Yesterday, I had the joy of chatting with my friend Holly Berkley Fletcher about her new book which releases a week from Tuesday. You can read my initial reactions to Holly’s book that I posted last month.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation, taking out cross-talk and false starts.
JH: I am thrilled to be with my friend, Holly Berkeley Fletcher today. Holly is the author of The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism, which drops next week. I got an early copy and then some others apparently have made it into the universe.
HBF: Yeah, apparently Amazon, it's Amazon that's sending them out early. So if you line Jeff Bezos's pockets, you get the book early, I guess.
JH: So I wanted to start with, before we get to the book, let me begin here. Holly and I connected online some, I don't know, somewhere in the last year, maybe year and a half. And then there was this wonderful moment when we were both at the at this conference in St. Simons, Georgia in January, and she asked an insightful question. And Diana Butler Bass acknowledged her from the platform and said, oh, thank you, Holly. That was a wonderful question. And immediately I said, wait, that's Holly. until the break and then ran to her before she could get away.
HBF: It's weird when you make connections like that. I recognized your name obviously although I have to say for briefly for a minute I was confused because you know in those that that watch Dog Shirt TV — which John was on you were on and a few months ago talking about your book — there is in the greek chorus, as we call it, a John Hawkinson and I get Hawkinson and Hawthorne like mixed up all the time so briefly i thought you were John Hawkinson but then that didn't make any sense because John Hawkinson lives in Cambridge and is not at all religious as far as i know so then I got it straight and I was like okay, yeah.
JH: I have a similar kind of mistaken identity story. When I was working on my first book, I was doing a residency at Calvin. And as I'm doing this residency, there's also a gathering of Chinese philosophers that friends of mine had brought in and they were talking about values and virtues. And apparently there is a British philosopher named John Hawthorne who is quite prolific.
HBF: Really? Like a living person?
JH: All these Chinese philosophers were thrilled to see my name tag and then crushed that I was not the right one.
HBF: Yeah, well...That's the way it goes.
JH: So, we'll get into the book, but I wanted to do some background. Much of which I know, but it's good to rehearse for those who don't. You, obviously, given the title of the book, grew up on the mission field.
HBF: I was eight when we arrived. So almost my whole childhood, all of most of my cognizant childhood, shall we say.
JH: Yeah. By the way there's the Annie Dillard has this wonderful book An American childhood. And it's like there's a point she writes about. somewhere around seven or eight, where she realizes that her actual address is her name, her house number, her street, which is in a city, which is in a state, which is in a country, which is in the world.And it's like, but you don't know that until about the time you left at all.
HBF: I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, I would say so maybe.
JH: We'll get back to the boarding school. You were there from eight.
HBF: Till I graduated high school.
JH: You graduated high school and came, went to Texas to go to college.
HBF: The worst part of Texas, West Texas. It was jarring.
JH: Probably no Mount Kilimanjaro in sight.
HBF: No, no, not even hardly any trees.
JH: So we'll return to the missionary setting. It's not all of the story of the book. The story of the book is part memoir, part social science analysis, part kind of broader cultural critique within evangelicalism. Is that fair?
HBF: Yeah, yeah. My story kind of dips in and out. But I interviewed over 80 people and I surveyed a few hundred and got like long foreign surveys. So I got, you know, lots of contributions from a lot of different people. And I profile some of those in more depth. And then the others are sort of just bits and pieces woven together.
JH So you went to Christian University, which is why we talked about my book on Dog Shirt TV. And you majored in history. You loved history.
HBF: I did. I probably was more just lost as an individual than a lover of history, to be honest. A history professor kind of mentored me and gave me some direction, which involved becoming a historian. It was a little bit of an accident.
JH:So a little bit of an accident but there's enough intention there that you actually went to graduate school.
HBF: Yeah, and I finished. I have a PhD in history, so blah, blah, blah. I guess I am a historian.
JH: And then that kind of ended. Was the CIA analyst position immediately thereafter?
