The Jim Wallis Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Evangelicals' Dangerous Amnesia Mar 01, 2023

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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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How to Talk About Racism with Your Kids Feb 15, 2023

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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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What a New Survey Reveals About White Christian Nationalism Jan 11, 2023

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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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Four Orientations Toward White Christian Nationalism Dec 07, 2022

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This week on Soul of the Nation we continue our series on White Christian Nationalism by welcoming Andrew Whitehead, one of the foremost scholars of the movement in the United States. Andrew is the lead author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, and a sociologist at Indiana University–Purdue University in Indianapolis. Whitehead’s research on Christian nationalism has been featured across several national outlets including The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker and The Washington Post.

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The Historical Roots of White Christian Nationalism Nov 23, 2022

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Yale University sociologist and author Phillip Gorski explains how White Christian Nationalists wove together stories from the Bible to create a theological justification for white supremacy, how current economic and political conditions have created a perfect storm for White Christian Nationalism to thrive and why it is not just a fringe movement.

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How White Christian Nationalism Threatens Democracy Nov 09, 2022

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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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Crossing the Color Line Oct 26, 2022

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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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Why Racism Still Makes Sense to White Folks Sep 21, 2022

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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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White Too Long: How Racism Lives in the DNA of White Christianity in America Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

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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How Universal Voting Could Save American Democracy Sep 07, 2022

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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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