The Justice Briefing with Dr. Jemar Tisby

Dr. Jemar Tisby
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The Justice Briefing is your weekly guide to understanding current events through a historically grounded, theologically rooted, justice-centered lens. Instead of framing the world through fear or culture-war panic, we draw from the spirit of justice—from the biblical prophets to the Civil Rights Movement. This isn't just commentary; it’s discipleship for truth and justice.

  1. 6d ago

    How to Tell Powerful Stories about Justice

    How do you tell a compelling story about racism, injustice, or social change without making your audience feel like they're listening to a sermon? What separates a story that moves people from one that overwhelms them with its message? And how do you build a creative career telling these stories when there isn't an obvious path forward? In this episode of The Justice Briefing, historian, author, and filmmaker Dr. Jemar Tisby sits down with award-winning writer and director Nick Brooks, director of the new narrative short film What Will We Tell Them. Brooks is the author of Promise Boys, Up in Smoke, and the Ethan Fairmont trilogy. His creative career has taken him from teaching and writing children's books to filmmaking, music, and video game writing. Their conversation explores the craft of storytelling, the relationship between social justice and art, the importance of representation, and the persistence required to create opportunities. In This Episode, You'll LearnWhy justice-centered stories can become preachy. How to build a story around characters. Brooks's three ingredients for a strong story. Why trusting your audience matters. How lived experience shapes creative work. How to pursue opportunities before you feel fully qualified. How to move from inspiration to a finished film. What went into making What Will We Tell Them. About Nick BrooksNick Brooks is an award-winning author, director, and musician whose work spans young adult and middle-grade fiction, film, and music. His writing explores the lives of young people navigating institutions, expectations, and systems of inequality. Learn more about Nick: thenickbrooks.com What Will We Tell ThemLearn more about the film "What Will We Tell Them" by subscribing for updates at: jemartisby.substack.com Chapters00:00 — Welcome and *What Will We Tell Them* screening announcement   01:45 — Meet Nick Brooks: author, filmmaker, and creative artist   04:47 — Telling stories about justice without preaching   08:30 — Hook, heart, and theme: how Brooks develops stories   11:19 — The influence of hip-hop, books, and Black storytelling   14:47 — How to nurture social awareness in young people   18:20 — Howard University, mentorship, and discovering education   24:09 — Writing children's books and finding a creative purpose   29:15 — Creating opportunities and getting a literary agent   33:56 — Taking risks, handling rejection, and writing for GTA VI   38:15 — How children's books opened doors to a new career   41:11 — *Fruitvale Station*, Ryan Coogler, and becoming a filmmaker   45:30 — Learning filmmaking by getting onto film sets   48:13 — Mistakes to avoid when telling stories about injustice   50:44 — The story behind *What Will We Tell Them*   54:21 — Filmmaking challenges, preparation, and adapting on set   57:29 — Private screening details and ways to support the film Stay ConnectedSubscribe to "Footnotes" for historically grounded analysis, commentary about faith and justice, and updates on new films and educational projects: jemartisby.substack.com Instagram: @JemarTisby

  2. Oct 9

    How to Build Your Own Table: 3 Steps to Find Your Purpose and Create Something New

