NPR just gave Douglas Wilson another splashy, in-depth interview, and Dr. Jemar Tisby has a problem with it.

Not that the media covers Wilson: the pastor from Moscow, Idaho has a direct line to power through his disciple Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, and that is newsworthy.

The problem is how they cover him.

In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Tisby makes the case that respectful, on-location, one-on-one coverage does exactly what Wilson wants.

From there, Dr. Tisby walks through who Wilson is and what he actually believes, from his rejection of the Nineteenth Amendment to his vision of a theocratic America, then names a better way to cover him.

The real question is not what Wilson believes. It is who gets to speak for Christians, and which version of God and country will prevail.

• Why NPR, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times keep making the trip to Moscow, Idaho
• The one line where Wilson admits a "respectful hearing" is the win he is after
• Wilson's theology explained: reformed fundamentalism, postmillennialism, biblical patriarchy, classical Christian education, and dominionism
• His views on repealing the Nineteenth Amendment and "household voting"
• How the Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, and other evangelical platforms gave Wilson legitimacy years before the mainstream media did
• Why the coverage centers Wilson, on his own turf, with no counter-voice in the frame
• The lack of racial analysis in most coverage of Wilson and Christian dominionism
• A better model: pass the mic to the scholars, pastors, and survivors who resist him

Scholars and books that offer a counter-narrative

• Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
• Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
• Sheila Wray Gregoire, She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up
• Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
• Sarah Stankorb, Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning
• Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism
• Obery Hendricks, The Politics of Jesus
• Bryan Massingale, Racial Justice and the Catholic Church

Survivors speaking out

• Sons of Patriarchy (sonsofpatriarchy.com), hosted by Sarah Bader and Peter Bell

The best way to materially support The Justice Briefing is to subscribe to Footnotes at JemarTisby.Substack.com, the #4 ranked publication in the history category. Your subscription is what keeps this work independent and coming to you every week.

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, white Christian nationalists are telling their version of the story: that America was founded as a Christian nation.

In part two of his America 250 series on The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby argues that there is a better, more truthful story to tell if we know how to tell it, and that telling it requires something most churches have never named: a theology of history.

Dr. Tisby is a historian and a believer, and he makes the case that those two things belong together, and that Christians should be passionate about truth and history.

• Anniversaries as arguments about the past, and how they shape who we were, who we are, and who we must become
• What white Christian nationalists actually mean by "Christian nation": theocracy, a covenant like ancient Israel, Christian privilege, and a religious test for being a "real" American
• The restoration narrative of fear and grievance, and why regression differs from progression
• The biblical case for a theology of history: the Bible as a history book, and God's repeated command to remember
• The dangers of forgetting, and why memory is a guardrail against idolatry and injustice
• History and identity: how the power to tell the story is the power to shape identity
• The church's abdication of teaching history, and the "potato chips" problem of getting your history from social media
• Applying the ARC of Racial Justice (Awareness, Relationships, Commitment) to doing history well

• Part one of the series: "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" on The Justice Briefing
• "James Baldwin Was Right About Patriotism," drawn from the autobiographical note in Notes of a Native Son
• "The Trick Inside Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July Speech"
• "How Gerald R. Ford Celebrated Black History During America's 200th Anniversary"
• The Spirit of Justice and How to Fight Racism by Dr. Jemar Tisby
• Primary sources: the U.S. Constitution and First Amendment, the Treaty of Tripoli, the Danbury Baptist letter, and the Declaration of Independence
• Scripture: Deuteronomy 8, Psalm 77:11, Luke 22:19
• "Echoes of Injustice: From Manzanar to Mass Deportation," a mini documentary on the YouTube channel (YouTube.com/@JTisby)
• Christians Against Christian Nationalism, by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty
• Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) at prri.org

Everything I do here is available for free, but I would really like your help. This kind of truth-telling at the intersection of faith, history, and justice is possible because of the people who choose to support it. Subscribe at JemarTisby.Substack.com: $5.83 a month on the annual plan, and help make this work possible.

Stay informed. Stay faithful. Stay in the fight.

How should we think about the Fourth of July, a day dedicated to celebrating independence and freedom, in light of the unfreedom of race-based chattel slavery?

What do we do about the fact that of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence 41 of them held slaves?

Do those noble words of the Declaration stating that “all men are created equal” apply to anyone other than wealthy white men?

Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved 19th century abolitionist, has something to say.

We take his speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” as our primary text for exploring the tension between liberty and bondage in U.S. history.

Listen and share!

Right now, curricula across this country are being rewritten to erase exactly the tension Douglass named in 1852. Subscribe and make sure this history does not get edited out from under you. JemarTisby.Substack.com

As the country marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, one claim is everywhere: the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby refuses the flat yes or no and insists on the first move any honest answer requires, which is to define the terms.

If "Christian nation" means a country shaped by Christians and their ethics? Does it mean a government with an official, state-sanctioned church?

History has the receipts,

Dr. Tisby walks through the primary sources, from Article VI and the First Amendment to the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the Treaty of Tripoli, and he traces the longer backstory of Henry VIII and the colonists who fled state religion.

• Why "define your terms" is the first move in answering the Christian nation question
• The sense in which the claim is true and the sense in which it is false
• History has the receipts: Article VI, the First Amendment, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and the Treaty of Tripoli
• Henry VIII, the Act of Supremacy, and why colonists fled state religion
• The difference between the separation of church and state and the separation of faith and politics
• The Enlightenment roots of the Declaration
• What white Christian nationalists actually mean, and why the slogan works as a permission structure for power

• The Christian Past That Wasn't: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History by Warren Throckmorton
• The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance by Jemar Tisby
• The Color of Compromise (book and video study) by Jemar Tisby
• Rededicate 250, National Mall, May 17, 2026
• Primary sources: Article VI of the U.S. Constitution; the First Amendment; the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786); the Treaty of Tripoli (1797); the Act of Supremacy (1534); John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government

Support The Justice Briefing by subscribing at JemarTisby.Substack.com, where Dr. Tisby brings the receipts every week so you can answer questions like this one from an informed perspective.

This week on The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby breaks down why Juneteenth and America 250 are not the same kind of anniversary, even though they fall just weeks apart this summer.

Dr. Tisby argues that America 250 asks the nation to celebrate how great it has been, while Juneteenth asks a harder, more honest question: how free are we, really?

Using a ten-point comparison chart, he walks through what each holiday marks, whose freedom it centers, and what's at risk of being lost or co-opted in 2026.

Dr. Tisby also explains why this year carries extra weight.

With a White House actively promoting a whitewashed version of history through initiatives like Freedom 250 and PragerU's Freedom Trucks, he makes the case that you cannot responsibly celebrate the country's anniversary while erasing the centuries of bondage that came before emancipation.

• The origin of Juneteenth and the text of General Order No. 3
• Why the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free enslaved people
• How U.S. slavery was uniquely race-based, matrilineal, and perpetual
• The White House's "Freedom 250" rebrand and PragerU's Freedom Trucks
• A 10-point T-chart comparing Juneteenth and America 250
• What it looks like for white and Black Americans to commemorate Juneteenth differently

• How to Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby
• I Am the Spirit of Justice by Jemar Tisby (picture book)
• Stories of the Spirit of Justice by Jemar Tisby (middle grade and up)

If this episode helped you think more clearly about faith, history, and justice, the best way to support it is to subscribe at JemarTisby.Substack.com. Paid subscriptions fund the research, the production, and the in-person interviews that make episodes like this possible.

In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby breaks down the Southern Baptist Convention's recent vote to amend its constitution—by a 77 percent margin—banning women from preaching to assembled congregations.

Dr. Tisby draws on his own history with the SBC to offer an insider's analysis of what the Truth and Unity Amendment actually says, why Al Mohler pushed for it, and what the election of new SBC president Willy Rice signals about the denomination's continued rightward turn.

But Dr. Tisby goes deeper than the headlines.

Tracing the SBC's origins back to 1844 and the case of James Reeve—an enslaver whose deliberate nomination as a missionary candidate was the spark that led to the denomination's founding—Dr. Tisby makes the case that the SBC's patriarchy and its racism are not two separate problems that happen to coexist.

They share a common theological architecture: the divine sanctioning of hierarchy, the use of Scripture to compel submission, and the punishment of those who resist.

From the household codes that justified chattel slavery to the amendment that just passed, the logic is the same, and understanding that connection, Dr. Tisby argues, is essential to understanding what faithful resistance must look like today.

