This interview is part of The Reconstruct, a weekly newsletter from Sojourners. In a world where so much needs to change, Mitchell Atencio and Josiah R. Daniels interview people who have faith in a new future and are working toward repair. This week features a guest interview by Sojourners associate editor Darren Saint-Ulysse. Subscribe here.
Full disclosure: It’s entirely possible you wouldn’t be reading this interview right now if not for its subject. Let me explain.
In 2013, Jemar Tisby and Phillip Holmes, co-founder of the organization then known as the Reformed African American Network, started a podcast called Pass the Mic.
Around 2015, a friend suggested I listen to the podcast—by then, Tyler Burns had stepped in as Tisby’s co-host. I wasn’t theologically connected to the Reformed tradition (and for what it’s worth, Tyler wasn’t either), but the idea was that I would enjoy listening to two thoughtful Black people in ministry share their journey about pursuing justice in the U.S., particularly in white evangelical church spaces. I very soon became a regular listener and started following the work of RAAN—which later became The Witness: A Black Christian Collective. I wasn’t alone: By its 10th anniversary in 2023, The Pass the Mic team estimates the podcast had conservatively amassed 6 million downloads (most of their episodes before 2016 were lost when their server got hacked, so exact numbers are unavailable).
From 2020 to 2024, I served as The Witness’ content curator. I likely would not have been hired here at Sojourners if not for the opportunity I had to work in the organization Tisby built.
But I’ve never had the chance to talk with Tisby about the journey he’s taken and the platform his work with Pass the Mic and The Witness gave him. Shortly into my tenure at The Witness, he took a role as senior academic researcher and assistant director for narrative and advocacy at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. After about five months on the job, he resigned. The University launched an investigation into the center’s culture and financial management, citing complaints, and it closed in 2025 when its founding director Ibram X. Kendi left for another job. Tisby has since founded his own studio, Tisby Media; he is a history professor at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville and the author of several books, including the bestseller The Color of Compromise and the forthcoming Notes from an Evangelical Reject: Reflections on Following Jesus Out of a Corrupt Tradition.
In May, Tisby and Burns announced Pass the Mic would end in the fall. I wanted to ask him about the journey these past 12 years have taken him on, what we lose when we go from “networks” and “collectives” to Substacks, and what keeps him going in his work as a historian, writer, and speaker.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Darren Saint-Ulysse, Sojourners: How do you explain the journey that led to you creating Pass the Mic?
Jemar Tisby, Tisby Media: At first, I was looking to have a place at the Reformed and evangelical table—to present our unique perspective based on our existential reality as Black people who are also Christian. So that meant the formation of the Reformed African American Network in the fall of 2011. The podcast really came as an evolution of how to get our voices out there.
We started with a Facebook page, just gathering people [and] sharing stories. We weren’t producing any original content; we were simply creating a space for these conversations to happen. The next phase was to launch our own website. This finally gave us a platform for writing that we were in charge of. And then it seemed very natural from there to move into podcasting.
I’ll never forget: We were on our way back from a 17-hour road trip from a Desiring God conference in Minneapolis to Jackson, Miss. It was me, Phillip Holmes, and a guy named Simon Babba. I had been mulling on this for a while. But finally, I just dropped it in the conversation on this multi-hour ride, and they were on board.
Very quickly, we found Beau York, who to this day is our producer. We were all going to church together. So it was a very Jackson-centric thing. But the fundamental impetus behind it was finding the best way to get our perspectives as Black Christians who were in some way shape or form in these Reformed and evangelical circles out there to the people who resonated with us.
When RAAN started in 2011 and when Pass the Mic began in 2013, the world was very different.
We had a semblance of a democracy ... a Black president ...
Imagine that. But in listening to the show for the past 10 years or so, I’ve also noticed changes in you. How do you narrate the way you’ve changed during the show’s history?
I often say that if you are a person committed to racial justice in predominantly white spaces, you typically sell out, burn out, or get pushed out. I experienced being pushed out of the [Presbyterian Church in America] and reformed evangelical online communities. I had preaching opportunities that were already booked, taken away; speaking opportunities that were already booked, taken away. I became radioactive in some circles—a pariah. It was baffling because all I thought I was doing was promoting Black dignity.
So, what changed was a couple of things. One, we had a Black Lives Matter movement that put conversations about race at the forefront nationally. As we did, a lot of white Christians showed their tails.
2014 and 2015 is probably the tail end of the evangelical racial reconciliation movement, which would have started in the early ’90s. Up to that point, there was this positive assertion that getting people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds together was good and that it would lead to reconciliation. What Black Lives Matter exposed was that when white people said racial reconciliation, they meant friendship. When Black people said racial reconciliation, we meant justice.
READ MORE: How Evangelicals Became White
So instead of racial reconciliation, I started talking about racial justice. That got into systemic and institutional issues, which was absolute anathema in a lot of these Reformed and evangelical spaces. That began, in earnest, a lot of the “pushing out.” But then, at some point I turned around and I walked out because I’m like, y’all not on the same page anyway.
The second thing that happened was me studying history. I started my doctorate in history in 2016 [and was] reading dozens of books about U.S. history. Whether they’re explicitly about race or not, whenever the church and race came up—at least the white church—it was bad news. This led to The Color of Compromise, [which] was me saying that this is worse than we’ve been led to believe. However bad you thought the race problem in the U.S. was, when you actually dig into the history, you are never pleasantly surprised. That led to what Martin Luther King Jr. calls the “fierce urgency of now.”
