By Chris Hughes
ST. LOUIS — Throughout the day Thursday, Cooperative Baptists at 2025 General Assembly had opportunities to engage in the gospel work of justice and equality through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Advocacy Breakfast and the annual Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM) luncheon.
Sharon Felton and Robert P. Jones
At the inaugural CBF Advocacy Breakfast, attendees learned about the Fellowship’s newest initiative encouraging faithful Christian citizenship and public witness, and listened to a thought-provoking conversation between scholars Lewis Brogdon and Robert P. Jones.
Director of Advocacy Jennifer Hawks shared updates on the work of CBF Advocacy sharing how the team mobilized to meet new challenges at the intersection of faith and public policy over the past year. That includes signing on to an amicus brief opposing religious charter schools in Oklahoma and joining a lawsuit that challenges changes to the “sensitive locations” policy that protects certain locations from federal immigration enforcement.
In the sensitive locations case, CBF is a plaintiff in a lawsuit for the first time in its history, alongside several Quaker groups and a Sikh temple.
“We joined the lawsuit because the idea of agents entering our worship spaces to question, intimidate, harass or arrest our neighbors is a violation of CBF’s religious freedom. Including immigrants within our fellowship family has been core to our identity since our beginning more than 30 years ago,” Hawks explained.
“We are currently 2-0 in the court system,” she declared, celebrating the courts siding with CBF in both cases. “CBF Advocacy is well positioned for this moment.”
In the year ahead, Hawks announced CBF Advocacy will hold an Advocacy in Action experience in Phoenix, Arizona in November.
“A national unraveling”
Lewis Brogdon, associate professor of Black Church Studies and executive director of the Institute for Black Church Studies at BSK Theological Seminary, and Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), concluded the breakfast with a sweeping discussion of their work around race, white supremacy and religion in America.
Brogdon helped set the stage for the conversation, which focused on Jones’ work on the roots of white supremacy and Christian nationalism. “We are living through a national unraveling. We are witnessing the erosion of meaning, trust and moral vision; the collapse not just of systems but of the soul of this country,” Brogdon suggested.
Jones described the energy behind his research as the “great white freak out” that began with the election of the nation’s first Black president and the loss of a white Christian majority at the same time. That compelled him to dive further into his own history as a white person in the south as he simultaneously probed the depths of Christian nationalism and white supremacy in U.S. history.
“In some ways, the term Christian nationalism is new and I think it’s a helpful term for us to understand what’s going on. But it’s very, very old in this country. In fact, it is perhaps the original founding story of our nation,” Jones asserted. “What we are living through right now is the use of power to grab it back…This is all about losing control of the narrative and what’s at stake of losing control of the narrative for those who look like me is that we’re going to be held responsible.”
Jones encouraged white Christians and white churches to excavate and examine their histories—suggesting that many of them have been written with rose-colored glasses—and begin telling the truth about themselves for the sake of justice and equality. This work, he admitted, could be costly. “We’re beyond the time of being nice. We’ve got to be for justice, we’ve got to be for equality and if that requires breaking some bonds of friendship and if it requires us getting on the opposite side of some family members, we’re going to have to find a way to do that,” he said.
Baptist Women in Ministry
The annual luncheon of Baptist Women in Ministry invited attendees into a conversation on the backslide of women’s rights in the U.S. and around the world, and a corollary resurgence of toxic masculinity.
“If you read any analysis provided by groups studying and advocating for gender equality in the United States, they will tell you that in the last five months, efforts toward equality for women here in our country have been moving backward instead of forward, especially in the areas of access to healthcare, workplace protections and voting rights,” said BWIM Executive Director Meredith Stone.
Progress for women’s equality is not inevitable and it requires tireless work to keep moving forward, Stone said. “We have to keep going. We have to keep inviting people to join us in this work if we are ever going to see the fulfillment of the gospel’s freedom for women,” she declared. “So that’s our update of what we’ve been doing this year—we have kept going.”
In order to keep going, Stone said it is important to engage men in the work of women’s liberation.
“We’re never going to be able to overcome global threats to women’s equality if women have to take this on all by themselves. We need the partnership of men to create fertile ground for our work, to amplify the voices of women, to use the power and influence they have for the purpose of empowering those who have been disempowered,” she noted.
Stone’s introduction was a fitting precursor to the luncheon’s featured conversation with author, Lutheran pastor and veteran journalist Rev. Angela Denker. The author of “Red State Christians” and “Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood,” Denker has explored the intersection of race, gender, religion, politics and toxic masculinity in the U.S.
In her latest work, “Disciples of White Jesus,” Denker examines the duality that white boys and men in America are dangerous, and that white boys and men in America are struggling as a result of the toxic masculinity being modeled and taught in the country. “White men are more likely than any other demographic group in the U.S. to be a mass shooter. And also white men are more likely than any other demographic to die by suicide. This is a really tragic story,” she lamented.
Between writing “Red State Christians” in 2019 and “Disciples of White Jesus” in 2025, Denker observed a marked change from an emerging Christian nationalism to the inculcation of extremism and violence among conservative white Christians.
“What I see now is the ways in which that message has been tweaked even stronger to focus specifically on an idea of masculinity and manhood…And that is focused on violence and hatred. And for boys and for young men who are growing up in this environment, what it’s re-entrenching for them is that the only safe emotion that you get to express is anger,” the author concluded. 
A better model for Christian men could be found in Jesus, she shared, who wept openly and empathetically at the death of Lazurus in John’s Gospel. “Empathy is not toxic,” Denker proclaimed.
Toxic masculinity is a devastating force for women’s equality, but Denker said men can be a formidable force in tearing down patriarchy and advancing equality. “I think one of the more powerful antidotes is having men engaged in the work,” she charged.
Following the conversation, Rev. Molly Shoulta Tucker, chair of BWIM’s board of directors, announced a new fundraising effort for the organization called “Dismantling Patriarchy,” with a goal of raising $30,000 over the next year. Shoulta Tucker called on attendees to jump start the campaign by raising $15,000 during the lunch. That goal was surpassed, raising $15,395.