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- [Robin] Good morning.

- [Congregation] Good morning.

- [Robin] Welcome to the good ship Mayflower.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

It's a very important day for us.

A congregation in covenant with the United Church of Christ,

where we believe that no matter who you are or where you are

on life's journey, you are welcome here.

- Nobody has the absolute truth

and that would be to put it

in sort of old religious language that would be idolatry.

To say, you know the truth, you're absolutely certain.

And by the way, an interesting thing about people

who say they're certain,

then you need no faith.

(upbeat music)

- There are no historical errors in the Bible.

All that we know confirms the truth.

(upbeat music)

- [Jeff] I would cite you to the apostle Paul

and his clear and wise command in Romans 13,

to obey the laws of the government,

because God has ordained the government for his purposes.

(upbeat music)

- I arrived here 32 years ago and thought to myself,

what am I doing in Oklahoma?

(upbeat music)

I came to build a liberal Protestant church in Oklahoma,

knowing there wouldn't be one on every street corner,

but I made the mistake of using the word liberal.

And so a woman on the search committee said to me,

"I just wish you wouldn't keep using that word."

I said, "Well, liberal means open-minded,

"tolerant of divergent opinions and exceedingly generous.

"That's what it means if you look it up

"and I would like this church to be liberal

"in that sense."

And she says, "No, I don't like it.

"I don't want you to use it."

I said, "Well, what word would you prefer that I use?"

And she said," Conservative."

That was my introduction to Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is arguably the reddest state in the country.

So we didn't have a single County, for example,

that went for Barack Obama and either election.

And all counties went for Trump in the last election.

We are Southern Baptist in our political orientation.

So that means that there are certain messages

that get sent to young people who are gay, for example,

or who are Democrats.

I'm always joking when I'm out lecturing

that in Oklahoma, you can be a Democrat

or you can be a Christian,

but you can't be both, right?

That would be peculiar.

- We've entered a time

where the power of negative partisanship

has sorted us along lines of race and religion.

So that if you look at Republicans

there are about seven in 10 white and Christian,

Democrats are only at three in 10 white and Christian.

And what it means is that the two parties

have exploited race and religion

to the most visceral things

you can think of in terms of human experience.

And they've locked them into partisan identities.

(birds chirping)

(gentle music)

- This gets to be called the Bible Belt,

largely because the kind of religion

that was in the South was created in the Civil War

and came out of the support of slavery.

(gentle music)

It's a kinda religion that's stuck in many ways,

and it's centered on the Bible.

They think the Bible is the essence of religion, which is,

if you think about it historically kinda odd,

that means Jesus can't really have anything to do with it

because there wasn't any Bible in his day.

(gentle music)

Most people who drive through a landscape

don't really see much.

But the more you know, the more you see.

The same thing's true in a text.

(gentle music)

It's kinda flat, it's barn, the colors are subtle,

although they can be spectacular.

It's a beautiful landscape in its own.

And it's kinda primordial in ways.

(gentle music)

(cows mooing)

(gentle music)

It's also the most damaged landscape in the world.

You know.

We only have about 5% of prairie left.

So it's very damaged ecosystem.

It's somewhat like the Bible,

which is a highly damaged ecosystem.

(gentle music)

- Oklahoma is viewed by the rest of the country

as being distinctive.

Where either your future are or your past,

I'm not sure which.

I taught for 26 Years at Phillips Theological Seminary,

which is in Oklahoma.

A lot of students would come here

and they have lived in a culture

that has been largely Christian

and largely unthinking about its Christianity.

They don't really question it.

The Bible is a moving target.

If people who say, "Well, you have to have a Bible

in order to be Christian."

Well, you can't have any Christians

until the fourth century.

Cause that's when you get the canon.

Canon is a fourth century creation

masquerading as a first century eyewitness report.

The various compositions that are in the New Testament,

never thought they'd be in a New Testament.

There are occasional.

Paul's letters are clearly occasional.

They're just written to specific people.

The gospels are quite local.

The canon takes them out of their historical context

by force and they become kinda self-referential.

Just kinda referring to each other.

So then the text is cut free of its historical context,

and you're then free to put it in any context you want to

over and over again.

Which is what happens.

(Gentle music)

- The Christian right has defined Christianity for us

and a God that's very judgmental and vindictive gets angry,

punish his people is a law-giver and a judge,

hands down these laws and if you break them

you get punished.

If you follow them, you get rewarded.

There's a very parental and punitive model of Christianity.

I don't see that when I study the new Testament

and the early church at all.

I see the opposite.

There are female apostles,

poor people are brought to the table and fed,

you know, communion was especially presented

to feed poor people who otherwise wouldn't eat.

(gentle music) (upbeat music)

"Why do you not judge for yourself what is right?"

Jesus said it.

He put a lot of emphasis on individual action.

The idea that God's gonna do everything

and that everything has been determined by God.

I think it's a very harmful idea in religion.

And that there's nothing we can do to change anything.

And I think one of the things that Protestants

were supposed to tell the world

is with their whole Protestant work ethic,

you can change things.

You can make a difference.

(gentle music) (upbeat music)

But look at what's happening now

we have the largest gap between rich and poor

in the history of the United States.

And it's getting wider all the time.

We have more churches than almost anyone,

and yet some of the worst social statistics.

In the country, teen pregnancy addiction, domestic abuse.

- One in four, Oklahoma children face food insecurity.

Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other state

in the nation.

And we have for over 25 years.

- We have the highest divorce rate than most cultures.

This County, 67% of the buckle of the Bible Belt.

- Well that tells you something is really,

really wrong with our whole approach to religion.

- [Robin And Congregation] Be with us as we determine

our next faithful step,

and then see us through.

We pray in the name of our Teacher Jesus.

Amen.

- We've operated under this hierarchy

of humans are better than animals.

Whites are better than blacks.

Men are better than women.

Straights are better than gays.

And if all those other groups

which are further down the ladder,

start to rise up,

we push back using all kinds of fear tactics

and quoting scripture out of context,

to sort of hold on desperately to what we have.

Because we're living through sort of the last days

of the privileged white male.

And I think that's part

of what the Trump presidency represents.

White people won't even be the majority in another 50 years.

We don't really like the way that feels,

but that's what's coming.

- I'm fourth generation

Classical Pentecostal Fundamentalist Christian.

So I can address this not as an outsider,

but as an insider.

Carlton Pearson.

The world knows me as Bishop.

But I don't look like a Bishop so.

I look like a son of a Bishop.

That's what they think.

(Interviewer and Carlton laughs)

- [Announcer] Pastor Carlton Pearson

will tell you that Tulsa is the city of his prime

and of his crime.

His ministry was a sudden and bright supernova

before it burned out in a spectacular crash

that left Pearson shattered for straying from the story

as it had always been told.

- I think that the church itself in America

has become corrupt and eroded and tired.

And we have an elite attitude of superiority

to Christianity itself feels that it's the chosen group.

We're the chosen people.

This is the chosen country.

This is chosen culture.

We must own it and control it and keep it pure

so we can evangelize the world.

And that's why they like Trump.

Trump is the closest thing to their image

of an angry vengeful God who says,

"Vengeance is mine say the Lord I will repay.

