A political ideology is rising that distorts the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy — and poses dangers to both. This episode features an live event sponsored by Georgetown’s Center on Faith and Justice with: The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church; Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee; Dr. Samuel Perry, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Oklahoma. 

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This episode is a recording of a TED-style talk Rev. Jim Wallis delivered this fall in Atlanta, Georgia. In it, Wallis talks about growing up in segregated Detroit as a young person -- and how crossing the color line educated him about the troubles and trials of Black life in America. 

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On this very special episode of The Soul Of the Nation, we revisit our conversation with best-selling author Heather McGhee which was recorded in July of 2020 during the aftermath of the George Floyd murder and the beginning of the onslaught of COVID-19.

How did white people justify racism for so long in this country? Heather McGhee, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the legacy of racism in the United States and the lies that allow America’s original sin to be perpetuated to this day.

“The whitewashing and posthumous glorification of our society's agitators allows for contemporary people to pretend that they back in that time would have had a clear moral stance,” says McGhee. “And that, I think, is a temptation that allows people in the contemporary moment to justify their own ambiguity or hostility towards the agitators of today. So often in conversations with white people about Jim Crow and about slavery, they act as if, of course they would have been one of the good guys back then.... What is lost is how much the justifications for the status quo always evolve and change.”

“There were reasons that good, upstanding, moral white people gave themselves and their children for why segregation made sense,” continues McGhee. “It was about crime. It was about poverty. It was about God's will. It was about the natural order of things. And when you focus on what the possible justifications could have been, as opposed to just saying, ‘old people in the past were evil,’ then you might start to recognize some of those same justifications for the status quo today.”

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In this very special episode of Soul of the Nation, we revisit our conversation with Robert P. Jones, from July 2020.

Robert P. Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute and the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about how white American Christianity and white supremacy collaborate throughout our nation's history. 

Jones says, "[Racism is] very, very deep in [white Christian] theology and it's going to take more than a couple of potlucks with the African American church down the street. It's going to take a serious reconsideration of evangelical theology top to bottom. I liken it to something like a bone marrow transplant. It's so deep that you basically have to kill the immune system and bring someone close to death in order to finally bring them to health. I think that's the situation we're in after hundreds of years of this being built into the very DNA of white Christian identity in this country."

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E.J. Dionne, Jr. a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, and Georgetown University professor explains how universal voting could help alleviate some of the deeper problems plaguing our democracy, including voter suppression, rampant polarization and political apathy. 

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This week on the Soul of the Nation, Jim Wallis speaks to Mark Magana, founder and CEO of GreenLatinos, a network of Latino environmental advocates, about why more than 80% of US. Latino voters say the global climate crisis is their greatest–or one of their greatest–concerns. Jim and Mark also spoke about how unprecedented barriers are being erected to disenfranchise Latino voters in several key states across the country and why some Latinos broke for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. 

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Anne Nelson is author of the book “Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Religious Right,” which examines the history of a secretive group called the Council for National Policy. The council, a mix of money men, religious fundamentalists, political operatives and media moguls, includes Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. As Nelson explains, its goals are curtailing civil and political rights for women and minorities, giving tax cuts to the rich, and white Christian domination of our politics. 

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Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University, reveals why white evangelicals have become Donald Trump staunchest supporters, even after his lies about the election, his multiple affairs and his decidedly un-Christian behavior before, during and after his presidency. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Donald Trump in fact represents the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values. In her memorable phrase: White evangelicals say they love Jesus, but they follow the example of John Wayne. 

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During her time at Fox News, Kirsten Powers once ground her teeth so hard that she cracked a molar. That was the Road-to-Damascus moment for the author and columnist when she decided that -- even when dealing with political adversaries– we must approach them with grace.

“I am talking about this very transformative kind of grace, which is really for the people we don’t like and may even hate. Grace helps you see the humanity in them because you are separating them out from your rage and your anger about what they are doing,” says Powers.

So how do we hold people in power accountable and call out political misdeeds without losing our sense of grace? Powers has some ideas.

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Dr. Eddie Glaude, chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, reveals how religion contributes to racial bigotry in America.

“What are we fighting about? It's these basic ideas that all men and women are equal. White supremacy has overdetermined, distorted, disfigured democracy in this country,” says Glaude. “The situation that's at the heart of the rot of the polity isn't resolved.”

Glaude and Rev. Jim Wallis discuss the need to shatter our illusions about the myth of equality and the role religion can play both in the redemption of American democracy.

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