Professor Lin tells us all about her new book Immigration and Apocolypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration. We think about Christopher Columbus and the New World, why there’s a “new” in New England, New York, and New Haven, how Revelation’s words have shaped rhetoric about immigration, how Westward expansion and building a wall fit in, and more. Professor Lin helps us think about how our new understanding of Revelation and the American imagination apply to preaching on Revelation, teaching children about Thanksgiving, and making the case for why thinking about colonialism is important.
42: Immigration and Apocolypse with Yii-Jan Lin
Hosts: Brandon Nappi and Hannah Black
Guest: Yii-Jan Lin
Production: Goodchild Media
Music: Wayfaring Stranger, Theodicy Jazz Collective
Art: Ella Landino
Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast
- Get your copy of Immigration and Apocolypse (and watch our Instagram for a giveaway!)
- Learn more about Professor Lin
B: Hey, Hannah.
H: Hey, Brandon. How are you?
B: I’m doing really well. It’s always good to be back here at Yale Broadcast.
H: Yale Broadcast Studios. Yes. Agreed.
B: How was your Thanksgiving?
H: Oh, so funny. I was about to ask you the same thing. My Thanksgiving was lovely. My dog was dressed as a turkey. All four pies made it to Northern Virginia, all different; we had apple pumpkin, lemon chess pie, and triple berry. And then when I asked my nephew what his favorite flavor was, because my niece and my nephew both sampled all 4 flavors as is to be expected, he said his favorite flavor was marshmallow because in a last minute stroke of inspiration from none other than Brandon Nappi, I made homemade marshmallows to go on top of the pumpkin pie.
B: So I am so excited that you have … that you have entered the world of homemade marshmallow making.
H: And it’s a world.
B: I would highly encourage anyone whose eyebrows are cynically raised right now, listeners, that may be …
H: They might be raised with wonder and surprise. Right?
B: This is really worth doing. You do need a candy thermometer. There are a few steps, you need a mixer. But the difference between a jet-puffed, store-bought, god knows how old, dusty marshmallow …
H: No more dusty, fusty marshmallows for us!
B: Where did that wrath come from?
H: That’s a lot of marshmallow hate.
B: The difference between that and the airy bit of heavenly goodness.
H: Wow. I might even say a little bit creamy.
B: Creamy too. Right? So it’s worth the extra few steps.
H: And there’s just the wow factor.
B: It … it’s a crowd favorite. You always look like just an excellent human being. One of God’s chosen ones when you walk in with that.
H: Okay. Walk us through the process for people who are still bamboozled.
B: Oh, yeah. For the bamboozled, there’s, there is gelatin in in most recipes. Did you use a gelatin-based recipe?
H: I used the recipe you sent me. Yep.
B: And there’s an absurd amount of sugar, which you just have to get over. Right? And so there’s, you know, water and sugar, and there’s just lots of simmering of sugar to … to the proper temperature, and that’s why the candy thermometer is essential. And then the mixer, comes on, right, and takes … really it takes a center stage.
H: I have to be honest with you. I used my thermometer from my, like, espresso area of my kitchen, which goes to 240 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s supposed to go to 265, meaning that the thing you’re boiling is supposed to go to 265. Right. So I was just watching it, and I thought, okay. After it passes 240, I’m just gonna vibe it out.
B: Wow. Dr. Hannah Black … Going on vibes.
H: It worked. But then the thing … The thing is that I’m … I’m very straight-laced in my professional life. So when I’m home quilting, baking, it’s a very vibe-based system. But the thing that was most impressive to my 6 year old niece was when it was still one large marshmallow, and it hadn’t been cut up yet. I was FaceTiming her, and she kept wanting to see it and then trying to, like, compare, like I was like, Well, it’s, like, 10 inches big right now! She’s like, Well, what is that? Just holding things up to the camera, like, Is it this big?
Is it this big?
B: Yeah. It produces a sheet, a big sheet of marshmallowy goodness. Mhmm. Yeah.
Which, sort of I mean, it looks like a heavenly cloud.
H: It does.
B: It does. Which …
H: Very sticky.
B: Which is my, I think … B+ transition.
H: On, no, this is the transition? … To the book of Revelation.
B: Transition. Not my finest moment, but also not my worst moment … to the book of Revelation.
H: Well done. Yeah. We need, like, a game on the Instagram that’s, like, ranking our transitions from worst to best.
B: Oh, that’s amazing.
H: The marshmallowy cloud.
B: Like a bingo transition card.
Well, my earliest memory of Revelation is, I I believe, from my first communion. And I have to go back and look. I don’t know if, in the lectionary or in the Roman Missal, it’s typical to have the book of Revelation read at a little kid’s first communion. But I am absolutely positive that that’s what happened at mine, and I was asked to read. And I was in my little white robe and with a large bowl haircut.
H: This is a real picture you’re painting.
B: This picture exists, and we may need to post it with the show notes because the bowl was real. And, of course, I had no idea what I was reading at the time. But it was etched in my memory.
H: Do you know what passage it was? Was it a coming on the clouds of glory kind of a thing?
B: It was coming on the clouds of glory. Yep. Well done.
H: Wow. I guess it’s a classic for a reason.
B: Yeah. Anyways, so this conversation that we’re having with Professor Lin and her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse, is a revelation. It’s a revelation about Revelation.
H: A Revelation revelation.
