Sojourners in the News

We are hearing of war and rumors of war yet again as a gruesome story develops over ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

We are six days out from the People’s Climate March, and the ark is built and on its flatbed truck on its way to Manhattan.

I was in South Africa on August 9, when a young, unarmed black man was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, MO. It didn’t take long before Michael Brown’s story was on all the news channels in South Africa. After that, in every media interview I did Ferguson came up. “How could this have happened?” all the journalists asked. When I laid out the pattern of this happening regularly to men of color in America at the hands of white police or other men with guns, they were stunned. “White cops couldn’t get away with that anymore in South Africa,” they said.

That was a bumper sticker Sojourners published at the outset of the Iraq war more than a decade ago. American church leaders had not only opposed the war but offered an alternative: "An Alternative to War for Defeating Saddam Hussein, A Religious Initiative." We not only presented it to Colin Powell's personal council and Tony Blair, but also printed full-page ads in every major British newspaper the day before their Parliamentary debate and vote on the war. The U.K.'s Secretary of State for International Affairs, Clair Short, told me the only real alternative on the table in their Cabinet meetings was "The American church leaders' plan," which, she said, was seriously discussed.

After the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, I read a letter from the Rev. Jim Wallis titled “Lament from a White Father.” In it, he stated that he is convinced that if his 14-year-old son Luke had left the house, on the same day, dressed exactly as was Trayvon Martin, to walk to the store in the same neighborhood, he would have come home to his mom and dad that night unharmed.

In a township called Khayelitsha, a woman wakes well before dawn to catch a bus that will carry her to the beautiful home in Cape Town where her employer/boss/master wants his tea in bed by 7 a.m. That is what "post-apartheid" South Africa still looks like today.

AMERICAN author, activist and theologian Jim Wallis and his trailblazing theologian wife, Joy Carroll Wallis, will be in KwaZulu-Natal for a series of public events in August, hosted by Diakonia Council of Churches. Jim recently served on the White House advisory council on faith-based and neighbourhood partnerships, and is the vice chairperson of the Global Agenda Council on Values of the World Economic Forum.

As Jim Wallis, a New York Times bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, and acclaimed commentator on ethics and public life, has frequently noted: “Budgets are moral documents.” The moral aspects of Virginia’s budget have been addressed by the various faith communities in the Commonwealth and have been persuasively articulated by the Catholic bishops of Virginia in their statement (April 11, 2014) on expanding Medicaid: “Our advocacy is informed by...teaching that, first, everyone has the right to life, and second, healthcare is a right – not a privilege – that flows from the right to life itself… Virginia should start accepting federal money that can provide nearly 400,000 of its poorest residents the health insurance they currently lack and desperately need.”

Now is the time to harness Christian support for immigration justice and meet the increasingly desperate need at the U.S. and Mexico border.