• The Truth and Unity Amendment, what it says, and why Al Mohler pushed for it even though the restriction on women pastors was already denominational policy
• The case of James Reeve—the 1844 missionary nomination that was a deliberate pro-slavery provocation and led directly to the founding of the SBC
• How the biblical defense of racial hierarchy and the biblical defense of gender hierarchy draw from the same New Testament household codes
• The “purity of white womanhood” trope—how white women were simultaneously subordinated to white men and weaponized against Black people
• Saddleback Church, Beth Moore, and the enforcement mechanisms the SBC already had in place before this amendment
• The parallel between the SBC’s centralizing of authority and unitary executive theory in the Trump administration
• The election of Willie Rice as SBC president and what it signals about the denomination’s further rightward turn
• Why you cannot address patriarchy in the SBC without also addressing its racism and why the denomination is case in point

I believe women are called and qualified to preach and pastor. And I name the links between racism and patriarchy. If that’s the kind of insight you value, become a paid subscriber. JemarTisby.Substack.com

Host a screening of Jesus Was a Migrant: jesuswasamigrant.com

In this urgent episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby breaks down the Supreme Court's latest ruling in Allen v. Milligan--a decision that allows Alabama to eliminate one of its only two majority-Black congressional districts just months before the 2026 midterm elections and while primaries are already underway.

Drawing on his training as a historian and his recent trip to Selma to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Dr. Tisby explains how the Court's selective application of the Purcell Principle exposes a legal system being weaponized to dilute Black political power rather than protect it.

He traces the historical roots of Black voting patterns from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Movement to make the case that Black voters aren't loyal to a party--they're loyal to their survival.

Dr. Tisby also examines the Congressional Black Caucus's pointed letter to Corporate America, holding hundreds of major corporations accountable to voting rights commitments they made publicly in 2021--and demanding they prove those words still mean something before a June 9th deadline.

From the courtroom to the boardroom, Dr. Tisby asks the question that drives the entire episode: do you care?

In This Episode

• The Supreme Court's ruling in Allen v. Milligan and what it means for Black congressional representation in Alabama
• What the Purcell Principle is, where it comes from, and why the Court is applying it selectively
• How the Louisiana v. Callais decision gutted the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to rapid redistricting across the South
• Why Republicans stand to gain up to 15 additional House seats through redistricting — and what's at stake in the 2026 midterms
• The historical roots of Black voting patterns, from Reconstruction and the New Deal to LBJ's Civil Rights Act
• Governor Kay Ivey's response to the ruling — and what the language of "states' rights" has always meant in the context of Black political power
• The Congressional Black Caucus's letter to Corporate America and its June 9th deadline for action
• Justice Sotomayor's dissent — and why Dr. Tisby says every justice-minded person should be reading it

We have a lack of voices raising the alarm about voting rights in the church. If you think that work is important, you can help make it possible. Become a paid subscriber today. JemarTisby.Substack.com

A news report just revealed that children are still being separated from their parents in the immigration crackdown. We must speak up. This film will help you. Host a screening of Jesus Was a Migrant: jesuswasamigrant.com

In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby examines the stunning victory of Ken Paxton in the Texas Republican Senate primary and asks what it reveals about the moral state of American politics. Despite years of scandals, impeachment, felony indictments, and allegations of corruption, Paxton not only survived politically—he won decisively. Dr. Tisby explores why voters embraced a candidate with such a record, how loyalty to Donald Trump has eclipsed character as a political qualification, and why this race represents a larger battle over the meaning of Christianity in public life. Contrasting Paxton's vision of faith with that of Democratic nominee James Talarico, Dr. Tisby argues that Texas is becoming a testing ground for two competing religious and political visions: domination versus care, power versus conscience, and white Christian nationalism versus a faith rooted in justice and love.

• Why Ken Paxton's primary victory shocked even seasoned observers of American politics
• The corruption allegations, impeachment, and legal controversies surrounding Paxton
• How loyalty to Donald Trump became more important than character or experience
• Why Paxton's victory signals a deeper shift within the modern Republican Party
• The contrast between Paxton's and James Talarico's competing visions of Christianity
• How white Christian nationalism shapes contemporary political debates
• Why Black Christian political traditions are often overlooked as authentic expressions of faith
• What the Texas Senate race reveals about power, religion, and democracy in America

When corruption becomes normal, context becomes essential. To support independent analysis at the intersection of faith, history, and justice that helps make sense of this political moment, become a paid subscriber: JemarTisby.Substack.com

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