Power

The Editors 4-26-2023
Rebecca Shearer (actress Sienna Miller) wears a red shirt and brown shorts with a bandana around her neck while leaning against a tree in a forest and looking up to the sky in the 'Extrapolations' Apple TV series.

From Extrapolations

New Earth?

The TV show Extrapolations, featuring Meryl Streep and Forest Whitaker, offers eight terrifying visions of how climate-changed humanity’s unchecked consumption will harm Earth. The interwoven stories aim to inspire climate action, even as they disturb.
Apple TV+

4-21-2023
The cover image for the May 2023 issue of Sojourners, featuring an illustration of blue disembodied hands pulling white strings in various directions in the shape of the Enneagram symbol. The background is a mixture of bright colors of the rainbow.

The Enneagram's potential for building community and creating a more just society.

The Editors 12-26-2022
An illustration of Janes Evans and a German Shepherd over his shoulder, accompanied with a quote: "I want people to think of pet ownership as being as diverse and complex as pets themselves. There is a pet out there for everyone."

James Evans is founder and CEO of Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity (CARE), which strives to make animal welfare and rescue more equitable. / Illustration by Tiarra Lucas

ALL THREE FEATURE articles in this issue revolve around issues of power. Jenna Barnett looks at the power wielded by charismatic leaders such as Jean Vanier, one of the founders of the L’Arche communities, and how his power — and a lack of accountability — became a fountainhead of abuse. Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, explores the May 2022 killing of Palestinian Christian Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military, a consequence of the massive power imbalance between the State of Israel and the Occupied Territories of Palestine. And Sojourners’ Moya Harris, an itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, looks at the spiritual power of Lauryn Hill and other female rappers who address questions of “sexual power, sexism, embodiment, racism, and economic issues” in their lives and music.

As Christians enter the season of Lent, we reflect on human brokenness and who we are before the cross. Abusive power is not new. But it also does not have the final word, as the people in these stories show.

12-26-2022
A picture of the cover of the February/March 2023 Sojourners issue titled "The Trouble with Christian Heroes." A headshot of Jean Vanier is split apart by thick red lines and pictures of the L'Arche logo and photos of people in these communities.

Charismatic leaders such as Jean Vanier can inspire and transform us. But when these leaders commit abuse, how do the movements they ignite pick up the pieces?

Caroline McTeer 10-20-2021

‘The Vale of Rest’ by Sir John Everett Millais, Bt. Oil paint on canvas, 1858-1859. Photo via Tate / CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)

In Lauren Groff’s newest novel, Matrix, monastic life in the High Middle Ages serves as a stunning backdrop for the story of Marie, a nun who feels “her greatness hot in her blood.” Marie arrives at an English abbey as a reluctant teenager, at the appointment of her queen, Eleanor, who expects Marie to become abbess and save the Crown from the public shame of a royal abbey where nuns die of starvation and disease.

Stacey Abrams 7-21-2020

Illustration by Tracie Ching

I GREW UP in Gulfport, Miss., which is on the coast, and my parents are from Hattiesburg, which is about an hour north up Highway 49. On weekends, my mom and dad would pile the six of us in the car, and we would visit my grandparents.

My grandparents’ names always caused some confusion in our family because my grandmother was Wilter and my grandfather was Walter, but they called each other Bill and Jim. I didn’t know who was who. And my grandmother—Wilter, Bill, and known affectionately by my grandfather as Sugar Honey—she and my grandfather raised us with my parents to understand where we came from.

They wanted us to understand that my great-grandmother Moo Moo, who lived in the little house next to theirs, was two generations removed from slavery. Her grandparents had been slaves. Her parents had been sharecroppers. If you were lucky, you would get there in time to help her shell peas and listen to the stories that she would tell. You could listen to the history from her mouth, and you knew you were in a sacred place sitting on that front porch. When I got ready to run for office, I was bringing them with me, and I didn’t quite understand it.

But in September 2018, as the election for Georgia’s governor was heating up and stories were flying around about voter suppression, I went home to Mississippi because my grandmother was ailing. My grandfather had passed away in 2011, but my grandmother, she was on the edge. Grandma had a rocking chair recliner she sat in most of the day and a bed right beside it. When you came in the room, you sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand—because she was watching MSNBC, and you didn’t want to interrupt her learning why she was mad that day.

