Bishop Wright: 0:02
Hi everyone, this is Bishop Rob Wright and this is For People. Today we’ve got a great guest, David Hayward, who’s a cartoonist, an author, an illustrator and a former Presbyterian pastor. David, welcome.
David Hayward: 0:20
Thanks very much. Good to be here, nice to meet you.
Bishop Wright: 0:24
Thanks very much. Good to be here. Nice to meet you, david, let’s just jump right in. You are called or have named yourself, the Naked Pastor.
David Hayward: 0:34
I love it. Tell us how we got there. Yeah, I get asked that a lot. Well, back in 2004 or 2005, I thought, you know, I’m going to get into the blogging game and at that time blogging was sort of at its peak and there were a lot of pastors out there blogging. I was a pastor at the time and I thought, well, I want my blog to be unique, I want it to be authentic, real raw. I was going to sort of pull back the veil and let people see what really goes on in the life of a pastor and I was going to be completely honest and share with them my feelings, my experiences, my ups and downs, my struggles, my doubts, my questions, all those things, and so all those things. And so Naked Pastor just seemed perfect. You know, yeah, little did. I know that you know a lot of people. It raises a lot of eyebrows and a lot of people are wondering well, what’s that about? You know? So it’s. I’ve had.
Bishop Wright: 1:37
I’ve had my struggles with that name, but generally speaking, I’m pretty happy with it because it does it pretty accurately describes what I try to do, and that’s just to be really open and real and honest in what I share. Your newsletter hits the eyeballs of over 13,000 people a week, according to the website.
David Hayward: 2:11
And so, even though you say you’re a former pastor, that’s sort of a congregation, isn’t it? Yeah, well, you know, when I left the official ministry in 2010,. And here I am, you know I’ve been blogging as Naked Pastor since 2005. And so I did struggle with okay, do I keep the name? Because am I a pastor? And anyway, I had enough people talk me into keeping it by suggesting look, you’re still doing pastoral work just online. And you know, I guess, kind of like John Wesley’s, the world is my parish, yes, Through the internet.
Bishop Wright: 2:48
that makes me one of your congregants because for years, without knowing very much about you, I’ve appreciated your work. You know the cartoons especially I have sent out over my own social media channels some years ago. I have sent out over my own social media channels some years ago one of what I think is one of your most genius cartoons that I’m aware of, where it shows basically how we are drawing lines and then there’s this figure of Jesus coming behind us with a big eraser and erasing those lines.
Bishop Wright: 3:28
So say a little bit about that and how cartoon helps us to get down to it, I mean, and why that’s your mean, your medium.
David Hayward: 3:34
Well, I’ve drawn ever since I was a little kid. My dad was an artist on the side and so art became just second nature to me on the side. And so I just art became, you know, just second nature to me. And so I’ve been drawing and sketching and cartooning, you know, on and off, for my whole life. But in 2005 or so I had been blogging and you know, writing posts and everything like that, maybe sharing some of my paintings and everything. And then I thought one day I’m going to try a cartoon, just see what happens. And I challenged myself to try to draw a cartoon every day until I ran out of ideas. I thought I would last a couple of weeks. But here I am, almost 20 years later, wow, still drawing cartoons every day.
David Hayward: 4:25
And so what I love about it. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I love. I try to do my cartoons in one frame with as few words as possible, and the impact is immediate. I mean as soon as you see it. You see it, you can’t unsee it, and it communicates. It can communicate a lot like that, that one eraser. It’s basically based on that passage, where there is therefore now no dividing walls between us, and yet the human race seems to be very busy trying to build these walls Right and and establish, you know, separation and division among us, and so I just wanted to. I think it’s a very theologically accurate cartoon and it portrays what I think is a very fundamental truth, is that we are one, we’re connected at a deep and fundamental level and we should be honoring that, embracing that and nurturing that, rather than fighting against it.