B: There’s a lot of dots that were connected …
H: Wow. For me in reading this book. I have so many little stories about my life in the book of Revelation. But one is that I have a childhood memory. I don’t know how old I was, maybe ten, twelve, sitting in the back seat of the car on a road trip, and I had heard at church that there’s a special blessing for those who read this book. I think maybe it says that in Revelation somewhere. So my road trip activity was, like, I’m just gonna, like, muscle through this cover to cover because I wanna be blessed.
B: Some of us were reading, like, Star Wars comics or, like, playing punch buggy red.
H: But then, there’s a Eugene Peterson book about Revelation. Oh, I wish I could remember the title off the top of my head. But he talks about the word apocalypso, which is the word for apocalypse or revelation. And to describe its sort of Greek semantic range, the image he chooses to use is that it’s like … it’s like an unveiling or an uncovering. So he says, it’s like when there’s stew in, like, your Le Creuset on the stove or something like that, and you unveil it to behold. It’s like, of all things, you chose, like, brown goo.
B: Wow. The pot roast has a whole new meaning.
H: Yeah. Apocalypso. Behold.
B: Wow.
H: The unveiling. Yeah.
B: So, wow. I’m not sure how to transition now. I’m stunned.
H: Yeah. I think I had a third, oh, my third Revelation tidbit, these aren’t going in chronological order, is that back in my Biola days, I remember, like, hearing for the first time that the book of Revelation could be poetic and not literal. That was a Revelation revelation. Yes.
B: That’s a stunner.
H: Yeah. So let this be the fourth in a long line of Revelation revelations for me and my theological imagination.
B: From marshmallows, stew … bowl cuts.
H: Road trips. Stew …
B: We took the long way around, listeners. And we’re … we’re proud of it.
H: So, write in to let us know what your Revelation revelations have been. But I’d say this is the most sturdy of my Revelation revelations is learning about Revelation from Professor Lin.
So let me tell us a little bit about Professor Lin before we get going. Professor Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament, our colleague at Yale Divinity School. She specializes in immigration, textual criticism, the Revelation of John, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality.
This is her latest book, Immigration and Apocalypse, How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration. It focuses on the use of Revelation in political discourse surrounding American immigration. And she also has another book called The Erotic Life of Manuscripts, from 2016, which examines how metaphors of race, family evolution, and genetic inheritance have shaped the goals and assumptions of New Testament textual criticism from the 18th century to the present. She’s been published in a whole bunch of journals. She’s co-chair of the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation section of SBL, and she’s on all kinds of other steering committees, leadership things. She’s amazing.
B: She’s amazing.
H: I think our listeners will get a sense of how she is absolutely masterful at the rigorous academic work and also the practical stuff and bringing those two things together.
B: Oh, fantastic.
H: Which is where the magic happens.
B: The magic. The magic happened for me in this book in a way that was truly powerful.
H: Truly. Mhmm. Mhmm. Let’s get to it.
B: Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi.
H: Hi. I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leaders Way podcast.
B: A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology.
H: This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary at Yale.
H: Well, thanks for joining us on our podcast. This is very exciting.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.
H: Of course. The first thing I really wanna ask, I’ve … this is such an engaging book and so timely and academic. It’s practical and rigorous all at the same time, which … is always really exciting to see. I feel like we don’t see it quite enough of that. And I I just kind of wanna hear the life-iness behind it. Like, why write this book? What was the story of getting to the point of writing this book? What are your hopes for it? That kind of a thing.
Yii-Jan: It was really random the way it came about. I was asked to reflect on a bunch of readings for an Asian-American community. I was teaching out in Berkeley at the time in California, and the advent readings happened to be quite apocalyptic, and I thought that’s really interesting and I was also thinking, you know, I was in the Bay area in California, and there was just a confluence of different factors. So thinking about apocalyptic texts from the Bible, thinking about Asian communities, and then also the history of the place that I was in, and all the place names that were included in, you know, the geography of the place. So Angel Island, which was a detention center for a long time, but, you know, has this heavenly paradisiacal name, Golden Gate, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and then Golden State, of course, California. And also the Chinese name for San Francisco was Gold Mountain, at the turn of the century, and it’s still, like, in my household with my parents in Mandarin, we still call it Old Gold Mountain. That’s, you know, the name for San Francisco, or one of them.
And so it just seemed just like, why is it that we have all these heavenly associations with these places that have become really iconic in the Chinese immigrant experience, and so that’s how I started thinking of the immigrant arrival experience as quite apocalyptic. Right? You could meet with … entering. Right? Something that you would hope would be utopic, something that would be an arrival of hoping for promises fulfilled, or I mean, and, as well, they’re not mutually exclusive, experienced disaster and catastrophe, which is also another part of the semantic range of apocalyptic. So that’s how I started thinking about it, and the more I looked beneath the surface of those particular elements, the more I found. And that’s how the book got started.
H: Oh, so interesting.
B: So I grew up, as a third generation Italian American, with a 19th century copy of Columbus’s diary entries …
Y: Okay. Wow.
