the more perfect union with Rev. Adam Russell Taylor.

episode preview.

[00:00:02] Adam Taylor: I think, a lot of fears of white Christians, white evangelical Christians in particular, that they were somehow being displaced, that they were losing their influence, that the kinda culture wars were ultimately gonna be won by the other side, quote, unquote. And so I really don't think that you can counteract what I think was a more ahistorical and dystopian vision with no vision at all. Like, you have to have a more positive unifying vision,

That vision is to build a society where neither punishment nor privilege is tied to our race or our ethnicity or our gender to our ableness, et cetera. And it's to build a country where everyone has an equal voice, everyone is equally respected, and where everyone is enabled to thrive, and where our growing diversity is viewed and treated as a strength and not as a weakness or something to be feared..

episode intro..

[00:02:01] Mike: Well, you're listening to The Underview, an exploration in the shaping of our place. My name is Mike Rusch, and today Monica and I sit down with Reverend Adam Russell Taylor, the president of Sojourners.

[00:02:12] Mike: Let me set the table because today answers a question we left hanging. In our last conversation with Dr. Andrew Whitehead, he gave us the diagnosis. He showed us what happens when faith and nation get fused into a single thing. An ideology that decides who belongs in a place before anyone ever gets introduced. And he told us where change begins, a person of faith saying from where they sit, "This is not okay," and then finding the others.

[00:02:39] Mike: But as a community, if we stop at only naming what's broken, it is only half of the work. Because the answer to Christian nationalism was never going to be faith going quiet. No one in this season has asked anyone to leave their faith in the parking lot of their public life, and we're not starting now.

[00:02:56] Mike: The whole season has been built on the opposite claim, that faith shapes this place. It always has. It's the question we are trying to answer together for the benefit of everyone who calls these Ozark Hills home.

[00:03:08] Mike: So the question in front of us isn't whether faith and public life get woven together. They already are, in our school boards and in our county buildings and in our capital.

[00:03:17] Mike: The question is how.

[00:03:18] Mike: If the broken version is faith used as a lever for power, what does the whole version look like? How does a person carry their deepest convictions into shared civic spaces without those convictions becoming a weapon?

[00:03:31] Mike: Not whether, how.

[00:03:33] Mike: That's why we invited Reverend Taylor to this table. He leads the organization that Jim Wallace founded, a community that has spent five decades insisting that biblical faith and social justice belong in the same sentence. He served at World Vision, led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank, worked in the White House as a fellow, And wrote a book called A More Perfect Union about rebuilding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of the beloved community. He is also here because he is a pastor, ordained in the American Baptist tradition and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, a Black church lineage with the civil rights movement in its bloodline.

[00:04:08] Mike: That's the tradition that read the same Bible as the fusion we've been studying and arrived at the opposite conclusion of where Christian nationalism stands today. And it has woven faith and public life together for two centuries without apologizing for either.

[00:04:24] Mike: It is not a visitor to this season. It has been at the table since June when Pastor Jonathan Lowder of St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Fayetteville talked about a congregation of enslaved people worshiping in Fayetteville before the Civil War.

[00:04:38] Mike: And here's maybe the tension to hold while you listen. This show asks who belongs in this place. Reverend Taylor has spent years asking who is included in "we the people." Those are the same question on two different scales.

[00:04:51] Mike: In our last episode, we asked a sociologist to look at this place from the outside. Today we ask that same question of a pastor who is also a practitioner.

[00:04:59] Mike: Listen for what travels and what doesn't. Listen for whether the beloved community is still a North Star that we can navigate by or a memory that we're mourning. Listen for the guardrails that Reverend Taylor provides, and listen for where he says the work actually begins, because he won't say Washington, DC or Little Rock. We have to ask ourselves if it is beginning here in the Ozarks.

[00:05:21] Mike: I would expect that this episode is gonna cause some wrestling, and as always, we wanna hear what you're wrestling with. There's a Send Us a Voice Message button on the underview.com homepage, and your questions are shaping where this series continues to go.

[00:05:34] Mike: All right, we've got a whole lot to work through today.

[00:05:36] Mike: Let's get into it

episode interview.

[00:05:41] Mike: Monica and I have the privilege of sharing a table with Reverend Adam Russell Taylor, who's the president of Sojourners. And so, uh, this is a conversation about what is a national organization and a national leader working within spaces of what faith and community, and civic engagement looks like. So we're really excited to have Reverend Taylor here, and really just welcome to this conversation. Reverend Taylor, thank you for being a part of this conversation and bringing your voice here

[00:06:05] Adam Taylor: Thank you. It's really an honor to be with you

[00:06:07] Monica Kumar: Thank you for being here

[00:06:09] Mike: Well, Let's get started. I would love at your discretion to give a little bit of introduction of yourself and your background and your work there at Sojourners which is really... i'm biased, of course. I think it's incredibly significant. But I would love for maybe you to speak and just give us a little context of kind of where you're coming from today and what that looks like

[00:06:26] Adam Taylor: Yeah. So I mean, I have been with Sojourners off and on for almost 20 years in different roles and capacities. So I joke it's kind of the through line throughout my resume. And I was on the board for a number of years. I was on staff and then left, and then ultimately came back in order to engage in a leadership transition with the founder of Sojourners, Jim Wallace, and ultimately took over from him the president and been leading the organization for a little over five years now.

[00:06:55] Adam Taylor: Sojourners is a ecumenical Christian organization, so that means, we speak to and inspire and equip Christians from pretty much every tradition, from mainline Protestant to Catholic to evangelical to Black church, which is my tradition, to the peace church and more. what kind of binds us together is a deep and abiding belief that our call following Jesus leads us to a deep commitment to advancing justice and peace in our communities and our nation and the world. And I mean, literally, our mission is to articulate the biblical call to justice in ways that inspire hope and that ultimately help to build and strengthen movements that create change. that was A real attractive and alluring mission for me because a lot of my really kind of the arc of my life has been centered around how to revitalize and strengthen social movements that can create real transformation and that, can protect human dignity, that can enable human flourishing, that, I think are so often rooted in faith, so often inspired by faith.

[00:08:11] Adam Taylor: So I'll just say a brief word about kind of my origin story 'cause it kind of ties into this. My mother and father made the decision to get married in nineteen sixty-eight, just a year after interracial was legalized through the case Loving versus Virginia, and I was just, such a... I don't think it's coincidence, kind of a providence of history that the that, enabled anyone to marry each other was named after a couple named Loving. My mother is Black and grew up in segregated Louisville, Kentucky. My father is white and grew up just outside of Cleveland. They fell in love and a time when that was not popular, and in some cases was literally banned in many places, ended up starting a life together as a married couple in Bellingham, Washington.

[00:08:58] Adam Taylor: They both got jobs at Western Washington University. And they instilled in me this really strong belief that, one, kinda my generation, Generation X, now I'm aging myself here, but our generation inherited the unfinished business of the civil rights movement. So in other words, the baton has kind of been passed on to us, I really internalized that at a young age.

