(Image source: Dasvandh Network)

The American religious landscape is diverse and complex. Too often, the perspectives of people from marginalized religious communities go untold. But a new documentary series called Undivided seeks to change that and answer a broader question: Who is included in the story of America?

Each episode of Undivided focuses on a different religious community, including Muslims, Latter Day Saints, Sikhs, Jews, and Black Christians. The show explores the contributions each community has made to American culture, history, and identity, as well as the diversity within those traditions. The show is currently in production, with a release date of Summer 2026.

Host Simran Jeet Singh, a scholar of religion and contributor to The Revealer, was drawn to this project in part by his experience of being a Sikh Punjabi man in America. Singh knows what it is like to live in a minority faith tradition where the stories people tell about his community are not often reflective of the reality.

With series director Jack Gordon, Singh seeks to tell a new story about religious diversity in America, one that combines personal testimonials, historical context, and candid reflection on what it means to live one’s values today.

I sat with Singh and Gordon to discuss the series and to reflect on their recent experience shooting an episode on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and their conversations with Black and LGBTQ members of the church.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Reina Coulibaly: We are in a time when many people describe the United States as “polarized”—polarized politically, religiously, racially, on social media, in our personal lives, and elsewhere. Tell me about why you wanted to explore religion in America under the framework of “undivided” for this TV series.

Simran Jeet Singh: With Undivided we are looking to help introduce Americans to their neighbors, and it’s really driven by this experience that I’ve had, and that the director Jack Gordon has had, of what it’s like to be on the other side of ignorance, and knowing what can happen when you are labeled as the unknown in this society. The kinds of rifts, bigotries, and violence that can follow in that.

This series is also meant to help us lift up stories that get swept under the rug, overlooked, or erased so that we can have a better understanding of who we are as a country and how we got here.

We do that through the story of religion and religious communities which have, and continue to, play a significant part in the founding and shaping of this country, and in how people live their lives and understand the world.

That’s the vision behind Undivided.

Reina Coulibaly: Since you are a scholar of religion and a writer of popular books and articles about religion, I’m curious to know how you got involved in Undivided, and what makes this project so important to you?

Simran Jeet Singh: When Jack Gordon first approached me about this project, my initial reaction was to look around and see if there was anything like it in the marketplace. And I was really surprised at the dearth of resources like this, of shows and movies presenting opportunities to learn about religions and religious diversity. That really grabbed my attention when he first brought it to me.

Jack and I have been friends for over a decade, and we’ve had a lot of shared interests in terms of reporting on religion. We met through the Religion News Association, the professional organization for journalists who cover religion, and we both served on the Board there.

A few years ago, Jack and I were at a conference in DC. We set a meeting, and he said, ‘I have an idea,’ and we talked about this show that he had a vision for, Undivided.

Part of what was underneath our conversation was this understanding and feeling of the pain and urgency of the social divisions in this country, and wanting to do something about it, and recognizing that there is something that we have access to that could help. That being, our training in the media space, along with the knowledge base and lived experience that we bring to this.

(Image source: Dasvandh Network)

Jack and I sat, I remember, in the hotel and talked through story ideas and framing of what might or might not work, and I just got really excited by the prospect of bringing this story together.

I’m a scholar of religion, somebody who thinks a lot about the impacts of how we think about, or treat, religion in this country, and the kinds of inequities that follow. Undivided really helps bring some of that to the surface, but not in a way that is preachy or judgmental, or even just a quick fix.

It has this narrative element to it that I love, and that I think really makes a difference. It can help people understand what’s going on. To me, that narrative aspect asks: ‘How do we tell the story of religion in this country in a way that’s not been done before?’ We ask this in a way that’s honest and incisive but also sensitive to people’s unique experiences and perspectives.

All of that felt to me like it gelled really well with this television series.

Reina Coulibaly: Having that narrative element allows folks to tell their story on their own terms and hopefully facilitates more understanding, especially if you’re coming from a space of not necessarily knowing much about a certain religious tradition. It allows people to touch on themes of shared humanity.

Simran Jeet Singh: Exactly. And, just to add to that, it’s so often that when people learn about religion in our culture today, it’s the human being that is being taken out of it. You’ll look at a textbook and you’ll say, ‘Hey, what does X religion believe? And when did it start? What do they do?’ and then the curiosity generally ends there.