"I'm a jealous God that shall have no other God but me.

"You're my chosen people."

- We were really never a Christian nation.

Our constitution made certain of that.

- It was a rare thing

to have kind of non-religiously identified,

you know, people in power all the way

from the beginning of the country.

But yet this kind of general sense of a theistic belief

that was roughly Christian.

- Christianity was kind of assumed

cause it's just in the water.

There's not a lot else around.

But they're not founding a Christian nation.

- Washington is a really interesting example.

On the one hand, he really does see religion

as tied up with morality

and morality tied up with the success

of the democratic experiment in the US.

He also though is very clear from the beginning

that it's not overtly Christian.

The early Jewish community saw themselves

and experienced themselves as this extreme minority

non-Christian group,

and they were wondering where's our place in the country.

(upbeat music)

And he wrote this beautiful letter back to them

where he said we are founded as a nation

based on the constitution,

and the only thing required for one to be a good citizen

is to affirm the principles of the constitution.

We will not be a place where bigotry takes root.

(upbeat music)

It wasn't just these lawmakers saying this.

They had allies in the clerical community.

There's a Baptist minister of this period,

this colonial period named John Leland.

He believed in his religious convictions very strongly,

but he absolutely insisted that everybody

should have the right to make their own decisions

about religion.

(upbeat music)

- One place where you really see the power of Christianity

really on the negative side of US' history

is the issue of slavery.

We really don't get the Civil War

and the kind of moral arguments around justifying slavery,

without it being rooted in biblical arguments.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Looking at sermons that were preached

during the Civil War.

It's really clear that those who were for slavery

had the better arguments from the Bible.

The Bible is pretty clear slavery is okay.

The abolitionism has had a terribly difficult time

overturning them because they really had to disagree

with the Bible.

(upbeat music)

There's another way to look at it though,

the whole Exodus experience for Israel,

is Israel coming out of slavery.

And that becomes a kinda primary theme.

You know, that this freedom from slavery,

you have Paul saying in Galatians,

"There is neither Jew nor Greek.

"There is neither slave nor free.

"There is neither male nor female

"for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

He says, "Within this body of Christ,

"there is no distinction."

Now it took the church a long time to figure that out.

- Virtually every white Protestant domination split

over the Civil War and the slavery question.

Most of them came back together in the early part

of the 20th century.

Southern Baptist have remained split to this day

from their Northern brethren.

That began to be the fault line

really we've been living with through the 20th century.

And that is still largely with us today

that you can see in voting patterns,

you can say in political activity,

and even in theological differences.

(gentle music)

- I was born and raised here in Oklahoma.

And so the fact that we're a very religious state

and that our population expects their legislators

to be very religious and quite frankly

expects them to be Christian does not surprise me.

- I came up with the phrase, The Reverend and the Rev

in our 2014 campaign,

when Colin ran the first time unsuccessfully.

But I thought, Oh man, that would be a really,

that would be such a fun way to connect us

and to talk about how our work is really not that different.

- The Republicans hold about 68 of the seats

while Democrats hold about 28 of the seats.

So we are outnumbered.

- A lot of young people are leaving

the State of Oklahoma because of regressive taxes,

of closed-mindedness, of the conservative culture here.

And we thought about it,

but came to the conclusion that our family is here,

we love this place.

- Oklahoma has a history of being a populous state.

We have a history of being proud of our ability

to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

- And so it's our responsibility to insert ourselves

in the conversation.

- My name is Collin Waukee,

I represent House District 87 in Northwest Oklahoma City.

In 2017, three bills ran to raise the minimum wage

in the State of Oklahoma and not a single one

received a hearing.

As a result this year,

I'm running my own minimum wage bill

that would raise the minimum wage to $11 per hour.

- In Oklahoma we talk about family values all the time.

Meanwhile, we pass legislation that makes it harder

and harder on families.

- We have passed nothing but shameful budgets

for the past six, eight years.

We continued to cut education.

We've cut education spending more than any other state

in the nation.

We've cut Aid to DHS to the Department of Mental Health.

There's two reasons why I think a lot of these conservative

social spending cut oriented bills get passed.

From a religious perspective.

The first one is that the individuals who run these bills

have a sincere belief that what you believe

as far as whether Jesus is your Lord and savior

is more important than what you actually do.

- Most Christians think Jesus came and founded Christianity

and the church started and you're off to the races.

And depending on what your denomination is,

that's what the early disciples were doing.

So for Methodists,

they're all singing hymns, you know,

and for Catholics, they're all saying mass,

and none of these early folks in what you might call

the Jesus movement think they're Christians.

They think there's some form of Jews.

They're in a Jewish reform movement in one way or another.

All of these reform movements Phariseeism

what becomes Christianity,

the Jesus movement and that they're all dealing

with a couple of similar problems.

One is the thing nobody wants to talk about,

but determines everything and that's Rome.

They're living in the Roman Empire,

and the Roman Empire is an empire.

It's not Pax Romana, Roman Peace.

It's only Pax if you're a Romana.

If you're something else it's called oppression.

It's too dangerous to be Jewish.

And the empire keeps this pressure on.

And one of the big drivers in the second century

is the rise of Martian who comes along,

and he really reads Paul as being anti-Jewish.

And he makes a collection of Paul's letter

and something looking like the Gospel of Luke,

and that becomes his gospels.

And that becomes his New Testament.

So you've got this political pressure,

you've got this emerging new set of scriptures

that begins to push the grip to identify itself

quite differently.

As over against what is now trying

to identify itself as Judaism.

So the both movements are engaged in self identification,

which pushes them apart.

The key player here is Constantine.

(upbeat music)

In 321, he calls the Council of Nicaea.

He begins to favor Christianity.

He doesn't make it the official religion of the empire

that comes later.

But he does favor it.

He wanted Christianity to help unify the empire

because the empire really lacked

a kind of coherent ideological foundation.

And he thought Christianity could provide that.

The problem was Christianity was divided itself

cause it's doing all this self-definition

and it's, you know,

it's not all that unified.

And so he calls the Council of Nicaea which is fascinating.

The first Ecumenical Council is called by a Roman emperor

who wasn't even Christian.

They meet in an old pagan temple,

and they argue and argue and argue.

They don't really know where they gonna to go.

Eusebius who was there describes it, you know,

he surrounded the temple with troops

and cutoff the food supply and you get the Nicene Creed.

(playful music)

That's a little quick and facile

but there is a certain amount of force to him.

He will not let them out until they agree.

And so the point of the creed is to create unity.

The point of the creed is also to exclude

those who don't agree.

So a creed has both a unifying aspect to it

and an exclusive aspect.

It gets rid of folks.

And it still functions that way today.

The other thing that's really important

to know about the creed is it changes

what becomes the new Christian movement.

That's really in a way you can say

who invented Christianity the Nicene Creed, Constantine.

Because it shifts Christianity

from being a religion of Praxis like Judaism.

It's what you do that matters.

And to being a matter of belief.

We don't throw people out of church

because they don't sell everything and give it to the poor.

We will throw them out a church if they don't say

the Nicene Creed.

(gentle guitar music)

- My dad grew up in this very conservative world.

And actually at one time was very enamored of it,

wanted it to be one of the church of Christ,

great boy preachers.

