The victims of trauma, she writes in a remarkable blog post for Sojourners, experience days “when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of yourself, when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes any chance for pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over and over and over again.”
Source: SiriusXM | Pete Dominick
Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners and author of "On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned about Serving the Common Good", joins Pete to discuss what it will take to finally win the "war on poverty".
Source: Huffington Post | Jim Wallis
This weekend we'll commemorate the too-short life and great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While we rightly celebrate his life dedicated to advancing equality for all, too often we overlook his call to peacemaking. This year, in light of conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, and an often-overlooked war in Central African Republic, we should remember his words.
Source: The Christian Century | Gail Irwin
How can we do this? This article from Sojourners, written by a fitness coach, is a little bit strident, maybe, but it speaks of the need for churches to consider our task of making disciples more seriously, and then “get to work” doing it, instead of just talking about it.
Source: Slate | Rob Shryock
She wrote in an article on the same topic for the magazine Soujourners, saying, “I can’t help feeling that while some of the concerns about the effects of a “birth control culture” may be valid, I also worry that to deny women access to contraception — especially when we’re talking about women in the developing world — is to trivialize what more children means in a place like Malawi, or, say, Somaliland, where women have a one in 14 lifetime risk of dying in childbirth.”
Source: NPR | Krista Tippett
Lisa Sharon Harper: Thank you so much. My name is Lisa Sharon Harper. I have a few thoughts and then I have two questions. And the first thought has to go back to our earlier conversation about Black Power and recently in our history we have three films that I think really do a beautiful job and a powerful job of explaining the African-American male's experience in America and why that call for Black Power would actually rise out of the soul of black men. "12 Years a Slave," "The Butler," and "Fruitvale Station," all three of which you just see immense, immense amount of control that are put on black men in particular.
Source: truthdig.com | Gar Alperovitz
This article was originally published in the January edition of Sojourners and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
Source: Politico | Jake Sherman, Seung Min Kim
“I get the sense that there’s a mood that is at least open to options,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose former chief of staff, Becky Tallent, is now Boehner’s top immigration aide. “Part of it is the business community, part of it is the evangelicals, part of it’s organized labor. It’s the largest coalition ever behind any piece of legislation.”
Source: Huffington Post | Jim Wallis
Watching the news cycle for the past week or so, I have been pleasantly surprised at how much the issue of poverty is being discussed. There have been many analyses of the successes and failures of the War on Poverty, the 50th anniversary of which we marked last week. But there is one report that has particularly fascinated me -- and many others -- as it describes how women have been struggling the most against poverty in the United States. In partnership with the Center for American Progress, this year's Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink examines the problem of poverty as it pertains to women and proposes solutions to eradicate it.
Sixty-two organizations delivered a joint letter to the Senate today urging the Senate to oppose new Iran sanctions legislation, S.1881, that they say would “critically endanger the possibility of a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear standoff with Iran, increasing the likelihood of a nuclear-armed Iran and an unnecessary and costly war.”
Source: Religion New Service | Sarah Pulliam Bailey
Campolo and other progressive evangelicals like Ron Sider and Jim Wallis have taught evangelicals how to speak the language of social justice, said David Swartz, a history professor at Asbury University and author of the book “Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism.”
Source: Asian Fortune | Mary Tablante
Dae Joong Yoon, executive director of the National Korean American Education Consortium was one of the three core fasters. The Fast for Families tent was on the mall for one month, from November to December. Yoon, as well as advocates Eliseo Medina, Christian Avila and Lisa Sharon Harper, participated in a water-only fast for 22 days.
Source: Slate | Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, David Plotz
Rev. Jim Wallis and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson have endorsed a bipartisan approach to fighting poverty.
Source: US Catholic | Scott Alessi
Over at Sojourners, Anna Hall dispels five common myths about raising minimum wage. And the city of Chicago is apparently listening, as there is reportedly some talk of raising minimum wage in the city to $15, reports Crain's Chicago Business.
Source: Huffington Post | Jim Wallis
The only way to win the War on Poverty is for liberals and conservatives to make peace -- for the sake of the poor. That would be the best way to mark the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, declared by President Lyndon Johnson in his January 1964 State of the Union address. Making peace means replacing ideologies with solutions that actually solve the problems of poverty. With both Republicans and Democrats speaking out on poverty this week, and the recession slowly receding this should be an opportunity to find the focus, commitment, and strategies that could effectively reduce and ultimately eliminate the shameful facts of poverty in the world's richest nation.
Source: Christianity Today
It’s a tired trope that evangelicals only recently began caring about “social justice,” a buzzword that carries connotations of political activism and “the social gospel.” In fact, orthodox Christians have long recognized in Scripture a call to defend and uphold the dignity and well being of all persons, especially the poor and powerless. Take, for example, John Wesley, who led prison reform and abolitionists movements in 18th-century England. More recently, evangelical leaders like Ron Sider and Jim Wallis have promoted Christian engagement in anti-war, environmental, and immigration causes, while facing suspicion of falling prey to partisan politics. At the local church level, sex trafficking, fair trade, and clean water campaigns are trendy ways today for lay Christians to fight social ills, even if that means simply clicking a “Like” button.
Source: PRWeb.com
Corey is a two-time graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with Master’s degrees in Theology and World Missions. He is currently a Doctor of Missiology student at Fuller Seminary. Besides his personal blog at Formerly Fundie, he has been featured by Sojourners, and has appeared on HuffPost Live.
Source: Christianity Today | Katelyn Beaty
As a sophomore at Calvin College, I began hearing a refrain from classmates who had shed their evangelical heritage like a bulky fur coat at the start of spring. "Evangelicals only care about abortion and gay marriage," they sighed, parroting headlines of the time. It was 2004, and the "values vote" had apparently secured George W. Bush's reelection. We rushed to show that no, really, we cared about poverty and social justice too (unaware that Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, and others had been saying this since before we existed).
Source: Christian Post | Jim Wallis
"Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words" is a quote widely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. It also seems to be the motto of Pope Francis. Instead of just talking about abstract doctrines, he consistently lives out his beliefs in public ways that have grabbed the world's attention. His example of humility, compassion, and authenticity resonate powerfully in Washington, where cynicism is rampant, pride remains even after the proverbial falls, and an ideology of extreme individualism has overtaken a significant faction within our politics.
Source: Metacrock's Blog | Metacrock
The sad part is one article in Sojourners suggested that they were burned out by the culture wars.[5] This may be the unchurched generation, because they sick of the culture wars.