Christian Nationalism, Trump’s Redefinition of Religious Liberty, Signs of Resistance and Hope
Plus, the latest from Jemar, Diana, Robby, and Kristin
Dear Convocation Unscripted community,
It was so great to be with more than 600 of you last night for our second LIVE Convocation Unscripted conversation of 2025.
As a reminder, to keep up with what will be a challenging stream of news, and to help us all collectively sort out the signal from the noise, we’ll be conducting our Convocation Unscripted podcast conversations weekly for the first 100 days of Trump’s administration.
Here’s the rhythm: We’ll hold The Convocation Unscripted+LIVE on the first Thursdays of each month at 5:00 p.m. ET; on the other weeks, the Convocation team will record the show on Thursdays. And each week, we’ll post the show Friday afternoon here via this newsletter, on our YouTube channel, and on our audio podcast. (NOTE: You can click on those links to receive the show directly via YouTube or Apple podcasts.)
If you or a friend would like to join us for one of our upcoming live conversations, please be sure to subscribe to this newsletter, where we’ll send out the registration link the Tuesday before the show. We may also bring on a special guest from time to time. Here’s the schedule for the upcoming TCU+LIVE shows—we hope you’ll join us:
March 6, 5:00 p.m. ET
April 3, 5:00 p.m. ET
May 1, 5:00 p.m. ET
Tune into the new episode below. We’re all so glad to be in the struggle to protect our democracy together.
Jemar, Kristin, Diana, and Robby
Christian Nationalism, Trump’s Redefinition of Religious Liberty, Signs of Resistance and Hope
On our second live Convocation Unscripted show, we were glad to be joined by over 600 live participants. Robby kicked us off by highlighting the main findings of PRRI’s recent study of support for Christian nationalism in all 50 states, reminding us that while the 3 in 10 Americans who are Christian Nationalism Adherents or Sympathizers are enjoying a moment of extraordinary influence, they are actually outnumbered by a margin of 2 to 1 in the general population. They are neither the best of us nor the majority of us. Jemar reminded us, particularly those of us who are white Christians, that in addition to examples of courageous, justice-seeking leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we have an often overlooked resource closer to hand in the witness the Black church here in the US. Kristin and Diana talked about Trump’s jarring speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he announced the establishment of a task force on “anti-Christian bias,” making it clear that this administration’s commitments to religious liberty are narrowly focused on protecting the interests of conservative white Christians alone. Trump’s attacks on Lutheran and Catholic social service agencies are just the beginning. After discussing a dozen listener questions, we wrapped the episode by each sharing a passage about resistance and hope from our recent books.
As requested, here are links to resources we discussed in this week’s episode:
ICYMI from The Convocation Team
Trump’s Racist Politicization of a National Tragedy, and The Stirrings of a Faith Resistance
Dear Convocation Unscripted readers,
No one is talking about how they are now going after NOAA https://www.noaa.gov/ --where all our weather forecasts originate. Here in Denver we are getting the local news on this, fed cuts, buy outs offered, and how this will impact climate change understanding and preparation for everyone in the USA.
Thank you for yesterday and all the work you do. And thanks for that little bit of good news there at the end.