By Kate Eubanks
This summer, while Religion Unmuted takes a short hiatus between seasons, we’re revisiting some of the most powerful conversations from our first season — episodes that continue to speak urgently into today’s public conversations about faith, justice, and human dignity.
In this re-released episode, original hosts Pamela Prickett and Elaine Howard Ecklund sit down with author and former missionary Gina Thomas to discuss immigration, motherhood, trauma, and the moral questions raised by family separation policies at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Drawing from her book Separated by the Border, Thomas shares the story of Lupe and her young daughter Julia, who fled Honduras seeking economic survival and safety, only to be separated during the “zero tolerance” immigration policy era. Thomas recounts how she unexpectedly became Julia’s foster parent while the child’s mother remained stranded in Honduras after enduring exploitation and violence during the migration journey.
The conversation moves beyond politics into deeper questions about faith and responsibility. Thomas reflects candidly on the failures she perceived within American evangelical responses to immigration, while also describing how her Christian faith compelled her to advocate for migrant families. Throughout the episode, the hosts and guest wrestle with themes of communal care, women’s leadership, racial privilege, and what it means to pursue justice rooted in shared humanity.
At the heart of the episode is a powerful vision of “communal salvation” — the idea that human flourishing cannot exist at another person’s expense. As Thomas explains, true wholeness comes when “your flourishing and my flourishing together create our communal salvation.”
This episode contains discussions of trauma and sexual violence that some listeners may find difficult, but it remains one of the most moving and thought-provoking conversations from our archive.
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