But you don’t get to meet anyone from that tradition or get to know what their lives are actually like. Bringing in the human element, re-humanizing others in an interfaith context where we’re constantly dehumanized, or dehumanizing one another, is crucial to what this series is doing.

Reina Coulibaly: The theme for this special issue of The Revealer is “religion, activism, and community action.” One episode of Undivided follows members of The Church of Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints and explores the church’s history. The episode touches on LGBTQ identity, race, and other topics that are often sources of contention within many religious communities. Can you tell me about some of the people who you met while shooting, and how they navigate matters of identity and faith within LDS communities?

Simran Jeet Singh: There were a few different opportunities that we had to meet with folks and talk about their unique identities as they pertain to their faith. ‘

One that comes to mind is my conversation with Dr. Kate Mower, a nonbinary lesbian who also identifies as LDS. They shared a really touching story about what it’s like loving a community that doesn’t love you back. We had this powerful interaction around what it feels like when you come out to your family and they don’t accept you, and they don’t accept you on the basis of your shared religious ideology.

And for Kate, that journey with their own family is a very particular story to them. But in some ways, it’s also a very common story that a lot of us hear about, where loved ones need time to come to terms with something that they don’t know how to accept, or don’t want to accept.

The second touch point on community that stuck with me was meeting with some of the Black Latter-Day Saints. We got to sit down with a group of them, and then I attended an affinity-based service through their group, called Genesis, at the church.

What I really loved was the one-on-one hang out time I got, just kicking around a soccer ball with the group’s president, Ronnell Hugh. There was some resonance that I felt with him as he shared his story, with regards to how I have experienced race and racism myself in America as a Sikh Punjabi person. He’s often been in spaces where people don’t get what it’s like to be him, in his shoes, in his skin.

Most people can’t understand what it’s like to be a Black man in this country, what it’s like to be a Black man in the LDS church. In a way, I feel similarly about my own racial identity and religious identity.

At times in our conversation, it felt like we are living these parallel lives in different communities, in terms of this ‘outsider-ness’ we both carry. His ‘outsider-ness’ comes in the form of racial identity within his faith community, whereas my ‘outsider-ness’ comes from being a Sikh in the diaspora who’s been born and raised in the U.S. and is often seen as neither Sikh nor Punjabi enough. And for him, it comes in the form of ‘you’re not Mormon enough, or you’re not white enough.’

Reina Coulibaly: Were there any moments while shooting where you found yourself thinking, ‘Okay, I really relate to this person’s experience of XYZ,’ where you were able to relate to people’s stories on an experiential basis?

Simran Jeet Singh: Yeah, a moment like that came when I was asking the Black Latter-Day Saints why their Genesis group was important to them, and what it spiritually enabled for them that their regular communities did not.

One of the things they said was that they could freely be themselves, that they don’t have to ‘code switch,’ which I really relate to. I gave them some examples of what that looks like in my life.

When I get on an airplane, I find myself behaving differently. For example, if I’m talking to my family in Punjabi on the phone, which I often do, I’ll switch over to English just to make sure that people around me feel like they’re safe and they’re comfortable, but it’s also so that I ensure my own safety by not triggering anybody else’s anxieties.

I live in New York City, but I’m often in spaces where it’s not as diverse, and I’m just very aware of my being differently perceived and then having to perform in certain ways.

Reina Coulibaly: You’ve described this sentiment of LDS Saints with these minority identities loving a faith that doesn’t love them back. Could you elaborate on that?

Simran Jeet Singh: Sure, I remember a conversation with a Black Latter-Day Saint named Lashawn Williams, who is also a member of the Genesis group. She told me: ‘Sometimes I want to leave, I wish I could leave.’ She felt that way, in part, because of some of the racism she has experienced.

For an outsider like me, it’s easy to say, ‘well then just leave,’ or ‘what’s holding you back?’ And when I asked her about that, she just came back to me basically saying, ‘I haven’t been called to leave.’

That reasoning is so interesting to me because this is not a tradition that I’m a part of, and it’s not a theology that I espouse. I don’t think of my own decision-making in life in terms of a particular calling, since it’s just not native to the Sikh way of thinking.

