S6, Ep. 11: African Americans and Religious Freedom

African Americans’ knowledge traditions, religious practices, political cultures and ideas are rich resources that facilitate new concepts of religious freedom. On this episode of Respecting Religion, Dr. Sabrina E. Dent and Dr. Corey D. B. Walker join Amanda and Holly to discuss the book they co-edited, African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities. It’s  a collection of essays that provide novel interpretations of religious freedom informed by African American experiences, which are essential for a full public discourse about the topic. First released in the days before the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the second edition includes a new preface addressing the need for religious freedom to undergo a deep interrogation in our perilous times.

SHOW NOTES

Segment 1 (starting at 00:38): Introducing the book and the conversations it inspires

Dr. Sabrina E. Dent is the director of the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation. Learn more about her on BJC’s website.

Dr. Corey D. B. Walker is the dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities, and director of the Program in African American Studies. Learn more about him on the Wake Forest University School of Divinity website.

The second edition of African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities is now available, free to all. 

Dr. Dent mentioned the religious freedom course with students from religious graduate schools at historically Black colleges and universities that began many of these conversations. Read about that in this 2019 article by Adelle Banks for Religion News Service: Black seminarians take first-time religious freedom course

Learn more and read the text of David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World on the website of the National Constitution Center.

The Columbia Law School Law, Rights & Religion Project released the Black Religious Liberty Curriculum in 2024. You can see the 12-part video series and access the curriculum on their website. 

 

Segment 2 (starting at 18:51): Pushback and barriers to expanding the narrative

You can access a PDF or read a flip-through edition of the book African Americans and Religious Freedom. Visit our website for more details.

 

Segment 3 (starting 31:01): The launch event on February 28

You can watch a recording of the Feb. 28 event celebrating the re-release of the book on YouTube.

The Rev. William Lamar IV talked with NPR about the ruling that gave his church the copyright of the Proud Boys. You can listen to his conversation here.

Learn more about the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation on our website at BJConline.org/center

Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC’s generous donors. Your gift to BJC is tax-deductible, and you can support these conversations with a gift to BJC.

Transcript: Season 6, Episode 11: African Americans and Religious Freedom (some parts of this transcript have been edited for clarity) 

DR. WALKER: How do we begin to really live out a religiously plural, multiethnic democracy?
DR. DENT: It’s important for us to revisit history through these essays and through these experiences that have been shared by these authors.

 

Segment 1: Introducing the book and the conversations it inspires (starting at 00:38)

AMANDA: Welcome to Respecting Religion, a BJC podcast series where we look at religion, the law, and what’s at stake for faith freedom today. I’m Amanda Tyler, executive director of BJC.

HOLLY: And I’m Holly Hollman, general counsel of BJC. On today’s episode, we’re joined by two of our dear friends and colleagues to discuss the critical need to expand the narrative of religious freedom. Dr. Sabrina E. Dent and Dr. Corey D.B. Walker, welcome to you both.

DR. SABRINA E. DENT: Thank you for having us.

DR. COREY D.B. WALKER: I’m so glad to be here. Thank you, Holly.

HOLLY: Our colleague Dr. Sabrina E. Dent is the director of the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation, and she’s been kind enough to join us on earlier podcasts, so welcome back, Sabrina.

We also want to welcome Dr. Corey D.B. Walker to the podcast. He wears many hats, including serving as the dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity and Wake Forest professor of the humanities.

AMANDA: Yes. Welcome to Sabrina and Corey. They are the co-editors of the newly re-released book, African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities.

And today we want to talk about this important collection of essays that examines religious freedom through the lens of African American history and lived experience. And we want to step back further and examine how these conversations are too often lacking in our public discourse about religious freedom.

The second edition of the book was released February 28 of this year, but the first edition was released just days before the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, so this new edition of the book includes a new preface addressing the need for religious freedom to undergo a deep interrogation in our perilous times.

But before we dive into all of that, first I want to ask you both: What led to the creation of this book in the first place?

DR. DENT: Amanda, thank you for that question, and thank you for the opportunity to be on the podcast to talk about the book. The initial book actually came about in 2018 when we were working on the Religious Freedom African American Perspectives project.

It was a project that was funded by the Henry Luce Foundation in partnership with the Freedom Forum and the six historically Black theological institutions. And it was critically important for us at that time to create a course where people also saw themselves in the narrative.

