This week on Soul of the Nation, our host Jim Wallis is joined by two of the country’s preeminent Christian leaders to celebrate and discuss the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, Interim President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, and the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, join to reflect on King’s famed epistle and its lessons for our day. Sixty years after its publication, “Letter From Birmingham Jail” continues to challenge Christians – and all people of faith – to understand that, as King warned, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

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This week on Soul of the Nation features a public conversation with Rev Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. In this Q&A moderated by Rev. Ebony Grisom of Georgetown University, Douglas explores the role of Black women in the church, discusses the importance of maintaining hope against what seems at times as insurmountable odds and lays out a pathway towards moving beyond the white imaginary.

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Jim Wallis, the Founding Director of the Georgetown University Center on Faith, advocates spirituality and social change in America. Under Wallis’ leadership, Sojourners has had international acclaim as a group of Christians who work together to live a gospel life that integrates spiritual renewal and social justice.

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This week, Soul of the Nation welcomes Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton University whose research focuses on poverty in America. He is the author of four books, including “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” which won the Pulitzer Prize. Desmond’s new bestselling book is called “Poverty, By America.” In this episode, Desmond explains why the United States has more poverty than any other advanced democracy, calls the Republicans' plan to reduce federal spending by cutting poverty programs "sinful and shameful," and offers five ways we can all become "poverty abolitionists."

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This week on Soul of the Nation features a public conversation Jim Wallis had recently with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the role her Catholic faith plays in her public and personal life. The conversation was part of a new series called Higher Calling Jim just launched at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. During this conversation, Nancy Pelosi opens up about the Catholic values she learned growing up in Baltimore, how she deals with relentless political attacks and the Bible verse that inspired her to move, as she says, “from the kitchen to the Congress; from housewife to house speaker.”

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This week on Soul of the Nation, we continue our series on White Christian Nationalism by welcoming Jack Jenkins to the podcast. Jenkins is a national reporter for Religion News Service (RNS) covering U.S. Catholics and the intersection of religion and politics. Earlier this year, Jenkins ventured west to northern Idaho to explore the rise of White Christian Nationalists staking up a claim in the state and published a piece with RNS documenting his findings. In their conversation, Jenkins discusses his discoveries on how deeply entrenched the White Christian Nationalist movement has become in the local politics of northern Idaho, how he thinks these trends will affect other libertarian minded states, and how current residents are responding to the influx of this movement in their communities. 

You can read Jack's article from RNS here.

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This week on Soul of the Nation, we continue our series on White Christian Nationalism by welcoming Rachel Kleinfeld to the podcast. Kleinfeld is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. Her work on troubled democracies facing problems such as polarized populations, violence, corruption, and poor governance bridges the United States and international cases. In their conversation, Rachel discusses the rising threats facing modern democracy in America and what can be done to subvert these attempts to overthrow democracy as we know it.

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This week on Soul of the Nation, we continue our series on White Christian Nationalism by welcoming cultural sociologist Ruth Braunstein to the podcast. Braunstein is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where she is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of the Meanings of Democracy Lab, which studies the moral and cultural foundations of American democratic life. Braunstein reveals the types of people who are attracted to White Christian Nationalism, what the phrase "Judeo-Christian" really means, and offers insights on how to persuade people away from Christian nationalist views. 

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Jemar Tisby, a historian and author of "How to Fight Racism: Young Readers Edition," as well as several other books, joins the podcast to talk about his personal history with white evangelicalism, how he came to feel unwelcome in the tradition and how to talk to your kids about racism. 

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This week on Soul of the Nation, we continue our series on White Christian Nationalism by welcoming pollster Robert P. Jones to the program. Jones is the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, and the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. The Public Religion Research Institute takes the pulse of Americans each fall on a range of issues at the intersection of religion, culture and politics. This year, they covered attitudes about white Christian nationalism, systemic racism, abortion, gender and gender identity, QAnon, and critical issues for voting among others. 

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