Embracing Division: Robert P. Jones on Unity, Justice, and the Lines We Have to Draw

Robbie Jones wrote a book called Backslide, and I went in expecting a chronicle of every way a Southern Baptist kid from Jackson, Mississippi cursed or lusted in middle school. That is not what this book is. Robbie takes a word that in our shared upbringing was entirely personal and entirely theological, and puts it next to the way political scientists now use the same word to describe what is happening to American democracy. The two stories are not separate. He can prove it with the word white Christians used to name their victory over Reconstruction: redemption. This is the fourth book in ten years — The End of White Christian America, White Too Long, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, and now this one, which pops back to the present and asks: okay, now what? We got into the Bright Line Watch numbers, why Martin Niemöller is a more useful guide for American Christians than Bonhoeffer, the finding that made Robbie go home at 2:30 in the afternoon, the estate settlement he added to his family Bible before passing it to his kids, the war on empathy, and then the back half of the book — where Robbie argues polarization is the wrong diagnosis and writes a chapter called "Embracing Division." I pushed back. He was gracious about it.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Dr. Robert P. Jones is the founder and president of PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) and the author of the White Too Long Substack newsletter. He grew up Southern Baptist in Jackson, Mississippi, trained as a mathematician at Mississippi College, attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary during the fundamentalist takeover, and earned his PhD in Ethics and Society at Emory University. He co-hosts The Convocation Unscripted with Diana Butler Bass, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and Jemar Tisby.

His new book is Backslide— on the interlocking crises of democratic backsliding and Christian apostasy in America. His previous books: The End of White Christian America, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, and The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.

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