How Do We Organize an Interfaith and Secular Coalition in 2024?
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Sometimes we have to pivot from analysis to organizing. From study to action. In order to do that, Brad speaks with the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, President of Interfaith Alliance. They discuss ways to organize and mobilize for the 2024 elections in order to build a coalition of non-religious and religious Americans who share a commitment to democracy, inclusiveness, and equality.
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If you listen to this show, you know that Christian nationalism is ascendant and you know that Christian nationalism is ascendant and Christian supremacy is in our water.
Thank you.
We're heading toward the 2024 elections, seeing Christian nationalism rise, not only to the Speaker's office, but in our PTA meetings, our school board elections, and in our culture all around us.
One of the things I get asked all the time is, what can we do about it?
It's fantastic to dissect and analyze the intellectual foundations of something like Christian nationalism.
It's important to know the history, and it is helpful to see the sociological and political dimensions of this whole phenomenon.
But sometimes you have to stop and say, what do we do now?
And so today I'm joined in a wonderful interview by the Reverend Paul Brandeis Rauschenbusch, who is President and CEO of Interfaith Alliance.
I've known Paul quite some time, as you'll hear us talk about in this interview, and I've appreciated his approach to interfaith work as long as I've known him.
One of the things that I really do appreciate about what he and Interfaith Alliance are doing right now is an election mobilization strategy that is recruiting folks from not only across religious traditions, but those who are of no religion.
In order to build coalitions for the 2024 election based around inclusive visions for the LGBTQ community, safety for trans people, voting rights and reproductive rights, and on down the line.
I appreciate this kind of work because it not only shows that religion can and it is, in some cases, a social force, but it also shows us a way forward where people of religious faith and those who have no religion can work together to build an inclusive democracy.
On that note, for subscribers, I want to play for you today, after my interview with Paul Rashinbush, something from the archives, and that is an interview I did way back in 2020, just days after the election, with the journalist Sarah Posner.
Sarah's a veteran journalist who's been covering the religious right for a long time.
If I'm honest, she is somebody who I look up to quite a lot.
Every time Sarah publishes something, I eat it up right away because her reporting is meticulous.
She's intrepid and she's somebody who is willing to walk into rooms with Steve Bannon or Victor Orban and ask hard questions.
She also is just a wonderful analyst of everything related to the religious right, Christian nationalism, and the far right.
And I think it's just fascinating to go back to the archive today and see what her and I talked about like a week or 10 days after the election.
I've been thinking a lot about the last four years and for me this was an opportunity to kind of take stock of where we were when it all went down and where we are now.
So if you're a subscriber stick around I have that that piece for you from the archives and I think it's actually really interesting and compelling listening at this moment.
Appreciate all of you, appreciate all of your support, appreciate all of your help, appreciate all of your questions.
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All right, y'all.
Here's my interview with Paul Rauschenbusch.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
As I just introduced, I have a wonderful guest, and that is the Reverend Paul Rauschenbusch.
So, Paul, thanks for joining me.
I'm thrilled to be with you.
Thank you so much.
So before we get going, I'm going to tell a story that I think you probably know and may or may not remember.
But 14 years ago, a friend of mine from graduate school said, hey, you're a huge fan of the show Lost.
The Huffington Post religion folks really would like someone to write about that.
Do you want to do it?
I'd never done anything like that.
I'd never written anything public.
And I said, sure.
So I watched the finale of Lost, which many of you remember was Rather disappointing to so many.
And I stayed up to 4 a.m.
writing down thoughts, and I sent in my op-ed very nervously to the HuffPost, and it all went pretty well.
You were the editor of the HuffPost religion desk at that point, and you invited me to write more after that, and that was really the beginning of, for me, writing things about religion for a public audience, and I'll never forget that.
So thank you very much for that invitation and for letting me write about a TV show that I really loved.
Listen, that is one of my great joys, is that I had this platform that we launched and, you know, we just wrote it.
And for five years, it was the biggest religion website in the country, and a bunch of people got their start there.
I mean, part of the whole idea was There's just, like, there's a monolith who are claiming religion and saying, oh, we speak for religion.
And the idea, you know, of HuffPost Religion was there's so many more voices that need to be heard.
And that is still true.
And I thank you for all you've done over the years.
I remember when you launched this podcast, I was like, well, that wins for the best title and the best game of the podcast.