[00:09:22] Adam Taylor: I became really mesmerized by the civil rights movement and tried to read everything I could get my hands on, from Taylor Branch's books to watching the Eyes on the Prize series, which came out when I was in middle school And then they also instilled in me this really strong belief that our nation's racial and ethnic and religious diversity is a real strength and not a weakness, that my own as someone who is both Black and white a real strength and not a weakness.

[00:09:53] Adam Taylor: And one of the ironies my perspective is that some of folks the including some of my own family members, particularly on my dad's side, that really tried to convince him not to marry my mother, one of the, the main reasons they would use is that their children, in other words, myself and my brother, would be hopelessly lost.

[00:10:13] Adam Taylor: We wouldn't have a strong sense of community that, we would not have a strong sense of identity. And the irony in that is that I actually feel like my biracial background has enabled me to be a br- bridge builder in all kinds of ways, not just across race, but across other differences as well. And you might hear this come out in other places in the interview, but my, my family were huge Marvel fans, like Marvel Uni- universe fans. Actually our dog is named Marvel. I like to put this in Marvel terms, that I really believe that one of the greatest, if not the greatest superpower of the United States is in its incredibly rich diversity, racial, ethnic, religious and more. throughout our history, there have been many that have treated that superpower like a form of kryptonite, and I just switched over to DC Comics there.

[00:11:04] Adam Taylor: But literally something that makes us weaker, that we should be afraid of, that can even be fatal, right? there's been a tug-of-war throughout our nation's history around whether we truly expand who we the people fully include, includes in terms of all the rights and privileges associated with that, and then efforts to try to limit that, to con- to contract it, to exclude many that don't fit a particular people's vision for what the country should be and who should be centered in the country. I really feel This work of celebrating our diversity and recognizing that, diversity comes with challenge, it comes with disagreement, it comes with, discomfort. But I think on the other side of that, there is such incredible strength, and I've certainly been able to experience that, not just kind of within my life, but also within my faith life, where I also feel like there's a need to celebrate some of the diversity that exists within the Christian tradition.

[00:12:06] Adam Taylor: And sadly, Dr. King said many years ago, Sunday is often still the most segregated hour in American life. And so I think a lot of the divisions and polarization that we're seeing in our society at large is in part because of just how polarized and segregated we are as as people of faith, including Christians.

tradition.

[00:12:26] Mike: Thank you very much. I think one of the thing that's really i- interesting to me is that you talk about the diversity within faith traditions and maybe how that relates to you personally. I, I believe you were ordained in the American Baptist tradition and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, which came to emergence in 1961 when clergy committed to the Civil Rights Movement.

[00:12:46] Mike: You talked about this, that this kind of inheritance has been given to you. I'm curious from your own tradition, like what does it mean to you to walk in the inheritance of that tradition today?

[00:12:59] Adam Taylor: Yeah. So The Progressive National Baptist Convention in particular formed by Dr. King and his father and others 1961, partly out of a concern, a frustration that the National Baptist Convention was kind of lukewarm when it came to its commitment to civil rights. I mean, I think sometimes there's kind of this, this misnomer that we can easily have about history that, the majority of Black churches were deeply committed to the civil rights movement and were on the front lines of activism and everything else. And the reality is it was still a minority of Black churches, still a substantial number, but a minority of them that were deeply involved. And there was a, kind of a leadership challenge and disagreement. There was an election, essentially, and there were very different visions that were put forward for what direction the National Baptist Convention should go. And one vision was, very much aligned with Dr. King and including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The other one was to retreat, to kind of try to, know, de-politicize, if you will, the m- the National Baptist Convention and its commitment to civil rights. Ultimately, I can't remember the name of the person who won, but the Daddy King Dr. King's father, was the candidate that would have taken it in a more civil rights direction. He lost, and And there was some controversy around the results. Ultimately, Dr. King and Daddy King and others decided that they would... It was kind of a moment of reckoning, and they decided to split off and form a separate denomination that would be much more committed to the cause of civil rights and social justice.

[00:14:41] Adam Taylor: I the reason why that's important to me is that, and I think this align- this directly aligns with what I just shared about Sojourners, I don't think you can disaggregate or separate a commitment to justice from a commitment to following Jesus. I think the two are interwoven and are inseparable. And that doesn't mean then that we all have to have the exact same politics or have the exact same views on policies, 'cause politics is extremely messy, and there's a lot of different ways to get to some shared goals and destinations. But I do think that, we literally follow savior that in his opening s- sermon quoted the Book of Isaiah and said, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news to the poor, lend sight to the blind, to set the captives free, and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He's literally talking about this mission that I think is directly connected to the cause of justice, and it's not, to reduce all of what he said and stood for to just justice. But we also can't know, separate it. We can't remove it from who he was. We also can't forget the fact that ultimately he was arrested, falsely arrested, and ultimately tried, convicted, and crucified for the political crime of sedition And his message directly challenged the religious lu- leaders of his time and the political leaders of his time. And I think that's an important part of what it means who Jesus was and what it means to follow him. Sadly, one of the things that I have ended up doing a lot in, in my career is kind of challenging two extreme views that exist within the church, and they...

[00:16:33] Adam Taylor: These... There's actually more than this, but I'm just gonna name two of them. So one view is that any engagement with politics is inherently corrupting, and that ultimately faith is personal, it's private, it is not something that we should be fa- sharing publicly, and that, Christians should just be disengaged from politics entirely. Sometimes you actually see that as a really prominent of view within many Baptist churches, because this kind of commitment to the separation of Ba- of church and state is just so enshrined within the Baptist worldview. And I do believe strongly in the importance of that. I'm a big fan of Roger Williams for that exact reason. But I don't believe that a separation of church and state means that we separate our faith from the public realm, I actually believe that we are kind of doing a disservice to our faith when we don't actively engage in our political system, particularly in a system of democracy where our voice is so often our influence, where v- by voting, we signal what we care about, and we hold leaders accountable to those values and those priorities.

[00:17:46] Adam Taylor: And I recognize we live in a flawed democracy. It's never been perfect. It's always been a work in progress, right? But, I really think that when we withdraw, we are essentially giving license, we're kind of giving our com- complicit- complicity to whatever the status quo is. And to me, that really is just a way of kind of ceding too much of our faith and ultimately not living into God's call on us to be God's instruments of justice, of righteousness, and of steadfast love. flip side, can have I would call a Constantinian faith, right? So remember Emperor Constantine in the 4th century who converted to Christianity. I don't know his heart, but, many schol- scholars believe and historians believe that he was being pretty calculating when he converted, 'cause he saw just how much Christianity was spreading as a movement and decided that he would convert, and by converting, he was able to co-opt the Christian movement within the Roman Empire. this, this kind of complete merging of Christian identity with political identity is also a real danger, and that is what I have seen and what I've tried to resist, and certainly Sojourners has tried to resist within the American church context really since its beginning. Sojourners was founded in 1973, just around the same time that the religious right as a movement was coming into and again, I mean, I think we can't know where we're going until we know where we've been. and telling history accurately is really important particularly in a time when history's being whitewashed and erased and censored in so many different ways. The history of the religious right's really important because a lot of people today that the religious right was founded as a movement to oppose abortion, because that became its animating issue. The reality is that the religious right was really a creation of the political right. It was a deal between Paul Weyrich, who was a, a Catholic political operative within the Republican Party, and Jerry Falwell Sr., Very prominent pastor and religious leader. They formed a kind of Faustian bargain with each other where they wanted to convert White evangelicals in particular, particularly in the South, into a loyal voting bloc for the Republican Party. And the first issue that they chose was not abortion. That didn't come until six or seven years later.

movement background.

