Faithful America Confronts Religious Bigotry and Christian Teachings that Serve a Hateful Political Agenda – Between The Lines

In the 1960s and 70s, the liberal wing of faith institutions was ascendant, with a progressive religious component to key struggles like civil rights, farmworkers rights and peace. But for the past almost 40 years, the right-wing has sucked most of the oxygen out of the faith sector of our society, including the explosion of conservative televangelists and the growth of organizations like the Family Research Council and a Catholic Church that has moved in a more conservative direction.

In 2004, progressive faith organizing began through the National Council of Churches, the umbrella group of mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S. The group doing the organizing, Faithful America, became independent in 2013.

Between The Lines Melinda Tuhus spoke with the Rev. Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest and campaigns director with Faithful America, which does online organizing and has involved more than 180,000 people in its campaigns. Here, Rev. Empsall talks about his groups past successes and what progressive people of faith have confronted during the Trump era.

THE REV. NATHAN EMPSALL: We describe ourselves as the largest online community of grassroots Christians putting faith into action for social justice, reclaiming Christianity from the religious right. We do that using online campaigns and online organizing. So MoveOn.org, Credo, Indivisible, are now familiar to folks in a way they werent when we were first founded. There are a lot of great Christian organizations and progressive organizations out there that have a communications approach and a grass-tops approach and highlight faith leaders. Thats so important. But we help give people in the pews a voice to raise their faith and their religion and put that into action. Our members are both lay and ordained, and represent every major denomination in the U.S. Theyre from all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

MELINDA TUHUS: What are some of the issues youve worked on?

THE REV. NATHAN EMPSALL: We were really involved with the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2009. We did a lot of work on climate change at that time. We helped a group of Catholic sisters beat a fracking pipeline in Kentucky; I believe it was in 2013. A lot of our organizing is around LGBTQ rights and full LGBTQ inclusion in the church, in Christianity. Every human being was created in Gods image and has God-given dignity, and the Gospel is all about love and says nothing about sexuality. We stand for that Gospel love and fully support LGBTQ rights and stand against all of the bigotry and discrimination we see coming from the religious right against LGBTQ persons.

Tony Perkins is the leader of the Family Research Council, which the civil rights group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, has identified as a hate group. Faithful Americas members in, I believe it was 2013 or 2014, helped persuade MSNBC to stop featuring Tony Perkins as a talking head and pundit representing Christianity on its programs and also curtailed his appearances on CBS and I believe on ABC. These networks would bring Perkins on to represent the Christian point of view not the right-wing point of view, but for the Christian point of view, as if theres only one. And then hed spew all kinds of hatred in Jesus name that in no way represented Jesus. And thanks to sustained long-term pressure from our members, MSNBC stopped bringing him on. That was a very important victory, we thought, certainly at the time.

Weve continued to pressure Catholic bishops and Catholic schools to stop firing teachers for marrying the people they love teachers and other staff members. And weve certainly spoken out about Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr. and their support for Donald Trump.

MELINDA TUHUS: Yay! And what about this year? You said you actually brought on more staff for 2020.

THE REV. NATHAN EMPSALL: 2020 has been a particularly big and successful year for Faithful America. As you might imagine, weve been very busy around the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, there are a lot of religious bad actors out there, spreading false information about COVID-19, and refusing to take important public health actions, even though Jesus was a healer who taught us how to care for the sick, so from the very beginning of the pandemic, Faithful America members were working to a social justice response to the virus and stop the spread of that disinformation.

We continued working on social justice measures around the pandemic, helping pair asylum seekers and refugees who didnt have a place to stay, who would usually live with individual families. But those families had to close their doors due to the pandemic. We helped those refugees and asylum seekers find willing churches that were empty and had space to sponsor them and their requests for asylum.

Jim Bakker, the infamous televangelist from the 1980s, is back on the air now, and he was touting a fake cure for the coronavirus at the start of the virus. Our members sprang into action and helped get his show taken off at least two different networks. That was a really important victory for public health.

Weve continued to take action around the pandemic all year long. Right now, were working to stop disinformation around the vaccines. And Im proud to say since that campaign began, at least one bishop has changed their position and now supports the Pfizer vaccine, after previously incorrectly claiming it was made with stem cells and that no Catholic or Christian should take the vaccine. Well, thats not true; thats not how Pfizer and Moderna made their vaccines, and were helping to correct that misinformation in religious circles.

MELINDA TUHUS: I imagine some issues might be rather divisive. For example, have you done any work around abortion rights?

THE REV. NATHAN EMPSALL: As an organization, Faithful America, has not run campaigns specifically related to abortion access or reproductive rights. We have spoken out against the ex-communication or denial of the sacraments to politicians for taking pro-choice stances. We made a lot of headlines around both Tim Kaine and Joe Biden in their different elections, when bishops threatened to deny them communion, or local priests in Bidens case, in Rhode Island. We said that no one should be denied full participation in the church because of their political positions on those issues. And weve spoken out against folks who harass women outside abortion clinics in Jesus name.

For more information, visit Faithful America atfaithfulamerica.org.

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Faithful America Confronts Religious Bigotry and Christian Teachings that Serve a Hateful Political Agenda - Between The Lines