The Prophetic Resistance Podcast Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews

In this episode, we are in conversation with Pastor Rhonda Thomas, executive director for Faith in Florida. She was the state-wide campaign director for the Let My People Vote campaign, and she helped to ensure the voting rights were returned to returning citizens. She runs the biggest, the baddest, and the most well-funded Souls to the Polls program in the country. Pastor Rhonda has a passion to build a beloved community in Florida so that all of the Creator's children feel a sense of belonging.
Learn more about Faith in Florida Souls to the Polls here. Contribute to Hurricane Ian relief here. 

The Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould is no stranger to the podcast. She is now the senior faith strategist with Faith in Action. Today, we revisit her first appearance during our beta launch in advance of the 2016 general election. We talked about the work she was leading in Missouri and the power of her mother’s story to inspire her commitment to organizing, activism, and voting.

Midterm elections are less than 100 days away, and the Prophetic Resistance Podcast is kicking off our Rise + Vote series — co-hosted by my dear sister the Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould — to explore all the ways our votes are both sacred and powerful. 
I can think of no better way to kick off this series than with this week’s guest, my friend and colleague, Rev. Nicole Barnes.
Nicole is the national voting program director for the Faith in Action Fund, having come up through the ranks as an organizer for Faith in Indiana (then called IndyCAN). She also has a master’s degree in divinity degree from Christian Theological Seminary in addition to an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in psychology. In other words, she’s the perfect person to talk about the intersection of faith, politics, power, and community.

In this episode, we welcome my very dear brother, Simran Jeet Singh, father, runner, scholar, and executive director of the Religion & Society Program at the Aspen Institute. We talk about his Sikh faith, religious pluralism, and his latest book, The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life which just hit the shelves last week. We explore his upbringing in San Antonio, Texas, the close relationship between race and religion, and the call to practice radical compassion. This conversation is for the head and the heart.

In this episode, we welcome the Reverend Doctor Emma Jordan-Simpson, the new president of Auburn Seminary in New York. 
We discuss how her upbringing and grounding in the Black Church tradition have informed her approach to pastoral care, as well as her focus on the needs of children to help them thrive. In the recent wake of the tragedies in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Orange County, and Uvalde, we talk about how critical pastoral care is for grieving, healing, and the movement for justice.

Today’s guest is Dr. Maureen O’Connell, an associate professor of theology at LaSalle University in Philadelphia and a clergy leader with POWER Interfaith. Maureen recently released a book titled, “Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness.” Maureen and I dig into the history behind the book, including how Irish Catholics learned to define themselves as Americans by rejecting Blackness, going back as far as 1820.