How to End Christian Nationalism Conference 2025
Afternoon Educational Offerings
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The Age of Discovery and Christian Nationalism
This offering will explore the relationship between Papal Encyclicals, European Colonization, and their integration into English and American Law.
Dr. Taino Palerno, co-founder of the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights, will lead this session.
Covering School Committees, Trans Rights, DEI, and Book Bans in Rhode Island
Rhode Island is a small state with 34 public school districts, each with its own school committee or school board, and 271 schools. Tracking Christian Nationalist efforts can be challenging - and sadly, it’s not a one-person job.
Steve Ahlquist, an independent reporter with well over a decade of experience writing about politics and social justices, will lead this session.
Made in God’s Image
Christian Nationalism’s role in the persecution of gender diverse individuals is confounding, in no small part because it’s not what scripture leads us to. To the contrary, Jesus led us to understand that the diversity of humankind is absolutely essential to our existence. Let us faithfully explore together how and why this is so.
Rev. DL Helfer, ordained minister and licensed social worker, will lead this session.
Parasites, Patriarchy, and Project 2025
This class will focus on identifying how Project 2025 relies on and extends sexism, patriarchy, and racism in its concepts of the family, distributions of civil rights, and extreme favoring of white, cisgendered men and their heterosexual family structures. It will also ask how our faith traditions and practices can critique Project 2025 and call us to stances and actions of resistance on behalf of women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC folx - all of whom are deeply loved by the God who created them.
Rev. Dr. Amy L. Chilton, Senior Minister at Phillips Memorial Baptist Church, will lead this session.
Roger Williams, the Prophet of Religious Liberty
Roger Williams created the first place where religion and the state were separated. Because of him, his colony, Providence Plantations had a completely secular government, and he regarded the idea of a “Christian state” to be blasphemous.
Dr. J. Stanley Lemons, Professor Emeritus of History at Rhode Island College and Historian of the First Baptist Church in America, will lead this session.