In the months since Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson Missouri, and the death of Eric Garner in New York, racial tensions in the United States have been at the highest for a generation.

For Heart and Soul, Matt Wells explores how protests against those deaths have been led by a new generation of the faithful who are challenging the old civil rights warriors and traditional church leaders.

In the fiery urban protests of the late 1960s, a “liberation theology” peculiar to a black American yearning for deliverance from injustice was developed. Now it seems that it’s re-emerging in a more youthful secular form.
Matt hears from rapper Tef Poe about how he prays to his own black Jesus and from young black women more interested in fighting for the disenfranchised and marginalised in their home towns than marching on politicians in Washington.

Producer / Presenter: Matt Wells
(Photo: Black Lives Matter sign outside Pastor Traci's church, Christ the King. Credit: Matt Wells)

Correction: Within this programme we mistakenly named Alexis Templeton as Alexis Thompson. The error was noted after the programme was finished. Show less