D.L. Mayfield is an author and activist for just community development and being a good neighbor (how subversive is that!). In addition to her two books, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (2016) and The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power (2020), her insights can be found in McSweeney’s, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, Englewood Review of Books, Image Journal, and others. In her conversation with Radix on her latest book, she speaks with hope, humility, and a deep conviction that we can do things better.
[Radix] When I first read your article, “St. Joan,” years ago, I was compelled. I liked how you talked about a raw zeal for change that eventually matured into a staid form of tangible everyday love, the kind of love that does the steady, imaginative healing of ourselves and our communities. As I’ve followed your work, I think I would characterize you as really hope-filled. In my own work of journeying with ex-offenders, I think maintaining that hope is key. It isn’t looking for radical, instant change, but rather the working out of love in compassion. So I am delighted to be part of this conversation.
[DLM] I love hearing your background.
[Radix] In your recent book, you speak about the impact of consumerism and individualism in our culture. Can you tell us more about your view of its negative impact?
[DLM] I started really thinking about consumerism twelve years ago when I was influenced by Shane Claiborne. I was working at this fancy mall selling chocolates that I couldn’t even dream of buying. It was an interesting juxtaposition to go home to my tiny place, read Shane Claiborne, and reflect on my day of selling things that few could buy. It got me thinking about consumerism. Now, though, I have shifted to thinking about capitalism. And partly that includes thinking about my background as a white American evangelical.
I think, sociologically, we don’t have a framework to engage with systemic issues. We love to boil things down to the individual. This individualistic thing can really stunt our imagination and our theology. If you know me, you know I can be a bit intense. When I was recently married, I remember telling my husband, “Okay, we are never, ever shopping anywhere that isn’t a thrift store ever again.” Possibly he was thinking, “Okay, but what about underwear?” And I’m like, “Yeah, even underwear.” When one of my sisters told me about a cute shirt from the store Forever 21, I fired back that this was the same store that had lawsuits against it because they actually locked the bathroom shut so their workers in foreign factories couldn’t use the bathrooms.
And it’s true; there’s this whole system of ideology and desires and a whole political system that thrives on the exploitation of others, on this idea that we can never have enough. That we should always strive to keep producing more and more and more. To make it worse, we don’t see it. It’s the culture we swim in. But we have to be careful to not get caught in the individualistic trap by thinking that acting individualistically – like buying only from the thrift store – will solve the problem. Instead, I have to ask myself, how are these systems that I am a part of inherently designed to dehumanize and exploit people, which therefore makes them anti-Christian?
[Radix] This really touches on the lack of Christians thinking about economic systems. We don’t talk about it in church for a variety of reasons, partly individualism, I think. Sometimes, if we would be more cognizant of our motives, maybe we would read Scripture differently. Tell us what you think about why Christians don’t talk much about a biblical perspective on economics?
[DLM] In my book I talk about these issues being connected with four values: affluence, autonomy, safety, and power. I’ve been influenced by the work of Walter Brueggemann, specifically his book, Money and Possessions. It just rocked my world because he goes through the Hebrew scriptures regarding economics. What really stood out to me was that two of the most talked-about things are, first, that wealth is a blessing from God, and second, that wealth causes us to lose sight of our neighbor. Both of those things are true. We don’t need to hate money. And it’s not productive to despise people who have money. But we need to take that second part into consideration: What is it about wealth building that inherently causes us to lose sight? That’s why Scripture is always reminding the people of God to look out for the foreigner, look out for the widow and the orphan, because that was the triad of the vulnerable. Randy Woodley and Lisa Sharon Harper, along with other theologians, have pointed out that God is always saying, “Please keep your eye on these people who are most marginalized.” The safer and more secure you are, the more affluent you are, the easier it is to forget them. The marginalized neighbor and our proximity and relationship with them will be a natural check on our wealth building. And that’s something I’m seeing not really talked about in most Christian financial curricula.
[Radix] Yes, and how much of this comes from a stunted idea of what success is? In Chapter 11 you mention a study done by Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist, who talked about the “rhetoric gap.” His research suggests that what matters most is not what we say we value to our children, but how we act. Out of ten thousand students surveyed, Weissbourd found that almost eighty percent chose achievement or happiness as their highest value, while only twenty percent chose caring for the community. When the typical North American thinks of “success,” who comes to mind first: Mother Theresa or Steve Jobs? We need to think about success differently. And you talk about success a good deal.
[DLM] I think it’s really important that we think about the power of a myth. These are things that can get buried deeply within us and we aren’t even able to articulate what is driving our life.
I focus a lot on school choice and how people choose to educate their kids. For some people, academic success is way more important than building and being involved in a community. In the United States, school choice has absolutely contributed to economic and racial segregation of schools. Since the 80s and 90s, it’s scary to think of the increase in racially and economically segregated schools. Do we want to return to, essentially, segregation times?