HBF: There was a gap. So I probably wouldn't have left that job. I was teaching history at the college I went to as an undergraduate. but then I met my husband and he was living in Washington, DC, and he had a career established here. And so, I liked the job, but really didn't want to live in West Texas, to be honest. So I basically just did a very anti-feminist thing and I quit my job and moved over there to get married. But then I did a feminist thing and decided that I needed a job. And so I ended up applying and getting hired at the CIA as an analyst.
JH: As one does.
HBF: In Washington, Yeah, as one does.
JH: And then it's been 18 months. Is that how long have you been out?
HBF: No, it's only been since December.
JH: Oh, since December
HBF: So no regrets, particularly given everything that's been going on. So I, if I hadn't quit by then, I, I would have probably quit by now.
JH: We'll come back to, uh, very general questions about your work.
HBF: Yeah, it really wasn't that super secret, really.
JH: Was it Africa?
HBF: Yeah.
JH: Okay. And then a big question that I have is...How did you fall in with Ben Wittes and “A freaking revolution in morning television.”
HBF: Well, I really, again, just there's so many accidents in life, right? I wouldn't have worked for the CIA if I hadn't have met my husband. I wouldn't have met my husband if I hadn't have gone to graduate school with a guy that he grew up with. You know, there's just so many accidents in life. So the Bulwark thing was definitely one. So we I had been listening to the Bulwark. I'd become a big Bulwark fan and of course had heard Ben on there and I don't know if you remember but Ben and Sarah Longwell did a podcast on the show The French Village, which is a incredible show by the way if you haven't watched it
JH: I watched the first season I think.
HBF: It is really, it's all about complicity. It's a French village during World War II, during Nazi occupation. And it's all about, you know, all the characters and the different choices they make to navigate this terrible time. T o either save themselves some of them act in self-interest some of them resist but then it's just a morally complex universe is what the show details. Anyway fantastic show and they did a whole podcast about it so then we have a personal friend who — I won't get into who he is — but he was organizing an event for uh honoring the french village show at the French Embassy and we had dinner with our friends and he mentioned like oh do you guys want to come to this event and I said Not only do I want to come, but you've got to invite Sarah Longwell and Ben Wittes because they have this whole podcast. So anyway, they got an invite. And so and not only them, but Sarah Longwell, Mona Charon, David Frum was there, and Ben Wittes was there. And so and I went and I went to meet those guys. I was like, the French village actresses [were there]. I had just started watching the show, actually. And so I went basically to meet those guys and cornered them and just sort of struck up and then, Mona in particular, emailed me later and she lives in my neighborhood as it turns out. And so then we started walking our dogs together and then I met various ones of the other Bulwark folks and anyway, so then I just kind of wormed my way into this society.
JH: But then, but then how did you become cohost of Dog Shirt TV?
HBF: Well, he just, you know, I was ending my CIA career. I had become friends with Ben as well. And he knew I was, I guess he knew I had time on my hands. So he doesn't pay me. So that's an issue. And I mean, there's only so many people that have — I mean, I have varying kinds of expertise, I suppose, and will show up at 8 a.m. on a weekday and not for pay. So it's been really fun.
JH: Given that I'm two hours behind you,it was quite fortuitous that on the day that I was on Dog Shirt TV, Ben had to be in California, so I didn't have to do it at six.
HBF: Yeah, you got a break there. Sometimes he will shift the time. But he's kind of a stickler about it.
JH: Thank you. That's kind of good, eclectic background and your ability, which I envy, to connect with people kind of everywhere.
HBF: Yeah, a lot of accidents.Yeah, a lot of just accidents. That's also how I became friends with Diana Butler Bass, who also lives here. I mean, it helps to live in a place where all these interesting people are. And so you you live here long enough and you're basically, one or two degrees of separation from pretty much anybody else. So it's a small world out here.
