In 2024, white Christian nationalism continues to threaten our democracy and our freedoms—including our freedoms to vote, to practice our diverse religions, to live in safety, to protect and care for our families, and to live in a welcoming country.
There is no one more critical for the struggle against white Christian nationalism than Christians committed to democracy, justice, and human dignity—Christians such as Reverend Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, founding director of the Georgetown Center for Faith and Justice, and author of a new book: The False White Gospel (St. Martin’s).
Join us this week on the Just Politics podcast as Wallis takes us through how white Christian nationalism is entirely un-Christian—and how the notion of neighbor, as Jesus taught in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is not limited to a certain race, religion, or country of origin (neither white, nor Christian, nor nationalist!) Rather, the question of “Who is my neighbor?” is best answered by looking at who among us is most marginalized, other-ed, and in need.
Luckily, everyone in this country—not only people of faith—has the power to spark conversations in their communities about our core values and how they can be distorted and weaponized by powerful interests who try (and fail) to use religion to divide us.
As you listen, please be aware that NETWORK Advocates is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to advancing the principles of Catholic social justice and does not endorse or oppose any candidate or party in the upcoming election.
Additional Resources:
- More on Jim Wallis
- NETWORK’s White Supremacy and American Christianity series
- Sojourners, A Call to Civic Discipleship
- The False White Gospel
Below is a transcript of this episode of Just Politics:
Eilis McCulloh: Welcome back to season four of Just Politics, a podcast collaboration between NETWORK and U.S Catholic, where we discuss the intersection of faith and politics. I’m Sr. Eilis McCulloh.
Colin Martinez Longmore: I’m Colin Martinez Longmore.
Joan Neal: And I’m Joan Neal. This season of Just Politics will highlight the freedoms we hold dear in this country, freedoms NETWORK articulates in our Equally Sacred Checklist, our main election education resource.
Eilis: When Christian nationalism was on the rise in Europe almost a century ago, FDR famously said that while this movement presented itself as a “new order,” what was actually happening “is not new, and it is not order.”
Joan: That’s right, Eilis, and it is not over yet. Christian nationalism poses a threat to everyone and all it produces is oppression and violent destruction. It’s a jarring reminder of the hate that persists in the extreme corners of our politics and our country. And its goal is to dismantle the freedoms we enjoy from living in a democracy.
Colin: Last week we heard from Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman about the basic income proposal she has introduced – multiple times– in Congress. Her vision of a future where all people are free to care for themselves and their families could not be farther from the grim vision that’s put forward by white Christian nationalists.
Eilis: To get a better sense of the threat posed by white Christian nationalism, Joan sat down with Rev. Jim Wallis, who is the founder of the Sojourners social justice organization and the inaugural holder of the Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University.
Joan: Yes, and what a conversation it was! Jim really needs no introduction – but just in case anyone is wondering – Rev. Jim Wallis is a leading Evangelical thinker, and the author of numerous books, including his most recent, “The False White Gospel,” in which he details the threat of Christian nationalism, both to our democracy, and to the Christian faith as a whole.
Colin: Let’s listen in!
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Joan: On this season’s podcast, we are continuing our conversation and discussion of democracy and the current threats to our freedoms that are front and center to all of our lives as we move closer to this election.
As we know, one of the biggest threats is white Christian nationalism. So today it is our distinct pleasure to welcome Reverend Jim Wallis, a long-time laborer in the vineyard at the nexus of politics and faith. Welcome to Just Politics, Jim.
Jim Wallis: Joan, it’s always a pleasure to be with you and all your colleagues there at NETWORK.
Joan: We are so grateful that you could spend some time with us today. But before we begin, why don’t you tell us just a few things about yourself?
Jim: Well, I’ll tell you one thing is when I started Sojourners with some others many, many years ago, I would go out to speak at often conservative evangelical Christian colleges. And there’d often be a whole row or two of sisters in the front row of the chapel, or the auditorium. And I would say, “sisters, why are you here?” And they would say, “well, we’re local, Jim.” And I said, “great, but why are you here?” “Jim, this is a very conservative place and we thought somebody should have your back.” So I’ve had sisters as bodyguards for years.
