Magazine
Illustration by Daniel Downey
CERTAINTY IS A rare thing in the age of the coronavirus. But there is one thing that we can know for sure: There will be fewer pastors after the pandemic than there were before it. For me, the realization started with reports from friends and colleagues, all gifted and committed pastors, sharing their decision not only to step down from their church but from ministry altogether. This is not an uncommon reality, but the number of reports caught my attention. I was used to hearing this kind of news a few times a year. Now, it was a few times a month.
My observations were reinforced by data. A survey conducted by the Barna Group discovered that toward the end of 2021, 38 percent of pastors had given real and serious consideration to stepping down from ministry permanently. That number was up 9 full percentage points from earlier that same year, meaning that if the trend has held steady, the percentage is likely even higher today.
Then, in the middle of 2021, I felt it in myself: a deep weariness that I had never experienced before, even when I pastored a church while my wife fought cancer. There was a sense of despair as I faced decision after decision that would invariably lead to controversy and criticism: Masks or no masks? Open our doors or close them? How do I navigate social issues in a way that is courageous yet pastoral? I felt trapped between the very real needs of my congregation and a very virulent pandemic that today has killed more than 1 million Americans. I had become part of that 38 percent.
The ‘Great Pastoral Resignation’
WHILE STILL AN unfolding dynamic, it is not too early to imagine how the dearth of pastors might shape the future of ministry and churches. After all, prophecy, or casting our eyes to the future, has always been a key practice of the church. (The prophetic tradition, of course, wasn’t just future-oriented: Prophets also confronted poverty, war, despotism, and oppression.) What broader ramifications could the “Great Resignation,” which has impacted industries across the U.S., have on churches? Probably more than we recognize. Much more.
Michelle Eisen (center left) and other Starbucks employees react during a union vote held in Buffalo, N.Y., on Dec. 9, 2021. / Photo Credit: Lindsay DeDario / Reuters
"It was the most emotionally charged experience I have ever had in my life."
Illustration by Matt Chase
NEW YORKERS CAN show up late to the party when it comes to slowing down with the summer. Even with the haze and humidity conspiring for an unholy pairing, thickening the air, and lathering our skyscrapers—our hustle remains undeterred. We might pause momentarily in the caress of the cool air leaking out of department store foyers. Still, many of us only begrudgingly slow down.
Fight as we might, our bodies are always communicating. Sending messages. Receiving them. Storytelling and processing the world. Heaven and life continue to stream data vying for our attention by different means. Thomas Merton wrote, “For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of [people].” For Merton, this data could land unbeknownst to us. Many BIPOC folks, however, have experienced this sense of knowing through the body. It is something many contemplative activists are also reclaiming as part of an abolitionist heritage.
Illustration by Matt Chase
DEEP IN OLYMPIC National Park in Washington is the quietest place in the United States. In 2005, one square inch of Hoh Rain Forest—marked by a small red stone—was designated for sound protection.
The logic is simple, according to acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton: If anthropogenic (human-caused) noise can impact many square miles, as scientists have observed, then a natural point of silence, protected from such sound, can also impact many square miles around it.
Preserving natural silence and setting limits on our human sonic footprint, on land and underwater, is a leading edge of ecological practice and regulation. Similar to the dark-sky movement to reduce light pollution, Hempton cofounded Quiet Parks International to defend natural silence.
For billions of years, the Earth was very quiet. Only the low pounding of waves, rivers of wind, thunder. No birdsong, no frog choruses, no insect beatbox. With flowers came winged pollinators and, eventually, an explosion of nature’s creaturely orchestral arrangements.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
THROUGHOUT THE PANDEMIC, church attendance has varied wildly. As precautions have fluctuated with every ebb and flow of the virus, congregants have had to balance their attendance with health concerns—and this balancing act has proven even more complicated for high risk and immunocompromised parishioners.
Government officials and political figures now encourage citizens to “live with COVID.” The faithful may be puzzled by still-empty pews. Where are our neighbors? Have they lost faith? Or do they still “live in fear”? These assumptions fail to consider a more troubling reality: Some neighbors are suffering from long-term illness resulting from COVID-19.
Though recent viral variants have been touted as mild, reports show that many people who tested positive for COVID-19 can struggle with ongoing health problems. This condition, called “long COVID,” affects one in three people who came down with the virus and had symptoms for months following the initial infection. A 2021 study shows that 57 percent of people who contracted COVID-19 were still experiencing symptoms up to six months after testing positive—including cardiovascular issues, neurological problems, brain fog, muscle pain, and fatigue. For sufferers, long COVID is debilitating and life-altering.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
MY DREAMS ARE dominated by repairing the harms of mass incarceration. I dream of a future that includes decarceration and prison closures, one where Black people aren’t at risk of fatal police interactions. I dream of a future for Black people where public safety isn’t defined by arrests and lengthy prison terms. My Black future dreams are radical in the context of America. If my dreams were currently possible, the anti-Black through line that characterizes the nation’s public safety strategy would look a lot different.
