Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share "Where's the space for us to tell our stories and for people to just listen?" - with Dianca London Potts
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
"Where's the space for us to tell our stories and for people to just listen?" - with Dianca London Potts
Happy Black History Month! On this episode of Backsliders, we talk with our new friend, Dianca London Potts, a brilliant and hilarious author currently working and residing in Brooklyn. Her memoir, Planning for the Apocalypse: Meditations on Faith and Being the Only Black Girl at Your Party, is forthcoming from 37 Ink. We chat with Dianca about her experience growing up in a rural, conservative suburb outside of Philadelphia in the 90s, going to many different types of churches, and getting her elementary education in a very restrictive, nationalist, fundamental baptist school. We also dive into her high school experience in a Mennonite school, where being in a new space that wasn’t Christian-nationalist opened her up to feel comfortable questioning things like not only her nation and her country’s history but her faith community’s history as well. After high school, Dianca attended a Christian university in New England for two years, where her studies made her become even more interested in viewing the bible and sacred text as something of literary relevance that needs interpretation and context, and not something that is “just Truth with a capital T.” However, even this collegiate Christian environment was still seeped in conservatism, and she still had to deal with unique strains of racism and prejudice that took a toll on her mental health. She decided she had to leave the Christian university and complete the final years of her higher education at a secular university, Temple.
She talks with us about how she is still in process of deconstructing her fundamentalist upbringing, and probably always will be. But as she’s been digging into her family’s history (especially on her mother’s side of her family, with her great-grandfather founding a Church), she feels like the Black church has been a bedrock of stability in offering things that the government still fails to offer, and also as a place of collective resistance against white supremacy and collective action for civil rights. She feels like it (Christianity) is a broken thing, but there are parts of it that she’s proud of, and to disavow herself as a Black American from that history would be “really strange.” She feels like she’s ‘culturally christian’ in that way, (something she knows her parents will probably react to with, “What are you saying?”).
Dianca also shared with us that when she thinks about what matters most to her from everything that she was either raised to believe or she walked away believing from how she was raised, it’s the radical love of “Christ as the archetype.” She views Christ as a story archetype and model for how to be ethically, sympathetically, and inclusively human. “Jesus the archetype as a model for radical love, and how to care not only for each other but for ourselves.” She thinks that makes her "christian-adjacent," or culturally christian, descriptions she says usually make everyone uncomfortable, but it’s right for her.
This conversation goes deep. We even talk about subjects like the blasphemy of white evangelical Christianity, the hypocrisy of virtue-signaling, and the power of simply holding space and listening. We think this is one of the best conversations we've had on our whole show so far. :) We hope you enjoy our conversation with Dianca as much as we did, and please show support for her artistry by subscribing to her newsletter and following her on social media! All links are below.
[CONNECT WITH DIANCA]
Newsletter
Tumblr
[OUR LINKS]
Backsliders Instagram
Bob Billiams Productions Instagram
Keylee Instagram
Micah Instagram
[CREDITS]
Sound Mixing by Darren Augustus
Videography and Photography by Claude Charles
Intro Music "7.2.19" by Chase Burnett
Outro Music "Stay Mad" by Chase Burnett ft. Julia Nunes
Title Animation/Poster art by Cody Walzel
Special Thanks to Angie Charles
[FREE WAYS TO SUPPORT BACKSLIDERS]
Please consider these free things you can do to help our projects reach others!
1) Subscribe to this podcast!
2) Leave us a 5-star rating and a one-sentence review!
3) Share your favorite episode with your friends or in a group you're a part of!
4) Subscribe to our Youtube Channel and leave us a comment!
Thank you so much for your support!
[WATCH OUR OTHER SHOWS]
Backsliders the series
Home the series
Talk the series
[REACH OUT]
We'd love to hear from you directly! Let's talk about what we were raised to believe, where we are now, and how that affects our relationships with others and ourselves! [email protected] [email protected]
View all episodes
By Keylee & Micah SudduthHappy Black History Month! On this episode of Backsliders, we talk with our new friend, Dianca London Potts, a brilliant and hilarious author currently working and residing in Brooklyn. Her memoir, Planning for the Apocalypse: Meditations on Faith and Being the Only Black Girl at Your Party, is forthcoming from 37 Ink. We chat with Dianca about her experience growing up in a rural, conservative suburb outside of Philadelphia in the 90s, going to many different types of churches, and getting her elementary education in a very restrictive, nationalist, fundamental baptist school. We also dive into her high school experience in a Mennonite school, where being in a new space that wasn’t Christian-nationalist opened her up to feel comfortable questioning things like not only her nation and her country’s history but her faith community’s history as well. After high school, Dianca attended a Christian university in New England for two years, where her studies made her become even more interested in viewing the bible and sacred text as something of literary relevance that needs interpretation and context, and not something that is “just Truth with a capital T.” However, even this collegiate Christian environment was still seeped in conservatism, and she still had to deal with unique strains of racism and prejudice that took a toll on her mental health. She decided she had to leave the Christian university and complete the final years of her higher education at a secular university, Temple.
She talks with us about how she is still in process of deconstructing her fundamentalist upbringing, and probably always will be. But as she’s been digging into her family’s history (especially on her mother’s side of her family, with her great-grandfather founding a Church), she feels like the Black church has been a bedrock of stability in offering things that the government still fails to offer, and also as a place of collective resistance against white supremacy and collective action for civil rights. She feels like it (Christianity) is a broken thing, but there are parts of it that she’s proud of, and to disavow herself as a Black American from that history would be “really strange.” She feels like she’s ‘culturally christian’ in that way, (something she knows her parents will probably react to with, “What are you saying?”).
Dianca also shared with us that when she thinks about what matters most to her from everything that she was either raised to believe or she walked away believing from how she was raised, it’s the radical love of “Christ as the archetype.” She views Christ as a story archetype and model for how to be ethically, sympathetically, and inclusively human. “Jesus the archetype as a model for radical love, and how to care not only for each other but for ourselves.” She thinks that makes her "christian-adjacent," or culturally christian, descriptions she says usually make everyone uncomfortable, but it’s right for her.
This conversation goes deep. We even talk about subjects like the blasphemy of white evangelical Christianity, the hypocrisy of virtue-signaling, and the power of simply holding space and listening. We think this is one of the best conversations we've had on our whole show so far. :) We hope you enjoy our conversation with Dianca as much as we did, and please show support for her artistry by subscribing to her newsletter and following her on social media! All links are below.
[CONNECT WITH DIANCA]
Newsletter
Tumblr
[OUR LINKS]
Backsliders Instagram
Bob Billiams Productions Instagram
Keylee Instagram
Micah Instagram
[CREDITS]
Sound Mixing by Darren Augustus
Videography and Photography by Claude Charles
Intro Music "7.2.19" by Chase Burnett
Outro Music "Stay Mad" by Chase Burnett ft. Julia Nunes
Title Animation/Poster art by Cody Walzel
Special Thanks to Angie Charles
[FREE WAYS TO SUPPORT BACKSLIDERS]
Please consider these free things you can do to help our projects reach others!
1) Subscribe to this podcast!
2) Leave us a 5-star rating and a one-sentence review!
3) Share your favorite episode with your friends or in a group you're a part of!
4) Subscribe to our Youtube Channel and leave us a comment!
Thank you so much for your support!
[WATCH OUR OTHER SHOWS]
Backsliders the series
Home the series
Talk the series
[REACH OUT]
We'd love to hear from you directly! Let's talk about what we were raised to believe, where we are now, and how that affects our relationships with others and ourselves! [email protected] [email protected]