AU's Brian Silva is the visionary behind the Summit for Religious Freedom. On the series finale, he shares a message: Organize, lobby, and build coalitions! He talks to Brad about why the separation of church and state is a matter of protecting all Americans and ensuring fair treatment for everyone. He then outlines a vision for the Summit for Religious Freedom as a radically inclusive coalition of organizations and communities working together to ensure that we have one nation where all beliefs and identities are protected.

Go to thesrf.org to find out more!

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Gay son of immigrants. Student body president. Organizer for change: Ranen Miao (he/him) is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis studying political science, sociology, and women, gender, and sexuality studies. He is passionate about civic engagement and supporting equity-centered policy change through advocacy and research. On his campus, he served two terms as student body president and president of the debate team.

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Brad is joined by the team of the Unreasonable, a podcast based in Pennsylvania, but with a national scope. Its hosts:

David Brown - Chair and co-founder of Pennsylvania Secular Democrats, he is a leading voice in the statewide movement for the separation of church and state- and Christian Iacono

Christinia Iacono - Chairwoman of the Chadds Ford Democrats, and serves as Secretary on the Board of Citizens for Better Elections, a nonprofit organization working to promote election security and efficiency

Discuss what it means to organize in a swing state, draw together diverse coalitions to overcome the odds, and to simply keep showing up in order to fight for democracy.

Bonus: All three of them talk about the deep Christian nationalist strongholds in the state and what to do about it.

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Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray is the ninth president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. She was elected in June 2017 to a six-year term after serving congregations in Arizona, Ohio, and Tennessee. After leading the Unitarian Universalist response to Arizona’s anti-immigrant laws in 2010, she became lead organizer for the Arizona Immigration Ministry, among her other activism.

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Dave Warnock was caught up in the Jesus movement of the 70s and lived the bulk of his life as a Charismatic Evangelical, serving as a pastor on three different church staffs. 

Following several years of internal struggle, Dave came to the conclusion in 2011 that he no longer believed in a personal God. In 2019 he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), a progressive neurodegenerative disease with an average 3-5 year life expectancy. In early 2023, Dave, along with Bevin Jett and Sheila Hoover, founded I Am Dying Out Loud, a nonprofit organization with the mission to enhance the quality of life by advocating against the unwanted intrusion of religion in the areas of healthcare, dying, and death, and by providing “bucket list” moments for those diagnosed with ALS. 

https://iamdyingoutloud.org/

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Dr. Shortle is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she studies group identity in the context of American political behavior. She also serves as a faculty member for Latinx Studies and Women and Gender Studies. She runs OU’s Community Engagement + Experiments Laboratory (CEEL), Oklahoma City’s Community Poll (Exit Poll), and OU’s Democracy Survey of OU freshmen. For fun, she lends research support to organizations seeking to increase civic engagement and improve physical and mental health of their communities.

Dr. Shortle’s new co-authored Cambridge University Press book, The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics (2022 – w. Eric L. McDaniel and Irfan Nooruddin), examines the relationship between American religious exceptionalism and prejudicial and antidemocratic attitudes. She is currently extending this line of research to examine the many faces of ethnocultural nationalism (EN) – defining American identity according to ascriptive traits such as race, religion, and gender (w. Ana Bracic and Mackenzie Israel-Trummel).

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Alex is a white, queer, transgender man, an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Rev. McNeill served as the executive director of More Light Presbyterians for over eight years. There, he empowered faith leaders to welcome LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC neighbors into worship communities and to advocate for justice in their broader secular communities. Alex has worked to elect LGBTQIA+ leaders, advocated for reproductive justice, and won state, national, and denominational legislation affirming and protecting the rights and dignities of queer and trans people. Before earning a Master’s of Divinity from Harvard University, Alex got his start in LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights activism as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

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Brad speaks to Rabbi Robert Barr about what the separation of church and state means for him and his community. They discuss the rise of anti-Semitism, what it means to organize in the face of persecution, and the importance of solidarity.

Robert B. Barr is the Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Adam and OurJewishCommunity (our online initiative). Known for his irreverent and often witty presentation style, Barr is a popular speaker on a wide range of topics including contemporary Jewish thought, religious fundamentalism, and ethics. Barr currently serves on the Faith Advisory Council for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.  As well as on the Policy Advisory Committee for Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

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Brad speaks with Paul Southwick and Erin Green from the Religious Exemption Accountability Project. They explain REAP's mission: to help queer students on religious campuses and to get tax dollars out of institutions that discriminate against LGBT people. Through civil rights litigation, storytelling, oral history, research and public policy, REAP works toward a world where LGBTQ students on all campuses are treated equally, with safety and respect.

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Brad speaks with Indu Kumar, a student fellow with Americans United who is organizing on the ground in Tennessee. She discusses the ways that students, Black churches, and other minoritized groups are building coalitions to fight gun violence and create sustainable movements. Indu explains how separation of church and state is a key issue for young people who care about reproductive rights and LGBT inclusion. She also shares her unique perspective on the positive and negative roles religion can play in the public square.

https://www.au.org/

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