General
The Vote is Sacred Tour: Michigan
On Friday, we began the day in Hammond, Indiana. We stopped for a private event in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which rejuvenated the bus rides after five days of events.
We were also joined on the bus for the remainder of the tour by Ekemini Uwan, a public theologian, international human rights activist, and co-author of the 2023 NAACP Image Award Nominated book Truth’s Table: Black Women’s Musings on Life, Love, and Liberation. She co-hosts the award-winning podcast Truth's Table and Get In The Word With Truth’s Table. We’re excited to have Ekemini onboard!
Religion News Service published an in-depth report on our tour stop in Madison, Wisconsin. “Wednesday’s press conference was part of an interfaith pro-voting bus tour across swing states that began in Nebraska and will end on election day in Pennsylvania,” RNS reported. “Raushenbush and other leaders hope to encourage people to get out and vote, no matter their faith — and to remind the public that no one faith group has a monopoly on how religion should affect the upcoming election.”
During the long drive from Kalamazoo to Cleveland, I put together some of the highlights of the tour so far into a video compilation. You can watch it here:
Texas Faith Communities Fight Against Mandated Ten Commandment Displays
Texans of all faiths are uniting in filing a lawsuit against Senate Bill No. 10 (S.B. 10), which requires Texas public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. The bill specifically mandates the display must be at least sixteen by twenty inches, hung in a "conspicuous space,” and follow a specific phrasing most commonly aligned with Protestant beliefs.
Faith leaders have an important role in fighting hate speech
Recently, the Sure Foundation Baptist Church (SFBC) in Indianapolis held a sermon in which the preacher called for the government to institute the death penalty for the LGBTQ+ community. Despite heavy criticism from the Indianapolis community for its hateful remark, the church has refused to back down, instead celebrating the exposure that the incident has brought.