[00:20:20] Adam Taylor: There's a historian named Randall Balmer that does some really good work on this. issue they chose was the forced desegregation of Christian colleges and schools because of the passage of the 1964 voting r- or Civil Rights Act, one of the crowning achievements of the Civil Rights movement. That act, many years later, was starting to force, schools, colleges like Bob Jones University, and lots of Christian colleges and schools across the, the South to integrate, and they decided that was gonna, generate a lot of resi- resentment and resistance. And so they kind of used that issue, tapped into the anger around that issue, to try to form a political movement. And think the big mistake they made is, one, they chose an issue that I think was very racist at the time, and still is today. But also, they decided to essentially try to fuse their movement within one political party. I believe deeply in the lordship of Christ. I do not believe in a lordship to a political party or to a political figure, and certainly to just an i- ideology. And so the religious right as a movement became essentially an appendage of the Republican Party, and that movement over time, particularly in the last 10-plus years, has mutated and morphed into the current Christian nationalist movement of today that has also become aligned with and is loyal to not just a political party necessarily, but to one political leader in our current president in President Trump. And so to me, that is the danger of idolatry. That is the danger of kind of overly politicizing and weaponizing your faith. So as Christians, I think we have to find a middle way, and that middle way, again, is not a completely apolitical faith, but it can't be the kind of fully politicized faith that we're seeing on the right

[00:22:17] Mike: Goodness gracious. We're gonna jump right in here, aren't we?

[00:22:19] Monica Kumar: I know. I would love to, before we do jump right in can I just go back a couple... Can I just go back a little bit? W- you brought up the social realm and what faith and your faith tradition looks like in the social realm. And I wanna go back to this idea of rootedness and ask before we move into a little bit more about your vision and the book and your, that you've written and especially beloved community.

[00:22:46] Monica Kumar: Before we do that, can you share, going back to the side of root- idea of rootedness and can you share a little bit about stories or moments that you heard growing up or even, ancestors have shared throughout that have shaped your understanding of faith, your understanding of your place in this country, in the community?

[00:23:07] Monica Kumar: I, I would really love to explore that and maybe stay a little bit personal before we move into a bigger vision space.

[00:23:14] Adam Taylor: When I went to... I ended up going to college in Atlanta, Georgia, and really deeply grateful that I got a full ride scholarship to emery and literally one of my first Sundays there, I made a pilgrimage to Ebenezer Baptist Church, so the spiritual home of Dr. King. And growing up, I grew up in, in Bellingham, but then when I was 16, we moved to Tucson, Arizona. My mom became the first Black vice president of University of Arizona, I was not thrilled about that uprooting right before my junior year in high school. But it made me realize just how much I actually like change, and how much I want... I could benefit from being in a much more diverse environment. anyway, I ended up Emory in part because I wanted to trace some of that history of the civil rights movement back to the South, and understand kind of what does it look like to more fully realize the goals of that movement in the place where the movement started, right? And so I ended up at Ebenezer, and up until that point, I mean, I certainly was a, a, a person of a faith of...

[00:24:20] Adam Taylor: I was a Christian. Had been involved in church kind of off and on throughout my childhood. But I think that I had kind of treated my f- my relationship with Jesus in a little bit of a kind of almost arm's length way. I hadn't fully surrendered, if you will. Just use that word. And I hadn't fully understood or embraced why a redemptive, personal, transformational relationship with Jesus was really the heart of the kind of step of faith that I ultimately wanted to make. And so when I was in this service, one, I mean, the preaching just seamlessly wove together a commitment to justice with a commitment to accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. then, later, I up, know, getting baptized for the first time, and really felt like I wanted to make a more public acknowledgement of my faith. and I'll fast-forward a little bit where I an opportunity to study abroad in my year of college. And I was able to go... Actually, it took a lot of convincing of my university, but I was able to use my scholarship to go into a program in South Africa. And so I spent, six months in Cape Town, just a year and a half after Nelson Mandela had been elected the first Black president of South Africa.

[00:25:52] Adam Taylor: It was like y- just a really euphoric time to be in South Africa. Still a lot of struggle and a lot of pain, but also a lot of joy and euphoria. And I remember at the end of that year, I had It's a longer story but basically, into that program was a, a internship that I ended up doing with an organization called ACCORD, the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes. And I was charged with teaching conflict resolution skills to a group of young people and young people, that definition's very fluid in South Africa. Most of these people were much older than I was. I was, what? 20 years old. so I felt way over my head, and many of these young people had literally sacrificed so much of their to the anti-apartheid struggle, and some of them had been tragically pulled into political violence that had happened in the lead up to that election.

[00:26:50] Adam Taylor: Either they were perpetrators of some violence or they're victims of some violence. And they were trying to kind of figure out what this new South Africa meant for them, and I was supposed to be the one teaching them these skills that I barely understood myself. And I basically internalized a huge amount of their pain and ended up falling into a real depression. Didn't really use those words at the time, but as I look back, that's certainly what it was. didn't know how to lean on my faith in a time when I desperately needed it. fast-forward a little bit, the program ends, and I was kind of lost, and I ended up... my, my girlfriend at the time came all the way over to do a service project and to spend time with me, and I didn't know how to relate to her and kind of ex- explain to her what I had been through. And so I ended up l- kind of leaving essentially and going to Zam- or to Zimbabwe and spent a week traveling across Zimbabwe and ultimately ended up at Victoria Falls. And, it is, considered one of the wonders of the world. It is... I don't know if it is the largest. It's certainly one of the largest waterfalls in the world. And as you approach Victoria Falls, the, the sheer amount of water creates this just wall of mist, and as you get close to it, it just soaks you. And when I approached the falls, I was feeling all this guilt about the situation with my girlfriend, about just kind of running away from facing so much of what I needed to face, I literally just felt overwhelmed with the grace and forgiveness of God.

[00:28:28] Adam Taylor: I could feel God's presence, and I fell on my knees, and I just surrendered entirely. And really was, I think, the most definitive moment where I really did accept Jesus into my heart and gave my life entirely. No, no exceptions, no, no clauses, no... You know. so, so that, that is a big part of my faith story. I f- I generally am passionate about my faith. I'm passionate about what it means to be committed to the Great Commission, to spread the love of Jesus across world. And that's one of the reasons why I am just so pained and, at times exasperated with the ways in which I think Jesus has become a the, essentially the victim of identity fraud. And so much of what I see you know, kind of some Christians and some Christian leaders, particularly on the right, stand for feels like it's a complete antithesis to the teachings of Jesus. And I know that, you know, I'm not trying to disregard Paul, and I believe in the importance of the Old Testament as well, so I'm not... but I do think that as a Christian, you gotta start with the red letters. You gotta start with the words of Jesus. You gotta start with the teachings of Jesus, right? And so don't get that cor- correct, and if we're not starting from that start, that shared starting place, it is very easy to go astray.

