The Convocation Unscripted

This week, we reflect on the anticlimactic America250 celebrations in Washington, DC, and around the country. We also talked about the tragic, suspicious death of African American 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells, whose body was found after he disappeared during a boat trip with a group of white friends on Horn Island over the Fourth of July weekend, and why so many Black Americans are reacting diff...

Independence Day Edition Follow on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/jemartisby.b... https://bsky.app/profile/kkdumez.bsky... https://bsky.app/profile/dianabutlerb... https://bsky.app/profile/robertpjones... Follow on Substack: The Convocation- convocation.substack.com Robert P. Jones- www.whitetoolong.net Diana Butler Bass- dianabutlerbass.substack.com Kristin Du Mez- kristindumez.substack.com Je...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s order to remove Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The lead opinion, written by Justice Alito, declared that Trump’s derogatory language about these groups (“they’re eating the pets”) and their country of origin (“sh*thole countries”) was not “OVERTLY” racist and therefore not a factor i...

This week, the Convocation Unscripted team talk about the implications of the silencing of women’s voices in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the erasure of women’s voices in the New Testament. On the even of Juneteenth, we also discuss the importance of embracing Juneteenth as our newest federal holiday, and the power of commemorating that holiday alongside Independence Day, which falls...

Because it’s the first week of the month, this week’s Convocation Unscripted episode was live. We talked about the latest happenings in the world of religion and politics: the drastic narrowing of officially recognized religions within the Department of Defense, the further politicization of the civil service by the Trump administration, and moral bright lines being crossed that we must continue t...

In this episode, we talk about the broad interdisciplinary research across the humanities and social sciences that has converged to establish the clear threat of Christian nationalism to pluralistic democracy, both here and across Europe. From the headlines, we also discuss the surprising victory by scandal-laden Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary race in Texas. The coming...

In this episode of The Convocation Unscripted , we wrestle in real time with two competing visions of America unfolding side-by-side. On one hand, we discuss the “Rededicate 250” event and the growing effort to frame the United States as a distinctly Christian nation rooted in white Christian nationalist mythology. On the other hand, we reflect on “All Roads Lead to the South,” a contemporary voti...

This week, we talk about the dismay our friends in Canada and other nations are expressing about the decline of America as a good neighbor. We also talk about two events that are taking place this weekend: 1) Jemar is attending the “All Roads Lead to the South” event, a day of action in Selma in response to the dismantling of the voting rights act; and 2) Robby is attending the Trump administratio...

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 r...

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. Th...

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 m...

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 TC...

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...

On this episode we talk about the recent bombshell story from the New York Times, “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years.” We note that these stories of men abusing women and children cut across ideology and reflect a broader brokenness in our culture. But we note that one thing that matters always: how institutions react when these kinds of credible, corroborate...

This week, we open the conversation with reflections on the challenges of living daily life amid the onslaught of horrific news, so often these days instigated by our own government. We reflect on normalcy—focusing on daily tasks of caring for family, tending friendships, and connecting with local community—as a mode of resistance. We then turn to address the war in Iran, particularly how Pete Heg...

In this TCU+LIVE conversation, we covered a lot of ground. We opened with the significance of Trump’s falling favorability numbers in a brand new survey, especially among white non-evangelical Protestants and Latino Protestants. We also talked about Pete Hegseth’s dangerous commitments to Christian Nationalism and how it is entangled in the War in Iran—noting that the story is much more complex th...

On this episode, we discussed the deep logic of white Christian nationalism. It’s all about protecting the hierarchy: men over women, white people over all people of color, straight people over LGBTQ people (when they are even acknowledged at all). So this week, when we saw Doug Wilson—who has been an apologist for white Confederate slave-owning society and an advocate of stripping the right to vo...

On this episode, we discussed the ways white femininity has been weaponized by Trump and the MAGA movement, along with the erasure of climate change as a scientific conclusion by the Trump administration. Pam Bondi’s recent contentious testimony before Congress, which was widely criticized for its disrespectful demeanor towards Democratic lawmakers, provided a vivid example of conservative white f...

In this TCU+LIVE conversation, we talked about Trump’s shameful, rambling speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he talked three times longer than his allotted slot. His remarks were filled with lies about losing the 2020 election, cursing, threats to churches and nonprofits who disagreed with him, and the demonization of Democrats. We’ve come a long, long way from the days when conservati...

In this episode of  The Convocation Unscripted , Jemar, Diana, and Kristin talk about what it means—and what it costs—to speak up in a moment of moral and political crisis.  Reflecting on the Southern Lights Conference, Alex Pretti, and midterm elections, they explore why so many people who once remained silent are now finding their voices, and what finally pushes individuals past fear, caution, a...

This week we talk about the recent autopsy reports that reveal the escalating brutality of ICE. Renee Goode’s autopsy revealed that she was shot four times in rapid succession. Another autopsy report this week revealed that the death of migrant Geraldo Lunas Campos, who was in ICE custody at an internment camp in Texas, was unlikely a suicide as the government claimed but caused by wounds consiste...

Following our conversation last week about the senseless, unjustified killing of Renee Good by and ICE agent in Minneapolis, this week we bring you a special episode of The Convocation Unscripted with our first ever guest, Rev. Angela Denker. Angela is an ordained Lutheran pastor in Minneapolis (her full bio is below) and author of DISCIPLES OF WHITE JESUS: The Radicalization of American Boyhood....

Our first conversation of the year was a heavy one. We mourned the senseless, unjustified killing of Renee Good by and ICE agent in Minneapolis, noting that the chain of events that lead to her death is anchored in Trump’s racist lies about Somali immigrants. And we also warned that the $170 billion of our tax dollars that ICE received to dramatically expand operations on U.S. soil in 2026 will me...

This week we discuss the explosive Vanity Fair article and accompanying photographs that reveal unflattering images of Trump administration officials, including Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, and Karoline Leavitt. The photographer, Christopher Anderson, defended his work as authentic journalism rather than celebrity-style portraiture. The article and the backslash against it exposed the vanity and vuln...

Why his latest rants signal a deeper unraveling We’re living in a moment where authoritarian power is panicking, elites are hiding, and ordinary people are the ones finding their voice. You could read Trump’s outburst against Somali immigrants as just another racist rant. But if you listen more closely you can also hear it as a panic siren from an authoritarian project that knows it’s slipping, ev...