Passion & Policy: Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

This week, Interfaith Alliance takes a giant step forward in our ability to advocate for the critical issues that are top of mind for most of us: religious freedom, democracy, protection, advocacy for justice and equality. That's because joining the organization as senior director of policy and advocacy is Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a very familiar and respected figure in this work.

Guthrie has served cornerstone roles at the BJC, the Center for American Progress, and the National Immigration Forum. Guthrie is the author of the book Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity, and I'm very happy he's joining us on Monday as part of the team at Interfaith Alliance, as well as today on The State of Belief.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to you, Guthrie!

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS, GUEST:

It is such a great honor to be with you today, Paul, and to join this organization. I have admired the work of Interfaith Alliance for a long time, and am just filled with joy and an honor to be joining the organization at this critical time for our democracy.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. I mean, it's not like anything's going on, you know? I'm just so excited for you to join the team and all the expertise, all the passion, and just, like, in your heart. And I want to get into that, because the work that we do is in your heart and in your spirit. It's so great to have you as a partner in this work. You know, we're in just such a kind of an amazing moment. And Interfaith Alliance is celebrating 30 years. We were started as a response to the Christian Coalition: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, who were kind of saying, we own religion and we're going to tell you what religion thinks. And I think one of the really important things we can do right now is say, no, you don't. And this kind of metastasized Christian coalition into Christian nationalism, which is, I would say, even more kind of militarized and virulent than its predecessor. I didn't think that was possible, but it feels that way. And it's important for us to step up in this moment, representing religious diversity, religious freedom, and the ideas of what it means to represent what we believe is the appropriate role of religion in America that the founders intended. So, welcome!

I know you've really thought a lot about this, so tell me, but more importantly our listeners, a little bit about where you come from. Like, where did you grow up and how religion functioned in in your upbringing?

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Sure. Thanks for that question. And I'm very grateful for the way I was raised in a progressive Methodist church in Houston, Texas. My parents were labor union organizers, and so I was raised in a progressive political environment. And also, you know, learning the teachings of Jesus. And they always seem like two sides of the same coin to me, the work of justice - whether that's economic or racial or social justice, and then what I was learning in church.

And I was raised in this activist family and quickly took to that, in my own life, and then also to church life, being someone that was super involved in church. I preached on Youth Sunday as a teenager, and went on mission trips, and to church camp, and was just super involved in religion. And from an early age I was reading Sojourners Magazine and just felt a call to this work of faith-based advocacy as a teenager. And I just dreamed of working in it. And it was a dream that I didn't know exactly how it would work out, but I've been very fortunate now, for over twelve years, to be able to have found a career and worked in faith-based advocacy. A dream I had as a child that has now become real, and it's my life's mission.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

It is really, dreams come true. But I think, you know, sometimes I just think it's really important for those of us - because I also was raised in a, you know, I thought of it as kind of milquetoast at the time; looking back, it actually wasn't milquetoast. It just felt like church, you know, but actually we talked about racial issues in church and we talked about abortion rights in church, and we talked about other things.

And, and so when people talk about the Christian tradition, I'm always like, well, you have to honor my tradition too. You know, I come out of a very important religious tradition in America - and I want to get into this, because you've really talked about this - the progressive religious tradition is a really important part of the religious tradition in America, both how it manifested itself in the White Church amongst White social gospel, but also in Black churches and Black social gospel, and within the Catholic Church and some of the, you know, Dorothy Day, but others. Other teachings. So it's just really important.

I really appreciate you going into your tradition as a foundation of what brings you to this work. And maybe you can just tell us a little bit about the book that you wrote and how that felt to kind of go deep into that tradition that we are a part of, and kind of owning: the progressive side of that, actually, is a real tradition in America - in fact, you could argue, the most important tradition in American Christianity.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

I hate when people say conservative Christians are traditional, and then juxtapose that against progressives who are trying to change things against tradition. No, we are part of a long, bold tradition of following Jesus to the work of justice. And that is a tradition that I felt in my family. So I write about that in the book. I dedicate the book to my grandmother, who had this profound influence on me as someone who most modeled the love of Christ in my life to me and everyone she encountered, and that included taking… She would often write a little Bible verse when we'd go to a protest, whether that was protesting the invasion of Iraq or on the picket line with my parents and their union work. And so she modeled for me this tradition that I seek to carry on. And, of course, that tradition is in so many different communities all over the world. We see different manifestations of liberation theology, the social gospel. I was fortunate during my time at seminary - I went to Union Theological Seminary and got to take a class with Gary Dorian on the Black Social Gospel and then of course, study Black liberation theology with James Cone. And so in so many different communities, we have seen this long history.

