Magazine
Illustration by Matt Chase
SOMETIMES, WHEN YOU'RE reading a murder mystery, a new clue appears as if out of thin air—the coroner phones the detective to report that the corpse was drugged with some rare toxin, or an image conveniently appears on old CCTV footage. There was a similar moment in the climate fight this spring, when investigators came up with something remarkable: a number definitively linking the biggest banks in the world to the biggest crisis in the world.
We’ve known for quite a while, of course, that Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America have been lending vast sums to the fossil fuel industry—more than a trillion dollars since the Paris climate accords were signed. But it took investigative research by a climate consultancy called South Pole to make clear exactly how massive that money was. They found, in essence, that if you kept $125,000 in the banking system (your retirement account, or your college savings fund), then that money emitted more carbon than all the other actions of a normal American life combined. That cash is recycled into pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals—you might as well be spending it to drill oil wells in your backyard.
The main focus of the South Pole report was not individuals; it was the biggest companies on Earth, and it showed that while Google and Microsoft and Apple were busily trying to reduce their carbon footprints, their cash hoards were producing vast clouds of greenhouse gases simply by sitting in the bank. Google’s emissions were up 111 percent accounting for the new data—that is, their cash produces more carbon than everything else they do.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
A YOUNG GIRL sits on her father’s shoulders at a women’s soccer game in California, where fierce women play on the field, wise women own the professional soccer club, and women on the U.S. national team just won the right to be paid equally. The father locks eyes with Abby Wambach, a veteran in the fight for equal pay and a winner of two Olympic gold medals and a World Cup title. The father points up to his daughter and shouts to Abby: “This is the only world she’ll ever know.”
It’s commonplace for institutions to fail to honor a woman’s worth—from rulings in domestic violence cases to recent decisions from the highest courts that restrict reproductive options. But the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team is not common. And they are not used to losing. The team, which has won four World Cups and four Olympic gold medals, is considered the world’s best women’s soccer team, and yet the players’ efforts to be compensated fairly have been an uphill battle for decades. For instance, under the most recent collective bargaining agreements, a player on the women’s team, according to The Washington Post, would earn about 89 percent of the compensation U.S. men received for a series of exhibition games. That disparity was true in 2018 and 2019, when the U.S. women won the World Cup and the U.S. men failed to qualify for the tourney.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
WE HAVE BUILT an entire political economy that relies on racism. We can no more give up the racism than we can give up the political economy that funds our lives. Racism persists because racism works. It does not, of course, work for all of us — but that is somewhat the point.
Racism naturalizes what are obviously unnatural relationships forced between value and labor and land and bodies. As the ultimate gaslighting move, racism blames the oppressed for their oppressions, claiming it is something “natural” about them, something about their “race.” This naturalization attempts to justify the morally unjustifiable and makes what is obviously evil, idolatrous, and abhorrent look good, true, and beautiful. Following the Black radical tradition, we can call this gaslit normalization of domination and exploitation “racial capitalism.”
Racial capitalism has built into its politics a divide-and-conquer strategy. The Black Marxist Oliver Cromwell Cox laid this out in 1948 when he observed that poor whites, migrant Chinese, and Jim Crow-era African Americans suffered similar, if also unique, oppressions at the hands of politicians, factory owners, planters, labor agents, managerial elites, and so on, but it was the fate of those crushed by racial capitalism to blame one another while giving a free pass to those most responsible for their sorry lot. Rather than finding ways to build coalitional solidarity against oppressors, they became divided by race. In this scenario, oppressed whites sided with their white oppressors in exchange for what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “public and psychological wage” of white racial identity — and many participated in all manner of white supremacist violence to seal the deal. All the while, African Americans and Chinese were made out to be enemies of the nation and of one another.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
HISPANIC CULTURES ARE profoundly relational. Family is family whoever they are, whatever they believe, and whatever they have done. Family also includes people who are not blood relations; being family is a way of life. Being family means that the suffering of our daughters and our mothers, our sisters and our cousins, matters. Our relationship with God also matters to us, and how we see and sense the voice of God influences our choices.
