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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