And it was actually as a young adult when I first realized that wasn't the norm, which was sort of a, my mind was blown. It's like I had female pastors most of my life. And then I discovered that in a lot of traditions, that wasn't the norm. And then I discovered the Christian right. And I'm fortunate in so many ways for this tradition I was born into, that I had, in Houston, Texas, a Methodist pastor who was on the cutting edge of saying that LGBTQ rights was a calling for her as a Christian pastor. And then even though I didn't come out, myself, as a gay man until college, I heard that message as a high school student from my pastor. So this tradition is the water in which, you know, I was baptized and raised and came to follow Christ myself.

And it's in every community we see, no matter where you look: the environmental movement, the movement for human rights around the world, women's rights - no matter what, every corner of the progressive movement has a deeply embedded faith component in it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Right. Well, I mean, you could say it was one of the first movers of social justice. So one of the great privileges - and I think you and I share this -1 is out of our religious commitments comes a commitment also to religious diversity, and the recognition that every single tradition in this country deserves every single right that Christians deserve, as well as secular and atheist people. Everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. It's the thing that the founders got most right, and I know that part of our work is working alongside people of different faith tradition.

And so talk about that. I mean, I think that's one of the great privileges of Interfaith Alliance is that, you know, in our name, in our mission is working alongside people who are different from us - and yet share equal dignity and equal, hopes and dreams for our democracy and for their communities.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Doing this work as a Christian, but in an interfaith context, is the reason I'm most excited to join the team at Interfaith Alliance - because we have to embody the antithesis of Christian nationalism, which is this history and ideal of religious freedom that yes, I loved how you said it was what the founders got most right; and yet we have to make it more right and more of a reality in our time.

And throughout my career, I've loved working with all different kinds of religious communities. I spent several years working to combat the Muslim ban that former President Trump promised and then tried four different times to enact as president, and has said he'll bring back bigger if he wins again. So working with different religious communities, working with a diversity of Christians has been a great part of my career.

I started working in immigration reform advocacy with very conservative Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, who were advocating for a path to citizenship for the undocumented. And then something I've really loved is getting to work with the organized non-religious, and people like American Atheists, Freedom from Religion Foundation, and people who have every right to enjoy the same religious freedom people of faith do.

I get frustrated when people talk about interfaith work, and it's kind of like, pick your religion. But implicit in that is that you need to pick a religion. It may be like pick from these different choices, and religious freedom means little if it doesn't mean the right not to believe and have equal citizenship in the United States. And so those are some of my most treasured partnerships are with people who want the freedom not to believe.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. And you can't really have a productive coalition without having it really represent as wide of coalition as possible. I want to just get your take on the term “religious freedom” or “freedom of religion,” because I think it was Rachel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, she said the word religious freedom - what do you think of when you think religious freedom? On the show, she was telling me the story. She said that to a group of college students, and they were, and they all had very conservative things to say about it.

They were like, oh, that's the way people discriminated against LGBTQ people, right? Unfortunately, religious freedom, the way it's been manifested in our country using the courts has really been like, I get to discriminate using my faith. I heard Maya Wiley from the Leadership Conference, say, religious freedom has become to mean religious freedom for White men and White Christian men. And you know, the question I'm always asking when someone says “religious freedom” is, who's religion and who's freedom? So let's just make sure we interrogate it.

But, you know, part of me is like, this is unsalvageable, that term. But the principle of it actually is still absolutely necessary. What's your take on that, and how have you - I'm sure you've thought of all of this and wrestled with this in your own way.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

My first experience with religious freedom was right after college. I, again, had this driving passion to work in the areas of religion and social justice. I just didn't know what that would actually look like. And I now had this college degree and was looking to put this into practice. And I read a story about several religious denominations in Alabama, had sued the state of Alabama over its draconian anti-immigrant law called HB 56. It made transporting someone in the country without proper documentation a crime, and several religious leaders came together and said, under our faith, this is an infringement on our religious freedom, and we cannot practice our faith, which calls us to love everyone, including undocumented immigrants, if this law is put into place.

And I read that and was so convicted by what that lawsuit said and the need to have a broad understanding of religious freedom, that I went to Alabama right after I graduated college and helped start what was the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, working with faith communities there. And so we need to have a broad understanding - I think, first of all, we need to have a broad understanding of religious freedom claims that the Supreme Court, which I'm looking at right now, right across the street here, has a very narrow understanding of the types of claims it wants to take.

