the more perfect union with Rev. Adam Russell Taylor (ep 3, 32).

Thank you very much.

I think one thing that's really interesting to me is that you talk about the diversity within faith traditions and maybe how that relates to you personally.

I believe you were ordained in the American Baptist tradition and the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

which came to emergence in 1961 when clergy committed to the Civil Rights Movement.

You've talked about this, that this kind of inheritance has been given to you.

I'm curious, from your own tradition, what does it mean to you to walk in the inheritance of that tradition today?

Yeah, so the Progressive National Baptist Convention in particular was... formed by Dr.

King and his father and others in 1961, partly out of a concern, a frustration, that the National Baptist Convention was kind of lukewarm when it came to its commitment to civil rights.

I mean, I think sometimes there's kind of this misnomer that we can easily have about history, that the majority of black churches were deeply committed to the civil rights movement and were on the front lines of activism and everything else.

And the reality is it was still a minority of Black churches, still a substantial number, but a minority of them that were deeply involved.

And there was a kind of a leadership challenge and disagreement.

There was an election, essentially, and there were very different visions that were put forward for what direction the National Baptist Convention should go.

And one vision was very much aligned with Dr.

King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The other one was to retreat, to kind of try to, you know, depoliticize, if you will, the National Baptist Convention and its commitment to civil rights.

Ultimately, I can't remember the name of the person who won, but Daddy King, Dr. King's father, was the candidate that would have taken it in a more civil rights direction.

He lost, and there was some controversy around the results.

Ultimately, Dr.

King and Daddy King and others decided that they would...

It was kind of a moment of reckoning and they decided to split off and form a separate denomination that would be much more committed to the cause of civil rights and social justice.

I think the reason why that's important to me is that, and I think this directly aligns with what I just shared about sojourners.

I don't think you can disaggregate or separate a commitment to justice from a commitment to following Jesus.

I think the two are interwoven and are inseparable.

And that doesn't mean then that we all have to have the exact same politics or have the exact same views on policies because politics is extremely messy.

And there's a lot of different ways to get to some shared goals and destinations.