And in that denomination, you didn't have to go to seminary.

You just had to show promise,

and the elders would lay hands on you and say,

"Go get him, sick em.

"You've got the gift."

And my dad started driving around in the little towns

in Eastern Oklahoma preaching at age 15.

And he was quite the spellbinding preacher.

And then he went off to World War II.

He left the farm.

He met all kinds of people willing to die for him

who were Methodist, Presbyterians.

They would take a bullet

and they weren't even gonna get into heaven

according to his childhood theology.

But my dad said,

"I saw this world that was bigger

"than I had ever been taught the world was.

"And all these people believed in different things

"and surely God loved them too."

Surely the Presbyterian had a chance to get into heaven.

Maybe even the Buddhist could get into heaven

or the Jew could get into heaven.

Surely the world I've been shown is too small

and he just sort of outgrew it

and left it and became a congregational minister

after he left the church of Christ.

(suspenseful music) (keyboard clattering)

Then I sort of heard him in a free pulpit

questioning the Vietnam War,

conventional nuclear power,

pushing for women's rights and civil rights,

and I thought,

Whoa, this is kind of exciting.

This might be a good way to spend my life doing that.

If I could do it without getting fired.

One of the first things we did at Mayflower

we started marrying gay people long before it was legal.

We just made up our own marriage licenses

because we couldn't get one from the state.

We thought might drive a hundred people out,

and what happened was a hundred more people came.

And so I learned something at that point

about going ahead and saying what I really thought

and the hunger for that in people's lives,

and for them to feel like church

was gonna be an honest place.

They could agree they could disagree,

but they could believe that what was being said

is what the preacher really thought.

That sort of set this church on a new trajectory.

I have only one announcement,

but it's a very important one.

Notice is hereby given of a special meeting

of this congregation to be held today

at noon in this sanctuary to discuss and vote

upon a plan to join the Sanctuary Movement.

Your attendance and participation

will be deeply appreciated.

- So here we are on the edge of a congregational meeting

and a congregational vote to discern

how we as a church will respond to the crisis

faced by our undocumented neighbors

who are threatened by heightened ice activities

and oppressed by unjust immigration policy.

(gentle music)

Since the beginning, our country has used race and ethnicity

to determine who can come, who can work and who can stay.

Even though I wanted to keep it brief,

the history of racism in this country is long.

The 1790 Naturalization Act

excluded nonwhite people from eligibility to naturalize.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The 1917 Immigration Act banned immigration

from most Asian countries,

prior to 1965 residents of only three countries,

Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom,

all overwhelmingly white were given nearly 70% of the visas

available to enter the US.

The policy was clear white people in brown people out.

I believe Mayflower Church should be a sanctuary church,

both on paper and in practice.

- I'm not in favor of partisan politics in the pulpit.

Nobody ever is told here who to vote for,

or what side of an issue God is on.

There is however, a politics of the gospel,

and everybody's free to interpret that the way they see fit.

I'm not trying to get other people

to interpret it the way I do,

but I think not trying to interpret

the politics of the gospel,

which has to do with how we treat people,

how we relate to our enemy, whether we're compassionate,

whether we're forgiving,

all those things has to be interpreted

and applied to the current

political, economic, social situation of America.

Or you're not preaching.

You're just sort of offering people a history lesson.

That's usually pretty boring.

- Growing up as a Southern Baptist,

my family's life really revolved around the church.

I can distinctly remember before the age of eight,

just standing or sitting in the pew

while everyone else received communion around me

and noting the exclusion,

without praying the sinner's prayer and asking Jesus

to be your personal savior,

when if you die you're gonna go to hell

and spend eternity in that place

where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The other option is for you to have accepted Jesus

as your savior.

And that is your ticket to heaven.

St. Peter lets you in and you get a mansion,

which we, you know, we sing hymns about that.

I could sing you a couple of,

- [Interviewer] Sing it.

- Over the Hilltop.

* I've got a mansion just over the hilltop *

* In that bright land where

I mean and the examples go on.

We grew up singing songs like that.

(gentle music)

- I had lunch with my friend,

she said, "Your granddaughter was in the paper

"again this morning so."

But I hadn't read the paper that morning.

But there you are and I thought

that was a real good picture.

And of course I had never seen a picture of--

- Robin.

- The lead.

- Yeah, we don't actually get many,

many pictures together.

- A lot of it's not fair for the persons involved.

(gentle piano music)

And my opinion is who am I to judge?

And that's what I think people are mostly doing.

Is judging.

And I'm not for that.

- Maybe I should have said that at the press conference.

- You think you should have?

- Yeah, I'll do that.

I'll say that next time.

I like that.

(gentle piano music)

- [Novella] Lori and I have always been talkers.

- [Lori] And we've talked about all kinds of things,

even stuff we don't see completely eye to eye on.

And from my perspective,

one of the things that I am most grateful to you

for is the idea that you should talk about it.

You should talk about things,

- [Novella] Oh, I agree. - Even if you disagree.

- [Novella] I agree.

- You know, you were an important part

of my spiritual development and faith formation,

and it happened without me,

you know, really knowing it was happening.

So I have sort of encyclopedic knowledge of hymns

and that's your doing.

Can you sing a little bit of it, grandma?

- Oh, will you sing?

- [Lori] Sure.

* Oh, them golden slippers

* Oh, them golden slippers

* Them golden slippers I'm gonna wear *

* To walk them golden street

* Oh, them golden slippers

* Oh, them golden slippers

* Golden slippers I'm gonna wear *

* And walk them golden street

- Can you see me with three little girls

going down the road and a pickup,

and singing songs like that.

But they all sing them.

(gentle piano music)

- Before you guys came in and I came in the house,

how I knew she was nervous about this

cause she knew that we were gonna ask

about me being in the paper and particularly about,

you know, the headline minister

decries LGBTQ discrimination.

I come in, give her a hug,

tell her Thank you for doing this,

and she says, "I just wanna know one thing,

"are you going to go to heaven when you die?"

Which is her way of asking me, are you saved?

Do you still consider Jesus to be your personal savior?

And yeah, I do think I'm gonna go to heaven when I die.

I did not also add, I don't think that there is a hell,

so I don't think anybody is going to hell.

Because that kind of conversation,

well, it doesn't do anybody good,

any good at this point.

She's not gonna change her mind

and I'm not gonna change mine.

And what I do appreciate is that she cares enough to ask.

She cares enough to ask cause it matters to her.

And if I didn't matter her, she wouldn't worry about it.

But she is.

(gentle music)

It was not until college that I was completely

removed from my environment of origin

and experienced some new people and new situations

that really pushed me to question

the things I had been taught about God

and about people who are different than I am.

I'm on the basketball team and developing relationships

and friendships with my teammates.

Some of whom happened to be lesbians.

And this was really the first time

I was able to develop a genuine friendship

with someone who wasn't straight.

And I won't pretend that I would have said to them,

"I'm an open and affirming person for all LGBTQ people."

That's not where I was at the time.

And you know, I was still,

I was struggling with what I had been taught

to think about homosexuality.

But having in this other hand,

my teammates who were real people

and good people and people who are compassionate

and kind and hardworking,

who also loved God.

And so that was a really transformative time for me.

