jimmylreader

Organizing the faithful

I met Nathan Empsall this past summer while working together to oppose the Reawaken America Tour scheduled for Rochester NY. That event was cancelled, but then moved to nearby Batavia – and was in the national news spotlight. I’m delighted to share this interview with him.

The Rev. Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest and organizer, leads Faithful America as its executive director. It is the largest online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice. Their 200,000 members — Catholic, Protestant, and more – refuse to sit quietly while Jesus’ message of good news is hijacked by the religious right to serve a hateful political agenda. They are organizing the faithful to challenge Christian nationalism and white supremacy and to renew the church’s prophetic role in building a more free and just society.

In this interview, Rev. Empsall clarifies the mission of Faithful America at this time. They are calling out Christian nationalism for its “distortion of our faith,” working with interfaith and secular partners as they work from a Christian perspective. They are “not just against something, but for something … lifting up an alternative vision of love and working together as a community.”

Please watch the interview and then read more about their work below:

Nathan defines Christian nationalism as “a political ideology and distortion of religion” because it “merges Christian identity with a civic identity, specifically their form of Christianity with a conservative political identity. Their message is that we can only be good Christians if we share all of that. And he adds that the movement is about “seizing power just for themselves rather than sharing power” to attain justice and equality for all in our nation.

We want to lift up love, hope, grace, compassion, and dignity, he says, but we also need to “name the problem and take it on, just as Jesus did in his day.” It’s important to distinguish between the movement, which is not Christian, he says, and people in the movement who may be Christian as they claim to be. It’s the people we must love even as we challenge and call out the movement and its leaders.

So what can you do? How can you be involved? Nathan invites you to visit their website and go to “Resisting Christian Nationalism” where you will find a wealth of resources to learn about Christian nationalism and get involved. You will find a variety of curriculum resources for small group studies in your church or community. Use them. Learn from them and talk about them.

Show up! A familiar phrase, and always true. Get involved in your local community – school boards and local elections – and don’t leave your faith at home. Speak up in love with an alternative story about who we can be as a nation and community. For those of you who are Christian by faith and commitment, he says, “Jesus is the center of our narrative” – his words and life of love. [I would add that compassion and justice are the core of every religion – or non-religious worldview – at its best.] Christian nationalism gets its power from claiming to have a monopoly on Christianity. They don’t. Trust your sense of what’s right and speak out now in a way that people “feel loved and empowered.”

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Another resource you may want to explore is a free eBook called “One thing YOU can do,” available for download here. Learn the 2 ways to do that one thing and when and how to do it. … Once you’ve downloaded it, please visit Imagine and learn how you can be part of a growing community committed to opposing religious nationalism and building a better world. … Join us today and get a 30-day free trial subscription.

Making sense of it all

On Christmas morning, the Washington Examiner (a radical right newspaper) ran an unsigned editorial calling for “a return to shared ideals and the possibility of civility in disagreement” in 2023. We all want that, so I read on to hear their ideas for achieving it. What I heard blamed all our national troubles on a decline in church affiliation and attendance – what they termed faith, but which meant traditional Christian religion.

The writer claims that “unbelief…dimming of conscience…toxic ideologies” all come out of “woke ideology, a form of religion itself” which has replaced “traditional religion with a much darker religion — that excludes redemption.” And what are some of the consequences for our nation?

Lack of “love, respect, and common ground”

A “divisiveness” in our nation

Destruction of “a sense of community”

“Polarized and caustic national political conversation”

By faith and religion, this writer clearly means Christian faith and religion – and a specific version that comes from a worldview not all Christians share. If that’s not plain early in the editorial, it is clear by the end:

“Christmas is supposed to generate feelings of respect and kindness for others — the impulse to treat others as they would wish to be treated. Indeed, this impulse is one originating in the Golden Rule that Jesus later propounded as an adult. Where the world says to treat friends well and enemies poorly, and to take revenge on those who have wronged you, the child born on this day taught that vengeance belongs only to God. You, on the other hand, are born for something better: to love your enemies, to forgive offenses from the bottom of your heart, to bless those who curse you, and to love others not just as you love yourself but as he loves you.”

