Sojourners in the News

Religious historian Diana Butler Bass is our preeminent narrator of the decline of traditional religion and the emergence of progressive and spiritual-but-not-religious faith in the 21stcentury.

The first thing the new Pope Francis said to the world in St. Peter's Square when he accepted the papacy was "I am a sinner." In a final mass of one million people in Philadelphia, the last words Francis spoke to the American people were, "Please pray for me; don't forget!"

Pope Francis is not a liberal or conservative. He transcends pedestrian labels that drive wedges in American society.

So perhaps it trivializes spirituality and religion to keep political score on the pope's visit. But it also might lend instruction and context to some of our raging debates.

So here's how I score it: In the current American political context, Pope Francis was mostly, but not exclusively, left-leaning in his address to Congress on Thursday.

Stunning is the word that most comes to me after Pope Francis' two-day visit to Washington, D.C. The country and the media was reveling in his presence, using language like "amazing," "incredible," and "wonderful" in response to this extraordinary moral leader who literally transformed our public discourse in the 48 hours he was in the nation's capital. What these two extraordinary days mean going forward is the big question on all our hearts and minds.

The shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, earlier this summer has been deeply troubling to us and other people of faith in Anderson Township.

The Pope is visiting the US this week to make the case that we should take climate change seriously and start doing something about it. He is really making the case that we should change our paradigm from one of individual self-fulfillment to one of “we’re all in this together,” from individual salvation to collective salvation of our earthly home. This has far-reaching implications. We need to be concerned about what’s happening to the earth as a whole, to humanity as a whole, and not just to our own family, town, state, country.

Next week, the conversation will change in America. All the media attention recently given to political figures will now shift to a moral leader who is changing the global public discussion about what is compassionate, just, good, and right -- and Christian.

Pope Francis issued a call to action regarding climate change in hisencyclical on the environment. In it he wrote, “We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.” America’s most influential faith and moral voices are doing just that by Coming Together in Faith on Climate at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. during the pope’s upcoming visit to the United States. Here’s what they have to say on the need for us to join Pope Francis’ call to protect creation...

The vituperative attacks on the War on Poverty sound a little gleeful or mean-spirited or nutty—sometimes all three. A quick review of recent press coverage would lead almost anyone to think that Head Start, Legal Services, community health centers, food stamps, ESEA Title I support for education, the Job Corps, and a host of other programs had no connection to the War on Poverty but materialized sui generis to provide vital services to the poor.