Bishop Wright: 5:31
What I love about it is yeah, the effect is immediate and it goes right to the heart of some of Jesus’s best stories and best sayings. I mean, it just delivers the punch. You’re in Canada, we’re in the American South, here, and our saying here is I can show you better than I can tell you, and your cartoons deliver exactly that. But you say of your work that you challenge problematic norms in religious spaces and in life in general. So talk a little bit about the problematic norms in religious spaces that you see.
David Hayward: 6:11
So I think one of my driving passions, for me personally, is I want to be free to find and express my most authentic self. I think that personal freedom is essential for my own happiness and for me to be able to grow spiritually. And I think everybody should be afforded that same freedom, including people who are in churches, people to find and explore and express their most authentic selves. And and so my cartoons kind of have a double edged sword feel to them, where I I am uh, encouraging and validating and affirming your personal freedom to be who you are. And so for people who want that freedom and appreciate that freedom, they like my cartoons.
David Hayward: 7:13
But people who think people need to be controlled and managed and coerced and manipulated hate my cartoons. Yeah, because you know they have this foundational belief that people need to be controlled and managed. And so my cartoons all have that double edged aspect to them where if you appreciate personal freedom, you’re going to like them. The freedom of others, you’re going to like them, but if you think there are some people who are in and some who are out, you’re going to be challenged by them.
Bishop Wright: 7:52
You know, to be fair, a lot of people come to that alternative translation about control and in and out and those sorts of things through. You know their experience in the church, they have been taught to see Jesus through that lens, and so how did you escape some of that yourself, yeah, or are you on a journey yourself with all of this?
David Hayward: 8:20
Oh man, yeah, I’m on a journey and I always will be, and I hope I always will be. I never want to think I’ve arrived and a lot of my cartoons address that where as soon as you think you’ve arrived, then that’s when you’re in trouble.
David Hayward: 8:45
I think one of the most impacting things that I think Jesus is quoted to have said is that the sun shines on both the just and the unjust, and the rain falls, and they didn’t know gravity back then, but gravity is the same, it’s indiscriminate. Like sunshine, like rain. Gravity I think of the parable of the sower just threw out the seed indiscriminately. I think that’s what love is, and so that’s always been sort of a guiding factor of my deep, um, sort of fundamental belief that love is the glue that binds us together and that love is indiscriminate. It yeah, love just is yeah. And so when we start thinking love is, this one deserves love and this one does not, uh, then we, I think you know, misunderstand what, what love really is, and so that I think that’s been a real guiding principle for me for many, many years now is talking about that kind of indiscriminate love. Yeah.
Bishop Wright: 9:49
And you’re not just sort of coming up with this out of the clear blue sky. I mean, you have studied theology, you’re a trained theologian, and yet you think a lot about deconstruction, according to what’s available to read about you online. What’s the deconstruction piece about? What are you deconstructing?
David Hayward: 10:12
Well, I was invited to participate in a weekend seminar on hermeneutics this was back in 2006, I believe, and we were given a bunch of textbooks to read on hermeneutics and the general lean of the books was its criticism of deconstruction, the philosophy of deconstruction that was founded by Jacques Derrida. The French philosopher came up with the word deconstruction and basically it’s you know, you take everything apart and you question everything right down to the roots. And when I was reading it it had the opposite effect on me. It didn’t turn me against deconstruction, it had the opposite effect on me. It didn’t turn me against deconstruction, it actually turned me on to deconstruction because it seemed to be accurately describing the journey I was on at that time of questioning everything you know, right down to the roots, not just what the Bible says, but the Bible itself you know, like that kind of deep, foundational, the very roots of all my beliefs. And so I actually co-opted the word to describe my personal spiritual journey and started sharing that, you know, on my blog. And you know people were starting to call me a deconstructionist and things like that. I didn’t care, because it seemed to be a pretty good word for describing what I was going through and that’s.
