April 19, 2025 – Easter and Passover Courage in the Fight for Democracy

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

 

REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH:

From Interfaith Alliance, this is The State of Belief. I’m Interfaith Alliance President Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush in New York City. This week I want to talk directly to you about some of the things that are on my mind right now and what I see as happening in this country.

 

I feel like we are in an inflection point. We’re reaching the end of the first 90 days of the Trump-Vance-Musk administration. And this is also coming at the center of the sacred days of both the Christian and the Jewish tradition. And so I really felt like I wanted to speak directly to you because I have some things that I want to convey, and also just wanted to try to communicate my deep respect and my commitment and my love for each of you and how much we need each other in this moment.

 

And so you’re going to be hearing a lot of my voice today, but it’ll be interspersed with some really excellent other people’s voices, including an amazing interview I did two years ago, actually for Easter, with the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, who is the Bishop of Washington, D.C., who was so important on Inauguration Day when she spoke directly to the President about asking for mercy for the most vulnerable, including LGBTQ people and children, as well as immigrants. And she got roundly attacked for that, terribly attacked. But actually, that was a way of her showing up with bravery. And two years ago, she talked to us about a new book she had about bravery. And so it’s not a surprise that she had the courage to stand up in that moment.

 

We’re also going to hear from Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who is the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who spoke to us a couple years ago about Passover and the importance of Passover, but also about the history of the RAC, as it’s known, the Religious Action Center, how it was formed and how important it was that the RAC was formed in community and has always had a sense of being in community with other traditions as well as other groups. And we need that sense of community and that sense of solidarity right now, so much. And so both of those amazing leaders, we’ll be hearing their voices.

 

And then on top of all that, we’ll be celebrating the long-awaited reopening of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City that was damaged by fire a few years ago with Senior Pastor Dr. Jacqui Lewis, who will offer us a reflection on Easter and rebirth, which will have meaning for that congregation, but also hopefully for our country.

 

We need these conversations now more than ever. This podcast is featuring voices that need to be heard in this crisis of our democracy, the incredible march towards authoritarianism that we are experiencing. The fact that we are highlighting voices who are speaking up, showing up, informing us how we can show up is so important. So please, if you have not already, subscribe, share, and rate The State of Belief at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you are listening to.

 

Just think about who we’ve had, just recently: Rep. Eric Swalwell; Katherine Stewart; Michael Eric Dyson. These are amazing people. You can go on our website. You can find past programs and re-listen to the ones you like the best; but then, also, you can share those with your friends and let people know – because right now, isolation and a sense of impossibility of being able to show up and withstand what is coming at us is our worst enemy, and The State of Belief is here to create an opportunity for us to hear one another, to grow one another together. And so If you want to give a financial contribution, you can find out how at stateofbelief.com.

 

But this is also something that Interfaith Alliance is offering to the country right now. And we would love for you to come and join us at Interfaith Alliance. And at interfaithalliance.org, you can find out what we’re doing. We are showing up in incredible ways. I’m so proud of our team. And we would love for you to be a part of it, so become a member. You can become a member by giving a financial contribution at any level, literally $5. It will make you a member of Interfaith Alliance, but we would love to be in community with you. You can sign up for our newsletter. You can really learn about the actions you can take so that we can show up for our democracy, show up for our neighbor, and show up for whatever faith tradition or diverse belief you have. We have to show up together right now, because the only way to get through this is to go through it together. And the wider the “we”, the better, as we like to say. So thank you for any support you can offer Interfaith Alliance.

 

I’m going to start off with some really important warning signs that are happening right now that we need to pay attention to, that we need to be aware of, and we need to figure out a way to show up and fight back. The first thing I want to talk about is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who lived in Maryland and who was abducted and deported illegally, mistakenly, to El Salvador. And it was acknowledged by the U.S. government, by the Trump administration, that was a mistake. And the Supreme Court eventually heard the case. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the U.S. had to try to get Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from the Salvadorian prison.

 

And what we saw recently, earlier this week on Monday, when President Trump met with the president of El Salvador, they basically said, no, we’re not going to do it. And this is really important, because this is a test. They’re trying to have a test case where they refuse to follow the mandates of a law. And they’re trying to do it on technicalities and they’re saying we can’t – but of course they can. And I can’t remember who was commenting on this. They can talk about annexing Canada. They can talk about invading Greenland, but they can’t talk about, with the president of El Salvador, getting someone who was wrongfully deported back. I mean, you know, forget it. And so this is an attempt to corrode the system of American law.

 

And this is terrible for so many reasons. We think, this is clear, this guy was not supposed to be deported. And the reason this is a religious issue for all kinds of reasons, but the moral, this is a life that was, and frankly, all the lives who were deported without due process, without any process – this is the slippery slope that they’re trying to say, well, these are really bad people.