(gentle music)

- [Collin] Are you going up to the church today?

- Yes. That clinic starts at 10.

And I think it lasts until four or maybe five.

(gentle music)

I started at Oklahoma City University School of Law,

where I ran into Collin.

Who I would eventually marry.

And it was very clear to me early on that he was someone

who encouraged questions and was ready to explore

new ways of thinking and had done

some of that work himself already.

He actually was a Mayflower member at the time.

- I started going to Mayflower and about 2006, 2007,

after reading some articles by Robin Meyers.

At that time, I wasn't particularly diligent

in my religion if you will.

And I started reading about this minister

who was in favor of LGBT rights.

Who was against the war in Iraq.

And I just thought this guy can't be real.

And he certainly can't be a Christian minister

in the Heartland of America.

(gentle music)

- So we would go to this 8:30 AM service at Mayflower

and hear Robin Myers offer this new theology.

(gentle music)

And then we would go to the 10:30 service

at Grand Boulevard Baptist Church,

where we were hearing theology,

like God sent Hurricane Katrina to new Orleans

because of the sin in that city.

It did not take me very long to say,

"You know what, we've got,

"I've got to take myself out of this other situation.

"I'll find a way to serve this a new church

"and offer my gifts to God in a different setting."

(congregation cheering) (upbeat music)

- [Robin] I have never had an associate minister

before I had Lori Waukee as an associate minister.

And that's been just like a gift

that's just been dropped in our laps.

And not only because women preach differently,

understand the world differently.

But a whole group of people are now listening

and understanding Christianity

in a way that's different because Lori

is explaining it to them.

- From what we can tell

early Christianity is very open to women.

Paul knows female apostles.

Not many Christians know that but in fact

if they would actually read the Bible,

instead of just look at it,

they would find that out.

So you have women in positions of authority.

You have women well into the second century

into positions of authority.

You have the Gospel of Mary, for example,

and some of these kinds of texts,

which didn't make it into the canon.

But which Christians ought to read

if they wanna know what's going on.

(gentle piano music)

There's some wonderful art pieces

there called the praying women.

The most distinctively Christian images

in Pre-gonna art is of a woman praying.

And you find them in tombs.

In catacombs.

All over the place.

We have a large number of these.

(gentle piano music)

This praying woman in the,

Romans pray like this with their hand out,

is a distinctively Christian image.

It's never discussed in the mail literature.

But it occurs in these catacombs

and it represents the Christian.

So, you know, what do you make of this?

The most distinctive image is of a praying woman.

That's what a Christian looks like.

That's how a Christian sees himself

or herself as a praying woman.

That's against the values of the Roman Empire.

That's very antipatriarchal.

Okay?

That goes away with Constantine.

- So we're headed to the Oklahoma State Capitol.

I am chaplain of the week for the House of Representatives.

Last year when I was chaplain of the week,

my prayers were a little different

than what they were used to, I guess.

And upset a few of the ultra conservative representatives.

- We begin each day

in the State House of Representatives with a prayer.

It's typically always a Christian prayer.

And it's typically always from a conservative view point.

- There's some resistance in the Capitol

to a women clergy and Collin had to fight for me

to be able to pray this week.

- Despite the fact that we do have separation

of church and State,

there's always been this little carve out

for certain ceremonial practices that occur in government,

chaplains are one of them.

And that sounds great on its face,

but it can be problematic when somebody comes in

and says something controversial.

Or when a member of an unpopular religious group

wants to come in and give this right.

- There was controversy about the new Chaplaincy Policy,

which said that you had to be invite somebody

that was a member of your own faith.

So they changed their policy.

And they said that they would hire a house chaplain.

And that would be the chaplain of the day for everyone.

And anyone who had not been confirmed

up until that point would not be allowed

to be minister of the day.

Even though I had submitted Lori

at the beginning of session,

they had not yet confirmed her.

So I went to the representative who's in charge

of the chaplaincy program,

and I told him he had two choices.

He could either identify my wife as a minister of the week,

or I was going to go to the press

and call him out for being a sexist.

- [Interviewer] A sexist and what else did you say?

(laughs)

- Xenophobic, bigot, all of that.

Because at the end of the day,

that was the problem with the Chaplaincy Policy

as they instituted it.

We do not have any Muslims in the house.

We do not have any Jews in the house.

We do not have any Hindus in the house.

So it's already a Christian only club

and that's not the way that should be.

It should be ecumenical in nature.

- White evangelicals they make up 17% of the population.

They made up 26% of voters in the last election cycle.

The way to understand some political space

is that our ballot box acts a little bit

like a time machine.

It takes us back about 10 years in terms of our history

and demographic change.

And the main reason for that is that white Christians vote

at higher rates than other citizens do.

So it means that they are able to be overrepresented

at the ballot box in a way,

in a much higher rates

than they are in the general population.

(gentle piano music)

- Members offering our invocation this week

is Reverend Lori Waukee

of the Mayflower Congregational Church

in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Reverend Lori Waukee your recognized.

- This is our hope, Holy one,

as the representatives in this room,

make decisions for our beloved state,

that these women and men remember that they have one job

and that's to make this corner of the earth

a little brighter.

Dark shadows threatened to overwhelm so many,

the 75,000 low-income Oklahomans

who need health care for their families.

Our teachers who need money

not just the motto printed on it.

These representatives, depending on how they light up

the voting board could turn this place

into a city upon a hill.

- Evangelical used to think

that you took care of your own soul

and you did not sully yourself with the things of the world.

You did not get involved in politics.

- Jerry Falwell Sr. for example,

as late as the mid 1960s

was still delivering sermons saying,

"You know, political stuff is not the realm of pastors.

"We should stay out."

Now that he was mostly motivated to say that

to criticize Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

- Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood

is more than a meaningless word and at the end of a prayer

but the first order of business on every Legislative agenda.

Let us march on ballot boxes.

(crowd cheers)

Let us march on ballot boxes

until we are able to send to the State Houses of the South,

men who would do justly,

love mercy and walk humbly with their God.

Let us march on ballot boxes.

- If we'd been having this interview a generation ago,

we would still be talking

about the solid Democratic South, right?

Now today it's the solid Republican South.

Well, how did that happen?

(clapping)

The real mark for this shift

is when the democratic party

becomes identified with civil rights.

- Let us close the Springs of racial poison.

Let us pray for a wise and understanding hearts.

- Then what begins happened is that whites in the South

who have been voting democratic for generations

largely because the Republican Party

was the emancipation party

and they were the slave owning party,

begin to take flight to the Republican Party.

The parties began to shift their positions.

So the Democratic Party becomes the party of civil rights.

The Republican Party begins increasingly

to become the party of law and order

and really pushing back on civil rights.

- This a nation of laws.

And as Abraham Lincoln had said, "No one is above the law.

"No one is below the law."

And we're going to enforce the law

and Americans should remember that

if we're going to have law and order.

- White evangelicals can see that the tide of history

is shifting and they're on the losing end

of the racial argument.

The kind of precipitating spark here

was actually Bob Jones University,

having a dating policy that prohibited

interracial dating on campus.

And that ran a foul of Federal Civil Rights Laws.

