Magazine
A pregnant inmate at Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee, Mass., poses for a portrait in the facility’s visiting area in 2014. / Dina Rudick / The Boston Globe via Getty Images
KADIJA CLIFTON LEARNED she was pregnant with her second child while being booked at a Maryland county jail. She had no idea that she was expecting. She was halfway through her pregnancy before she got her first ultrasound. On that day, two armed sheriffs escorted her to the medical facility with her wrists cuffed in front of her belly. A female correctional officer sat in the corner of the room while she was being examined. Clifton felt she had no privacy — “it was invasive and not fun at all.”
Clifton, who has been out for several years and is raising her son with her parents’ support, recalls that she spent the rest of her pregnancy in the county jail worrying about the health of her unborn child. She was already anxious about leaving her then 5-year-old daughter to be raised by her ex. The news of the pregnancy made things even more complicated.
“During those months I remember simply wanting a comfortable place to sit, versus plastic chairs or stools with no back support. I was seriously pregnant,” says Clifton. “Then there was the food, or lack of it. You have a limited amount. You get three meals a day, and if you are pregnant, it is just not enough.” Luckily, by the time Clifton was due, she was able to pay the bail bond and was awaiting trial at home.
I first met Clifton at a graduation ceremony in Alexandria, Va., for Together We Bake, a workforce training program. Clifton shared her life story in front of a handmade collage while hugging her then-5-year-old son. She had completed a 10-week training, learning about food safety, business administration, job readiness, and other critical life skills. Two months later, she became a senior adviser to a podcast on reentry I was producing at the time. Clifton now works as a night supervisor in a facility that hosts at-risk LGBTQI+ youth. Her daughter, now 14, still lives with her dad, but she and Clifton speak regularly.
Illustrations by Michael George Haddad
In 2012 I was a U.S. State Department officer deployed to Turkey to work with the Syrian opposition. It was an opportunity to support Syrian activists waging a remarkable popular struggle against an authoritarian government that had responded to peaceful protest with bullets and torture. For nearly a year, Syrian Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Druze, Alawites, and others used demonstrations, sit-ins, resistance music, colorful graffiti, consumer boycotts, and dozens of other nonviolent tactics to challenge the Bashar al-Assad administration. But the nonviolent movement was unable to remain resilient in the face of brutality, external support for civil resistance was weak, and finally Syrians took up arms. This played into Assad’s hand. Death, displacement, and destruction skyrocketed. Extremists exploited the chaos. The Syrian nonviolent pro-democracy forces were inspired and courageous but lacked organization and adequate support to prepare them for the long haul. This haunts me to this day.
I’ve worked around the world with scholars, activists, policy makers, and faith communities to design effective support for nonviolent struggles to defend and advance freedom and dignity. I’ve been mentored by leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement, the greatest pro-democracy movement in our history, whose strategic campaigns to dismantle racial authoritarianism hold great relevance today.
As we head into the 2024 election, the risks to freedom and democracy are higher than they’ve been for decades. Religious communities who understand that democracy is the best modern governing system for protecting religious freedom and advancing shared values have a critical role to play as partisans for democracy.
Illustrations by Sam Lubicz
“ONE OF THE TRADITIONS of St. Patrick is an old prayer that he wrote called ‘St. Patrick’s Breastplate,’” explained Father David Rose of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Rincon, Ga., to the half-dozen men who’d gathered around him. “It’s more like an epic poem, like an old epic Celtic poem, but it’s a prayer.”
“I bind unto myself today / the strong Name of the Trinity,” he continued, reciting stanzas of the 1,500-year-old prayer. “By invocation of the same / The Three in One and One in Three / Of Whom all nature hath creation / Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation / Salvation is of Christ the Lord!”
Father Rose wasn’t addressing his fellows from the pulpit, however, nor were they gathered in the basement or rectory of St. Luke’s. Instead, he was speaking to a group of Dungeons & Dragons players at Savannah Lion Games in Pooler, Ga., at a table covered in rulebooks and dice rather than Bibles and hymnals.
Welcome to Game Church.
Liev Schreiber in "Doubt" / Joan Marcus
IN THE LAST nine months, John Patrick Shanley has had three plays on and off Broadway: revivals of “Doubt” and “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” and the debut of “Brooklyn Laundry.” While the timing is completely coincidental, the three plays cover much of his career: “Danny” premiered more than 40 years ago, and “Doubt” recently turned 20.
Despite the decades between them, these plays share a surprisingly consistent take on faith. Though raised Catholic, today Shanley demurs from identifying with any one religion. In a recent interview he told me, “It’s like when you’re among theists, you get handed a piano with 88 keys and told you can only use 13. I think that human spiritual experience is first of all mysterious and second of all, extremely rich and varied. Any reduction is just that, a subtraction from the breathtaking panoply available to us through the history of the spirit.”