That, to me, is showing where our values actually are. We don’t actually want to live in a community—in an integrated, diverse community—where all together we can help each other. Instead, we’ll do whatever is in our power to choose what’s best for us and ours.
I think that part of discipleship includes repentance, so I want to repent. As a kid I repented for treating my sister badly or whatever. I had to confess and repent. But now, why wouldn’t I need to repent if I’ve grown up in a society where these values of empire are dehumanizing to God’s people. I think we need to reclaim some of our Christian language. Lamenting the state of the world should be a normal Christian practice. That’s truly what I want to keep doing. And I don’t quite understand the resistance from some Christians about needing to repent of some values.
[Radix] In terms of repentance, I wonder, if Christians would acknowledge how we have contributed to the problems in our society and repent of them, it would help with our credibility. There’s a little demotivation poster I love. It says, “No single raindrop believes it’s responsible for the flood.” It’s relevant to me because it is so easy to pass off blame. But I need to start with the me, and the repenting, and then I can ask for forgiveness.
[DLM] I think there’s something really interesting about people who speak on how America’s criminal justice system has affected our view of confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Bryan Stevenson has talked about how this could be a part of why there’s such a hesitance to actually put up memorials and monuments in recognition of the darker elements of United States history. Other countries have done that. And it’s actually led to this communal sense of ownership, repentance, and then moving forward.
For some reason, the United States is like, “That’ll be the end of us if we ever acknowledge what we’ve done wrong.” I think that’s really sad because that’s not what we see in Scripture and that’s not what I’ve experienced. I would say personally, as a Christ follower, that I have not experienced condemnation when I repent. I experience a deeper connection with my neighbors and a deeper ability to listen to them. This is one of the coolest things about being a Christian. We get to repent, and then get forgiveness, and still be part of God’s dream.
This is what helps me move forward. But it’s going to take a lot to convince other people that they’re not going to be punished for repenting. I think, what does the American evangelical church have to lose if they are willing to recognise some of the damage they have done? We should say we are sorry that we have tried to retain power and sorry that we have turned a blind eye to certain things our leaders have done in order to fulfill our own evangelical agenda. If we say we’re sorry, I think we have so much to gain.
[Radix] I so appreciate your vision of the hope of what comes along with repentance: healing and restoration. I think sometimes, too, that if there aren’t the ingredients of hope and joy, especially for the people working in areas of justice, that burnout can happen. Can you tell us how you work this out in your own life?
[DLM] I was talking to my husband about how it’s so hard to try and live a balanced life right now for me. But, you know, I was thinking about Jesus having all of these parables and he’s always telling people to look to the flowers, look to the trees.
In my book, I write a lot about taking walks in my neighborhood as sort of a centering practice for finding joy. So, I think we should be paying attention to both inequality and delight. These are things that I have to keep in continual balance for myself. I think no matter where we are, Jesus is inviting us to pay attention. And that includes looking both to the hopeful and beautiful and then also to where God’s kingdom is not yet. The truth is that I would like to only look at the flowers, you know, but I don’t think we’re living in a time where that’s what God’s inviting us into. And yet living into anger, constantly, can become unhealthy.
[Radix] You speak about the importance of interdependence. You have a quote by Lisa Sharon Harper, “The peace of self is dependent on the peace of the other. God created the world in a web of relationships that overflowed with forceful goodness.” That quote blew me away. Do you have any stories that really have made an impression on you or shaped your perspective on interdependence?
[DLM] There are a few stories that come from my work with refugees and people who experience forced migration to the United States. Many of these people I am now happy to call friends. I remember when I was nineteen or twenty, a friend was driving my car and got into a car wreck. A teenager hit the back of the car. Because he started crying, she didn’t get any of his information. So I had a smashed trunk, no insurance, and to make matters worse, whenever it rained my whole trunk would fill up with water. And then the inside of my car started molding.
I remember feeling pretty bummed. I drove this molding, crumpled car to teach English to my migrant and refugee friends. Here is what got me though: None of them had cars, but they were so concerned for me! Anyway, they got together and decided to try and get some money for me to fix my car. They had zero resources. I didn’t take the money, but the genuine concern they had for me, you know, was so amazing.
But there is another part to this. Here I was driving around in this car, and I always had a towel in the front seat to wipe off the condensation. It never crossed my mind to even ask for help or consider that anybody would want to offer help to me. But to see that they gathered, talked about it, and worried about me just really blew me away. They didn’t think individualistically as I did, you know? And I would say now that I’ve learned so many amazing things from my friends who come from more collectivist cultures. But at this point, again, going back to my personality a little bit, I think I just tend to get struck by how limited my own imagination is. As I continue to see the way the neighbors in my area live out their lives, it kind of shines a glaring light on how lonely I feel sometimes and how isolating it can be to only prioritize yourself.
I have another story in the book about one of my now-best friends. My husband and I bought a second car. We call it the “tuna can.” We were so excited because it gets great gas mileage, we got it second hand, and it’s just so economical. We were thrilled.