B: In my library. I can remember as a little kid. I don’t know where the book came from. I’m not even sure that my parents know, but it was always on the bookshelf. And I can remember paging through as a young child, not understanding anything that I was reading, but being really, in those days, proud. Right? Because for Italian Americans, at one point in history, Columbus was a heroic figure. And in recent years as, thankfully, there’s been a kind of grappling with the historical figure of Columbus and the kind of very fraught theology, and colonial colonialist project that was part of his voyage. You know, we’ve we’ve re-ranked Columbus. But I wonder if you’d take us back to help us unpack the the apocalyptic and colonial threads that are woven into a person who was once seen as this great hero, and and now, thankfully, we have a much more layered, multifaceted understanding of what was going on there.
Y: Yeah. So I think the public attention on Columbus, of course, has shifted, right, around different parts of the country, and he’s a figure that represents discovery in good and bad ways. Right? Somebody who also represents, you know, genocide and colonization and the spread of disease and all sorts of violence.
Right? So there’s that side of it. There’s also the side of, you know, he was the one who had the idea that he could sail, you know, as far as he could and think that he could, you know, circumnavigate the globe. So those two things are the usual focus, but what isn’t talked about very often or discussed is his apocalyptic understanding of what the time he was living in. So he was really influenced by others before him who had this apocalyptic worldview that the end times were drawing near, and he felt he knew or he believed that he had to fulfill certain prophecies, or that certain prophecies had to be fulfilled.
And he happened to have, you know, the ego to feel like he was going to be the one to do it. And so he believed there are a couple of things that needed to happen before God’s kingdom would be manifested on earth. So it would be, 1) that the Jerusalem on earth, which was at that moment in time belonging to and ruled by Islamic power, he believed that if it was taken back and made Christian as part of, you know, a continuing of the old crusades that that would be part of realization of taking back Jerusalem, and part of Christ’s millennial reign that’s talked about in Revelation. And then he also believed that every tribe and nation on earth had to be evangelized, too. So that was another part of the prophecy.
And so these things kind of came together in his idea of a voyage, which was, if I sail far enough, towards the west, I’ll reach the far east. Right? That was his … I mean, then actually, that is, you know, pretty true, right, if you think about at least flying, right? And if he finds those lands, which he thought would reach paradise, he could find all the places that it’s described in Genesis is full of this rich gold and jewels and all of these things, bring back that treasure to fund a new crusade to take back Jerusalem, and put it under Christian power.
And then at the same time, all those people that had not been evangelized in all those distant places in the world could be evangelized to hopefully converted. So those are two things, you know, to kill to kill two birds with one stone. Right?
So but … the astonishing thing is that land did appear. Right? And so in his mind, and it fit his apocalyptic understanding of himself and the role he was playing and all the prophecies that he had collected in his little notebook. So basically, he had a kind of a commonplace book where he would copy in all of these passages from the Bible; Isaiah, Revelation, that foretold these lands in his mind. And then he found them. Right? And so that became … he colonized them not just, you know, in taking the land and the people and etcetera, but also in his mind and in the mindset of European perspective of these, this is a new world and it’s gonna help us realize some sort of apocalyptic prophecy.
So it’s just really astonishing to think about how that happened, that moment in world history, and it set the stage for understanding and conceptualizing this whole place that we now call the United States and the Americas.
H: Right. Right. It’s taking the land, but also giving it this new identity that comes with all this loaded theological stuff. It’s so interesting talking about it historically because I’ve been part of Christian communities where evangelizing to every people and language has been totally still part of the kind of ethos, and millennialism and amillennialism and premillennialism, postmillennialism. There’s still a lot of this in the theological water today, especially for evangelical Christians. I’m wondering if we can camp out on the word “new” a little bit. And this is kind of just fun because we’re in New England, in New Haven. But can you talk a little bit about what that means in an apocalyptic sense?
Y: Yeah. Well okay. So we have I just wanna draw a couple of pretty startling parallels. Yeah. So we have in Revelation, in chapter 21, you have the descent of the new Jerusalem.
Right? So here we have and in the Greek, it’s not we’re not really sure if it’s “new” as part of the title like New England, where it’s capitalized because we just don’t have, you know, capitalization in those particular manuscripts and also the adjective in that … those particular phrases, it’s ambiguous, whether it’s part of the title or of what’s whether it’s a new meaning just to describe it. Exactly. Right? But of course, it’s working and playing off of Jerusalem, and it’s part of the Israelite exilic dream of redemption, of return, right, of, a ceasing of that kind of suffering from being exiled from Jerusalem.
And so the descent of the new Jerusalem presents both a return, right, to what is old Jerusalem as they knew it, or it was in historical memory, And then also a new start of a new Jerusalem that’s heavenly, spotless, pure, a place to be, you know, with God worshiping as close as possible. Right? So it represents both of those things, and it’s also, you know, it comes down and it’s to be populated. Right? There’s the kind of an exodus of all of God’s people and also from the judgment of the dead, those who can go in whose names are in the lamb’s book of life, then enter the new Jerusalem.
Now we have the appearance of the new world, right? So new, again, of course, it’s not new, it’s always been there and it is also peopled, right? Right. But in European imagination, it was there for the taking. So indigenous people who had lived there for millennia were basically erased in that conceptualization, right, and there’s this eagerness to claim this as new.
So you’re right, there’s a lot of things to think about in just that one word, “new,” and the naming of places, especially if you think about just names we still have, New England, New York, New Jersey, right? These are place names that hearken back to English colonial mindsets, right? And when they came and colonized, it was a very similar move. They are thinking of, they’re thinking of themselves as an exile. So many of them are leaving a place where they felt that their religious practices and their congregational life were not what they wanted, but they’re coming to a place that reminds them of the old place and is kind of a perfection of what could have been, but also something new.