I think my tone shifted some. I was a lot less patient with anyone of any race or background who would soft-pedal the racial crisis that we were in or encourage some sort of gradualism. We were way past time to make substantive changes. And the church had been such a big part of the problem. It now needed to commit to being a part of the solution.
One of Pass the Mic’s most notable series was “Leave Loud,” in which you told the story of your decision, as you said, to “walk out.” During that time, you and Tyler used to talk a lot about the wilderness—the in-between space between where you left and where you were going. Do you feel like you’ve landed somewhere now?
I still feel like I am in the wilderness wandering, but it’s a whole lot more crowded now. Settling down is less common for people. This wandering is more of a norm. It just feels like I’ve been in a tent for a really long time, and I’m used to it now.
But no, I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily planted. I still struggle to describe myself theologically, still am rebuilding my biblical hermeneutic and decolonizing it and constructing something healthier.
I’m still, in many ways, searching for a church home. But at the same time, my definition of the church has expanded so that it’s not simply the local congregation, although I still think that’s important. But it is much more the community of wanderers, or as I say, people who are on the justice journey and the people you meet along the way. So, yeah, I think I’m still in the wilderness wandering, but I’ve got good company.
Conservatives who didn’t like your work would often label you a leftist, Marxist, communist, socialist, critical-race-theory practitioner, and so on. You often would push back and say, that’s not what we’re doing. But in retrospect, I realize you could have just claimed one of those labels, and it could’ve been fine! What is your current resistance to those labels, and what are you working through that is keeping you in the wilderness?
I’m still working through what I believe about Christianity. The only thing I’m certain of is Jesus. What I love about Christianity is that it’s focused not around a principle, it’s focused around a person. The only thing I know is Jesus is real. Jesus has never left me, and I’m doing my best to consciously never leave him. Everything else is a question mark to one degree or another.
I’m still working on how to read and interpret the Bible. I was trained to be a pastor. I was trained to exegete and preach and teach scripture. Now I don’t trust my training. I’m having to experiment and see when I read the text how the Spirit speaks to me. I’m still figuring out how to pray. Because again, the God I was taught to pray to doesn’t seem like the God embodied in Jesus. So, I’m trying to figure out how to talk to Jesus without some of the more harmful interpretations of who he is.
I have way more questions than answers. But it’s also one of those things where what I do know is more than sufficient for what I don’t know.
I think a danger could be settling in the wilderness and just planning to be there. So, what keeps you moving?
As a historian, I’m conscious that the lives we live day-to-day are actively building a legacy for tomorrow. I want to live in such a way that people can look back on my life as a pattern to follow if they want to pursue Jesus and justice. I live today in light of how history will view me in the future. And that keeps me endeavoring to do the right thing.
READ MORE: Is Christianity Without Boundaries Still Christian?
It’s not too much more complicated than that. I want to do what pleases Jesus. Any other alternative is just not appealing. I don’t get up day-to-day and think about, “How am I going to keep going?” I just do what I think needs to be done in service to the church in general and my audience in particular. We won’t know if I was successful until my last breath, but today that’s where I am.
When you started the Reformed African American Network, it was a network. Eventually, it became The Witness, A Black Christian Collective. When you announced the end of Pass the Mic, the big thing that you called people to was to follow your Substack, which feels different to me. How do you think about the shift in what you’re calling people to join?
I stepped down from The Witness in the spring of 2021. Ever since then, I have felt that absence in the sense of being part of a collective, a community of something bigger. For years I debated, do I start something new? Do I start another network, another collective?
Ultimately, [I realized] because of the times we’re living in, I have to be nimble. I have to be able to shift and adapt quickly to address what’s happening. Because to me, the fundamental drive is to be useful to the church. Over the years, I’ve just come to realize that my best way to serve the church and the broader society is through my teaching and through my writing.
So, the next thing for me is scaling up Tisby Media. We’re looking at documentaries. We’re looking at short-form video. I’ve done different online courses. I love the classroom dynamic, even if it’s virtual: Fundamentally, what I think it does is help us know we’re not alone. We’re not the only ones who are seeing the fall of democracy, and we’re worried about it.
Eras of crisis also produce tight, dynamic communities. One of the things that we learn from the far-right is that they are really good at telling really bad stories. They have a bad story to tell that’s exclusive, authoritarian, and anti-democratic, but they are using all the tools of the digital age to tell that story, and it’s working for their audience. People with better stories to tell about inclusion and justice and plurality—we are behind. I want to be part of the solution and show and demonstrate and witness to everyone that we can tell good stories in really good ways.
What I’m calling people into is a community of people committed to truth at the intersection of faith, history, and justice. Is there some broader organization in the same way as it was with The Witness or even Pass the Mic? No. But I do think [my] Substack, and the alumni of my courses, is forging a kind of a community that that may not have a label [like] The Witness or Pass the Mic, but there is a kinship there.
At this point, where we are, because our institutional faith communities have been so compromised in so many ways, we are going to have to have these networks of community. No longer will one person be subscribed to just one community, primarily: It’ll be a network or a collection of communities, of which I hope mine is one.
“When white people said racial reconciliation, they meant friendship. When Black people said racial reconciliation, we meant justice.”
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