[00:30:01] Adam Taylor: And I just... I really feel that if we're able to more, more fully and courageously embrace the words of Jesus, and that and again, it goes back to what I said before, including a real commitment to justice to live out a commitment to justice in a more deep and radical way, that actually could be one of the most powerful forms of evangelism and of rehabilitating the church today, which again, is something I'm deeply committed in, committed to. And I've been able to see some of this happen in my interactions with local congregations all across the country. So anyway, just wanted to kind of connect those two things together.

the beloved community & where we are today.

[00:30:37] Mike: And you can just tell from your story that this life of this relationship between faith and justice is at the core of that. And after obviously 20 years with Sojourners this is the work. I'm gonna assume this... You're gonna keep doing this, obviously. This is not going away anytime soon. And we're thankful for that.

[00:30:55] Mike: I know you wrote a book in in 2020 that was really the inspiration, A More Perfect Union is the name of the book. Where you gave us this idea of this new vision for building the beloved community, and this was 2020.

[00:31:06] Mike: We're in 2026, obviously. It feels like the world has shifted a little bit.

[00:31:11] Mike: In your book you talked about that, you write how "the beloved community cannot be defined only by what shouldn't happen, but it must be defined by a positive vision of a preferred future where our differences are not feared or scapegoated, but celebrated, and where protecting human dignity becomes a sacred and shared responsibility."

[00:31:30] Mike: And I'm curious, as you think about the time maybe when you wrote those words, and culturally where we are today, and how faith and justice has arrived in this world, how do you place yourself? How do you see the, the... or interpret the, the events of where we are today in light of maybe where you were, six years ago, and maybe how has that changed?

[00:31:54] Adam Taylor: Yeah, it's a really great kind of provocative question. So l- let me just say a word about the beloved community, and then I will definitely link it back to your question.

[00:32:03] Adam Taylor: So the beloved community was a kinda moral vision. Literally, the, the term beloved community was kind of coined by Josiah Royce, who helped to co-found the Fellowship for Reconciliation, and organization still exists today.

[00:32:19] Adam Taylor: Dr. King was a member of it, Dr. King kind of grabbed ahold of this notion of the beloved community and then really helped to it life and popularized it. When Dr. King had his first kinda major victory, campaign victory in Montgomery, he gave a speech where he literally said that the end goal of the civil rights movement is redemption. The end goal is reconciliation. The end goal is the creation of the beloved community.

[00:32:50] Adam Taylor: So for him, he saw the beloved community as kind of the North Star for the movement. And so I, read a lot of what he had to say about the beloved community as well as like what other leaders like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer and Congressman John Lewis had to say, it resonated deeply with me, this deep commitment to nonviolence, to agape love, a kind of selfless and sacrificial love, a commitment to equality, which, certainly at its best is ingrained within our Constitution, liberty and justice for all. but what I realized is that while that vision almost was like a glue that held together a lot of the civil rights movement and then kind of was a North Star in terms of what it was trying to achieve, far beyond just some of the more specific victories around civil rights and voting rights. I felt leading into the 2016 election that we as a country were really missing a kind of shared moral vocabulary and moral vision.

[00:33:50] Adam Taylor: And one of the reasons that I think President Trump, then candidate Trump, was so successful he was able to cast a vision for the country. It's not a vision I certainly agreed with, it was a vision that really tapped into a deep sense of unease and of resentment in some ways, and of fear, and of in some cases victimization, really helped to create a vision that was backward-looking rather than forward-looking.

[00:34:19] Adam Taylor: So Make America Great Again obviously was the mantra, and it was kind of this notion that our best days are behind us, right? Now, you know, I think it begs the question, was America great for everyone, including Black Americans and others, right? but it did tap into something that was very deep, a deep story, and it tapped into, I think, a lot of fears of white Christians, white evangelical Christians in particular, that they were somehow being displaced, that they were losing their influence, that the kinda culture wars were ultimately gonna be won by the other side, quote, unquote. And so I really don't think that you can counteract what I think was a more ahistorical and dystopian vision with no vision at all. You have to have a more positive unifying vision, and that's where I think the, the vision of the beloved community comes in. So when I wrote the book, I was kind of filled with a lot of hope that, this, this vision could be that, that vision, right?

[00:35:17] Adam Taylor: And I'm not naive about it. I don't think that every American is necessarily going to jump at the beloved community vision, but I think the vast majority would. And I'll just share really quickly my most succinct kind of re-imagination or remix, is a better way of putting it, of that vision, is to build a society where neither punishment nor privilege is tied to our race or our ethnicity or our gender to our ableness, et cetera. And it's to build a country where everyone has an equal voice, everyone is equally respected, and where everyone is enabled to thrive, and where our growing diversity is viewed and treated as a strength and not as a weakness or something to be feared.

[00:36:00] Adam Taylor: So I know there's a lot in that, right? But what I do about it, and I'm biased obviously, but think it's very measurable. We can literally measure whether any policy decision or any budget decision or any law either helps to reinforce and exacerbate ways in which privilege and punishment are so often tied to different parts of our identity, including race, or we can measure whether it actually helps to unravel that, right? And then, of course, I don't think anyone is gonna disagree or should disagree with a nation where everyone's able to thrive. Now how we make that happen is where we need to have the real debate and the real civil discussion. But that, should be kind of a shared goal that we have, including from a faith perspective.

[00:36:43] Adam Taylor: Think where I Maybe was naive or at least kind of underestimated where we were when the book came out, I thought that kind of MAGA movement had reached its high point of power with the election of President Trump the first time. And it's not to say that, President Biden was a perfect president. He wasn't. But I do think that, his election in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement, that really shined a spotlight on, racialized police brutality and violence. And, in the kind of coming out of the COVID epidemic where, I think it really exposed just glaring inequality in our country, including in our healthcare system but also beyond that, that it created an opportunity for this kind of shared moral vision to take hold and could actually enable us to have a kind of third reconstruction of our country.

[00:37:53] Adam Taylor: Kind of a new founding that was more aligned with this kind of vision. And I think what I underestimated was just much anger and pain many people felt still How much of a, I think, poor communicator the president and many of his allies were as they tried to kind of restore some semblance of order, of decorum, and then ultimately try to get the b- the economy back on track.

[00:38:25] Adam Taylor: I think I underestimated the degree to which the kind of white Christian nationalist movement had built such an incredible degree of infrastructure, and was doing, and had been doing such local work, including in places like , Northwest Arkansas. And then I think I underestimated the degree to which we now have, and this kind of ties into my last point, a bifurcated information ecosystem where, a lot of people are getting information that is shaping their reality that is completely d- outside the realm of, say, mainstream media, right? And so it very easy for us to of, I'll just use one example, reach a reality today where despite, courts at every single level across the land, including the Supreme Court, have ruled that there is no evidence that the twenty twenty election was stolen or of widespread voter fraud. And yet because of that completely bifurcated information system and, the degree that if you say a lie l- long enough and enough times, people will start to believe it, of Republicans in this country now believe that we have a serious issue of fraud in our elections, and they believe that the twenty twenty election was stolen. And to me, that, that is both to say the least, but it's also something that's really harmful to the health of our democracy moving forward.

shift of the religous right.