Joan: Oh, that’s a wonderful story!
Jim: Yeah, I with others founded Sojourners, was there for 50 years, and then made the transition. I wanted a new generation of leaders at Sojourners, and Adam Taylor and others are doing that. And then Georgetown invited me to become a chair, and they wonderfully named my chair after one of my great mentors and tutors and friends. I’m the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair of Faith and Justice at Georgetown and the director of a new Center on Faith and Justice here at Georgetown. So when a place like Georgetown takes your two favorite words, faith and justice, and makes a chair and center out of them, you’re a happy camper.
Joan: Absolutely. Well, we’re so happy that you’re able to be with us this afternoon. And let’s just dive into this conversation. So, you recently published a book, The False White Gospel, another New York Times bestseller, and that is your 13th book. Why did you write this book now and who are you trying to reach?
Jim: Yeah, great question. This book for me came just of watching the news and listening to so many people and sensing this deep crisis that we were in, which I think is a test of democracy, as you’re suggesting. But also a test of faith, and also a test for a new generation about whether they’re going to engage with us or be involved with us, depending on how we stand or don’t stand on this crisis.
So it formed in me a desire to write almost more of a manifesto than just a book. And for me, it’s about time. In the Bible, there’s two kinds of time, Kronos time, tick tock, tick tock, normal time. And then there’s Kairos time, time that changes time, times that change events, even for generations. And I think we’re not in a Kronos normal time, a normal election time. This is for me, a Kairos time. And there will be a faith factor in this election. It could be decisive. And the False White Gospel and many things I’m doing with allies like Mary Novak and you and NETWORK and lots of others, is how do we act and speak in ways that really make the faith factor clear? What is the faith factor in this election, and how do we talk about that?
Joan: So, it seems that you agree with President Biden then that we are in a battle for the soul of America and that that battle is not just a political or a civic battle, but a moral struggle. Why is this your starting point? Rather than describing this as just a normal election, a normal set of politics or classism or church rivalry…?
Jim: That’s the right question, to be sure. Every nation has its better angels and every nation has its worst demons. And the demons of race in America run so deep and go to our initial beginnings and foundings. And it’s not that racial grievance is being appealed to, which it clearly is. A master of grievance is appealing to our racial grievances in this nation. Rather, it’s an appeal to our worst demons. That’s why the soul of America is so important here. What kind of nation, what kind of people are we going to be? Are we going to be a multiracial, multicultural nation in democracy? Or will we hang on to the dominionist theology that started this a long time ago?
This isn’t new. What’s happening isn’t new. It’s old, but it’s bringing all the old fears back. The political trajectory is fear, which leads to hate, which leads to violence. And that’s where we are. So, we really are confronting our worst demons as a nation. And how do our better angels prevail over our worst demons?
Joan: And of course, that’s where the faith factor is really very important. Can you talk a little bit about this phenomenon of Christian nationalism? And you say in the book that it’s not just a challenge or a threat to our democracy, but it’s also a threat to our Christian church.
Jim: Yes. It’s bad religion, it’s false faith, it’s really idolatry, to use a language that the listeners to this podcast know. The name spells the problem. First of all, the most inclusive, welcoming, inviting vision on the planet is made “white.” Second, “Christian,” but they don’t mean service or love or sacrifice, they mean control, domination. That’s why I mean dominionist theology. Third, “nationalist,” I mean, the followers of Jesus were told by Jesus, go in to all the world, making disciples in every nation, teaching them whatever I’ve taught you, tell them what I’ve taught you. “Nationalist”? So this is a narrowing, this is making an idol of a nation and making the idol of a race. I mean, white supremacy is embedded in Christian nationalism.
And so the book, even the subtitle says, “rejecting Christian nationalism, reclaiming true faith and refounding democracy.” So how do we go deeper than politics, as you’ve already said, to our core values?