So, what does this all mean when it comes to abortion?
Whether or not Hispanics fight to affirm Roe v. Wade, our fundamental perspectives may not fit neatly into the two sides of the debate. While some values are shared across generations, they are differently weighted in ways that impact political decisions, creating a family dialogue that is profound and deeply emotional.
A core precept of liberation theology in Latin America, and its evangelical cousin misión integral (holistic mission), is the power of place and position in determining perspective. While it is not possible to talk about a single “Hispanic culture,” given the broad diversity of the Hispanic community, there are common experiences and values between various Hispanic cultures that impact the way that we see the moral, scriptural, and spiritual issues in the abortion/choice debate.
The following formative experiences and values have significant impact for many of us.
Seeing God in babies. I remember when I was a pastor of an English- and Spanish-speaking congregation trying to
explain to the English-speaking members why we let children run around the church freely, appreciating their playfulness. On a deeper level, I remember explaining why we would take in a distant cousin’s child to live with us without a moment’s hesitation. In traditional Hispanic Catholic circles, the figure of Christ as a child is one of the most popular depictions, along with Madonna and child images. There are many Hispanic people who are deeply troubled by abortion. If we can’t know the exact point at which cells become a baby, many Hispanics would feel like we should approach the question with fear and trembling.
Illustration by Matt Chase
PUTIN'S CARNAGE IN Ukraine has given us a horrendous window into the immorality of modern warfare. We may feel one side is an innocent victim and the other an egregious aggressor, but the images from bombed-out civilian sites give us daily, gruesome reminders that the waging of war today is anything but “just,” typified by indiscriminate killing, high civilian casualties, and military actions that are in no way last resorts—and behind all this brutality, the very real threat from even-more-devastating nuclear “weapons of mass destruction.” War is hell, and it always has been, but modern weaponry, tactics, and attitudes make it perhaps more hellacious than ever, especially for civilians.
In this context, who can serve as the outside moral voice, raising questions around the ethics of modern warfare? Who can bring to bear the church’s teaching on war and hold the warriors, particularly those who profess faith, to account? Who can challenge the moral framework of a war and how it is waged? The answer to those questions is probably not “military chaplains.” Tom Witt, a longtime activist and former head of the Lutheran Peace Fellowship, is concerned about the fact that military chaplains are in the military chain of command. “When chaplains are hired by, under the command of, and getting paid by the military,” Witt told Sojourners, “there’s not much chance they can be anything other than cheerleaders, or people who affirm whatever kind of war that we’re in, even if it’s not a so-called ‘just war.’” What we have, Witt said, “is a military chaplaincy rather than a chaplaincy to the military”—and such “embedded” chaplains aren’t free to oppose military doctrines or actions, even if they contradict the teachings of the church.
Ayesha Barenblat is founder of Remake, a global advocacy organization working to create a more ethical and just clothing industry. / Illustration by Damayanti Blankestijn
THE NEW TESTAMENT stories of Mary Magdalene—and the way the church has treated her since biblical times—tell us a lot about the church today, and perhaps even more about our still-patriarchal society in general. In scripture, and in other contemporaneous documents, Mary is portrayed as one of Jesus’ closest confidants; after his resurrection, Jesus appears to her first and commissions her to tell the others (John 20). But, as Kyndall Rae Rothaus explains in this issue, the church has had a difficult time accepting the biblical portrait of Mary as one of Jesus’ closest and most faithful disciples. Instead, beginning most notably with a 6th- century papal sermon that called her a prostitute, Mary has been portrayed as a “fallen woman” in need of repentance or, sometimes, as Jesus’ lover, but not as the “apostle to the apostles” she became by merit.
Graphic by Candace Sanders
IN THE AUGUST issue of Sojourners, Ph.D. candidate and writer Céire Kealty highlights the spiritual significance of the desert in the Christian tradition and why the clothing dump in the Atacama Desert should be a concern for ethicists, environmentalists, and theologians alike. Editorial assistant Liz Bierly spoke with Kealty about her research, the ethics of today’s garment industry, and how readers can take action to combat clothing waste. Read Kealty's full feature.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Bierly, Sojourners: From your undergraduate studies to your ongoing Ph.D. candidacy, you’ve concentrated on religious studies and theology. What drew you toward this path?