[00:39:54] Adam Taylor: The o- the one other thing I wanna say in this context is I think that there was a shift that happened with the religious right as a movement, where when it was founded, as much as I disagreed with a lot of its goals and the way in which kind of it, it got fused in the Republican Party, was still trying to persuade people.

[00:40:12] Adam Taylor: It was still trying to kind of win in the, the broader rules of our democracy. There has been a shift that has h- that happened where the Christian nationalist movement, n- particularly the strongest adherence of Christian nationalism. I do also just want to say Christian nationalism is not a perfect term. It's kind of a messy term. It's the best one I think we have to try to capture what's happening, and it's not a binary. It's more of a continuum, right? And but for those that are, like, on the more extreme end, have a b- have essentially come to the realization that they can't win If the rules of our democracy remain the way they are, and that the only way for them to really cement their control and p- power, let alone kind of impose their ideology on the rest of the country, to support a strong man, to engage in anti-democratic practices.

[00:41:16] Adam Taylor: And that's, I think one of the reasons why there's such support to Trump to this day.

[00:41:23] Adam Taylor: And that's a very different proposition. and to me, that's where I think it's really important that we've always gotta love including our enemies. I mean, that is a, clear teaching and injunction from Jesus, right? I take those red letters really seriously. I also think that there are some political movements that have to be politically defeated. if you're no longer pro-democracy, you're no, no longer even willing to pl- play in the same sandbox in terms of the rules of the game, that, that is deeply problematic, and that is something that I think we have to contend with.

[00:42:00] Adam Taylor: And I also think that, again, is a real danger, not just to the future of democracy and whether we have one, but also to the witness of the church. Because so much of this kind of hijacking of the Christian faith has done incredible harm to the reputation of the church and to how people perceive the church.

[00:42:18] Adam Taylor: And again, that, that is something that I'm really worried about.

[00:42:22] Mike: Reverend Taylor, thank you. I, I... There's a whole lot there. As you, from your role in the work that Sojourners is doing nationally, you're watching religious communities start to direct policy and - direct the terms by which people belong to a community, I, I'm curious how you see the relationship between what's happening nationally, which at times from someone from Northwest Arkansas can feel very abstract from a faith perspective that, gosh, what are we trading or trying to enforce a, a, a different version of Christianity back into our public square? And then at the same time, like, how does that really work itself out locally? How do you see from your perspective, - communities of faith that are expressing their faith through our civic public squares in a way that is moving towards or back towards this idea of the beloved community?

[00:43:16] Mike: I'd... I would love to understand how you think about the relationship, kind of all of these, national agendas, local agendas, how faith communities see themselves in the world and how they really are stepping back into or pursuing this, this vision of the beloved community.

[00:43:37] Adam Taylor: Yeah. I I would say so much of the work of building the beloved community has to be rooted in and start at a local level. I mean, it literally starts within your church, within your neighborhood, within your block. and yes, it then kind of cascades up to a national level. One, we just know that there is such, and in some cases very understandable distrust if not disdain toward national politics right now, right? And I do think that our national political system is extremely broken, and some of that has been done very intentionally.

[00:44:17] Adam Taylor: I mean, I'll just give you one example that kind of blew my mind when I first heard the statistic. In, in, in the last election, the vast majority congressional seats, so on, on the House side, obviously every member of the House has to run every two years, and we're about to face a midterm election coming up. The vast majority of those seats were not decided in the general election. They were decided in the primary. And we're probably talking about 40 or so seats that were competitive enough they were actually decided in the general election I'm not gonna make this a survey 'cause it's a podcast, but, when I ask audiences what, what percentage of eligible voters do, do you think voted in the primary, where the real election was determined?" most of the time people will say "Oh, like 40%, 30%, 20% right? The reality, and this varies a little bit, but it's typically been under 10%. Of eligible voters voted in the primary.

[00:45:25] Adam Taylor: So that means that ten percent is literally determining the majority of seats in Congress. And guess who those ten percent tend to be? tend to be the most ideologically extreme, not always, but that's where they tend to skew. They tend to have the, most strident views. that is part of what has pushed both parties. I think it's not it's not symmetrical. It's m- happening in a much more intense way on the right, but it is happening on both sides toward the extremes.

[00:45:55] Adam Taylor: And that is a structural problem. in part because so many states across the country, most recently in places like Texas and elsewhere, have gerrymandered their districts beyond recognition so that they can ensure that they are safe seats for a Republican or in some cases a Democrat. And I think that's a real betrayal of the kind of core democratic values of our system. So I'm just using the example of where, I, I do think that there's a lot that needs to be healed and fixed and reformed at a national level to kinda heal our politics. But a lot of that can't even happen until there's real change at a local level. And so again, I would start local. I think that, for Christians that care deeply about justice, it's really important that they get more involved in local conversations about, what's happening in your school board, what's happening, with a whole range of very local things that impact your community. And, I know that sometimes that means having to, I don't know, argue with other Christians that might have a very different point of view. But if we don't show up, then those, those louder voices are certainly gonna dominate. And so I gu-- I think that's, that's one piece. The other piece is that... and actually Sojourners has developed a whole series of tools and resources around this. We have it through what's called the Faith & Practice Forum that folks can avail themselves of.

[00:47:22] Adam Taylor: But I really feel for pastors, particularly in this day and age. I mean, I think they already had one of the hardest jobs in the world, and now it's been made that much harder because of how polarized things have become. a lot of pastors are trying to navigate all this, right? And, I know, as I've said before, I think some pastors have been a part of the problem in, weaponizing their faith for partisan and ideological ends. But the majority haven't, and yet many of them are really struggling.

[00:47:51] Adam Taylor: They don't wanna further divide their congregation. They also don't agree with a lot of things that are happening. They don't like the, the tone and tenor of our politics right now. But they feel stuck or they feel like they don't have the support that they need. And know, I think that the local congregation should be the place where if we were truly in a commitment to being one in Christ, as Jesus literally prayed in one of his, final prayers.

[00:48:20] Adam Taylor: Literally said that we should be as one as Jesus and his Father are one. and if we were truly rooted in a a, a primary commitment to our faith, which supersedes any other commitment and affiliation we have, the church should be that place where we can have the hard conversations, as long as they're rooted in some shared values.

[00:48:44] Adam Taylor: And again we glean those values from the teaching of Jesus and from the Bible. And so we developed a curriculum called Bridging Divides that really tries to help pastors navigate some of this and be able to create the space in their church to have some of these hard conversations, and ultimately try to build up more civic muscle so that their churches can engage in a healthier way in our politics. So I'll just name that as kind of a concrete, resource that folks can take advantage of. But I even though I do work at the national level I see more hope at a local level. And I do think that the work of the beloved community, it literally starts at the most micro level, and it builds up

[00:49:20] Mike: Reverend Taylor I love hearing the hope that you have.

[00:49:23] Mike: As you're working nationally and you're talking about, y- you mention how pastors are like, "This is really difficult." I'm curious for you to lean into that a little bit more to, maybe to the pastor who's listening or maybe someone who's sitting in a church pew on most Sundays, what would you ask of them? What would you want them to hear about what you're seeing nationally and how this vision can really work itself out in a local community ?