You all know this so well. Every new order in the Catholic Church, every revival movement in my tradition, always has gone back to Jesus, always. What does it mean to go back to that Jesus, really to the early church of the first three centuries who were followers of Jesus? And so I take six iconic biblical texts in this book, and I’m trying to reframe and refresh them even for myself. Joan, these texts are known to you and I very well, but I went back in with more commentaries, more prayer, more, ‘what do they mean right now?’ So I’m trying to take these texts and get our way back by letting Jesus do the talking.
Joan: Well, I’m so glad you mentioned that because that was really my next question was about the six texts. You take us all the way from Genesis to Galatians. I mean, basically, all the way through scripture. And you just talked a little bit about why you organized the book in that way. But at the end of the book, what is the message that these texts are designed to bring? What are you trying to say through these texts to us?
Jim: Well, most of the book is about the text. There is an analysis of Christian nationalism, why it’s false religion, bad religion, and I quote all the best scholars on this. Lots of books have been written, really good books, about this dangerous growing threat of Christian nationalism. But the text really are the heart of the book.
So you mentioned Genesis. First book, first chapter, first book in the Bible. And I love the way it starts. We can imagine all the noise around us in the news of today, for example, and tomorrow—the political noise all around us. And part of my job, part of NETWORK’s job, is to listen to that noise and find perspective. But sometimes it’s almost overwhelming. I know your listeners must feel that way sometimes. So imagine all the noise in our heads all around us, and then the text. Genesis 1:26. Then God said, ‘be quiet noise, shut up noise!’ Then God said, and what did God say? God said, ‘let us create humankind in our own image and after our own likeness.’ This is the divine foundation for all our earthly talk about human rights, civil rights, voting rights.
And I apply that text to the voting rights crisis we’re facing. And I end up saying, if imago Dei– Latin for image of God–if that’s true, which is the way the Bible starts, everything is about human dignity, human worth, all humankind is made in the image of God. [If that’s true,] then any attempt to deny someone their voice, their vote, their ability to participate in the society, is literally an assault on imago Dei. It’s an attack on imago Dei.
So voter protection, which I’m involved in with so many of you, is not just a political issue. We are the imago Dei movement. That’s who we are. We’re the imago Dei movement. So I apply imago Dei to what we’re facing right now with voter suppression, voter intimidation, voter disinformation, designed to confuse and keep cynicism, keep people away from the polls.
And that Galatians text, I’ll mention those two, as you mentioned both of them. This is the wonderful text where we all know so well, there is no longer Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female — all are one in Christ Jesus. We quote that text, we love the text, because here are the fundamental pillars of oppression and division: race, class, and gender, all three right here in this text. And what I learned, Joan, was this text, Galatians 3:28, was a baptismal text in the early church. They read this in every baptism. Baptism’s going public with faith, right? And so they read this text as if to say, well, we are the followers of this brown-skin Palestinian rabbi named Jesus. And he told us that part of our mission, our job, is to overcome these divisions, overcome these pillars of oppression. We don’t do it perfectly, but it’s not extracurricular for us. It’s core to our mission.
Imagine if American Christians, particularly in white churches, read that text at every baptism. We’d be saying, in effect, here’s what we do: we overcome divisions and barriers. If you don’t want to do that, you should go somewhere else because you don’t belong in our group.
Now, interestingly enough, I found out and talked about in the book, that that text, Galatians 3:28, was removed from all the white slaveholder Bibles. At Fisk University, where they have all these Bibles still, no Galatians 3:28. It was talked about as the abolitionist text. It was foundational to those movements. And so these texts, applied to where we are right now, have tremendous power.
Joan: They do, yes. And unfortunately, many of us are not that familiar with the Bible, not that familiar with Scripture. And so some of us may have heard this Scripture text in liturgy or worship service, but not really thought about it in those terms, Jim. It is really applicable to today.
Jim: I’m trying to delve deeper into those texts that we’ve heard or we’ve heard preached and maybe they sound familiar, but let’s go to see what they say. Like for example, one text most Americans would know about the Good Samaritan Parable. That’s well known even outside religious traditions.