Right? So … and they’re also describing the new world and the colonies as an exodus very much in imitation of Israel. So they’re thinking of it as a journey into the wilderness, a finding of the promised land, which also justifies killing of indigenous people, right, as entering Canaan, right, as the Israelites. So there’s, I call it, I think of it metaphorically and literally as this live action role playing of Israel, right?
H: That’s really good way to put it.
Y: They’re both reading biblical texts, reading both Exodus, reading Revelation, and playing that out in their political colonial religious fantasies in real life, Right? In real time coming in to the colonies and understanding it as a new place, the new Jerusalem in many, understandings. And, of course, we see that reflected in the new new new that’s up and down the East Coast. Yeah. Oh, I I wanna follow-up on that because I’ve been thinking actually, especially at this last AAR/SBL, a good friend of mine were thinking a lot about the category of imagination and how that plays into all of this. And I could imagine someone listening to this and feeling defensive. Like, oh, well, if the biblical narrative caused this to happen, does that make it bad? And one of the questions I had reading this book was about your charge to forget Revelation and remember history, which I see exactly how helpful that is. And also, I see the places in the biblical story where welcoming foreigners is one of the most important things that the people of God can do. So is the problem in your estimation with the Bible? Or is the problem with the way it shapes our imaginations, or is the problem with the way we read it to match our preconceptions … like, where do where does the issue lie to you? And maybe that’s too simple of a question.
Y: No. I think I think that the … the text can say what the text says. Right? And even by saying say, it sounds as if the text is shocking, but not really. Right? It’s we who come and read it and say, I’m gonna use this as a metaphor. Right? Or it’s really handy to preach about our country in this way or … and/or frame justification for taking the land in this way. There’s nothing about the text that commands us to do that. Right? So there’s a story, and there are certainly metaphors, and, yes, there are harmful metaphors and harmful impulses within the text, but I think that’s true of any text. Almost any text where you can take something and move it in a really bad direction. Exactly. And it’s … I think it’s the people who are interpreting and enacting it, or commanding people and instructing people and it was, you know, persuading people in a particular way, using that text as something that’s really convenient, that can slide right into a colonizing, you know, mode. I think the responsibility lies there and not essentially within the text. I think, sure, there are texts that lend themselves quite easily to that use and, yeah, we can talk about that, but we don’t have to use them, like, no one’s forcing us to use that way.
H Somebody’s choosing to center that text over another.
Y: Exactly. So that’s where I … that’s where I would land on that. And I think, you know, Revelation, it is … people do many many many different things with it, because it is such an interesting and bizarre text.
H: I mean, its bonkers. Right. You have some creative … license, immediately … when you’re interpreting.
Y: Yeah. Exactly. So you fit right in if you use it in a really bizarre way because it itself is pretty full of random bizarre elements. And so but then I think the ethical responsibility lies in the interpreter.
B: What I found so powerful about your book is that it was that it is, for me, a kind of decoder ring that explains so much about what is happening at this very moment. And I wonder if you can take us, to how this went so wrong. We have an image, in Revelation of Paradise that was literally recreated in the center of almost every New England town, this beautiful green. And how did we go from paradise and beautiful New England greens to exclusion, colonization, dehumanization? Because both poles are there really strongly in Revelation, and in the religious imagination, I think, of many Christians. Take us on that journey of how there can be such beauty, but also such, dehumanization. How did that unfold?
Y: Yeah. And I think Revelation as a book has a lot to do with that because, you know, in the use of it, it is a book set at the end of the New Testament canon, right, in which we have absolutes presented. Right? So it is presenting these pretty theologically, absolutely. Right? So we have the judgment of the dead. You are in or you are out, your name is in the book of lamb of the of life of the lamb or it is not, right?
So it feels like, did the time for forgiveness just run out, right? So those are … that’s a big theological question and because people would latch on to that, there’s a … on the one hand, there’s a sense of all the things you said, right, of refuge, of comfort, of perfection, of justice and being together with God, all wonderful things, right? But taking that to a point of absolute judgment and absolute … an end to forgiveness, to mercy. Right? I don’t wanna get into the theological weeds too much on that because I don’t feel like that, you know, that’s not really my wheelhouse, but it does feel like a very different, moment in understanding and realization that we find in some of the teachings in the gospels, for example.
So if you’re gonna take that as a model for something earthly, right, and realizing that, it’s very easy to, 1) say we, you know, we wanna create this, you know, place of purity and all of that, but then you’re implying impurity. You’re implying God’s enemies, those who shouldn’t be allowed in, those who are absolutely not admissible, right, just as we find that in or out within Revelation. And so I think when you incorporate that metaphor, you incorporate all the other parts of it as well.
And I think that’s what we see happening –and of course, it’s … we’re also playing with just general human in-group, out-group impulses, and that can just be exacerbated and taken to an extreme of all sorts of racism and, extreme, you know, violence against the other and using a biblical text that’s considered sacred to to support that. Yeah.
H: Can you talk a little bit more about how it is that this theological lens of revelation as the operative narrative, like, creates or paints a certain picture of what it means to be the outsider of what the immigrant is in the American imagination. And yeah.
Y: Yeah. So, like, what elements from Revelation is being used to describe those things?