The language the writer uses to talk about “the woke” – substituting that for “liberals” which they use in the same way – seems just the opposite of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, which is quoted in this paragraph. The writer even claims that “the woke”:

“Debate whether it is OK to mutilate or sexualize children”
“Exacerbate racial tensions”
“Drive people out of restaurants and give them no peace”

How do we make sense of it all? I grew up learning the teachings of Jesus and have spent more than 50 years as a Christian minister, seeking to follow the teachings and life of Jesus in all I do. My worldview – the way I imagine the world I want to live in – focuses on compassion and justice, empathy and equality, and shared responsibility. Yet this writer, I’m confident, would say that I am “woke” in many ways the editorial condemns.

There is no single definition of the term, but on Facebook today, I found this description of what it means to be “woke”:

“Woke means awakened to the needs of others. To be well informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble, and kind. Eager to make the world a better place for all people.”

The “shared ideals” this writer refers to seem to come from a different worldview – the one shared by Christian nationalists. They imagine the world as a place where it is good to possess authoritarian power and dominance in family, church, society, and government – where “rugged individualism” (every man for himself) is a core value for the laws and rules in this world. Their “shared ideals” come out of their nostalgic longing for the tradition they inherited – of a white Christian America operating from this worldview.

To make sense of it all, we must acknowledge that the majority of citizens in this nation never enjoyed the privileges and freedoms of that world, nor did the people in power in that world govern it on the basis of the teachings of Jesus. We must understand that authoritarian worldview desires a different world than a compassionate worldview. Therein lies the fundamental differences among us. Can we build bridges between both worlds and be willing to cross over or at least meet in the middle? I don’t know, but I’m willing to try.

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Done turning the other cheek

“I’m a Christian, and I’m done turning the other cheek.” So said Jack Posobiec at the Turning Point USA’s Amfest 2022 conference yesterday. With those words, he dismissed one of Jesus’ most well-known teachings about nonviolence and love as something not for him. Yet he claims to be a Christian, speaking to thousands of people who claim freedom, family, and [Christian] faith as fundamental values for this nation.

Like me, his name may be new to you, but he is well-known in radical right circles. He says his podcast, Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec, “brings you unfiltered and factual updates on how current events will impact our country today and in the future.” Yet the Politifact Scorecard rates his “factual updates” as 100% false or mostly false. The Southern Poverty Law Center says that “his disinformation typically focuses on making his political opponents seem dangerous or criminal, while ignoring or downplaying the corruption of authoritarians.” He also “collaborates with white supremacists and neo-nazis.”

Why would this man be invited to speak at a national conference of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) whose mission is “to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote freedom”? If you watch some of the highlights from America Fest 2022, it makes sense. The founder and president of TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, has his own show where he says ….

“We are lectured all the time about ‘domestic violent extremism’ as if the right has lots of domestic violent extremists, except that’s just not true. The left is full of people that are willing to use force to intimidate and harm conservatives.”

As Doug Pagitt said in last week’s interview, the Christian right often casts itself in the role of victim in the story they tell of America today. Kirk’s statement alludes to that in saying “the left” wants to “intimidate and harm conservatives.” This is why Posobiec claims it’s time to stop turning the other cheek and fight back. They refuse to be victims of “the left” any longer, as they see it, and they are ready to fight.

Charlie Kirk’s opening speech at Amfest presents a dark narrative of the future for this country. As does this whole movement, he uses fear – the fear of what will happen if they don’t fight back. The speech is 30 minutes, but watch just the first three minutes to experience the dark spectacle of what thousands of people saw and heard at the conference opening.

Watch another 10 minutes or so, and you will hear him describe their opponents as….

“the Marxist, totalitarian left filled with venom, hatred, darkness, resentment, arrogance, and despair … and teaching our children this vile garbage of critical race theory and woke nonsense.” He says “they want power, authority, control, and submission.” And that “their vision is one of despair and confusion, destroying the distinction between good and evil.”

TPUSA describes itself as traditionally conservative, committed to “the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.” The rhetoric of their conferences, speeches, and podcasts expose them as a radical right group similar to the Reawaken America Tours. In my two days there, I heard the same demonizing of “the left,” with hate-filled language and the call to fight back – with the suggestion that militarized violence is coming.