Céire Kealty: I was raised in the Catholic Church and attended parochial school [starting in] kindergarten, so I have had a long-standing fascination with religion and theology. It was through my childhood education, the materiality of my faith, and my proximity to the natural world that I came to realize the numinosity cradling the world. I was convinced that Holy Mystery permeates all, especially the most mundane parts of our lives.
This may come as a surprise given my childhood and my C.V., but I had no plans to study academic theology. I began college as a business major! I bought and sold vintage and designer clothes as a part-time gig before college, so business school seemed like a wise place to land.
Luckily, I attended a liberal arts college, where I had to complete humanities courses as part of the core curriculum. I remember the first religion class I took: I learned about Catholic social teaching alongside Sr. Helen Prejean’s anti-death penalty work. I couldn’t get enough of the readings and class discussions, so I sought out more and more religion classes. By the end of my sophomore year, I had declared a second major in religious studies.
Throughout college, I maintained these twin interests in business and religion, with special attention given to the garment industry. I knew I couldn’t abandon these interests and go off to an accounting firm. I had seen how my interdisciplinary studies had complexified my interest in clothing, and revealed striking insights about consumption, community, and responsibility. I wanted the space to “play” with these insights and share my findings with others– and graduate school gave me that space.
Graphic by Candace Sanders
IN THE AUGUST issue of Sojourners, editor Jim Rice raises questions about the ethics of military chaplaincy in his column, “Grain of Salt.” Editorial assistant Liz Bierly spoke with Rice, who joined Sojourners in 1982, about how he became editor of Sojourners, his commitment to environmental activism and peacemaking, and how he lives out the values of the magazine. Read his most recent column.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Bierly, Sojourners: How did you first come to be connected to Sojourners?
Jim Rice: I came to Sojourners through voluntary service. I was in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, working at Georgetown University on peace issues. I started working in collaboration with the peace ministry folks at Sojourners specifically around the nuclear weapons freeze campaign. Long story short, I got hired and came to work on the peace ministry here at Sojourners, and I’ve been here ever since.
I became editor of the magazine in summer 2006. One thing I find most compelling is that we may do the same round of things issue after issue, but the content of what we deal with is always different. There’s always new material to learn, issues to learn more about, amazing stories about what people are doing to make a difference in the world, and it’s very inspiring to be part of that month after month.
Credit: Candace Sanders
For the July issue of Sojourners, freelance artist Blane Asrat illustrated portrait painter Kehinde Wiley. She spoke with editorial assistant Liz Bierly about why she’s a portrait painter, the physical connection to her work, and what she hopes viewers will take away from her art. You can find her illustration of Wiley in the July issue and see more of her work at artblane.work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Bierly, Sojourners: On your website, you say that you “seek to explore the sensitivity of everyday human experiences while making the world a more empathetic place.” What does that look like?
Blane Asrat: I am primarily a portrait painter because I am interested in human emotions. Growing up, I was always told that I was too sensitive and too reactionary. All teenagers kind of go through that phase of being extra emotional, but I feel like for me, it started way too early and never really ended. I’ve always just been a sensitive person, and I’ve been in these situations where I am in conversations or social settings where no one really knows how to deal with that. It’s uncomfortable and it’s awkward because we don’t know how to be emotional with each other.
And so, my artwork is all pretty internally motivated. It’s usually about what I’m feeling, or how my friends are feeling, or what I’m feeling other people are feeling. My goal with my artwork is really just to answer the question: What would this feeling look like if I could see it? And I have this hope that if more people could have time to pause and really ask themselves those questions, it will just lead to a world where people are more comfortable with their emotions.