JH: Let's focus on the book a little bit. You mentioned this a little while ago about the interviews and the surveys. Because I'm a sociologist, I'm curious. I mean, you didn't have a methodology chapter in your book. I'm not in the audience.
HBF: I know I could have used your help. I am not a social scientist. I state that up front.
JH: So you did these interviews and you have this open ended survey. How did you find the people to interview again? Was this just networks that were preexisting or networks connected you to networks? And then like, was it an online survey and who did that go to? I mean, how did, how did that work?
HBF: It was just an open link. It was just an open link that anybody could wander in and, and survey. So again, there's, there's a lot of problems with the methodology. Basically, I'm a historian. We tell stories, right? But basically, I wanted to sort of check my own assumptions and my own experience to see how with something. I also use two much better surveys. I don't know if you've heard of TCK training. They have rigorous methodology for their survey. So I use some of their data. And then there's another woman called Michelle Phoenix who did a survey. Her methodology was similar to mine, but I think it was just a larger sample size. But, you know, it's going to be hard. It's hard to say, like, how many missionary kids are there. And so therefore, what is a good sample? And there's a lot of self-selection in mine, obviously. But I just, you know, I'm already connected to a lot of missionary kids, obviously. There's a lot of alumni groups for the various schools, boarding and day schools that MKs, that's short for missionary kids , that MKs go to. So I kind of contacted the administrators of the various Facebook pages. And then there's a lot of Facebook pages just for MKs generally or TCKs — third culture kids of which MKs are a subset of. So, yeah, and then people shared the link and it just kind of happened that way. And then that's how I people I interviewed as well. I just, you know, initially I put notices out and they would contact me. But then I set up just a calendar schedule and just put the link out and people would just sign up for the interviews. So I had no problem. I did way more interviews than I anticipated and probably could have done far more, but I had to actually write at some point.
JH: I'm curious about like the age range.
HBF: Yeah. You know, I ended up getting a good [balance], I worried about that. I worried about getting too many African people because that's kind of my world and not getting other people. I worried about getting too many, you know, people of a certain age, either too young, too old. I wanted a good distribution of geography and age and gender. I probably interviewed slightly more women than men, but the survey I got about even. So, you know, I ended up getting a, it skews a little bit more to Africa. But then missions kind of skewed towards Africa anyway. So it works out. So, yeah, I got I ended up really happy with the sort of range that I got.
JH: So when I wrote my review on my Substack a few weeks ago. I started by talking about my reflection of teaching intro to sociology to missionary kids who are first time freshmen in college. And you realize that. they have no context for what you're describing I mean it's when I first really came to terms with what you describe is the sense of isolation of of what I almost call placelessness that that's your home but it's not your home but now you're here but you're not quite and you don't know the rules. Where do I want to go with that? How well did that describe your experience in West Texas as a freshman coming to
HBF: I hated it so much.I can't tell you, John, I will say, I do think the internet has made things a little bit different because people are, well, first of all, I've read this in other like I think sociologists have commented on on this that there's sort of a mono culture that's developing globally particularly in like urban you know people of certain education areas and the internet has been a you know big part of creating kind of this global community but then it's obviously that global culture monoculture is heavily influenced by American culture because we're the sort of behemoth,the elephant in the room and put out so much cultural stuff and economic and so much money. Influence tends to follow money and power, right? So I will say that it's it's a bit different now. Probably people are more exposed to sort of what America is and the news. But when I was growing up — I graduated high school in 1992. And, you know, we had no television at all. We had no radio. We had no Internet. We had like bits and pieces people would bring back. Oh, our big thing was people would send us. Well, until I was in eighth grade, we didn't even have a VCR. So just literally no entertainment at all. And then we didn't get like American newspapers or hard copy. We didn't have anything like that. I didn't really grow up knowing what was going on outside my narrow slice of the world. But people would send it once we got a VCR, people would send us tapes of television. They usually put in the tape and like,put it in on like Nick at Night or something or like Thursday Night TV and press record and leave. And then when it filled up, they'd send us the tape. So it was like there's certain commercials like that happened that repeated that I can probably memorize. There's certain episodes of like certain of shows from the eighties that I've seen like a million times. And then I have huge gaps elsewhere. So we didn't get movies really on time. So music, all of that stuff was really fits and starts. So it's a lot, but it's a bit different now, but I do think obviously there's an emotional tie to being in a place that is established. And when you leave that place, there's a, there's a loss. There is even with all of the connectivity that we have. I mean, there is something about physical presence, obviously. So that remains. And they may know a little bit more about America, but that's different than, living in relationship with Americans and sort of experiencing life in America. So the grief is universal from what I can tell, because I talked to a lot of young people. And I have young MKs in my life. And yeah, the grief is still there from leaving.