But let’s look at what happened there in that story in Luke, one of the most important texts for me in this whole book. This lawyer comes to see Jesus, to ask him questions. What I didn’t realize before, until now, he was a Washington lawyer. Because I know that tone of voice! ‘Okay, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And well, I think you know, Jesus says, ‘you love the Lord your God, with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength, and you love your neighbor as yourself.’ [The lawyer] concedes that’s what the text says. ‘Well, okay, who is my neighbor?’
Now, “Who is my neighbor?” is probably the most important question for democracy today, especially if we’re looking toward becoming, as we’re becoming, a multiracial nation and democracy. And who is my neighbor? He’s not saying in a welcoming voice, ‘who is my neighbor? How can I welcome?’ He says, ‘okay, exactly who am I obligated to?’ You can tell this is a lawyer who sounds like a lawyer. I’m not against lawyers, my son’s going to law school in the fall, but still I can tell that tone of voice!
So, Jesus gives him an example of what a neighbor is, and he picks a Samaritan. Now let’s be clear: to his Judean audience to which he’s speaking, there were no good Samaritans, right? The Samaritans were mixed race. They were half-breeds. They were dangerous. Stay away from them! They’ll get you in trouble. They were othered, just like immigrants and migrants are being othered right now. All the political talk is the “other” who you should be afraid of, and we’ll protect you from the others. That’s who the Samaritans were.
So, imagine. I looked at all the Jewish scholarship, the man laying by the side of the road is a Jew. He’s been beaten and robbed, he’s half dead, he’s a Jew. And two of his tradition’s leaders walk right past him. Too busy, don’t care, whatever the reasons they walk past him. And here’s a Samaritan for whom the Jew on the side of the road is an “other.” And the Samaritan other is an other to the person on the road and is being othered by them. And so he stops to help the man, takes his time, risks his own security, takes his money, takes him to be cared for, and pays for it all.
That’s a powerful transformational notion of how we must reach out to those who are othered, because they’re our neighbors. They’re our neighbors. So, the title of that chapter is “your neighbor probably doesn’t live in your neighborhood.” How do we reach out to those who are being othered and say, ‘no, no, these are my neighbors!’?
And as we said yesterday on a call you and I were on, Jesus also says, love your neighbor and love your enemy. He says both. That’s totally different from the politics we’re living in right now. So the Good Samaritan parable could, I think, help lead us, guide us to a multiracial democracy.
Joan: I think that’s right. But maybe we only can get that message through faith leaders like yourself and those of us who are in pastoral ministry and those who are willing to use that text and to apply it to today. And I’m wondering, you know, how can we as the church, as the Christian church, really get that message out there, bringing us back to the gospel message?
You talked about this point in our history as perhaps being a Bonhoeffer moment, referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was founding what we call the Confessing Church during the Third Reich. But my question is, how can something like that happen today when we see increasing numbers of young people, young priests, young pastors, and young lay ministers reaching back to the “good old days” of strict theological and ecclesial doctrine and practices. How can a resistance movement of Christians gain traction today to defeat the threat of Christian nationalism?
Jim: Well, I think it’s a matter of stepping up, standing up, and speaking out. I mean, all the listeners to this podcast are not religious women, or sisters. I mean, many of them are, and they’re allies. And all those people out there that you reach, I want to say to them, you all could make a great difference right now. Because this has to happen, not just at a national level. It has to happen at a state level, at a local level, particularly in these battleground states, where how people decide to love their neighbors or not will determine the outcome of this election.
What is the politics of love here? And what does that look like? And all of us, all of us are influencers. I don’t want people to think, “I’m not a national faith leader.” We’re all influencers in places where we have authority, where people listen to us.
So, Jim Simpson, my colleague here whom you know at the Center for Faith and Justice at Georgetown, his father is a Presbyterian minister in rural Georgia. So he and his dad and mom come down to rural Georgia. And she is in the choir, wife of the pastor, and one morning they were practicing before the service. And then at the end of the practice, the choir director does a prayer for the service, very traditional pattern. And so the choir director, who’s not a right-wing person or a militant, but she’s scared, you can tell she’s scared. “Lord, protect us from those caravans of immigrants who are coming with disease and guns and rapists and criminals and protect us from those trying to kill us.”
