Next BNG webinar will have a live audience and feature Robert P. Jones with Greg Garrett, Timothy Peoples and Mark Wingfield

BNG’s next webinar will be a first, with a live audience in addition to the online audience.

The event will take place Sunday, April 14, beginning at 12:30 p.m. Central time. It will be broadcast live from Wilshire Baptist Church, with guests Robert P. Jones and Greg Garrett in dialogue with BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield and Wilshire Senior Pastor Timothy Peoples, who also serves as a BNG board member.

The dialogue will culminate a weekend of conversation at Wilshire on the theme of “The Deep Roots of Racism in the Christian Church.” Anticipate a wide-ranging discussion on Christian nationalism, democracy, race, polling data, American history, Baptist history and the Bible.

Advance registration for the online webinar is required but free. Register here. The weekend activities at Wilshire are open to the public without advance registration for anyone wanting to attend in person.

Robert P. Jones is founder and president of Public Religion Research Institute. He is author of three bestselling books, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (2023) and White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (2021) and The End of White Christian America (2019).

He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University, a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi College. He serves on the national program committee for the American Academy of Religion and is a past member of the editorial boards for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Politics and Religion, a journal of the American Political Science Association.

Greg Garrett grew up Southern Baptist in Oklahoma and today is a seminary-trained lay preacher in the Episcopal Church and canon theologian at the American Cathedral in Paris. He teaches creative writing, film, literature and theology classes at Baylor University, where he is the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture. He is the author of two dozen books of fiction, nonfiction, memoir and translation. His latest book is The Gospel According to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Identity.