 

Well, we’ve already determined that some of them were picked up just because they had a tattoo wrongfully identified, like this gay barber. But then this guy has no reason to go to El Salvador. He was rightfully in the United States and he was kicked out. Morally, that’s the destruction of lives. And it’s terrible for our country. It’s terrible for American rule of law. It’s also a direct statement that we’re not going to obey the rules. And once you start to do that, and once you start to become familiar, then we’re just entering into a different time in American history, where the president feels like he doesn’t have to do what the law says he has to do.

 

Now, this is compounded by something that Trump said when he was talking to the president of El Salvador. He said, “The homegrowns are next.” This is a quote. The homegrowns are next. You’ve got to build about five more places. It’s not big enough. The homegrowns are next. That means that basically Americans who he doesn’t like,are next. And see, this is where, people who are undesirable, we’ve seen this before. People who are deemed undesirable sent to prisons. Let’s not forget, sending them out of the country to prisons is a technique. I mean, in Germany, Auschwitz was in Poland. They sent undesirables outside of Germany. We’re in a moment where this is a crisis.

 

I don’t mean to be a super bummer, and don’t turn me off yet, but I’m going to compound this bummer with another bummer, which is something that might be less on the radar. We have to speak out about what happened to this one fellow, because it’s a test case. And we have to be loud. We have to insist. We have to call your representatives. There was a senator, and I’m blanking on his name, he said, this was a Democratic senator, said, I’m going to go down to El Salvador. I’m going to try to get him released. And we need that kind of energy. Because the moment we say, oh, well, okay, we’ll let this slide, let’s fight the next fight and see if it’s a better fight. No, this is the fight right now.

 

And so this is compounded, let me just say, by the fact that on Easter Day we will be observing the 90th day of the Trump administration. What happened on Inauguration Day was that Trump ordered his Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary of Defense to submit a joint report within 90 days about the conditions at the southern border, with recommendations on additional actions that may be necessary to obtain operational control of the southern border, including the invocation of the Insurrection Act of 1807. So that was something that Trump actually said on Inauguration Day, January 20th. 90 days later is Easter.

 

So the irony, this podcast is coming out on Easter. And so hopefully you’ll be listening to it then, maybe before, maybe a little bit after, but Trump is going to make a decision about invoking the Insurrection Act. And what the Insurrection Act does is it allows the president to basically use the military to enforce laws. And that, in this case, is around the deportations. And so some of the things that are possible are that the National Guard in various states will be federalized, and the president will be able to direct the National Guard to declare martial law and begin to help with deportation efforts, including directly confronting sanctuary cities and potentially putting down any sort of protests. So this is a very dangerous, dangerous moment, and we’re there.

 

And we don’t know exactly what will happen and we don’t know if it will happen, but many serious people that I’m talking to right now are talking about this. And so I’m raising this up because it’s really important that we also speak up about this. It’s related. It’s very related. So the important thing to remember here is this is so not normal. This is a severe break with tradition. The separation of military and civilian life, especially around civilian law enforcement, is a foundational American tradition. And so to do this, to deploy military troops for mass deportation, which is what he wants to do, is completely unprecedented. It’s very extreme. The military has never done this before, does not have the training or the skill to do it. And so what we’re seeing is, again, another move towards authoritarianism. And we need to be really clear-eyed about what this could mean.

 

And I’m going to give you a few things to keep in mind, and these come from our friends at Indivisible, that I think are really important. So you can find this, “Insurrection Act”, “Indivisible”. You also can find more about this at interfaithalliance.org. But I’m going to give you five things or six things that you can do about this. And it also pertains to all the stuff with deportation, which is: the first is sound the alarm. We need to talk to people about this. So share this, share this podcast, share this information with anybody, with your neighbors. Really make sure that people know that this is potentially happening. Push your representatives at all levels to be aware of this and to challenge this abuse of power. It’s super important. The governors have to be on alert because they are the ones who are supposed to be able to control the National Guard, and maybe, hopefully, they could prevent this federal takeover of the National Guard. You can use your platform, whatever, if it’s social media or if you like to call people on the phone, let people know about it.

 

The important thing, and I need to learn this one, it’s stay calm. We have to be really disciplined in this moment. We are not going to be chaotic. We are going to be powerful. We are going to be joyful. We are going to be defiant. We are going to be nonviolent, and we’re going to protect each other. Really, really important. We are not going to play into the violent, chaotic narrative, which will give him permission to set the military on us.