And the pastor’s wife says, “no, no, no, stop, that’s not true, and we don’t lie in church.” Stop, full conversation. But she’s a person in authority. And she says, “I understand your fears, we can discuss that. People are saying those things, but that’s not true. So let’s talk about what’s true.” And Jesus says, you’ll know the truth–one of the texts in the book–and the truth will make you free.
And what I went deeper with that, is that the opposite of truth isn’t just lies, it’s captivity. Captivity. Truth and freedom are indivisible. So I lay out in that truth chapter how our job is to find the truth, speak the truth, know the truth, and stand up for it where it’s being distorted. And it’s being distorted now in more and more sophisticated ways.
We face that in this election. I saw a gathering with four secretaries of state, Republican and Democrat, and they’re all worried about disinformation and intimidation and making people afraid to vote, even violence against poll workers. So we have to speak the truth and try. Because it’s not only about saying ‘you’re wrong, I’m right, you’re wrong.’ We want to free our people from their captivity.
Joan: Yeah, I think that’s right, Jim. And you talk about in the book being a deeply formed evangelical pastor. You talk about one way to move forward on being truth tellers and helping not just Christians, but people of faith, and even people with no faith, but helping us out of this situation of being captivated by lies and moving into the light of the truth. And you talk about the fact that you think we need a remnant church and an altar call.
Now, you know Catholics don’t do altar calls, especially white Catholics. So, since the majority of our audiences are Catholic, can you just translate that for us? What does that look like for us as a Christian church?
Jim: Great question. First of all, I am from the evangelical tradition, but I define evangelical the way Jesus did at his opening statement, his first gig, where he quoted Isaiah and said, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he’s anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” The word there for good news is evangel, in the Greek, from which we get evangelism and evangelicalism. And I wish that evangelicals today in this country, particularly white evangelicals, were known as those who bring good news to the poor. But that’s not the first thing you come up with when you think about white evangelicals. But while I’m from that tradition, I’ll say here the first time that I met Dorothy Day, she said to me, ‘so you’re a Catholic, right?’ And she was kind of coming out as I was coming into all this. She said, ‘well, you’re not a Catholic?!’ I said, ‘well, some of my best friends are Catholic!’
So the Catholic tradition has formed me tremendously. And Catholic social teaching; I’m at Georgetown. And for me, the Black Church has formed me most of all, which it did Bonhoeffer as well, when he was in this country going to Abyssinian Baptist on Sundays. Here’s this white German kid going to a Black Church, and that helped shape his confessing church. And our version of that is something like a remnant church. It’s really a confessing church. I’m talking to lots of young people all the time–that’s what I love about this, going around the country and the places I teach. And I think a new generation of believers, especially younger ones, even some younger white believers, are really hungry for something new and different. And they want to join with Black and Brown church leaders and form literally a new American church. That’s what I mean by a remnant church.
So this book is not just about what we’re against, and what we think is dangerous. It is that, but also it’s saying what we could do to literally create a whole new notion of what it means to be an American church led by the wonderful diversity of leadership going forward.
And so this is a book about what we’re for, should be for, and not just what we’re against. It gives language for people to figure out how to maybe say this in ways that can reach people who are right now captive or confused or frustrated or angry.
I often say that a movement, and this is controversial I suppose, but a movement has to decide or figure out who they can persuade, and who they have to defeat. I mean non-violently, I mean at the ballot box. But if I didn’t think there were persuadable people out there, I wouldn’t have written this book, done all this work with these passages. I think there are. I think we can reach them by going back to the texts – like my friend Michael Curry, a presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who came into that church with a commitment about racism and evangelism.
But then there are some power brokers who are using religion. Garry Wills said it well in the back of the book. He’s a wonderful scholar. “Using religion to bless hate is the supreme blasphemy.” How do we defeat people who are using religion?