The beautiful thing about the course is that there were seminarians — close to 80 seminarians — that participated in this course over two cohorts and had the opportunity to learn from experts and from faith leaders about this topic and think about history. However, it only extended to seminarians, and so the question was:  What about the rest of the world?

At the same time, we know historically that if something has not been written, people will say that it never happened, and for us, it was important that we wrote and documented this information and the resources so people could have access to it.

DR. WALKER: And we really wanted, Amanda, a real sprite book, a book that really can begin to think through and move through various communities and congregations and have the opportunity to really share this message. So we really wanted to limit the length of the text. We wanted to limit the length of the essays, and we wanted an essay collection that really spoke to — the essays spoke to one another.

We cultivated and curated a collection of contributors who have amazing credentials in and of themselves, but also who can reach a broad audience. We know that generally we think of a book with a ratio of one reader to one book. What we wanted for this resource and this book was we wanted one book to move to a hundred readers, a thousand readers.

We wanted it to be a pocket book, so you can place it in your pocket or place it in a bag or in a purse or in something that you’re carrying. You can carry two or three with you that you can then share. We also wanted to make sure that it was available electronically. We wanted individuals to be able to share it through their telephones. Hey, look, I have a new book; I need you to read this.

We wanted it to spark conversations, spark questions, spark creativity, and then spark inquiry around what our nation is about around this concept of religious freedom, and more importantly to spark conversations about how do we broaden and deepen American democracy.

And I just remember, Sabrina, when we first were meeting in Richmond. This was after your graduation, and we were in the basement of Proctor Hall.

DR. DENT: Kingsley Hall, yes.

DR. WALKER: Kingsley Hall at the Proctor School, and we pulled out a big white sheet of paper, and we had a whiteboard. And we had this opportunity to think about African Americans and religious freedom, to design a course. And what we did was we began to design not only this book but really a life’s work that has kept us together for close to a decade.

DR. DENT: Right.

DR. WALKER: And it’s taken many forms, and we’ve been able to talk with folks all across the nation about this. But it was really an opportunity to open up and expand our imaginations; and as our imaginations expanded, as we learned from those seminarians and as we’ve learned from conversations with members across the nation, we wanted to extend that learning.

And that was just part of one of the byproducts of this, those really creative, collaborative moments that just open up new opportunities for us, to learn deeply about our society and to also hope about new ways in which we can live together and deepen our democracy.

HOLLY: Well, we certainly appreciate how you shared that course beyond its original development and kept growing and expanding this in new ways, and how you continue to do that. And now we have a second edition.

So tell us about what made you reissue the book, reissue a second edition. Why did you need to do that, after all the work that led to the first book, and why do that right now?

DR. WALKER: Well, one thing that we realized, when we had the first book come out and we printed those, I think, Sabrina, it was over a thousand, close to 2,000 —

DR. DENT: It was a thousand copies.

DR. WALKER: A thousand copies?

DR. DENT: Uh-huh.

DR. WALKER: We had an electronic version, but folks always asked, we want a printed edition. And, you know, as much as we talk about being in our new media world and we love our technology, there’s something about the old technology and the old texture of holding a book in your hand —

DR. DENT: Yes.

DR. WALKER: — and being able to share that book. So folks were asking, can we get more copies. And Sabrina and I were like, Well, we’re out.

Sabrina would call down to me in North Carolina. “Sabrina, I don’t have any copies here!”

DR. DENT: Yeah.

DR. WALKER: So then the opportunity came. We started talking, the end of last summer, at the BJC Fellows Seminar in Williamsburg. And we thought, it’s time for a second edition, but it’s time for a second edition with a new preface. And the preface really has to speak to the importance of religious freedom in this moment.

And, of course, the new preface highlights religious freedom before and beyond January 6, and that new preface gave us an opportunity to not only add the new preface — write it and add it — but also update some of the information in some of the essays and also the affiliations of all our contributors.

And it was just a moment where we knew, given the intense partisanship in our society, given the intense contestation around religious freedom, both in the legal arena but also politically and globally — the ways in which religious freedom is mobilizing new forms of global authoritarianisms — it felt time to reissue this text and then spark a new wave of conversation. And when we think of our contemporary moment, those conversations are needed now more than ever.