As I listened to both of these men, I heard them projecting onto their opponents some of what many of us see in this movement – a desire for “power, authority, control, and submission” – and a “vision of hatred and darkness … of despair and confusion.” How is it possible to even talk with each other? I’m not sure it is – not with people who demonize their opponents. What we must do, however, is challenge them. Call out their story of being victims of a power-hungry, hateful, “left” and learn to tell our own alternative story of a better future as we live with empathy, compassion, and justice for all.

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What will we do about antisemitism?

Tonight in Brighton, New York, I will join a rabbi and an imam – as a Baptist minister – to speak briefly at a community gathering sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Rochester to publicly declare our opposition to all forms of antisemitism. It is happening again, and it is growing in intensity in the United States. What will we do? Not just if we are Jewish and targets of the hatred and violence, but simply because we are human beings.

One article by the Associated Press told several stories of how “Jewish Americans Confront Antisemitism with Resolve and Worry.” Just two of those stories – from December 2023 – call all of us to do what we can.

Jewish Americans are closely following the recent upsurge in antisemitic rhetoric and actions with a mix of anxiety and resolve — along with a yearning that a broader swath of Americans, including leaders across the political spectrum, speak out against anti-Jewish hatred. New Yorker Rizy Horowitz said: “It’s a very frightening moment. There is no other word. We’re all frightened because we’ve seen the past and we don’t want to relive it.”

Texas author Anna Salton Eisen, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, has been sharing her late parents’ stories for years. “When I started speaking in schools more than 20 years ago, the Holocaust was a history lesson. Now it has become a lesson in current events,” she said. “Students who used to ask me questions about Hitler now want me to address the statements by Kanye that put Hitler in a positive light.”

This is why I will be there tonight. Today’s threat of antisemitism demands from all of us much more than giving a few remarks at a small evening gathering, but it’s one thing I can do. And I can keep writing about it – creating awareness, educating, giving alternatives for action. This is what I will say tonight – “3 reasons why I am here”:

First, I am here because of my faith. As a Baptist minister for 50 years, I remain firmly committed to two foundational principles – the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion for all. You may hear some radical right Christians denying separation of church and state and calling for a Christian nation, but that has never been our faith as Baptists. I am also a follower of Jesus, who affirmed the Hebrew scriptures when he said the two greatest commandments were to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourself. As a Christian, but also simply as a human being, I am here because of love. Our scriptures also say that “love does no harm” to another, so my faith compels me to here because of a love that will do no harm to another and will prevent that harm wherever possible.

Second, I am here because of history. Some of us do know actual history, and we do know the hatred and persecution of Jewish people through the centuries. We know the horrific realities of the 20^th century and all that happened to Jews. We know that it happened not just because of the direct actions of a few, but because of the silence and complicity of so many others. Like most people of my generation, we learned and accepted the deep commitments of the words: “never forget” and “never again.” – A commitment not just of Jewish people, but of all people, and I am here because of that history.

Third, I am here because of the present threat … because it IS happening again. Some people choose to be ignorant of the past or willfully deny that it could happen again, and so they are once again complicit. Some choose hatred and violence – all the evils of antisemitism – and are a direct threat to the well-being, to the very lives, of Jewish people. Some would deny their right to exist, if they could. So I am here because I am compelled by conscience and love to join with you to stop it now.

The question I am asked most often about the threat to democracy of Christian nationalism is “what can I do?” Many of us are now asking the same question about the threat of antisemitism, which is related but not confined to religion. This runs deep in human history.

What experience, abilities, or gifts can you bring to this? I can write, speak, talk to people, teach about it. I can participate in community gatherings or demonstrations. I am looking for more alternative actions I can take. What about you? What will you do?

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This is why

Why did members of Congress get “a Sunday School lesson … on the history of Baptists and religious freedom” this week? Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), spoke at a congressional hearing on the rise of anti-democratic extremism. When the chairman, Jamie Raskin, asked Tyler why BJC decided to actively oppose white Christian nationalism, she said:

“The problem of white Christian nationalism exactly fits with our mission of defending and extending religious freedom for all people. That’s because Christian nationalism strikes at the heart of the foundational ideas of what religious freedom means and how it’s protected in this country, and that is with the institution of separation of church and state.”