 

And we want to make sure that we’re aware of the polls. The important thing to remember here, and I’m going to diverge a second about polls, Trump is way underwater with polling on deportations. He’s 11 points under, 42% support him, 53% do not support and do not approve of the deportations to this moment. And add that to a militarization, and I think the bottom is going to fall out, but we have to make sure that we are not playing into his game and his rhetoric.

 

The other thing is, flip the script. He wants to stop insurrectionists, but what about the ones he pardoned, the thousands he pardoned, who actually attacked our democracy? So let’s talk about how the president did not care about the chaos and the attack on our democracy and, actually, the attack on police. So don’t let him… The insurrectionists in this case, again, comes from inside the house. I think this is a really good one. I love this. Like this is all, again, from the Indivisible website. You can go there and find this.

 

Use ridicule to deflate his power, and I love that. So, mocking him making sure that this makes him look weak instead of powerful. That’s really, really important.

 

And then just recognize that this is a long game. So we have to continue to build infrastructure, build solidarity, and be with one another and really recognize, show up for our neighbors, reach out to our neighbors, create concentration of people power in your local neighborhood. So I offer all of that.

 

Okay, I know that was a lot, but it’s really important because I really do believe we’re at an inflection point with just the attacks on our universities. Harvard actually stood up to the administration and said, no, you’re not going to tell us exactly how to do this. And it was wonderful. Trump immediately said, okay, we’re going to take away $2 billion from you. Okay, so it’s on. Let’s see what happens. And I will say, right after Harvard did that, the president of Columbia sent out an email and actually talked about pushing back against the administration for the first time. They said, we all read the Harvard message, including the acting president. And she said, we’re not going to let them dictate to us what we’re going to do.

 

And so higher education under attack, law firms under attack, many of them capitulating, the incredible attack on public education… And I don’t know if you heard that now, any student can snitch on a teacher, even a whiff of DEI, which means really anything about the history of America that includes the systematic oppression of Black people and others, that will be too DEI. You can just see how this is going to spiral out.

 

Plus, and Interfaith Alliance is very activated on all of this, there’s now this anti-Christian bias EO that Trump did early on. Now in the State Department, basically, they’re asking people to snitch on one another if they hear anything that is vaguely anti-Christian. And what do they mean by that? This is the most anti-Christian administration that we’ve ever seen. I mean, this is incredible. Attack the Bishop Budde, attack the Catholic bishops, attack the Lutherans, attack the Quakers, all of them. And including when they shut down DEI, they shut down a Christian affinity group in the State Department.

 

But now the State Department is urging people to snitch on one another if they hear anything that’s anti-Christian at all. And you know what that means. It just means anything that’s pro-gay, whatever. You can make things up. This is very Orwellian. We’re aware of it. So all these attacks are coming on DEI, on all of this.

 

This is all happening, but we are in Holy Week, okay, people? So I just want to say, this is an important time to be thinking about this because actually, Holy Week and also Passover and, really, all of the faith traditions have this moment where incredible power by humans is used to oppress the people. And the story always is about the liberation from the pharaohs or the emperors. In the Christian story, Jesus comes in and he talks about, oh, we have the Beloved Community. Let’s create, let’s love one another. Let’s let love be the foundation of our time together.

 

And yet, they don’t like that at all. And so literally, On Maundy Thursday, he says, the greatest commandment is love. And then from there on, he gets executed, put into the tomb. And then, three days later, he rises. And so for some people, they’re like, oh, okay, he got crucified. That freed my soul. It’s done. That’s not the way I understand that story. He got crucified, and we all know crucifixions are happening today. Attacks on people are happening today. People are suffering today. And the idea of Easter is that that’s not going to have the last word, and that God is not going to let that have the last word.

 

And so as we think about this moment where a would-be emperor is trying to attack people and really harm people, people are being harmed… I didn’t even mention the erasure of trans people, the unbelievable attacks on LGBTQ people, especially trans youth and all. It’s just unbelievable. We have to recognize where are we in that story, and how are we going to be part of a resurrection?

 

Same with Passover, that’s a story of a people who were oppressed and found a way out, found a way towards liberation, found a new way to be with one another. And so I just, in this moment of the holy seasons that we’re in, which is different than kind of the birth narratives – you know, it’s not Christmas, that’s kind of a fun thing even though  they’re forced refugees and they’re out in the the barn. But anyway, the the point is that these are seasons about Liberation.

 

 

 

 

I’m going to share one story with you. This is this is a personal story. It happened just a couple days ago. So I was scrolling, I was scrolling. And you know, that’s rough stuff. And I was reading about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and I was reading about all of these things that were happening. I was getting more and more furious. And this is like 8:30 at night and I’m in this room and right next door, my kids are, you know, and I hear this thumping and I hear this loud noise and it just pissed me off. I was like, ah, these kids, these kids need to be going to bed. They’re disturbing my fury.