DR. DENT: And I would say one of the things that was important to us in doing this new book was to make sure that we captured the essence of the significance of not just the essays, but what it means to also Black life in America.

Corey talked about how, you know, we had this conversation around the time of the BJC Fellows Seminar, and so one of the things that Corey had presented in his presentation down there was talking about David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.

And so when we thought about how we wanted the cover to look, we were very intentional about the messaging that we wanted to happen, that the art work now on the front of the book actually features the torn paper from the text from David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, which was written in 1830, and that it actually symbolizes the ongoing quest by African Americans to realize a truly just and equitable American democracy for all people.

And also, just looking at the design, the torn edges serve as a visual reminder of the unfulfilled justice, which is a theme that’s central to the collection of essays that are in the book. And so just like Walker’s vision outlived him, we believe that this book’s second edition continues to have urgent conversations on religious freedom and drawn from African American history, culture, and the ideas of really reimagining its meaning today.

So it was not anything that we took lightly when we designed this second cover. People can definitely see the differences from the first cover to this cover, and that there was a lot of intention that went into this work. And I’m grateful to the designers at Open Tomorrow that took our vision and brought it to life.

AMANDA: Yeah. It’s really such a striking cover that, again, will, I think, entice people to pick up the book and pass it on to friends and leave it in those community places and those little free libraries and all of those places that more and more people can encounter this amazing work.

And I often think, you know, it was right when you published it, but it’s really right and needed right now. And when we see the active erasure or attempted erasure of people from American history — and I’m really noting just what’s happening around the world and in our country right now, where any effort to include diverse perspectives on history is somehow seen as an initiative that threatens American history in a preposterous way. I think it’s so important to have this resource available for more and more people to reflect on and to share and to think about.

You know, it’s really central to the work, of course, that we at BJC have been doing to grapple with the truth that religious freedom has been white too long, to de-center a white perspective and add more diverse perspectives and lived experience to our understandings of religious freedom, in a way that will help us appreciate religious freedom in a more fulsome sense at a time when it is so under attack —

DR. DENT: Yes.

AMANDA: — in this country and around the world today. I’m really curious, since it has been out for several years and now we’ve had kind of this recent re-release, what are some of the responses that you’ve gotten from the book, over the years and more recently as well?

DR. WALKER: Well, I think, Amanda, you hit on one of the key themes that we really wanted to amplify and make available to a broad public. It is really to develop an understanding and conceptualization of religious freedom as multiple, as plural, as dynamic, and as changing as our society changes. It is not a static ideal, you know, born in the neighborhood of Jefferson and Madison, and then just plopped onto the world and stays static across space and time.

Instead, it is a dynamic, vibrant, contested, contentious concept that has evolved over space and time, from a very narrow conception of what religious freedom could be, particularly with its latent Christian supremacist understandings, to the ways in which we understand how religious freedom is being mobilized in new ways of Christian nationalism that are afloat in the world today, particularly in our nation.

So we want to begin to rethink that narrative, that narrative arc, that gives us this great, heroic narrative that we began from this wonderful point that’s all-inclusive. We have some flaws, but that’s all we have to do is go back to reclaim it. Instead, we want to create a sense of contestation around the term itself, so that we can begin to develop new meanings around it, fresh understandings and fresh orientations.

And in this moment where diversity, equity, and inclusion is really a war on democracy, education, and immigration, which is a war on the very idea of society, the very idea of the human being, the very idea of human community, we have to begin to lift up and express new understandings and fresh orientations to how these ideals call us to develop a deeper democracy, a broader democracy, and in a world that is deeply interconnected, a democracy that just does not stop at the borders of the nation, but one that affirms the worth, value, and dignity of human life across the planet.

DR. DENT: Yeah. Amanda, I want to add to that, what Corey said. When I think about your question, I also think about like who are the people that reached out when they first heard about the book and the importance of the book?

One of the people that comes to mind for me is Welton Gaddy, a former executive director or president for Interfaith Alliance. And I remember when Welton received a copy of the book and he read it, and he was like, These conversations are long overdue; this is necessary; people need to talk about the many different perspectives, especially this, this particular perspective around African Americans and our experiences and how we’ve been perceived throughout time and history.

And that was very significant, to have Welton to reach out and want to do that and to be with me.

