Ordinary Heroes of Racial Justice INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
JON BOYD IVP associate publisher and academic editorial director
Jon Boyd: Historians have a long-running debate about neutrality versus advocacy in their work, a tension between description and prescription. Your book goes for both. Karen Johnson: You’re right that I’m living into this tension. I think my first impulse, like many evangelicals, is towards action. My historical graduate training leaned into the descriptive. My solution has been to try to first understand the past in all its complexity. If I start with looking for a usable past or lead with judgment, I will miss and misunderstand more of what actually happened. But I also have a responsibility to love those in the present, those who are living in the world we have inherited from those who came before us. One part of loving the living is asking what we can learn from the dead. JB: An under-appreciated dimension of historical study is that the discipline involves not only time but also place. What stands out from your personal visits to the locations covered in your book? KJ: Going to visit the places and the communities where the people I was studying lived and breathed made them come alive to me. Each community (then and now) focused not solely on the individual, but on the life of the community and on serving others. My natural inclination is not in that direction. Shaped by suburban values and American individualism, efficiency, and time management, I tend towards seeking my own comfort and to maximizing each moment. I remember all of these implicit values of mine crashing into Catherine de Hueck’s community when I was doing research at the archives at Madonna House in rural Canada. Each morning, the community shared tea and bread at midmorning. In my drive to work through as much archival material as possible, I begrudged those breaks. Several years later, when I was researching at Koinonia Farm and participating in their shared daily lunchtime meal, I began to understand what I had missed at Madonna House. Being together was the work that mattered most. Breaking bread together was not a distraction, it was a gift.
JB: If you could invite all your subjects to a dinner party, how do you think that would go? KJ: There would be some big personalities in the room, but they had long years of practice in listening to others. Given that they all dove into topics we’re told we’re not supposed to discuss in polite company, I think any subject would be game. John Perkins, Raleigh Washington, and Glen Kehrein would go to embrace each other, since they all know each other already. I think Clarence Jordan and John Perkins would have some good conversations about Southern Christianity. Catherine de Hueck and Glen Kehrein would talk about cities and staying in a place. Perhaps the primary topic would be Jesus—who he is and why that matters. When we’re all in heaven, I guess I’ll have to host a dinner party like this and see what unfolds! JB: What’s next for you? Anything we should watch for in the future? KJ: In the fall, I’m going to South Africa with a cohort of Wheaton College faculty to learn from the global church about women’s experiences and leadership around justice issues, including creation care. Two threads that I want to follow are the history of Christians and the environment and the history of parenting or motherhood, which I see as tied to the racialized history of cities and suburbs. ■
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