Dear Friend,

I’m writing to you today because you’re a Sojourners reader in the D.C. area, and I wanted to make you aware of an exciting opportunity this fall if you're currently a student at a local college, university, seminary, or graduate school. Every year for the past several years, I have taught a course at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy on some aspect of the intersection of faith and politics. It meets on Thursday afternoons from the last week in August to the first week in December, and it’s always one of the highlights of my week. This year's course is focused on “Faith, Race, and Politics in 2020,” and if you're enrolled in higher education in the Washington, D.C. area, I want to invite you to consider joining us.

Here's how I have described the course to the Georgetown student community:

Faith and politics have always interacted in American political life—in both positive and negative ways. The questions have always been not if they will intersect but how—and whether those interactions are for the common good. Race has always been at the center of our public life, with religion used to either divide us or bring us together. With a president making racial fear and division even more explicit, and some church leaders being silent or even supportive, how are both the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith at stake?

How are the racial inequities revealed by COVID-19, and the deeper reckoning with systemic racism sparked by George Floyd’s killing, changing our national narrative, and how might they affect the fall election?

We will analyze and reflect upon America’s “original sin” of racism and how it still lingers in both attitudes and institutions, as well as on the fundamental demographic changes underway in the country and what it will mean to build a bridge to America’s multiracial future. How does religion at times make our nation’s extreme polarization even worse, and how could it help heal that divide? How does religion impact public policy, in positive and/or negative ways, and how do we examine and evaluate the difference? How do we not go left or right—but deeper?

If this sounds like the kind of conversation you want to be a part of on Thursday afternoons, please visit this link for more information on the course, and if you'd like to enroll please do the following:

1) Contact your school's registrar to find out if this course is eligible for cross-registration at your school and express your interest in doing so.

2) If they tell you that my course would be eligible for you to take, please contact me via my colleague J.K. Granberg-Michaelson to request permission to enroll in the class (your registrar will need this permission from me in order to enroll you).

There are only a few spots remaining, so I'd encourage you to act quickly if you think this class would be a good fit for you. I'm very excited to teach this course and have these critical discussions about faith, race, and politics in 2020, and I hope some of you can join me.

Blessings,

Jim Wallis