[00:49:45] Adam Taylor: I would really encourage them in this moment to take seriously the dual to be both pastoral and prophetic. I know that many of them, I would imagine felt called to being a pastor because they wanted to care for folks, they wanted to deepen their faith, they wanted to, share the love of Christ with others and draw people into the faith. In other words, they would probably lean more on the pastoral side of their role. But we also know that part of being a pastor is also to help shape people's understanding of how to apply our faith to the messiness of this world and the injustice and the sin in this world. And it's important that they, at times, are willing to... they should always try to speak truth, so I think there's kind of a inherent commitment to truth. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth sh- will set you free." So lies and conspiracies, which have become far too rampant in our public life and discourse, and of course, on social media, literally w- keep people captive, right?

[00:50:56] Adam Taylor: 'Cause it's the truth that will set us free. they need to hopefully embrace a greater commitment to truth-telling, but also a commitment to kind of speaking to the consequences when, leaders of all different times, types, not just political leaders, but certainly could be leaders in the business world, et cetera, start to a commitment to service with a commitment to selfishness. When they start to replace a commitment to the common good with a commitment to greed and self-enrichment. they replace of commitment to, caring for the most vulnerable to supporting things that directly harm the most vulnerable, or that blame those who are vulnerable for their condition. So I do think that this is a time when it is important to take some risks particularly to stand for the gospel in times where it's being very much challenged, and in some cases is under assault. I guess I would just encourage them to not underestimate much their congregation still listens to them and seeks their guidance to make meaning of the world. And they're not the only voice they're listening to. We understand that, right? But they are still a really critical one, and not to abdicate that responsibility particularly in a time when it's so needed. So are a few things, but I recognize that it's gonna look different for different pastors.

[00:52:29] Adam Taylor: This isn't kind of a one-size-fits-all approach or prescription. what I would encourage them is that, they're not alone. There are organizations like Sojourners that are here to support you and to, give you resources. this is, I think, a real inflection moment in our nation's history.

[00:52:51] Adam Taylor: And, you know, I know that there's been a lot of comparisons to where we are with, of Nazi Germany and the Weimar Republic, et cetera. The example that I actually have been referring to, and this ties back to our conversation about South Africa, but, in, in, at the heart, height of the anti-apartheid struggle, there were many South Africans that really felt in the 1980s that they were in the throes of what is described as a kairos moment.

[00:53:16] Adam Taylor: So we kind of know time based on chronos, time as we know it, and then there's kairos, time that really is determined by God, particularly where can enable transformation to happen, can kind of give birth to something new. and we have to constantly try to be attentive to what, What is kairos? What is chronos?

[00:53:40] Adam Taylor: And South Africans really believe that oftentimes , kairos happens when things around us become so fraudulent and so unjust that it creates a real reckoning. I think we are seeing some of that happen in our midst today. The climate crisis, the degree of inequality in our nation and around the world, the potential benefits, yes, but also real danger and threats of AI, super intelligence as it's being now called by the Trump administration. kind of, as I've to, the real efforts to undermine the freedom to vote and ultimately this next election. And so I think in that context of kairos, it is so important that we as faith leaders are willing to stand in the gap, are willing to do some of this truth-telling, and are willing to really tap into the kind of resilience and courage that is so often woven into our faith, 'cause we're gonna need it in the days to come.

[00:54:43] Adam Taylor: And I think that can be extremely inspirational for the people in your congregation as well as people outside of it, who again, are kind of watching and, listening to what you're doing. And so that can be a real powerful force for drawing people back into the church who maybe have, because they felt disappointed or excluded or abused.

shaking apolitical christians out of hibernation.

[00:55:04] Mike: I can't help but think as I'm listening to you that this engagement in faith being limited maybe to a local church within itself is not necessarily a, a, a bad thing. In your book that you had written I love this. You talked about, you said "you must shake apolitical Christians out of their hibernation because the pursuit of the beloved community is at the heart of the work of the church," and I think that makes sense to me. It probably makes sense to most people.

[00:55:29] Mike: We have a lot of really political Christians today, though, right? And that be probably majority supporting to your point that you made earlier supporting the Republican Party, and in a place like Arkansas, where we have a supermajority state, we also have the privilege of being the number one state that's been identified to, to hold Christian nationalist views . so it feels like this call to being involved in politics at least in the state of Arkansas has kinda grown in one area and maybe not in the other area, or in all areas, for the lack of better words.

[00:56:05] Mike: And so I'm curious, as you think through kind of like shaking apolitical Christians out of their hibernation and this, if the time is now because of, of where we are, this kairos moment is such a... this idea of being a prophetic voice in our space, what does this look like for the everyday person about how do we know we've entered this in the arena that's a really healthy space that's representative of, what we would think of as the call of Jesus to be in these spaces?

[00:56:35] Adam Taylor: Jesus us as Christians to be salt and light. And I say that or I start there because I think, salt to together, it preserves things, and light illuminates, right? And so I really think that we as Christians are meant engage... It is important for us to engage in politics because that's at least critical way in which we can create change, in which we can protect the most vulnerable, the way in which we can uphold human dignity. It's, a way that we can actually live out the kind of purposes for government that the Apostle Paul outlines in the book of Romans, where he... paraphrasing, but he basically says the two main purposes of government are to restrain evil to provide for the common good. and I think that is kind of at the core of what government is supposed to be about, right? And so what I think that we need are some, some guardrails that can help kind of govern how we engage in politics so that we don't get seduced by the temptations of politics. The temptations of power, right? Power I think does seduce. the temptations of greed. These are literally the temptations the devil tempted Jesus at the end of his 40 days of wandering the desert. so,

[00:58:05] Adam Taylor: A couple of the guardrails that I've talked about and emphasized is that as Christians, we should be political but never partisan. And what I mean by that is that, it's hard in a two-party system like we have, for all intents and purposes, in the United States. But I don't think that We should be, loyal or kind of aligned Forever to one political party. That and kind of the, what's tied to that is that our faith doesn't fit neatly into the broken political options that we have as a nation, right? no party is going to fully consummate what our faith will demand. Put another way, the kingdom of God is never on the ballot fully, And we have to contend with imperfect choices, and when one party tries to make an argument that they are the party of God or they own God, I think that is a sign of idolatry, right? so that's one thing and I'll just say in the context of Sojourners, throughout our history, we have really resisted a kinda label of being the religious left. because we don't think that our faith fits neatly into these different categories. And, ultimately we have had a strong critique of the Democratic Party, and we've had a very strong critique of the, the GOP. So the other kind of core principle is that we should be principled but never overly ideological. we all, have different ideological leanings. We all have a worldview in terms of how we see the world and how we want the world to look. But a kind of extreme ideology says that there's only one particular to achieve some kinda goal. And, the world is much c- more complicated than that, and so is politics. And so what we should have though are some shared principles, and I think after reading the 2,000-plus verses across the Bible that talk about God's particular concern for the oppressed, the vulnerable, et cetera, that we should share as Christians a particular principle that our politics are going to try to prioritize those who are most vulnerable, gonna try to find ways to protect them, to help lift them out of poverty or help to ameliorate their situation. that isn't a left-right thing. That's not a Republican-Democratic thing. That is a first order principle of what it means to be Christian thing. if we started there, that we could, be a much more powerful agent of change in our politics. I've written a lot about how have been frustrated that neither party has really prioritized a set of public policies that would, fully address the scandal of poverty in our nation that has been with us for a very long time. so anyway, so that, that's another one. Another one is that we should be engaged in our politics but not used by our politics. we know that there are politicians and political leaders that so often kind of want to have faith leaders be in their corner to baptize what they're doing, and I think that is a real risk.