Violent crime rates tripled between 1965 and 1990 in the United States, Germany, and Finland. Yet, countries have the policies and prison populations they choose. German politicians chose to hold the imprisonment rate flat. Finnish politicians chose to substantially reduce their imprisonment rate. American politicians chose to lengthen prison terms and send more people to prison. When migrant populations, some from the Global South, began moving into Germany and Finland, they were soon overrepresented in the prisons, incarcerated at twice the rate of citizens. Ethnic disparities and anti-Blackness drive incarceration policies everywhere.
Even in the context of increases in crime, the United States could choose another way. Public safety strategies could be centered on undoing the anti-Black practices that dominate criminal legal policies. Solutions must reduce the number of people imprisoned and strengthen communities rather than disappearing Black people from families and loved ones.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
MY COLLEAGUES AND I have done extensive research on race and religion for 30 years. We’re now wrapping up an intensive, three-year national research project where we heard from thousands of Christians and examined trends in church attendance and commitment. We have a clear conclusion: God is shaking down the U.S. church. It is currently in a reckoning, the likes of which has not been seen for centuries.
As our team interviewed Christians of color across the U.S., we heard a similar and painful story repeated: White Christians, by their actions, seem to favor being white over being Christian. Christians of color cited many instances of that type of behavior, national and local, communal and personal. We wondered if this was the case empirically and, if so, why. As we tested the hypothesis, we found a plethora of evidence substantiating what we heard.
My co-author Glenn Bracey and I are proposing a theory in our forthcoming book, The Grand Betrayal: Most church-attending white Christians are not bad Christians. This is because they are not Christian at all. Instead, we propose they are faithful followers of a different religion: the “religion of whiteness.”
Illustration by Ken Davis
AS WE APPROACH Independence Day, I’m anxious the holiday will be overshadowed by the pitched battles waged around what we teach about our nation’s history, continued assaults on our democracy, and the struggle over how we understand and express patriotism. In the face of these trends and the alarming prominence of white Christian nationalism, it is imperative that we resist destructive forms of patriotism that bleed into nationalism. Instead, we should embrace a redemptive patriotism that celebrates the noble promises the country was built upon, even while we acknowledge and repent for the ways the country has fallen so short of living up to those ideals and extending them to everyone. Nationalism is often rooted in a revisionist and censored telling of history and fueled by a hatred and fear of the “other.” In contrast, a healthy patriotism must always be tied to the project of building a more just and inclusive America. By rededicating ourselves to this cause, the Fourth of July can serve as a day that fosters greater unity and advances shared ideals, rather than one that reinforces our divisions.
Frederick Douglass and the biblical prophet Isaiah lend us seemingly timeless tools to resolve this conundrum. In 1852, nearly a decade before the Civil War, Douglass, formerly enslaved until his escape, was asked to address the citizens of his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., on the nation’s 76th anniversary. This famous speech—“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”—should be required reading for every American.
Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City. / Illustration by Blane Asrat
THREE ARTICLES IN this issue examine the various ways the church is in a process of radical transformation. In our cover feature, Peter Chin looks at the likely cataclysmic disruption ahead—particularly for the institutional church—as growing numbers of pastors consider leaving ministry. In our Commentary section, sociologist Michael O. Emerson draws on extensive research and concludes that many white U.S. Christians repeatedly place being white ahead of being Christian—so much that they’re practicing, in effect, a “religion of whiteness.” And Lexi McMenamin explores how some Christian colleges and universities continue to treat LGBTQ students as second-class citizens, and how alumni are stepping in to support equal rights and affirming spaces for all students.
Iris M. Crawford. Illustration by Candace Sanders
In the June issue of Sojourners, climate writer and journalist Iris M. Crawford identifies how some Indigenous nations are finding hope and solidarity through a collaborative solar energy initiative. She spoke with editorial assistant Liz Bierly about Afrofuturism, movement journalism, and what energizes her own work. Read Crawford's story, "Harnessing the Sun to Become Sovereign Again."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Liz Bierly, Sojourners: You got your start in science journalism because of your experience in grassroots climate justice organizing. How do you integrate that [experience] into your writing now?