I heard a story just the other day. The head of a denomination, I won’t mention which one or her name, but the head of a whole denomination has her pastors coming in saying, ‘I’ve got parishioners who say, when you preached on that text Sunday, it was an implied criticism of a candidate.’ And he said, what text? The Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are an implied criticism, which is true, right?
But even preaching the Beatitudes can get you in trouble. Or these texts that I’m talking about that are my conversion texts, like Dorothy’s conversion texts, is Matthew 25. It was me, I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, stranger, sick, in a prison. As you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me. That’s such a radical text. And we should be preaching Matthew 25 from our pulpits this fall.
Because whatever happens in this election will impact the most vulnerable and most marginal, the most of all.
Joan: Exactly. And speaking of the election and voting, you know, we at NETWORK have recently published our Equally Sacred Checklist to encourage Catholics and all people of goodwill to be multi-issue voters. We structured this checklist around the freedom language, recognizing that, as Pope Francis has said, “we cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in the world.”
So how does your work ensure that all people have the freedom to participate in a vibrant democracy and live free from the harm, for instance, the harm of white Christian nationalism?
Jim: Well, this is a big question, but not just long-term, it’s very short-term. We’re talking about six months here. And I do think it is a Kairos time. And we’re gonna have a lot of work to do after the election, no matter what happens. But if this election is decided by distrust and grievance, we’re not going to see democracy like we’ve seen for a long time.
Now I want to be the first to say, agreeing with a lot of young people I know and talk to all the time, democracy is flawed. And many young people aren’t feeling that it really has been serving them. All that’s true. But to transform democracy, we have to save this framework and then we have to redouble our efforts and really focus on what it means to not go back to democracy as usual, you might say. But to talk about transforming democracy.
And I think faith communities can be central. So Barbara Williams Skinner and I, you know, and Adam Taylor, are working on Faiths United to Save Democracy in 10 key battleground states. The book tour I did, the initial one, 12 cities in two weeks. Now we’re going back to all these other places, back to those states, to more conflicted areas, to have this conversation. This book, I think, I hope to be a conversation starter. And it’s starting conversations all over the country, well beyond being a book tour. It’s really a conversation starter with local leaders in places like Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and North Carolina, and Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Arizona we’re going to in a couple weeks. So, I want the book to be a conversation starter.
And then I’m saying to people, don’t say, ‘finally we had a good conversation on faith and politics!’ No, take the conversation out to the streets, to our congregations in particular. Let’s have pastors preach on these texts. I’m working on a pastor on a lay people study guide. I think really need to understand what’s happening in the country and what it means in their local communities. Where do they have to stand up and speak up and make a difference in those conversations?
Joan: Yeah, it’s so important, and particularly at this time, which for many of us can feel and be scary. It can be frightening. It can be intimidating. All of those things. But as you have so well said, not just today, but in this wonderful book, we can’t stop there.
So, I want to ask you a question that we have been asking pretty much all of our guests on the podcast. And I want to just mention something you said in the book. You quote Heather McGhee in the book. And Heather said that she is feeling like we have the wind at our backs, that there is a fire ahead, but that it’s just the reaction to the dying gasps of force in politics that always has been there since the founding of our country. Do you share her optimism? And if so, what gives you hope for our future generations?
Jim: Well, she said it so well, that’s why I quote her so much in the book. The Sum of Us, I make all my students read that book. Probably the best book on race in a long time. Race and economics, it’s so, so good. I would say what she’s offering is more than optimism. In fact, this is where I’ll bring in my mentor, Desmond Tutu, who taught me the difference between optimism and hope.
Optimism is often a feeling or a mood or even a personality type. Hope, as Desmond Tutu taught, and many of us, is a choice you make, a decision you make, because of this thing we call hope. Hebrews says, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And my best paraphrase of that text is ‘hope means believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change.’
