Opinion
Rev. Sam Dessórdi Peres Leite is rector of St. James the Apostle Episcopal Church in Tempe, Ariz. He spoke to Sojourners associate news editor Mitchell Atencio.
IN MY CHILDHOOD we would go to the cemetery early in the morning on the Day of the Dead [Nov. 2]. We would clean the graves and paint them. We would eat by the graves and tell stories of the person buried there and laugh. It was a light experience and joyful in the sense of becoming one family again, so the deceased and living were together for at least one day.
When I was in Washington, D.C., I noticed the Days of the Dead becoming more popular for people who are not of Mexican, Central American, or Latin American descent. Churches started bringing in the elements [of the celebration], not knowing how to properly use them. So I offered workshops to help church leaders understand where the tradition came from. It’s important for people to learn the historical meaning, how Latinos identify with the festival, and ask, “How can we honor that tradition?”
I’m tired of hearing politicians using “family values” as shorthand for a narrow and often misguided agenda. It is time to broaden and reclaim a truly pro-family agenda to protect and strengthen all families.
“No god, no gods, no spirits,” declares Detective Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice. “It’s only us.” Throughout the film, in theaters now, Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) points his ostentatious mustache at all manner of explanations to discredit the spiritualist Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) and her apparent powers of divination. But Poirot doesn’t just want to expose the alleged artifice of Mrs. Reynolds’ powers; he wants to reject any and all higher power. In a world so full of injustice, Poirot reasons, how could a just and powerful God exist?
This year marks 60 years since the death of W.E.B. Du Bois, who lived from 1868-1963. We remember the late sociologist, educator, socialist activist, NAACP co-founder, and revolutionary academic for his work in resisting racial capitalism in the classroom, the streets, and the Black church.
I first encountered Du Bois in middle school in an old biography — its pages falling apart, its cover hanging on by a thread. The writing was just dense enough to offer me a challenge but not so difficult that I couldn’t understand it. Ultimately, it provided the intellectual and vocational awakening I needed.
A Million Miles Away feels like a story too good to be true. But the new film is the true story of José Hernandéz (Michael Peña), a migrant farmworker who became a NASA astronaut.
As more people leave religious institutions, or never join them in the first place, it’s easy to assume this demographic will command more influence. But as a sociologist who studies politics and religion, I wanted to know whether there was evidence that this religious change could actually make a strong political impact.
There are reasons to be skeptical of unaffiliated Americans’ power at the ballot box. Religious institutions have long been key for mobilizing voters, both on the left and the right. Religiously unaffiliated people tend to be younger, and younger people tend to vote less often. What’s more, exit polls from recent elections show the religiously unaffiliated may be a smaller percentage of voters than of the general population.
For me, this faith has always been rooted in Jesus’ lived example of how we are to be unapologetic in our support for each other. And when Jesus says, “love thy neighbor as thyself,” I imagined this meant, well, help thy neighbor, assist thy neighbor, care for thy neighbor, nurture thy neighbor — all without condition or justification, just as Jesus did. But since then, I’ve learned a serious lesson about the limitations of the Christian imagination in politics. Despite our shared faith, many lawmakers in this country don’t seem to envision a country where we actually put these values into practice. My latest disappointment? Millions of people losing Medicaid coverage — our nation’s primary public health system that provides health care and support for folks with low income and/or disabilities — because states refuse to do the right thing.
In July, Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and an ordained minister in the American Baptist Church, made a case on his Substack that, with the exception of the rise of those who identify as non-religious or “nones,” the most important trend in American religiosity is the rise of nondenominational churches. For those who are actively engaged in denominational life, the numbers are staggering.
When taken together, those attending nondenominational churches now make up the second largest religious group in the United States after Roman Catholics. Rising from a mere 5 percent of the U.S. religious landscape in 1984, nondenominational adherents are now estimated to represent an astonishing 22 percent.
Yet a common assumption is that chaplains themselves must be grounded in a religious tradition. After all, how can you be a religious leader without religion?
In reality, a growing number of chaplains are nonreligious: people who identify as atheist, agnostic, humanist, or “spiritual but not religious.” I am a sociologist and research manager at Brandeis University’s Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, where our team researches and supports chaplains of all faiths, including those from nonreligious backgrounds. Our current research has focused on learning from 21 nonreligious chaplains about their experiences.
Two years ago, I spoke to one young woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder as part of my research into discipleship and depression. After this woman had received her diagnosis, some well-meaning but ill-informed members of her church instructed her to pray and read the Bible more. Because of their advice, she said, “I was always wrestling with whether it was spiritual warfare.” This spiritualization exacerbated her mental health struggles, adding on a religious component to her symptoms, including compulsive prayers and other spiritual practices to gain God’s favor and find healing. When it comes to accompanying young people through mental health challenges, I know the church can do better.