But the other person that was significant — and we’ve had a number of interviews or conversations around this book, but — was Liz Reiner Platt, who is at the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School. I thought it was very significant. I remember over a year ago when Liz reached out and said, Sabrina, I’m thinking about doing this curriculum called the Black Religious Liberty Curriculum, to look at the role of race and the law.

And specifically she said, I want to make sure that I’m not overstepping any boundaries in terms of the work that you’re doing. And I told her, Absolutely not. I was like, You’re not, because you’re looking at it through the legal lens.

And Corey and I had a number of conversations over the years, in talking about how legal experts needed to take a closer look at the way in which race was being treated by the law and how certain things applied to certain communities and didn’t apply to other communities, and so how that disenfranchised communities.

So it was very significant to see Liz take this so seriously and to have other experts that are not necessarily legal experts — right? — but come from many different disciplines, to say, Let us look at this differently, to see how religious freedom has been treated differently among the different communities and the ways in which especially Black people in America have been treated.

And so I thought it was powerful that she was inspired by our work and by this book to really expand her legal work and even offer it to law students, and also to the public, because this curriculum is available to the public.

And that’s the thing about it is that someone could read this book and be inspired, no matter what discipline they come from, no matter what background that they come from, and say, I have a moral obligation to do something about this, more than just reading the text. Right? It’s like, what do I do, now that I’ve read this text; what do I do now that they’ve brought this to our attention/

And so I’m grateful for the work that Liz has been doing with us. And, you know, she was also at the book launch that we had. But it’s so important to have those intersecting voices and perspectives, and people to look at it, and also call out what we actually see happening in the public square.

AMANDA: Yeah. And I’ll say, not that I speak for all law schools at all, but I think we need more of that. We need more of the perspectives that are brought forward in the essays, helping inform what’s happening in the legal academy, and thinking about these issues. And so what a wonderful story about how that’s already happening.

 

 

Segment 2: Pushback and barriers to expanding the narrative (starting at 18:51)

AMANDA: I’m also curious. I can’t imagine that this has been without some conflict or some tension along the way. It should, if we’re really troubling the waters in the ways that we need to. So what are some of the barriers that you’ve encountered when bringing these perspectives to the public discourse on religious freedom, because often the mythology, the mythology of a white Christian nation often looms large in conversations around religious freedom in ways that can be really detrimental.

DR. WALKER: One of the key things is what you just highlighted, Amanda, is really the mythology. Politics of nostalgia sort of surrounds the ways in which we understand religious freedom. And in many ways when we take it up in our respective discourses, the legal discourse, a political discourse, a discourse around democratic theory, those discourses tend not to speak with one another.

And so we have a rarification of those nostalgic memories around religious freedom, and all too often, because the legal becomes the arena of how we begin to adjudicate these competing claims, the legal discourse, the juridical discourse takes precedent.

But that discourse then drops out and leaves out the deep rich textures, the deep rich histories, the deep rich complex narratives that really make up those moments that are congealed in those legal moments. So we have individuals who wonder, How do you think a richer, more textured notion of African American history can really help me understand religious freedom? Religious freedom is a concept, an ideal that really is best expressed in our Constitution, and it’s one that everyone should ascend to.

I mean, it’s one that we just take as normal, but what we tend to do and what we’ve done through these essays is really tease out how those flat notions of universality really consolidate some deeply hidden biases, some deeply hidden prejudices that really normalize the ways in which we understand religion as uniquely Christian, religion as uniquely white, and religion as really operating within those organized communities of religious faith that we’re accustomed to.

So when we have the expansion of religious freedom across the 20th century, we have to look to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we have to look to folks like the Nation of Islam, who really begin to expand our understanding and orientation of what religious freedom means in a deeply plural, multiethnic population that is the U.S.

It also reminds us that we’re undertaking an experiment that has not happened before in the history of the world. How do we begin to really live out a religiously plural, multiethnic democracy that affirms the worth, value, and dignity of all of its citizens and all of those who seek to become citizens? That’s the real challenge, and in many ways, it is a discursive challenge.

It is a challenge for us to begin to imagine new ways in which we can really — our concepts, our ideas, our ideals can really reflect the deep diversity that is basically a fact of human existence. So our challenge has always been that. Some of the challenges are with those deeply contested conversations.

I like to call them “contested conversations,” simply because with a conversation, you’re entering a terrain where you might actually be changed as a result. Conversations are risk-filled endeavors. They’re wonderful opportunities for us to be changed. If you go into a conversation and are not changed, it just reinforces more of the status quo. Then the question has to be: Are we really communicating in a robust manner?