So there was a lawsuit filed

if they were gonna take government money,

they couldn't then have this ban

on interracial dating on campus.

- [Lawyer] Mr. Chief justice, and may it please the court,

I speak for the petitioner, Bob Jones University.

- It was a evangelical Christian college

so they really took a religious liberty argument on this

and said this is federal intervention

into a religious issue.

And we have a right to make these kinds of bans

and keep the races apart.

As we understand that to be a biblically mandated thing.

- [Lawyer] All of the policies followed by the University

are obligatory upon the university as dictated by scripture.

- White evangelicals really pushed back

into the national scene after this incident

with Bob Jones University.

You immediately see like in Jerry Falwell Sr.

for example, within,

you know, two or three years,

he has completely flipped his position

becomes one of the architects

of the Christian Right Political Movement.

- There is no Bible Belt in America.

There's a Bible cloak in America that covers

the home whole blooming Republic,

and they're everywhere ready for the leadership preachers

that you and I can offer them and let's give it to them.

- That's right. That's right.

(crowd clapping)

- We have a threefold primary responsibility.

Number one, get people saved.

Number two, get them baptized.

Number three, get them registered to vote.

- The Christian Right Political Movement

basically picks up other issues as it goes.

So it picks up opposition to gay rights

and it picks up opposition to abortion.

(upbeat music)

- [Bernard] When Roe V. Wade,

the abortion issue really hit hard.

The main group that was opposed to abortion were Catholics.

- The first big meeting of the Southern Baptist

after Roe V. Wade,

they actually affirmed the Roe V. Wade decision.

- It's only much later

that Evangelical Protestants

got on the bandwagon of Roe V. Wade.

(upbeat music)

In traditional religion and traditional cultures

a woman does not control her body.

A man does.

Whether her father or her husband.

And, you know, virtually nobody would own up today

to say a woman was a male property.

But that's the way it was up until fairly recently.

But a lot of the artifacts of that are still in place.

Birth control, the woman's right

to control her own fertility,

her own fertility, not to have her husband control it,

has become a fundamental issue

maybe the last straw in women being coequal.

(crowd protesting)

- [Robert] And it wasn't until the political movement

picked up steam,

that that issue got kinda inserted

into the political platform.

It really pushed down from the top.

(crowd cheering)

- [Announcer] Here in Dallas, the religious right,

and the political ride formerly wed.

The 1980 religious round table was dominated

by Baptist pastors and evangelists,

and W. A. Criswell perform the vow.

- Ronald Reagan.

(crowd cheering)

- [Ronald] Thank you, Dr. Criswell.

(crowd cheering)

- Now I know this is a nonpartisan gathering,

and so I know that you can't endorse me,

but I only brought that up

because I want you to know that I endorse you

and what you are doing.

- [Announcer] And Ronald Reagan,

the fundamentalist found a politician

who read the Bible as literally as they do.

- That I continue to look to at the scriptures today

for fulfillment and for guidance.

Indeed, it is an in controvertible fact

that all the complex and horrendous questions

confronting us at home and worldwide

have their answer in that single book.

(crowd cheering)

- I'm sick and tired of hearing

about all of the radicals and the perverts

and the liberals and the leftists

and the communists coming out of the closet,

it's time for God's people to come out of the closet,

out of the churches and change America.

We must do it.

- Christianity is deeply inculpated

and woven into the fabric of this country's nature.

We sing the Star-Spangled Banner, One nation under God,

and part of our allegiance.

There's always this references to God.

And most of the voters are passionate when they have fear.

I've noticed that when, even with offerings now,

I'm sort of in the new thought community.

There's no fear of God or fear of hell,

and so the offerings are smaller because,

it's fear to say, "You know, God is gonna judge you

"if you don't do this."

- There's no more powerful force in politics than fear.

We see it now all the time.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid of Muslim extremists,

immigrants who are gonna take your job,

women who are gonna take your masculinity, you name it.

We tell people to be afraid all the time.

Religious folk, preachers use this divide

and conquer strategy.

- Yeah the days before my father passed away in 2007,

he joked with CNN that he dreamed

that Chelsea Clinton had interviewed him

about the three greatest threats facing this nation.

He replied those three greatest threats

are Osama, Obama and your mama.

(crowd laughs)

- The US has become a dumping ground

for everybody else's problems.

On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable,

physical, tall, powerful, beautiful Southern border wall.

Their sending us not the right people.

It's coming from more than Mexico.

It's coming from all over South and Latin America.

And it's coming probably from the Middle East.

- I had this introduction all planned

about the theological rationale of the Sanctuary Movement.

And then Lori preached that sermon

and so it becomes completely redundant.

So what Lori said.

(congregation laughs)

This is obviously an important decision

that the congregation should be making.

And each of you who are members of this church

in good standing are allowed to cast a vote

on the ballots that we will be providing you.

And now we have some special guests here.

- My name is Judith.

I'm a beneficiary

of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA.

And I've been working with Oklahoma City Public Schools

the way that I'm involved with my community

is organizing through Dream Act Oklahoma,

and getting information out there to my community.

What is the church going to do to protect the community?

- There over 800 churches in the United States

that have declared themselves to be sanctuary churches.

So we're not going into this alone.

I'm gonna read the ballot

that you're gonna be looking at.

So you'll understand the three choices that are provided.

A, do nothing at this time.

Option B declare Mayflower to be a sanctuary church

with the understanding that this includes

the full meaning of sanctuary,

which includes knowingly hiding individuals

who are in the midst of a deportation action,

or transporting them.

Subject to felony,

to a charge of felony or C join the Sanctuary Movement

and join together with all kinds of organizations,

providing all kinds of resources in this church

and outside this church,

as part of that movement.

Those are the three choices.

And I know you have questions

and we're gonna try it again.

- I don't want to go to jail.

I would miss my husband.

I would miss my dog.

I'm extremely risk averse.

But if we follow the teachings,

there's no choice but to vote for B.

That is my intention to vote for B.

I'm willing to risk my license as a nurse,

but fortunately, my boss is Japanese American

whose parents were in an internment camp.

I don't think he would fire me for having a felony.

And I guarantee you, if you guys are in jail,

it's gonna be a pretty darn crowded jail cell.

- [Crowd] Yeah.

(crowd clapping)

- I'm a kindergarten teacher on November 9th,

I did not teach.

I held crying Hispanic children the entire day.

Two. Stop.

Ready. Okay.

I worry a lot for a lot of my families.

It's hard for them and for me.

All of their energy, if they're scared,

if they're worried all 22 of them,

it just comes with them and we unpack it how we can,

and we try to learn to read so.

And were past near the post we'll do one of this.

We refer to counseling like divorce,

death, and deportation is an actual

like counseling referral for us,

for an external counseling service,

because it is a frequent experience of our kids here

in Oklahoma City Public Schools.

- Three, two, one.

- [Students] Kaza.

- [Student] Yeah.

Yeah, Mrs. Girlder. - [Amanda] I know.

- The rest of you feel ready to vote.

Please cast a vote.

We're going accept whatever level of risk you authorize.

So please go ahead and mark your ballot

and pass them forward and we'll get account going.

And we'll let you know what the results are.

Right now we've got people fooled

into believing that if you are a Christian

you automatically vote conservative.