David Hayward: 11:46
It’s nothing new. Everybody’s done this down through the centuries, down through the ages. They’ve questioned their beliefs, and I thought it was a valid part of spiritual growth. Like Paul said, when I was a child, I thought like a child. But when I was a child, I thought like a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. And that’s done by questioning what you believe and moving beyond or further. And so, to me, deconstruction it’s not just a phase, it’s not backsliding, it’s a legitimate, not just a phase, it’s not backsliding, it’s a legitimate spiritual process of questioning your beliefs in order to move beyond and to grow.
Bishop Wright: 12:30
I mean, it makes perfect sense to me and you know, and that is the journey for so many of us. I mean, you know, as a, as someone who you know pastors and works with pastors and maybe especially lay people, you know, many are the stories that we have heard where people started off in one kind of faith. Real life hit them, sometimes it was a body blow to them. They may even say that they lost faith or faith went dormant and then it came surging back and all of that was part of the journey, right, none of that was useless. Or when, in the trash bin, all of it, you know, came together at the end to make something that was, that had integrity, that had authenticity and that had been tested by sorrow and joy. And so it seems like, you know, deconstruction, evolution, seasons of life, all of that is part and parcel of soul making. I like to call it. You know, how is the soul made? Well, it’s not made by, you know, 80 years of happy days, right, it’s made. And, of course, faith is trusting God over time. And when we go over time, you know, we meet a lot of seasons and we meet ourself anew. And then we have to ask ourselves, you know, can this faith of my childhood, you know, endure going forward with more serious questions about? You know sexual orientation, how I live with money, how I live with others. You know what is generosity, what is forgiveness. You know all these other things.
Bishop Wright: 14:07
I like the lens that you look through. So one of my favorite cartoons of yours is basically Jesus standing there with four or five guys and they’ve got holy Bibles under their arms and Jesus says to them the difference between me and you is you use Scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what Scripture means. I mean you can’t unsee that right. I mean you talk about a hermeneutic, a fancy $6 word to basically try to articulate how do we hold Scripture, how do we understand Scripture? What lens do we look through at Scripture? I think that’s so potent. Do these things? Take you a couple of minutes to write and illustrate what’s the process here?
David Hayward: 15:01
Yeah. So actually, first going back to your comment about not throwing things into the trash bin like that is my. Integrating your past experiences for me is, I think, healthy and essential for really good, healthy spiritual growth. It’s not hopping from one lily pad to the other, but it’s a process of growth. You grow outward so that nothing’s necessarily thrown out or rejected. Yeah, and I think that’s the healthiest form of personal growth is not looking back and rejecting part of your childhood or whatever. You can’t share out that chapter of your life and rejecting part of your childhood or whatever you can’t share out that chapter of your life. It belongs to your story and somehow, like Carl Jung and other depth psychologists would suggest, it’s healthier to figure out how to integrate that into who you are rather than deny it, dismiss it, forget it, suppress it. All that kind of thing and that was part of my journey is figuring out.
David Hayward: 16:02
Okay, I began with this deep love of scripture and then my idea of inspiration and errancy and infallibility changed. But does that mean I throw the Bible away or does it mean I understand it on a different level? Or do I use a different hermeneutic? Everybody, everybody in the world, whether they like it or not admit it or not, approaches the Bible with their own hermeneutic. It’s our own frame of mind we approach the scripture with and the lens we read through.
David Hayward: 16:35
And I think the best hermeneutic is a loving hermeneutic, because if you approach a scripture with a judgmental hermeneutic is a loving hermeneutic. And you know, because if you approach a scripture with a judgmental hermeneutic, you’re going to find enough verses to justify that and wreak havoc on the human race. And so why not approach it with a hermeneutic of love and see what happens? And I think we would see more um and inclusion and harmony and unity and community. You know. So yeah, that’s what was behind that scripture, and I mean that cartoon. And you know I was struggling with trying to figure out a way to draw that and that just finally I was on a run or something and finally the image popped into my head and I knew how I wanted to say it and I got home and drew it.