Later in the hearing, she added:

“Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that seeks to fuse American and Christian identities. It suggests that ‘real’ Americans are Christians and that ‘true’ Christians hold a particular set of political beliefs, but the Christianity presented by the movement is more of an ‘ethno-identity’ than a religion. Opposition to Christian nationalism is not opposition to Christianity, and a growing number of Christians feel a religious imperative to stand against Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism uses the language, symbols and imagery of Christianity — in fact, it may look and sound like Christianity to the casual observer. However, closer examination reveals that it uses the veneer of Christianity to point not to Jesus the Christ but to a political figure, party or ideology.”

This is why we need to pay attention to another story from Texas. A state representative, Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, hired as his legislative director a man named Jake Neidert who advocates extremist, violent views and calls himself a Christian nationalist. In a Facebook post earlier this year, he wrote:

“Please understand that we’re not TRYING to turn America into a Christian theocracy. We’re going to do it.” (emphasis mine)

State Rep. Tinderholt has pushed for legislation that proposed the death penalty for Texans who get and perform abortions and supports dozens of bills against any form of LGBTQ gender identity and sexual expression. Neidert, however, is publicly far more extreme and is now the man to develop legislation for Tinderholt.

In a June 2022 tweet, he wrote: “You want to force kids to see drag shows, I want to ‘drag’ you to the town square to be publicly executed for grooming kids. We are not the same.” As a Baylor University student leading the chapter of Young Conservatives for Texas, “Neidert compared LGBTQ allies to child rapists and serial killers, saying that homosexuality was equally sinful,” then “defended the post by saying he was a Southern Baptist, and that ‘many congregations and denominations of Christianity still believe that homosexuality is a sin. I would not say [the tweet] is a stretch.’”

People often react to such stories by labeling them “extreme” and saying these views represent only a small minority. Yet Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “directed Child Protective Services agents to investigate families who provide gender-affirming care to transgender children.” And “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office sought information on Texans who requested gender changes on their driver’s licenses — raising concerns among transgender Texans that they were being monitored. Meanwhile, ahead of Texas’ next legislative session that begins early next year, lawmakers have already filed dozens of bills targeting LGTBQ rights, including bills that would criminalize gender-affirming care for minors.”

The laws of the United States, or any of the individual states, must not be written based on the moral views of a specific version of any religion, including Christianity. As Amanda Tyler affirmed at this congressional hearing, many Christians oppose Christian nationalist views because we disagree that their views represent our faith and all it teaches about such concerns as abortion and LGBTQ rights.

When people like Neider and powerful groups like the Texas legislature, as well as the state’s governor and attorney general, want to criminalize human behavior that many of us support, this is why we speak up and take action. What many people still see as extreme views held only by a small group are being written into state laws governing the lives and restricting human freedoms of millions of citizens. This cannot continue.

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How do we engage with Christian nationalists?

How do we engage with people who part of this movement we call Christian nationalism? In this interview, Doug Pagitt helps us understand engagement and empathy, which he urges as our response to the people.

Doug Pagitt is the Executive Director and co-founder of Vote Common Good – an author, pastor, and social activist. A leading voice for progressive Christianity, Doug makes frequent national media and speaking appearances. He has a new book, Outdoing Jesus. Visit his website to learn more –DougPagitt.com.

Doug calls himself a possibility enthusiast. For two decades, he has been leading the conversation on progressive faith and politics. Through creative, entrepreneurial and generative efforts, he works to enlist people to join in the hopes, dreams, and desires God has for a more beautiful world.

“The threat to democracy,” Doug says, “comes when government begins to do its work in order to fulfill its purposes by Christian means,” but not everyone in the movement is in agreement about how to do that. “There’s a continuum of where people are and the kinds of ideas they hold. There’s not a unified view in the movement, and people are not motivated by the same thing. They fight with one another.”

Watch this interview with Doug, then read more below the video about the kind of response he recommends.

How do we engage with empathy in our personal relationships? Political or governmental engagement is important, but personal engagement remains critical to making a difference. Convinced that people cannot be persuaded to change their minds or their beliefs, most of us do not even try. Here’s what Doug said: “Many people are ready to swap one belief for another, but we all need a meaningful alternative belief before we let go of a harmful belief.” So personal, empathetic engagement may be saying to someone: “I have a different way to look at this. Would you mind looking at it with me?”

Empathy includes understanding why people believe what they do. We need to put ourselves in their place as much as possible to have a sense of why they say or believe what they do. One question to ask, Doug says, is this: “What function does that belief have in your life?” It does something for them. It provides something important in their lives. What is that and why? Once we have a good idea about the answer, we can talk with them about it.

