Opinion
As a journalist in the religion and social justice realm, two stories dominated my newsfeed this week: Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and sexual harassment at Christianity Today. Both reinforced to me the power of documentation.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about clothes — their power both to oppress people but also advance justice. If this sounds far-fetched, I invite you to reach deep into the pockets of the clothes you are currently wearing. Go ahead, try it.
This spring, I’m thinking about the season as a blooming period for the complexities of truth. That’s not to say that truth itself is complicated, but that the application, acknowledgment, or apprehension of truth can be a sticky mess. Truth will set you free, but then we get to wrestle with freedom and the responsibility that comes with it: Realizing that racism is ingrained in the church is important, for instance, but acting to rid the church of that sin is paramount.
Lent is the angstiest season of the liturgical calendar: Jesus in the desert with the devil; us sitting with our sin and mortality. So below you’ll find six songs to accompany you this brooding, contemplative season. Soon, Easter will roll around and bring with it upbeat resurrection bops, but for now, the tunes are appropriately emo — at least lyrically.
"Theology is lived. It doesn’t take place just in the mind but in the body as we engage with and learn alongside others. I learned about God while in the garden with my abuela picking avocados from the tree for our afternoon snack. My understanding of God is shaped not only from my experiences but from the community around me—those who formed me in both the past and present. I think this is key to abuelita theology."
Although deconstruction has been a disorienting process, I feel myself breaking free from the oppressive ideologies that locked me in static racial and gender hierarchies. It has allowed me to find value in our unique narratives as well as our partnership with God and the community of creation.
Time after time, these Christians would lay hands on me while I waited in line at Starbucks or the food court at the local mall. They’d try and cast out evil demons, pray that my faith would be strengthened, or command in Jesus’ name that I get up and walk (even though I could already walk). Each time, they would stand back as if they’d just recited the magic words. Each time, with progressively less optimism and greater anger, I’d step forward only to find out I wasn’t healed. Some would accuse me of not having enough faith, but most just apologized and went on with their day. I was left alone. Still limping, still furious.
Pew Research conducted a study in 2020 examining teens’ relationship to religion compared to their parents: data from that report showed that while 43 percent of parents claimed religion was “very important to them,” only 24 percent of teens answered similarly. In 2021, Springtide Research Institute, where I am a student ambassador, found that 52 percent of young people believe that religious communities are “rigid” and too “restrictive.”
For the past six years, Sojourners has celebrated Women’s History Month by sharing a list of Christian women who are bringing us hope and inspiring us to action. This year’s group includes pastors and poets, abolitionists and mothers, liturgists and storytellers; women who question authority, disrupt unjust systems, set boundaries, reimagine what’s possible, and pray.
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Brad Stine performs. By Hope4ASU via Flickr.
When I was a kid, Christian comic Brad Stine yelled at me about wearing a helmet while riding my bike. He also yelled about seatbelt and car-seat laws, smoking laws, and gay marriage through his stand-up routine that I sat in the front row for.
The latest IPCC report states that 3.3 to 3.6 billion people (nearly half of the world’s population) are “highly vulnerable” to climate risks like wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels. The report aims to prepare us for what’s likely and to give leaders a clear-eyed sense of urgency to implement solutions. But some may glance past its findings due to more immediate concerns. Others may be tempted to take a lifeboat mentality.
This is a tale of two orphans, Bruce and Jephthah. A tale of two cities, Gotham and Gilead. A story of curses and vengeance and redemption.
Put is committed to see the glories and geography of “Mother Russia” restored. Religiously, he claims this is preserving “Christian civilization” against the secular decadence of the West. And for that, his transactional alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church is essential. Like the czars, he wants to see Moscow as the center of political and military power over an empire that is sanctified by the blessing of the Russian Orthodox Church. And he wants an Orthodox Church he can control to reign in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Sunday that he had ordered Russian nuclear forces to high alert (he called it a “special mode of combat duty”) brought to mind some of the most dangerous days of Cold War brinkmanship. For four decades, bellicose Soviet and American rhetoric and actions — from the Cuban missile crisis to Reagan administration talk of a “winnable” nuclear war — kept the world at very real risk of annhilation. (The Biden administration, to its credit, responded this week to Putin’s provocations by asserting, correctly, that “A nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought,” as a White House offical put it to Reuters, and declined to escalate the U.S. nuclear alert status.)
My father saw Lent as a chance to build a more sustainable life, much like training for a championship game. As a mother and teacher of environmental education in the mountains of North Carolina, I couldn’t have imagined how the Lenten practice of my childhood would help me face both life and death amid a global climate crisis decades later.
Jesus’ “mission statement” when he begins his public ministry in Galilee includes a promise of liberation and release for those who are incarcerated. While the New Testament context of “captivity” wasn’t entirely the same as modern imprisonment, Jesus’ promise aligns liberation of prisoners with healing and good news for the poor and oppressed. Taking Jesus’ words in this text seriously forces us to ask: If God’s reign is characterized by freedom for prisoners, why are we supporting incarceration now?
Horror has always leaned on religion to provide the backbone for its explorations of evil, even before the first time Dracula cowered in fear at the sight of a cross. But religion doesn’t just inspire the horror genre, it utilizes it, too. The Bible is full of horror.
We are currently in the midst of what the American Library Association condemned in November as “a dramatic uptick” in efforts to challenge or remove certain books from libraries and schools. Many of these censorship efforts have been led by conservative Christians and conservative politicians who are concerned these books will dissuade their kids from embracing what they call “Judeo-Christian values.” But as Ryan Duncan explained, Christians are deluding themselves if they believe banning stories about gender, race, or sex will halt their kids’ curiosity. Ban ’em or burn ’em, these books will not disappear and kids will continue to seek out resources on these topics — to some parents’ chagrin.
In this opinion short, Sojourners explores the spiritual implications of the missing education and miseducation about Black Americans in the U.S. education system and our biblical mandate to be truth-tellers.
The State of the Union, the annual televised presidential report to Congress, can easily devolve into political theater. But at its best, the address provides the president a critical opportunity to galvanize the nation to overcome shared challenges. When President Joe Biden delivers his first official State of the Union on Tuesday, in addition to addressing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I hope he seizes the moment by tapping into the values that animate his Catholic faith — including the values of solidarity and a “preferential option for the poor.” Solidarity, as understood through Catholic social teaching, is based on the understanding that we are one human family — our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We see this preferential option for the poor in Jesus’ dual call to care for the most vulnerable (Matthew 25) and combat injustice by being “good news to the poor” (Luke 4).