There will be nothing better than that ever.
And it's proved to be true, and congratulations on that, but I appreciate you mentioning that story, and I'm very, you know, very pleased.
And I do remember, I do remember, but then I remember lots of other great pieces after that, and your public scholarship is so important.
I believe in public scholarship from people who can and really must share the wider view of what religion and spirituality and belief and the role it can play in our society.
Well, right on cue there, you are the President and CEO of the Interfaith Alliance, and you have a bunch of things happening at the Interfaith Alliance that I want to touch on, but one of them is an election mobilization strategy to fight Christian nationalism as we run up to the 2024 elections.
You're training in congregations.
You're working with folks across the political spectrum.
So I want to get into that.
First of all, though, tell us about the Interfaith Alliance and its mission and history so that people have an idea of the kinds of things you do, speaking of the kinds of religious communities and actors that often don't get the spotlight and are often not who we think about when we say religion in the United States.
Interfaith Alliance was started, actually, we're in our 30th year.
We're celebrating our 30th year.
I'm very proud to have been impacting religion and democracy for the last 30 years.
We were founded as a direct response to what we viewed as the oversized influence of the Christian coalition at the time, which was Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, these folks who were claiming the mantle of religion, literally saying, like, we represent religion in America, and like, we represent religion in America, and anyone who opposes us is some sort of godless commie secular who is trying to destroy the fabric of America.
And they didn't represent even the majority of religious Americans, much less all of America, many of whom are not religious.
And so we, this was a group of folks, it was Protestants, Jews, Catholics, a slightly wider circle, but really kind of a, not the most radical folks in the world, but like very much liberal idea of saying like, actually, No, you can't say this is a Christian nation.
No, you can't say that someone has a privileged place of religion in America and that they can impose their morality on the rest of us.
No, you can't say these things, and you can't do these things.
And not only that, we're going to mobilize, and we're going to fight you not only in the political realm—we were started as a C4, so we were very political to start with—but But also in the courts and in very local areas.
So we have, from the beginning, we've had local affiliates around the country who have showed up, stood up, and said no when Christian nationalism, or at that time we called them the religious right or the Christian right, have tried to take over local mechanisms of government, and we're still doing that today.
So over the last 30 years, we have, in various moments, really led the fight, actually.
My two presidents ago, a straight Southern Baptist gentleman named Welton Gaddy, blessed be his memory, he really decided, I'm going to step up about LGBT issues, and I'm going to speak out as a straight, white, Southern man saying this is and I'm going to speak out as a straight, white, Southern man saying this is Got him kicked out of the Southern Baptist, but he was the president of Interfaith Alliance, and he really, you know, he really spoke up, and I think part of what
We have been doing over the years is finding places where religion and democracy intersect, and where some people are using the idea of religious freedom to actually impose their ideas on others.
And unfortunately, almost the concept of religious freedom has almost been usurped by the Christian right, who use it as Kind of a club or a bludgeon to say, okay, my religious freedom says—and we've seen this recently—I don't have to serve people.
I don't have to—and this is what we're up against.
And so, we've been fighting the good fight for 30 years with lots of great partners from different faith traditions.
I should mention, right off the bat, some of our close partners include the American Atheist Association, the American Humanist Association.
We try, as much as possible, to really recognize that under our Constitution, under our laws, Everyone, no matter what their tradition is, has the right to have their beliefs respected, and have their expression of those beliefs respected.
And that's the fight that we're fighting today with such, you know, kind of a serious problem.
I love the fact that there's an explicit intention here to include those of no faith.
If one goes to the Interfaith Alliance website, One will find mention of how the Interfaith Alliance is working with, as you just mentioned, humanists, atheists, and so on.
I'm thinking of my friend Will Judy and the Houston Oasis group down in Texas, who is doing what he calls and what they call interfaith work.
As people who are of no faith or no religious tradition and they're community building, they're activating, they're mobilizing, and they're part of the vision and the coalition that you're working with.
And I really appreciate that about your work.
Let's talk about 2024 and the election mobilization strategy at the Interfaith Alliance.
I know that you've been in various parts of the country.
In Florida and other places working with a big tent of folks who are very wary of Christian nationalism and the dangers it poses to our democracy.
So tell us a little bit about the strategy and the ways you're getting folks on the ground working together.
We are in the middle of, we have all these networks that are doing incredible work.
