About Michigan Avenue Forums

Michigan Avenue Forums at Fourth Presbyterian Church promote civic formation within the Chicagoland community by presenting a series of events that feature important thinkers and public leaders in live lecture or panel-discussion format, discussing current issues of civic and ethical priority.

2024 Michigan Avenue Forum

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Future of American Democracy

We were honored to welcome as the speaker at our January 31, 2024, Michigan Avenue Forum Robert P. Jones, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.

The forum can be viewed on the Fourth Church YouTube channel.

In a presentation moderated by Fourth Church member Cynthia Johnson, Mr. Jones explained how the founders of the United States could build the philosophical framework for a democratic society on a foundation of mass racial violence — and why this paradox survives today in the form of white Christian nationalism.

Through stories of people navigating these contradictions in three communities, Jones illuminated the possibility of a new American future in which we finally fulfill the promise of a pluralistic democracy.

Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for the Atlantic, TIME, Religion News Service, and other outlets.

He is frequently featured in major national media, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others. He is also the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award, and The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

Jones writes weekly at robertpjones.substack.com, a newsletter for those dedicated to the work of truth-telling, repair, and healing from the legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University and an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The most recent Michigan Avenue Forum was held on November 2, 2023: “Understanding Antisemitism” was a panel discussion featuring Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, Scholar in Residence at National Council of Jewish Women; Becca Lubow, community organizer at Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA); and Nanette Sawyer, Associate Pastor for Discipleship and Small Group Ministry at Fourth Church.

That forum can be viewed on the Fourth Church YouTube channel.

Previous Michigan Avenue Forums have featured Elaine Pagels on her book Revelations; Walter Brueggemann on ministry in the twenty-first century; a panel discussion, cohosted with WBEZ, on NATO in the twenty-first century; Nadia Bolz-Weber on her books Pastrix and (two years later) Accidental Saints; a series on mass incarceration; and a forum on “The 1619 Project Revisited: Race, History, and the Future” — A Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, and WBEZ’s Natalie Moore.

For more information about Michigan Avenue Forums, contact the Adult Education office.