"Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation."
It may surprise you to learn that this statement was crafted in principal by a Baptis and has been signed by hundreds of other faith leaders. We hear all the time about the threat of Christian nationalism. But what about the Christians fighting to prevent another J6 and for the American principles of religious liberty and freedom from religion?
Amanda Tyler is executive director of BJC. She leads the organization as it upholds the historic Baptist principle of religious liberty, defending the free exercise of religion and protecting against its establishment by government.. Called a “powerful advocate” and “rising star in the sector” by The Nonprofit Times, she was named one of the nation’s top 50 nonprofit leaders in 2018. Tyler was named “Baptist of the Year” by EthicsDaily.com in 2019. She also co-hosts the Respecting Religion podcast series, and she serves on the board of the Center for Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation.
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Produced by Bradley Onishi
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Hello friends!
Before we jump in today, I wanted to say thank you to all of you for your support.
All of our patrons and people who reach out to us, we are immensely grateful and you definitely make this show go.
In the new year, we're looking forward to continuing the show and doing it three times a week, but we're basically in a place where we need to continue to raise revenue and raise money in order to do that.
For Dan and I, this is a passion project.
It's something that takes up a lot of time, especially for me.
I am the writer, the producer, the interviewer, the editor, and all of those things.
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What are the connections between purity culture and race?
Why does purity culture work so hard to disembody people, make them feel as if they're not living in their own skin?
And what do these things have to do with each other?
Well, we're incredibly excited to announce our next Straight White American Jesus seminar, Purity Culture, Race, and Disembodiment.
In this class, the instructor, Dr. Sarah Mosliner, who is a leading researcher on purity culture and the leader of the After Purity Project, will take participants through various histories and ideologies as they relate to the racist origins of purity culture, And how disembodiment is a tactic used by white evangelical leaders and others in order to achieve cultural, political, and religious dominance.
Sarah Mosliner is the author of Virgin Nation, a leading scholar on purity culture, and someone who's been studying this topic for over 15 years.
Our seminar is going to run in May, every Thursday, and you can find all the information at StraightWhiteAmericanJesus.com under the Seminars tab.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to a dangerous ideology threatening our democracy.
White Christian nationalism.
Most members of Congress don't even know what it means.
That's Representative Jared Huffman of the U.S.
Congress, who represents the northern coast of California, speaking on the very last day of March in Congress about the threat of white Christian nationalism to our democracy.
Representative Huffman brought to the floor a lot of data, reporting, and stories about how white Christian nationalism helped to fuel and integrate all of the themes and movements we saw at the January 6th insurrection.
You're probably not surprised to hear that the Freedom From Religion Foundation and our old friend Andrew Seidel were part of the team who put together the report that Representative Huffman read from and drew from in his remarks.
You might be surprised, however, to know that the Freedom From Religious Foundation had a key partner in putting together this report, and that was the Baptist Joint Committee.
We hear so often today about how white Christians are fueling the MAGA movement and helped to foment the riot that took place at our Capitol.
We hear much less often about the Christians who are working against Christian nationalism.
Amanda Tyler, who I had the privilege of interviewing for today's episode, leads the Baptist Joint Committee, which since 1936 has tried to uphold the principle of religious freedom and tried to instill the idea of religious freedom by protecting religious liberty for all and defending the separation of church and state.
Amanda Tyler was one of the key figures in putting together the statement A statement entitled Christians Against Christian Nationalism, which hopes to express the idea that Christian nationalism is an un-American movement, one that threatens to topple our democracy, and one that dangerously mixes religion and government.
Amanda talked about all of this and more in our conversation.
And so here it is now.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
And I'm joined today by an amazing guest who just wears a lot of hats and does a lot of really cool things.
And so I'll just say first, Amanda Tyler, thanks for joining me.
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
So, Amanda, you are the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, which is an organization, as we're going to talk about, that upholds the historic Baptist principle of religious liberty.
And we're going to talk a lot about religious liberty today, as well as Christian nationalism and some other things.
You're also You have an amazing CV and an amazing life history.
I wish we could just have coffee and talk about all this stuff for about three hours.
But you grew up in Texas, attended law school, became a lawyer, worked on the Hill and helped with congressional campaigns and worked on staff with a member of Congress.
Have your own podcast now, Respecting Religion, which is really important.
Serve on the board for the Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation.
Named one of the nation's top 50 nonprofit leaders by the nonprofit Times and so on and so on and so on.
So just an incredible amount of really cool work and amazing accolades.
So I wanted to talk today for a number of reasons, but one of them is there's a new report out from the Baptist Joint Committee, which you are the director of, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation about January 6th and Christian nationalism.
But that really leads us back to something you were doing even before January 6th happened and a couple years ago, which is an initiative called Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
And there's a statement that you put together or helped put together It's been signed by, I believe, over 25,000 people now, including some really prominent Christian leaders.
So let me just start here.
We hear all the time about Christian nationalism, at least on this show.
It's kind of what we talk about day in and day out.
And I think we hear about the Christian leaders who are invested in cultivating, developing, spreading Christian nationalism.
We probably don't hear enough about the Christian leaders who are helping to fight it.
So what led you as a Christian leader to feel the urgency to kind of put together a statement and an initiative on Christians against Christian nationalism?
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our SWADGE episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
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All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