And I should say, we're not starting out of, you know, from scratch with our election work.
We're actually building on relationships that have been ongoing, sometimes fairly recently.
We have our Interfaith Alliance of Southwest Florida.
It's actually just a year old, but they have started Really getting active, because they recognize that Christian nationalists actually got voted in to take over the school board.
And so all of a sudden now the school board is a little bit surprised, because all these people are coming up and saying, we don't want what you're trying to do to our schools.
And so the Interfaith Alliance of Southwest Florida has made anti-censorship One of their primary issues, and supporting LGBT students.
For the first time in a long time, Naples is questioning whether or not they should give a permit for a Pride March in June.
This is Christian nationalism at work, and so when we talk about elections, we largely talk about what is at stake.
Not, you know, less about the political figures, but what's at stake for America?
And especially at the intersection between religion and democracy.
And who gets to decide what matters?
LGBT rights right now are Unbelievably, you know, really in the crosshairs.
And they are, you know, people are talking about, we've had recent Supreme Court cases where someone has, it's been ruled possible to refuse service on the basis of religion.
And so these cases indicate that this is present for our election, and we need to get mobilized.
So if you care, About LGBT rights, then you need to get mobilized, and you need to get organized.
And what is so important from our perspective is reach across religious difference.
Because the truth is, 70% of the American public — that's the religious American public, it's even larger if you include atheists and agnostics and those unaffiliated — of religious America support LGBT equality.
And so what we want to do at every chance we get is, like, this is not religion versus LGBT rights.
This is actually religion in favor of LGBT rights.
And make sure that our elected, those who are running for office on every side of the aisle, understand that the religious vote is a pro-LGBT vote.
And the interfaith, the collective vote, the community vote, this is also, you know, we're also seeing a moment when, you know, Unbelievable what's happening with abortion in this country and reproductive freedom.
In my mind, reproductive freedom is religious freedom.
There are some people who are trying to say, okay, we're going to dictate when life begins.
We saw that in Alabama.
In the Supreme Court, a chief justice said, this is for God Almighty in his Supreme Court decision.
This is wild, and I think you may know, like, you know, I come from a background also from the court, my great-grandfather's first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, and so, which I, and my father was a law professor, and so I'm around enough lawyers that I feel like I could talk for law, but I actually do feel strongly about this.
That's a terrible thing to have in a Supreme Court decision.
You don't get to talk about God.
That's not what we're doing here.
And so, when we talk about our mobilization, we are mobilizing people on issues which we think matter.
Primarily, we believe in stopping hate against Jews, against Muslims, against Sikhs, against all these people who are being attacked.
Just for being who they are.
And it's sometimes explicit and sometimes it's not explicit, but it's very real.
This is coming up and it's going to get more clear.
So, like, being aware of how laws are affecting religious minorities in this country.
We're looking very closely at LGBT rights.
We're looking very closely at reproductive freedom.
We're also really concerned about elections per se.
So one of the things we're doing right now is inviting people, volunteer, Volunteer to be a poll chaplain.
There's some great groups.
We're working with Sojourners and some other ones who are talking about you can show up and be a poll chaplain.
You don't have to be a Christian to be a poll chaplain.
You don't have to be religious at all.
But you have to show up and want to keep the peace and make sure that our poll stations are safe.
So we're offering that.
We're encouraging people to show up in their local communities to make sure that their elections are safe.
And then we're helping people with messaging.
I mean, we don't want to be on the defensive.
I'm sorry, I'm kind of going on long and long, and I know you're like, you know, I'm probably talking too much, but I just think it's really important that we not be on the defensive here.
Because again, like, we represent the broad swath of America, and the folks who are promoting Christian nationalism, let's not forget it, they represent a thin slice of American Population, well-funded, well-organized, but not the majority, not even near the majority.
And so it's really important that we don't give them that credit.
And they also are only doing this because they're so freaked out because they're losing.
That's right.
Brad, you know this much even better than I do, but it's really an important point to make, is that we have made progress.
And what they're so freaked out about is that we've made progress.
One of my people I really admire right now is Eric Ward.
I don't know if you know him, but he's a fine guy.
Have you had him on your show yet?
You know, I was just – we're taping this, y'all, in late March, and it is a Wednesday.
It's a – yes, no, it's a Thursday.
I have young children.