Conservative family values.

But just look at the gospel itself

and see what Jesus was up to.

Everything he does indicates

that it's what you do that makes you a religious person,

not what you believe.

- [Announcer] Most Evangelicals and Pentecostals

believe that God loves everybody but only likes us

because we accepted Christ.

Everybody else is going to hell.

- Now later dominated my happy privilege and pleasure

to present the man that God has raised up

with a message for your deliverance.

God's man for this hour, the Reverend Oral Roberts.

(gentle music) (congregation claps)

- You really can't understand the religious right

until you look into its early roots.

* God is risen

* Thank the wisest man

- In the early seventies,

Oral Roberts was pulling in

something like 50 million a month.

In 1970 dollars?

The amount of influence that he held on a national level,

he was an integral part of creating

the whole structure of the religious right.

- Big mama picked me up just like I was,

took me out into the living room.

That's the way Jesus does.

He goes into the bedroom of your defeat,

of your illness, of your bad self image,

he pulls the blankets of sin off of ya,

scoops you up into his arms

and brings you out into the living room of life

and washes you with his blood.

And treasure you where He is.

He loves you just the way you are.

And somehow you qualify.

(congregation clapping)

Never forget that.

- I was affiliated with the healing ministry

of Oral Roberts for 40 years.

The laying on of hands, the anointed with oil,

all my parents and grandparents and godparents

on both sides did that kind of thing.

(gentle piano music)

- [Bernard] Oral Roberts really kinda saw him

as his successor in ways,

which for Oral was a revolutionary move.

(gentle piano music)

- I love this man.

I mean, I loved him like family.

He took me in from the day I met him in August of 1971,

the first thing he said to me, "What do you sing?"

And I said, "I try."

"Talk to my son we wanna get you in the world action."

Cause he wanted an integrated team.

Not just blacks but Hispanics and everything.

And Oral was always for the underdog.

He grew up in abject poverty and ignorance,

as a portal Pentecostal boy,

he always hated that aspect of his life.

He understood it and was happy when his audiences

became not only Pentecostal,

but Methodist and Baptist and Catholic

as the Holy ghost Movement.

The charismatic movement was moving

into non-Pentecostal church.

We call it Neo-Pentecostalism,

and he was like the godfather of that movement.

We used to get 32,000 average,

32,000 pieces of mail a day in Oral's peak.

When I was there as associate evangelist.

We were on nationwide television.

Christian's Pentecostals owned

all the major Christian televisions.

Not the Baptist and the the non-Pentecostal,

Oral had the highest viewership,

anybody sacred or secular on Sunday mornings

from the time people started watching till about noon.

We had our University, Jim Baker had Heritage USA.

Second, most visited tourist spot in America.

Pat Robinson had the Regent University in the 700 club

and a whole network.

Man, we were just kicking butt and taking names.

We had it covered.

So we thought were the most evangelistic people

on the planet.

* Got my war clothes on

* In the army of the Lord

* Got my war clothes on

* In the army

* I got my war clothes on

* In the army of the Lord

* Got my war clothes on

* In the army

- Underneath all of that fundamentalism,

that kind of nativistic charismatic religion,

there's a dualism that really comes out

historically of Neoplatonism.

They're about saving your soul.

And they talk about being soul savers,

and the soul is the real you.

It's the authentic thing.

And actually in Neoplatonism it's divine.

Christianity has to kinda do away with that,

but it still has it in many ways.

And the body becomes evil.

Men become the soul part.

Women become the body part.

I mean, this just plays out in horrendous ways.

They have a kinda literalist view of hell

that people will go to hell and pay for their sins.

- See that's Oral's physical hand on the right.

Physical replica.

None of that was here when I came.

The chapel wasn't here, Howard auditorium, the quad,

this was all just woods and weeds.

- Carlton in reading the Bible kinda got onto this notion

that you can't really find that in the Bible.

I mean, most of the imagery that most people have of hell

comes from Dante and Bunyan,

not from the Bible.

It's the Bible is really pretty modest to non-existent

on this topic.

And Carlton began to see that like a lot of mystics

became kind of overwhelmed, I think,

with the love of God,

and therefore could not envision a loving God,

destroying evil people in hell.

And that was a no go.

- And he started preaching universalism

from his pulpit.

And his congregation didn't like it at all.

And it shrank down and shrank down to almost nothing.

He lost all of his standing

because he allowed himself to keep growing theologically.

And then was unafraid to say what he really did believed.

- My old parents, you know,

they were so proud of me because of what I'd done.

You have to take all that into consideration.

My sisters (sighs).

Everybody was embarrassed, you know.

Everybody was proud to be my cousin.

"That's my cousin, Carlton.

"That's my brother."

And one of my nephews left the country moved away,

didn't talk to us for a long time.

Called me an educated fool.

We hurt so many people.

And that it wasn't about me being hurt.

It was about me inflicting pain on innocent people.

They had believed this stuff all their lives.

I taught them after they taught me.

Now they're old and tired.

And they were so proud of me because,

"I taught that boy in Sunday school.

"Look at what he's doing today.

"I saw it on television the other day."

Those kinda things.

Those were precious to them.

I would hold those little ladies,

and there was no way I could fix it.

The hardest part of that whole thing was losing the church,

the physical plant and being basically a churchless,

like a homeless family.

They're more panic about the no hell thing,

because if you say there is no hell,

then there's no need for Jesus.

And Oh my God, you got to have Jesus.

I never thought anybody would ever attribute

the word heretic to me.

It just wasn't in my mind at all.

It just means choice or opinion

or you to choose differently from others,

(speaks in foreign language)

in Hebrew or Greek.

So the whole idea of getting out of the traditions

or the traded down ideologies and ideas,

and, you know,

developing an independent way of thinking is dangerous.

- Here are the results of the vote of Mayflower Church.

Those who voted for A,

which was to do nothing at this time, 12.

Those who voted for B,

declare ourselves in the fullest sense

a sanctuary church, 128.

And those who voted for C, which are activities,

all of which are subsumed under B, 63.

So,

(congregation claps)

By a two to one margin,

the congregation has voted to declare itself

to be a sanctuary church.

Here we go.

(congregation claps)

- Before the reading (indistinct)

- [Robin] We're the first congregation in Oklahoma

to declare itself a sanctuary church.

- [Woman In A Blue T-Shirt] Thank you.

- [Lori] Your welcome.

- When you preach the gospel, you have to be political,

but it's the politics of the gospel.

It's not partisan politics.

Like God's a Republican or Democrat,

which is an absurd idea to begin with.

If all of us do matter,

and that's what we choose to believe

then that means not just privileged white people

sitting alone, cloistered in church

and worrying about their souls.

- Over and over again,

we kept hearing that they needed us to be public

and very clear publicly that we were going to fight

for laws that were just and treated immigrants

as the human beings that they are.

(Robin knocks)

(Lori whispers)

Hello?

- [Woman] Hi.

(speaks In foreign language)

- [Man With Glasses] Hello, John?

Hello.

(speaks in foreign language)

(gentle music)

- [Robin] We have a pediatric oncologist in our church

who made us aware of a child

that has a sort of juvenile form of Hodgkin's disease

and is also on the autism spectrum.