    What do you do when the church, workplace, organization, or community you once called home no longer reflects your values? How do you know when it's time to stop fighting for a seat at someone else's table? And if you decide to leave, how do you figure out what comes next? Maybe you've spent years trying to make an institution better, only to discover that there's a limit to how much change its leaders will tolerate. Maybe your presence is welcomed, but your perspective isn't. Or maybe you have a vision for something different, but you're not sure you have the resources, experience, or courage to build it. This episode of The Justice Briefing will help you think through your next move. Dr. Jemar Tisby shares lessons from his journey out of white evangelical institutions and into building Tisby Media, an independent organization dedicated to truth-telling at the intersection of faith, history, and justice. Drawing on his personal experiences with racial exclusion, institutional resistance, and entrepreneurship, Jemar offers three practical principles for turning dissatisfaction into constructive action. You'll discover how to move beyond simply knowing what you want to leave behind and start identifying what you want to create. And you'll learn why building your own table might not be what you actually need. In this episode, you'll learn:How to recognize when an institution has made space for you without giving you meaningful powerWhy righteous anger can be a powerful starting point for creating positive changeHow to identify the deeper motivation that will sustain you when building something new gets difficultThe three factors that can help you discover a mission uniquely suited to your gifts and convictionsThe surprising difference between building your own table and building your own chair You'll also hear about Jemar's forthcoming book, Notes from an Evangelical Reject, and get updates on projects from Tisby Media, including the upcoming short film What Will We Tell Them? If you're tired of shrinking yourself to fit someone else's vision—or you have a dream of creating something better but don't know where to begin—this episode will help you see the possibilities in front of you and take your next step with greater clarity. Mentioned in this episodeNotes from an Evangelical Reject — Jemar's forthcoming book, available for preorder. Publication date: January 19, 2027. How to Resist White Christian Nationalism — A self-paced course featuring practical action steps. Jesus Was a Migrant — Watch the trailer and learn about community screenings at https://jesuswasamigrant.com. What Will We Tell Them? — A new narrative short film from Tisby Studios. Book Launch Team — Join Jemar's launch team for exclusive resources, updates, and opportunities to help spread the word about Notes from an Evangelical Reject. Join HERE. Footnotes — Subscribe for historical insights and analysis at the intersection of race, religion, and politics. JemarTisby.Substack.com Episode chapters00:00 – How to Build Your Own Table 02:27 – Why So Many People Are Questioning Their Institutions 07:48 – Jemar's Journey Through White Evangelicalism 12:58 – When You're Given a Seat but Not a Voice 17:19 – Principle 1: Identify Your Internal Driver 19:59 – How Righteous Anger Can Fuel Constructive Change 21:24 – The Vision That Pulls You Forward 22:28 – Principle 2: Create a Clear Mission 24:09 – Discovering Your Gifts and Learning to Trust Yourself 27:33 – Finding Joy and Passion in Your Work 29:29 – Identifying the Need Only You Can Address 31:09 – Principle 3: Decide What You're Actually Building 31:43 – The Difference Between Building a Table and Building a Chair 36:21 – How Jemar Built Tisby Media 40:03 – The Justice Briefing, Teaching, and the Justice Institute 42:40 – Tisby Studios and the Power of Film 44:10 – What Will We Tell Them? and the Legacy We're Creating 46:16 – Notes from an Evangelical Reject and the Book Launch Team 54:02 – Upcoming Projects and New Developments 58:04 – Why We Need New and Truer Institutions Follow Jemar TisbyYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JTisby About The Justice BriefingThe Justice Briefing is your weekly guide to current events at the intersection of faith, history, and justice. #TheJusticeBriefing #JemarTisby #EvangelicalReject

  3. Oct 2

    Defying Tyrants with Dr. Matthew D. Taylor

    In a rare guest interview, Dr. Jemar Tisby sits down with Dr. Matthew D. Taylor, author of the new book Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists. They discuss Christian supremacy, Christendom, and imperialism. Going deeper, they explore how Jesus displayed and taught about power, and why the tyrants who claim his name avoid those teachings with surgical precision. They also talk about the cost of this work. Dr. Taylor lost his job for writing this book. You'll come away with a theological case for defying tyrants and a picture of what that looks like in the church, in politics, and in everyday life. Get Defying Tyrants wherever you get your books. Topics Addressed Pete Hegseth's speech and the new Office of Religious AffairsConstantine's conversion and the merging of church and empireChristian supremacy as the ideology beneath Christian nationalismWhy "antichrists" in 1 and 2 John refers to Christians who harm others in Jesus' nameThe parable of the wheat and the taresThe cost of speaking out against authoritarianismSupport conversations like this one by becoming a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com. Resources Referenced Matthew D. Taylor, Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists (Broadleaf, 2026)Matthew D. Taylor, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy (2024)Matthew D. Taylor's Reckonings (Substack)Scripture: Mark 10:42-45; 1 John 2:18-19; Matthew 13:24-30