Another fascinating idea in the interview is that most stories have heroes, villains, and victims. None of us sees ourselves as the villains, of course – just a hero or a victim. We sometimes do, however, see other people as villains, which is never helpful. “We must engage people as heroes or victims,” Doug says, “in whatever role they see themselves. Replace the hero narrative with another hero narrative, not make them villains in a story.”

Toward the end of our interview, Doug focused on what he calls “a sojourner narrative,” – a narrative of shared experience. Rather than heroes, villains, or victims, can we see ourselves as sojourners on a common journey? He suggested looking to migrants for help in this. What is their story as they learn “to live in a new land”?” What could we learn from that story about being sojourners together on a path to a better life, a better future?

If you find this interview helpful for considering an appropriate response to people involved in Christian nationalism, you might want to visit the Vote Common Good website. They offer a free course on “Confronting Christian Nationalism” that you might also benefit from. Thank you for watching this interview.

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Another resource you may want to explore is a free eBook called “One thing YOU can do,” available for download here. Learn the 2 ways to do that one thing and when and how to do it.

You are invited to join our new Imagine Learning Community where you will find interviews and resources from a variety of leaders and groups engaging with people in this movement. Click here to learn more.

Learn about Christian Nationalism

Interview with Mikey Weinstein

U.S. military regulations prohibit discrimination based on religion. Diversity of religious expression and faith or non-faith is legally protected, and any action designed to harass or manipulate service members based on religion is illegal and unethical. Thousands of men and women in uniform fight a constant battle against such harassment.

Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, works every day to help them win the battle. His group seeks to restore the obliterated wall separating church and state in the United States armed forces. His family has a proud military history, with six family members graduating from the United States Air Force Academy. He served 10 years in the JAG Corps and 3 years as White House legal counsel under President Ronald Reagan – once a mainstream conservative Republican.

Facing personal experience with antisemitism as a Jewish family and the growing influence of a specific version of Christianity in the military, Mikey took up the battle against far-right radical religious fundamentalists. On the Military Religious Freedom Foundation website, you can find examples of vicious hate mail he has received over the years as a result of defending the constitutional rights of religion and free speech of men and women in the U.S. military.

Meet Mike Weinstein in this interview today:

Mikey Weinstein Interview

There are more than 80,000 reasons for this work of the MRFF:

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Just over 81,000 active duty, veteran, and civilian personnel of the United States Armed Forces, including individuals involved in High School JROTC around the nation, have come to our foundation for redress and assistance in resolving or alerting the public to their civil rights grievances, with hundreds more contacting MRFF each day. 95% of them are Christians themselves.

Mikey and Bonnie Weinstein have several books you may be interested in reading. One is “No Snowflake in an Avalanche,” which goes deep inside the world of religious extremism in America s military and political infrastructure. Weinstein’s war pits him and his small band of fellow graduates, cadets, and concerned citizens of varying religious backgrounds against a program of Christian fundamentalist indoctrination that could transform our fighting men and women into right-thinking warriors more befitting a theocracy than a democracy.

Please go to the MRFF website today. You will find an array of interviews, videos, books, including his multiple honors and awards. Contact them and find out how you can help our proud men and women in the United States armed forces.

ALSO….please “like” our new Imagine Facebook page and go to our Imagine learning community site where you can find out more about Mikey and many other leaders organized to offer alternatives to Christian Nationalism for a better world.

Challenge or Persuade?

I gave up “bridge-building” years ago – at least with people who will never choose to cross over or even meet in the middle. When we are in direct conflict with our goals and values, I can challenge it, but not persuade anyone to change. When it comes to the movement now called Christian Nationalism, I have decided to challenge the movement with a goal of minimizing its power but without a goal of changing it.