H: Yeah, like how do we go from we’re reading Revelation to “wicked, filthy, disease bearing, immoral, violent people who want to be inside the walls,” right? This kind of matrix.
Y: So, I mean, Revelation itself, if we think about it in the ancient context, is a pretty polemical book. Right? So it is basically I mean, it begins with seven letters to seven churches and whoever’s writing this, called John of Patmos, right, is saying, you know, I know who where you are. There’s Satan’s synagogue or these are, you know, false Jews and this person, you know, is there’s a false teacher and this is Jezebel. Right? So using this, like, all of this language that is incredibly polemical And to, you know, to argue against, you know, certain types of assimilation, it’s very sectarian, so it’s already in that posture. Right?
So there’s gonna be extreme language of those who do not belong, those who don’t really share the correct faith, who are, you know, following false teachers, who haven’t, you know, worshiped God correctly, and now, you know, now are being described as the book progresses, and it’s not really a straight chronology, right, but you have these, you know, cumulative descriptions of God’s enemies or idolaters basically have receiving the mark of the beast, worshiping the beast. And then they end up being struck down by disease and boils all over their skin. And then ultimately, those who are described outside of the walls of the New Jerusalem are, you know, in Revelation 22 described as the dogs, the sexually immoral, the, you know, the violent, who practice sorcery and, you know, falsehood. So those labels, right, and it’s part of … I mean, it’s age-old to start labeling outsiders in those particular ways. But it’s a really interesting, constellation of terms that then gets used in American immigration language against people who shouldn’t be allowed into God’s country, right, which is the identity that America begins to assume.
H: It sort of helps, like, make sense of how, there’s a deep irony in the fact that, like, white people came, colonized the new world, and then start excluding other people when you know? I feel like there’s sort of a cheeky way of putting it that, like, well, aren’t we all immigrants? And now we’re excluding immigrants or something like that. But this, I think, pinpoints where that difference is in the imagination.
Y: Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, right, the the colonists are the very first immigrants, right? Indigenous people not within the last, I don’t know, I don’t know, geologic era, right? That had traveled, so we have those who are colonizing the Americas as the first immigrants. Right. And so there’s this use of scripture in their minds as justification for doing that. And then once that’s established, and they feel that they become nativists. Right? Then Right. They’re gonna turn that immigration language on everybody else. Yeah. So it’s it’s interesting the way that that turns.
B: There’s this interesting description you have in the book, where Ronald Reagan is giving a speech. Mhmm. And he describes, the streets of heaven guarded by the US marines. I thought it was a really interesting moment. When America is compared to heaven, heaven starts to look like America in this really weird way. Can you talk a little bit about how that has worked over history? That was a chilling moment, where I had to literally put the book down and take a break. What’s going on?
Y: Yeah. That was an epigraph, I think, in the book, right, where he describes, yeah, the US Marines as as part of the guard, angelic guard. And, there’s this, yeah, conflation of this nationalist patriotic pride in the US and American exceptionalism that’s definitely borrowing heavenly language constantly. And he does that a lot in that farewell speech to the nation that I discussed at the end of chapter one, where he describes the shining city on a hill. And that’s a phrase that he uses throughout his presidency to great effect. Right? He’s … that’s actually from Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, where, you know, “A city, a shining city on a hill cannot be hid,” you know, its lights will shine out, and that’s really a picture of American exceptionalism. You know, we’re a shining country, we’re a righteous example for the rest of the world. But when he fleshes it out in his farewell speech, he uses the language from Revelation 21, where it’s on strong foundation, it has … if it has to have a wall, it’s like a concession. It’ll have doors, doors that are always open just like the New Jerusalem has gates that are always open. So it’s the semblance of hospitality, you know, American exceptionalist, acceptance of the, you know, the refugee, etcetera. Right? Like, we have, on, Liberty Island, right, with the statue and Melazarus’ poem.
So he uses all of those things to conflate, and to make the US resemble heaven and heaven, you know, that being borrowed and to talk about the US. So, yeah, it does start to resemble each other quite a bit. Yeah. And and that’s really interesting because the US is not a city. Right? It’s a gigantic nation. But when you when you talk about it in terms of the city of God, which he does with the shining sea on hill, it really changes the way you think about immigration because it shrinks the entire nation to, you know, an understanding of a of a walled, bordered place that needs to be guarded. Right? Guarded with the US marines. And so it changes the whole conceptualization of what immigration is or could be and limits our imagination about it.
B: And the door should be shrunk, if not completely closed, right? Replaced with a wall.
H: Sealed.
Y: There has to be doors. As if that’s the part of the natural … Right? That it’s always, you know, when actually, no. We created those ideas of hardened borders and gates. Right? That is a human construction.
H: Oh, it’s so interesting. So being a West Coaster myself through and through, I grew up with a lot of California history, and I think I’m more familiar at this point with, like, ideas and imaginations of Christopher Columbus and Ellis Island. But we started in Berkeley, California. Yeah. And there are a few different things happening. There’s, like, imagination of the frontier. There’s westward expansion, but there’s also kind of other things going on, on the West Coast. Could you kind of fill in the gaps for me about how West Coast history fits into this other picture?
Y: Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know if I can encapsulate all of it.
H: Well, yes. This is a big ask, you know, whatever comes to mind.
