Winning Is a Long Game w/ Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow
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Brad converses with Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow about her viral advocacy moments, the impact of Project 2025, and the upcoming 2024 elections. They discuss McMorrow's strong stance against Republican extremism, her journey into politics, and the importance of grassroots organizing. The episode highlights pivotal events like her protest against divisive culture wars and her powerful, viral speech responding to inflammatory accusations. Additionally, it covers the role of active participation in democracy, the implications of the 2022 Michigan gubernatorial race, and insights from Kamala Harris' leadership approach. McMorrow also talks about her book, 'Hate Won't Win,' which aims to empower individuals in their communities.
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And no matter what happens, there's going to be a lot to process and a next chapter to prepare for.
That's why we're holding two live events in order to help you stay informed about what's happening and to get ready for what's coming.
On November 21st, we're holding an event with Americans United for Separation of Church and State at the University of Southern California.
We have an illustrious group of leaders and scholars, including Andrew Seidel, Rachel Lazar, Kyate Joshi, Diane Winston, and Dan Miller.
We're going to talk about what happened and prepare for what's next.
On November 22nd, we'll be talking about Christian extremism and the 2024 elections at the San Diego Convention Center.
Matt Taylor will be giving opening remarks.
They'll have a roundtable with familiar faces like Leah Payne and Lloyd Barba, not to mention me and Dan, and a few others.
Tickets are available now, and you can find everything in the show notes.
You can also watch online if you can't be in L.A. or San Diego.
November 21 and November 22.
Two chances to be with us at Straight White American Jesus and a number of other great scholars and leaders.
Join us in person or online.
Hello! - Oh!
I'm Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow, and this, this is Project 2025.
Now, over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900 page Why?
Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.
That's right.
They went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years.
And then they just tweeted it out, putting it out on the internet for everybody to read.
So, we read it.
And whatever you think it might be, it is so much worse.
Tonight I want to tell you about just one aspect of Project 2025.
Its plan to turn Donald Trump into a dictator.
That's Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow giving one of the most memorable speeches at the 2024 DNC. She slammed Project 2025, all 922 pages of it, on the lectern and proceeded to tell the nation about the extremism that it contains.
McMorrow entered the Michigan Senate in 2018, but most of you probably weren't introduced to her a couple years ago when a speech she gave on the Senate floor went viral.
Senator McMurray talked about being a straight white Christian suburban mom who wants everyone, including those who are not like her, to flourish in the United States.
The speech was a response to being called a groomer by a political rival, a member of the GOP who had given a prayer to open a legislative session and cast the opposing party as anti-American and anti-Christian.
Today I speak with Senator McMorrow about the election that comes in just a few weeks.
But her emphasis is on the long haul, about the fact that we can't think of this very important election as the only one.
She talks about the fact that we don't need more political heroes.
In fact, what we need is all of us if we're going to win.
Even as she crisscrosses the country, stumping for Vice President Harris on the campaign trail, Senator McMorrow is focused on what it will take to preserve our democracy in the decades ahead.
Today we talk about all of that and more.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.
Straight White American Jesus As I just said, joined today by Senator, Michigan Senator Mallory McMorrow.
Senator McMorrow, thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
It's fantastic to have you.
And there's a couple things that are really fitting here.
One is, a couple years ago, you went viral for being a straight white Christian mom.
And this is straight white American Jesus.
So it just feels like this was destined to happen at some point.
This was meant to be, for sure.
Okay, good.
Folks have seen you recently at the DNC slamming Project 2025 on the lectern.
You've been out campaigning with Vice President Harris.
Do you feel like those events helped calm your nerves to be on this podcast?
Do you feel like those were good run-ups to just, you know, being on Straight White American Jesus?
Oh, my goodness.
I was so nervous to be on this podcast.
And, yeah, exactly.
Being in front of 80,000 people in an arena and however many millions at home, now I think my nerves are calm.
Okay.
Alright, I'm glad you're ready.
Alright.
So you had a viral moment that is still inspiring.
I've listened to it several times getting ready to speak to you today and I still get chills.
So we're going to arrive there at your speech.
We're also going to talk about your DNC comments.
But just give us a little window into you.