In “Danny,” “Doubt,” and “Brooklyn,” God is not a comfort. Instead, Shanley’s characters are confronted with the radical, unavoidable uncertainty of reality — and challenged to go forward anyway. For Shanley, the whole idea of faith demands stripping away anything sentimental or reassuring. It isn’t faith if it isn’t well and truly a leap.
Apple TV+
When Girls Govern
The documentary Girls State follows a group of dedicated high school girls as they participate in an immersive mock-government program. At a time when civic norms are being eroded, the film is a fascinating, hopeful, and human portrait of American democracy’s future. Apple TV+
From The Green Ray
THERE IS SOMETHING outré about summertime sadness. As foliage reaches its lushest form and the sun turns our skin dewy, nature summons its full potential to evoke enchantment. And yet, we often find ourselves standing obstinate in the face of God’s good favor.
Such is the case for Delphine in Éric Rohmer’s 1986 French drama, The Green Ray. Newly separated from her fiancé and ditched by a friend she was supposed to vacation with, Delphine (Marie Ri-vière) is suddenly alone in Paris as the city’s leisure class flees for more temperate summer climates. Failed attempts at companionship find her isolated or, worse, at the mercy of dining companions who take on the role of Job’s friends, psychoanalyzing her disposition and insisting she just needs to get out more. Despite all efforts, Delphine is disenchanted.
"Throne of Weapons" by Cristóvão Canhavato / Mike Peel
IN PEACEBUILDING AND THE ARTS, practical theologians Theodora Hawksley and Jolyon Mitchell ask readers to imagine peace: “It is all too easy to reach for clichés” — doves or peace signs come to mind — or “to think of peace as a sort of absence, a not-happening.” In our violent world, we readily picture conflict and injustice, but not peace or conflict transformation. The arts help us fill this empty space, revealing the true nature of peacebuilding as “an ongoing, dynamic process, a journey that sets human relationships on the road to life.” Through bolstering the moral imagination, the arts rehumanize dehumanized contexts.
Mitchell explains how the arts give us “realistic visions of how to create peace” and foster “an environment in which the ‘moral imagination’ can be cultivated.” He shares the example of Mozambican Anglican Bishop Dinis Sengulane, who, in the mid-’90s, established the Transforming Arms into Tools project after the end of Mozambique’s long civil war. This project asked local artists to “glorify peace” through refashioning decommissioned weapons into art. Compelling works such as “Throne of Weapons” (2001) and “Tree of Life” (2004) emerged: metallic sculptures made from assault rifles welded together in a way that preserved the outlines of the weapons. The “Throne of Weapons” has a back, arms, seat, and legs made clearly from the barrels, triggers, and heels of AK47s. The viewing experience is a dance between the parts and the whole, which underscores the meaning of the project itself. The sculptures represent the specific horrors of the past and broader hope born from peacebuilding. Displayed in public places in the U.K., these works have served as a caution against gun violence and an inspiration to activist-artists across the globe.
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon. / St. Martin's Press
CHRISTIANITY IN THE U.S. often resembles a politically charged, dysfunctional family tree, its branches twisting and tangling as factions clash. When evangelical Christians leave their branch — or the entire tree — some continue to wrestle with the ideas that shaped their lives. NPR political correspondent Sarah McCammon portrays those wrestlers with care in The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church.
“Exvangelical” and “deconstruction” are buzzwords in some corners of Christian internet. The former was coined by Exvangelical podcast host Blake Chastain; McCammon defines the latter as “the often painful process of rethinking an entire worldview and identity that was carefully constructed” within conservative faith traditions.
Interscope / MCA Nashville
AFTER MY GRANDMA died, I began to pay attention to cardinals. She loved watching birds through her kitchen windows, and the memorial cards at her funeral displayed an illustration of a cardinal. After that, every cardinal I saw felt like a message sent by my grandma from heaven, reminding me that she was looking out for me, and that she wasn’t really gone, not fully.
So, when I listened to “Cardinal,” the first track on Kacey Musgraves’ latest album Deeper Well, I felt like Musgraves wrote the song for me.
“Cardinal,” she sings, “are you bringing me a message from the other side?”
With songs about finding peace and falling in love, growing up and maturing, Deeper Well is spiritually grounding. A reminder to slow down, go outside, and appreciate what we have.
Illustration by Haley Jiang
I was welcomed home by the me
I’d always tried to be—
more rainbow than thunderclap,
no more worry-do-worry-do.
