What is a Sojourner?
A sojourner is someone on a journey, a pilgrim on the road. Throughout ancient times, pilgrims were travelers to sacred places who were motivated by their faith to pursue wisdom and pay homage. A person on a sojourn may undertake a spiritual journey instead of or in addition to a physical journey.
Definition of Sojourner
The word “sojourner” in the English language means “one who sojourns.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the verb “sojourn” as “to stay as a temporary resident.” To explore the deeper meaning of sojourner, we turn to the Bible and the roots of the word in Hebrew and in ancient cultures.
Sojourners in the Bible
In the Bible, "sojourners" is a name for the people of God, an alternative community of faith in the world who learn to “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land” (Psalm 137:4). Sojourners are people on the move, temporary residents in land not their own who rely on the hospitality of others. Sojourners serve God in the world, wherever they find themselves. But they refuse to be conformed to the world's injustices. They are guided by differente different values. While away from their homeland, they “seek the welfare of the city" (Jeremiah 29:7) in which they find themselves, but also know that their "citizenship" is in “that city whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10).
In the Hebrew scriptures, “sojourner” is frequently used to translate the Hebrew word gēr. This word describes a person or group who live in a community and in place that is not their own and who are dependent on the good-will of that community for their survival. Other English words used to translate gēr are “foreigner,” “stranger,” “alien,” and “immigrant.” There are 92 references to gēr in the Bible, in addition to other words with similar meaning. Sojourners are guests, not settlers.
Mountains Landscape. The Negev Desert, Israel. Photo by Avi Theret on Unsplash
The whole people of Israel were sojourners, then captives, in Egypt. Deuteronomy 26:5 gives clear identity instructions for God's sojourning people: When bringing an offering to the altar of God the people are also to say: “A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there ...”
In the letter to the Hebrews, similar language recalls the heritage of those who are biblical sojourners: “By faith [Abraham and Sarah] became a sojourner in the land of promise, in a land not his own” (Hebrews 11:9). As Christians, we are never to forget that we are sojourners, strangers in a strange land.
God commands, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Jesus reiterates this core teaching to his followers (Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:27).
Sojourners today
From the concept of God’s people as sojourners comes God’s reminder (Leviticus 19:34) that the Israelites were once “strangers and sojourners” in a foreign land and that we should treat the sojourners among us as we would the native-born.
Today there are many people who are temporarily traveling through a place, sojourning, displaced, fleeing their homes due to war, famine, climate distress, or who have been forcibly evicted from their native place.
“If we remember the welcome that God gave to us, as we sojourned through life to spiritually connect to the divine, we will treat these modern-day sojourners with hospitality and love, providing sanctuary for those who are hunted by a broken immigration system,” Onleilove Alston reminds us.
As sojourners, we are people of a promise: the promise of God for justice, wholeness, healing, and peace. Because of that promise, sojourners are not dissuaded by present realities of injustice. Sojourners are people of faith always moving toward God in hope.
Sojourners, an organization dedicated to Jesus and justice
As an organization, we chose the name Sojourners because we are a people on a pilgrimage of faith.
While the word “sojourner” is rooted in scripture, it’s also the chosen name of one of America’s great religious leaders and organizers: Sojourner Truth. When our organization moved from Chicago to Washington, D.C. in 1974, we aspired to be as faithful and brave as this radical, prophetic woman who relied on God’s provision to carry out her mission for abolition, women’s rights, and caring for the vulnerable. Sojourners Truth called powerful presidents to account and never backed down from the fierceness of the message God had given to her.
Our earliest publication was called The Post-American. The title represented our sense that God did not call for an American Christianity embedded in the dominant expressions in the United States. Instead, God calls for a radical Christian critique of wealth and power in the United States. We discourage reading the Bible “Americanly” and instead encourage reading America biblically.
We come from many Christian traditions and denominations and are shaped by a rich diversity of callings. But we are on the same journey, drawn to the same vision. We share a common pilgrimage of spiritual and social transformation. Whatever else we are, we are also all sojourners. Welcome.