According to a recent Gallup poll, labor unions are enjoying their highest levels of national national support since 1965. One major reason for renewed labor organizing is the COVID-19 pandemic, as workers started to ask whether a new future for work was possible in the midst of the pandemic. Some of the demands that laborers were making then are still being made now: increased pay, safer working conditions, and flexible schedules. In the U.S., the federal minimum wage is still a paltry $7.25 per hour. Federal minimum wage has not increased since July 2009 but if it had been keeping up with inflation, it would be over $21 an hour today.
What would Jesus have to say about America’s hot labor summer specifically, and the renewed organized labor movement more generally speaking?
On the night of the 2016 presidential election, Jessica Reznicek, a Catholic Worker and water defender, began her “peaceful direct action campaign” against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Along with activist Ruby Montoya, they burned five pieces of heavy machinery in Buena Vista County, Iowa. From there, armed with an oxy-acetylene cutting torch, Reznicek went on to other pipeline construction sites and pierced through the empty steel valves, sabotaged electrical units, and burned other heavy equipment. In a 2017 statement, Reznicek wrote, “We acted for our children and the world that they are inheriting is unfit.”
Following her actions, Reznicek was arrested. She pled guilty to one count of “conspiracy to damage an energy facility,” but in the months following her court date, prosecutors persuaded the judge to add additional charges labeling her a “domestic terrorist.”
![](https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/styles/medium_square/public/blog/untitled_design_43_1.png?itok=IRvf_PGQ)
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hold their hands over their hearts for the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance at the start of at the first Republican candidates' debate of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign on August 23, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
While there are some extreme politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who proudly claim the label, it’s unlikely the top Republican presidential candidates will explicitly embrace Christian nationalism by that name. Instead, voters in the 2024 election will need to be on the lookout for how candidates’ behavior and rhetoric aligns with Christian nationalist ideals and anti-democratic beliefs. Or as Jesus put it: “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).
There’s plenty that concerns me about this latest indictment, including 161 specific acts prosecutors say were intended to obstruct the election, ranging from harassment of election officials to the infamous recorded phone call where Trump tells Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” missing votes. But what’s most bothering me aren’t the details of the indictment; I’m worried that most folks in the U.S., including Christians, are barely paying attention. Meanwhile, Trump remains the front-runner in the the Republican primary, despite the indictments.
Ambitious in scope, The Place We Make is part cultural and geographic history, part spiritual memoir, with thoroughly researched original source documents and contemporary voices. The structure of the book alternates between historical profiles from Vanderpool’s context and Sanderson’s personal moves from the places of ignorance, silence, and exclusion toward empathy, self-disclosure, and community. It is no small task to write as a confessional Christian while clearly identifying the numerous ways Christianity has served to create and perpetuate white supremacy. Sanderson tackles this challenge with humility, often citing theologians and Christians of color who have been wrestling with this paradox from the beginning of colonial modernity.
The writer James Baldwin’s 1967 New York Times essay “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White” is a passionate indictment of white Jewish racism and a condemnation of antisemitism. His essay is clear-eyed and right about most things — except for its thesis.
As reported by The Salt Lake Tribune, the parent arguing for the ban of the Bible explained that the book “has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.” The anonymous parent wrote to the school board, “Get this PORN out of our schools,” before listing over eight pages of offending verses that seemed to fit the legislature’s definition of what is considered to be “pornographic or indecent.”
I was supposed to be taking a writing day this past Monday, but the sound of sirens kept distracting me. Sirens in my Seattle neighborhood are not unusual, but the sirens blared from early morning until noon. By that time, I’d heard 10 or more police cars drive by, which felt different. So, during my lunch break, I resolved to walk down the street to see what all the hullabaloo was about. I figured I wasn’t getting any writing done, so I might as well go investigate.
Given the renewed attention to the danger of nuclear weapons — thanks, in part, to Oppenheimer — recent developments in Catholic theology regarding the immorality of nuclear arms provide a timely pretext to engage in interdenominational advocacy at the federal level, as well as political and theological education within church communities. We are at one of the most dangerous junctures in decades.
I’ve spent the past six years studying churches and urban renewal, a mid-20th century movement in the U.S. intended, according to President Harry S. Truman, to provide “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family,” but which many activists now see as the foundation of our contemporary housing crisis. As part of my research, I’ve studied how Christians — especially white Christians — participated in the remaking of American cities. It’s not a history we often tell, but buildings like First Baptist are hiding in plain sight, monuments to a time when white churches allied themselves with forces that displaced communities of color and redistributed their lands.