger in your car, all those ways where she was transgressive because she took risks and broke the norms.

When Linda Sarsour invites Rabbi Sharon Brous to speak at the women's march, that's transgressive rule-breaking kindness, because they are on opposite sides of a political spectrum in some ways. That's what I mean. Kindness that Mandela, in prison, learning to love the humanity of his captors. That is rule-breaking kindness.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any Middle Collegiate church congregation members want to call in and talk to your minister in front of everybody, or anyone else with a story of rule-breaking kindness or anything related, a story to share with Reverend Jacqui Lewis or a question to ask her, (212) 433, WNYC (212) 433-9692, on the occasion of the release of her book today called Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World, (212) 433- WNYC (212) 433-9692.

I want to get in a minute into how you were inspired by what's called the Ubuntu, am I saying that right, philosophy from the Zulu culture, and how that connects with your Christianity. To the stories that you were just telling, I wonder if you could add one from your book that's personal. When your father did not at first accept your husband, your marriage to your husband, John, and how you approached that conflict with your father through love rather than resentment.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Oh, gosh, Brian. Thank you for that question. I am celebrating my dad and his rule-breaking kindness as well. This might sound contradictory for sure, friend, but the first thing that we did in order to get to a reconciled place with that, me and my dad and John, is I confronted my dad boldly for a young black girl taught not to talk back to parents, but just to say, "Daddy, this isn't going to work out if we do it this way. I really need something different."

He was transgressive also, Brian, to meet me at a place where he was apologizing and saying he didn't want to hurt me and he didn't want us to break our relationship. This part that I don't quite tell all the way in the book is how John says, "After we get married, we're going to go see your dad. When we go see dad," but that's John's idea, "and we take him presents and we really make ourselves humble with him." He and John sitting in the backyard, just talking for a long time, frankly having some rum and cokes, my dad's favorite, and just telling their stories.

They now are friends. The kind act of my dad, let's say, engaging his child across a certain kind of boundary that old folks don't think they need to do with their kids. Then John and dad really meeting each other in this incredible container of truth-telling and storytelling, both of them being kind. They are now friends who should pull together and talk trash together and hang out together. I believe that this kind of kindness really does give us the opportunity, Brian, to make peace where there's brokenness, where there's sorrow.

Brian Lehrer: "My husband and my father now talk about me behind my back. My definition of success," says Reverend Jacqui Lewis.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: [laughs] That's good, Brian. Tweet that out.

Brian Lehrer: You write about being inspired by the Zulu, tell me if I'm saying the word right, is it Ubuntu philosophy-

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Ubuntu.

Brian Lehrer: -Ubuntu of I am who I am because we are who we are. Can you introduce our listeners unfamiliar with it to what Ubuntu philosophy is and where it comes from?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Yes, I will. It's Zulu and I don't know if you've ever been to South Africa, Brian, but when we went a few times, there really is this museum at the cradle of civilization. This is mind-blowing, this place where they really found the oldest human remains if you will. There's this whole museum about it and it's right outside of South Africa where the Zulu language cooks, inhabits.

I find myself thinking about the first people that stood up and walked out of the caves into the light and said, "Whoa, this is a new environment out here. We need to do something together if we're going to survive. Who's going to make the fire? Who's going to hunt? Who's going to gather? Who's going to watch the kids?"

This concept of humanity in the Zulu language [foreign language] a human is a human through other humans. Really there's a sense that there isn't even a singular human, you're human because of the other people. They greet each other and say, Sawubona, which means I see you. Actually, even more accurately, we see you. We being me, my ancestors, my [unintelligible 00:09:45], my progeny and the response is Sawukhona, I exist. We see each other into existence.

This is Mandela's wiring that enables [unintelligible 00:09:58] work with opponents, if you will, to dismantle apartheid. This is Bishop Tutu, his granddaughter writes about this. I think since we're all African, Brian, we all come from Africa, I would say that this philosophy is in our DNA. We know how to be a species together and we forgot it, but we can remember it.

Brian Lehrer: I am who I am because we are who we are. It's meant, it sounds like in addition to everything you just said, to put spiritual practice in a community rather than an individual context.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Yes, yes. That's right. Brian, I think that there are some cultures and some religions that get this better than I'm going to say modern-day Christianity or Western Christianity, my folks, I will criticize us. I feel like when we're reading the Exodus text, we're reading about God liberating the captors, it doesn't seem to me that it's a singular sense. The theological reading feels like it's the whole company, the whole company leaves Egypt and gets across the desert into the promised land over 40 years.

Something has happened where Christianity has become wrapped up in individualism, white supremacy I would even say patriarchy. It wasn't intended that way, that's not what Jesus taught, but it feels like over time, in too many spaces, it's become an individual pursuit of salvation, meaning I'm going to get to heaven and not how, and that's what matters. As opposed to, and again, I think this is rememberable, an original intent, that I'm not saved until everyone's saved. I'm not well until everyone is well.