Iris Crawford: I grew up in New York City, so I experienced Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. When I was an undergraduate student, I got the opportunity to write about climate justice and how it particularly affects Black and brown communities. Pulling from those experiences, being first-generation Guyanese, remembering Hurricane Sandy, and then writing that first story back in my undergrad years solidified that this is something that I kind of enjoy. That led me to my first organizing roles with the NAACP, and then I really got to understand how climate inequality and working toward racial and social justice all sort of intertwine. Through that, I got to learn and meet and build relationships with really great activists and people doing a lot of incredible things that are working to make our world better and more equitable, and I wanted to be able to tell those stories.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
ONCE I HAD a dream that I was walking along the beach with my Lord. I felt self-conscious about wearing a two-piece swimsuit, but I didn’t know the Lord was going to be at Rehoboth Beach during spring break.
God said, Don’t worry about it, Jenna. Purity culture is so 2008.
Suddenly, scenes of my life flashed before me along the shoreline. I looked back at the footprints in the sand. In most scenes, there were two sets of footprints: Mine and God’s. God is a size 8.5 and has high arches, in case you were wondering. But then I noticed something troubling. At many of the hard times in my life, there was only one set of footprints.
When I needed you the most, why did you leave me? I asked God, with more sass than I’d like to admit. God whispered something in return, but I couldn’t hear the words. It’s really loud at the beach, and there was a sand volleyball game nearby. So then God yelled, I never left you! When you saw only one set of footprints, that was when I carried you.
I was so relieved. Sorry for the mix-up, I said to God. I also wear size 8.5, so I was confused.
But then I noticed something even more troubling.
Illustration by Chris Robinson
THE MONTH OF June will require spiritual caregivers to take note of tensions. We begin with the celebration of Pentecost, known as the “birthday of the church,” which will undoubtedly be a day of great joy for the faithful. But later in the month, we mark the grim anniversaries of shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. We will celebrate people who father, and we will wrestle with complicated feelings about the fathers in some of our lives (and even contend with heteropatriarchy in our structures and theology). And we will celebrate the Juneteenth holiday while this nation still incarcerates Black bodies at disproportionate rates and refuses federal protections against voter suppression.
Pentecost invites the church to consider our Spirit-given power to share the gospel, speak with authority to all corners of the earth, and set the captives among us free. It may be that we find ourselves working for equity and liberation harder than we ever have before, and a pandemic has only exacerbated our fatigue. But hopefully this will be an opportunity to go back to the well of the Spirit and draw nourishment for our continued journey. We are not alone, and no one is expected to single-handedly carry the work. The same power that increased the church’s number by 3,000 on its first day is still with us. This, siblings, is good news, because we will need that power for the work we still must do.
Illustration by Mary Haasdyk
The chickens have a meanness I cannot quell
though I thunder from the kitchen window, a god
of rice and oats. No matter how much I scatter
in the cardinal directions, there is bullying,
the Silver Laced Wyandottes the worst despite their name.
All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep: Hope—and Hard Pills to Swallow—About Fighting for Black Lives, by Andre Henry / Convergent Books
AUSTIN CHANNING BROWN, author of I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, posted once that she didn’t need “more friends” but rather wanted “partners in the struggle for justice.”
As a white Midwesterner, I’d thought of racial injustice as an individual problem—individuals not liking other individuals who didn’t look like them. Therefore, the answer to racism was friendship. I worked at churches that celebrated calls to the common table in worship, absent confession or repentance, to sanctify my individualistic take on race. Brown’s words shook me—this activist wants co-laborers, not friends? What even is the work if it’s not friendship?
While Andre Henry is Black and grew up in the South, he and I were raised on the same milk of individualistic race relations. In his debut book, All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep, Henry narrates his journey out of the “colorblind” evangelicalism of his childhood to being an artist, activist, and community organizer for systemic racial justice.
Brown Girls, by Daphne Palasi Andreades / Random House
WHISPER NETWORKS. The Greek muses. Immigrant aunties. Women, in groups, are loud and gripping storytellers. Daphne Palasi Andreades’ debut Brown Girls confirms this. In eight immersive sections, the novel chronicles the coming-of-age of the titular brown girls, mainly second-generation immigrants raised in the “dregs of Queens” (N.Y.).With the first-person plural narration, we follow a chorus that aims to reclaim the voices they lost at various junctures in their lives. After all, what demands a shout if not systemic silence?
The brown girls experience erasure early. Their teachers mistake Michaela for Naz, Nadira for Anjali. They snap at Sophie who is Filipino, but call her Mae, who is Chinese. To mold themselves into girls who are worthy of visibility, the brown girls begin to erase themselves. They lighten their skin. They quiet their rage. After middle school, education takes some of them away from Queens. They wrestle with the changes it brings. “Dutifully, we reposition our tongues,” they tell us. “Even in song, we become fluent in the language of our colonizers. Our English, impeccable. Our mother tongues, if we were taught them at all, become atrophied muscles, half-remembered melodies.”
