For the ninth year in a row, Sojourners honors Women’s History Month with an article highlighting revolutionary women shaping the church. This year’s list includes theologians, filmmakers, illustrators, musicians, pastors, and academics. Our nominees engage in diverse work, but these women are united through a fearless pursuit of justice. They lead through empathy. They build community. They fight against rising tides of hopelessness in our world with messages of radical and inclusive love.
These women shape policy, raise awareness, and mobilize communities around a variety of vital causes. Whether they’re strengthening pluralistic democracy, protecting reproductive justice, resisting Christian nationalism, defending asylum seekers, or upholding immigrant rights, these women choose to lead through faith.
We asked each woman to share why their work is so important at this time and to offer us a blessing for 2025. May their bravery, kindness, and devotion inspire you along your own faith journey.
Sarah Bessey
Sarah Bessey is the bestselling author of five books, including Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith, Jesus Feminist, and A Rhythm of Prayer. A co-founder of Evolving Faith, she also writes the weekly newsletter Field Notes,which remains one of the most popular newsletters on Substack. She lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with her husband and their four children. You can find her online at sarahbessey.com.
Why is the work you do important right now? I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years, but the core of it has always been to remind people of God’s love, generosity, grace, and goodness. Experiencing an evolving faith can be a scary and isolating time, but it’s also a profoundly unshepherded time. So, coming alongside of folks who are interested in reimagining and renewing a faith that is centered on compassion, truth, and inclusion — all the good news of the gospel — is meaningful work to me right now. At this moment, it’s not enough for us to simply be against things; we need to be able to name and live into what we are for and that’s the work that interests me right now. I think there’s a profound hopefulness to that, but it has to be rooted in telling the truth first.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? When you refuse to turn away from what is difficult, when the road is uncertain ahead, when the cost of goodness and integrity feels steep, may you know the steadfast love and presence of God as a blessing and equipping all its own. Tyranny and hate and despair never win, not for long and not forever and certainly not now, so I pray that you would be blessed with a stubborn hope that keeps believing and keeps enduring. And may you know, truly know, even if just for a moment, how deeply loved you are, how deeply loved you have always been, and how deeply loved you will always be.
Rev. Young Lee Hertig
Rev. Young Lee Hertig, Ph.D., is the cofounder and CEO of Innovative Space for Asian American Christianity. Since 1992, she has taught courses on spirituality, sustainability, and diversity at Azusa Pacific University, United Theological Seminary, and Fuller Theological Seminary. Extensive experience advocating for gender equity in the pulpit, Rev. Hertig has been a leader in organizing, writing, and developing PastoraLab for Asian American women ministers and the podcast, When Women Preach, funded by Lilly Endowment. She also conducted the pilot study, National Survey on Asian American Church Leadership Practice (2022-2024).
Why is the work you do important right now? More than ever, pursuing gender equality and equity in Asian American pulpits is critical in 2025. The danger of utilizing Christianity to amass political power must be resisted. We cannot afford to remain complicit. Having spent over two decades in academia and at ISAAC restoring the gospel of Jesus Christ, the marginalized must take center stage in our lives. To support this mission, I have designed two programs to equip both AAPI male and female faith leaders to live out the core teachings of Jesus.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? God, who created humans in your image, imago dei, we repent for violating your mandate to care for your creation and ecosystem. We repent of our greed, which has taken precedence over caring for one another, and for yielding to a lifestyle that destroys the gifts you have so generously and freely given us. May you revive human hearts to be aligned with your heart and rekindle our spirits to transform how we live on earth. We yearn for justice to roll like a mighty stream, washing away all our greed, grief, and groaning. Let God Immanuel reign.
Rev. Jenn Hosler
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Rev. Jennifer Hosler, Ph.D., is a community psychologist and pastor, serving as minister of Christian social justice and peacemaking at Washington City Church of the Brethren in Washington, D.C. As part of her congregational work, Rev. Hosler focuses on community organizing, interfaith engagement, peacemaking, and preaching. She is active in the movement for peace and for stopping violence in Palestine and Israel, calling for the U.S. government to divest in weapons and to invest in life (education, health care, disaster relief, and more). Rev. Hosler led her congregation’s partnerships to welcome asylum seekers bused from Texas and Arizona to D.C. in 2022 and 2023. She also serves as the grants manager for the Church of the Brethren’s denominational food security and international development fund. In January 2025, she was honored to share as a Christian faith leader at the People’s March in Washington, D.C., bringing Jesus’ good news of love, justice, mercy, and welcome to more than 50,000 people.
