Description

In March 2022, the Luce Foundation approved a special grant of $50,000 to the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, joining the Fetzer Institute in providing early support for an initiative of the Kairos Center to counter White Christian Nationalism. In the months that followed, the Center – working in collaboration MoveOn Education Fund – developed and grew a cross-sector, multiracial, multifaith and multi-ideological network of leaders seeking to deepen understanding of the white Christian nationalist movement in the United States, and to generate innovative and scalable strategies to counter its influence.    Thanks in part to early grants from Luce and Fetzer, this collaborative initiative has since been able to garner additional foundation support, including grants from Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and others. The Luce grant being recommended here would supplement this support, allowing the Kairos Center and its partners to successfully complete the initiative’s current cycle of work, and to plan for an important next phase.    Led by Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and others, the initiative has gathered diverse knowledge makers—theologians and faith leaders, academics and researchers, journalists and media professionals, movement leaders and grassroots organizers—to explore how to most effectively disrupt the force of White Christian Nationalism. It represents one of several growing efforts focused on critically examining—and creatively responding to—the connections among religion, racism, and nationalism in contemporary political culture. Gatherings organized by Rev. Theoharis and her colleagues have included both other current Luce Foundation grantees – such as Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), and author of the recently published The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future – as well as a range of leaders somewhat less familiar to the Foundation.    In addition to its gatherings, the initiative has commissioned and published a report, entitled All of U.S.: Organizing to Counter White Christian Nationalism and Build a Pro- Democracy Society . As they pursue the initiative’s next stages of work, its leaders will draw on the report’s findings and recommendations, focusing on two strategies in particular: integrating faith communities and faith leaders more fully into a pro-democracy movement, and enabling Christians to organize Christians in confronting—and crafting compelling alternatives to—White Christian Nationalism. Further details on these strategies are included in the Kairos Center’s proposal, and in the published report itself.    The Religion and Theology Program seeks to deepen public knowledge of religion and to draw on the wisdom of faith traditions to advance shared understanding. Partnering with scholars of religion, faith leaders, journalists, artists, museum curators, and communities of faith, our work strengthens understanding of religious diversity, promotes more curious and civil public conversations, and stimulates faith-rooted efforts to envision and build a more just, compassionate, and democratic world.      Investing in diverse faith-rooted knowledge organizations, the program aims to amplify the voices of faith communities and faith leaders engaged in democracy and justice work. The grant proposed here aligns well with the program’s current goals and strategies, and it would continue to build upon and expand the network of knowledge makers we are developing.