The Supreme Court and the Christian right want to use religious freedom to advance its agenda of gutting civil rights protections and health care. So that is the agenda out there. But, you know, we were just talking earlier about not giving up the word “tradition,” and we're not going to give up tradition, and we're not going to give up religious freedom as long as I'm part of this, because this idea of everyone being free to worship and free from the government telling people how to believe, I think, is a fundamental freedom both in the United States and around the world, but it cannot be viewed in isolation.

When I was at the Center for American Progress, we did some work with our international human rights team at CAP to say, the Trump administration was trying to advance religious freedom internationally, apart from the human rights framework and trying to isolate it as saying religious freedom should trump these other rights.

And we see that in the United States, too, with people saying religious freedom should trump other people's civil rights. And so we can't isolate religious freedom. It's an important freedom. It's something I've worked on throughout my career. It's something I value, I'm not going to give up on. But at the same time, religious freedom is one freedom that comes into tension, sometimes, with other freedoms. And we have to negotiate those differences. And so we need a broad understanding of human rights, of civil rights, of civil liberties, and not overemphasize religious freedom to the detriment of others.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. I mean, the way Interfaith Alliance puts it in our mission statement and our vision is always: religious freedom in conversation with civil rights. And, you know, it's not in isolation and it's not the ultimate trump card. It hat is turned into that. I think it threatens religion, actually, to have people feel like they have the permission to refuse service to people different than themselves, and in public spaces. And I think it's terrible for religion, it's terrible for society, it's terrible for democracy. And it's something that we really have to fight against.

I think the other point that you made, which is really important, is that often, people think of like religious freedom, okay? I don't have to serve gay people. That’s religious freedom in America. Religious freedom. I can take books off the shelf. Oh, okay. I would say those are a very dangerous use of religious freedom. But if we're going to have the courts really side on absolutism with religious freedom, then religious freedom, exactly as you work for in Alabama - to transport immigrants, religious freedom, to be able to get and provide abortion, for those who want it, religious freedom for people to organize, religious freedom to get people to vote.

So I think all of these things, we're in a really interesting moment because of the way that the courts have decided some of the things in the last year and a half, as one of our board members, Skye Perryman, likes to say, there's been no cost yet for these new definitions and these new decisions. And we're going to see how that plays out.

You've been doing amazing work at the Baptist Joint Committee. You've been working on the Chaplain bill, you've been instrumental in the Christians against Christian Nationalism. What do you view as some of the most crucial, issues facing our country right now?

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

I'll start by talking a little bit more about, since you were bringing up religious refusals and turning religious freedom in a right to discriminate, something that frustrates me deeply is that that is an infringement on religious freedom, in that the same civil rights laws that protect LGBTQ people, protect people based on all forms of discrimination, often include a protection against religious discrimination.

And, you know, being able to turn away people because of their faith from your business is the civil rights protection that is being gutted by the religious refusal agenda. And so in that way, we need to, not, again, give up religious freedom, because in that instance, we were actually trying to defend it from people who would undermine it, using their religious refusal agenda.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Right after the Supreme Court issued the ruling on Creative 303, I was I was with Liz Reiner Platt, she’s at Columbia University. And we were just talking, like, what would actually, given the way the case was decided, what would prohibit someone from saying, I don't want to take a picture or create a website for a Christian - as a Pagan, that that's something that is deeply offensive to me.

It opened up things that felt very like the further fracturing of our society. We're getting into a little bit of insider pool, here, but this is really important stuff - that as a society, how religion functions within a democracy is hugely important. And so these are the kind of things that have real life implications for people. And I'm just excited that you've been thinking so deeply about them, and the question of, like, as you think about jumping in with Interfaith Alliance and leading our policy and advocacy team, what are some of the things that feel most pressing to you?

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

You know, I was visiting my husband's family over Christmas, and I was mentioning what I do, you know, working in the separation of Church and State. A lot of times people's eyes kind of glaze over or they don't want to touch that, it sounds controversial. But her eyes kind of lit up and she said, have you heard about this Chaplain Bill in Texas? Because we were in Texas. So I think people are recognizing the threat.

So if people haven't been following this, this is an effort in Texas to replace school counselors with chaplains. And the group pushing this actually said on their website - until they tried to wipe their website, and, you know, pro tip to anyone: you can't erase your website. People can go back and find past versions of it, but it was actually explicitly about evangelizing students in the public schools.