So you’re going to read stories that then challenge those normative ways of America, not as nonviolent but America as violent; America not as democratic from 1776 but as a nation that is evolving into a democracy that becomes a multiracial democracy only in 1965 and only on certain conditions; an America that is always already deeply ambivalent about immigrants and immigration that we see throughout the 19th century and throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century; an America that deeply is conflicted about the value of a diverse public education, an idea that only comes about as a result of Reconstruction; and mostly importantly, an America that is deeply ambivalent about valuing the worth, value, and dignity of all people, considering the genocide of Indigenous peoples as well as the ways in which we’ve seen the marginalization and denigration of those individuals who are not deemed normal, who are not deemed average, and who are not deemed a citizen.

AMANDA: There’s a lot of history that needs to be understood more deeply, and I’m just pausing, because I just think that’s such a sweeping way to think about, you know, how much work there is to be done. So this is such an important resource to help with that examination and with those conversations.

DR. DENT: I think the barriers, in my experience and my research, have been that once the conversation of race — once the word “race” comes in to connection with anything — it puts up a defense for some people, and that’s because America has not done its work in addressing white fragility and also addressing the history in this country around race.

And so, you know, Corey talked about it, the denial of rights, and anyone who does not align with or identify as what the standard of whiteness is in this country is pretty much someone that experiences the underside of religious freedom in this country. And I think that is important for people to remember. And so, you know, it goes back to citizenship.

But I think the other part of it is what Corey mentioned, is that a barrier is when people fail to understand how these issues, how this history and the issues that we see right now also have impact on people’s everyday lives, that it’s about one person’s ability to be able to live and to thrive in society versus another person to have more power, more privilege because they might identify a certain way.

And so I think there are a lot of barriers when people don’t make those connections, and that’s where for me conversations about Christian nationalism come in, and people understand also that Christian nationalism, you know, not being Christianity or Christianities — right? — that it’s this ideology, but when they’re not put in that ideology in connection with a lot of the public discourse that we see happen or the bills that are coming up that are causing harm to communities that have already been marginalized.

And I think that it’s important for us to revisit history through these essays and through these experiences that have been shared by these authors, to say, Oh, well, let me look at this a little bit more closer, to see how this has impact for the communities that are around me or the communities that I’m connected with and also ultimately the people that you say you love and support.

HOLLY: Well, I really appreciate both the naming of the barriers and the continued work and effort and inviting conversation, because we all know that through conversation, we can connect in ways sometimes that we don’t expect to. And as Dr. Walker said, you know, it takes some bravery. We have to open ourselves up in conversation, to be able to learn from each other.

And so it’s a real gift that you have put this book together. You’ve published it in physical form, so people can have it in their hands and they can drop it off and share it with people. And then you did something else really nice, and that is you made it available for free. And, you know, it’s valuable, and so things that are valuable, we pay for. Right? That’s part of the American tradition, too. Right? We give money to things we care about it.

But at times, also, we’ve got to give things away. Tell me your thinking about making this free.

DR. WALKER: Well, one of the things, I’ve never been very good at making money for myself, and this is one resource — of everything that I’ve published, this has been read more by more folks. And I said, Gee whiz —

[Laughter.]

DR. WALKER: — you know, you could have a dollar or two up there. But, no. We really felt this project was guided by a deep ethic. We believe that with the very inherent possibility and dignity of all people in our nation and in our world, that we need as many gifts and tools to not only develop and cultivate that deep humanity that we need in the world, but also provide those tools and share those tools with one another.

This really is not anything for Sabrina and I or even our contributors. It’s really a resource that comes alive in those catalytic moments when individuals are captured by a new idea, a fresh perspective, a new orientation, a new understanding. And then that enables them to open up new opportunities for living, new opportunities for engaging society to better the human condition, and new opportunities to deepen democracy.

That’s the deep ethic that underwrites this particular book. That’s the ethic that underwrites it in its second edition. And if I could, I’ll read from that last paragraph of the new preface, which really encapsulates this ethic.

We write, “At the conclusion of the introduction to African Americans and Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations and Communities, we suggest that critical explorations of religious freedom and African American life, thought, and culture might ignite a new religious freedom for a new America. Despite the precipitous rise of religious authoritarianisms in the United States, we remain ever hopeful that this small book may be generative of new understandings of a broader, deeper religious freedom in America.”