Illustration by Lauren Wright Pittman
IN HIS 2013 book The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality and What We Can Do About It, Timothy Noah notes that the personal income of the top 1 percent in the United States began to increase exponentially beginning in 1979, a peak year in what economists call the “Great Inflation” (1965-1982). While there has always been economic stratification in the U.S., the “great divergence” in American’s incomes began at the end of the 1970s, and the wealth gap has continued to grow. In 2019, people in the top 1 percent of income distribution held more than 33 percent of the total U.S. wealth — up from 27 percent in 1989, according to a Congressional Budget Office report. Families in the bottom half held only 2 percent of the total wealth. The U.S. has policies that protect wealth and others that depress wages and hinder affordable housing. This combination increases poverty. Unfortunately, false narratives still circulate about the causes of poverty, blaming the poor and pitting communities against each other.
From another point of view, acceptance of wealth disparity, and the policies that cause it, is a result of failed imagination: We accept increasing wealth disparity because we cannot envision another way. As people of faith, we are called to be God’s prophets and seers — to see the possibilities of God where others cannot. The church’s task is to challenge empire’s narratives about what is possible, to actively cultivate what biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann calls a “prophetic imagination” for a different reality and empower communities to embrace it.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
A WILL IS an important document that protects your family and ensures financial security for children who have yet to pay back the 300 grand you spent on each of them growing up. You definitely should not wait until you’re 73 to write one. In my case, I was waiting for the wisdom that comes with age. Failing that, I was also waiting for the lawyer we chose to grow up and go to law school. Because, when we first met him, I thought he was a teenager.
It’s like when I go to the doctor these days and she looks like she’s just been dropped off at soccer practice by her mom. Nothing like the white-haired doctor who used to frighten me with dire predictions of the health problems that every aging man confronts. But now that all those predictions have come true for me, I need to make my will.
In March, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," a life-sized sculpture donated by Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz, was installed outside of St. Sabrina Catholic Church in Chicago in partnership with Purpose Over Pain. / Anthony Vasquez / Chicago Sun-Times
I ONLY HAD one child. His name was Damien Purnell. He was 31 years old. In 2017, January 13, I got the worst call of my life. I was at work, and I found out my son got shot five times at my house. I hibernated for five years. And when I say hibernated, I really did. I only went to work and that was it. I was hurting so much inside. It was a pain that was unbearable. My husband was my support system. We cried with each other. I was never mad at God. I finally started getting up and getting out.
arvitalyaart / Shutterstock
MY FATHER TOOK his last breath on April 2, 2024, in his home in Southern California. My sister, my aunt, and I were present. He was 68.
Just days before, we were considering chemotherapy. But the illness had already swung into high gear, and his body shut down quickly. The day before my dad’s first chemo appointment, he died.
My dad was a complicated man who kept many secrets. He had written “Metastatic Stage IV Colon Cancer” in a notebook in mid-February, over a week before he told any of us how far the cancer had spread. In his final weeks, he began to relinquish independence and control, starting with giving me durable power of attorney over his affairs just an hour before he went into surgery to remove the tumor in his colon. Up until then, he didn’t want to sign the papers.
GeorgePeters / iStock
ONE SUMMER NIGHT in 1985, I was sitting alone in a banged-up rowboat listening to trees creaking in the breeze, held in that sweet rocking motion made by night wind on water. Suddenly, the stars began to wink out and I was caught in a full-fledged squall. Water whipped up into whitecaps. Leaves and branches swirled overhead. The shore was yards away, so I wasn’t in danger, but the storm’s speed and ferocity were unforgettable. I’ll also never forget that it happened on the Sea of Galilee.
I remember this experience each time I hear the story, told in all three synoptic gospels, about Jesus and the disciples in a similar storm. Surrounded by crowds of suffering people and after several days of healing, perhaps Jesus felt the miracle was turning into a sideshow. He told the disciples to jump into a boat at the Capernaum docks and strike out onto the Sea of Galilee. Jesus led them from the suffering of the masses on the Jewish side to a confrontation with the demon Legion that was occupying a man on the militarized Roman side. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. But first, they must deal with a mid-lake tempest and a god who sleeps through it.
Nazeeba Ibnat / iStock
I HAD A conversation recently about an essay I’d written on prison labor in the United States. My colleague was shocked. Well into the 21st century, she mused, isn’t that a phenomenon reserved for totalitarian regimes on the other side of the planet?
It’s a reasonable assumption. After all, it sounds an awful lot like slavery.
The U.S. never abolished enslavement; we only regulated it. In 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ended legalized chattel slavery and involuntary servitude, except “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” This proviso, known as the “exceptions clause,” has served to obscure the continuation of an American slave system from the end of the Civil War to the present day.
Convict-leasing schemes were integral to rebuilding the South from the ashes of total war. Incarcerated labor fueled the postwar Industrial Revolution. And today, approximately 800,000 of the country’s nearly two million incarcerated people work for a pittance (on average, less than a dollar an hour) with varying degrees of willingness. If U.S. prisons and jails were to form that workforce into a conglomerate, they would be the nation’s third largest private employer, behind only Walmart and Amazon.