When she got to a place where she was going to acknowledge your presence, she would mute the television and turn to you. As I sat by her bedside, her hand was frailer than it had ever been before. The skin was papery and soft. The bones were brittle, and I could feel every one of them; I knew I was holding my grandmother’s hand for one of the last times. But she didn’t want to talk about how she was ailing; she wanted to talk about my election. She asked me if I was taking care of her baby, meaning me. I said, “Grandma, I’m doing my best. But I’m worried, because this man I’m running against is in charge of the election. He’s the scorekeeper, he’s the contestant, he’s doing the box copy, he’s the umpire, and it’s going to be hard.” And she said, “Have you done what you can?” I said, “Yes ma’am.” “Let me tell you about the first time I voted,” she said.

A healthcare worker in protective gear treats a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient at the El Centro Regional Medical Center in El Centro, California, U.S., May 27, 2020. REUTERS/Ariana Drehsler

COVID-19 is culling the herd of humanity. Beneath the conversation about herd immunity lies a silent and unstated conversation about who will survive. Why are black and brown communities being hit so hard? Why are we more likely than whites to die if admitted to the hospital? Who gets access to health care of any kind, and with regard to COVID-19, to inequitably distributed tests? Who gets a ventilator and who does not?

Jim Wallis 10-24-2019

And yet, despite these positive global examples, our situation in the United States is not unique. There are autocratic would-be strong men all over the world. They're rising, and none of them are known to practice servant leadership. They’re known as corrupt. They’re known as unprincipled. They’re known as perpetual liars. They’re known as people who are serving themselves, people who are serving their own wealth and power, but not serving those around them. And while we are in a time where this authoritarian style is on the rise, it’s as old as humanity itself.

A.M. Lawrence 2-25-2019

“Abstraction Dark Green Lines with Red and Pink.” Georgia O’Keeffe / Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

In deep thirst, a desert stag will tear
open saguaro ribs with his teeth
and gorge on succulent heart, living sap.

This morning desire and grief for You
are the same ache. Welcome, hurt.
Enter and feast on my flesh. Become love.

Jamar A. Boyd II 2-21-2019

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

It is also from this rage and this discontent that Black people in America created and orchestrated their own culture, ensuring that legacy and heritage would exist for their children. They gathered in “hush harbors” to worship their God and Maker, absent of slaveholder religion and influence, tapping into the untampered presence of the Holy Spirit and the deities of the Motherland. They took the slop and remains of the plantation and created a delicacy now known as “soul food”.

Joe Kay 8-28-2018

Image via REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Jewish wisdom reminds us that we can’t be daunted by the world’s grief, but instead we are required to respond to it by acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly. We’re not obligated to complete the work of transformation, but we’re never free to abandon it, either.

Mark Labberton 4-25-2018

In much of the last century, American Evangelicalism has had a complex relationship with power. On one hand, it has felt itself marginalized and repudiated, defeated, and silenced. On the other, it has often seemed to seek — even fawn over — worldly power, mimicking in the church forms of power evident in our culture. (I remember being at a conference where it was announced we should all be back after dinner for “an evening of star-studded worship.”) An evangelical dance with political power has been going on from the time of Billy Graham, through the Moral Majority and the religious right, to the Tea Party, and most recently with the white evangelical vote—the result being, as honorary Chairman of the Lausanne Movement Doug Birdsall has said, “When you Google ‘evangelical,’ you get Trump.”

Eight years separate me from that fateful Cru retreat, and if I could go back in time with the voice I have found, I would ask the leader to instruct us in how to be disciples of Christ not for the sake of an imaginary spouse, but for the sake of the Gospel.

Abby Olcese 12-04-2017

Image via Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Facebook

Mildred rents the three billboards down the road from her house to cover with messages shaming the local police chief, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) in hopes of galvanizing the department into action. She merely irritates the sympathetic Willoughby, but infuriates Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a dim officer with racist and homophobic tendencies and an anger management problem. As tensions escalate and anger begets violence (which begets more violence), Mildred and Dixon are each forced to address the deeper issues inside them that fuel their actions.