(speaks in foreign language)

His mother is undocumented,

and she is terrified that she's going to be deported,

and there's nobody to take care of her son, John.

(speaks in foreign language)

- [Lori] We are going to go with you today.

(speaks In foreign language)

There will be many people there to support you.

(speaks in foreign language)

- One of the things that gets

talked about over and over again,

there's a kinda saying there are three people

for whom God has special care.

Widows, orphans and foreigners.

The foreigners are the illegal aliens in your land.

Okay?

Because those are the three people

that have nobody to protect them.

So if God doesn't protect them, they're in real trouble.

And it's kind of odd.

Here we are 3000 years later,

and we're still arguing about the same three done questions.

Jesus and Joseph and Mary are forced into Egypt,

which historically for Jews is the place of slavery.

See but now it's gonna be the place of liberation.

It's gonna be the place of safety.

They are from our point of view,

crossing the border illegally, you know.

Now if there had been a wall

(laughs)

they would have been trapped on the wrong side

and the whole story would have stopped.

So if you've gonna take a Bible position,

certainly you should be for illegal immigrants.

That's where the Bible comes out.

It's on their side.

- Did you tell him what happened?

Okay. Okay.

It's not terrible.

I mean, yeah.

A little a small stay

until we can do some more advocating,

letter writing, political pressure sort of thing.

So we're gonna get to work on that.

They're gonna put a tracker on her ankle which--

- [Blonde Woman] But not house arrest

just a tracker. - Right, right.

- [Blonde Woman] Right. Okay. - Right.

- [Blonde Woman] That was the clarification.

- Right. So she knows she has friends,

and people helping her out in that meant a lot to her.

That's where we are.

- [Woman] Robin does he have cancer?

- All we were saying was we're not gonna let

what's happening in country to our immigrant sisters

and brothers go unnoticed.

We're not going to just be silent.

Because we've been silent at some pretty critical moments

in American history,

and we wished we hadn't been.

- You know, one of the,

I guess the biggest marks of today's religious landscape

is the rise in the number of people who are not religious.

If you go back to the 1990s,

it's still only less than 10% of the country

claims no religious affiliation.

Today that's a quarter of the country.

And if you look at young people, it's four in 10.

- I happen to believe that church is dying

in its old form and will continue to die in its old form.

Nine churches a day,

close their doors on average in the United States.

That doesn't worry me.

That doesn't worry me.

Social justice churches will thrive, especially now.

(birds chirping)

(indistinct)

- [Man] Get them more here.

(indistinct)

- [Woman] Hi.

* Let the sunshine

- [Woman With A White Blouse] I'm here, hey.

* Let the sunshine in

* The sunshine in

- [Singer] Can you sing that with me?

* Let the sunshine

* Let the sunshine in

* The sunshine in

* Let the sunshine

* Let the sunshine in

* The sun shine in

* Let the sunshine

* Let the sunshine in

* The sunshine in

* Everyday let

* Let the sunshine

* Let the sunshine in

* The sunshine in

(congregation claps)

- Have you been following the legislature's

hurtful and heartbreaking Bill 1140.

- [Congregation] Yes.

- It's proposed to give private adoption agencies

the right to take public funding

and then discriminate against people

based on the agency's religious beliefs.

Now, what this means

is that a qualified family can be blocked

from adopting by a religious agency

because the family's Muslim or atheist or single

or a same-sex couple.

We still have time to stop this from going through.

And I would appreciate your help in doing that.

I'm inviting you into an act of religious freedom.

Here at All Souls our focus is not to try to save people

from a hell in the afterlife that we cannot see,

but to save people from very real hells in this life

that we can see.

Robin Myers reached out to me pretty early and said,

"We need as many progressive thinkers

"in this state as possible."

I'd read some of his books.

I saw what he'd done.

And I really admired Robin and looked up to him.

- Good morning, church.

You're in the right place.

This is All Souls Church.

This is a beautiful day in which we are living.

When Dr. King said,

"Yes, the road to justice requires sacrifice,

"suffering and and struggle

"and you got to have some passionate concern

"by dedicated individuals."

When Dr. King was speaking like that,

he was trying to say so therefore,

don't sit on the side and whin.

He was trying to tell you come on now

because we are moving towards something that's transcendent.

- [Congregation] Yeah.

- We are moving towards justice.

I don't wanna preach this morning.

(congregation laughs)

But I'm trying to tell y'all that you in for it.

We got Reverend Dr. Bishop Carlton Pearson.

(congregation cheers)

Yeah.

So get ready for this.

Let us hear the song cause if you listen to it,

you might learn something.

Come on.

(bright music)

* Long as you living always remember *

* You are never beat life

* So don't try and cheat life

* Sisters and brothers

* Do onto others

* Love's for enjoying

* Hate's for destroying

* Never forget it

* Or you'll regret it

* As long as your living

* Forgive me if I seem to preach *

* But there is something that I have to say *

* A message

- Wow.

That's a cute dangerous like girl.

(congregation laughs)

Devil would walk down that aisle and just kiss you.

(congregation laughs)

We were raised with a Bible and a belt.

(congregation laughs)

If they could preach the gospel into her

they'd beat that devil out of her.

(congregation laughs)

They'd go to jail for that today.

(congregation laughs)

But you can also carry guns.

They're trying to put forth legislation in this state.

Who are people who've had no vetting,

no preliminary examinations, no questioning,

any random person can walk around,

like in cowboy days and carry guns.

That's insane.

Especially while the psychologists telling us that

one out of five people you meet are mentally ill.

Count down the roads.

(congregation laughs)

If that one has a gun, slap him.

(congregation laughs)

You can go out today when we finish

and ask Governor Fallin, the veto,

permitless, carry.

But we talk about faith in God

but it's really fear and guns,

and Bible or bullets or ballots,

we've never had such polarization in our country

or in our culture before.

And I think that All Souls

is a part of a new spiritual paradigm

right here in the City of Tulsa.

- The first time that Carlton Pearson came onto my radar,

I had just come to Tulsa a year or so earlier.

And there was a issue of Bush's Faith-Based Initiative

became a big national issue.

I was speaking against them.

He was speaking for them.

And then a few years later,

Carlton came out with this new gospel of inclusion.

And so I reached out to him.

Because he was being denigrated in the media

and in all kinds of other ways in the churches.

And so I reached out to him and say,

"Hey, there are a lot of others who think like you."

And about a third to a half of his members

joined at that time.

- Used to go drive by there and say,

"It looks like such an innocent little place.

"How could all those demons live in there?"

They didn't like all of us,

black men Pentecostal coming in there first.

I was willing to go and he wouldn't have it.

Marlin would not have it.

And a lot of their people wouldn't have it.

(gentle music)

- [Marlin] All Souls started in 1921

at the same year as the Tulsa race riot happened.

- The founder of All Souls Unitarian Church

owned the Tulsa Tribune.

And initiated the terrible massacre that took place

because of the way he reported things in the news.

- The first time I found out about the Tulsa massacre,

I was almost 30 years old.

I'm sitting in a church in Chicago, Illinois,

and the pastor begins to talk about the excellence

of Black Wall Street.

And I'm like, "Oh, well, this sounds interesting."

