Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons: Community is at the Heart of Spiritual Resistance
Election Day of 2016 was a day that the progressive faith community will forever remember. It shattered hearts across the country, including Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons. Since then, he has been filled with sacred resistance. The 29-year-old church deacon’s early moments of resisting the Trump administration included attending the Women’s March, and combating racism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Today, the Kentucky-based activist serves as the Senior Associate in the Rights and Inclusion Collaborative at ReThink Media, a social justice focused communications non-profit. He is also the founder of The Resistance Prays, a daily newsletter that equips progressive Christians to spiritually and politically defeat Trumpism.
“Like all progressive Christians, I was dismayed after the 2016 election that Trump was President, but I was also inspired by all of the activism that had happened since the election,” Graves-Fitzsimmons said. “But I didn’t see anything that specifically empowered a broad resistance of faith to Trumpism.”
So he created one. Graves-Fitzsimmons launched The Resistance Prays one day after the election. Now just shy of the movement’s two-year anniversary, it has over 4,000 followers on Facebook and a daily subscription to their newsletter focusing on issues such as Medicare for All, reproductive rights, immigration, LGBTQ rights and racism.
Before the 2016 election and during his undergraduate at American University in Washington D.C., he held an internship at Faith in Public Life. He said that it was here where he found his passion for writing about progressive issues as a Christian. Upon graduating, he worked in faith-based immigration advocacy before entering Union Theological Seminary.
“I think about Jesus flipping tables in the Temple ,and I’m sure if Jesus walked into the White House today he would have a similar reaction,” Graves-Fitzsimmons said.
In the coming months, Graves-Fitzsimmons’ all-volunteer team will focus on how Christian values play an important part in the looming Mueller report, and they will create an e-book to equip subscribers to ground their reaction to the Mueller report in their faith. And all while Graves-Fitzsimmons plans his summer wedding to Rev. John Russell Stanger, a Presbyterian pastor.