Why is the work you do important right now? Our world needs to see embodied Jesus-following that is explicitly committed to love, to active peacemaking, and to nonviolence. We need Christians who are loudly and unapologetically acting for justice and risking themselves, while boldly proclaiming the belovedness of all human beings (migrant, Palestinian, Muslim, Jewish, trans, queer, and more). My willingness to show up for Palestinian lives — and even be arrested during civil disobedience — has brought new relationships, partnerships, and opportunities to share the fullness of Jesus’ gospel in ways I would not have imagined. Jesus proclaimed that he had come “to bring good news to the poor,” “to proclaim release to the prisoners,” and “to set free those who are oppressed” (Luke 4). Christian public activism and witness can demonstrate to the world around us that we understand the fullness of Jesus’ gospel and are willing to risk comfort and reputation for all of God’s beloved children.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? Creator God, our hearts are heavy with grief and exhaustion at the violence and hatred that fills our world. Give us courage to risk our reputation and our comfort for the sake of the gospel, for love, mercy, and justice. Draw us into your love and strengthen us with the joy of flowers and birds and trees, with the beauty of this beloved earth that you have gifted us as our home. Clothe us in the truth that we and all people are beloved. Let our hearts not twist in hate but use our rage against injustice to protect those who are threatened. Fill us with the courage of your Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name.
Dani M. Jiménez
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Dani M. Jiménez (they/she) is a 23-year-old femme lesbianwriter and illustrator from San José, Costa Rica. And Her Saints is their creative outlet where the sacred and profane converge in the experience of queer Catholicism.
Why is the work you do important right now? Pope Francis recently said, “Art is not a luxury; it is a spiritual need.” I think this makes the restrictiveness and elitism surrounding sacred art all the more offensive to God and the diversity of his creation. I always strive to depict the Divine in a way that is accessible and affirming of all people on the margins of the church and larger society. My art, illustrations, writings, and musings are all for God and the people who have trusted me with depicting the holy and giving them a safe space to perhaps heal from the wounds of religious trauma, guilt, and scrupulosity — a space for prayer, silence, hope, mutual aid, community, and organizing.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? Wherever there is fear and uncertainty, hide us in your wounds, O Lord. You who are God over death, let us be an instrument of your hope.
Jeanné Lewis
Jeanné Lewis serves as CEO at Faith in Public Life. She is a nonprofit executive, faith-based organizer, and authority on creating empowered communities. She has dedicated her career to building bridges, closing equity gaps, and creating policies that lead to strong, thriving, and self-determined cities.
Jeanné resides in Washington, D.C. and is a member of the DC Working Families Party, St. Augustine Catholic Parish, and SongRise, a women’s social justice a capella group. In addition, Jeanné served on the board of directors of Faith in Public Life from 2016 to 2022 and currently sits on the National Advisory Council of the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement, the president’s council of Search for Common Ground, is a member of the Faith and Giving Task Force of the Generosity Commission, and is a former candidate for DC Council At-Large.
Jeanné received her undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis and holds a master’s in conflict resolution from Antioch University Midwest.
Why is the work you do important right now? The United States is no longer a functioning democracy, according to several international agencies. But since our founding, Faith in Public Life has been engaging diverse people of faith to advance a more inclusive and healthier society. This work is more important than ever. Most people in our country want each of us to have freedom of religion and to have access to participate in our government. FPL’s work is helping the country reclaim our democratic process and create the society we want for ourselves and our neighbors.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? Creator God, you have told us that we are your beloved children and that each of us has purpose in your grand design. Too many of us have forgotten your mandate to love one another. We ask for your wisdom and your guidance in 2025, that we each may realize the purpose you have placed on our lives — all of which lead to deeper love of you and greater love for ourselves and our neighbors. May this love manifest in leadership and governments that lead to belonging and thriving. Amen.
Rev. Mia McClain
From stage to pulpit, Mia looks for ways to integrate the diversity of her interests, passions, and callings for the sake of life and liberation. A licensed Baptist minister and ordained in the United Church of Christ, Rev. McClain currently serves as the senior pastor of Riverside Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. She holds degrees from Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Syracuse University.
Why is the work you do important right now? The work my soul must have, whether at Riverside Baptist Church or in my personal endeavors, is grounded in the pursuit of life and liberation. This pursuit is fueled by empathy, for where there is empathy, there is solidarity. Where there is solidarity, communal salvation is not far behind. To move with empathy and compassion is to move in the way of Jesus; yet this way is countercultural in an era where oligarchs are calling empathy “the downfall of Western civilization.” The truth is: Empathy is the enemy of empire, and when we rise up in our empathy, we complicate the oppressors’ destructive plans. My work is to encourage us to participate in the resurrection possibilities made feasible by our empathy.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025?