Eric Barreto 6-06-2017

Power can be transformative, but only if power is suffused with love. As Andy Crouch has written, “Power at its worst is the unmaker of humanity—breeding inhumanity in the hearts of those who wield power, denying and denouncing the humanity of the ones who suffer under power.… Power, the truest servant of love, can also be its most implacable enemy.”

Justin Redemer 6-01-2016

Image via Lawrence OP / flickr.com

Would St. Justin Martyr recognize us as Christians? After reading his, “Discourse to the Greeks,” I have my reservations. I doubt he would recognize me.

Margaret Benefiel 11-20-2015

Image via /Shutterstock.com

The Nobel laureate and human rights advocate Aung San Suu Kyi entered the Myanmar Parliament this week, shortly after her party, the National League for Democracy, won the country's first free election in 25 years.

In those 25 years — since the 1990 election, which the NLD also won — Aung San Suu Kyi spent a total of 15 years without her freedom, having been placed under house arrest by the ruling military government which ignored the election results.

Since 1988, Ms. Suu Kyi has led nonviolent opposition to the military government. Last week’s landslide election results, which took the ruling generals by surprise, demonstrate once again that nonviolence is a force more powerful than violence.

Phil Haslanger 10-26-2015

Image via  / Shutterstock

The story of Job is one of the literary classics in the Bible. It is a story that tries to sort out why bad things happen to good people. It is a story that tries to make sense out of suffering. It is a story that concludes with an epic confrontation between Job and God. And it is a story that captures the isolation, the misunderstanding, and the feelings of abandonment.

Job’s friends and his wife are convinced that it is Job’s sin that has led to his misfortunes. That has a familiar ring to people trapped in violent and abusive relationships. “Why did you make him mad?” friends ask. “Why don’t you just leave?”

And inside the relationship, the abuser often threatens even greater harm if the victim tells anyone about what is happening. And if the victim decides to leave, the risk of violence increases, often with lethal consequences.

As Job said of God, “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him…If only I could vanish in darkness and thick darkness would cover my face!” (Job 23:8-9, 17)

Victims of domestic violence – both women and men as well as children – often feel isolated, abandoned by family and friends who are uncomfortable or afraid of the topic, trapped by religious traditions that stress male dominance and the indissolubility of marriage and feel forgotten by God. Job knew that feeling.

Derek Flood 8-04-2015
Image via Janaka Dharmasena/Shutterstock

Image via /Shutterstock

An independent report commissioned by the American Psychological Association (APA) has found that the association secretly colluded with the Department of Defense and the CIA to weaken the APA’s ethical guidelines and allow psychologists to take part in government torture programs under the Bush administration post-9/11.

As a theologian who is married to a psychotherapist, I have always been a vocal advocate of the value of psychology in the pursuit of human flourishing. Psychology is considered one of the “healing professions.” A central tenant among all health care providers is “do no harm.”
Min-Ah Cho 9-05-2014

(Pavel Vakhrushev / Shutterstock)

THE PROBLEM WITH Christianity today is not that Christians lack faith in God. The problem is that Christians believe they “know” and “understand” God completely. In a world overflowing with information, we hardly acknowledge the importance of God’s unknowability. Yet a conception of God that doesn’t recognize the unknowable keeps us in an uncritical banality, which in turn leads us to follow orders without questioning, to play it safe, and to go along with mass opinion.

For Christians, conversion is required. Theologian Bernard J. F. Lonergan defines conversion not simply as an acceptance of a new belief system, but rather as “a radical shift from an old horizon to a new horizon.” Religious conversion, in particular, is to “fall in love with God.” Thus, to convert is to deny the conventional, habitual belief and knowledge system, and to discover a new reality in which one becomes open and vulnerable to challenges. Conversion is not a solitary experience. It is a prolonged dialogue that constantly transforms one’s horizon and motivates us to wonder, appreciate, and raise more questions.

The texts for the next four weeks invite us to a conversion experience. They are reminders that conversion starts with abandoning any sense of security based on doctrines, dogmas, rituals, and systems of belief—precisely because God’s love never allows us to find comfort in human constructions.