JH: Even though one of the things that you bring out so clearly is, and I don't mean this unkindly, and maybe I'm overstating a little bit, but there's a certain aura of artificiality in that you're not actually I mean you're in Kenya but you're not in Kenya.
HBF: No it's it's not unkind it's just the fact.
JH: and then you're at the boarding school but the boarding school isn't like the public school where you would go with other kids from Kenya. You're going with other mission and ministry related kids.
HBF: Mostly yeah a few Kenyans but they're always those sort of elite kids I mean it's expensive for Kenyans to go there so yeah so you're not no it's not unkind to say, it's just a fact. And i think that that's a big part of the grief is that your sort of cultural, your sense of belonging is not based on an authentic sense of place, you know, or culture. Like you're not, you're not really a Kenyan. It's like if a family, let's say a Kenyan family immigrates to the United States, they're usually, they're doing that usually permanently, right? And their kids are born, like their kids, let's say their eight-year-old kid comes here. Their kid's going to like not even have an accent probably by the end. You know what I'm saying? Their kids, if their kid didn't already speak English, they're going to learn English. They're going to learn English with an American accent. Their friends are going to be American. They're going to be, they're going to be American by the time they're, you know what I'm saying? They will have assimilated. And even the parents to some degree will have sort of assimilated. First of all, you're going, with the expectation that you're, it's temporary, you know, like you're not really going to become a part of this society. You're not, you're not looking to assimilate. And yet your, your emotions, you know, take root obviously wherever you grew up. So you're not ever looking. And so therefore you're sort of not,You don't want your children to assimilate because you need them to go back. And so their cultural experience is always filtered. And then you have the whole just massive economic disparity and, political like in Africa, walking around with white skin. I hate to say it, but it just you you have influence and power and money. That's what you have. That's what you have written on your face. And so people relate to you in a different way. And it colors your whole experience in that way as well. And so it's just not, you're not a Kenyan. I'm not a Kenyan.
JH: Holly writes a wonderful substack called A Zebra Without Stripes which is often funny sometimes irreverent but she recently took a group on safari to Kenya and it was fascinating to read that series in that there was a sense in which you were home in the place. There was a placeness to it that even though there's this artificiality that I described and your safari itself is artificial.
HBF: That's a very important part of their economy. And I'm doing it with a friend of mine. So I’m trying to help him.
JH: Which was great. But but I was really struck with your oh, we went here and we had this experience and this was like all these other times. There was there was a depth to what you were writing about. You know, I'm sure the people you're with had a great time.
HBF: Well, a few of them were people I grew up with so and then they had brought friends and spouses so a few of them were people I grew up with and then they you know and then the rest were just as I call them regular Americans okay but I hope they had a good time. We had some adventures.
JH: There was an emotional depth to your writing of what you were experiencing of being in, we'll call it the homeland. Which is an interesting part of that. It's artificial. I'm not really there, but I'm back and I'm home. And then at the tail end of that, you wound up going back to your high school, boarding school. You write about it in the book and have a good experience with some color. I think I put it on balance. But then going back. in what you wrote about your nephew and his graduation that was in itself there was a pride there there was a a home there was a recognition so this this notion about not being in a place but the place being meaningful but not quite belonging but it's part of your identity absolutely really fascinating dynamic.
