Last week I was on the ground in Selma and Montgomery. It’s going to be a long Freedom Summer full of events and Iw want to bring you more live reporting. Your support makes it possible. Become a paid subscriber today.
Why isn’t your pastor talking about voting rights?
It has now been three Sundays since the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act.
Each Sunday, I’ve put up an informal poll asking people whether there pastors talked about voting rights or civil rights.
Want to guess the results? What percentage of people said their pastor or faith leader did NOT talk about voting rights?
40, 50, 60 percent?
Each week between 2/3 and 3/4 of respondents said their pastors did NOT talk about voting rights.
We are watching one of the most significant rollbacks of democratic protections in decades, and many churches are acting like nothing is happening.
Ultimately this isn’t just about politics or voting rights. It’s about moral clarity and moral courage in times of crisis.
The Supreme Court and the Slow Death of the Voting Rights Act
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Encountering the Sacred in Selma
Last weekend I traveled to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama for the “All Roads Lead to the South” march and rally organized in response to the Court’s ruling.
Thousands of people gathered to protest the dismantling of voting rights protections and to call people back into action.
What struck me most was how quickly the atmosphere changed once you arrived in those places.
Selma is not merely a historic site. Montgomery is not simply a capital city.
They are sacred ground in the history of Black freedom struggles in this country. You feel it almost immediately.
Crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge was especially overwhelming.
We marched silently two-by-two in reverence and recollection. And for a moment, it honestly felt like time collapsed.
The people who marched there in 1965 no longer felt distant or abstract. Their courage felt close enough to touch.
Later on a podcast about the event, another creator referenced a line from the film Sinners that perfectly captured what the moment felt like.
Early in the movie, the narrator describes musicians whose songs are so true they can “pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future.”
That is honestly the closest description I can find for what it felt like marching in Selma.
It was as if the veil between past and present had been pulled back for a moment. The marchers of 1965 and the marchers of 2026 did not feel separated by history. They felt joined in the same struggle.
That is part of what I explain in this week’s episode of The Justice Briefing.
The Civil Rights Movement of Our Day
I keep saying this is the civil rights movement of our day. How else do describe what is happening?
We are once again fighting over Black political power. We are once again watching lawmakers manipulate the rules of democracy to dilute Black voting strength while insisting race has nothing to do with it. We are once again hearing calls for patience, moderation, and “not making everything political” while rights are actively being stripped away.
And we are once again watching many churches remain silent.
One of the most chilling realizations when you study the Civil Rights Movement is that silence from pastors was never the exception. It was often the norm.
In this episode I discuss Reverend Douglas Hudgins of First Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, whom historian Charles Marsh profiles in God’s Long Summer.
Hudgins embodied what Marsh calls a “deracinated piety,” a theology stripped of any concrete application to racial justice.
During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Hudgins argued that the cross of Christ “has nothing to do with social movements or realities beyond the church.”
That mentality did not disappear in the 1960s.
More Devoted to Order Than Justice
Too many churches still treat voting rights, racism, and democracy as distractions from the gospel instead of matters that demand Christian ethical reflection and public witness.
Meanwhile, pastors who would never hesitate to address abortion or sexuality from the pulpit suddenly become allergic to “politics” when the topic turns to racial justice.
That is why Martin Luther King Jr.’s words from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” still cut so deeply.
King wrote that he had become “gravely disappointed with the white moderate” and had reached the “regrettable conclusion” that the greatest stumbling block to Black freedom was not simply the outright racist or the Ku Klux Klansman, but the moderate “who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”
Too many pastors today seem far more concerned with avoiding controversy, maintaining institutional stability, or preserving a superficial peace inside their congregations than confronting injustice directly.
King called this a “negative peace which is the absence of tension” rather than “a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
In other words, many churches would rather keep things comfortable than tell the truth.
And that is precisely why this moment feels so hauntingly, historically familiar.
Future generations will ask what the church did while voting rights were dismantled in broad daylight. Too many pulpits are already answering with their silence.
In This Episode, You’ll Hear About:
The “All Roads Lead to the South” march and rally in Selma and Montgomery
Why voting rights are deeply personal in the Black freedom struggle
The Supreme Court ruling that further weakened the Voting Rights Act
How racial gerrymandering operates under the language of “colorblindness”
The silence of many pastors and churches around voting rights
Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning about the “white moderate” from Letter from Birmingham Jail
The example of Reverend Douglas Hudgins and church complicity during segregation
Biblical models of courage, prophetic witness, and justice in times of crisis
Works Referenced
God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
What ways do you think pastors and faith leaders can and should publicly stand for voting rights in this moment? Let us know in the comments.
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