And I tell a story in the book at length, I’ll briefly tell it here. My first day in South Africa, years and years ago, we were invited in the country by churches there to make alliances between our churches and theirs. And I was to meet Desmond Tutu at his cathedral, because I had to be snuck in the country to get past South African security. So I walk up there and it’s surrounded by military, totally surrounded, hundreds, riot gear, guns. What’s going on? I was to meet him there, so I came in and I sat with my friends and he’s surrounded on the outside. And then they break down the doors of his cathedral and the South African security police line the walls with tape recorders and notepads in their hands, as if to say, ‘you just got out of jail. Be prophetic, be bold, we’ll take it down, we’ll put you back, go ahead!’ I felt that they were saying, ‘we own this place, we own this country, we own you, we own your God.’
Desmond Tutu stops talking and bows his head, apparently in prayer–little man, long flowing robes looking like Yoda. And finally he lifts his head and he smiles at both sides of the cathedral. “You, you are powerful, you’re very powerful, but you’re not gods, and I serve a God who will not be mocked.” Then he said, being surrounded inside and outside, “so since you have already lost, we invite you today to come and join the winning side!” The young people leapt out of their seats, started dancing on the streets and we followed them. The military didn’t know what to do with dancing worshipers who weren’t afraid. And so he knew back at St. George’s that we were on the winning side. 10 years later, I’m at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela and he’s the master of ceremonies. And I said “Bishop, do you remember that day?” He smiled. I said, “today they’re all on the winning side because everybody that day was always against apartheid, right?”
He taught me the trajectory of faith, which is faith, hope, that leads to action, that makes change. And we’re needed, not so much at the great party, the great celebration, as wonderful as that was. We’re needed back there in St. George’s, when you’re surrounded and you feel surrounded. You only see the victory through the eyes of faith. That’s what he taught me, seeing it through the eyes of faith.
So, I would say to your sisters and other listeners, we’re going to feel surrounded in these next few weeks and months by ugly things, scary things, brutal things, cruel things. We’re going to feel often surrounded. There may not be days where we’re optimistic. But if Desmond Tutu were here to answer your question about hope, I think he would say, ‘remember, we’re on the winning side!’
Joan: Another wonderful story! And Jim, your book is such a fantastic book. It really is a call to action at the end of the day as faithful Christians. And we could go on all day with this conversation, but unfortunately our time is coming to an end.
I want to just thank you on behalf of NETWORK and all of our supporters and our members, and all of those who are listening to this podcast or who will listen to the podcast for your voice and for your work, and to offer you our blessing as you move forward boldly into this work, especially during this period of time. So thank you so much for being with us.
Jim: Well, I just am so grateful, particularly for this podcast, because it has really been Catholic sisters and the Black churches that have helped surround me and carry my visions forward. And there’s something very powerful. I mean, Catholic sisters –not just the whole Catholic Church, but Catholic sisters and the Black churches– the leadership there, the vision of the gospel there, the solidarity there, the community there, as I have felt surrounded by my whole life.
So I’m so grateful to be with you. Always great to be with you, Joan, and with Mary Novak, and all our buddies. So I’m grateful to be on today. So bless you, I’ll bless all these listeners. Know that you can make a difference in these next six months.
Joan: Thank you, Jim.
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Colin: That was a great conversation! And I love how easily Jim translates the Gospel into a public witness, to show how Christian nationalism is twisted and bankrupt.
Joan: That’s right Colin, and we as a country have a lot of deep work to do. If we’re going to say that we embrace Christian values, well, that has an actual meaning! And we owe a lot to people who point the way to that better path – people like Jim, Pope Francis, Sister Anita Baird…
Eilis: …and the Sisters who founded NETWORK and have carried on our mission for 52 years!
Joan: Yes indeed!
Colin: Next week, we’ll hear from some exciting new people who are carrying on the tradition of Catholic Social Justice: representatives of NETWORK’s Young Advocates Leadership Lab, or Y.A.L.L., which is promoting advocacy on college campuses!
Eilis: We can’t wait to share the enthusiasm of our colleague, Chelsea Puckett, and Y.A.L.L.’s student leader, Baylee Fingerhut, with you on next week’s episode.
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