I spoke with James Tufenkian, founder of Tufenkian Foundation which serves to promote social, economic, cultural and environment justice in Armenia as it recovers from its genocide. I asked him about his connection with Sojourners, and how his work and faith intersect.
Ariana Denardo (AD): How did you get connected with Sojourners, and why did you decide to become a donor?
James Tufenkian (JT): My brother, a retired pastor, and I were having a series of conversations about the involvement of the church in social issues. He mentioned Sojourners, so I visited the website, read the magazine, and got interested. I found Sojourners to be the best, maybe the only organization I know of that works on social justice as Christians living out Christ’s example. It was natural for me to want to support that in different ways, one of them being as a donor.
Three years ago, when Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell took the stage at a Jewish vaudeville celebration and said he was going to sing in Yiddish, people laughed.
As a 6-foot-plus African-American with one golden earring, he just didn’t look like the typical Jew fluent in the language of the pre-World War II shtetl.
Then he opened his mouth. Out came a rich bass voice in a longing lament to the isolated villages and tiny homes left behind in places like Poland and Russia.
Think Fiddler on the Roof's “Anatevka” sung by a guy who looks more like Chris Rock than Zero Mostel.
I think we’ve all been there: physically tired, emotionally battered, and spiritual frustrated. This combination of conditions often lead to the thought of wondering if anybody cares — not just for you, but for the things that you are passionate about. You may feel like the last person standing, the only one who has a sincere zeal for what you’ve been called to address. ...
The Summit provided a unique setting that brought together leaders from the business and urban communities, others from the front lines of inner city racial inequality protests, and rural communities of both national and international descent.
In March 2015, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) conducted a general survey on American religious affiliation, irrespective of geographic setting. According to that survey, the three largest religious groups in the United States are Catholics (22 percent), the religiously unaffiliated (22 percent), and white evangelical Protestants (18 percent).
But what religious groups dominate in urban centers? And in which cities do certain religious groups dominate?
July is the cruelest month, with apologies to T.S. Eliot. ...
A movement has arisen in the past year to protest police brutality and the unjust killing of African Americans — an uncomfortable realization that the dream of civil rights has gone unrealized in a still-racist America. It's called Black Lives Matter, but in the summer of 2015, life seems cheap.
Explosions about a half hour apart shattered the serenity of morning services at two Las Cruces churches Sunday, but caused no injuries and only minor damage, police said.
Las Cruces police spokesman Dan Trujillo said they are still investigating explosions that happened near Calvary Baptist Church shortly after 8 a.m. and Holy Cross Catholic Church about a half hour later.
The case of Missouri man Henry Davis against the Ferguson Police Department was reinstated by a federal appeals court on July 28.
Davis filed a lawsuit against the department in 2010, arguing he was wrongly mistaken for a criminal and physically assaulted by three white Ferguson police officers. With the lawsuit Davis included a photo that shows him bleeding from his head. This injury had resulted in Davis being charged with destruction of property for bleeding on the officers’ uniforms.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Nannette Baker halted his case in 2014 after saying his injuries weren’t severe enough to merit prosecution.
But on July 28 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled that Baker should not have dismissed Davis’ claims.
At least five black women have died in jail in the month of July alone, ThinkProgress reports. What is going on?
Sister Maxine and Sister Julie, co-hosts of In Good Faith, a monthly podcast on religion and spirituality, hosted Sojourners editor Jim Rice earlier this month to chat Sojourners and the importance of justice work for every Christian.
Jim Rice came to Sojourners in 1982, where he serves as editor of the magazine.
"We started off with the goal of trying to arcitulate the biblical call to social justice. The gospel isn't a historical relic left up on a dusty shelf — it's relevant for our time," he said.
"Social justice is not optional for Christians."
1. Death of a Young Black Journalist
“The most basic instinct of a local reporter is to take the importance of her neighbors as a given. In a community like Anacostia—where more than ninety per cent of residents are African-American, one in two kids lives below the poverty line, and incarceration and unemployment rates are among the nation’s highest—this is another way of saying that black lives matter.”
2. Dear NBC, BBC, CNN, and Others: Mugshots Are for Criminals, Not for Their Victims
“Using a mugshot that has no relevance to the circumstances in which Sam DuBose was killed—up against a fully-uniformed photo of his accused killer—suggests that DuBose did something criminal to instigate the cop in his shooting. As yesterday’s grand jury decision confirms, this is blatantly not true. It warps the real story: a cop who allegedly killed an innocent man for no good reason.”
3. We Need to Talk About Feminism and Vocal Fry
“The clash here is not between anti-feminists and feminists. At its heart, the conflict over vocal fry is a clashing of feminist ideologies. … Wolf suggests that young women’s voices aren’t authoritative enough, and implies that they’re somehow squandering all the hard feminist work that came before them. But what’s really happening is a generational shift, both in feminism and in the workplace.”