Well, then he says that,

"The black wall street takes place

"in the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma."

And I'm like, "Wait a second. I'm from Tulsa."

And he tells the story of how just two generations

out of slavery,

African-Americans built this incredible city

in the shadows of Jim Crow.

(gentle music)

There are doctors,

there are lawyers and there are black teachers,

black schools, and these people are excellent.

- Nobody knows about it.

I didn't know.

I was here for years before I ever heard of that.

- On May 31st in 1921,

a girl by the name of Sarah Paige is an elevator operator

in a building downtown and a young African-American boy

who's a shoe shiner had to go to the restroom.

And so he chose the building

that I guess Sarah Paige was in,

and he's going up the elevator,

and the elevator supposedly jerks.

There's a scream.

And Dick Rowland comes running out of the elevator.

After Sarah Page screams.

Some people say that Dick Roland assaulted Sarah Page,

and there's a warrant for his arrest.

The next day, there's a warrant for his arrest.

- The Tribune was published in the evening.

And so when Dick Rowland was arrested,

the paper that day, that night said, you know,

"Nab a Negro tonight was the headline of the paper,

right on the front pages.

And they're telling this story about Dick Roland,

supposedly accosting a white woman.

And in 1921 in America,

that was grounds often for lynching

and all kinds of mob violence.

(gentle piano music)

- [Nehemiah] Hours later, there are angry white Tulsans

coming across the railroad tracks

to burn down this community.

(mournful music) (gentle piano music)

- It was 34 blocks of businesses

and homes and people that were destroyed

and killed in that devastation.

It's known as the Tulsa race riot but in essence

it was white people coming into the black community

and wholesale destroying that community.

And so massacre is a more appropriate word

for what happened.

(gentle piano music)

Because Tulsa kept silent about the events of 1921

for so long,

there was a conspiracy of silence,

both in the white community and in the black community.

And still today, it's hard work to bring people together

across race in Tulsa.

- I come from a very Pentecostal background.

My upbringing was in the Pentecostal Church,

The Church of God and Christ.

And I was a Church of God in Christ, born and bred,

and would never have imagined myself at my age

now being with a Unitarian congregation.

In August it'll be 10 years

that we've been here as a part of all souls.

I will say that it is not without some challenge

when these black people are perceived as invading a space

that has been pretty exclusively white for, you know,

eight decades.

* Blessing

* What a blessing

* So amazing

- It's one thing to put your dollars to it,

to march towards it, to sign legislation and to do a sermon.

I say, "But it's another thing when someone

brings in their luggage and open your drawers

and put their stuff in there,

and they're not leaving,

that's a completely different dynamic to deal with.

None of us asked for this, none of us wish this,

but this is the most divinely inspired thing

that could have happened to any congregation or church.

And it's hard to see that sometimes

when you feel a sense of loss.

So here we are with our worship music,

we're hugging each other and it's all spirit field

and heartfelt.

And we're asking people to do something

that they're not used to.

There was some people who thought that Marlin

was doing too much racial stuff, you know.

But the difference became you can now no longer say

that you don't know people who have been impacted by this.

- In light the beginnings 1921 to 2021,

and the arc of that story that goes from our founder

and his role in the race riot,

all the way to this congregation that is deeply committed

and has been working for decades for the unity

and equality of all people here in the community.

If you look over here.

And so moving into downtown allows us

to be in what we might call culturally neutral space.

In downtown that's everybody's Tulsa.

- [Carlton] Where's the entrance?

- The entrance will be right here.

Like we'll come right in here.

It's gonna be beautiful.

This whole side is gonna be gorgeous.

And then you have the main sanctuary, right here.

Facing Greenwood.

Where the arts window we'll have all that stuff

facing Greenwood right here.

- [Carlton] So the crowd will be looking that way.

- [Marlin] Looking right at Green.

Which is, - Black Wall.

- That was the segregated--

- And that was the Black Wall Street.

- That's right, Black wall street.

- So we really see this role as being border walkers,

between cultures and between theologists

and religious expressions,

as something that gives us a role in society

that can help us to help lead the community

and the country towards its promise.

- I think that churches like Mayflower and All Souls

will be the premier mega churches in the next 10 years.

I think people are gonna come from everywhere saying

"I relate to this because there's no judgment.

"There's no dogma in this place.

"I can be me.

"I could be proud of being me.

"I can come here unapologetically."

If it was LA or Frisco or even New York,

everybody expects it.

Nobody expects it.

What good thing can come out of Oklahoma since Oral.

- We're making a little tiny difference,

but I have this new theory about God.

That God doesn't do anything in my theology,

but without God, nothing gets done.

So every single action changes something,

which changes something else, which changes something else,

which changes everything.

And you can depend on that.

And that's what faith is all about.

(upbeat music)

- [Announcer] Welcome to the All Souls studio.

(congregation laughs)

(upbeat music)

I think you can snap your hands

if you want to.

(upbeat music)

This is a song about being grateful.

(upbeat music)

* You're my life, you're my breathe *

* You're a smile, you my guest

* You're the earth, you're the sun *

* You're the grass, you are love *

* You're my hands, you're a bug *

* You're my eyes, you're hug

* You're the light in the dark

* You're the spark, you are fun *

* You're my mom, you are water

* You're the stars, you're my daughter *

* Your my friend till the end

* You're my dreams, you're my father *

* You're are the ants on the ground *

* The miracles that surround

* I'm feeling it all around

* The hemisphere

- So your question, why do we support

or how can we support?

- How can you support criminals?

- [Robin] We're not here supporting

anyone who's breaking the law.

We're here trying to stand with human beings

that are very frightened right now.

- I completely understand where you're coming from,

but I'm a veteran and former military,

I'm a military brat.

- [Robin] I appreciate your service.

- So I follow the law.

- [Robin] Right.

- And so when I see groups here does it say,

"Oh, we stand with illegal immigration."

I stand with Americans first.

I have to.

- We're standing with human beings.

We're not making the distinction.

For us it's are they humans or not?

Cause if they're humans,

they're they're children of God.

And I think just at a human level,

we have to remember that.

The problem is we don't even

have a coherent immigration policy.

So you have people trying to come to this country

for the same reason you would or I would,

and that's to make a better life for our families.

But there's a lot of hypocrisy to go around.

And right now it gets deeper and deeper every single day.

- I truly appreciate somebody finally talking to me.

- Good.

- Cause I come from California,

- Yeah. - I've lived my life

mostly in California and all I get is you're racist.

You're bigot.

- I know, no.

No, I never thought that.

I don't think that now.

- And I think it's more because you have the collar,

you have that. - Yeah.

- And I get a more respectful answer from that.

And I do have to say, Thank you again

for that. - You're welcome.

You're welcome. All right.

- And I hope you have a wonderful day.

- All right.

We can solve our problems but only together.

Only together.

- And with talk.

- Bye. Bye.

Bye, Easter bunny.

(indistinct)

(Robin laughs)

That just didn't happen, did it?

- [Interviewer] Yes that did.

Okay.

* You're the path that I follow *

* You're the blessing that exist *

* The small things that are bliss *

* The gift to realize that

* Everything is a gift

* Every time I turn around

* Every time I think about

* Everything is a gift

* Every time I turn around