Bishop Wright: 17:28
Yeah, yeah, well, if, if, uh, if our listeners could download one, uh, one cartoon, I would say start there, because it, you know it. Yeah, if God is love, not just that God is loving, scripture says God is love. Uh, you know, we sort of have to hang everything on that then, and so then you know, that’s a great lens to read scripture through, and it also helps us to understand inspiration, because there’s some things in the Bible, as we know, that are not consistent with God is love and they end up being. Well, we know that the Bible is a messy kind of book. I mean, it is some history, but not exclusively history. It is written for faith, by faith. It is also the story of the victor.
Bishop Wright: 18:14
In some cases, I mean, it’s poetry, it’s hyperbole, it’s all those things together and the great, deep, wonderful journey with Scripture is trying to get one’s arms around that and begin to get a sense of the face of God and all that and also a sense of what is my life with neighbor about here, you know me personally. I mean I think why would you throw six to eight thousand years of human struggling with the divine out, 8,000 years of humans struggling with the divine out? I mean, and what do you replace that with that? Is that significant, deep, messy, wonderful. And so, yeah, I’m sort of staying with Scripture.
Bishop Wright: 18:56
But how I hold it over the years has changed significantly and I think my ears have gotten a little bit better tuned Not entirely, I’m not done, by any stretch of the imagination but a little bit better tuned to its myriad of frequencies. Also, when I take a look around and I see some of your work and I try to get some of the motivation for your work, inspiration for your work, this notion of talking about spiritual abuse is also part of your work, part of your thinking. Why is that part of your work? I mean, these cartoons are joyful, the illustrations are beautiful, the deconstruction is about evolution and growth, and then we come to this bit about spiritual abuse. Why talk about that, david?
David Hayward: 19:48
Because as a pastor, I’ve also served other pastors as assistant pastor, I’ve been involved in many, many different churches from many different denominations and I call myself my own ecumenical movement because I’ve been in so many different churches. But the common denominator is the tendency of institutions or systems towards the dehumanization of its members, of its members. And I believe leaders of these institutions or organizations or communities or systems, the majority of their effort and time needs to prevent this sort of gravitational pull towards the dehumanization of its members. And I saw it in the church and so on. And you know, I learned about systemic evil and how good people, when put in the right situation, can do harm to others and not mean to, but it happens.
David Hayward: 21:04
And so I experienced a lot of spiritual abuse I recognized. At one point I finally realized I was a part of a system that tended towards that and that it took an enormous amount of effort to resist that and to keep your hands off people in a controlling, manipulative, coercive kind of a way. And so spiritual abuse to me is a big thing, because I think many churches and other institutions and systems are prone towards that. I mean people experience this not only in the church. They experience in their jobs. They experience it in the hospital, they experience it in education. They experience it in the DVI Department of Motor Vehicles, whatever you call it down there.
David Hayward: 21:56
You know, wherever you are, the bureaucracy sometimes can take over, and so that’s why I talk about spiritual abuse a lot, because I think it is a real and present danger.
Bishop Wright: 22:09
Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. In our tradition, as part of our response to baptism, the baptismal covenant, there’s this notion about respecting the dignity of every human being. And if you’re going to do that, then you have to be always on guard for these ways in which systems can dehumanize both us and dehumanize people through us. And so when I hear respect the dignity of every human being, I don’t hear the invitation to be nice. I hear something else. I hear something about raising floor height, about the way in which we are together and the decisions that we make, especially in community, Understanding that we sort of lean.
Bishop Wright: 22:56
You know, I guess if sin is anything, it’s that we lean in a particular way which tends towards selfishness and control, and that if we’re going to lean another way, that’s going to take some real support. And let me just say your artwork, your thinking, your offering is helping us lean the other way, towards a more loving and charitable understanding of who Jesus Christ was. So thank you so very much. Thank you, David Hayward nakedpastorcom. If you want to see more and read more Again, david, thanks for joining us.