Y: But, of course, we have Spanish colonization, right, up and down the West Coast and into Mexico, and it’s only with US expansion westward, and the US claiming of land and then, and then finally war with Mexico, right, in which there’s the taking over of all of that land for US territory. And that’s really interesting, so there are a couple of things happening, one is what to do with native peoples who belonged to Mexico, or, you know, were understood as Mexican, but actually many are indigenous and not at all part of Spanish. You know, I mean, became part of Spanish colonization. Right? And then now you have the change of territory. So you have the saying, “the border crossed us,” right, in terms of Mexico. So what do we do?
And then the US, there was a treaty of Guadalupe, Hidalgo, in which there’s the understanding that if you wanted to remain on … wherever you were when the border crossed you, you can become a US citizen. So there’s an indigeneity, right, as one thing, citizenship as another, that’s being offered, not always actually realized on the ground because field officers would be like, you’re too brown, you cannot possibly be a US citizen. So then you start creating …
H: This issue of who’s white.
Y: Liminal, yeah, identity that’s race-based naturalization that becomes super problematic when you start having these individual judgments of skin color as part of the whole nexus of things. And then people who had belonged to the land, but suddenly, you know, they’re questionable in terms of who they are. And then increasingly, you know, accumulation of bureaucracy and documents and all of these things, you begin to have the construction of the illegal immigrant, right? Somebody who is illegal. And that’s a pretty recent construction, you know, end of 19th century, beginning of 20th. And then the beginnings of requiring documentation. So all of this stuff is relatively recent. We forget that because we think, Oh, well, of course you need to send … It seems very natural. If you’re an immigrant, you need these things. It’s like … that wasn’t actually … not the case.
And if you think about the way US created itself, it’s through just the seizing of land, right, at war. And so it’s just because of that that power that it can make these requirements and then begin to construct identities as essentially illegal and undocumented when these people are human beings who have lived there. Right? So that’s part of the history. The other part of it is the … a lot of the catalyst for, understanding legal, illegal, and documentation are actually Chinese immigrants who started coming in mid 19th-century and 1850s to work in the west, in mines, on the railroad, and it was because there was such a rejection of that identity that these things, you know, especially with Chinese exclusion laws, that these things became necessary.
And then that, of course, then it gets placed also onto, those who are in Mexico crossing the border. And so you just have this confluence of events that is increasing requirements, qualifications, documentation, legality, illegality. Yeah.
H: Oh my goodness.
B: Now something changes you describe in the book with the arrival of Donald Trump in the imagination. The frontier was once a place of limitless expansion. You could go and conquer and claim, but that’s not really the claim of Trump anymore. There’s a different sort of narrative happening. So what’s going on and what’s changed?
Y: Yeah. So there, I’m really piggybacking on Greg Grandin’s book. He’s a historian who wrote The End of the Myth, which is the end of the understanding of the pioneer spirit, the frontier spirit. And he’s saying, you know, that there’s always going to be a frontier whether it’s like, you know, war elsewhere across the globe or, you know, some sort of seeking of justice. Right? We can create these other things, but it was often based on American exceptionalism and thinking about how America is a righteous example for the rest of the world and that that shifts dramatically with Donald Trump where it changes from American exceptionalism to America first. Like, we are no longer interested in being a moral example for rest of the world. We are for ourselves. Right? So that’s a huge shift that he marks in the book and send says that’s the end of this myth of American exceptionalism. Right? In which Donald Trump very explicitly says, you know, America first, you know, we we’re gonna take America back and we’re not going to be, you know, giving these handouts, you know, serving as a moral leader, you know, that is not our first priority.
What I suggest though is that, yes, that’s the … I definitely see that. But the book of Revelation and its imagery and, you know, all sorts of elements that we find metaphors, is so fluid and so flexible that it can work both for the American exceptionalism as shining city on the hill, because you have the New Jerusalem, and it can also work for America First because you have the wall. Right? And so the Donald Trump wall, the Trump wall becomes a huge symbol of power, and the language around it is taken directly from Revelation as well. So that … that imagery from Revelation is just being reused, re-recycled, you know, in all of that.
H: Taken up into a slightly different, new narrative.
Y: Yeah. And it’s still super powerful because it’s Christian. It’s iconic. It is all the things that would please a certain part of his base. Right? And also, it can talk about strong borders and defense. So those things work too.
H: So lots of our listeners are people who preach. I’m wondering what advice you have for somebody whose charge is to preach on Revelation.
Y: Oh my goodness. Yeah.
H: What should be highlighted? What should be addressed? What should be avoided to preach responsibly about revelation in a context where we have this history?
Y: Yeah. That’s a great question. I mean, I think, well, of course, depends on your context and your audience of what it has become really important for that community, if anything. Revelation isn’t often a text that’s used liturgically because it’s like, just don’t know what to do with it. It’s super violent and bizarre. Yeah. There are different ways that scholars have handled it, and there’s a lot of debate, you know, on … in terms of interpretation. Yes. There are things that in it that are anti-empire that is against Rome in the ancient context, and that could be taken as anti-imperialist today or, it is, ending with refuge and comfort and, you know, a sense of wholeness and restoration with God. All of those things, right, that can be comforting, that can be used as liberative. Right? The people of God all gathered together, worshiping together, you know, from every tribe and nation in all languages. So those are, I think, things that strike a redemptive chord.
Right? I think also you have to be honest about certain aspects of Revelation as well is that even though it’s anti-imperial, it’s using all the empire metaphors to describe God’s kingdom. So the throne room I mean,
H: it’s a kingdom to begin with.
