Our very first guest for On The Other Side is Tom Tarrants. Tom is the President Emeritus of the C.S. Lewis Institute, and holds both a Master of Divinity degree and a Doctor of Ministry degree in Christian Spirituality. In this episode, Tom shares his testimony of radical transformation. He was born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, and was a junior in high school when desegregation began in 1963. Not only did he heavily oppose the desegregation of schools, he eventually joined the Ku Klux Klan. Tom shares the story of his past life, and how the ideologies he consumed led to him becoming a full-fledged racist, anti-Semite and terrorist within the KKK by the age of 21. After a violent shoot-out with the police and FBI, Tom was arrested, escaped soon after, and eventually caught again which led to his placement in solitary confinement. It was those years within his prison walls that Tom began reading the Gospels, and experienced a life-changing conversion to Jesus Christ. 

As he was sharing his story, we couldn’t help but realize how many parallels there were between his time and what’s happening right now in 2020. There is so much for us to learn, and it’s easy to get lured into a way of thinking by making tribes and ideologies our god. We love when Tom says, “There needs to be a demonstration of the authentic Christian life in the churches, and by that I mean that we take seriously the teachings of Jesus.” We are so thankful for Tom sharing his incredible story of transformation with us today. To hear more details about Tom’s testimony, check out his book Consumed By Hate, Redeemed By Love: How a Violent Klansman Became a Champion of Racial Reconciliation. 

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