June 17, 2017 – Booted from the Baptist Convention

Two headlines came out of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual conference this week. First there were hiccups in passing a resolution rejecting white nationalism. Second, LGBT faith activists working to highlight the damage done by religious-based bigotry were expelled. This week on State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s radio show and podcast, we’ll get a firsthand account from a leader of the expelled activists.

Host Rev. Welton Gaddy will be joined by evangelical leader and Nomad Partnership founder Brandan Robertson. He attended the conference with representatives of Faith in America, the invaluable group founded by Mitchell Gold that advances religious acceptance of LGBT people. The activists were officially registered for the conference and respectfully engaged with attendees. But as you’ll hear, they were deemed a threat and removed.

A new memoir, Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening, tells the powerful story of a leading Saudi Arabian women’s rights activist. That’s Manal al-Sharif, who will share her journey on this week’s show from ultra-conservative teenager to finding herself in a Saudi Arabian jail for driving a car in public. We’ll hear what’s happened since and where the movement for women’s rights in Saudi is headed.

Finally, Welton will be joined by Dr. Julie Ingersoll, who reported recently in Religion Dispatches on the latest addition to the president’s legal team, far-right theocrat Jay Sekulow. Religious Right watchers know that name well. Sekulow is the head lawyer at Pat Robertson’s ACLU knock-off, the American Center for Law and Justice. We’ll hear from Ingersoll what this development could mean for President Trump’s legal strategy and relationship with the Christian right.