But it was real for her, and I heard a similar idea, but in a different way, maybe in the inverse sense, from other people in the LDS community who also experience the othering we’ve been talking about. People would tell me: ‘I feel called to stay here by my faith’ despite negative experiences.

That was the underlying tension that many of the people I met, both in Genesis and LGBTQ, raised themselves in these conversations.

The other feeling that several LGBTQ people shared were variations on this idea that ‘the church might not want me, but I feel connected with this community.’ I remember some spoke more broadly saying that they still felt connected to LDS religion and its teachings.

It is so incredible to witness this kind of self-understanding where religion is more than what the church or any specific doctrine says.

This is an important example of living religion where the church might say something, or the priest might say something, or even the Scripture might say something, but those things are not the only things that draw people to a tradition or make them identify with a religion.

For people who are on the margins of a community, it can feel so isolating, and so to find others who have a similar lived experience and can affirm that you’re not making stuff up, or you’re not crazy, or an outlier can be incredibly powerful.

The simple act of showing up and being in conversation with one another felt like it was so significant for the LGBTQ individuals I met. Creating a space where they felt like they belonged in a wider context where they don’t always feel that way, and to sort of dive into that tension of, hey, ‘We’re not exactly sure what this is going to look like in the future, but we can sort of live in the ambiguity together.’

That was a beautiful thing to witness. Living in uncertainty on your own is scary, but to do it with other people is quite powerful.

Jack Gordon: To add to what Simran is saying, we’re trying to present a story that doesn’t pass judgment as much as possible, that still wrestles with these difficult questions about faith, religious institutions, and then American institutions. Our way of going about it is neither a puff piece about these institutions, nor is it a hit piece on them.

There really is a presentation of historical facts, as we’re also going through these documents that the church has released about their different and evolving official stances on race, gender, and sexuality, and how that impacts different groups within the community. Then, we’re getting reactions from the people that are living in it right now.

Reina Coulibaly: When Undivided airs, what do you hope people will come away having learned or understood about faith and religious diversity in America?

Simran Jeet Singh: Ultimately, my hope is that when Americans look at people who are different from them, they’re no longer so quick to pass judgment, or to assume that they have nothing in common with that other person.

I think it really comes back to the name of the show, Undivided, which means working to create a society that is less divided, where we really are able to understand and respect one another, including on the basis of what makes us different.

Our general approach to the show is trying to understand and humanize people whom we don’t really know much about and to learn from their stories, which we don’t typically hear. First, we identify some of the core assumptions we have about people. Then we ask ourselves: ‘How do we challenge those through history, storytelling and conversations with real people?’

Undivided is not an attempt to strip away what makes us distinctive. It’s also not an attempt to overlook the diversity that makes us who we are. It’s seeking to create connections through that diversity.

Jack Gordon: Hopefully, people also feel a bit more emboldened to approach someone with whom they have a perceived difference with the curiosity and the confidence that comes with a certain level of literacy to continue to ask questions with good intentions behind them.

Reina Coulibaly: Undivided is currently in production and has yet to air, but what else can viewers expect from the series?

Simran Jeet Singh: In the Islam episode, we examine the post-9/11 idea that Muslims are perpetually foreign and outsiders by looking at the history of Muslims in this country and saying, ‘well, if we understood that Muslims have been in this land since before the United States was even founded, and that they played a major role in establishing this country, how would that change the way we see them?’

If we look at how Islam came here through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and how many Muslims came here in bonds, maybe we could come to see Islam as a religion woven into our national story, as opposed to a foreign religion.

In the Jewish episode, we’re looking at major Jewish contributions to our country. For example, we delve into the notion of religious freedom, and the central role Jews played in ensuring that was a protected right, and they were advocating for this even at the founding of this country.

So far, we’ve shot and completed production of two full episodes on the Muslim and Jewish traditions. The episode on the LDS Church and community is in production now. We’re looking to add two more episodes on the Sikh American experience and on the Black American church. All of this will be ready to air in summer of 2026.

Reina Coulibaly is a freelance multi-media journalist whose work primarily focuses on faith and civic life.