From Our New Editor in Chief: Why Sojourners Is Here

Who is included when you say “we”? When I first arrived at this magazine as an editorial assistant, I learned this was the kind of pesky question editors were prone to add in the margins of a draft, nudging the author to be more precise.

Fourteen years later, it’s a question I ask as the new editor in chief of Sojourners. All magazines have an assumed sense of “we” and “us,” a shared purpose that unites the writers, editors, artists, and readers. Who am I, who are all of you, and what do we have in common as we stare at these words on glossy pages or screens?

I thought about this question recently when Vice President Kamala Harris condemned an apparent second assassination attempt against her presidential opponent, former President Donald Trump, saying, “There is no place for political violence in our country.” Yet less than a month earlier, at the Democratic National Convention, Harris promised to ensure the U.S. maintains “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” I struggle to see myself in a “we” that rejects violence in the U.S. but has no problem using deadly violence to defend “our” interests elsewhere.

If it’s alright with you, I’ll skip rehashing the numerous examples of how Trump has contrasted an aggrieved sense of “us” and “ours” — “good people,” “beautiful people” as he often greets crowds — with a subhuman, criminal “them,” who threaten all that’s good and must be stopped at all costs. I don’t see myself in the “we” Trump appeals to either.

Christians wrestle with our own version of the “we” question. As many of us have learned the hard way, a church’s friendly greeters and “all are welcome” signs don’t always translate to communities where women can preach, queer folks can love anyone (or no one), and people of color experience liberation. For some of us, church was once a place we felt safe, folded into a loving community, only to find ourselves outsiders when we disagreed with leadership, demanded answers about abuse, or kept bringing up Questions That Should Not Be Asked about topics like the Bible, politics, gender, and money.

This is true in my own story. I grew up attending a Midwestern megachurch in the suburbs; if you need a visual, picture a full-length denim skirt, my rainbow-colored braces, and a zippered Bible case with highlighters and a gospel tract tucked inside (admittedly, I didn’t know any people who weren’t Christian but wanted to be prepared). Aside from the annual Mother’s Day message from the pastor’s wife, I never heard a woman deliver a Sunday sermon. I knew what 1 Timothy 2 said, but I couldn’t shake the sense it was odd that God would forbid half the church from preaching the gospel in certain contexts. I didn’t (yet) have the language to make a biblical argument for women’s leadership, but something told me to press into those questions.

Fast forward: I eventually ditched the denim skirt and the tract but held on to the Bible and learned new ways to read it. I did an internship with Sojourners; I lived on a farm and worked with refugees; I went to divinity school. The inclusiveness of my theology grew and the size of the churches I attended shrunk. I realized — more slowly than I care to admit — how the same twists of scripture that marginalized women were also used to exclude LGBTQ+ folks, blame poor people for their problems, baptize American military violence, and generally uphold systems where white people always wound up with more power and money. In short: I changed, with God’s help.

But here’s the thing: Even Christian spaces that wave pride flags or show up at Black Lives Matter rallies can suffer from an anemic understanding of who “we” are as the church. We (and I include myself fully in this “we”) can lapse into thinking that the prophetic call to justice is something done unto others, for people out there, rather than an act of joining alongside those who are most acutely impacted. We talk about feeding “the hungry” or welcoming “the stranger,” rarely considering whether “they” — crushed by the -isms and systems this nation has built — could be sitting next to us. Or pausing to wonder why they aren’t.

I don’t say this as someone who finds all this easy or uncomplicated. Figuring out the radical implications of Jesus’ words when he says things like “as you did unto the least of these…” “seek ye first,” or “love your neighbor as yourself” is a lifelong group project.

This is why Sojourners exists: Through our print magazine, online coverage, newsletters, and multimedia, we aim to articulate the biblical call to social justice — not in the abstract, but through real stories and ideas rooted in the complexities of our present moment. We publish reporting that uncovers the truth about the world as it is; faith-rooted commentary that points toward the world as God intends; and plenty of cultural reviews, scriptural reflection, practical resources, and, yep, humor, that all helps sustain us as we follow Jesus through the messiness of that gap.

I hope this publication continues to forge a collective “we” that rallies around a shared conviction that justice is the heart of Jesus’ message. And I hope you can see yourself in this “we”: We have often been rejected by communities that couldn’t see the fullness of who we are; we have been heartbroken when people we love pledged their allegiance to power and nationalism instead of the gospel. We know firsthand the crushing weight of racism, greed, and violence; we grieve that our faith has often upheld them. Still, we nurture hope, however fragile, because we know people can change; we offer ourselves as evidence. We follow Jesus, with all our questions, doubts, and failures; we fall short, repent, and try again. Some days we need to be roused out of self-absorption and complacency; other days we need space to weep with exhaustion. And together we — all of us, we can’t do this alone — work to build churches and communities where all can thrive.

I’ve always liked how the name Sojourners evokes ongoing movement: travelers, dusty sandals, a twisting road toward something we haven’t quite reached. There’s a sense of humility in that name, something I keep in mind even as we continue to offer sharp critiques of the church and other powers that be, boldly imagining a different future. At the end of the day, we are not a smug coalition of Christians who always get it right; we are people following Jesus, earnestly committed to ever-deepening conversion in ourselves, our churches, and our communities. We walk on together.