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Magazine

Sojourners Magazine: November-December 1996

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Cover Story

A quarter century with Sojourners

Feature

Henri Nouwen's journey home
IT WAS A WONDERFUL sunny Sunday morning in June 1996. In high spirits our group left the Franciscan monastery at Rama, in central Bosnia, to drive to the small mountain village of Podhum.
I especially remember one visit among many to Sojourners by Henri Nouwen.
As told to Rose Marie Berger
It's 4:20 p.m. I'm standing over the Olympic soccer stadium in Sarajevo. From one goal post to the other are graves-headstones of various sizes and shapes, most unmarked.
The gift and struggle of Henri Nouwen's life

Commentary

Kevorkian's caricature of mercy
A new measure of economic growth
Opening church doors to street youth
Conspiracy buffs couldn't have concocted a more compelling story.
Netanyahu undercuts the peace process
The irreplaceable voice of Daughters of Sarah.

Columns

I'm beginning this column at about 30,000 feet, en route to Akron, Ohio. We're doing the Who Speaks for God?
It feels "normal" again in Atlanta, whatever that means.
What time-honored edible has all of the following: the warmth and comfort of hot bread; the fragrance of a baking cake; the staying power of potatoes and gravy
A recent survey, taken in a school for upper-middle-class American children, surfaced a startling statistic.
"Death sucks." Five years ago this was the opening of a eulogy by a minister for a mutual friend who died tragically.

Culture Watch

The most relevant novel of our time is a 40-year-old fantasy
Baking bread the Jesuit way
Kathleen Norris' monastic reflections
The public beliefs of Ralph Reed and Tony Campolo
Finding just the right gift for holiday pleasure
Martin Luther King's challenge to injustice
Hammering down the non-conformist in Harriet the Spy.
The gentle power of Carrie Newcomer

Departments

Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary
I LOVE YOUR magazine and have read it "religiously" for years. In the September-October issue ("Our Unresolved Dilemma"), Sen.
MY SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER Sojourners arrived today, and as usual there was plenty to think about.
Some are calling it "a pivotal moment." Others have labeled it "flawed and dangerous."
When a beloved person dies abruptly, first the bad news flies, short and rending.
Inspiring the faithful to be the "moral locomotive for social change."
Organizing to narrow the gap between rich and poor in America
THERE ARE THREE big lies about welfare that the Far Right has promoted for decades:
THE ARTICLE "From the Church to the Union Hall" ends with the words, "...for surely, in new ways and new places, the songs of working people will rise again."
Seventy-five years after its creation, a statue of suffragists Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton will at long last join the all-male statuary of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda...
Tibetan Aid Project. Manufacturing Consent. Against Forgetting.
WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT to see-in the same issue with Jim Wallis' article on civility in political discourse-the attack by Wallis on Clinton's decision to sign the welfare bill.
ONE MIGHT THINK from the "Letters" section of the September-October issue that there was overwhelming opposition to Julie Polter's commentary on partial birth abortions. 
When a beloved person dies abruptly, first the bad news flies, short and rending.
THANKS TO Bert Golding, David Pultz, and Joel Swadesh for writing to protest your harsh criticism of President Clinton's veto of (legislation restricting) third-trimester abortion.
AFTER READING Ed Spivey Jr.'s "H'rumphs," September-October 1996, I am disturbed by his "tongue in cheek" endorsement of Bill Clinton for re-election as president.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago, has announced that the cancer he was treated for in June 1995 has returned.
DOUG TANNER'S account of becoming "spiritual partners" with Jesse Helms ("Politics Without Demons," September-October 1996) is notable for its Christian forbearance toward an enemy.
The Pentagon snuck out an admission that the students at the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, once used manuals advocating torture, assassination, and kidnapping as t