Sojourners

Lexi Schnaser 3-07-2024

From top left to bottom right: Crystal D. Cheatham, Rev. Sue Park-Hur, Rachael Clinton Chen (and baby), Bethany Rivera Molinar, Brandi Miller, Kendall Vanderslice, Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Elaine Enns, and Rev. Mae Elise Cannon. Graphic br Candace Sanders/Sojourners

Each year at Sojourners we celebrate Women’s History Month by honoring the work of Christian women who are guiding the church to become a place of deeper welcome, justice, and wholeness.

Members of the early Sojourners community.

Half a century later, a lot has changed, but we remain committed to inspiring Christians across every tradition to put their faith into action for justice and peace and strengthening faith-inspired movements for change.

Betsy Shirley 12-07-2022
Book covers are arranged in a tiled pattern against a mustard background.

“Find those who tell you, Do not be afraid, yet stay close enough to tremble with you,” writes Cole Arthur Riley in This Here Flesh, “This is a love.” Here are 12 books from 2022 — nonfiction, memoirs, novels, and short stories — that we think are worth keeping close.

Cartoon-style illustration of a dark cave with Christmas lights around its mouth; the sleeve of a green sweater is visible out of the darkness of the cave and hands a red envelope to a snowman dressed as a mail carrier.

Illustration by Melanie Lambrick

DECEMBER IS A stressful time for fundraisers, as a significant percentage of most nonprofits’ annual revenue comes in during the holiday season. We made a mistake this month when we asked Beth, who does much of Sojourners’ online fundraising, to write a humor column for this issue. Instead of a humor column, she sent us the following, in an envelope with a return address of “a cave in the woods; do not look for me.” We hope she’s doing okay. — The Editors

Dear Potential Supporter,

Now more than ever. This holiday season. In this moment, this urgent time, the most crucial of moments that all of us are in, right now. (Yes, you too.) Now — today — more than ever — Sojourners needs your year-end donation.

Did you know that the average American hears the phrase “now more than ever” 500 times a day? Did you know that all other organizations who use the phrase “now more than ever” are copying us, and we used it first? (Did you know that I, a fundraising professional hiding inside a cave, am both deeply normal and a trustworthy source of information?)

An image of a stained-glass window. By Daniel McCullough via Unsplash

Deeply flawed and alarming. That was my reaction last week as I read the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion that would repeal Roe v. Wade, unravelling nearly 50 years of judicial precedent and placing abortion rights into the hands of state lawmakers.

Mitchell Atencio 5-06-2022

By Chino Rocha via Unsplash.

This week has been one where loss seems as close as it might ever be — losses significantly more important than tennis matches. Thinking of politics as sports is deeply unhealthy but understanding and identifying when we are losing is important. Loss is never inevitable, but neither is victory.

Olivia Bardo 3-25-2022

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

March is the most underrated month. In it, winter makes room for spring in a million miraculous ways. These changes are imperceptible unless you slow down and pay attention.

Betsy Shirley 12-07-2021

“Above all else, guard your heart,” warns Proverbs, “for everything you do flows from it” (4:23). But can any of us say we’ve made it through the past few years with our hearts in good repair? 

Yet whenever I’d crack open a book, something stirred; stories have a way of seeping in where tweets, memes, and news alerts fail.

Jim Wallis 6-24-2021

Jim Wallis in December 1976.

As I leave Sojourners, I am saying farewell to the faith and life school that I helped to start. But I will never leave it behind; I will always support Sojourners and I will continue to be shaped for the rest of my life by its mission.

Jim Wallis, left, and Adam Russell Taylor

For Adam, for coming home to Sojourners, for giving us the right person at the right time for this great transition, I am grateful. And I look forward to the road ahead for all of us.

The Summit 2018

The election of 2016 and its aftermath have revealed a crisis of politics and faith that continues to get worse in our nation. But the depth of that crisis, now revealed, holds possibility for redemption in our faith, and reform in our nation, that reaches into our churches and local communities.

the Web Editors 12-21-2018
  1. ‘This Is Not a Crisis. This Is a Long-Term Disaster’

This year saw many of the president’s immigration-related campaign threats come to fruition. That came to a head in the late spring and early summer of 2018 as the administration implemented a policy of separating children from their parents at the border as they arrived to claim asylum. But, as Sojourners notes here, this crisis point was just one of many ongoing eruptions at our Southern border.

  1. A Shared Theology of Sanctuary

Amid such horrors in immigration policy, churches throughout the country stepped up in a resurgence of the 1980s-era Sanctuary Movement. In addition to accompanying immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement appointments, training for interaction with ICE agents, and other active support measures, many churches — and synagogues and other houses of worship — are opening their sanctuaries to house people at risk of deportation.

Peter Borgdorff, Photo courtesy Wes Granberg-Michaelson

We at Sojourners were especially blessed to have Peter’s leadership for 26 years on the board of Sojourners and, before that, Call to Renewal, which we and he helped to found on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable. That was a deep passion for Peter, for those left outside that Jesus told us to bring inside.

Katie Dubielak 11-22-2017

I was the first intern of Cycle 34 to arrive at the Sojourners intern house in Washington, D.C., in August. An incredibly generous staff member picked me up from the airport, drove me the hour back to the house, and left me to settle into my new home (later I learned that this type of generosity was just a part of the job at Sojourners, but that is another story altogether).

Jim Wallis 11-21-2017

Gratitude, say religious leaders from many traditions, is one of the most important spiritual disciplines for a whole and healing life. And the discipline of remembering what and who you are most grateful for is especially important in difficult and even dangerous times like these. There are gratitude prayers, meditations, and walks, which focus our minds and hearts on the things and people we are most thankful for when we are most easily conscious of the things and people who make our times most difficult and even dangerous.

Image via RNS/Joseph Molieri/Bread for the World

With ashes on their foreheads, sackcloth draped around their necks, and the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, Christians leaders used the words “evil” and “immoral” to describe the federal budget cuts President Trump has proposed and many Republican lawmakers favor.

“It is a time for lamentation,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, explaining the symbols of grief the clergy brought to Capitol Hill on March 29.

Image via RNS/Adelle M. Banks

The Rev. Leah Daughtry stood in front of fellow black Christian leaders and told them they will need to work harder for social justice.

“If you’ve been feeding them, now clothe them,” said the Pentecostal pastor and 2016 CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee at a conference last week. “If you’ve been clothing them, now console them. If you’ve been at a march, now lead the march. If you’ve been at a rally, now organize the rally.”

8-23-2016

In a letter signed by 49 evangelicals from Texas and around the country, the Christian leaders said officials have a “moral obligation” to stop the execution, which is scheduled for Aug. 24.

8-23-2016

There are fundamental ethical, moral, and even religious choices that will have to be made by all of us now — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; conservatives, liberals, and those who feel politically homeless (like many of us); Christians, Jews, Muslims, those of other faiths and none at all. And those choices are much deeper than partisan politics

8-23-2016

At Washington National Cathedral on Sunday, an interracial group of clergy gathered to discuss the role of the white church in perpetuating racism. And what the church might do to heal the wounds. A tough subject, but dealt with unflinchingly