On this very special episode of The Soul of the Nation, Rev. Jim Wallis revisits his conversation with Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institute of Health, during this critical time of the Delta Variant of the coronavirus.

Rev. Wallis and Dr. Collins break down the current state of our country with COVID-19 and how the faith community can help with vaccine distribution and messaging. Dr. Francis Collins shares his journey of religion and science, and how he's found his harmony between the two.

"It's heartbreaking. Most people I don't think associate themselves with those extremes but they haven't necessarily found a lot of opportunities to discover the harmony. And one of my small goals here since I began writing about this was to try to put out there that this is an unnecessary conflict. In most polls to Americans [asking]do science and faith have anything in common? Can they get along? You'll encounter a lot of skepticism, which is hurting us as individuals, as families, as communities, and as a country."

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On this special edition of The Soul of the Nation, Rev Jim Wallis revisits his conversation with Heather McGhee

Author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, Heather McGhee speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis on the impacts racism has on our economy, changing the narrative, she says, goes hand in hand with comprehensive policy.

"There's this sense of stinginess, miserliness that nothing about our people are worth investing in unless they're already rich," McGhee says. "And that belief right and a hierarchy of human value is so racialized."

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On this very special episode of Soul of the Nation, Rev. Jim Wallis talks with ice cream entrepreneur and social justice advocate Ben Cohen (of Ben and Jerry's) about ending the systemic violence committed by police across the United States against communities of color.  

 Cohen advocates for the end of qualified immunity for police and the demilitarization of police forces across the country.

 “We, the taxpayers, are paying these police departments to hire consultants that come in--former military--that do these seminars with police called ‘warrior training,’” says Cohen. “And in that training, the police are encouraged to see the people they're policing as the enemy, and they're encouraged to be able to kill.”

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uthor of Without Oars: Casting Off into a Life of Pilgrimage, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson shares his reflections on recent violence in Israel and Palestine with Rev. Jim Wallis. Granberg-Michaelson offers insight to help open the eyes for people of faith.

"Do we see the people that are involved at the most grassroots level.? Do we get beyond all the politics and actually see the people?" Granberg-Michaelson further explains, "For Americans, and for U.S. Christians, we have to be honest and say, in this conflict it is the Palestine people who so often we have not seen.”

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Vice President of AACC and author, Michelle Reyes speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about her new book, Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead To Lasting Connections Across Cultures. Reyes discusses the Christian community and the uprise of targeted hate crimes against the AAPI community in America.

"The Asian community has been targets of systemic racism, from exclusion of immigration of the United States, to lynching, to killing, to stealing our wealth, to being sexualized and fetishized, and so much more." Reyes further explains, not just the 3,800 hate incidents that were reported, but all the other incidents that for which [the] Asian community have never been given permission, where we felt safe to articulate our pain."

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Author, Chuck Collins speaks to Rev. Jim Wallis about his latest book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions. Collins sheds light on the architecture of wealth inequality and the spiritual consequences of hoarding wealth.

"Privilege is a disconnection drug, it keeps you apart from people. Wealth and privilege can create a boundary or a wall around your life and the antidote is connection."

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Hyepin Im, the founder and president of Faith and Community Empowerment, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis her experience as a Korean American woman of faith in the U.S. Hyepin speaks about the long history of hate Asian Americans have endured, and how the pandemic has so gravely effected the Asian American community.

"When they talk about America, there's no picture of us, on TV, on stage, in the media; it leads to us always feeling like we don't have a say. We don't belong. And that has tremendous trauma," Hyepin says.  "For so long we've been told constantly that we are a foreigner, we don't belong. And so by not belonging then people can do things to us because we don't belong."

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Award-winning author and preacher, Diana Butler Bass speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about her latest book Freeing Jesus. Diana shares how her experience of Jesus has changed over the years and how the Christian that is she is today is much different than she was before.

And according to Bass, many people are eager to experience Jesus in a new way. “I often hear people who tell me ‘Oh, I’m no longer a Christian.’ ‘I just can’t be a Christian anymore,’ ‘I just can’t do church any longer, it’s just so hypocritical,’” says Bass. “But they almost always say, as a follow up to that, but I still love Jesus and I still want to follow Jesus.”

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Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, senior pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and author of Witness to Grace: A Testimony of Favor, speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about how to reject injustice and racial inequity.

The greatest legacy of the African American struggle in these 400 years, is the determination of African American people to seek full inclusion in a society that has not been deterred, Richardson says, "not by the strange fruit on the trees, not by dogs biting, not by hose pouring in, not by even the rhetoric of a president of the United States in modern times."

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Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is a forceful, progressive voice in the United States Congress. Focusing on matters of social and economic justice, international relations, and human rights, Lee speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis on how she finds the strength to speak out even when standing alone.

"This is not about personal responsibilities for the enslavement of Africans, this is about our system of government," Lee says. "The United States of America had a legal system that enslaved Africans, which through the ages, through the generations manifested in so many ways that are so deadly. And we will never get to the healing phase of this democracy until we tell the truth."

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