Credit: Candace Sanders
In the July issue of Sojourners, Peter Chin of Rainier Avenue Church in Seattle discusses why so many pastors are stepping away from ministry in the wake of the pandemic, and how this phenomenon could fundamentally change the landscape of the American Christian faith. Editorial assistant Liz Bierly spoke with Chin about the current pressures on pastors, God’s loving-kindness, and how we courageously move forward. Read Chin’s full feature, “Here Is the Church, Here Is the Steeple – Where Is the Pastor?” in the July issue.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Bierly, Sojourners: What drew you to pastoral ministry?
Peter Chin: I think pastoral ministry was definitely a call out of the blue. I had been preparing for medical school all throughout my adolescence and was taking the MCAT and doing all the pre-med requirements, and then just felt a very stark and sudden calling to ministry, which was very unexpected for me and for my family. But it did feel like a calling, and it remains that way. I don’t often feel fitted for it, to be honest, but I do feel like it’s a calling that I’m continuing to be faithful to.
Iconography by Angela Manno
LASCAUX IS FAMOUS for its Paleolithic cave paintings, found in an underground complex in southwest France. The biggest area of Lascaux with the most abundant paintings is an echo chamber. Enveloped in sound, our human ancestors may have drummed and danced around a flickering fire whose shadows animated the natural scenes of people, animals, and their environment on the surrounding walls—all inviting transcendence. In ancient Greek religion, the lyrical music of Orpheus charmed the gods and compelled animals, even rocks and trees, to dance. Early Christian iconography developed a practice of liturgical art that both offered theological instruction and included details of the plant and animal world, both literal and allegorical, to foster spiritual reverence.
Closer to our time, great thinkers such as 19th-century German explorer-scientist Alexander von Humbolt looked beyond isolated organisms to the unity among plants, climate, and geography. In the 20th century, French Jesuit and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s perception that the universe is an evolutionary process moving toward greater complexity and consciousness furthered the understanding that humans are interdependent with the created world. Albert Einstein wrote that human beings experience ourselves “as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness” and that “we will have to learn to think in a new way” if humanity is to survive. This view is echoed in new developments in quantum physics that we may be evolving toward a more coherent wholeness among spirituality, science, and art.
The icon paintings of Angela Manno, an internationally exhibited and collected artist, are yet another expression of this lineage in her series “Sacred Icons of Endangered Species.” I interviewed Manno by email and telephone in March.
Andrea M. Couture: As a contemporary artist, what attracted you to icon painting, one of the oldest forms of Christian art, going back to the third century?
Angela Manno: I’ve been fascinated by non-Western and ancient art forms throughout my life, from illuminated manuscripts as a child to batik while traveling through Indonesia in my early 20s; icon materials—gold leaf, pigments made from ground up semiprecious stones, earth colors; and the ethereal look of the finished product’s images of angels and saints.
In the 1980s, I developed my own personal idiom, combining the ancient art of batik with color xerography to symbolize the merging of intuition and reason. My aim was to convey a sense of the sacredness of the planet Earth. In the 1990s, no longer having access to my large studio and a photocopier, I searched for a medium that would allow me to work in a more modest space and, at the same time, I wanted to explore a truly liturgical art form. In a stroke of synchronicity, I had the opportunity to begin studying with a master iconographer from Russia in the Byzantine-Russian style, and became completely captivated by the symbolism, not only in the images, but in the process itself, and studied with him for over a decade.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
LEST YOU THINK labor organizing started with the most recent Amazon or Starbucks unionization, let’s look at this ancient document found submerged near the island of Patmos. The document appears to be from another group of mammals negotiating what is believed to be the first collective bargaining agreement.
Letter of Demands
From: The International Animals Union
To: Noah
Subject: Excessive Rainfall
Whereas the earth has become corrupt and filled with violence and
Whereas God has decided to destroy all living creatures and
Whereas Noah is required to build an ark and bring a pair of every kind of animal on the ark, therefore
Noah and the International Animals Union agree that the previous agreement has been terminated and replaced by the following agreement beginning on the 17th day of the second month and ending after 40 days and 40 nights, unless it rains the whole time.