HBF: Yeah. It's a lot
JH: The subtitle of the book is “unmasking the myths of white evangelicalism”. I have to correct a little bit, I know that titles and subtitles aren't always your decision, We could say unmasking some of the myths of white evangelicalism.
HBF: Yeah, although I think that they are sort of founding myths. They're the founding myths because missions has been a huge part if what I consider the beginnings of sort of white American evangelicalism to be in Southern Christianity, to some extent, more national Christianity coming out of the Great Awakening. And very soon after the First Great Awakening and then led into the Second Great Awakening,a lot of historians consider it just one big awakening, The missionary movement took off and became a huge part of that and a huge part of not only the Christian sense of calling, but an American sense of calling and exceptionalism, that was really deeply rooted in there from the beginning. And then you take the Southern culture, piece of it. Of course, to this day, the largest, most spectacular mission organization that has ever existed is the Southern Baptist International Missionary Board. And the whole reason the Southern Baptist Convention began in 1845 was specifically to appoint slaveholders as missionaries because the National Convention would not do that. They sort of launched a test case to sort of call to basically make an issue of slavery. They didn't, by that time in the 1840s, they weren't looking for, you know, they were looking for slavery, not only to just be a necessary, considered a necessary evil, but they were wanting to push slavery as a positive good and as a Christian good. And so, not the national convention refusing to appoint a slaveholder as a missionary was, a moral kind of condemnation that they took personally. And so they they walked out and they formed the Southern Baptist Convention,and they formed their own mission board. And they started sending slaveholding, racist, later segregationist missionaries to places like Africa. And just the irony of that sort of racial juxtaposition is I think says so much about the endeavor because, you know, for white American Christians, I think it's still much more pleasant to engage in race somewhere else than to engage in race here in America, because here in America, there's a lot of discomfort and guilt and complicity.And if we just go to Africa, we can be the good, we can be the good guys. We can be the good white people. And they can be the grateful Black people.
JH: Well, there's also a feedback loop that goes on in that you're taking the gospel to primitive people in Africa, which underscores the fact that you think these are primitive people in the United States. You know, in the 1840s. the dehumanizing rhetoric works kind of both directions and there's a sense in which, and I wrote about this in my SubStack, that the more outlandish the story is that you could tell on a deputation trip when you're back to the States. You know, you don't want to say, let me tell you this great meeting I had with a bunch of mid-level career diplomats in the Kenyan government. They don't want that. They want the story that we hiked out into the bush for this far and we met these people and let me tell you about the crazy way they lived. And then, I mean, there's all of that motif.
HBF: And the danger, which, of course, has real implications for the children involved when you have celebration of danger and and putting one's family in at risk, either health wise or danger wise. One MK wrote in the survey they had grown up in Latin America and they said their parents like just completely fabricated an entire story of a kidnapping by like FARC rebels and that they used to raise money with and it was all fabricated.
JH: By the way, I quoted this in my piece as well, but in the introduction, you have this wonderful metaphor of missionary kids as the roadies to the rock band, which I just think is marvelous.
HBF: Yeah, I wanted that to be the title, but they thought it sounded too funny and flip for a more serious topic.
JH: Yeah, but I thought that was kind of maybe the maybe the subtitle.
HBF: But yeah, they you know how it is, John. So the book is really less interested in detailing the lives and experiences of missionary kids for its own sake. The book is wanting to basically use missionary kids as good sources, that they're fantastic sources to this whole enterprise. And so that's kind of what the book is about. It's not really about the missionary kids in particular, not that we're not just fascinating and amazing, but it's like as a source of information on this culture and the place of this enterprise really in the white evangelical mind, that's kind of what the book is essentially about.