I don't know where I am half the time.
Tuesday night, Paul, I was at an event at the University of San Francisco, and I moderated it, and the keynote speaker was Eric Ward.
So there you go.
Yeah.
Okay.
See, I think he's amazing.
And I think one of the things, in my chance to, I interviewed him, I'll put in a plug for The State of Belief, which we're doing similar work and talking to great people about religion, democracy, and our wider society.
But I had him on, and he said, Paul, the thing they want us to think is that we're losing, when in fact, we've never had more people who wanted a multiracial, multireligious, multicultural society.
And what they're so freaked out about is that they know they're losing.
And I think that what's important as we go out there thinking about this election season is that we come out there saying, America—and really clearly, America was not founded for some people.
I mean, at the time, they did a lot of things wrong, and absolutely it was, but not in the way they're trying to make it sound today.
But it was not founded just for Christians.
It just was not.
And like anybody who is really honest about the language of the First Amendment and honest about the Constitution, it was specifically the way they constructed it.
And they could have done it differently, but they didn't.
There is no established religion, which means that everybody has equal status, and we have to work to make that come true, just like we have to work to make all the other things come true around patriarchy and white supremacy.
But in the Constitution, they set it up so we don't have to argue that!
And so I'm just hoping—all of our work is about organizing.
If you want to get more information, go to interfaithalliance.org, sign up for our newsletters.
We're putting out all these opportunities for volunteering.
And you can organize locally.
I mean, we've had several new affiliates start up, in part because they've seen Christian nationalism active in their community, and they're saying, we need to get together.
And it doesn't take more than three or four to organize, and then you can start inviting more people and say, and so what's happening?
I went down to Southwest Florida, gave a talk, did a training.
We are also offering election training and things like that, but I did a training.
They were like, at the end of the training, say, well, I think we're going to start something here.
Next time I went down, standing room only, the local rabbi was there, the local head of the LGBT Center was there, the local school board person was there.
They were ready, and if anybody listening is ready, please reach out.
We'd love to work with you.
These are the questions I get all the time.
I think that what's clear for me doing this show is, you know, my expertise is really in bringing forth academic ideas, concepts, and highlighting books, highlighting big themes, and that's really something that I'll always keep doing.
But the question I get every week in my email, every month, every time I do an event is, how do we organize?
What do we do?
How do we counteract these things?
So I'm wondering, Paul, would you mind sharing us just like a one tidbit of something you might say in a training?
In terms of tactics, how do you go on the offensive against Moms for Liberty?
How do you construct a message that is positive and inclusive when the school board or the mayoral setting or the city council setting is full of such myopic and narrow visions of what it means to be an American?
We've got to get organized.
I mean, the reason Moms for Liberty all of a sudden just, they were so well-funded and, you know, very top-down.
What we say is, look around you.
There are people all around you.
And if you need help, this is what, this is our whole thing.
Like, you know, I mean, like, so if people listening are trying to figure out how to start, reach out.
Because what we do is we say, okay, here's the next step.
And, you know, sometimes, you know, our first, like, is interfaith advocacy training, which is, what are the issues that are the primary issues that you think are important in your community Who has control over the fate of those issues?
Who are people who you can bring together across difference that shows that the community has an opinion about that and can begin to bear witness to the people who have the power to make the change?
And then how do you build power?
How do you build power in your local community to make sure that the people are represented?
The broad people.
So how do you do that?
And then, how do you show up?
How do you show up?
We even have people trained to go on lobbying visits, or trained to speak up at a school board.
Or we do media training.
How do you write an op-ed to the letter, say, to the local newspaper or whatever the local digital thing is, and say, we represent these groups, and we don't agree with this?
Because until they hear from you, They are proceeding as if they represent the majority, but they don't.
And so one of the things, one of our operating ideas and kind of bylines is, you know, it happened at the end of a training we did in Dallas, Texas, where a pastor stood up and just said, I feel less alone.
And that's the idea.
Feel less alone.
Know that all around you are people who are asking the same question about how we can get organized.
And, you know, religious people, They have a special role, this is true about America, is religious folks, rightly or wrongly, but they do have a special tradition in America of moving social movements forward.
So it actually, it is good to have a rabbi with a priest, with an imam, show up and say, we don't want this in our community.
Or whoever is that collection of people.
I'm not prescribing it at all.