 

I kind of stomp out there and one kid is just reading. He’s just reading a comic book that he likes, this really great one that has these great stories about strong women characters I love. Aand then the other one is dancing. And he’s dancing to this song that I love that I have no idea how it got on our Alexa. It just must have kind of gotten there eventually, but it’s called “You Can’t Stop the Beat”, and at the culmination of a movie that came out a while ago and then it was on Broadway for a long time called Hairspray. And it was a John Waters film, originally, and then it became a musical. And “You Can’t Stop the Beat” is about the integration of the Corny Collins Show, which is a dance show in Baltimore in the 60s. And it’s actually kind of a great song and it’s like, you can’t stop the beat, and there I see my son just jamming, and I had to make a decision.

 

I was like, okay, do I just shut it all down and make him feel my misery and make everybody just miserable because I’m miserable. But then I just – it was grace, really. I just saw him dancing and I just went over and I started shaking and shimmying with him and we, for the next five to seven minutes, we just danced and it was so important. I’m going to just read you a couple of the lyrics because you’ve got to understand, it’s a light song. It’s not like a super protest song, but it’s a celebration that says, “You can’t stop the motion of the ocean or the sun of the sky. You can wonder if you want to, but I never asked why. And you can try to hold me down, I’m going to spit in your eye and say, you can’t stop the beat.” And it says, you can stop the motion of the ocean, the rain from the skies. You can try this to stop the paradise we’re dreaming of. But you cannot stop the rhythm of two hearts in love. You cannot stop the beat. And it was like, we started dancing. We were going wild.

 

And it just was so important for me. And yeah, okay, dancing is not going to solve any of this, but let’s remember Miriam, in the story of the Exodus, if you read the story of the Exodus, the Exodus starts with Miriam dancing with other women, playing cymbals, and dancing into the liberation. And you can argue that the Palm Sunday was a parade, it’s just important that we have joy in this moment. And it changed my heart. And I just wanted to offer you that, because I just think it’s important. We’re struggling so much and so many of us are hurting, but just find joy. Find people who give you joy. Make space for joy. Make space for fun.

 

And the other thing I want to talk about is courage, and I want us to take a moment now. I’m going to play a clip from Bishop Mariann Budde from two years ago. She talked to me on Easter week, and so this is Easter Sunday, and she had just come out with a book about bravery. And she talked to us about bravery and it’s a great insight, but also what it takes to be brave, but also showing up in moments that require bravery. And we saw that so much with her just saying so gently to the president, please have mercy on the most vulnerable. So I want to listen to this message as an Easter message for us this week.

 

(Bishop Budde clip)

 

I love that and I love Bishop Budde, and I just think it’s important that people realize she’s someone who’s really trying to hold people together. What she tried to do that day with the president in January 20th, she wasn’t trying to pin him down. She was just asking very, very directly out of her faith tradition, please have mercy and realize there’s a wider America, that all of us need a president who sees us. And so it’s just really important to recognize that.

 

And I want to offer a little bit of a passage from Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who is the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. And he talked to me around Passover about the importance of this story of liberation, but that the history of the Religious Action Center is not just a history of the liberation of the Jews, but it’s also about the intersection with NAACP and and all these other groups. And so the founding story of that group is so instructive for us today as we think about what’s the widest “we” we can create right now that can help us all feel liberated and inclusive of all. It’s going to take all of us. So, so please enjoy this this clip from Rabbi Jonah Pesner.

 

(Rabbi Pesner clip)

 

I have one more voice that I want to introduce into the mix, and that is the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, who is the pastor at Middle Collegiate Church, an amazing church, and she has gone through it, and her congregation has gone through it lately. They had a terrible fire and have been out of their congregation for years, several years, and now they are back in their congregation, their sanctuary has been rebuilt, and they are back in for the first time for Easter. So let’s listen to a reflection that the Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis made especially for this moment.

 

(Rev. Lewis clip)

 

I want to close by reading the final pages of my children’s book called Together We Rise: An Easter Story for All of Us. And so this is the final pages, just as a message that I hope will resonate with each of you today:

 

“We rise with God’s love that brings us together to love one another. We rise to bring God’s promise of justice and freedom to earth, as in heaven. We rise to remember that each of us, especially you, who is reading this book” – or listening to this podcast –“right now is a part of God’s heart, made in God’s image, worthy of dignity and respect. Jesus’ great invitation to rise in love continues today for you and for all of us to join in the Beloved Community of God here on earth. Hallelujah, Jesus rose, and together, we rise.”