What we’re about
LOGLINE: To commemorate the first Anniversary of the Covenant School Shooting, Evangelical outsiders host “family dinners” for strangers and friends across the country - creating safe spaces to challenge the Christian investment in both the gun industry, and the future of the American Church.
CONTEXT:
In 2024, there are around 500 million guns in America.
More than 81.4 million Americans are gun owners; the average owner possesses at least 5 firearms; and according to PRRI’s 2022 Social Networks Survey, 54% of white Evangelical Protestants, and 45% of white mainline Protestants, keep guns in their homes.
Simultaneously:
- firearms are now the leading cause of death for American Children and Teens;
- a young Native American commits suicide with a gun every six days;
- women in the US are 16 times more likely to be shot and killed than women in other developed nations;
- Black Americans are 10 times more likely than white Americans to die by gun homicide;
- each year, over 10,300 Victims of Hate Crimes are assaulted, threatened or intimidated by guns; and,
- LGBTQIA hate crimes are on the rise, with half of victims killed by firearms.
Gun violence is a public health crisis, our most vulnerable are suffering, and thoughtful Christians across the country now sit at a crossroads.
DESCRIPTION:
Despite the blood in our streets, and the carnage in our land, Evangelical Christians continue to champion gun ownership and proliferation - believing they should have a “God-given right” to own as many guns as possible.
Even after the March 2023 Nashville Christian School mass shooting, the silence within Christian churches and leadership circles was deafening - with seemingly almost no one willing to confront the sizable Christian investment in America’s Gun Industry.
Easter Sunday - the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection - is the centerpiece of the Christian faith. Sunday Dinner chronicles the journey Evangelical outsiders Calvin Lee and Marisa Prince take in the week leading up to Easter 2024 - talking to Historians, Thought-Leaders and Everyday Christians about holiday themes including sacrificial love and surrendered lives. Journeying through Los Angeles, Denver, Nashville, Washington DC and Boston, they explore the un-eradicated fears that continue to fracture and isolate the Church, as well as the historical, emotional and financial roles guns have played for Christians in America. Along the way, they hope to create space for the truth-telling, oneness and action that could turn the tide of gun violence, while turning a corner towards a more loving Christian Church.
CREATORS & CO-HOSTS:
Marisa Prince and Calvin Lee are hungry for a faith that disowns supremacy, disrupts inequity, and disavows empire - instead championing liberation for ALL. They’re conveners, creators and campaign-people, committed to bringing measurable social change to our country. A Black and Korean sibling(esque) duo who met while working on a Massachusetts Senate Campaign, they bonded in the belly of white, wealthy, conservative Evangelical spaces. They're Believers of Color - and now frustrated Evangelical outsiders - seeking more for the American Christian Church.
In 2018, the duo co-founded American Awakening, a seven-figure Arts/Entertainment Campaign raging against the divisiveness of the 2020 political cycle. The AA Team (spread across Boston, Nashville, Jacksonville & Maui) partnered with William Morris Endeavor (WME), HarperCollins/Zondervan Publishing, Relevant Media Group, Christianity Today, Premier Productions, and Q Ideas to produce/distribute a book, 71 episode podcast, global concert event, daily devotional, published articles, docuseries sizzle and national thought-leader gatherings.
In 2020, Prince & Lee launched [GOSPEL], an initiative to curate creative content and spaces to catalyze more for the American Christian Church. In February 2022, they took a cinematic journey to Standing Rock Reservation to discover the ways that Nationalism and White Supremacy have infected the American Christian Church. Captured in the short Film “Are We There YET”, the journey unpacked the origin story of American Christian Nationalism - and what it might take for the Church to repair the historical damage it’s caused. Weeks after Calvin and Marisa returned home, the Uvalde School Shooting forced them to connect dots - and some of the same historical narratives they’d learned about on the road now seemed to lay the foundation for the Nation’s gun epidemic.
“Are We There YET” served as a central organizing tool for the January 2023 Boston Activation Experience (a citywide gathering to combat Christian Nationalism), and is currently playing in Film Festivals across the country. In August 2023, Prince and Lee were selected by Invested Faith, the innovation financing initiative, as Fellows in its latest National Cohort of Social Justice Innovators.