I think it's just important to recognize that Also, you know, religious groups are power.
I mean, congregations can be power.
They can also be humanist organizations if they are organizing.
But who can you get to show up is part of the question.
And congregations, people come every week.
They can hear messages and they can be deployed.
And this doesn't have to be about elections.
You know, it actually can just be about what's happening in the moment in your community, which is often what is most like kind of, you know, we've had It's just so painful what's happening out there sometimes with this Christian nationalism.
We have a friend who is a religious Jewish leader whose daughter was trans, and she was a serious religious leader.
She was representing the Jewish community, and she had to go there and try to fight against people who were telling her how to raise her child and how to care for her child.
And she was saying, but from my tradition, I'm doing what is needed to give my child what she needs to survive.
And they were trying to override her because they had their own idea based in their Christian nationalist worldview.
And it gets very real very quickly.
Despair is not a strategy, as my friend Ruth Messinger, who's a wonderful woman, she said, despair is not a strategy.
And it's also like, we don't have to despair.
We have lots of people around us who can help lift us up.
And that's what I really encourage as far as, you know, Interfaith Alliances work.
And by the way, we give out, you know, I mean, we're not a rich organization.
I'm building it up, but, you know, but we do give out micro grants.
Like, we're really there to help.
I mean, our whole idea is to help folks all around the country.
And I really do hope your listeners take us up on that.
Well, one of the things I'll just add here is that I've had the privilege of traveling around the country to visit various conferences, be part of various groups.
And, you know, despair is not a strategy, but hope springs from organizing.
It springs from being together.
It springs from gathering, of sharing our fears, sharing our hopes, and saying, this is what we're going to do together to counteract what's happening in our society, in our community, in our city, and to hopefully instill a vision that is more inclusive, that is aimed at human flourishing.
And I just have to say, it feels so good.
I was at a conference where people were trained to go lobby and they went up to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
And these are everyday people.
These are people from Michigan, from Georgia, who are going for the first time to their nation's Capitol and looking an elected congressperson in the face and saying, this is what's important to me.
This is how I feel as a religious or non-religious person.
About LGBTQ rights, about reproductive rights, and so on and so forth.
That feels good, people.
It feels good to be with others, to fight for something you believe in.
And so I think that's just a great part of what you're saying.
A hundred percent.
And the other great thing about interfaith organizing is sometimes we don't know what we don't know.
And so when we, when we join together with people who are from different traditions or different, they have struggles that we might not have imagined.
And so sometimes, for instance, I'm thinking about some great work happening in Texas where there were major tests being given on fast days for some of the traditions.
And until you hear that from someone, Yeah, you may—you know, it's not an indictment.
It's just that it never occurred to you.
And then you hear it, and you're like, well, that's not right.
And then you can move together on it, and it's like—so part of the benefit of interfaith organizing, and again, with the wide understanding of what interfaith can mean, is that you can learn from other people.
And you can imagine a strategy forward that really does lift other people who might not be your own immediate concern, but then you can invite them to show up with you.
And so it's wonderful.
I want to mention one thing that we've been involved with, which is such a perfect distillation of how Christian nationalism is showing up right now, but also how people are fighting back.
And that's Are you familiar with the chaplain bills that are going across the country?
Oh yeah, we've talked to Representative Tallarico, we've talked to Mindy and Chris Tackett.
Yeah, yeah.
So, actually, Tallarico is one of those great people who's really, he's reaching out.
I've had him on my show as well, and Bajani, who's his Muslim counterpart, and they have been working together to make sure that they're, it's really, it's really beautiful, so these small moments.
But the chaplain bill, just a reminder, is basically school districts are given the opportunity to not hire actual qualified school counselors, instead hire chaplains who have no training, And also, no prohibition against proselytizing.
And the people who are promoting these bills, lest you forget, are very conservative Christians who have this idea that it's only really going to be them who is going to be in there as chaplains.
And this is very nefarious, because if you're actually looking for help getting into college, and these people are like, well, I don't really know what that is, but I can tell you about Jesus.
And then, you know, that's not helpful.
And then, or if you are LGBT and you're kind of really getting bullied, but you go to this person who says, well, you might want to think about your sin.
I mean, these are terrible things, and they should not be there.
And my whole point here is that as a Baptist minister, I don't want to export, I don't want to outsource religious training to some person who I have no idea what their training is.