Then, this friend noticed the car. She said, “Wow, you didn’t think about us at all when you bought that new car, did you?” It totally floored me because no, I had not. That wasn’t my world. But what she said was so perfect for me. It was incredibly loving for her to be honest with me about how it feels to know that your friend doesn’t actually take you into their consideration. She has four children and doesn’t have a car. She doesn’t even have a driver’s license. She needs a neighbor who will think with her in mind. And I was not that person for her.
So, interdependence, again, can be kind of hard to live into. But I trust I’m able to really take what my friend said into consideration, because it’s going to make me a better disciple of Christ. If I can say, wow, how can I learn to love my neighbor when looking at cars? I mean, I truly wish I owned a minivan today. I do. Next time we have to buy a car, that’s what we’re going to buy, just because of these types of exchanges we’ve had within our neighborhood community.
[Radix] I loved that story! If it was up to me that story would be read to everybody in the world – twice. I wonder how often we contribute to our own loneliness by how we choose to live. This topic of interdependence makes me wonder how much we, as Christians, lose when we are more concerned about keeping ourselves pure than we are about getting involved. I mean, we are supposed to be salty, right? How are we going to be that if we aren’t in the soup? And we are supposed to believe that we, the salt, will make the world, which is the soup, better by being in it.
[DLM] I wonder sometimes if people of that view that we need to be more isolated to stay pure, are actually fearful of losing power. When I think of the early Church, they expected zero power. And yet they still expected to be blessed by God. Recently I have been reading about the early Church. It seems like the earlier message was different than it is now. It wasn’t so much on apologetics and the kind of evangelism that we have now, which can be utilitarian. They did not try and put a ton of money into building institutions. So how did the early Church grow? They grew by treating each other as good neighbors, right? By tending to the poor and the sick, by caring for each other. By living out this joyful life where you actually shared the table with other people, ate together, and praised God together. And that is what I want to see.
My book really starts off with Luke 4:14-19, when Jesus introduces his ministry to the community. He says, “The spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” What would it look like if that defined the Christian Church? There are so many ways the Christian imagination can be beautiful and gorgeous. And yet, I so often just end up seeing this really pale, awful imitation. I hear a lot of evangelicals talk about religious liberty and getting political power. That is not a theme I see talked about by Jesus or the early Church. And I do not see that as being the thing that should drive what we do in the world at all, unless it’s for the religious liberty of my neighbors.
[Radix] Totally. I can hear Mel Gibson from Braveheart screaming “Freedom!” And I think, sure. True. That’s important. But we don’t often hear people screaming, “Responsibility!” Especially for our neighbor.
[DLM] Oh, I love the word responsibility and I love the Christian connotation of that. Dorothy Day is one of my favorite people, the woman who started the Catholic Worker Movement. When she was talking to her American audiences she would say, “Yes, we all have this right of personal responsibility.” And people be like, “Yeah.” Then she’d follow with, “…a personal responsibility to the poor.” Suddenly the tone changed.
[Radix] This is not retreating, but reminds me of something that happened in the Canadian federal prison institutions when Covid-19 hit. All the chaplains had to leave the prisons. And it wasn’t just chaplains. It was all staff and personnel that were not considered “essential.” So, basically, just guards were there. But there was a priest who said, “If you’re going to kick me out, then how about I just stay in; I’ll just live here. Because if the concern is getting prisoners infected, I’ll just stay in the institution. You cannot make me leave my brothers. These are my brothers and I’m staying.” What a way of seeing our work and community. I appreciated how, in your book, you talk about the importance of getting more involved in community development instead of just doing charity work.
[DLM] Thank you so much for sharing that incredible story. And I’m really grateful for your work because I’ve been thinking a lot about how I am not in relationship with anybody in prison, currently, and how we really need to prioritize people who have been imprisoned as we are thinking about how to re-envision our world. Prisoners are people who have something to say, too. In a way, they can tell us what kind of world they actually want to live in. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
In terms of a church co-op, yeah. It’s easier for us to go out and give peanut butter sandwiches to people rather than helping build a food co-op that makes food affordable for people. There’s a real reason why charity is a much easier framework to be immersed in. It’s way easier. To do a co-op is just so overwhelming. Making meaningful change is hard.
I am convinced that we actually have to want to talk to the people most affected. And we have to listen to them when they say, “I need rent control, I need a job that pays me to the point where I could actually afford to buy food,” all that kind of stuff. I think prioritizing is not just about empathy. It’s about actually listening to and believing people who have been marginalized when they offer some solutions. I’m pretty sure you won’t find a lot of people who have been the recipients of charity who would like to live in a world where charity is the norm. It doesn’t feel great to be the recipient of charity. And that’s not the kind of future most people want to envision.
[Radix] Thank you so much for all that you are doing. May your voice continue to get to the people who need to hear it the most.