You had a career before politics.
You don't seem from the outside as somebody who had masterminded her way into politics from age 13.
Some folks are like 12 years old and are like, I'm going to be president someday.
What motivated you to be somebody who got involved in being a state legislator?
Yeah, it was a long winding road.
So I am not a native Michigander, which is always a scandalous thing to say in the state where you run for office.
But I've lived all over the country.
I was born and raised in rural New Jersey, which I swear is a real place.
I've lived in Indiana, California, New York, Michigan.
And my now husband and I moved back to Michigan.
I say back because I'm a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
So basically Michigan, it's just across the border.
He's a native Michigander.
We moved back.
We were back and forth between Southern California and Michigan quite often, but moved in 2014.
And this is where we wanted to put down roots.
My grandma would always joke with me that she had to write my address in pencil because I moved so frequently.
So this was our, you know, let's put down roots.
Let's start a family.
And watching Michigan from 2014, 2015 into 2016 and kind of the rise of Donald Trump in a place like this, it was just so jarring how ugly it was.
This is a place where I think a lot of people really got attached to the idea of make America great again.
We are the home of the American auto industry.
We were still really struggling from the recession.
And the idea that we can go back to a time when we were great is compelling.
So just watching how it tore even our neighborhood apart was really ugly.
And there was a video that went viral the day after the 2016 election of middle school students chanting, build that wall at another fifth grader, a Latina student.
And CNN came in, they interviewed her.
And I've gone back and I've watched her interview again recently.
And just she's shaking and she's sobbing.
And she says, you know, these are my friends.
And when you watch, she took a little quick clip of what it was like in the lunchroom.
And there are all these kids like pounding on the table and screaming, build that wall, build that wall.
And it is terrifying.
And there was something about the fact that it was kids and that kids had picked it up from Donald Trump and their parents' acceptance of Donald Trump that broke something in me.
So I googled how to run for office.
I'd never done it before.
You know, I voted fairly consistently.
I wasn't, I didn't work on campaigns.
And here we are.
That's the short version.
I remember that video like vividly.
And, you know, just to think about that and those kids.
Yeah, it brings back a lot of a lot of bad memories of those first days of the Trump years.
So you arrived in office.
You were successful.
You arrived in the Senate in Michigan and in 2022, very soon after your arrival, Another senator, Lena Tice, opened a Senate session with a prayer.
Now, a lot of times, you know, feel free to correct me here, but my understanding is when these things happen at the mayor's office, in City Hall, in the state legislator, anywhere, it's a kind of...
Non-sectarian prayer.
It's not supposed to be something divisive.
And she prayed, Dear Lord, across the country, we're seeing in the news that our children are under attack, that there are forces that desire things for them other than what their parents would have them see and hear and know.
And there was more.
You walked out with a few other Democratic colleagues.
That was a bold move as somebody who had just arrived in the legislature.
Why'd you do that?
So it had been something, and I think a lot of people...
Why does the legislature still open with an invocation that seems pretty outdated?
What about the separation of church and state?
But you're right.
I think that at its best, it is just sort of a moment of intention setting and reminding us that we exist in the service of 10 million residents of the state and, you know, to receive proper guidance and to take our job seriously.
And it's usually a nice moment.
But there had been some really ugly abuses of it over the years.
So I got elected in 2018.
This was started in 2019.
This is 2022.
So three years in.
And at one point we had a priest who was a guest, who was a visitor.
You used to be able to bring priests or religious officials in to give the invocation.
And he had declared from the rostrum that he had successfully converted people from being Muslims or Jews or, you know, made gay people straight, and we had walked out of that.
So this wasn't the first time that there had been an abuse of this moment.
Some of my colleagues just refused to sit around for this altogether, and they would kind of wait in the back until it was done.
But this was put into context.
It was just after the legislation in Florida known as the Don't Say Gay Bill had passed into law.
We in Michigan had started to see the rise of these culture war issues, particularly attacking the LGBTQ community from our Republican majority.
And Senator Tice got up, and you could tell right away there was, like, a deep pause, and she was very intentional about a dramatic delivery.
And right away, that just set, like, my red flags up that this is going to be something it shouldn't be.