So there is a new theocratic aggression on the right that people are paying attention to - especially trying to go into public schools and ban books and post the Ten Commandments, and then counsel your child to become a Christian. Think about that recipe of what the far right is doing in our public schools. And I think people are starting to really pay attention to Christian nationalism, because it's impacting public schools, which is where I first learned about people of different faiths and was around kids not at my church, and met people of different religious traditions and those that were not religious. So I think the attack on public schools is very pronounced.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Let me just say a word about that, because it's so odd to me that conservative Christians want to outsource religious instruction to someone away from the Church. You know, they want to say, okay, let's have the public schools do it. Okay, you're going to have the Ten Commandments up there. You don't know who the teacher is. And someone says, well, what does it mean? This one. Can you explain that to me? And then all of a sudden, someone is explaining a religious tradition. And if you're Jewish, it sounds one way. And if you're Christian, it sounds another way. And all the different Christian traditions and all of a sudden you don't know.

My view as someone who has kids in public schools and is a Christian and a minister, I don't want to outsource that. I want them to learn about all the different religions and the multiple… You know, it's a very good thing to learn about religious traditions,1 and have an awareness to have actual Christian teachings in school is not what their public schools were meant for, and it's a very dangerous. So the partnership that Interfaith Alliance has had with BJC and other groups on the ground in Texas, and now it's happening in Florida, and 13 other states have chaplain bills in the works. This is really serious. And as you said - I love that term, I haven't heard that exactly, I think you said “aggressive theocratic move” or something like that. That's exactly what it is. And we have to recognize it. And it is true: when you tell people, average person on the street about this bill, they're like, what? And I think that's part of our job is to let people know what's happening, so that they can stand up and say, not in our town.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Yes, there was after the Supreme Court decision in Kennedy vs. Bremerton, the case about the football coach that was misconstrued by the court. The impact of it was this new “We're going to test the bounds of theocracy, and if this Supreme Court has any guardrails in terms of the Establishment Clause.” And we're seeing that play out now and it's scary, but it's also an opportunity for us to raise these concerns to educate people about Christian nationalism. Pew Research Center found that over half of Americans have never heard the term Christian nationalism. So this moment is both very scary in that our democracy hangs in the balance - and that's not hyperbole. We just saw former President Trump tell a group of Christians that after this election, they would never have to vote again, which is a very scary thought in a democracy.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, because he's going to fix it for them, which I'm like, what does that mean? You know, I mean, it is terrifying. I do want to say one word about the way we organized against the Chaplain bill in Texas, which I thought was so good - and you were a really important part of this - was the headlines that we were able to get after we got all these chaplains and religious leaders to sign on to a letter saying, we oppose this because it's bad for religion, it's bad for chaplains, was we got the headline: “Religious groups oppose chaplain bills.” That's what you want. You don't want secular communist opposed chaplain bills because that cedes religion.

I'm not singling them out, but I'm just saying, like, in this case, you really want it to be recognized that this is not, again, religion versus secular. This is religion recognizing a bad use of religion and rallying against it. And 25 of the largest school districts actually voted against the bill to not enact it in their district, which I thought was a real win, in part because of the way that communications and the narrative was framed.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Exactly. And politics and policy is downstream of culture, and culture is shaped by the media. And so that's why so much of my career I've spent trying to shape the larger media narrative, because it has that policy impact. And I went to one of the debates... So every school board in the state was forced by the Texas legislature to take a vote. And I went to one of the school board meetings outside Austin. And then I watched a lot of them, their live streams.

And I was amazed at how many conservative people said, you know, I watched one person in Conroe say, you know, I'm a Southern Baptist and I don't want the government taking over religion. Right? I'll send my kids to my church, and parents can choose where to send their kids to their church. And so I think the religious case is the strongest case against Christian nationalism. It's why I came to BJC was to work with the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, and why we needed chaplains and other religious leaders, because we have a responsibility as Christians in a majority Christian nation to reject Christian nationalism.

We are still a majority Christian nation. And that means that Christians could ostensibly try to exact majoritarian rule on everyone else of different faiths. But for most Christians, I think we don't want to do that. And we need to organize ourselves better - and in partnership with people of faith, of other faiths and the non-religious. And in Texas, the secular groups and non-religious groups were part of the coalition. And they actually said, you need to take this on as religious groups and lead here. It wasn't like us pushing groups out of the way. It was a coordinated effort to say: the religious groups have a responsibility and a voice that is strategic.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yep yep yep yep. So you know, you have a couple different things that you're probably thinking about and we'll be talking about. We're in the middle of an election season - and what happens in the election, the reason it's so important for us to think about the election, is what is possible as far as policy, in some ways, at least as far as national policy, well, local, down to the school board, depends on who's in power. And so we're not endorsing anyone, but we are recognizing that there's some really important issues for all of us that how they go forward will be determined by what happens in November.