JH: Because it plays a big theme.You devote at least a chapter, maybe a couple. The problem of abuse runs not throughout the book, but it plays a major role. And again, that's related to so many things. It's related to the isolation. It's related to the special status of the missionary parents taking the gospel forth and what that represents and how you don't want, as you described it, you don't want to be responsible for being “sent home”. So, there's this elevated sense, which creates both a vulnerability to abuse, given the isolation and the power dynamics and an inability to deal with it. There's a kind of built in built in structures to that. How does reflecting on, as you wrote about that, how does it give you new insights into the struggles with really coming to terms with sexual abuse in in the evangelical church, or since we're here right now, in the broader political landscape of America.
HBF: I think the lack of accountability in the political landscape is directly tied to, basically, the people getting a pass in our government are getting a pass because they have the unquestioning support of white evangelicals. I don't think we would be there without that. There's no other political block in our country that is that active and that solid. I mean, there's just no comparison. So I certainly do blame white evangelicals. No, but the abuse piece, you know, It was bigger. It was more of a story than I expected. I expected to run into it here. And then I knew of some cases of sexual abuse, but just more importantly of just some really horrible people as missionaries. I opened the book talking about someone I knew who literally was a murderer or allegedly was a murderer. Everybody thought he killed his wife and he was allowed to leave quietly and go home. And actually I just heard from a reader this week who reached out and said she had actually gone to a big welcome bash, you know, like memorial service for his wife. And he was there and he was the celebrated missionary and she had attended that service in her church for him. So, I had known about some of that, but of course, there was more than I expected. There were more stories that I ran into and expected.And then of course there's been just broader reporting on the issue by the Houston Chronicle in looking at the Southern Baptist Convention abuse crisis, they did a whole article on the mission field. And I don't if there's more there, I'm sure, because the the International Mission Board has never really released publicly any sort of files on that it has.And it's done it's done multiple investigations. So, the mission field has some really unique challenges in terms of the law, which I detail in the book. There's more options now than there was pre-2003. Now there's a federal law where an American who commits sexual crimes can be overseas can be prosecuted under federal law. Before that, there was really no way to do that. And then in a lot of these countries themselves, there's very weak rule of law. There's often differing notions of what is child abuse. Some of these countries marry girls off at very young ages and things like that. There's a lot of gaps. So there and then the isolation, as you say,I think here in America, where obviously child abuse still happens and it's terrible. But still, like most American children are, integrated in a web of community institutions that are actually they they must by law teachers and things like that have to report these things and so still it happens so there's nothing like that there you do not you're not you do not have peers except for other missionaries really and they have obviously their own interests in things you know are going on so it's these communities tend to be very insular and codependent you know people depend on their colleagues for everything it's more like a family in some respects but then there's just the whole not just theological element,there's obviously the patriarchy element, which is present everywhere white evangelicalism is. But broader than that even, I think I say in the book at one point, the American evangelical narrative really doesn't have a place for abuse. Yeah, within it, because the whole thing is basically, we're the good guys and we're fighting the bad guys out there in the culture, and, out there in the culture, out there in the world, we're winning the world, we're winning America,we're winning, And there's just not a good place or way to reckon with abuse inside the house. And you can tell, just the amount of time that white evangelicals spend on the culture wars fighting people outside their midst versus talking about their own dysfunctions is like, it's probably like 99 percent to one.
JH: So I'm moving toward the overlap between your missionary lessons and CIA work. So there is historically is a parallel between colonialism and the mission enterprise.
HBF: Although it is more complex than a lot of people say.
JH: I was going to ask kind of what the role, and this actually covers the period when you were there, but the independence movement really began changing dynamics as countries broke free of their colonial past and worked on indigenous leadership, higher education, all that. So, I mean, I don't know where I'd place that time-wise. If you left in 92, that would have been about the period where that transition was really beginning. Independence happened earlier.