And two of my other colleagues, Senator Dana Polhenke and Senator Rosemary Bayer, both had the same reaction.
So in silence, we all made eye contact with each other.
And then as she got going...
We just walked out.
So it's not the first time that had happened.
I was surprised that reporters noticed because typically they don't pay attention to that time.
But I think it's because of the dramatic delivery and then seeing the reaction from some of us that it became a moment.
That led to some tweets from you and others.
Tice noticed, sent out a fundraising message, and infamously now said that you and those with you are wanting to groom and sexualize children and impose this kind of Perverse agenda on them through our educational institutions.
And that led to an incredibly viral moment from you.
I want to play part of that now for our audience just so they can hear what I think I learned in church when I was young might be the textbook case of righteous anger.
Let's play that now.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I didn't expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the senator from the 22nd district had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an email fundraising for herself.
So I sat on it for a while wondering why me.
And then I realized, because I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme.
Because you can't claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of, quote, parental rights, if another parent is standing up to say no.
So then what?
Then you dehumanize and marginalize me.
You say that I'm one of them.
You say she's a groomer.
She supports pedophilia.
She wants children to believe that they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they're white.
Well, here's a little bit of background about who I really am.
Growing up, my family was very active in our church.
I sang in the choir.
My mom taught CCD. One day, our priest called a meeting with my mom and told her that she was not living up to the church's expectations and that she was disappointing.
My mom asked why.
Among other reasons, she was told it was because she was divorced and because the priest didn't see her at Mass every Sunday.
So where was my mom on Sundays?
She was at the soup kitchen with me.
My mom taught me at a very young age that Christianity and faith was about being part of a community, about recognizing our privilege and blessings and doing what we can to be of service to others, especially people who are marginalized, targeted, and who had less.
Often unfairly.
I learned that service was far more important than performative nonsense like being seen in the same pew every Sunday or writing Christian in your Twitter bio and using that as a shield to target and marginalize already marginalized people.
I also stand on the shoulders of people like Father Ted Hesburgh, the longtime president of the University of Notre Dame, who was active in the civil rights movement, who recognized his power and privilege as a white man, a faith leader, and the head of an influential and well-respected institution, and who saw black people in this country being targeted and discriminated against and beaten and reached out To lock arms with Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
when he was alive, when it was unpopular and risky, and marching alongside them to say, we've got you.
To offer protection and service and allyship to try to right the wrongs and fix injustice in the world.
So who am I? I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense.
I'm Philip Diesel.
And I'm Stacey Stukin.
Breath of Fire debuts October 23rd on HBO Max.
It's a docuseries about yoga, cults, abuse, and turning spirituality into big business.
The series focuses on Yogi Bhajan, who in the 1960s immigrated from India to the United States, and on Katie Griggs, a millennial American.
Decades apart, they both built wellness empires based on kundalini yoga.
Each had a huge personality, celebrity followers, and fervent disciples.
They also left behind a legacy of abuse and exploitation.
I'm a journalist, Phillips, and academic.
We served as historical consultants and on-camera experts for the series.
We created Temple of Steel, an unofficial companion podcast to the Breath of Fire docuseries, which premieres on HBO Max Wednesday, October 23rd.
Join us the morning after each episode airs for context, analysis, and a deeper discussion.
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So it immediately, your speech immediately went viral.
I remember watching it.
We played it on the show days after you gave that speech.
It led to outreach from Joe Biden, mentions from Hillary Clinton.
I can tell what you feel in that speech.
And speeches are great.
Speeches are inspiring.
Speeches are empowering.
But I want to know what it taught you as a leader, as a lawmaker, and how it might have been an opening for you to understand a blueprint for change in not only Michigan, but across the country.
Yeah.
So, you know, to kind of set the stage for where I was kind of mentally and emotionally going into this is...
You know, we had become aware the day before that Senator Tice had sent out a fundraising email accusing a colleague of being a groomer and wanting to sexualize kindergartners.
I didn't know right away that it was me.
So then a screenshot came out and she accused me by name, you know, in her email, raising money for herself, accused me.
