Sojourners in the News

"There is nothing quite like the African bush to soothe and rejuvenate." That experience was conveyed to me by a South African church leader who has been helping plan the speaking tour I just arrived for here in this beloved country.

Jim Wallis, the prominent US author, activist and theologian together with his trailblazing theologian wife, Joy Carroll Wallis will be in KZN for a series of public events this month, hosted by Diakonia Council of Churches in Durban.

This rhetorical theme isn’t limited to television. In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama addressed a conference hosted by the Christian social justice organization Sojourners. In addition to describing his own spiritual journey, Obama also questioned the biblical invocations of conservative leaders, asking, “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination?”

But a blogger for Sojourners worries that talking about compensation packages distracts from a pastor's true purpose: serving God. "Seminaries are places for the formation of pastors, not employees. I am afraid, however, that we have lost the sense of that," wrote Tripp Hudgins, the director of admissions at American Baptist Seminary of the West. "Have we lost our middle-class status? I wonder why we had it in the first place."

If there is one thing that most Christians of all denominations agree on, it is abortion. A 2012 Gallup poll found that 54% of American Catholics and 57% of Protestants/Others consider themselves “pro-life.” Every presidential election, we hear of prominent pastors raising questions about a candidate’s position on abortion. And while organizations such as Sojourners have tried to emphasize additional issues which ought to concern Christians as they go to the polls, the reality is that abortion is still a central issue for many people. This is not altogether a bad thing; since the earliest days of Christianity, the church has always had a special concern for unborn and abandoned children, taking them in and caring for them when others do not. These days, however, whether or not it is an accurate portrayal, “pro-life” Christians are more associated with picketing abortion clinics, hanging pictures of dead fetuses in public places, and gathering for the March for Life than welcoming such children into their homes.

C. Christopher Smith is editor of The Englewood Review of Books, and a member of the Englewood Christian Church community on the urban Near Eastside of Indianapolis. Englewood is one of the churches whose experiences gave root to the concept of Slow Church. Chris’s recent work has appeared in Books and Culture, Sojourners, The Christian Century and Indiana Green Living.

“The science is clear,” said Lisa Sharon Harper, the senior director of mobilizing for Sojourners, an evangelical organization with a social justice focus. “The calls of city governments — who are trying to create sustainable environments for 25, 50 years — that’s clear.” Ms. Harper was one of about 20 interfaith activists who quietly sang “Hallelujah” and Jewish spirituals in a prayer circle outside the environmental agency’s 12th Street entrance here on Tuesday. Mr. Yearwood and three other faith leaders spoke at the hearings on Tuesday, and about 20 others did on Wednesday.

Under interim president Bill Robinson, the president emeritus of Whitworth University, the CCCU joined the Evangelical Immigration Table and recently joined leaders from World Vision and Sojourners to call Congress to authorize additional funds for unaccompanied immigrant children.

President Obama nominated Rabbi David Saperstein this morning to be the next—and first non-Christian—United States ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.