I'm really working hard on this book to get not only Christians back there, but people of no faith or any faith to understand our survival and our thriving is inextricably connected. That Brian when your older folks don't have healthcare, I should be at the policy table thinking about that.

Brian Lehrer: My guess is Reverend Jacqui Lewis, senior pastor, senior minister at the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village with her brand new book, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World. We have many callers who want to talk to you and we're going to start with Arturo in Ridgewood. That's Ridgewood, New Jersey, not Queens. Hi Arturo? You're on WNYC.

Arturo: Good morning, Brian. Good morning to my dear sister and friend and colleague, the Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis. Good morning to you both.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Hello, hello, hello.

Brian Lehrer: What you got for us, Arturo?

Arturo: Well, listen, I want to, not that I have to be the one to do it, but I want to confirm what Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis is sharing with us this morning, the importance of fierce love. I've had the tremendous pleasure of learning from her and with her about the importance of fierce love. It is her work that helped to inspire our community. That enabled us to create an online platform that has attempted to teach the importance of antiracism work to an intercultural intergenerational community. So much of that has to do with the teachings of Dr. Jacqui Lewis.

I'll share this one last item here, Brian and Jacqui. Brian, your colleague, Jamie Floyd is going to be our special guest next Tuesday night when we present our last seminar in this series. Thank you, thank you, Dr. Lewis, for all that you have done for me and for, my cohort and so many others teaching us the importance of fierce love. We're indebted to you.

Brian Lehrer: Arturo, thank you so much. I'm going to go right to our next caller, and that is Jane in Leonia, Jane you're in WNYC. Hello?

Jane: Oh, hello. Thank you for taking my call. I just was responding to someone who had done a random act of something, what I thought was very good and it was very touching to me. This happened two or three years ago. I was coming back from the supermarket. I had left my wallet somehow perched on the back of my car because I was in a hurry to get home with my groceries. Took off, drove back home, which was maybe half a mile away, and then when I got home realized I didn't have my wallet.

I rushed back down. Going through the parking lot. In the meantime, the person who was driving behind me saw the wallet fly off my car, and it apparently spilled everything all over the road. He stopped his car, came back, picked up all my cards and my wallet, found my driver's license and found my address there, and drove it to my house. I wasn't actually in the house. My husband was there and he gave it to him. I had gone back down to look for it. It was Good Friday.

I remember my husband saying to him, "This is a wonderful thing you've done. Can you just wait? I'm sure she'll be back." He said, "Well, it's Good Friday, you have to do a good thing on Good Friday." Then he left, but I never knew his name and I never got to thank him, but I thank him now.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, very nice, Jane.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: That's a great story, Jane. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: One of the blurbs for your book I see is from CNN's, Van Jones, who's also an Obama Administration Official who calls the book, 'a powerful antidote to the tribalism that is wrecking our country and poisoning our souls.' Is tribalism a word you also use in the book?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Yes, yes it is. One of the chapters is about increasing your tribe because they're your people too. I think, Brian, I'm a psychologist as well as a clergyian. I think it's actually a very natural phenomenon when we're under stress, under threat, under duress to circle up our wagons with our own kind like to find our people, find my people, I'm okay over here.

I think we could increase who we think is our people. You're my people, Brian, to imagine the other as our people. Our Jewish colleagues always remind me that love the stranger is actually more in the Hebrew scriptures than love your neighbor, because we were once strangers in a strange land.

I think I'm really wanting to invite us to imagine how big our tribe is. This is tough because I'm a progressive black woman living in a racist nation. In a time when people don't want to have their children remember the stories of the past to hurt their feelings. That's not all the people, but there's a lot of rumble about critical waste theory which is not for kids. That's for law students.

Race conversations are for kids, teaching our children to appreciate color and difference and hair texture and not assign negative value to it is a good thing we could do. "What color is your friend's hair? Does he have blue eyes? Cool." Let's learn that culture, let's learn that story. That increases our connection to each other and therefore grows our empathy and our tribe becomes humankind. This is my aim.

Brian Lehrer: That is related to a tip you have for parents and educators in the book, right?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Yes, yes. Children are watching, they're paying attention all the time. What do we say about what we saw on TV? What comment do we make about Fox or CNN or in the CBC? What are the ways that our children hear us interrogating life with bias and prejudice and anger and vitriol? I can't believe, Brian, honestly, it breaks my heart.

That's part of why I wrote this book. I think about what my ancestors endured, my husband and I did a tour of the south this last summer, took ourselves to the Equal Justice Initiative museum, and lots of other places. Just remembering the way reconstruction meant a backlash of terror against black folks, and "good people" took their children to watch lynchings and burnings and taught them to hate.

Can't we instead model for our little people curiosity, interrogation, flexibility, nimbleness, let's learn about each other? We might not agree. We likely won't all agree, but there can be deep respect anyway for humankind if we model that for our kids.

