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In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will and Josh speak with Holly Berkley Fletcher, historian, essayist, former CIA Africa analyst, and author of The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism. Drawing from her childhood in Kenya as an MK and years of research on the American missionary movement, Holly explores how missionary culture has shaped white evangelical identity, race narratives, and U.S. religious politics for more than a century.

She discusses the history of American missions, the deep roots of evangelical “calling,” the romanticized myth of the missionary saint, and why missionary children often carry the hidden costs of their parents’ spiritual ambitions. The conversation dives into race, colonial influence, trauma, American exceptionalism, Christian nationalism, global evangelicalism, and how missions became both a mirror and mask for white American Christianity. Holly also shares personal stories—from boarding school trauma to growing up surrounded by stark inequality—that illuminate the insider/outsider vantage point MKs uniquely bring.

If you care about global Christianity, American evangelical culture, deconstruction, mission work, or the complicated intersection of faith and identity, this episode offers an honest, challenging, and deeply human lens.

Buy: The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889832034

Guest Bio
Holly Berkley Fletcher is a historian, essayist, and former Africa analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, where she spent nearly two decades focusing on political, cultural, and security trends across the continent. Raised in Kenya as a missionary kid, she later earned a PhD in American History, giving her a unique insider/outsider perspective on evangelical culture. Her book, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism, blends memoir and research to examine the American missions movement, the psychology of calling, racial narratives, and the long-term impact on children raised in missionary families. Her work explores faith, identity, trauma, and glob

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Investigative reporter Jennifer Smith Richards of ProPublica joins Will and Josh to break down her major reporting on Oklahoma’s controversial education overhaul under Superintendent Ryan Walters. She explains how Christianity was woven into new academic standards, why educators across the political spectrum objected, and how figures like PragerU, David Barton, and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts influenced the proposed curriculum. Jennifer also walks through the dramatic rollback of civil-rights enforcement at the U.S. Department of Education and what the loss of federal oversight means for students with disabilities, racial discrimination claims, and families seeking accountability. This is a sobering, deeply important look at the future of public education, Christian nationalism in policy, and the stakes for parents and students nationwide.

Additional Resources

• This Is Ground Zero in the Conservative Quest for More Patriotic and Christian Public Schools: https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-education-department-oklahoma-public-schools
• PragerU Kids curriculum referenced by Oklahoma DOE: https://www.prageru.com/kids

Guest Bio
Jennifer Smith Richards is an investigative reporter at ProPublica, specializing in education, civil rights, and systemic failures affecting children and families. Her reporting has uncovered national patterns in school discipline, civil-rights enforcement, curriculum changes influenced by political movements, and the real-world impact of state-level education policy. Her work is widely recognized for its depth, clarity, and public impact.

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How do we argue without tearing each other apart? Corregan Brown joins us to explore the art of disagreement in an age of outrage. He breaks down the difference between arguing policy and clarifying principles, showing how many of our public fights aren’t about facts but about unspoken values. Brown also explains why recognizing power differentials matters in civic discourse and how “unbundling” political coalitions allows for more authentic and constructive engagement across divides.

We dig into the practical side of argument—what it means to enter a tense conversation without triggering defensiveness, how to recover when debates go sideways, and why empathy doesn’t mean compromise. Brown brings insight from both his engineering and faith-based backgrounds, offering a model for conversation rooted in curiosity, integrity, and shared purpose. His message is clear: productive disagreement isn’t about winning—it’s about understanding enough to build something better together.

Guest Bio:
Corrigan Brown leads in-store technology teams at Chick-fil-A—covering point-of-sale, kitchen operations, and digital fulfillment—and serves as an educator with Be the Bridge, facilitating historically grounded conversations around race, faith, and civic life. He blends a background in engineering, leadership, and reconciliation work to help communities navigate complex social and political divides with empathy and clarity. Brown appeared on Faithful Politics in a personal capacity and not as a representative or employee of Chick-fil-A.

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In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will and Josh talk with China expert William Nee about the major October 2025 crackdown on Beijing’s Zion Church, one of the largest underground Christian networks in China. William explains what actually happened during the coordinated raids, why Pastor Ezra Jin (Jin Mingri) and nearly 30 church leaders were charged with “illegally using information networks,” and how all of this connects to Xi Jinping’s tightened national-security agenda.

The conversation steps back to look at the broader picture: how “Sinicization” works, why the Chinese Communist Party fears independent faith communities, and what life is like for ordinary Christians when church gatherings, youth religious education, and online ministry can all trigger state action.

William also describes how the U.S. government and human-rights groups are responding, why international attention matters, and what this moment means for Christians, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetans, and others facing religious restrictions in China. If you want clear, grounded insight into what’s really happening inside China’s religious-freedom landscape, this episode gives you the context you need.

Guest bio:

William Nee is the Senior Manager for East Asia at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), where he focuses on China’s human-rights landscape, civil society, and religious freedom. Before NED, he served as a China researcher at Amnesty International and worked with Chinese Human Rights Defenders. His work often covers the CCP’s efforts to control faith communities, including the recent crackdown on Zion Church and its founder, Pastor Ezra Jin.

