This is an interview about Christian pop culture with an author you probably haven't heard of.

Wait!  Don't go yet!  The power of Obama compels you!

See, these days with reverends calling out future presidents, and future presidents giving dap like they're chilling at the 40/40 club, the tides of race, religion and pop culture have washed us all up on some sort of unchartered island. Everyone's a little Lost TV series for clear definitions: What does it mean to be black?  What does it mean to be Christian?  What does it mean to be Tyler Perry?

So here's the deal: Daniel Radosh -- one of the smartest Caucasians I know (statement verifiable by his blog: Radosh.net) -- immersed himself in the mostly white-washed world of Christian pop culture for 12 months. And he survived to tell the story! Annnd that story is available for purchase at your local book store, Rapture Ready!.

Intrigued by how this seeming societal outlier could be a 7 billion dollar a year industry, I emailed Daniel a bunch of questions looking for connections between issues of race and Christian evangelicals. Basically trying to keep it "Spiritual, but not Religious", so we can get more perspective on if those folks are "Christian, but not Crazy."

In so doing we explored why church at 11AM is still the most segregated time in America, and why Jesus "can be your girlfriend, but not your ho", all set-up so that I could pin him down on one question: would he rather wake up as an evangelical christian, or a black person?

Will Daniel provide some compelling data to help us navigate this dark island of cultural politics, or will he say something inflammatory or insensitive? Find out in the interview below.

CULTURE WAR AMMUNITION

TAN: Is Jesus a Black man or White?

RADOSH: Of course, race is a social construct and the terms black and white in this context did not exist in first century Palestine. That said, as I understand it, he'd have looked pretty much like Middle Easterners do today. If I were making a movie I'd cast Naveen Andrews. Even though he's Indian. And no one would see the movie.

TAN: You mention the "cultural divide between black and white christians" as being much bigger than mainstream. Can you explain?

RADOSH: My focus is on pop culture, entertainment and media and in that context, the black/white divide in the Christian world is considerably more stark than it is in the mainstream. After all, white America accepted blacks as entertainers long before it accepted them as neighbors, co-workers, um, human beings. So there's a long tradition of black influence in American pop culture. You see far less of that in Christian pop culture. Hip hop has dominated American music for at least a decade, but while there are some Christian rappers, most of them are not very good, the only really popular ones are white, and, more tellingly, the hip hop sensibility has not taken hold in the same way.

There are certainly prominent black authors and artists in the Christian sphere -- Tyler Perry, T.D. Jakes, Sherri Shepherd -- but overall blacks remain underrepresented in Christian pop culture. Black gospel music sells well, but not in Christian bookstores. A (white) man who distributes gospel CDs told me Christian stores frequently turn him away saying, "we don't get those people in here." I should add that I don't think this is about personal bigotry. The white church has made a concerted and largely successful effort in the last few decades to cast racism as an intolerable sin, and most white Christians I met would eagerly embrace blacks, especially black Christians, as their brothers and sisters. But white evangelicals tend to be very personal-oriented. The concept of systemic racism wouldn't really resonate with them. So there's a sense that the problem is solved because there's no personal hatred, and there's not much effort to look at why there's still such segregation in the church.

You mentioned Tyler Perry, do you know if he signed a deal with god, or the devil?

RADOSH: TBS

TAN: Dr. King said,  "the most segregated hour in America is 11 AM Sunday morning"?  What is it about religion that makes people draw firmer boundaries? If religion and a person's spiritual choice is so personal, does it in a roundabout way offer a legitimate argument for separatism?

RADOSH: Sure. People need to put their guard down when they worship. They want to be with other people who understand them on a deep level. A church is like a family in that sense. It's not necessarily a bad thing to recognize that while we can and should find commonality with all people, we're most comfortable with people's whose life experiences are most like ours, and we want to be completely comfortable in church. I would hope, of course, that if a black person is most comfortable in a majority white church, or vice versa, that the rest of the congregation would be comfortable with having them there. But desegregating churches doesn't seem like the same essential goal as desegregating schools and workplaces.

On the other hand, in evangelical theology, your faith isn't supposed to be just something personal that takes place during the hour that you spend in the church building. You're supposed to live your faith at all times, which is partly why Christian consumerism caught on so easily. So if your church is segregated, then by extension a much larger part of your culture is equally segregated, and that is a problem.

TAN: if we have all these niche compartments, how do we assess gains and losses? The culture war is a zero sum game, right? There's gay stuff, black stuff, christian stuff ...what do we keep and what should go?

RADOSH: I met a lot of people who said, rolling their eyes, that Christians are the new gays -- meaning that it's become trendy for movies and TV shows to stick in a minor Christian character for a little extra "flavor." These characters are usually portrayed positively, but still in thin, stereotypical ways, just as the campy gay neighbor was for so long, or the sassy black best friend. I like to think that the portraits of Christians in my book are more complex and multifaceted than that. I found some people quite appalling and others pretty terrific, but few exactly fit any preconceived notions I had of American evangelicals. But just as it makes sense to speak of a gay sensibility or a black sensibility, with however many caveats, we can also speak of an evangelical sensibility. And there are elements of it that definitely have something to offer the rest of us. I was tremendously impressed with how many Christians try to live deliberately, with a clear sense that life has a purpose. I admired their willingness to help out friends and even strangers without a second thought. In terms of culture, the effort to emphasize human dignity and avoid degradation is certainly something that the mainstream could learn from. I'm not saying that all Christians are saints, of course, but these are ideals that carry a great deal of weight with many of them.