  4. Sep 24

    How to Gain Confidence When Resisting White Christian Nationalism

    Get the course. Gain the confidence: How to Resist White Christian Nationalism White Christian nationalism is the greatest threat to democracy and the witness of the church in the United States today.  Most people who follow this work already know that. So why don't we have more confidence to confront it?  In this back-to-basics episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Jemar Tisby names five obstacles to confidence:  1. leaving out the "white,"  2. calling every conservative Christian a Christian nationalist,  3. leading with facts alone,  4. stopping at 'it isn't really Christian,"  5. mistaking understanding for resistance.  Along the way, he brings the receipts, from PRRI's newest data showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans resist Christian nationalism to Gorski and Perry's "deep story" of a Christian America that was supposedly stolen and must be taken back. The episode builds toward a revelation Dr. Tisby had live on the show: what people need most to resist white Christian nationalism is confidence. The truth is on our side.  To move from understanding to action, Dr. Tisby introduces his new self-paced course, How to Resist White Christian Nationalism. Topics Addressed How the plantation's paternalistic hierarchy mirrors the white Christian nationalist visionTokenism: why people of color in the movement are useful but never central, and why tokens get spentNew PRRI data: nearly two-thirds of Americans resist Christian nationalism, with Arkansas and Mississippi the least resistant statesThe "deep story" of white Christian nationalism and why we must meet a bad story with a truer storyThe third commandment, the no true Scotsman fallacy, and the responsibility of Christians to resistThe ARC of Racial Justice and the gap between understanding and action Resources Referenced 1. How to Resist White Christian Nationalism (self-paced course), Dr. Jemar Tisby 2. PRRI, New Report Analyzes the Two-Thirds of Americans Who Resist Christian Nationalism (September 24, 2026) 3. Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2022) 4. Dr. Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise (2019) 5. Dr. Jemar Tisby, How to Fight Racism (2021), source of the ARC of Racial Justice 6. Scripture: Exodus 20:7; Isaiah 6:8 Support the Show Fewer than 5% of subscribers make this truth-telling at the intersection of faith, history, and justice possible. For $7 a month, or $5.83 a month on the annual plan (less than a gallon of gas in LA), you can help keep The Justice Briefing going. Become a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com. Stay informed. Stay faithful. Stay in the fight.

  5. Sep 19

    It Was Never about Abortion

    For decades, the religious right told Christians that abortion was the one issue that outweighed every other.  Yet ICE recorded at least 18 miscarriages in its custody from January through September 2025, then lost count, and the movement's loudest voices have barely said a word. In this episode of The Justice Briefing, Dr. Tisby asks why an unborn child's life should matter less because their mother is an immigrant, and how race shaped the religious right from the start. In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention backed laws allowing abortion in cases including rape, incest, and likely harm to a mother's emotional health, then reaffirmed that stance after Roe v. Wade.  Historian Randall Balmer argues in Bad Faith that what first mobilized conservative Christians politically was the IRS denying tax exemptions to racially discriminatory Christian schools like Bob Jones University. So was it ever about life in the womb, or was it about power? Support the podcast: Is this kind of information worthwhile? That's the only question you need to answer. If yes, become a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com  For $5.83 a month on an annual subscription, you fund the research behind every episode, along with Tisby Media's new course and films.

  6. Aug 22

    Storytime with Dr. Tisby: Three Reconstruction Era Stories About What Democracy Takes

    This episode of The Justice Briefing is different. Instead of starting with a current event and working backward to the history, Dr. Jemar Tisby does what he loves most: he tells stories. Diving back into primary source research for his new Substack series, History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Rights Edition, left him feeling like a grad student again, brimming with material he could not wait to share. So he devoted a full episode to three of those stories. The first is about the Congress that refused to seat more than sixty former Confederates in December 1865, overrode a president more than a dozen times, and wrote insurrection into the official record. The second is about the 1868 Charleston constitutional convention, the only one in American history with a Black majority, where recently emancipated men wrote the most democratic document South Carolina had ever seen and included the children of the people who had enslaved them. The third is about Amos T. Akerman, a former Confederate and enslaver who became attorney general and prosecuted the first Ku Klux Klan out of existence for forty years. Taken together, the three stories make one argument: Congress has the power, it lacks the will, and history has the receipts. Topics AddressedWhy the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan disbanded in the mid-1870s and did not reconstitute until 1915The 1868 South Carolina constitutional convention: 76 Black delegates out of 124, and the only Black-majority state legislature in U.S. historyWhat Black delegates actually wrote into the state constitution, including free public schools, protected suffrage, women's property rights, and a permanent ban on secessionThe three Enforcement Acts, and why the Ku Klux Klan Act finally worked by naming the state itself as the defendant Resources ReferencedHere's What Congress Did When Members Had a SpineWhen Black People Wrote the ConstitutionWhen the Department of Justice Prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan Out of ExistenceThe Spirit of Justice by Jemar Tisby: bit.ly/spiritofjusticeA Way Forward: Hope in Uncertain Times, Nashville, August 28-30, with Rep. Justin Pearson, Shane Claiborne, and others. Free, but registration is required: Register here Support This WorkHistory Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Rights Edition runs weekly through the 2026 midterms, roughly twelve installments in all. The episodes are free. The articles are free. The research is not. If this is the kind of work you want more of, become a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com. It is $5.83 a month on the annual plan. Less than six dollars for history from a PhD historian who spent years learning the tools of the discipline to bring it to you. Stay informed. Stay faithful. Stay in the fight.