Beloved,
We are light—
Light of the world
Salt of the earth.
Called to do strange things.
Let our empathy be an act of resistance.
Let us come alive in the face of death as a sign of resurrection possibilities.
In the name of all that is sacred and holy,
Amen.
Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail
Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail, aka “Father Lizzie,” is the vicar and founding planter of Jubilee Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, which is a colorful, playfully reverent, incense-swinging, sanctus-bellringing, stomp-your-feet singing, multicultural, multi-generational, LGBTQIA+ celebratory congregation — in a strip mall suite. Known for her social media presence, podcast (And Also With You), and trademark phrase “beloved babes of God,” she uses her platforms to unravel toxic theology and reveal the abiding love of a joy-full God, as crystallized in her new book, God Didn’t Make Us To Hate Us: 40 Devotions To Liberate Your Faith From Fear and Reconnect With Joy (Tarcher, 2025). She and her sweet husband Rev. Jonathan live their lives besotted with their two beloved daughters, who are often found on Lizzie’s hip or underfoot while she preaches.
Why is the work you do important right now? The country-wide temptation to cynicism, despair, and outright giving up — giving up on ourselves, giving up on our neighbors, giving up on our enemies, giving up on the Church, and giving up on God — has not been stronger in my lifetime.
Which is exactly what tyranny and evil want us to do: give up.
And that is exactly why I am standing with arms wide, deep in the heart of Texas, and online, interrupting your regular doomscroll programming, proclaiming in my loudest voice that there is more than enough room, and love, and sparkle, and feast for all of us. We have seen death, and we have seen our God laugh in its face; we can rejoice, even now, too.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025?
(Inspired by Saint Julian of Norwich and the benediction blessing I give every week at Jubilee)
God did not promise that our lives would be easy,
or pain-free, or without enemies, or unshaken by tempests.
But God did promise:
in the belly of the beast?
God will be there.
Because God was already there,
with us,
for us,
each of us,
all of us,
always.
And so the blessing of God,
Who is both the storm, and the shelter,
ready you, bless you, and keep you,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Rhina Ramos
Rev. Rhina Ramos is an activist, writer, immigrant, and queer leader who immigrated to the U.S. at age 14 from El Salvador. In 1995, she graduated from Hofstra University School of Law in New York, and worked as a labor attorney recuperating owed wages for immigrant workers at an organization called The Workplace Project. After moving to California, Rev. Ramos became a community organizer and enrolled in seminary. Rev. Ramos was ordained by the United Church of Christ in 2012 and founded Ministerio Latino, a Spanish-speaking faith community that is home to the Latine immigrant LGBTQ community.
Why is the work you do important right now? The work I do is important because it provides safety and support for immigrants and LGBTQ folks. It stands against the hate the government has directed at these communities. Every way in which we can accompany communities at the margins is crucial right now because BIPOC, LGBTQ, and the poor are being blatantly persecuted.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? Divinity, grant us grace, grant us strength, make us feel loved and seen. Genderless and Borderless God, remind us we are made to your image, divine and free.
SueAnn Shiah
SueAnn Shiah is a Taiwanese American musician, filmmaker, community organizer, ethnomusicologist, queer Christian pastor, and public theologian. Her 2016 documentary HuanDao follows her journey along a two-week bike trip around Taiwan. She released her album of reclaimed hymns, A Liturgy for the Perseverance of the Saints, in 2018 and is currently working on a follow-up album slated to be released in 2026. In addition to her own creative and theological works, she collaborates with others in a variety of capacities as a producer, writer, and creator of liturgy, and is a member of the leadership team and editorial board of Taiwan’s New Bloom magazine. She has a bachelor’s in music business and a minor in Chinese from Belmont University, a master’s in musicology from National Taiwan University, and is currently pursuing an MDiv/MACEF from Princeton Theological Seminary and ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Why is the work you do important right now? We are in a time of profound alienation in our society; it is what is driving this new wave of fascism across the world — alienated from nature, from ourselves, from community and one another, from the fruits of the labor of our hands, and ultimately from God. I see the work that I do — whether it be community organizing, musical and artistic, pastoral, and theological — about bringing people together to reconnect, heal, reconcile, and live out our liberation that Jesus Christ has called us to. It is in times of deepest despair that we must offer hope that is not rooted in denial or shallow optimism but a proclamation that even when and if the worst happens, even death, that it is not the final word. I need to hear that proclamation and reassurance from others and others need to hear that from me, and we must become disciplined in the way that we show up for each other in those needs.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? Lord of all creation, you knitted us in our mother’s womb, and we are born into a world full of love, fear, comfort, and anxiety. Open our eyes to the blessings of beauty and care so that we might be transformed by that and share that outpouring in concert with all of your beloved creatures. Jesus Christ, the Word incarnate revealed to us in divine humility and human frailty, your flesh showed us the Way — sustain our struggles against the powers and principalities of the world, help us to hear the call to take up our crosses to follow you. Holy Spirit, advocate against all the accusations of guilt, shame, and destruction that debilitate and seek to lead us astray from our true repentance and rest in God, soften our hearts and usher us into the victory of resurrection in the new heaven and new earth that we both fear and long so deeply for.