RELEVANT LINKS

Zion Church background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Zion_Church

Pastor Ezra Jin biography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Mingri

Reuters report on the 2025 arrests:
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-undergr

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In this return visit to Faithful Politics, political scientist Dr. Ethan J. Hollander helps us take a hard, honest look at the health of American democracy—and why so many people around the world are tempted by strongman rule. Drawing on his Great Courses series Democracy and Its Alternatives, Ethan walks through a clear, working definition of democracy, why “constitutional republic vs. democracy” is mostly a semantic dodge, and how all political systems are constantly trading freedom for order.

Will and Josh press into the mechanics of democratic backsliding: court-packing, weaponizing the bureaucracy, gerrymandering, hollowing out norms, and the “they did it first” spiral that turns politics into a race to the bottom. Along the way, Ethan explains why ranked-choice voting can reward bridge-building candidates, why demonizing the “deep state” is so dangerous, and why, even in failing democracies, the public is still the final check on authoritarian power. This is a hopeful but unsentimental tour through the dictator’s playbook—and what it will take for ordinary citizens to keep the republic.

Guest Bio
Dr. Ethan J. Hollander is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Wabash College, specializing in comparative politics, authoritarianism and democratization, ethnic conflict, and the politics of the Holocaust. He is the author of Hegemony and the Holocaust: State Power and Jewish Survival in Occupied Europe, and the creator of the Great Courses series Democracy and Its Alternatives, which explores how democracies thrive, why they fail, and the lessons their authoritarian competitors offer. His scholarship also includes work on democratic transitions in Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring, and he is a frequent commentator on the future of democracy around the world.

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Can you stay in hard conversations without trying to “win” or walk away? In this episode, Harvard Law School Senior Fellow and USA Today bestselling author Bob Bordone joins us to unpack conflict resilience—the ability to stay grounded, curious, and compassionate when everything in you wants to shut down or strike back. Bob helps us understand how to build this muscle in our homes, workplaces, and even in our faith communities. He explains why persuasion mode often backfires, how identity threat hijacks our nervous system, and what neuroscience reveals about giving our brains a “bigger, better offer” than defensiveness. Together we explore the cost of avoidance, the limits of performative civility, and how faith can model a braver kind of engagement that doesn’t sacrifice truth or relationship. By the end, Bob leaves us with tools to disagree well—without giving up or giving in—and reminds us that healing our political divides begins in the small, sacred act of really listening.

Learn more and buy his book: https://www.bobbordone.com

Guest bio:
Bob Bordone is a USA Today bestselling author, Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, and one of the nation’s leading experts on negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution. For more than two decades, he has helped organizations, governments, universities, and faith communities navigate their toughest conversations. His latest book is Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In.

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Is the real crisis in American politics actually a crisis of biblical authority and interpretation?

In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram sit down with former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint to talk about his new book, What the Bible Really Says: About Creation, End Times, Politics, and You. Drawing on more than two decades in business, Congress, and the conservative movement, DeMint argues that Western civilization—and especially the United States—was built on biblical, Judeo-Christian assumptions about morality, family, and public life, and that those foundations are now being systematically discredited.

Will presses DeMint on what it actually means to say America was founded on Christian values, especially in light of the violent treatment of Indigenous peoples, while Josh reflects on his own journey from “America as a Christian nation” to a more complicated, historically informed view. Together, they explore DeMint’s big claim that the Bible itself is true, but many of our long-held interpretations—about creation, science, and the end times—may not be. The conversation ranges from Galileo and the church’s resistance to science, to how Christians should think about nation-states, markets, and political power without confusing America with the kingdom of God. If you’re wrestling with faith, Scripture, and the future of American democracy, this is a thoughtful, challenging listen.

Buy the book: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781956454901

Guest Bio:
Jim DeMint is a conservative leader, author, and former U.S. Senator from South Carolina. After a career in marketing and business, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2005 and in the U.S. Senate from 2005 to 2013. He later became president of The Heritage Foundation and now serves as chairman of the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization focused on training and supporting conservative lawmakers and staff in Washington, D.C.

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What does it really mean to say Christianity is “rooted in Judaism”? In this conversation, Dr. Gavin D’Costa—Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol and visiting professor at Rome’s Angelicum—unpacks the argument of his new book From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church. We explore how early Christian faith grew from Jewish soil, where continuity ends and discontinuity begins, and why terms like “Judeo-Christian” both clarify and confuse. We also dive into Hebrew Catholicism, Messianic movements, Passover and the Eucharist, interfaith empathy, immigration anxieties, and what a Christ-honoring “rubric” looks like when discerning which practices to carry forward.

Dr. D’Costa challenges modern Christians to rediscover the richness of their Jewish roots without collapsing distinctions or erasing theological difference. He argues that recovering this lineage isn’t simply an academic exercise—it’s a spiritual one that can help the Church understand itself, its liturgy, and its moral imagination in a fragmented age. For listeners wrestling with how faith and identity intersect in pluralistic societies, this conversation offers both historical grounding and a compelling call toward deeper empathy and continuity within the Christian story.

Buy the book
From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church https://ignatius.com/from-sinai-to-rome-fstrp/

Guest bio:
Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Gavin D’Costa has shaped contemporary conversations on how Christians theologically relate to Jews and Muslims. He is Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol and serves as a visiting professor at the Angelicum in Rome. His books include Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (OUP, 2014), Catholic Doctrines on the Jewish People after Vatican II (OUP, 2019), and (as co-editor) From Sinai to Rome: Jewish Identity in the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2025).

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