The Convocation Unscripted

In this live episode, we talk about the hollowing out of the Voting Rights Act that the U.S. Supreme Court has accomplished with its recent LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS ET AL. ruling. The court’s conservative majority found that the Louisiana district represented by Democrat Cleo Fields relied too heavily on race. In its wake, a number of southern states with white Republican-dominated legislatures have raced to redraw their electoral maps to further dilute the power of African American voters. We talk about the perfect storm of the erasure of history, faulty logic, and gaslighting that is turning the clock back on voting rights for Black Americans and what we can do in response. And we took viewers questions on a wide range of topics in the last half of the show.

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Jemar Tisby- JemarTisby.Substack.com

The White House released a report on so-called “anti-Christian bias.” But who counts as Christian in these claims?
Diana, Kristin, and Jemar discuss how this regime is narrowing the definition of Christianity to a particular ideological and political express, while positioning that version as under threat.
This is not about defending religious freedom, it’s about reframing power as persecution.
Then we turn to the Voting Rights Act and how the latest decision from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court renders it all but a dead letter law.
The justices’ claim to colorblindness actually ignores the historical conditions that made an intervention like the VRA necessary in the first place. The ruling is part of a pattern on the far-right to view structures built to address racial inequality as unfair while leaving the inequalities themselves in place.
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Jemar Tisby- JemarTisby.Substack.com

In this week's episode of TCU, we talk about Trump's participation in a public reading of the Bible, sponsored by a white evangelical group, where he read II Chronicles 7:14, a favorite of Christian nationalists. We also talk about the continued platforming of self-described Christian nationalist, "paleo-Confederate" pastor Doug Wilson not only by the likes of Pete Hegseth but by more mainstream outlets in the evangelical world. But we also review his recent dressing down by Wajahat Ali on the Piers Morgan show. Finally, we talk about the ways local churches are banding together to advocate for and serve immigrants who have been wrongfully detained by ICE.

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Jemar Tisby- JemarTisby.Substack.com

On parallel channels over the last two weeks, we’ve witnessed Hegseth’s dangerous holy war rants, Vance’s arrogant lecturing Pope Leo XIV on Catholic theology, and Trump’s direct attacks on the pope, followed by an unhinged promotion of an AI image of himself as Jesus. Just typical post-Easter weeks in the MAGA era. In this week's Convocation Unscripted, we were joined LIVE by nearly 300 in TCU community. Tune in to hear a rich conversation based on your questions.

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Jemar Tisby- JemarTisby.Substack.com

On this episode, the Convocation team talks about the large new survey by that demonstrates that most Americans want a more humane approach to immigration policy and do not support indiscriminate mass deportation, the construction of concentration camps on U.S. soil, and the increasingly aggressive and violent tactics of ICE. Jemar gives a preview of his new short documentary, “Jesus Was a Migrant.” For the film, he traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to examine the theological crisis at the heart of American Christianity — and what it means when a nation built on faith turns its back on the most vulnerable. We wrap with theological reflections about the abandonment of any pretense of trying to make government humane by this administration in both domestic and foreign policy.

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Jemar Tisby- JemarTisby.Substack.com