American Baptist Churches USA

Now, This is a chart, and I can say this as someone with a master's degree in biblical studies, which is broadly accurate.

So for example, right here in the middle at zero you've got nazarene wesleyan free methodist assemblies of god foursquare global methodist and we'll get into this in just a moment but this is broadly the tradition i come from so yeah right in the dead center uh then of course toward the left you've got american baptist churches you've got the united methodist church disciples of christ Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, PCUSA, that's Presbyterian Church USA, UCC is United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, and then all the way to liberal Quakers.

So I suspect that some of you may come from a number of these backgrounds, or you certainly know people who are in these backgrounds.

And it is important when you look at things like PCUSA, Presbyterian Church USA, or ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran, United Methodist, American Baptist, you recognize that some of the Protestant groups have more liberal or progressive break-offs, as well as more conservative break-offs as well.

On the conservative side, Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, That's PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, SBC, Southern Baptist Convention, Churches of Christ, Calvary Chapel.

No, OPC is Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

And that's why I'm so excited to welcome Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush.

Paul is the president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, an ordained American Baptist minister, and the host of State of Belief.

Right now, he's kicking off the Vote is Sacred bus tour, meeting with communities across America.

Today, we're going to talk about why these midterms matter so much.

Paul is the president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance.

What's so interesting about that to me is that that's one of the country's leading organizations at the intersection of religious freedom, democracy, and the separation of church and state.

You're an ordained American Baptist minister and the host of The State of Belief.

And before leading Interfaith Alliance, you were the founding executive editor of Huffington Post Religion and served as the associate dean of religious life at the chapel at this little university called Princeton

He was also the senior political director initially at Sojourners.

He is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and he serves in ministry at the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Adam has become a good friend of mine.

I am so appreciative of his care for the world and the way he manifests it in his work.

It really just connected the dots around a lot of the things that I really cared deeply about and was passionate about.

I actually became his teaching assistant my second year, and then that started kind of a friendship and a mentorship that ultimately led me to join the board of the organization and then on staff my first time around as a political director, and then ultimately 15 years after that to kind of come back and enter into a leadership transition with Jim where I ultimately became president.

Well, I am deeply rooted in the Black church tradition and ordained in the American Baptist Church and then

the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I'm ordained, uh, with the American Baptists.

But, um, there's a separation between, uh, this, the idea of church and state, and there's a reason for that.

Um, but no matter what we do in America, they will never be separated because they're so entrenched.

Dude, man, dude, that's American Catholics.

That's American Baptist.

That's American everything that you would you would have assumed that Jesus was crucified in Philadelphia.

You know what I mean? Like, I mean.

The Congregationalists, the United Church of Christ.

Uh, the American Baptists are often, most often associated with the old Protestant mainline.

But as you're looking at this, you see that there has been a dormancy in terms of a lot of political identification here.

If you go back to the... look at Congress, say, in the 1950s, '60s, even the '70s, the vast majority of members of both the House and the Senate, but especially the Senate, were upscale establishment mainline Protestant church members.

Um, as a council member, um,

See, I thought you were also going to bring in your faith background, too, because Josh is also president of American Baptist Churches USA as well, and his wife is a pastor.

All these volunteer roles.

So

It was Bethel and St. Paul.

So it is American Baptist because it was a wake up call to me like, hold up, what do you really feel called to do in the church? So I was thankful for that and thankful for the journey to heal all of those wounds and

kind of did you a favor.

I'm sure that's what they were anticipating that by taking your seminary off the approved list.