Amanda Tyler
Amanda Tyler is executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, leading the organization as it upholds the historic Baptist principle of religious liberty: defending the free exercise of religion and protecting against its establishment by government. The author of How To End Christian Nationalism (October 2024), Tyler is also the co-host of BJC’s Respecting Religion podcast. Tyler’s constitutional law analysis and advocacy for faith freedom for all have been featured by major news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS News, ABC News, CNN, and MSNBC, and she has testified before Congress on religious liberty and Christian nationalism. A graduate of Georgetown Universityand the University of Texas School of Law, she lives in Dallas with her husband and son.
Why is the work you do important right now? I view Christian nationalism as the single biggest threat to religious freedom for all in the U.S. today. The work I do alongside my colleagues and partners brings awareness to the problems of Christian nationalism and provides tools for communities to mobilize action against it and organize for change. Our work strengthens a free civil society, a necessary ingredient for pluralistic democracy, while providing a Christian witness to love our neighbor through advocacy for everyone’s dignity and freedom.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025? God, we pray for those most vulnerable to the discriminatory and violent policies that are harming our neighbors. We humbly ask for guidance, wisdom, and courage to follow Jesus in this moment, to seek love and justice rather than power and comfort, to see your image in every person we encounter, to do our part each day to bring your kingdom to earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Rev. Angela Tyler-Williams and Rev. Iyalosha Latishia James
Rev. Angela Tyler-Williams (she/her) is a queer pastor ordained by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) into her call to engage people of faith to speak publicly and politically in support of reproductive health, rights, and justice, and LGBTQIA+ equality.
Rev. Iya Latishia James (she/they), affectionately known as “Rev. Pleasure,” is a Black queer femme, womanist, spiritualist, and reproductive justice leader. Latishia is an ordained reverend in The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries as well as an initiated priest in the Lucumí religious tradition, where she is known as Iyalosha (or Iya) Oyínkán. Her belief that a pluralistic world will help us combat the forces of religious fundamentalism is embodied through her duality as a faith leader. Together they serve as co-executive directors of Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity, a national, multifaith alliance of religious leaders, congregations, movement organizations, activists, and academics collaborating to advance reproductive justice through congregational education, culture change, community building, and direct service.
Why is the work you do important right now? SACReD equips religious communities to engage in healing, transformation, and organizing to shape a world where reproductive justice is our lived reality. We affirm bodily autonomy and moral agency, celebrate healthy sexuality, and advocate for reproductive dignity to support the flourishing of all people and families. The forces of white Christian nationalism exploit religious authority to gain political control over our bodies, freedoms, and healthcare — especially abortion — but people across centuries have been resisting. SACReD empowers communities to engage liberative faith through our A SACReD Journey curriculum, our bi-annual SACReD gathering, and organizing. We break the silence and stigma, hold courageous conversations, and equip leaders to work for reproductive liberation for everybody and every body. Join the work by becoming trained as A SACReD Journey facilitator, May 5-6 in New Orleans.
Will you offer us a blessing/prayer for 2025?
May you know deep in your bones that you are whole, good, worthy, and beloved.
May the breath of renewal and everlasting life remind you that God dwells within you and may you renew yourself with each breath.
May this breath be what sustains you as you draw your strength for what is ahead, remaining grounded in your sovereignty and dignity.
May you trust that the divine accompanies you in all your decisions, co-creating your future with you, and looking at you with eyes full of love every step of the way.
May you feel the power of the divine, the strength of our foremothers, and the creativity of our queer elders and ancestors, as you move with tender courage into the life God has called you.
Amen and may it be so.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article misspelled Rev. Rhina Ramos' name.
To see who we’ve included in past years, check out the links below.
● 8 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2023
● 10 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2022
● 11 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2021
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