I. Breaks
All animals shall be given 15-minute breaks for naps, whenever they feel like it. (We’re assuming any human over 600 years old on the ark will likewise be taking multiple naps per day.) Breaks can be used for whatever animals want, including but not limited to gathering around the water trough to talk about the change in rain patterns for the day.
II. Schedule Assignments
All animals shall be given their work assignments a week in advance via pigeon post delivered on papyrus. On holidays, work assignments shall be delivered on parchment. Ravens and doves are available for special work at the end of the cruise.
III. 40-Hour Work Week
Illustration by Tsjisse Talsma
MY PARENTS WERE raised watching Westerns in which the tropes were all the same: There were “good guys” and “bad guys.” I was raised on Disney movies with similar tropes. There was little moral complexity in these stories, which I suspect reflects our tendency to look at the world in terms of a good/bad dichotomy. Reality is much more nuanced. I appreciate the way that popular 21st-century movies have embraced some of that nuance. One example is the Oscar-winning film Crash, a complex racial narrative released in 2004. An antagonist police officer in the movie’s opening becomes a hero by the end, while his idealistic partner takes the inverse path. It’s never totally apparent who the “villains” and “heroes” are. While I think our investment in the good/bad dichotomy is still substantial, it seems popular culture might agree with the psalmist who says, “there is none who does good” (Psalm 14:3).
Our willingness to accept human complexity is key to our ability to reshape ourselves into more just communities. Today, we see state legislatures seeking to prohibit educators from teaching uncomfortable truths about our country’s past because of the dominant culture’s inability to confront that truth. I remember the words of James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The scriptures for this month help us change what needs to be changed by facing it and trusting in God’s ability to move us forward.
The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka / Knopf
LET'S SAY YOU are a third of the way through Julie Otsuka’s latest book, The Swimmers, and someone asks you to describe the story. If you have encountered her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic, you might comment on the familiar reliability of the collective “We,” the prevalence of lists, the cataloguing of characters’ habits and choices.
But if you prefer to be concise (so you can return to your reading), you would say the novel is about a group of swimmers who belong to an underground pool in their town. Above ground, they struggle with “bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melancholia, anhedonia,” among other afflictions. But down below, in the pool, they can rely on the consistency of lanes, their lap counts, and their rules. They can even tolerate occasional rule breakers and bad management. Everything makes sense until a mysterious crack appears at the bottom of the pool.
Soon, one crack develops into many. When experts cannot find the origin of the anomaly, it leads to one conclusion: The pool must close.
The 45-rpm single of "Living for the City."
THE OPENING IS spare, just electric piano over a gently throbbing synth bass line, and then the vocal: “A boy is born in hard time Mississippi / surrounded by four walls that ain’t so pretty.” The radio cut of Stevie Wonder’s 1973 hit song “Living for the City” is a four-verse sketch of a loving Black family who work hard, live right, and yet can’t get ahead under the racist economic and social strictures of their Southern town. The instrumentation builds quickly—drums, synthesizer, hand claps, backup vocals—all performed by Wonder. It fades out on a choir of Wonders, singing variations of the chorus: “Living just enough, just enough for the city.”
The album version, more than 7 minutes long, segues from that repeated chorus into a spoken interlude. The boy of the first verse is now a young man arriving in New York City. He is quickly arrested for unwittingly taking a handoff of something illegal and incarcerated for 10 years. The melody and vocals return, heavier, rougher, with Wonder singing from “inside my voice of sorrow” to describe a now broken man who wanders the city, homeless.
“Living for the City” is from the album Innervisions, the third of an astonishing run of five albums Wonder released between 1972 and 1976. During this period, Wonder, a self-taught multi-instrumentalist who made his recording debut in 1962 as a 12-year-old, was stretching lyrically, innovating musically, and embracing a deeper social consciousness.
From Pose
ONE OF MY favorite quotes is from the novelist Taiye Selasi—or, more specifically, Selasi’s editor. Selasi was nervous before the release of her debut novel, Ghana Must Go. How would it be received? What if it wasn’t perfect? She called her editor, and the advice was simple: “Perfection is the Lord’s.”