Y: It’s the Kingdom of God. Right? And so it’s just … it’s taking something that’s human construction and inhabiting it in a different way towards God’s kingdom. So you could be super honest and be like, this is, sometimes the human imagination wants to hang on to what we know, right? So if Rome is being worshiped and is, you know, portrayed as the Whore of Babylon, which is again, highly misogynist, right, again, a thing to watch out for. So it’s also like incorporating what’s really harmful, right, in a new imagination, right, of Rome, but this time, not Rome, but it’s God’s kingdom. So we still have a throne room, we still have, you know, those who are punished, we still have, you know, the destruction of our enemies and all of these things that you can you can point out. Like, this is still a very human book. We can understand it as inspired theologically and for use, but also be very honest about the failure of imagination sometimes to think outside the box.
H: Oh gosh. And the whole thing is predicated on, like, human stuff that we can use to metaphorically understand. … Clearly something that can’t be described, like, clearly or literally because there’s just it’s imagery sitting. Yeah.
Y: I think you can you can see the longing and the spark. Yeah. Right? But you can also say there was a way that it did not break out of certain structures. It couldn’t think of gender in any new way. It couldn’t think of empire in a new way. Right? And I think those are the things to also be aware of.
H: Okay. I have another kind of, like, hard and zany one for you about how to, like, how to fully, take this in and, like, have this understanding of the American understanding of Revelation be part of our imaginary. And that’s we … we just had Thanksgiving. I just got back from Thanksgiving. My fabulous 6 year old niece recited a poem that told the story of white people coming to the new world in a way that I was like, “Huh!” You know? Wow. Okay. But that being taken as a given, like, how if I were to sit down with my 6 year old niece and talk about the story of Europeans coming to the Americas. How do I tell that story in a way that a 6 year old can understand?
Y: I mean, you probably don’t wanna go into, like, the brutal bloodshed and spread of disease.
H: We’re gonna do like a PG version.
Y: At some point that needs to be known. Right. But you could say I mean, there’s a way of thinking about …
H: I guess, yeah. What we’re over and against is like, your ancestors came for religious liberty because they were being persecuted, and now we’re Americans.
Y: Yeah. Right.That that that’s Americans. Yeah. Right. That that that narrative.
H: That doesn’t quite work. So what how do I complicate that for her?
Y: I mean, I think children have a very strong sense of what is theirs and how to share and asking permission and, you know, if someone came into your house and decided it was their house, how would you feel? Right? There’s a way of saying like, there were things that happened when people really didn’t respect other people, didn’t care for them, didn’t understand that a place was their home or … did understand actually. Right? That’s the hard part. Yeah. And didn’t care.
H: Right? I was told that this was my house. But, I already live here!
Y: Yeah. Or based on right. Like, the way I live is better than the way you live. Therefore, I have a right to take over whatever it is that you have and, you know, where you live and that’s a lot of that is what happened. I mean, I think to put it on the simplest terms is, on those very basic violations of human rights. Right? And, I don’t know how heavy you wanna go into with a 6 year old, but, that is part of the story and say, you know, this is a story that you hear in school that we wanna feel better about ourselves, so we wanna say, right, this is the myth of America, but a lot of this is not actually very nice at all. Right? And it … there’s a lot of bad things that happened, I think, you could say, you know, and, you know, we’ll talk more about what those bad things are when you’re a little bit older, but I think it’s okay for you to know that that’s not the case. Yeah.
H: Okay. And then this is like –
Y: I’m not a child educator.
H: Okay this is my third, like, wacky hypothetical. First, we’re a preacher, then we’re a 6 year old. And now, also, just at the conference, I was talking to people about sort of post-colonial theology, and my more conservative colleagues still, I think, just can’t wrap their mind sometimes around why this matters at all. It’s a little bit like, well, why would we talk about white people? We’re white people. That just makes us feel bad about ourselves. We shouldn’t use words like colonialism because I don’t identify with that word.
Y: Right. So that like a sensitivity to whiteness.
H: Yeah, a sensitivity to whiteness and a sense that this is history. Why would we keep hashing it out and feeling bad about ourselves?
Y: Right. Right. I guess the polite answer would be well, for one thing, I would say it’s not just history, it’s happening. The ravages of colonization are still absolutely true, right? You think of what happened when Europe decided it had every right to colonize and invade and kill, right? And it’s just fact, it’s not to make anyone feel bad, it is what happened. Right? It happened in Africa, in South America, in the – Northern America, it happened in parts of Asia, all over. Right? And so there was European invasion, colonization. I mean, independence of India was only, you know, not that long ago, right? So it’s just all these things. And not just colonization, but continued, you know, planting of industries, political governments, you know, all sorts of things. Right? And then if you see the way that the extraction of goods, the extraction of labor has built up what’s happening in the global north, and that’s continuing, right, in in thinking about what’s happening, you know, all of post-colonial era. Right? And not really. I mean, I still have corporations, you know, all of these things, and how that’s shaping global dynamics to this day, right, in which you have, you know, introduction of governments, removal of those governments, the vacuum of power that happens, what happens to then independent African nations, what’s happening.
So it’s just a few step back and look at the globe as a whole. And then who also has the wealthiest economies, the largest archives of stolen goods, you know, in artifacts and all of those things centered in the global north and think, really? Are you saying that post coloniality is not important?