  7. Aug 7

    Everything You Were Never Taught About the Voting Rights Act

    On the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. Jemar Tisby closes a full history of the law by turning to the fight over it right now. What took blood and marches to win in 1965 has been taken apart in the thirteen years since 2013, from Shelby County to Louisiana v. Callais, and almost nobody marched. Dr. Tisby refuses to end there. He points to the faith leaders already mobilizing to protect the ballot before the November midterms, from William Barber's 100 days of action to the poll chaplains and peacekeepers being trained in local churches, and he names the moment for what it is: the civil rights movement of our generation. The episode also launches History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition, Dr. Tisby's three-month series tracing the struggle over the vote from Reconstruction to today. In This Episode Why 2026 is the civil rights movement of our generation, and how the April march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge echoed 1965How the Voting Rights Act was taken apart in thirteen years, from Shelby County to Louisiana v. CallaisFaith leaders mobilizing before the midterms, including William Barber's 100 days of actionPoll chaplains and peacekeepers: protecting voters, protecting ballots, and protecting the system itselfThe launch of History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition on FootnotesThe closing charge: register, check your registration, and take somebody with you Resources ReferencedThe Washington Informer, "Faith leaders start 100-day countdown to Nov. 3 election," featuring Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Tony Lee of Community of Hope AME Church: https://www.washingtoninformer.com/faith-leaders-midterm-vote/Black Church PAC and its Freedom Summer events: https://www.blackchurchpac.org/All Roads Lead South Coalition, organizers of the 2026 march across the Edmund Pettus BridgeHistory Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition, Dr. Tisby's new Footnotes series: https://JemarTisby.Substack.com Support The Justice BriefingThe Justice Briefing runs on readers and listeners, not advertisers. If it helps you make sense of this moment, the best way to support it is to subscribe to Footnotes at JemarTisby.Substack.com. The annual plan comes to $5.83 a month, it keeps this work independent, and it puts every installment of History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition in your inbox from now through the midterms.

  8. Jul 31

    Stop Telling Black Voters to Wait

    The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee just voted to have South Carolina lead off the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, and Dr. Jemar Tisby explains why that decision matters more than the news cycle will let on. He walks through what a primary actually does, why the order of states determines momentum, money, and makes the case that this is a win for the party. In this episode: What a primary actually is, and why it is not a direct vote for the nomineeWhy the order of states determines momentum, media coverage, donor confidence, and who drops outThe South Carolina versus Nevada split and the case Latino leaders made for NevadaThe progressive objection to a Southern first primary and what it assumes about Black Southern votersSix things candidates should do over the next 18 months to earn Black votes Resources referenced: Previous episode: "What Every Social Movement Must Do"Dr. Tisby's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@JTisby Support the show: There are no ads on The Justice Briefing and no sponsors. Paid subscribers are the ones who make this work possible. If the breakdown of the 2028 primary calendar was useful to you weeks before it becomes a headline, become a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com.

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The Justice Briefing is your weekly guide to understanding current events through a historically grounded, theologically rooted, justice-centered lens. Instead of framing the world through fear or culture-war panic, we draw from the spirit of justice—from the biblical prophets to the Civil Rights Movement. This isn't just commentary; it’s discipleship for truth and justice.

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