That’s really everything, our hope, our ethic, our intent, and most importantly, this is the gift that we have the opportunity to share with our fellow citizens and with our nation. And it’s underwritten by that deep hope, not a pessimism of the present but truly an optimism of an infinite future.

HOLLY: Well, thank you. Thank you for making it available for everyone and for creating it with that spirit of being for all of us.

 

 

Segment 3: The launch event on February 28 (starting at 31:01)

HOLLY: I know you guys had a great event on February 28 to reveal the second edition of the book, and before we close, we want to give you a few minutes to hit some of the highlights about that. You know, when you have a conversation with people in the room, it takes on a life of its own.

DR. DENT: Yes. One of the things I appreciated about the book launch was the fact that we had two of the nine contributing authors to participate in this event, Rev. William H. Lamar, who is the pastor of Metropolitan AME Church, here in Washington, D.C., and also Rahmah Abdulaleem who has been working with us for a number of years and actually is a co-chair for the American Bar Association, Civil Rights Division. And I think that’s something powerful to be stated there within itself.

And so we had a number of incredible experts as well as Liz Reiner Platt with the Law, Rights, and Religion Project. What stood out to me was each of the experts brought their own perspective and leaned in to this content. I thought it was powerful how Liz talked about the legal field and needing to take a closer look at this information and really do the deep work, to ask the hard questions and sit with it, and at the same time, how Rahmah reaffirmed the role of faith communities in being there and supportive of African Americans and how we live and thrive.

And so one of the things that I appreciate is something that she wrote in the book, where she’s talking about the beauty of religious pluralism for African Americans in times of crisis. And she talked about how masjids have supported different movements, but how also churches were right in the heart of the civil rights movement.

But she ended it by saying, “In all, African Americans have used religious freedom and drawn on their own religious pluralism to survive and thrive in America.” And I thought it was so important to have her to like write that piece and reflect on it at the launch event, but then also to hear Rev. William H. Lamar talk about the Proud Boys and the case that they won, that Metropolitan AME Church won the legal rights to the Proud Boys name and how they’re capitalizing on it by making money, having shirts with the names of the Proud Boys on it.

But it was more than just that. It was more about, you know, him talking about the experience of how having the Proud Boys to come in and try to coopt this space, this sacred space for this Black religious community, but really to just talk about how it wasn’t just about that particular thing but it was like a disruption in the lives of that community.

And so for them to win that case and to, as he talked about it, he talked about the outcome of the case and them using the name. He said that wasn’t novel. He said he leaned into the wisdom of the ancestors, and in history, how Black people have been creative and moving forward narratives for our advancement and for our support and for our survival as a community.

So I thought it was just so powerful how he talked about the case and how their faith community is doing the work around this issue. And so it was just so important, and I think those that attended, at least the feedback that I received from attendees, that people were excited about the book, but they were excited to hear the perspectives in the room and the conversations, and that made them even more excited to want to share the resource with others.

And that’s the thing that’s important to me and the significance to me, to see that people want to pass it on, that they’re not just keeping it for themselves and like, okay, I read this book. But it’s like, okay, I read this; now what’s next? What is my responsibility, because there are many more Metropolitan AMEs and gurdwaras and other places that will be attacked. So what will be your moral response to addressing these issues, especially as we look to what’s happening right now in the public square?

And so the event to me was very powerful, to have the audience there to ask questions. Lots of different questions came up. Corey can speak to that more than I can since he was the moderator of the conversation.

DR. WALKER: Yeah. I was thinking back to the questions that were asked, questions about what do we do now, questions about how do we deepen our understandings of religious freedom along these lines, two questions that really open up new opportunities for those who are assembled from Rev. Lamar to begin to think through, what is religious freedom now.

And a question that’s really interesting to begin to think through, when folks are looking at this deep democratic deficit that we’re in right now, folks are really questioning, well, what does religious freedom mean in a democracy that has such deep democratic deficits. How do you begin to support all religions or none when religious freedom has been freighted and been mobilized to really serve as the vehicle to support Christian supremacy in schools, to then have the repeal of reproductive rights through a Christian lens, to actually then support discrimination of those because of a particular religious orientation that’s then supported by the state?