Mallory McMorrow, I think she said Dee Snowflake, which sort of gets the joke wrong, but of wanting to groom and sexualize kindergartners and wanting eight-year-olds to believe they were responsible for slavery.
And when I came into office in 2018, so it was my first time ever running for office, I took on a Republican incumbent in a Republican district.
I wasn't supposed to win.
You know, this was a big upset when I won.
So I had served at this point, you know, three years, two and a half years in the minority.
And I think for a variety of reasons, because I had beaten an incumbent, because I'm fairly vocal on social issues and standing up for people, the majority had blocked me from getting anything done.
So I had never had a bill hearing on anything that I had ever introduced.
And I had just been redrawn into a district with a Democratic college.
So I was sort of in this headspace of really feeling like I had let everybody down, had supported me and donated to me and knocked on doors for me, that I thought that getting into government would be what I needed to enact change.
And then I found that that wasn't possible.
So I was already in this headspace of like, I'm not going to run for office again.
I tried.
I have failed.
And then this happened.
And there was something beyond the pale about, you know, this was another woman who is a mom herself.
I am a mom of a now three-year-old.
You know, she was one at the time.
And Senator Tice had sat on the committee that reviewed the Larry Nassar case.
Larry Nassar was a Michigan State University gymnastics doctor who sexually abused girls for decades.
So she knows, and this is one of the reporters mentioned it, like, she knows firsthand what grooming actually is and the damage that it inflicts.
So her willingness to accuse another mother of, you know, let's just call it what it is, wanting to befriend children for the purpose of molesting them is just horrific.
So I wasn't sure how I was going to respond at all.
You know, I was sort of taught to not give bullies attention, but as you saw this growing...
It wasn't stopping.
And I think that that's been a mistake that many of us have made is you got to stand up in the face of ugliness.
But I also was in this mindset, okay, I'm not going to run for re-election.
So if I'm going to go down, I might as well go down swinging.
So I didn't feel like I had anything to lose.
I wrote...
A lot over and over and over again, initially accusing the other side of the aisle of hypocrisy.
And I took that all out and I wanted to talk about myself because this was also a moment where we started to see the rise of groups like Moms for Liberty who really leaned on, you know, particularly white moms leaning on their Christian identity as an excuse to attack vulnerable kids.
And that just...
Shook me the wrong way.
So I talked about myself and my mom and how I was raised in the church and what, you know, faith meant to me.
And I gave this speech genuinely thinking, A, I was just angry.
And I think that came across.
Somebody asked me about the delivery once and I said, you know, what you don't see in that video is that everybody in the room was looking at me except Lana Tice.
Who is pretending to have a conversation with somebody else.
So I'm looking at the back of her head and I'm just livid.
And I gave this speech and I was like, if that's the last speech I ever give, that is enough.
And then I put the video up and it immediately went viral.
And I started to get letters and phone calls and emails from people, not even Michigan, all around the country, all around the world of, you know, Democratic background, Republican background, religious, non-religious, saying what it meant to them.
And I think in a very unexpected way, in an ugly moment, it reminded me that being a legislator is not the only way to make change and that I had a lot more power than I thought I did.
So, you know, I was ready to get out and that moment dragged me back in, in a really overwhelmingly positive way.
One of the things you're working on now is a book.
I mean, you've worked on it.
It's set to be released here pretty soon.
And it seems that one of the things that is really on your mind is empowering others to be changemakers, to find their power and ability to affect change in our public square, whether that is as part of government or as organizers, as mobilizers, as Whatever role they may play.
We interacted on Twitter.
You actually sort of reacted to something I had tweeted and reminded me that, hey, it's great to have strong leaders.
It's great to have strong speeches and other things.
But what really matters are ongoing, sustained efforts of everyday Americans working together.
So I'm wondering how a speech like this one, where you were at the end of your, you know, envisioned time as a political office, an elected official, Led you to a kind of understanding of what you might teach others going forward about their power and the way we have power when we work together.
Because there's way more Americans that want a country that looks like the one you discuss in your speech than those who have the myopic vision of Lana Tice.
So what did this teach you about organizing, mobilizing, and sharing power in an effective way?
Yeah, so it was a strange experience because as soon as I saw Hillary Clinton retweet the speech to 30 million followers, I was like, oh my God, my mom is going to see this.