Topeka K. Sam is founder of The Ladies of Hope Ministries, which supports and empowers formerly incarcerated women and girls. Sam, a former prisoner, received an honorary doctorate from New York Theological Seminary in 2022. / Illustration by Clarissa Martinez
JAILS ARE NOT nice places. There is little to dampen the sheer terror of being closed in, locked down, and utterly vulnerable. Now imagine getting booked into county jail while pregnant. Journalist Beatrice M. Spadacini writes this month on moms giving birth and raising children while incarcerated or entangled in the carceral system. These stories call to mind Junia, the only woman whom Apostle Paul identifies as “in prison with me” and who was “in Christ before I was” (Romans 16:7). Christians are continually instructed to make alliances across the cell blocks and over the prison walls. Dwayne David Paul’s commentary on convict labor elevates the usefulness of those alliances today for strengthening worker’s rights and defending the dignity of all.
Will D. Campbell / Digital Collections at the University of Mississippi
IT FEELS AS though the United States could not become more polarized. Across our contemporary chasm, no matter what side people believe they occupy, the other always feels unreachable. That’s why this is a particularly apt time to ponder the late Rev. Will D. Campbell, who was born 100 years ago this July.
A white Mississippian raised in a 1920s Jim Crow thicket, Campbell rejected that era’s rampant racism early on. When the civil rights movement began, he embraced its goals with open arms. Campbell’s no-frills reading of the Sermon on the Mount led him to the cause. When 16-year-old Ernest Green and eight other African American students entered Arkansas’ Central High School in 1957, Campbell walked beside them. When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference came together, Campbell was the only white man in attendance. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed in 1960, Campbell made the first cash donation. To the brave leadership from the Black community, he added his own. For everyone involved, it was an extremely dangerous endeavor.
Then, at the midway point in Campbell’s life, his ministry underwent a drastic change. He set a controversial new direction for himself, one that confused many of his supporters and angered others. He began a soul-saving outreach to the white racists of the local Ku Klux Klan.
Illustration by Allison Vu
SINCE THE RECORD-BREAKING Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, we have witnessed a right-wing backlash against efforts to advance racial justice, exemplified by state and local laws to ban books and censor how we teach history. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, especially those in the corporate world and higher education, are also increasingly vilified.
Of course, these attacks on DEI are just a repackaging of old grievances. I’ve written extensively about how the political right in the United States has long sought to win and maintain political power by inflaming white racial prejudice through a never-ending culture war. To counteract this, we need to make a more persuasive and forceful case for why DEI programs align with and advance our core faith and civic values.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs address inequities experienced by people from historically marginalized identities, whether based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or any other element of humanity used to exclude and disadvantage. A DEI framework expands an organization or institution’s focus beyond simply recruiting a more diverse staff or student body to include diligent attention to equitable policies, compensation, and opportunities. When equity and inclusion are added to the picture, organizations can better build a shared sense of belonging, possibility, and ownership. That should be reflected not just in an organization’s culture, but in its material realities, including wages and promotions.
Illustration by Nico Ortega
IN JULY 2014, the Russian state-owned television network Channel One aired a news story that sickened many Russians.
Speaking from a refugee camp near Rostov, a woman named Galina Pyshnyak claimed to have seen Ukrainian soldiers in the contested Donbas region torture a child while his mother watched. Pyshnyak said, “They took a 3-year-old child, a small boy in panties, in a T-shirt, and nailed him as Jesus to an advertisement board.”
The story, which independent journalists were unable to verify, was quickly called out by international watchdogs as Russian propaganda: a way for the Kremlin to rally support for its occupation of Crimea and — in time — plant the seeds for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine as a whole. The “crucified boy” story served as a call to arms, as cases were reported of Russians who volunteered to fight against those Ukrainians who crucify little children. Subsequent investigations showed that a version of the story had first appeared on the Facebook page of Alexander Dugin, one of the most successful propagandists of the Russkiy Mir (“Russian World”) ideology. Channel One retracted the story in December 2014.
To Netherlands-based theologian Katya Tolstaya, however, the explicit Christian imagery of Pyshnyak’s “eyewitness” account and the visceral responses it elicited throughout Russia represented something else: In Putin’s world, religion and politics were becoming narrowly intertwined.
Over the years, experts have produced various explanations for Russia’s return to totalitarianism and who should be held responsible. Some argue the development stems from the ambition and personality of Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, while others point the finger at a broader Russian culture. Assorted studies focus on the political or the historic, the economic or the religious roots of totalitarianism. Tolstaya, for her part, sees religion as both a problem and a solution. Divorcing Russian Orthodoxy from the Kremlin’s imperialist agenda, she argues, can help Russians come to terms with a dark past that they have yet to process.