Brian Lehrer: Is it hard to denounce tribalism and be a real activist for social justice and all the ways you've been describing? At the same is there not a powerful them out there who are blocking social justice in its many forms who cannot be convinced and only need to be legally defeated and culturally called out?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Well, there we go, Brian, with the truth of the truth, right? There is a powerful them. Absolutely there's a powerful them, and there's a powerful us. I'm really talking about a different kind of tactic which is to say let's say my tribe is the people, no matter what their religion is, what their race is, what their ethnicity is, what their sexual orientation is or gender is, who are working for love. That's my tribe.

My tribe can increase if I engage even that person with whom I wholeheartedly disagree with love. My sister's husband, Larry, I left him saying his name. He this greatest guy, he's such a great guy. We were talking about climate the other day and Larry is convinced that climate is doing what it's supposed to do on a cycle. I'm like, "Nope, we're killing it. We're killing the earth, and I disagree. I disagree."

We just kept talking until we got to, "Well, we both want there to be more science. Don't we? We want there to be more evidence. We want to learn." We love each other but we didn't agree. What makes him my people is that we can have a conversation located in love and respect.

Brian Lehrer: Alison in Manhattan, we're on WNYC with Reverend Jacqui Lewis. Hi Allison.

Allison: Oh my God. I love you, Reverend Jacqui Lewis, seriously. You are so my people, you are. Here I am. I'll just give you background on me for half a second. Your basic white woman, upper east side, Jewish New Yorker, middle-class person who has two children, 20 and 24-year-old. I have tried so hard to just be happy with our diversity and make sure we all understand that we have different people. I get breakout and hives. For example, I lived in France for 15 years. I lived in a very small town, only white people. Literally, I couldn't stand it.

I do so agree with you. I have been screaming to people that we we're hurting ourselves by narrowing our groups and saying that we are this, we are that, we are that when we are one. I know it sounds like utopia or you know what I mean but I'm still-- and please forgive me because I'm working and you didn't hear, have you written a book? Where can I get to grab on to your [inaudible 00:22:35]? No, but hallelujah. I really, really mean it. I really mean it. I want to cry right now.

Brian Lehrer: Reverend Jacqui, talk to Allison and then a plug away and say your book title again.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Allison, thank you so much for just wanting to have like-- what I hear you saying is we want there to be a conversion. I do want that. When I was listening to the news earlier today and it's which representative has made a video, some animated video in which another representative with whom he disagrees, who's a progressive New Yorker who we know who that is. It's depictive that he's slaying her. Slaying her. We're going to kill each other because we disagree. I can't abide it. I love a good fight. I really do. I love a good argument. I feel like I learn inside arguments. [inaudible 00:23:25] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Just to amplify what you're talking about, that thing in the news I haven't seen it yet, but I've seen it written about Republican Congressman Paul Gosar. I guess the video somehow depicts him physically attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Biden.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Yes, whatever. We're going to break into the Capitol [unintelligible 00:23:46]. That is terrible. It starts with this. It starts with we don't know how to just say, "I would like to know your point of view and tell you mine." We can disagree. If we get to war because we disagree, conflict level of level five in our conflict work is like we're going to break up, but we're going to kill each other? That's a whole other thing.

I wrote this book called Fierce Love, Allison. Today is launch day and Brian is so kind to have me on the show, but you can get it anywhere you get books. It's got a big title, Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World, but if you do Fierce Love, you'll find it and you do Jacqui, you'll find it. Jacqui Lewis, you'll find it.

Brian Lehrer: Allison, thank you very much for your call. That recitation of the book title should be the end of the interview, but I have to ask you before you go. How's the church almost a year now after the fire?

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Thank you, Brian. Well, it's been rough, to be honest. We got stalled in our work of just wrapping up the site, if you will, closing up the book bricks that are now exposed, waterproofing them, getting the rubble because quite frankly our neighbor made it really difficult to have access to the site. That's where the fire started and I was not saying that out loud so that sounded mean but that's honest. It was really hard.

I don't know the neighbor well enough to know what that was about, who knows what it is about, but what we found is now a way to work around. We now are in that tough space of just evaluating. Can we afford to build back there? Can we because the façade is up and New York is expensive or do we need to find a place that's also on the lower east side of Manhattan and do that? We have that.

We covet your prayers, friends who are listening, for just what to do. We're worshiping in a temporary space right now at 21st and Park. We feel really lucky, blessed to see each other in person.

Our digital church continues to flourish. 500 people joined the church last year, Brian, while we didn't have a building. People are loving in us, we're trying to love on them and still do our work of healing in the world. We'll know soon, we are walking across the wilderness toward the promised land of a new headquarters and soon we'll find it. We know we're walking with God in fierce love.

Brian Lehrer: Well that story in and of itself must be a testimony to the power of your fierce love because while churches and synagogues are I think losing congregants all over the country, there are you in the middle of a pandemic, after the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village, your church burned down, you added 500 congregation members. That's amazing.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis, senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church, wherever it is physically or virtually, is now the author of Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness that Can Heal the World. She also hosts the podcast called Love. Period. We always appreciate it when you come on with us. Thank you so much.

Reverend Jacqui Lewis: Thank you, Brian. Blessings and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

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