Pro-democracy activists should have as much if not more confidence in the potential of their movement as authoritarian white supremacists do, Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones said during Fellowship Southwest’s Compassion and Justice Conference.
“If we were not powerful, if our power of resurrection and hope was not powerful, they would not be trying so hard to stop us. They recognized that if we come together, we can bring down these systems and build this nation into what it never was but can be,” Jones told the group meeting at Life in Deep Ellum in Dallas.
The Sept. 20-21 conference brought together activists from across Fellowship Southwest’s nontraditional network of Christians who share callings to serve vulnerable communities. The theme of “connection” underscored the organization’s values of “Compassion, Justice, Connection.”
Jones said he has witnessed all too well the lengths racist anti-democratic movements will go to in opposing truth, justice and diversity in government and society.
Justin Jones
A Democrat who represents portions of Nashville, Jones gained national notoriety in April 2023 when he and fellow Black lawmaker Justin Pearson were expelled by the Republican House leadership for participating in a gun-control rally at the Statehouse following the March shooting deaths of three 9-year-olds and three adults at Covenant School in Nashville. A white legislator who participated in the demonstration was not expelled.
While Jones and Pearson later won special elections to retain their seats, Jones was subsequently ruled out of order and officially silenced in January during a special session on gun violence for naming the white supremacy and authoritarianism of Republican leadership. Previously, he had been arrested 18 times, although never convicted, for civil disobedience, including for his protest of the statue of a KKK Grand Wizard displayed at the Tennessee Capitol since 1978.
Those experiences testify to the God-inspired transformative possibilities inherent in opposing acts of discrimination and injustice, he said. “The same troopers who took me to jail and who took me to court on these charges, now pull the door open and say, ‘Welcome, representative, to your office.’”
But that hasn’t kept Jones out of conservative crosshairs. He has been condemned in the Tennessee House for opposing sending Tennessee National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and for participating in a Fellowship Southwest-organized trip to the border to witness living conditions for migrants.
“I told the story on the House floor and the response of my colleagues was not compassion and justice, it was calling for my resignation because they interpreted it as ‘Rep. Jones just admitted to helping people illegally cross the border,’” he said. “That is the mindset that they have.”
“I’m in that body not to make friends but to bring change for our district, and so I’m here to talk about resurrection.”
Republican leadership also told him he was “worthless” and unwelcome in the House, which only widened the sense of gratitude and perspective Jones felt about his purpose in the legislature, he explained. “It reminded me of the very important lesson that I’m in that body not to make friends but to bring change for our district, and so I’m here to talk about resurrection.”
Jones relied on two biblical images to demonstrate hope exists for causes such as health care access, gun safety and environmental and racial justice.
The Valley of the Dry Bones in Ezekiel captures the despair of witnessing apparently successful attacks on democracy and racial justice, while also sowing the seeds of hope and transformation, he said. “We poison our waters and poison our rivers and then bow down to corporate interests as opposed to protecting the waterways future generations will need. Can those bones live again? Can our democracy live again?”
The answer is contained in Christ’s raising of Lazarus from the dead in the Gospel of John, he asserted. “We hear the response saying, ‘You’re too late,’ we’re only 42 days from the election, the forces we are up against have already amassed so much power in terms of media and disinformation and misinformation.”
Voter suppression efforts have been successful across the country, LGBTQ rights have been reversed, books have been banned, migrants continue to languish at the border, and the racist South threatens to rise again.
“We see the systems of power conniving and saying that no matter what happens, they already know that this election has been stolen,” Jones said. “What does Jesus say? He says, ‘Move the stone.’ What is moving the stone? It’s removing the structural barriers that are keeping people in these systems and places of death. Move the stone, move the barriers.”
The forces of justice can begin to move the stone by shedding defeatism and resurrecting a movement uniting the struggles for Black lives, indigenous sovereignty, immigration justice, LGBTQ rights and interfaith work, he preached. “I’m seeing resurrection happening. I’m seeing people actually paying attention to the South and saying that the South is our home too. It’s a testament to resurrection. The South will not rise again but will rise anew.”
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