This came to mind as I watched the final season of Pose, a scripted FX drama focused on the New York City ballroom culture, in which groups of LGBTQ+ people influenced by the fashion industry compete in dance, runway, and posing competitions. Pose isn’t just about trans and queer people as they try to survive the AIDS epidemic; it stars trans actors. It’s moving not just because of its subject matter but also because it’s unafraid to make what many scholars consider a grave mistake in art: crossing the line into sentimentality.
Let dialogue be cheesy. Let characters’ instincts to battle it out on the dance floor after every tragedy be as ridiculous as most musical numbers in Glee. Let feelings be unrefined. These seem to be Pose’s creeds, and I often eyerolled at the show’s adherence to them. And yet I kept watching. It was—there’s no other word for it—love.
Boycott, directed by Julia Bacha / Just Vision
FROM THE BOSTON Tea Party to the Montgomery bus boycott, expressing patriotic dissent by withdrawing support from goods, services, people, or structures has long been an integral part of our American democracy.
So, when Alan Leveritt (publisher of the Arkansas Times newspaper), Mikkel Jordahl (an Arizona attorney who provides legal services to incarcerated people), and Bahia Amawi (a Texas public school speech pathologist) were asked in separate incidents to certify that they would not “engage in boycotts of Israel” as a condition of doing business with or being employed by their states, they were troubled. Leveritt, Jordahl, and Amawi each decided to defend their First Amendment rights and push back on legislative efforts that have the potential to outlaw peaceful political boycotts related to a variety of issues.
Their stories are central to Just Vision’s new documentary, Boycott, which exposes the wave of anti-boycott legislation and executive actions in 33 states since 2015. These laws require Americans to give up their right to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, a campaign formally begun in 2005 in Palestinian civil society to urge the international community to leverage economic influence to encourage the Israeli government to address its human rights record. (Some Israeli officials and others claim that BDS efforts challenge Israel’s right to exist and are inherently antisemitic.)
Illustration by Hokyoung Kim
“Awake, awake …
clothe yourself with strength!”
—Isaiah 52
“What Really Happens When You’re in a Coma”
—Cosmopolitan (Feb. 5, 2019)
You dream I’m looking down on you
like a light on a ceiling
as though you are a thing
and I am a thing,
a light you aren’t,
shining down
on a body
you can’t escape
even in dreams, like this one
in which you dream
you’re awake, trying to awake
to the light that holds you together
From Three Songs for Benzair
A Love Song
Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei’s short documentary Three Songs for Benazir follows the life of a young newlywed couple, Shaista and Benazir, living in a Kabul camp for displaced persons. The Oscar-nominated documentary focuses on their burgeoning love as Shaista struggles with whether to join the Afghan National Army. Mirzaei Films.
Photograph by Mitchell Atencio
NATALIE BERGMAN DID NOT anticipate a particular response from Christians to her first solo album, Mercy. Released in May 2021, it was a departure from Bergman’s work with her brother in the duo Wild Belle, offering a gentler sound and deep lyrics. Yet Mercy has been hailed as a masterpiece that explores gospel through the lens of grief. Christians, particularly millennials and Gen Zers who long ago grew sick of Air1 and K-LOVE, have celebrated the work.
But Bergman wasn’t thinking about listener reaction before releasing Mercy. She wrote, produced, and mixed the album entirely by herself to process the grief after her father and stepmother were killed by a drunk driver. She said she felt “protected” in its release.
“I knew—after I put the album out—that I was going to have some sort of feedback on [Mercy] from people that are believers ... but I went into this with no fear,” Bergman told Sojourners before her March performance at Songbyrd Music House in Washington, D.C. Citing right-wing trucker protests and other authoritarian manifestations of Christianity, Bergman said she realized later it was a “kind of courageous thing to [release] this body of work, because of the political climate and because of the history that religion has.”
Mercy and the follow-up EP, Keep Those Teardrops from Falling, are fundamentally gospel in every sense of the term.