In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Jemar Tisby confronts a pressing question facing the American church: Why are so many pastors silent about voting rights in this moment? Drawing from his firsthand experience at the “All Roads Lead to the South” march and rally in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, Tisby connects today’s attacks on voting rights to the long struggle for Black political power during the Civil Rights Movement. He reflects on the spiritual weight of marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the legacy of Bloody Sunday, and the urgent need for moral courage from clergy and congregations alike.

Tisby also examines the Supreme Court’s recent Voting Rights Act ruling, critiques pastoral silence through the lens of God's Long Summer and Letter from Birmingham Jail, and challenges churches to move beyond “deracinated piety” toward the concrete application of Christian ethics in public life. This episode is both a prophetic critique and a pastoral plea for believers to speak up, organize, and act courageously in what Tisby calls “the civil rights movement of our day.”

• The “All Roads Lead to the South” march and rally in Selma and Montgomery
• Why voting rights are deeply personal in the Black freedom struggle
• The Supreme Court ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act
• How racial gerrymandering operates under the language of “colorblindness”
• The silence of many pastors and churches around voting rights
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning about the “white moderate” from Letter from Birmingham Jail
• The example of Reverend Douglas Hudgins and church complicity during segregation
• Biblical models of courage, prophetic witness, and justice in times of crisis

• God's Long Summer by Charles Marsh
• "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.

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The Trump Administration has released a massive new report from its “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias,” arguing that conservative Christians were targeted by the federal government under President Biden.

The report frames conflicts over abortion, LGBTQ rights, education, COVID policies, and workplace protections as evidence of anti-Christian discrimination.

In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby examines the report’s arguments, historical claims, and political implications. He explores how white Christian nationalism uses grievance politics, why some Christians conflate losing cultural dominance with losing religious freedom, and what happens when Christianity becomes closely aligned with state power.

This episode also asks a deeper question: What kind of faith are we cultivating if Christianity requires political dominance to feel secure?

• Trump’s “Anti-Christian Bias Task Force” and Executive Order 14202
• Why the report focuses heavily on abortion, gender, and sexuality
• The difference between religious freedom and religious privilege
• How grievance politics fuels white Christian nationalism
• Why “Christian America” rhetoric pushes certain groups to the margins
• The relationship between Christianity and state power throughout history
• How pluralism gets reframed as hostility toward Christianity
• Why true faith does not depend on cultural dominance to survive

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If you value historically grounded analysis on faith, politics, and justice, support The Justice Briefing by becoming a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com.

Conservatives on the Supreme Court dealt what amounts to a “death blow” to the Voting Rights Act.

But you don’t have to be a legal scholar to understand what really matters here.

The effect is to dilute the voting power of Black people and other people of color who tend to vote Democratic.

But the entire decision rests on a faulty understanding of racism and how to address it.

This assumption has a name: colorblindness. It is not a virtue.

If race caused the inequality, then race must be named in order to create equity.

• What the Supreme Court just did to the Voting Rights Act and why some are calling it a “death blow”
• How shifting from discriminatory impact to intent makes voting rights cases nearly impossible to win
• Why this decision could dilute Black voting power while appearing race-neutral
• The long history of voting rights—from Dred Scott v. Sandford to the Fifteenth Amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• How racism adapts over time and why “race-neutral” laws can still produce unequal outcomes
• The flawed logic of colorblindness and why ignoring race doesn’t solve racial inequality
• Why many churches are ill-equipped to respond to this moment—and how that happened
• Practical ways to mobilize, dissent, and take action—from local engagement to national advocacy

The best way to support The Justice Briefing is to become a paid subscriber: JemarTisby.Substack.com

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