I want to be in charge of the religious training for my children.
I have two boys, five and nine.
I don't want someone who I don't know to tell them about what religion is and what they should do.
That's not right.
But one of the great things that's happened is that the response to it was a collection of people.
It was it was ACLU, it was the American Atheist, but it was also a bunch of religious communities rallying chaplains around the country and getting chaplains to speak out against it.
And so the great headline that we got is religious groups oppose chaplain bills, which means that it's not like the kind of trope that they like to use, which is, oh, all these atheists and people who hate religion are opposing religion everywhere.
No, it's actually religious folks who feel a responsibility to the entire community to make sure everywhere is safe for everyone that are opposing this bill.
And so, yes, there can be litigation, but even better, we can convince people to reject these bills.
And the 25 largest school districts in Texas rejected it, often citing the work that this coalition had done, including Interfaith Alliance and BJC, a bunch of other folks.
And so, I just want to offer that as an example of organizing that actually can be effective and speak into the language that is being used, but recognizing the threat of some of these bills that are...now 14 states have chaplain bills.
So, I'll just say, folks, that I've hung out with the American Atheists.
I've hung out with Humanist Association.
And I know some of you out there are religious.
You're Christian.
You're Jewish.
And you're thinking, well, when atheists get together, they're just trying to prove God doesn't exist.
Isn't that what they're doing?
And I can tell you, it is not.
You know what they're talking about?
LGBTQ rights, voting rights, they're talking about all Americans being protected under our constitution.
And some of you out there are humanists, you're non-religious, you're secular, and you're thinking, yeah, when Christians get together, all they talk about is how they can convince everyone around them that they're going to hell.
And I think Paul and everything you're talking about today is... Actually, no, when I've hung out with Paul, when I've hung out with folks from the coalitions you're talking about, guess what they're talking about?
LGBTQ rights, voting rights, democracy, religious freedom.
So the message here is, right, there's some probably some misconceptions across some of these demographics.
And I just want to encourage everyone listening to take very seriously the fact that there's possibilities here for joining together.
I was at a Metroplex atheist event in Fort Worth a couple months ago, and who did I speak alongside?
A Christian minister at an atheist event, because everybody there was concerned with the same political issues and freedoms.
So, I just want to put that out there.
Before we close, Paul, I want to ask you, we are in the few days running up to Easter here.
We are in Holy Week for Christians, and you have a book.
It's just released here just about a month ago.
It's called Together We Rise, an Easter story for all of us.
And so speaking about inclusion, tell us about this children's book you've written and how it tells the story of Jesus in a way that really reflects how you understand the gospel rather than perhaps what others might have in mind when they think of Christianity and Jesus.
Well, Together We Rise is a, yeah, it's a children's book.
I wrote it for my children.
It happened out of, like, three or four years ago.
I wanted to tell my kids the story of Easter, and most of the children's books just were a little bit Either to Pat, or they were, like, really focused on, kind of, that Jesus died for your sins, and good luck.
And so, you know, and it was—that's which isn't the theology that I was raised on, and it wasn't the way I understand the Easter event.
And so, I I actually just took, I was like, okay, this is the challenge.
I'm going to squish all of the theology that I've been thinking about for the last 30 years as a minister, and put it into 900 words.
And I wrote it down, and I put it on Facebook, and people really loved it.
And they were just like, oh my God, this is what we need.
And even more importantly, I read it to my son.
And he listened, and he was like, okay, that was good.
But what happened is that then when we got to dinner, he just out of the blue said, you know, it wasn't about power.
Jesus was about love.
And that's kind of the main theme of the book, which is that, you know, Jesus came as an embodiment of love, and that Jesus was taught about love, and He tried to turn the world upside down where, you know, the misfits We're loved by God especially, and the poor and the outcasts, and it wasn't the priests and the rulers and the rich people who were especially loved by God.
It was the other ones, and it's kind of this upside-down world that some of us have described as the beloved community or the kingdom of God, you know, this idea of that being on earth, and that the Easter story talks about, like, how he comes in and then, you know, he's actually put on, you know, Put on trial and imprisoned and then put to death for it.
One of the things that was interesting about this was with kids, and I think you might appreciate this, a lot of kids' stories are pretty shadowed.
They deal with tough themes.
It's not all joy, joy, happy, happy.