[01:01:32] Adam Taylor: We wanna make, try to make sure that we can influence across the board and try to get them to commit to the things that we believe are so important. I mean, I could share more, but I just wanted to name a couple of examples. again, I know this is hard, but I think if we have some of these, guardrails in place, it really helps to protect the Church and Christians from, know, the kind of temptations of our politics, and ultimately enables us to engage in a healthier way that I actually think is gonna have bigger impact over time. The last thing I'll just say really quickly is that I have been pretty outspoken about how I don't think it's healthy for our politics for the Democratic Party to cede faith to the GOP. And, I'm speaking in broad terms here, but, there's kind of a perception within our electorate that the Democrats are reticent about faith and in some cases are hostile toward people of faith. That, that's a non-starter, or should be a non-starter. It, particularly in a country where the vast majority of Americans still identify with a faith tradition. Now, I don't want Democrats to be sectarian with their faith. I don't want them to try to kinda put in place a theocracy like we see in some parts of the right. But I also think it's really healthy for them to talk more about how their faith guides them and inspires them to care about the things they care about, and we're actually seeing that quite a bit in this election cycle, which is why I think some of these candidates, including, the pastor of the largest Methodist church in the nation Adam Hamilton is really getting so much traction because, he is authentically talking about his faith and applying that to a lot of the, the issues that are affecting the people of Kansas.

[01:03:20] Monica Kumar: No, I really appreciate that, Reverend Taylor. And it feel, these are all questions that I'm thinking about, too.

interfaith communities.

[01:03:26] Monica Kumar: As we're kind of closing, I would love before before we move on to kind of our final questions, there's something I'd love to, for you to speak on. Because this whole season we've really been talking to people of different faiths and that was kind of our, our goal, was to think about what does faith, what has faith traditionally looked like in Northwest Arkansas, and then what has it evolved into and developed into. And so can you speak just a little bit on what and why multi-faith communities I mean, working together and action together in communities and how that could be powerful and why is it important for that to happen?

[01:04:03] Adam Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that the kind of growing religious diversity in our country, again, is just a real gift. It's a real strength. And- In many ways, I mean, we have been a, a multi-religious country from our inception, right? And it was of an American invention in some ways to enshrine in our Constitution a commitment to religious liberty and to reject the establishment of religion. It was quite radical for its time. I think the founders did us a favor by, know, giving us commitment in our Constitution. Now, there's been lots of efforts to weaken it, to unravel it as of late. But I think, it, it really gives us the kind of foundation for so much of the work that needs to happen.

[01:04:53] Adam Taylor: I've been really inspired by the degree to which, the movement that inspired me the most, the civil rights movement, was multi-faith. I mean, yes, it was anchored in the s- in the activism and vision of the Black church. But, so many Jewish Americans were deeply involved. I mean, the deep friendship between, Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Dr.

[01:05:16] Adam Taylor: King, was an example of that. But you also had Hindus and Buddhists and many others that were also supportive of the movement and active in the movement. And, fast-forwarding to today, kind of the flagship campaign that Sojourners co-leads is called Faces, so Faces plural, United to Save Democracy. And it literally is a multiracial, multi-faith campaign that is working across the country, particularly in, in nine battleground states where we've seen some real efforts to suppress the votes of Black and Brown voters and in some cases young people and elderly voters. And we are working to try to ensure that everyone is able to exercise their freedom to vote because we really believe that is a faith imperative in addition to something that's really key for a healthy democracy. And we have been... The kind of the, the highlight of that program is we train what are called poll chaplains and peacekeepers who are faith leaders. They could be clergy. They could be rabbis. They could be imams literally are trained in basic election law and in de-escalation training to provide a moral presence at voting-- polling places all across the country. And for me, like that, that's just a really beautiful of like people of different faiths coming together protect our democracy in a time when it feels very vulnerable. So yeah I, while I lead a Christian organization and I think it's, crucial to kind of ensure that we're kind of reaching Christians with the Christian message a lot of our campaign work is in multi-faith contexts, and I think they are often stronger as a result.

fears.

[01:07:01] Monica Kumar: Thank you so much, Reverend Taylor. I'm thinking back on our conversation today and reflecting on it, and we started with ancestry and history and rootedness. And I would love before we move into the question of love and beloved community, can I ask you about fear? And what are your fears for this, for your community, for our community, the South, really for our country?

[01:07:27] Monica Kumar: What are some fears that come up for you as we're moving forward, especially as we're moving into the midterms, we're moving into, yeah

[01:07:35] Adam Taylor: yeah. So not to get overly academic, but I think we're in the middle of what a lot of political scientists call a period of authoritarian consolidation. And, for some people, authoritarianism can feel abstract or it can feel hyperbolic, But when we look at what the Trump administration has been doing, checks the boxes of, almost all of the playbook of what authoritarian-style leaders do in other parts of the world, from Orbán to Putin to Bolsonaro and more.

[01:08:12] Adam Taylor: And one of those boxes is when you try to sow chaos and uncertainty into the election system, and you try to put your thumb on the scales to ensure that election outcomes go in the way that you want them to go. we are seeing steps being taken by this administration to do just that. so one of my fears is that we are gonna have some kind of election crisis, and I don't... there's lots of different ways this could shape. But we've already had the president basically say the only way that he can lose is if there's mass cheating. He's already been doubling di- down on the lie that there's widespread voter fraud, even though The Heritage Foundation, which is certainly not a bastion of progressivism, if you will, has studied this since 1982, and they've only found 100 cases of non-citizens voting and being convicted of illegal voting in our elections.

[01:09:05] Adam Taylor: So we know that, this has been a lie for a very long time. I'm saying this because I think that it could be everything from, putting pressure on local officials not to certify the election. That then could trigger a real national crisis. It could be if there's, protests in response to ICE agents being in and around polling stations in neighborhoods to create a climate of fear. That could then cause the president to, invoke the Insurrection Act and try to deploy the military. a whole series of different scenarios that I'm really worried about, and so we're actively preparing to try to ensure that we can respond as needed with, certainly non-violent resistance as needed.

[01:09:47] Adam Taylor: I'm also just really worried about the, the, the incredible attack on our commitment to fairness as a nation and our commitment to trying to make some amends for some of the harms that have come before us. Let alone like efforts to try to rewrite and whitewash our history. And I think that's a serious issue.

[01:10:15] Adam Taylor: And the last thing I'll just mention, I mentioned this earlier but certainly, as someone that has high schoolers, I'm really worried about kind of where, I'm really worried now, but I'm increasingly worried about where we'll be, 10 years from now in the context of a growing climate crisis that is, creating, wreaking havoc when it comes to the weather and other things. And, the, the painful reality of that is like we, we know what to do to help get us out of this crisis or at least help to reverse it in some ways particularly when it comes to renewable energy. So I'm hopeful that we will be able to get back to some of those commitments and solutions.