So how are you understanding the moment we're in in this election, and what are some of the things that you can imagine, if you had to if you had to ask some questions in the debate - if it happens. I mean, it's very interesting to see how that's playing out right now, as we record this, you know, Donald Trump is saying he may not want to debate Kamala Harris, which is like a really interesting moment. But what would be some questions you would like to see the candidates really debate?

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Sure. I'm a policy person in my heart, and politics is often focused on the insults they're throwing back and forth, the personalities. We've seen the number one issue in the election this year has been talk about the candidates’ age. Let's talk about policy. And the most detailed policies we have on the right are Project 2025, which is this 900-page blueprint for pushing an authoritarian takeover of our democracy. Of gutting civil rights protections, of doing it all to help corporations by cutting the corporate tax rate.

And if authoritarianism comes to the United States, it will be done in the name of Christianity and restoring God to the public and putting God back in our schools. And it will be a Christian theocracy that is advanced. And you see that in Project 2025. A year ago, I was the first person to go through this 900-page document and identify the different theocratic elements of it. They talk about how they are going to put forth a religious definition of marriage.

Of course, the United States Congress and President Biden signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. That obviously wasn't favored by the people putting forward Project 2025. And so they're talking about a religious definition of marriage.

They're talking about trying to, in terms of the CDC, criticize actions during Covid, saying the government needed to be concerned about keeping churches open to save souls. They talk about portraying the left as trying to advance a religion that would attack Christianity. And so throughout `project 2025, you see explicit and implicit appeals to Christian nationalism. So I'd love to hear people ask former President Trump, who's tried to distance himself from Project 2025 but also hasn't put out any set of policies that are different than Project 2025.

And then on the side of Vice President Harris, I would ask her about the commitment to religious pluralism that she has embodied in her family, being raised in an interfaith household, though she identifies as a Baptist. And then creating an interfaith family by marrying a Jewish man as her husband. And you see different pieces of that in her vice presidency, like her hosting an Eid celebration and bringing Muslim civic groups to the vice president’s residence. But I'd want to ask her about, what are the policy areas where we can advance religious pluralism.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. I mean that gets to the heart of it. I mean it'll be really interesting to see - I haven't seen the Democratic platform yet, and how religion plays into that. It's always been a little bit of a sensitive issue for the Democrats, so it'll be interesting to see how that actually plays out. On the Republican side, you don't really have a platform aside from fealty to Donald Trump. I mean, I don't think that they've even they even put out a platform. Did they?

it's very interesting. I really appreciate the attention you've paid to Project 2025, and it's very interesting how it was out there. I think a lot of conservative folks were like, this looks good. This looks good. let's like kind of put that out there. And all of a sudden when other people started looking at it and going, wait, what? Wait, what? And have you read this and have you read that? And all of a sudden they realized, oh, our viewpoints are unpopular. Yeah. Maybe we need to pull back from this. And now, like, you know, Trump is saying, like, some of this is ridiculous. And the person I think stepped down from the Heritage Foundation, who was one of the architects of it. So, you know, it's very interesting to see how radical some of these ideas are, and how actually unpopular they are when people are aware of them.

You've worked on the Hill. For those of our listeners who haven't spent much time in Washington, D.C., especially doing policy work. What's an experience that you've had working on the Hill that felt, you know what, you know, government can work if we actually, like, kind of get it together. What was a campaign that you worked on or a public policy that you felt really strongly about that, from the religious angle, you felt like there was an important voice there.

And then you worked with the different offices of these members of Congress and Senate, and something was passed that actually benefited the lives of people - because I think we don't hear those stories very often.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Sure. I think the well, it passed. I think it laid the foundation for something passing. So I'll talk about the Equality Act, which has not passed yet, but would expand federal protections for LGBTQ people. And I was fortunate to co-chair the Faith for Equality Act Working Group, which is part of a larger coalition of groups working to pass the Equality Act. And we came together with many organizations across different religious communities and had a petition drive to say, people of faith support the Equality Act. We refuse to let this LGBTQ equality issue be defined as the godless LGBTQ people versus the Christians who want to preserve traditional marriage. We said, we refuse to do that.