At the same time, a new book (Anand Giridharadas, The Persuaders) tells stories of social activists and political leaders who have learned that some people – the “persuadables” – can be persuaded to see another way. Loretta Ross – activist, public intellectual, professor – says that we can do more than “call out” someone with whom we disagree. We can also “call in” with love. Here’s what she says:

“For me, calling in is a callout done with love. You’re actually holding people accountable. But you’re doing so through the lens of love. It’s not giving people a pass on accountability—like you don’t have to pay attention to the fact that they said something racist or that they caused harm to another person. No. It’s not ignoring it. But it’s about seeing a pathway or multiple pathways for addressing accountability through the lens of love.” (p.47)

Ms. Ross reminds us that most people see themselves as good people with good motivations. Rather than challenge their self-image (if you don’t agree), she says, “help them lean into that internal exploration of themselves and show them how to bolster that self-perception of them being good people by walking them through examples” of how they would choose in certain situations to do what is good. That’s where we find common ground. And she continues:

“You have to be in a loving, healing space to call anybody in. You can’t do it from anger, because it’s just going to end up badly. So you have to assess why you’re doing it. What’s your motivation? Are you trying to help this person learn, or are you actually trying to change them?” … “You can’t change other people. You can’t even change the person you’re married to. You can help people. You can expose people to different information and help them learn—if you do so with love.” (p.55)

Her story and approach to persuasion with people who seem to be opposed offer a core strategy for engaging people in a movement we oppose. Whether our goal is to CHALLENGE or to PERSUADE, empathy and compassion for the person – even if their words or actions appall us – are necessary. To be in that “loving, healing space,” refusing to let anger motivate us, we engage the person with concern for their good (which is what love is). And our goal is to “expose people to different information and help them learn.”

George Lakoff’s model of Strict Father / Nurturant Parent values – with its moral and political impact – has been a major influence on my thinking and practice since I discovered it 15 years ago. Sometimes I think “these people live in a different world.” In a way, we do live in different “worlds,” with different worldviews – ways of understanding how the world “works” – when we operate out of one set of values or the other. There is always overlap, of course, but it’s important to understand the basic difference. Here’s his summary:

The strict father is moral authority and master of the household, dominating the mother and children and imposing needed discipline. Contemporary conservative politics turns these family values into political values: hierarchical authority, individual discipline, military might.

The nurturant parent model has two equal parents, whose job is to nurture their children and teach their children to nurture others. Nurturance has two dimensions: empathy and responsibility, for oneself and others. Responsibility requires strength and competence. The strong nurturing parent is protective and caring, builds trust and connection, promotes family happiness and fulfillment, fairness, freedom, openness, cooperation, and community development. These are the values of strong progressive politics.

You can find much more detail about Lakoff’s model on our Imagine learning community site, along with an introduction to Christian Nationalism, interviews with national leaders, and other learning resources. I hope you will take some time to see what’s there and decide to join our learning community working for a better world.

Interview with Jennifer Butler

Jennifer Butler founded Faith in Public Life in Washington, D.C. A Presbyterian minister and global justice activist, she leads this national movement of clergy and faith leaders united in the prophetic pursuit of justice, equality and the common good. They are leading the fight to advance just policies at the local, state, and federal levels. They have a network of 50,000 leaders who engage in bold moral action that affirms just values and the human dignity of all.

Jennifer and I met this past August when the Reawaken America Tour came to Batavia, NY. She joined the public opposition to the event, and I attended the 2-day event. We have both since been writing and speaking to challenge the movement and change the conversation around Christian Nationalism. You can read her article in The Philadelphia Inquirer here.

Jennifer Butler, Founder of Faith in Public Life

Rev. Butler also wrote Who Stole My Bible? Reclaiming Scripture as a Handbook for Resisting Tyranny. I hope you will read it. In the introduction, she wrote:

The usurping of moral norms, like human dignity and loving your neighbor, is at the root of so much chaos. These beliefs are being undermined in favor of unbridled greed, ethnic nationalism, and xenophobia. A large percentage of white Christians is marching to the drumbeat of white nationalism and leading the way in the corruption of our values. Given all of this, nothing could be more important than reclaiming this radical book called the Bible and acting to make its vision for radical justice, equality, and liberation a reality.

After today you will find this interview – along with interviews of other people challenging this movement and changing the conversation – at Imagine, a learning community working for a better world. Sign up for free (for 30 days). Then for $10/month, you will have access to resources, interviews, and updates – and an Introduction to Christian Nationalism – all of which can help you learn and work for the kind of world you want to live in.

I don’t want to live in the authoritarian, power and fear-driven world this movement works to build. Rather, I want to live in a compassionate, just world, filled with hope. I can imagine it, and I am learning and working for that better world. Will you join me?