HBF: Most independence happened in the 60s for most countries. And I would say,so British missionaries and missionaries from different countries, including America, started arriving in places like Kenya, like in the late 19th century. And the British missionaries or the missionaries of the colonial power, they were sort of agents of the government to some degree, but in other respects, they were actually working against those interests in many respects. For instance, all the nationalist leaders got their education from missionaries and in mission schools. And of course it was that education that opened opportunities and opened their minds really to fighting colonialism so you could you could argue that missions sort of went both ways and Americans were always kind of because they weren't of the nationality of the colonial power in places like the Philippines it was you know there is a more complicated history because the Philippines what which was a huge place of American missions actually and it was also of course one of our sort of colonial enterprises if you want to or imperial we call it imperialism but it's basically similar. Hawaii was another one. So in places where they weren't the sort of colonial power, they were, still culturally, they were sort of in keeping with that. But I would say after independence, after World War Two, American missions really ramped up. America was the kind of superpower and all that geopolitical and economic influence sort of opened doors for more American missionaries. And then actually in the aftermath of nationalist movements in places like Africa, the Americans missionaries offered a lot of things that they, needed in terms of development and education without the all of the baggage of the like they weren't the colonial power. And so American missions have had specifically white evangelical Christianity, has had enormous impact in Africa to the point now where it's like it's the it's kind of the clone and you get this kind of boomerang effect of, people talk about the global church. I'm like, well, the global church, at least in evangelicalism, is heavily, heavily Americanized. And so when you get the influence of the global church, it's often an echo of white American evangelicalism. And you can see this really clearly in the emphasis on the same issues like abortion and homosexuality in Africa. Now, you know, those are conservative societies, so they've never been, at least Kenyan — South Africa is a little bit different, their constitution is very liberal on homosexuality — but in most of these countries, they’re traditional societies, they haven't really had a place for, differing sexuality traditionally. But the elevation of the issues to just this almost hysteria in places — you see this in Uganda in particular. That is definitely, I think, one of the impacts of American evangelicalism. So it's complicated is that is what i'm trying to get at with regards to colonialism and not and what is American influence and what is it's very difficult to measure sort of influence right and to determine like well that's American and that's not.
JH: Okay that makes sense. Which is my connection here in thinking about your work as a CIA analyst is also about teasing apart these same kinds of dynamics about what is going on, what are the patterns that are present within a culture, how do you read those? Does the sense of placelessness that we talked about earlier aid a CIA analyst's ability to not read too much into a situation?
HBF: Yeah, I would say in studying Africa as an analyst, actually, it kind of convinced me just how American I am, really. I mean, my experience helped me at some times, but my education has all been in America, except for a primary school. I did do a couple of years in a Kenyan primary school. But, you know, my education has all been really American. And my view of things was always through, if I was honest, is always through an American lens. So I was always really chagrined to be confronted with instances where I actually didn't understand things as well. Or like in hindsight, I was like, I can't believe I missed that. It was really American of me to miss that. So working at the CIA first of all again ironically because and again look i get it CIA isn't where you can say well let's lecture American Christians about imperialism. Working for the CIA I'm like there's a difference and that is the CIA has a very clear mission and that is to inform American policymakers and to promote American interests around the world. And every country has an intelligence agency. You would be a fool. You would not be serving your citizens well not to have an intelligence agency. It's just a necessity of living in the modern geopolitical world. I think what alarms me about sort of the global church sort of thing is that there's a lot of influence and overly American influence within the guise of like, kumbaya, we're all like one big church. And it's like, no, you're promoting American culture and interests as well. But anyway, setting that aside, working at the CIA, ironically, I learned way more about Africa than I ever did growing up there. I learned Swahili working at the CIA when I hadn't learned it growing up there. I've really studied it hard. I used the opportunity to study it even more than I really needed because it was so meaningful to me to finally learn Swahili. And I realized, again, I was confronted with just how American my upbringing really was. The CIA actually taught me a lot about Africa.
JH: Well Holly it's always good to chat. And it is a great book. And I hope it gets the attention that it deserves. And I'm very eager to hear what your interview with Mona. That's going to be really great.
HBF: Yeah, that's going to be in a couple of weeks. So we'll see how that goes. Thank you so much.It's always fun to talk to you.
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