Voices You Need to Hear.

Lifting up four of my favorite voices

Voices. Many voices are now being lifted up against white Christian nationalism, and for a better and truer vision of faith–which is always the necessary connection.

In our latest episode of The Soul of the Nation, I lift up four of my favorite voices. All four were speakers at our Test of Faith: A Summit to Defend Democracy at Georgetown just two weeks ago when we were all together face to face for the first time this election season. They are also all co-hosts of the wonderful The Convocation Unscripted podcast and you can read all of the writings on the The Convocation Substack.

You can watch this conversation on YouTube and listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like this conversation, please subscribe to the The Soul of the Nation podcast.

Jemar Tisby is somebody you should all be watching and listening to as a new generation African American leader, a dynamic speaker and author of many books including the New York Times bestseller The Color of Compromise and his latest book The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. Jemar is also a historian, teaching at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville. As a student and teacher of history, he spoke about this historical moment in our country.

I don't think a lot of people who were born and raised in the US understand just how chaotic governments can get because we've never had to deal with the kind of tyranny and tumult that some other countries face. But we're at a point where it could happen here and it could happen in the very next election. Wouldn't happen maybe all at once. But that opens the floodgates for whatever could come next. So at this point, I consider myself an evangelist for democracy.

 - Jemar Tisby

In my view, one of the best scholars of democracy is Kristin Du Mez, professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University in Grand Rapids Michigan and this year a fellow and teacher at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. The author of the widely acclaimed New York Times Bestseller Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin is deeply connected to people in the evangelical tradition and is speaking to many of them–publicly and privately this season. In our conversation she recounts how some from that evangelical world, that she and I both come from, are loud voices who are now literally saying that Scriptural texts like God creating us all in “the image of God” and Jesus' clear instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself” should not apply during this election season. Really.

There's so much complacency and complacency turns to complicity right now within Christian communities. There are bad actors in a number of religious spaces right now, religious and political spaces who are orchestrating essentially a takeover of the federal government. We are in unprecedented territory, at least in my lifetime. 

-Kristin Du Mez

Another historian of American Christianity, prolific writer of many books, and host of the popular podcast The Cottage is Diana Butler Bass, who speaks regularly to those in the mainline Protestant churches. She is an unusually insightful scholar, yet also a preacher who loves to tell stories, and it is always fun to be on her podcast! In this remarkable conversation, Dianna spoke directly about the pressure on pastors that she is finding around the country during this election season.

The pressure for these pastors to not speak to anything controversial is enormous...I preached a sermon using James about the lie, and talked about race, and talked about refugees...And  afterwards, this man comes up to me and he said, "You know, I really think that you were too hard on Donald Trump." And I said, what do you mean? ...He said,  "A lot of people are saying this really happened." And I said...American history is full of people in power who said lies about people who were somehow marginalized, usually by race, often by religion, in order to maintain their power."

-Diana Butler Bass

The other white guy on the podcast panel was my good friend Robby Jones. Robert P. Jones is the President and Founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). He is also the author of many books, like White Too Long and his most recent bestseller The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a New American Future. We often joke that our conferences of white people who talk about racism all the time are sometimes held in phone booths! He spoke eloquently from the perspective of a PhD, but one who grew up in the southern Bible Belt of Mississippi.

Can I just say, as a Southern Baptist who grew up in that world? You might think that for a denomination that got race and slavery and segregation so wrong that [hey] might want to take a hiatus for a few years--or a few decades---on pronouncing [their] righteousness and [their] lockhold on the Truth [with a] Capital T. 

-Robert P. Jones

This was such a fascinating conversation with some of my most respected and beloved commentators on faith and public life in America. And I believe you will really enjoy it and find it very helpful to all the conversations you’re going to have in these next critical and urgent weeks before the elections.