[01:10:54] Adam Taylor: But right now, things are looking pretty bleak.

wholeness.

[01:11:00] Monica Kumar: So then can I ask you I wanna pull on the threads of your vision for a beloved community, and as we're moving forward for our community, for our region, and then really for our country, what does wholeness look like to you to your tradition, to the Sojourners? What does that look like?

[01:11:23] Adam Taylor: My, my definition of justice is actually tied to wholeness. To me, justice is about restoring right relationship between ourselves and God, ourselves and our neighbor, ourselves and whoever we deem the other to be, and ourselves and all of creation. And to me, that, that is about a kind of a restoration or at least a a pursuit of a greater sense of wholeness, right?

[01:11:48] Adam Taylor: And I think that one of the things that I'm trying to do is convince a lot of Americans that this us versus them, zero-sum mentality that has kind of gripped our politics, let alone just like the outrage machine that we see on social media, is literally kind of a vicious cycle that's gonna lead us to further dissolution as a nation. And that there is another a way that is so much more aligned with our faith. In my case, a Christian faith, right? But I think it's aligned with other faith traditions as well. And, that is so often tied to believing we are so much better when we give everyone opportunity, when we lean into the core civic values of our nation, right?

[01:12:50] Adam Taylor: Of, of liberty and justice for all. When we really understand that, our thriving is very much tied into the thriving of others, particularly those that are most vulnerable. So anyway, there, there's lots of ways that I could describe this further, but I mean, that's... I think that's the core of it.

closing.

[01:13:12] Mike: Reverend Taylor, thank you yeah, for your time and I'll take that definition of wholeness any day of the week. So I think it's a, a wise word to be able to pursue this idea of wholeness.

[01:13:23] Mike: And I just wanna say thank you for your time and for the work that you're doing and Sojourners is doing, and how you're speaking truth into these spaces and helping us really understand here in Northwest Arkansas, how do we think about what it looks like for our faith to move from what happens on Sunday into a place of Monday in a way that is pursuing the integrity of what that faith should be.

[01:13:42] Mike: And so we're just very thankful for your time and we'll be watching and following along, and we'll share all of the information we can about how to get connected back to Sojourners and the programs that you've mentioned to make sure that if people have questions, they have a way to follow up with you. And so thank you so much for being here this day. We really appreciate it

[01:14:00] Monica Kumar: Thank you, Reverend Taylor

episode outro.

[01:14:04] Monica Kumar: Well, an incredible thank you to Reverend Taylor. I'm grateful for his time, for his candor, and the way that he's carried this national story and ours in the same conversation. We've included a link to his book, A More Perfect Union, in the show notes, along with the Sojourners resources that he named, the Bridging Divides curriculum for congregations, and the Faith and Practice Forum, and the FACES campaign that trains chaplains. We told him we'd share those, and they're all here.

[01:14:34] Monica Kumar: I want to start where he started, with a wedding in 1968, one year after the Supreme Court said that his parents were allowed to marry each other in a case that happened to carry the name of a couple called Loving. He grew up holding the unfinished business of the civil rights movement in one hand and a conviction in the other, that this country's diversity is its greatest superpower, and that there have always been people who treat that power like kryptonite, something to fear, something that makes us weak.

[01:15:08] Monica Kumar: That's the tug of war that he named running from the founding to this morning. Who gets included in we the people? And if you've been with us through this season, you already know that that's the question that this show keeps asking about the Ozarks. Who belongs to and in this place?

[01:15:31] Monica Kumar: Last episode, Dr. Andrew Whitehead showed us the broken weave. Faith and nation fused into a tool for deciding who this land is for. Today, Reverend Taylor told us what actually belongs woven together. He said a commitment to justice and a commitment to following Jesus are interwoven and inseparable. And then he gave us some guardrails. Political, but never partisan. Principled, but never overly ideological. Engaged in our politics, but never used by our politics. And one sentence that I'm going to be carrying for a long time, that the Kingdom of God is never fully on the ballot.

[01:16:16] Monica Kumar: And then he said something that leads us right into this part of our season. He shared what he knew and understood when he wrote his book. He named the infrastructure the Christian nationalist movement has been building. Patient work, local work. And then he said, "Including in places like Northwest Arkansas." We did not hand that to him. He's a national leader sitting 1,000 miles away, and he named our own place.

[01:16:45] Monica Kumar: We've spent this whole series trying to describe the water that we're swimming in, and he can see and feel it from Washington, DC. But notice where he put his hope, because he put it in the exact same place that was named as the danger. He said the work of building the beloved community literally starts within our churches, within our neighborhoods, and within our blocks.

[01:17:12] Monica Kumar: He said that after all of his years working at the national level, he sees more hope and optimism at the local level. The same ground where the patient organizing happened is the ground where the reweaving and rebuilding starts. Both of these movements know the same secret, that this gets decided and built locally.

[01:17:38] Monica Kumar: And to the pastors and faith leaders listening, he saw you today. He said something you already know, which is that your job is already one of the hardest in this world, and this moment has only made it harder. He said the call right now is to be both pastoral and prophetic. And then he said something we hope you listen to and will hold on to. Do not underestimate how much your congregation and your community still listens to you and still seeks your guidance to make meaning of the world And even though you're not the only voice they hear, you are still an incredibly critical one, and you are not alone.

[01:18:22] Monica Kumar: Reverend Taylor called this a kairos moment, the moment when things grow problematic enough and unjust enough that something new can be born . Whether this moment becomes won't be decided in Washington, DC or in Little Rock, it will be decided in places exactly like ours. And when I asked him what wholeness means, he tied it into justice, and I think he gave us the season's answer in one line. " Justice Is restoring right relationship between ourselves and God, ourselves and our neighbors, ourselves and whomever we decide the other is, ourselves and all of creation

[01:19:02] Monica Kumar: Friends, that is a communal theology of place, a shared understanding of what we owe each other on this land, in this place, wide enough to hold everyone who calls the Ozarks home.

[01:19:15] Monica Kumar: So here's the work this week, and it's maybe smaller and more significant than we think. Somebody in our orbit is living on the far side of the word neighbor, the immigrant family, the coworker who voted the other way, the kid with no religion at all. Reverend Taylor's call is to cross that distance that shows how the weave gets rewoven, not at the capital, but at our table.

[01:19:43] Monica Kumar: This season sets out to understand how faith shapes this place, its culture, and its forming. What we heard today is that the shaping runs in both directions, and the pattern is not fixed. The same faith that can be braided into a claim about who this land is for can also be braided into a table big enough for everybody.

[01:20:06] Monica Kumar: Reverend Taylor gave us a vision old enough to trust and a lifetime of evidence that the weaving can and should be done. The question that he leaves us with is very simple: Will we do it?

[01:20:20] Monica Kumar: For everyone that's been listening, I want to say thank you for being the most important part of what our community is becoming.

[01:20:29] Monica Kumar: This is The Underview, an exploration in the shaping of our place and our faith.