News

Gina Ciliberto 8-25-2021

Sister Elise García gives the presidential address at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious 2021 conference. Screenshot by Sojourners. 

Every year the Leadership Conference for Women Religious, an association made up of leaders of institutes for Catholic sisters in the United States, hosts an international assembly. This year, it opened with an apology.

Mitchell Atencio 8-25-2021

Dr. Deborah Turner of the League of Women Voters (LWV), Rabbi Jonah Pesner of Religious Action Network, Virginia Kase Solomón of LWV, Rev. Melvin Wilson of Saint Matthew AME Church, and Ben Jealous of People for the American Way lead a civil disobedience action during a voting rights rally at the White House. LWV, People for the American Way, Black Voters Matter, and many other organizations hosted the rally to pressure Congress and President Biden to protect voting rights after many states passed laws to make voting more difficult for minorities. Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via Reuters.

The House of Representatives passed HR 4, known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advacement Act, 219-212, which faith leaders and other voting rights advocates believe is a crucial step in voter protection.

“Tireless hours by members of Congress and civil rights leaders have brought the issue of federally mandated voter suppression to the forefront of conversations around American democracy,” Rev. Al Sharpton said in a news release through March On For Voting Rights. “This is only the start of the fight to move farther and farther away from the Jim Crow Era.”

Gina Ciliberto 8-16-2021

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the crisis in Afghanistan during a speech in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., August 16, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis

On Monday, as the Taliban took over many parts of Afghanistan, President Joe Biden announced the United States intends to “transport out thousands of American citizens and civilian personnel,” as well as Afghans who are eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and their families.

A view shows Highway 89 with burned trees on one side and unburned trees on the other at the site of the Dixie Fire, a wildfire near the town of Greenville, California, August 7, 2021. REUTERS/Fred Greaves.

The United Nations panel on climate change told the world on Monday that global warming was dangerously close to being out of control – and that humans were “unequivocally” to blame.

Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, the report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned.

Andrew J. Wight 8-05-2021

Coffee farmer Aceneth Bedoya and her daughter Alejandra (foreground), rake dried natural coffee at their farm in Vereda Nazareno, Planadas, Tolima, Colombia on June 17, 2021. Andrew J. Wight for Sojourners

Alejandra Bedoya, 14, shows visitors around her family coffee farm in southwest Colombia: The steep hills are dark green with coffee bushes, the air is alive with birdsong and the coffee drying in the sun emits a sweet, rich fragrance.

Things haven’t always been tranquil in southern Tolima, which is not too far from the birthplace of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerilla group. The FARC and Colombian government were embroiled in more than 50 years of open conflict until a peace deal in 2016.

Mark Dovich, Hazel Tang 8-03-2021

Rev. Angela B. Martin, who was arrested during a National Moral Monday Action demonstration and march, displays her arrest ticket on Aug. 2, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Hazel Tang for Sojourners.

Around 500 voting rights activists and faith leaders sat outside the Hart Senate Office Building singing hymns, protesting poverty, and calling for federal protection of voting rights on Monday. The actions were a part of the Poor People's Campaign’s National Moral Monday Action, and organizers said U.S. Capitol Police arrested around 200 people over the course of the protest.

Gina Ciliberto 8-02-2021

Praying on Facebook differs from praying in church: In a physical church, it’s understood that prayers will be kept confidential within the community. On Facebook, however, prayers are shared with other members of the Facebook group and the content of a prayer request becomes another source of data Facebook can use to send targeted advertisements. Though this practice is outlined in Facebook’s terms and conditions, tech experts question whether those who use the prayer feature are aware of this.

Former U.S. Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick arrives for a meeting at the Vatican March 4, 2013. REUTERS/Max Rossi/

Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been charged with sexual assault, Massachusetts court records show, the first time that the defrocked priest has faced criminal prosecution after multiple claims of sexual abuse.

A lengthy Vatican report released in November 2020 found that McCarrick had risen through the church's ranks despite persistent rumors of sexual misconduct, including a 2000 promotion to the position of archbishop of Washington, D.C, by Pope John Paul II.

The members of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for a group photo in Washington, D.C. on April 23, 2021. Erin Schaff/Pool via REUTERS

A Reuters analysis of emergency applications over the past 12 months offers a glimpse into the full range of parties seeking urgent relief from the top U.S. judicial body through the shadow docket. The justices have increasingly relied upon this process to make rulings in a wide array of cases without the normal deliberative process involving public oral arguments and extensive written decisions.

Jeff A. Chamer 7-28-2021

Angela Wolf carries a protest sign for nearby traffic to see after gathering with people outside of an apartment complex with the intention to stop the alleged eviction of one of the tenants in Mount Rainier, MD, Aug. 10, 2020. The federal eviction moratorium, set to expire on Aug. 1, 2021, many fear the housing crisis will once again worsen. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo.

Housing rights advocates, community leaders, and faith-based organizations across the country are scrambling to provide resources and funding to thousands at risk of losing their housing when the federal eviction moratorium ends on Aug. 1.

The moratorium was first put in place in September of 2020, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was previously extended under both then-President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. So far, the CDC has not signaled that it will extend the moratorium again, though Democrats in Congress have petitioned to have it extended.

