Understanding American Christianity Today

How do Christians in the United States understand their faith today? This session will dive into exactly that question—and how we arrived at this contested moment. Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made) changed how countless Americans understand their faith in her recent book, Jesus and John Wayne. In her new book, she uncovers the roots of today’s glittering, Instagram-ready culture of white Christian femininity. Bestselling religious studies scholar Robert P. Jones (Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy) examines the role white Christianity has played in the rise anti-democratic authoritarian politics in America. His new book reflects on history, his upbringing in the white evangelical South, and decades of social science research to show how the church has rejected empathy to instead privilege the few. This will be a can’t-miss conversation. 

Purchase your book from Eagle Eye, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the festival.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, and seating is first come, first served. Signing information: Signing time: 2:15 PM

Signing location: First Baptist Church – Front Lawn

About the Authors

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is the New York Times–bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. She is a professor of history at Calvin University and a Senior Democracy Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute, and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. Her new book is Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made.

Robert P. Jones is the award-winning author of the New York Times–bestselling The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future, White Too Long, and The End of White Christian America. The president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Jones has written for TIME, The Atlantic, Religion News Service, and more. Often featured in national media, such as CNN, MS NOW, and NPR, Jones also writes the popular Substack newsletter Redeeming Democracy. His new book is Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy.

About the Moderator

Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones is Assistant Professor of Theology and Africana Studies in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Her first book, Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology (Oxford University Press, 2025) centers the Black Madonna to examine how Christian theologies of purity and rape intersect with Black flesh. She is at work on a second book project, See No Evil, which offers a theological account of surveillance, artificial intelligence, and anti-Blackness. 

Outside of academia, Rev. Dr. Adkins-Jones is an ordained Baptist minister who frequently preaches and teaches around the country and brings pastoral sensibility to her work centering social justice. She is a practicing birth worker, a trained iconographer, and has a career background in UX Copywriting and Design. She joyfully builds community and hospitality with her beloved spouse and their four joyfully hilarious children in Atlanta, GA.