But it's so hard to get that message out. You have great policy. You have all the right people on board, but how do you get the message out? And you have to find your Hill champions. And we found that person in Senator Chris Coons. Senator Coons went to seminary himself. He is an ordained Elder in the Presbyterian Church. I actually had a chance to visit his church once, through my husband, who's a Presbyterian minister. And so I knew that Senator Coons had this profound,interest in religion and came from an affirming religious tradition. And so we partnered very closely with him to do a public petition delivery, and that got news coverage.

And then Senator Coons, actually, during a hearing on the Equality Act, held up the petition and made it clear to everybody that the religious voice in this argument was not going to be misportrayed; that the majority of people who are religious, and this is polling from the Public Religion Research Institute, support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. And that was just this profound, I think, game-changing moment that altered the political dynamic that for so long has just heard from the Christian right.

And while the Equality Act has yet to pass, I think a lot of that work laid the foundation for the Respect for Marriage Act and forging a bipartisan consensus with a lot of religious support for LGBTQ rights.

You also see former President Trump kind of running away from the LGBTQ elements in Project 2025. It's deeply unpopular to gut civil rights protections for LGBTQ people. It's deeply unpopular to ban abortion. It's deeply unpopular to close the US Department of Education and end Head Start. These policies are so unpopular not just among the American population at large, but among Christians and among people of faith.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. That's right. I'm really excited for all of the work that you're going to do. You are working on, you have an MDiv, and you're working on a doctoral degree. What is the subject matter of that degree that you're working on?

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Sure. It's a Doctor of Ministry in Prophetic Leadership at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. I'm almost done with the coursework. And then my Doctor of Ministry project is going to be working with Christian lawmakers against Christian nationalism. I think Christian lawmakers, especially at the state level, but also federally and at all levels of government, have a responsibility to contest the association of Christianity with right wing politics.

I've gotten to know James Talarico, a state representative in Texas who's gone viral all over the country repeatedly for his strong I'm-a-Christian voice, and he actually goes to the same seminary where my husband graduated from, Austin Presbyterian Seminary there. And he has really changed the game in Texas. And my doctoral research is around equipping Christian lawmakers to bring their faith into politics, which I think can be done responsibly. But you need strong guardrails, and you also need explicit commitment to affirm the rights of and place in American society of religious minorities and the non-religious, and the separation of Church and State. Because if you're bringing Christianity into your official governing duties or on the campaign trail, that can go awry very quickly and actually kind of reinforce Christian nationalism.

And so I think there's a way to do it. There's a responsibility to do it, a calling to do it for people that are Christians and think politics is part of their vocation. But I think there needs to be more research and resources to help them do it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, we had James Talarico on with a colleague, Salman Bhojani, who is Muslim, but it was really beautiful to see how they supported one another, and also Jewish members of the state Senate. And it felt like, you know, they were all coming from their particular places, but recognizing the equal dignity and equal rights of one another. And they were going to show up for one another in whatever way was necessary, but had their own calling. And I think that that's what you're talking about.

It's not like all of a sudden James Talarico saying, well, I'm a Christian, I get to decide. It's like, how do you show up using your faith to show up among other people who might actually have less power in that situation? And it's been actually kind of glorious to watch Talarico use his faith on the floor, and you can see these really conservative folks who are very unnerved by someone feeling so facile and feeling so  comfortable using religious language to counteract and push back against some of their assumptions about the way religion was going to show up in the debate.

I want to end this conversation the way we end all of our conversations, and that's to ask you, Guthrie, what gives you hope in this moment?

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

You know, the Olympics just wrapped up in Paris, and I was fortunate enough to go to the Olympics and see some of it in person. And so I am just filled with hope, knowing that this life of social justice and faith is a relay. We've been handed the baton by those that came before us. We don't have to finish the race, Paul. It's not up to us. There will be many generations that come after us that can finish this race, but we've been handed the baton right now, and so let's keep going.

Let's do our part, and let's trust that what we've done will make a positive contribution. And that's all we can say. And we know people will come after us.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is the newly-anointed, appointed, welcomed, senior director of policy and advocacy at Interfaith Alliance. He has served at wonderful places like the BJC, the Center for American Progress, the National Immigration Forum. He has a great book called Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity.

We are so excited to welcome you to Interfaith Alliance, and also so glad that you were able to join us here on The State of Belief.

GUTHRIE GRAVES-FITZSIMMONS:

Thanks so much, Paul.