Lexi McMenamin 7-27-2021

Aquilino Gonell, sergeant of the U.S. Capitol Police, Michael Fanone, officer for the Metropolitan Police Department, and Harry Dunn, private first class of the U.S. Capitol Police, listen while Daniel Hodges, officer for the Metropolitan Police Department, testifies during a hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., July 27, 2021. Brendan Smialowski/Pool via REUTERS.

In an emotional congressional hearing Tuesday morning, witnesses of the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill used multiple words to describe those who attacked them: One was “terrorists;” another was “Christians.”

“It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians,” Metropolitan police officer Daniel Hodges stated in his testimony, which graphically described the physical attacks on Hodges and other officers.

Bayard Rustin at news briefing on the Civil Rights March on Washington in the Statler Hotel, half-length portrait, seated at table. Warren K. Leffler via the Library of Congress. 

Rustin, who died in 1987, is best known for helping Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. implement Gandhian tactics of nonviolence and for the key role he played organizing the 1963 March on Washington and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — two key components of the civil rights movement.

Less well-known are the particularities of Rustin's faith, including his deep roots in the Quaker and African Methodist Episcopal churches which drove his activism. Those two faith traditions, marked by silence and singing, respectively, echoed throughout Rustin’s life and work.

Gina Ciliberto 7-22-2021

A child looks at the “Naming the Lost Memorials” at The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 10, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid.

According to a new report, 1.5 million children lost at least one primary caregiver to COVID-19 by the end of April 2021.

Children: The Hidden Pandemic 2021 — a joint report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Agency for International Development, and World Without Orphans, in conjunction with other global child welfare experts — stated that, without immediate action, “the COVID-19 pandemic is destined to leave millions more children orphaned.”

Gina Ciliberto 7-20-2021

Recently installed solar lights mark burial sites on Cowessess First Nation, where a search had found 751 unmarked graves from the former Marieval Indian Residential School near Grayson, Saskatchewan in Canada on July 6, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon VanRaes

For Indigenous communities, the existence of these schools and the abuse, neglect, and murder committed within them are not new; Indigenous communities have been aware of — and harmed by — boarding schools, many of them run by Christian groups, for generations. And though Indigenous people have ideas about how Christian communities can atone for their involvement in the schools, many are not sure Christians are willing to listen.

Pope Francis leads prayer from his window at the Vatican on July 18, 2021 following intestinal surgery. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

“Let us put a halt to the frantic running around dictated by our agendas. Let us learn how to take a break, to turn off the mobile phone,” Pope Francis said in his weekly address from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

Patrick Egwu 7-09-2021

Azubuike Muodum, a Nigerian migrant living in Johannesburg, South Africa, poses for a photo on May 4, 2021. Patrick Egwu/Sojourners. 

Azubuike Muodum, a Nigerian migrant living in Johannesburg, South Africa has not had his worst COVID-19 fears realized.

“When the [pandemic] started, I thought it was a disease that is going to kill everyone, more like an end-time plague,” Muodum told Sojourners in May.

Still, the last two years have had challenges. Muodum runs a small-scale restaurant in the central business district of Johannesburg, South Africa; he says the pandemic and subsequent lockdown created a “huge burden” for him and his restaurant. While countries like the United States begin returning to post-pandemic life, Muodum and others who emigrated to South Africa are facing the challenges of a still-spreading COVID-19.

D.L. Mayfield 7-09-2021

Photo via @taylorschumannwrites.

Her thoughts on guns didn’t immediately change; slowly — as the PTSD and long-term effects of her injuries continued — Schumann began to question the narratives around guns she had grown up with her entire life. Now she’s asking others to join her in questioning the stories we’ve been told about gun violence in the United States.

Balloons are released during a funeral service for some victims of the Sutherland Springs Baptist church shooting, in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Nov. 15, 2017. REUTERS/Darren Abate

A federal judge found the U.S. government 60 percent responsible for a 2017 mass shooting that killed 26 people at a rural Texas church, where a former Air Force serviceman used firearms he should not have been allowed to purchase.

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled on Tuesday that the Air Force did not use reasonable care when it failed to record Devin Patrick Kelley's plea to domestic violence charges in a database used for background checks on firearms purchases.

He said the government bears "significant responsibility" for harm to victims of the Nov. 5, 2017 massacre at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX.

Joshua Eaton 7-07-2021

A photo of the poem Beth Strano painted on the door of The Space, an anarchist community in Phoenix, Ariz. Image via The Space / Facebook.

“I saw my poem posted on another website and attributed to someone else,” Beth Strano wrote in response to a comment on her post. “I thought it was an honest mistake, but then I searched and realized this woman has been claiming that she wrote this poem and publishing it and doing readings of it.”

Gina Ciliberto 7-01-2021

People gather during a stop on the Freedom Ride For Voting Rights at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. June 21, 2021. REUTERS/Dustin Chambers

Rev. Carl McCrae, bishop and founding pastor of Exousia Lighthouse International Christian Ministries in Lithonia, Georgia, remembers that his grandfather was one of the first people to vote in Georgia’s Montgomery County. Government officials attempted to prevent his grandfather from voting — until a white man vouched for him. Now, McCrae sees his ministry as continuing his grandfather’s fight for Black and brown Americans’ voting rights.

“I don't see a discontinuation between what I do in the pulpit on Sundays and what I do every day of the week,” McCrae told Sojourners. “That is to advocate for people of color and marginalized people as the systems that are rigged against them seek to destroy them.”