This stakes of it, but then the idea that That, you know, that God's—together, with one another, we rise, that we need one another, and God loves all of us.
And one of the things that was so important to me was, like, that God, you know, at the beginning, God made people of all different colors, all different sizes, all different genders, all different backgrounds, and they were all good.
They were all equally good.
And, you know, and Jesus is a dark-skinned person who—which also, like, is factually correct and also represents an idea.
And there's women at the Last Supper.
You know, just—these aren't, like—these aren't, like, crazy liberties just done for fun.
They're actually ideas of, like, what it means to really represent the gospel in a way that—the good news, in a way.
And also that we don't do any of this alone.
And that, you know, for those of you who may reference the name Rauschenbusch, he was associated with something—my great-grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch, was associated with something called the Social Gospel, which is really a lot of the theology that I grew up with.
And that I believe in now is that it's not about us individuals and like just say getting me to heaven.
It's about all of us experiencing heaven here on earth.
And so that's the goal of the book is just to kind of invite that kind of speculation, that imagination at a young age.
And so I'm really glad you asked about it and appreciate the opportunity to speak about it.
No, it's wonderful, and I think you just answered a question.
Yeah, go ahead.
One more thing is just that it fits very much into what I'm trying to do in the interfaith world, which is I'm going deep into my tradition and recognizing how it fits in a wide, wonderful rainbow of other traditions.
This is not a supremacist book.
It's not meant to be.
It's meant to show how one tradition understands it, But it's also meant to be a reprimand of the idea of Christianity as power, Christianity as money, Christianity as force.
It's actually a total reputation of that, representing what I think is the true message of Jesus, which is a reputation of money, power, and force as what God values.
And so, it is very much aligned with my work, with my day job, let's put it that way.
No, I love that.
I appreciate it.
And I think what I was going to say is I think you just answered a trivia question that some very sleuthy, insightful people at home were wondering about, which is, yes, you are the great grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch, the great social gospel.
constructor and, as you already mentioned, a descendant of Louis Brandeis.
So there's just a lot happening in your family tree there that I think someday will be the, you know, we'll get the full Netflix eight episodes of how did we get Paul Rauschenbusch?
Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot that went into it and that includes some really...
Yeah, and on the other side, we took, you know, my grandfather took the seas out of his name.
And so, you know, it was really, you know, it was interesting because I, Walter Rauschenbusch was the seventh in seven generations of pastors.
And then none of his children went into the ministry and none of their children went into the ministry.
And I went back and And so everybody's just like, You're spelling your name wrong, and I'm like, you're right.
But my grandfather and his brothers all took the C's out of their name in some ways to whatever.
It was after World War, you know, it was like a question of like Americanism.
It was a question, it's a long name.
But anyway, it is confusing.
But, yes, it's the same Rauschenblatt.
No, I look forward to the eight-episode Netflix, you know, here's Paul, and somehow these two titans of American theology and law are in your same genealogical tree, and that's pretty cool.
All right, folks, I want to close by just asking you, I'm sure the best way to get a hold of you is at the Interfaith Alliance website and everything you're doing, but what are other ways that you want to encourage people to connect?
I would love for people to sign up for our newsletter, but go to interfaithalliance.org.
Also sign up and subscribe to The State of Belief.
It's The State of Belief, anywhere that you're getting podcasts.
You're already getting one great podcast with Straight White American Jesus, and The State of Belief is, you know, where religion and democracy meet, and I think that, you know, At the end of the week, you'd be the smartest person on the block, or the most something.
I don't know if it's smart, yes, and also something more than smart.
And if you have any questions about organizing, really reach out to me.
You can find my email on the website.
Reach out, ask a question.
I will send you in the right direction.
We would love to help you.
We would love to help you.
You know, really create a strong response to white Christian nationalism in your local community.
And that can all ladder up to a strong national response.
I love that.
And it's something that I really appreciate.
And whenever I'm in the midst of folks doing this work, I'm inspired.
And I'm glad that there are people who are doing this every day on the ground, making sure that folks get organized.
and our lobbying, our writing, our speaking out, and so on and so forth.
As always, friends, find us at StraightWhiteJC.
You can get access to everything we do by becoming a premium subscriber.
All of that's in the show notes.
We'll be back later this week with It's in the Code in the Weekly Roundup.
But for now, we'll just say thanks for listening.
Have a good day.
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