H: Totally. Well, and I think you can go small. Like, you can say the way you feel about immigration law and gun law was a really interesting one that also showed up in the book. All of that is, like, public policy speaking to theology and theology speaking to public policy. And so your take on these things is wrapped up in colonialism and bringing it to immigration and Donald Trump, I think, helps draw that line.
Y: Yeah. And I think the whole sensitivity to whiteness and to the that I was in the past, It’s only seeing one slice right now and saying, well, this is just how things are. Those people in the south, they’re just developing. They have they can’t progress as quickly as the north. I’m like, well, Why is that? You know, what happened? It’s not as if, you know, all of these things just dropped down in time and they are the way they are. Like, it is absolutely a cumulative effect of what’s happened in the last, you know, five hundred years.
H: So, well, thank you for helping me talk to preachers, a 6 year old, and also my conservative colleagues.
Y: I don’t claim to be an expert in those communications …
H: It helps though. It helps, I think. Yeah.
B: So to step back, when I when I finished your book, I thought this is a book about the power of imagination. And it’s about the power of imagination to create literally our world and structures in our world. Can you help us think through how do we heal with this legacy that we have? We have to be honest about it, we have to tell these stories, but how do we heal the imagination, a kind of a distorted Christian imagination that’s created these structures in place that have dehumanized, that have been so violent, that have murdered so many. That’s a big question. And, but I wonder if you can leave us on a note of healing in some way.
Y: Yeah. I think on a … and this is more on the policy, legal immigration side of it, not legal immigration, but laws surrounding is to think about, and the way Revelation gets wrapped up into that is to think about, What if we took every one of the assumptions that we have, they’re also shored up by Revelation’s language. Right? The idea of inside, outside, the idea of walls, the idea of gates, you know, all of these things in which you have enemies. And just simply said, What if not? Right? And just assume the opposite. Right? That that’s one way to break that assumption because so many of these things seem become to seem essential. Right? In which … and anything that’s suggested in the public sphere gets slammed down immediately.
I mean, we saw this with the election is, like, everybody has to be strong on the border. Everybody has to be like, we are going to crack down, and it’s like, That’s weird. What if not? And it might be scary to say because you’d be like, Well, then you’re just for open borders and crime and murder everywhere. And we’re just like, okay. Let’s hold that for a moment and just question the assumptions that are of what is necessary. Right? And also, what is what how do we define nation-state, and borders. Right? And what does that have to do with what we think is actually essentially human and human rights.
Right? And, like, is a human ultimately a citizen? Right? That’s also a huge theoretical question and theological question to ask as well. So I think that’s one way to begin to heal the imagination is to question those deeply held assumptions that could have really violent implications that we don’t even think about. Right? To say that a human necessarily needs to be a citizen and belong to a nation or you’re nationless and therefore, you’re just unprotected, lost, floating around, not belonging, not deserving of human rights, like that that’s a huge assumption and makes larger theological, you know, arguments that I don’t think hold up.
And so beginning to think in ways that might seem, you know, really counterintuitive because of the ways we’ve naturalized all those things and, you know, to read Revelation against the grain, like, what if we did everything the opposite way? It might seem really, you know, against what we’re used to because we have millennia of thinking about it this way, but that might be one possibility.
B: And do I hear then, like, a turn from Revelation to Genesis that in a sense, the image of God in every human being is the starting point maybe to read Revelation. That there’s a kind of fullness of humanity that is a bigger marker of identity than citizenship. Am I making too much of that?
Y: No. I think that’s that’s a that’s a really great thing to explore, being made in God’s image. And there’s no in the beginning, at least, you know, until we get to, like, a few chapters in. Right? There are no properties, there are no territories. Right? There’s naming, but that’s about it. Right? And you’re just made from the earth. Right? And and with you know, so that could be one way to think about it as a counternarrative to that. Yeah.
H: In a way that civil rights activists thought about it in another part of American history. Another episode.
B: Yeah. Professor Lin, thank you so much for the conversation, for the work, and thank you for telling these important stories in our history.
Y: Thank you so much for the conversation too.
B: Hannah, I’m really thankful for that conversation. I think it’s really important to be disturbed, unsettled, and moved, as we learn and relearn our history.
H: Yeah. I really appreciated that coming right on the heels of Thanksgiving where you’re sort of wondering, like, well, what am I supposed to think about all this? Not the stuff I learned in kindergarten, but also I need that story filled out a little bit. So this is on a personal level, this is really nice.
B: Yeah. So let’s pray, for ourselves and for our world.
Lord, our god, you have revealed yourself as one who wishes to bring about justice and true peace among people. In a world that looks away from injustice, you cast your eyes on the destitute, the poor, and the wronged. And you have called us to follow you, to preach good news, to proclaim release for captives and recovery of sight, for all of us who in some way or another are blind. Set us free from pious exercises that prevent us from the true worship you choose. Sharing bread with the hungry, sharing homes with those who are without, sharing clothes with the naked, sharing our hearts.
So may your justice roll down like waters, your righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, lead our footsteps to stand with the poor, That we might stand with you. Have mercy, O God, scatter the proud, put down the mighty, lift up the lowly, fill up the hungry, And send the rich away empty-handed. And may we have the courage to say, amen.
H: Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast.
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H: Until next time.
B: Peace be with you.