Welcome to the Onscript podcast, your home for world-class conversations on scripture and theology,

where you get to meet some of the best in the field. Visit us at OnScript. Study. Say hello on Twitter at

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Welcome On script listeners.

This is Aaron Heim coming to you from Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, and I'm delighted to host the author

of The New York Times bestseller, The Color of Compromise, The Truth about the American

Church's complicity in Racism, and President and co-founder of The Witness, a black Christian collective,

Jemar Tisbee.

Jemar's writing has been published in the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Atlantic,

Vox, and CNN.

And he also is the host of the podcast, Pass the Mic, which he hosts along with Vice President

of the Witness, Tyler Byrne, and his own podcast footnotes, both of which you can check out at the witnessbcc.com

or wherever you get your podcasts. Jamar, we're so happy you could join us. Welcome to Onscript.

This is a pleasure and a privilege. Looking forward to our conversation.

Jamar, I read in your bio that you grew up north of Chicago, but that you've now lived in the

deep south in the Mississippi Delta for a number of years, where you've worked as a teacher

for Teach America, where you moved after completing your BA at Notre Dame. Now, that's a big

move. And since that move, you've completed

an M. Div at Reform Theological Seminary, and now you're finishing up a PhD in history at the

University of Mississippi. So you've been there in the Deep South. You've been educated in the

deep south. But help us understand what was it like for you as a black man to move from the Midwest to the Mississippi Delta?

Definitely a culture shock going from the north shore of Illinois down to what one author calls the most southern place on earth.

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