And I talked about her in the speech.
She lives outside of Philly, so she's not usually aware of what's happening in the Michigan legislature.
So, you know, I called my mom and I told her, I gave a speech about you at work today.
And, you know, she's like, what did you say?
And I told her what I said.
And then her next response was, well, why did you have to give a speech like that?
And I gave her the why.
And my mom's reaction was, where does that woman live?
I'm coming out there.
And, you know, I got her to pop the brakes.
And a few days later...
My mom responded on Facebook where I had put the video.
And by this point, it was tens of thousands of comments and people had shared it all over the place.
And my mom finally replied.
She's like, you know, as a mom, when somebody attacks your kid, your instinct is to fight back.
She's like, but what I saw is that I raised a kid who's not only capable of taking care of herself, but standing up for others.
and I had to retract the mama bear clause.
So she and I talked probably a lot more than we had before that.
And she said something that really stuck with me in kind of the immediate days afterwards.
She was like, you know, Mal, what you did was really great, but it's not going to mean anything if 20 million people watch your speech, but they don't do the same thing you did.
And it doesn't have to be a speech on the floor, but you know, if somebody's attacking a gay kid in their classroom and it doesn't affect you, so you're not going to stand up to it, It's not going to stop any of this ugliness from kind of growing.
So I thought about that a lot.
I had the unexpected opportunity because of that speech and the impact to travel the country.
So I was in more than a dozen states in 2022.
I spoke to the NHL. I spoke at Vanderbilt's Divinity School.
I spoke at...
I spoke to Red Wine and Blue, which is a group of suburban moms who are learning how to do activism, all these different groups.
And there was a version of a question that got asked everywhere I went, which is, Everything feels so heavy.
And I know I have to do something, but I don't even know where to start.
And I started to realize, like, people get mission paralysis.
If you look around and you see gun violence and culture war issues and the rising hate, whether it's on people of color or the LGBTQ community or immigrants right now, you know, all of the kind of demonizing language.
And I think people want to help on all of the things and say, I don't have the power to do anything.
And then you just do nothing.
except doom scrolling.
So what the book is about is really taking everything that I've learned in my experience, you know, talking really candidly about I thought the fact that getting elected would solve the problems and it didn't.
So here's what I learned about how to tell a story in a really effective way, understanding who your audience is and who you have to convince to get to the change you want to make.
The power of networking your neighborhood.
You know, I think people think you have to have this big influential network.
Do you know all of the people who live within three blocks of you?
And if not, why not?
My mom, I lived in a really small village growing up, It's like one street.
And my mom would organize the neighborhood and host a town-wide yard sale.
And there was something about that that brought everybody together.
She knew everybody's name.
We didn't know each other's politics.
And I asked her about it.
I'm like, you know, how did you feel being an organizer?
And did you think what you were doing was political?
And she got so offended.
She was like, no, it's not political.
It was about bringing people together.
But the book is about telling people that's what politics is.
It's about building power and influence to create the community you want to create.
And here's how you can do it in very practical steps that I've seen work in my life, in others' lives.
And I'm really excited to get it out there.
You know, I get that question everywhere I go.
And I'm so excited for your book to come out because the thing I tell folks is like, hey, you can look around and the world seems like it's on fire.
Crisis upon crisis upon crisis.
And what that has led me to do at times is like order three large French fries and get under my duvet and eat them while doing scrolling.
And I feel even worse.
And that doesn't seem to help.
What does seem to help is I pick one thing, one place I can contribute, one organization, one issue.
I get together with other people.
And when I'm in a room, when I'm in a march, when I'm in a space, when I'm in a network of others, not only do I feel like I'm making an impact, but I feel better because I feel hope because there's others who are working towards the same vision.
And that it gives me this sense of momentum that we have a chance here, right?
We have a chance to do something to make people's lives better.
And so I love that about your approach.
David Remnick covered your speech at The New Yorker, and he said, Unhappy is the land that needs a hero, which is a famous line from Brecht's Life of Galileo.
It's quoted all over the place.
