Much like the issue of slavery in the early 19th century, the issue of LGBTQ inclusion is splitting denominations across the United States. On opposite sides of the fault-line are those calling for inclusion and those engaging processes and crafting policies that exclude LGBTQ+ people from various levels of membership and leadership. Churches usually avoid this conversation, because the stakes are so high and the outcomes so painful.

This month Freedom Road Podcast, Activist Theology Podcast and Red Letter Christians leverage the power of story to engage this fraught conversation together. Join Lisa Sharon Harper, Dr. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza and Shane Claiborne as they wade through the troubled waters of this sensitive, necessary and timely conversation; charting a way to the other side with raw honesty and grace.

Join host, Lisa Sharon Harper, in conversation with the women of the Pantsuit Politics Podcast, Beth Silvers and Sarah Stewart Holland. On this collaborative extended episode, released on both platforms, listen in as Lisa, Beth and Sarah talk COVID-19, sci-fi movies, canaries in mines and wrestle over one hard question: What will alliance with women of color require of White women in 2020? Be prepared to hear all of the things that need to be said. The times we are living in require it. 

The issue of abortion has the level of power it does in our nation because we never talk about it. So, we’re going to talk about it. Listen in as host, Lisa Sharon Harper, is joined by Rev. Susan Chorley (Exhale), Rev. Shekinah Hamlin (Christian Church Disciples of Christ) and Andrea Lucado (evangelical journalist) to talk about Abortion and Reproductive Justice. This is a #mustlisten conversation.

Listen in on this powerful conversation between Lisa Sharon Harper (host) and Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III (Lead Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ). The two dive deep on the power of pilgrimage and legacy. As the son of a Civil Rights hero, Moss shares how pilgrimage helped him understand his father better and himself as a man of African descent in the US. 

Join host, Lisa Sharon Harper, and guest Belinda Bauman as they go off-script and dig deep in this vulnerable and raw conversation about the relationship between power and solidarity. #silenceisnotspiritual #solidaritysunday

Advent is about God's embodied solidarity with humanity. In December 2015 Dr. Larycia Hawkins, political science prof at Wheaton College in Illinois placed a hijab on her head, took a picture and posted a message on Facebook in solidarity with Muslim women who were being targeted and forced to take off their hijabs in public spaces within democracies around the world. Standing in embodied solidarity with Muslim women as her Advent practice, Dr. Hawkins lost her job and became the target of white patriarchal evangelicalism. Join host, Lisa Sharon Harper, as she examines the intersectional oppressions of race, gender and religion with Dr. Hawkins and the Emmy Award Winning filmmaker who documented Hawkins's story, Linda Midgett, director of "Same God."

Want to see #SameGodFilm? Please tag @PBS in your region and @Netflix and ask them to carry #SameGodFilm! And don't forget to use the hashtag #embodiedsolidarity. 

This month on Freedom Road Podcast join host, Lisa Sharon Harper, and special guest State Representative Ruth Anna Buffalo--the first Native American woman Democrat elected to North Dakota's State Assembly. In honor of Native American History Month, the two recount stories from their recent pilgrimage through the stories of Buffalo's people, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation on the Fort Berthold Reservation. They consider the stories the land tells about historic and current violence and resilience in Native America.

2019 marked the 400th year since Africans first stepped foot on North American shores. Antony and Isabela (their given slave names) were brought from Angola aboard a Portuguese slave ship bound for Mexico. The White Lion, an English warship, pirated the Portuguese ship and stole its human cargo. The first “20 and odd” Africans brought to this land in chains stepped off the White Lion in the year of our Lord 1619.  Antony and Isabela were among them. They were traded for food by residents of Jamestown. Bought by Captain Tucker, they  eventually found each other and fell in love. They bore the very first African-American in 1624–William Tucker. 

This month join host, Lisa Sharon Harper, and her guests Vincent Tucker (Direct descent of Antony and Isabela) and Angelique Walker-Smith (Pan-African and Orthodox Church Engagement, Bread for the World). Learn about life for the first African Americans and consider the path toward America’s healing over the next 400 years. 

In this second episode of the Freedom Road Podcast two-part series on Immigration, Exploitation and Labor in the U.S. join host, Lisa Sharon Harper, and company as they travel from The Alamo to the Borderlands; shining light on America's labor system--a system perpetually dependent on the no-cost and low-cost labor of black and brown immigrant labor.

Over the next two episodes pilgrimage with us on Freedom Road Podcast as we stand on the land where whips cracked backs to bleed more work from black and brown bodies. Stand with us in a literal valley of dry bones—a mass grave filled with the bodies of men and boys swept up in the post-antebellum terror of peonage. Sit with us as we speak with a descendant of America’s Bracero program and faith leaders pushing back against the exploitation of asylum seekers in America’s detention system today.

Host, Lisa Sharon Harper, and Sandy Ovalle (Immigration Campaign Manager at Sojourners) are on pilgrimage from the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana to a mass grave in Sugar Land outside Houston, Texas to the Alamo in San Antonio to the borderlands of McAllen, Texas where they cross the border into Mexico.

This episode features guests: 

Ashley Rogers, Executive Director of Whitney Plantation

Dr. Ibrahima Seck, Director of Research of Whitney Plantation

Reginald Moore, Founder of the Sugar Land Convict Leasing and Labor ProjectLiz Peterson, Board Member of the Sugar Land Convict Leasing and Labor Project

Suzzette Montgomery, Communications Director of the Sugar Land Convict Leasing and Labor Project

Click here to find out how you can join us on a Freedom Road Pilgrimage.(Hyperlink to: https://freedomroad.us/what-we-do/freedom-road-pilgrimages/ )

Join us next month for the second half of our pilgrimage into the fruits of American exploitation of immigrant labor.