(RNS) — A native Oklahoman, the Rev. Shannon Fleck is a big fan of college football, especially the Sooners, and the University of Oklahoma softball team, which won the 2024 Women’s College World Series.
But when her staff wants to talk baseball, she’s in trouble.
“I’ve got nothing,” said Fleck, laughing at herself in an interview from her home near Oklahoma City.
For the past seven years, Fleck, a pastor and former probation officer, has been the executive director of the Oklahoma Faith Network, helping transform what had been a council of congregations into a network whose goal is to “empower the witness of faith communities and individuals throughout Oklahoma on issues of faith, care and social justice.”
That has meant running programs to strengthen families, helping faith communities respond to the opioid crisis and organizing churches to address issues of race, climate change and the rise of Christian nationalism in the Sooner State.
And starting this week, she’ll enter the activism big leagues: Fleck is the new executive director of Faithful America, a national organization that describes itself as “the largest online community of grassroots Christians putting faith into action for social justice.”
Faithful America, originally founded in 2004 as a project of the National Council of Churches, emerged in the 2010s as a sort of religious analogue to secular activist organizations that rely on online petitions such as MoveOn.org. More recently, the group has focused much of its activism on condemning and countering Christian nationalism, which Faithful America describes as an antisemitic and Islamophobic ideology that “poses a threat to the religious freedom of America’s Jews, Muslims, Indigenous peoples, mainline Protestant Christians, and more.”
In an interview this week, Fleck said her experience in Oklahoma has been the perfect training ground for her new role. There she helped challenge efforts to start a state-funded religious charter school under debate in the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as a plan by Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent for public instruction, to buy Trump-endorsed Bibles for every classroom in the state.
Heather Cronk, co-chair of the Faithful America board, cited Fleck’s experience in Oklahoma in announcing her new role.
“The Faithful America board is thrilled to be working alongside Shannon as she transitions into her new role as Faithful America’s executive director,” she said. “Shannon stood up to False Prophets like State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the architects of Project 2025 long before any of them became a household name. Her bold leadership emphasizing an active faith and collaboration is exactly the kind of pastoral leadership needed at this particular moment in our nation’s history.
As a pastor, Fleck said she wants to see people of faith and religious leaders bring their faith to the public square, and to use their values to influence public policy. But she doesn’t want politicians telling people what to believe or try to create policy that conforms to their particular religious views.
“We do not need to have religious perspectives being tossed out on our House and Senate floors as justifications for public policy and decisions made about human rights,” she told Religion News Service.
A boat billboard sponsored by a coalition of groups opposed to Christian nationalism travels around downtown Miami in May 2023 during a ReAwaken America Tour stop. (Photo courtesy Faithful America)