From Solar Power, by Lorde
“DO NOT LOOK AWAY. Do not avert your gaze. Do not turn aside.” These words met me a few weeks ago via ecologist Joanna Macy’s ever-relevant book World as Lover, World as Self. I love these words, even though their charge is not an easy one. Looking at what is, without turning away, without aversion, takes incredible strength of will, especially in a culture that banks on our inability to pay attention or handle despair. Nonetheless, for Macy, the illumination of sustainable futures is impossible without first facing our grief. Which brings me, in an extremely roundabout way, to Jane Campion’s film The Power of the Dog and Lorde’s 2021 album Solar Power.
From The Neutral Ground
Biased History
Wanting to understand the enduring power of the myth of the Confederate “Lost Cause,” comedian CJ Hunt expanded what was originally a satirical internet video into an insightful documentary. Set against the New Orleans City Council’s 2015 vote to take down four Confederate monuments, The Neutral Ground explores hard truths of our nation’s past. ITVS.
From Turning Red
MEILIN LEE, the 13-year-old hero of Pixar’s Turning Red, has a lot on her shoulders. She’s maintaining perfect grades alongside responsibilities helping her mom, Ming (Sandra Oh), run Toronto’s oldest Chinese temple. She’s torn between her identities as a dutiful daughter and a socially active teenager. Oh, and she transforms into a giant red panda in times of strong emotion.
That last issue, it turns out, is genetic. Because of a deal made by an ancestor, the women of Meilin’s family all poof into red pandas when they’re angry, sad, or excited, a trait that emerges during puberty. The panda spirit can be contained through a ritual. Ming is desperate to keep her daughter’s red panda spirit under control. Meilin, however, isn’t sure she wants it subdued.
Directed and co-written by Chinese Canadian animator Domee Shi, Turning Red’s fuzzy transfiguration is a metaphor for real-life stressors.
Photograph of Aline Mello by Stephanie Eley
ALINE MELLO WAS 7 years old when she left Brazil with her parents and sister for what was supposed to be a short-term stay in the United States. Growing up undocumented, Mello turned to writing to process her questions about belonging and relationships. More Salt than Diamond (Andrews McMeel Publishing), her debut poetry collection, pulses with themes of identity, religion, and living as an immigrant in tumultuous times. Sojourners columnist Liuan Huska spoke with Mello, a graduate fellow in creative writing at Ohio State University, about race, language, and coming back around to God after disillusionment with the church.
Liuan Huska: What were the circumstances of your family’s emigration from Brazil?
Aline Mello: We emigrated in 1997. We were pretty poor. We had a lot of faith that if we were going to the U.S., it was because God wanted us to go. My uncle got a tourist visa for the four of us to go to Somerville, Mass. It was just going to be three years.
My father had this thing where he would follow charismatic pastors, and we followed one to Atlanta in 2000, right before 9/11. I had been told [incorrectly], “If you stay here for 10 years, you automatically get papers.” I thought, “Okay, I’m going to be fine.”
Right when I graduated high school, in 2007, my father left us. My mom literally got home from work one day and got a voice mail from him saying, “Hey, I left the country.” I realized I couldn’t go to college in Brazil because I didn’t know college-level Portuguese. And I had scholarships here. The goal was to go to college and then go back. Then DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] happened. So I thought, “Obviously, God wants me to stay.” You keep getting scraps enough [that] you don’t starve.
Trainees Claude Ridley, Coulee Luger, Jimmy Mote, Trace Harrison, and Red Rock Perkins, under the supervision of instructor Daniel East, work on a project of the Indigenized Energy Initiative on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. / Photo Credit: Sarah Arnoff Yeoman
IN 1876, LAKOTA SIOUX rode on horseback from South Dakota to Montana Territory to help the Northern Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in one of the most important actions of the Great Sioux War.
The battle was inevitable. The rights promised through the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, which gave the Sioux and Arapaho possession of the Dakota Territory, were being ignored. White miners had come to settle on part of the land that was sacred to the Lakota Sioux. The U.S. government ordered the Indigenous communities to return to their designated reservations. Instead of complying, they banded together as an act of resistance. Led by Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, the Indigenous resistance grew several thousand in number and ultimately defeated Lt. Colonel George Custer and the 7th Calvary—one of the worst U.S. army defeats during the Plains Wars.
Nearly 150 years later, members of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne have joined forces once again to defend themselves against a new threat to their communal life: fossil fuels.