My sense is, as somebody who did not plan to be in politics from age nine and all of those kinds of things, that you don't want to be a hero, but you want to empower everyday folks to be those who participate in this power-sharing experiment we call democracy.
Does that sound like your vision?
And what is there to add to that?
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
You know, I think the, as ugly as it feels like our country is right now and as divisive as we are, the beauty of it is the United States is still the world's oldest democracy.
And in a democracy, it's of the people, by the people, and for the people, truly.
Like, it is supposed to be regular people who get into these positions.
It's not a dictatorship.
It's not authoritarianism.
It's not communism.
It's not Marxism.
It's us.
We decide what happens next.
And that can be really overwhelming, but I think it can also be really empowering.
I also know that no single person can do this alone.
And something that I have taken a lot of flack for is a frustration that I have with politicians and people who say, this is the most important election of our lifetimes.
Because it sends the message that if we just do this one thing, if we just elect this one person, and it's usually the president, right?
Totally.
That's going to fix everything.
And that just sets people up to be disappointed.
And also it sets us up to abdicate our own responsibility to participate.
It's like, well, if we just work as hard as we possibly can, you know, we're in the middle of an election cycle right now.
And this is not to say that elections are not important, but it is just one aspect of us creating this country.
And if all we do is, you know, donate and canvas and vote and then we say, I'm good.
I did my job.
It's never going to work.
So I think that that is a lot of what I hope to remind people, you know, I'm very active in this election cycle right now.
I'm supporting Vice President Harris.
I'm a surrogate.
I'm all over the country.
I'm working in Michigan.
My book comes out in March, and I was very intentional about that timing so that once the dust has settled on the election cycle and we've seen an inauguration, no matter what happens, it's for what's after that and what we all do because after that, it's our turn.
It's not who's running for office.
I think another thing I want to add is like, you know, we talked about curling up and doing scrolling, which I think is what we all do.
And I want people to realize like that is very unnatural.
This was created.
Social media was created.
We were never designed as human beings to take in so much information all at once.
And when you just keep swiping and swiping and swiping, On, you know, seeing war and fires and chaos and protests, like it's just, it's too much and it's designed to wear you down.
So I think forcing ourselves to disconnect from that and just go spend time with 10 people in your neighborhood, actual human beings, to your point, you're going to feel a lot better.
I have a three-year-old.
You have a three-year-old.
I see this with her.
She comes home at the end of the day from preschool or something and is like, hey, should I watch a show like a cartoon?
And I'm like, you know, on the days that we don't do that, the days, and these are most days we try at least, like, let's do coloring.
Let's go outside.
Let's run around.
Let's, you know, let's do a thing together.
you watch her over the course of the evening and it's like, wow, what a regulated, fun kid she is.
And then the days where it's like, you know, dad's trying to finish work or dad's cooking dinner and mom's trying to finish work.
And OK, go ahead, watch your show for 45 minutes and then we're going to eat dinner together.
Then the night goes bad.
And it's a stupid example, but it is kind of representative of like, you know, the times we spend together and we work together, we feel better and it engenders hope and inspiration.
So you talked about Michigan.
You talked about an unexpected win for you entering office.
I think Michigan has become an unexpected place in terms of state politics.
Obviously, Governor Whitmer has become a national figure.
You are a national figure.
There are others in your state who are just showing us the way to a place that many people did not expect, I should say, which is A place like Michigan becoming a place where there could be a Democratic majority in the statehouse, where you have a Democratic governor.
I know that y'all are in the fight for your lives now to keep that majority.
I'm wondering what hope that might give people because I have a lot of folks listening in Texas and in Oklahoma and in Wisconsin and in Arizona who, you know, when they write in or I see them at conferences, they're tired, they're exhausted, and it feels like this is a battle that just no matter what happens can't be won.
And so what hope might we learn from the work you've done and your colleagues have done in a place like Michigan?
Don't forget, y'all.
Two live events coming in November.
Some straight white American Jesus.
One at the University of Southern California in LA with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
And then the next night at the San Diego Convention Center.
Tickets are available now and you can find everything in the show notes.
You can also watch online if you can't be in LA or San Diego.
November 21 and November 22.
Two chances to be with us at Straight White American Jesus and a number of other great scholars and leaders.