And we have some significant Supreme Court cases, one that will come up at the end of April, around, do we have straight state funding for religious schools, charter schools. That’s coming out of Oklahoma.

Religious freedom has not been about authorizing and legitimating religious partisanship or support for one particular religious ideology in the nation. It has been about expanding our understandings of religious freedom. And the questions were really concerned about: How are we going to challenge a new narrowing of religious freedom and a telescoping of religious freedom to support these new religious provincialisms that are operating in our public sphere?

That’s really a challenge that continues to reverberate in my imagination right now and in my thinking. I’m going to give a talk over at our law school in April here at Wake Forest where we’re going to be wrestling with the questions around what happens when — we’re going to revisit the famous Walker v. Birmingham case, but we’re going to contextualize it in the Birmingham campaign. What happens when you teach a law case that reaches the Supreme Court without its context?

What happens when we have renderings of the majority that actually strip out the contextual dynamics that are at work, that then have individuals who are not legally represented in our legal discourse, but then who are subject to it. In many ways this becomes the issue of taxation, in a sense, without representation. How do you have religious freedom and individuals aren’t even thought of as being religious?

We’re in a very precipitous moment right now, and it’s not something that’s just — that we can then say, This small book’ll provide us with the response. But what we did learn from the launch was it ignited questions, and that’s the most important thing, because as we’re reminded by the great philosopher in Truth and Method, Hans Gadamer. Questions mean the answers are not given. They’re not certain. And as long as there are questions, the answer is not given and there are openings for new ways to respond.

We’ve had a number of questions, and those questions continue. Let’s hope we can keep the space open for new, deeper, broader responses and not a narrowing and atrophying of religious freedom that then gives us new forms of authoritarianism.

AMANDA: Well, you have both given us so much to think about, about what questions need to be raised. I love that. We don’t have to have the answers. We need the questions in this moment, and that creates the space for the fuller understanding of religious freedom that has been far too limited throughout American history, and it’s certainly being threatened right now.

So as we close, any final thoughts for our listeners? It feels like we just got going. But what would you like to leave the listeners with today?

DR. DENT: Yes. I just wanted to encourage the listeners to go online, go to the website, and get the book. Download the book. Share it with other people.

But I also just want to pause and say thank you to the contributing authors. Corey and I didn’t do this book by ourselves. It was the thought leaders, the faith leaders such as Rahmah Abdulaleem, Ambassador Suzan Johnson Cook, Sharon Grant, William H. Lamar IV, Keisha I. Patrick, Teresa L. Smallwood, Eric Williams, and, of course, my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Corey D.B. Walker who really made this book possible.

It’s because of them, their passion for this work and what they do in the world, that made it possible for us to share this collection of essays with all the listeners and those that will have access to receive the book. And so I want to say thank you to them.

And I also want to say thank you to BJC. In the work that we do at the BJC Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation, we’ve been committed to looking at religious freedom through a broader justice lens, and I’m grateful that my boss, Amanda, you have made it possible for me to have the space to do this work and do it with integrity, and also showing the support in many different ways. And so this book is made possible because of BJC’s support. And so I am just so grateful, and I wanted to acknowledge that before we go.

AMANDA: I just want to add my thanks to you both for your scholarship, for your editing of this incredible volume, and for your generosity of time and spirit today to share with the Respecting Religion audience. This has been a wonderful time together and great to share it on our podcast.

DR. DENT: Thank you.

DR. WALKER: Thank you so much.

HOLLY: And that brings us to the close of this episode of Respecting Religion. Thanks for joining us. The second edition of the book African Americans and Religious Freedom is now available, and you can read it for free. We have a link in our show notes to access the book and to learn more.

For additional information and for a transcript of this program, visit our website at RespectingReligion.org.

AMANDA: Thanks again to our fantastic guests today, Dr. Corey Walker and Dr. Sabrina Dent for joining us.

Respecting Religion is produced and edited by Cherilyn Guy. Learn more about our work at BJC defending faith freedom for all by visiting our website at BJConline.org.

HOLLY: And we’d love to hear from you. You can send an email to the show by writing to [email protected].

AMANDA: We’re also on social media @BJContheHill, and you can follow me @AmandaTylerBJC.

We also want to thank you for supporting this podcast. You can donate to these conversations by visiting the link in our show notes.

HOLLY: Join us next time for a new conversation Respecting Religion.