Betsy Shirley is the editor of sojo.net. She rejoined the editorial staff of Sojourners in 2015 after previously serving as an editorial assistant from 2010-2011. She holds a M.Div. from Yale Divinity School and a B.A. in English from Butler University.
Betsy’s articles and essays have appeared in America magazine, Religion Dispatches, Religion & Politics, OnFaith, Reflections, UTNE Reader, and of course, Sojourners. She is a board member of the Religion News Foundation and the Religion News Association. She is a 2015-2016 recipient of the Handa Fellowship in Interreligious Communication.
Betsy began writing narrative nonfiction at the age of 6, though she now writes less stories about cats than she did back then. These days she prefers to focus on stories that delve into the complexity of contemporary religion — faith, doubt, scandal, schism — and the ongoing tension of believing in an unseen reality while living in this one. She’s especially interested in stories about gender, sexuality, evangelical history, and interfaith collaboration.
When she’s not cooking up story ideas for an award-winning publication of faith and social justice, Betsy enjoys walking tours, refinishing furniture, and sitting around campfires.
Posts By This Author
Dreaming of Another World?: What Our Editors Are Reading This Week
The White House before dawn after President Donald Trump announced that he and U.S. first lady Melania Trump have both tested positive for COVID-19. Photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
“Schadenfreude,” the German term for “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others,” became the most searched-for term today on Merriam-Webster.com. But “enjoyment” isn’t the right word for this week in which civil discourse and the U.S. refugee resettlement quotas reached another record low.
In Civil Unrest, How Do We Keep Each Other Safe?
Police line up on the 101st consecutive night of protests against police violence and racial inequality in Portland, Oregon in September 2020. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs.
NONVIOLENT PEACEFORCE is an international nonprofit that works with communities facing violence to implement nonviolent strategies to help keep them safe. They have worked with communities around the world, including in Sri Lanka, Iraq, South Sudan, and Guatemala. Mel Duncan, Rosemary Kabaki, and Jessica Skelly of Nonviolent Peaceforce spoke in mid-September with Sojourners’ Betsy Shirley about their newest project location: the United States.
Sojourners: Why did you start projects here in the U.S. this fall?
Mel Duncan: We recognize that right now there are many indicators of looming violence, whether it be strife over police brutality and racism, or the chaos that is being stirred up around the election, or the catastrophic experiences we’re seeing with climate change—all of these can trigger violence.
What risks do you see?
Jessica Skelly: As we look toward the elections and beyond, we can see some indicators for flashpoints of violence—election tampering, delays in the election, perhaps continued police brutality, instigation by agents provocateurs—and people want to know how they can mobilize in responsible and constructive ways and help de-escalate some of that violence and protect themselves.
Come On, Wisconsin
Marni Bailey, a worker at a nearby group home for the elderly, uses her mobile phone as she stands in line outside Riverside University High School to cast a ballot in Milwaukee,Wis., April 7, 2020. REUTERS/Daniel Acker
The consequences of this election — voter disenfranchisement and health risks — will fall disproportionally on Wisconsinites of color. Take Milwaukee County: Typically, the county has 180 polling locations, but on April 7, there were only five polling locations available.
Why Christian Anarchists Want to ‘Burn It Down’
An anarchist flag waves over a crowd of demonstrators in Philadelphia in 2016. Belltreephotography / Shutterstock.com
BEN WILDFLOWER IS a self-described “high-church lowlife.” He lives in Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood that’s also home to intravenous drug users and sex workers. Wildflower—the surname he and his wife adopted after their marriage—is white, bearded, and male; he grew up among conservative evangelicals but now attends an Episcopal church (“a wonderful, welcoming space for so many people alienated by the church,” he said, “but also a bizarre, bourgeois institution”). Sometimes he fixes his roommates’ bikes to cover rent; he aims to live on very little.
I came across Wildflower through his handmade religious prints that resemble the black-and-white woodcuts found in The Catholic Worker , albeit with a little more attitude: “O Mary conceived without white supremacy,” reads one of Wildflower’s prints featuring the Holy Mother using aerosol flamethrowers to destroy Confederate and Nazi symbols, “pray for us trying to dismantle this shit.”
Wildflower doesn’t love the word “anarchist” because it sounds too self-assured (“like how a super-duper Reformed person has answers for everything”) and often evokes scenes of white dudes eager to break stuff and punch cops. But he sticks with it: “I’m an anarchist because I oppose hierarchical power structures,” said Wildflower. “You apply it to sex and gender, you have ‘feminism.’ You apply it to white supremacy and racism, and you have ‘anti-racism.’ So what is it when you apply it to the modern state? I guess we don’t have a word better than ‘anarchism.’”
Does it bring joy?
IN THE PAST four years, it’s been tempting to believe the main problem with U.S. democracy is the current occupant of the White House and the electoral politics that paved his way to office. But Christian anarchists offer a different perspective.
“The thought of America crumbling should bring you joy,” Wildflower told me in an interview last spring. As Christian anarchists see it, the problems that exist in our nation—poverty, white supremacy, militarism, economic inequality, and on down the list—are not aberrations in an otherwise good system, but rather inescapable outcomes of any system where some people have been put in power over others. And as people of God, Christian anarchists feel called to dismantle these oppressive systems and create radical alternatives.
Take prisons: “I think people are valuable and shouldn’t be warehoused in cages,” said Wildflower. “I don’t think [prison] changes people; I don’t think it makes us safer; I think it’s a tool to control and impoverish communities of color. I want it to be destroyed.” Though he participates in what he calls “reformist” actions, such as voting for a better district attorney or advocating to change sentencing laws—something his younger anarchist self would have scoffed at, but that he felt was important after listening to women and people of color in his community—he doesn’t feel those actions will ever fix the underlying problem. “A system that holds people accountable for injustices looks so unimaginably different than the prison system, that I’m still totally on the ‘burn it down’ side.”
And They Were Not Ashamed
Matthias Roberts
Sojourners: Why write a book on sex and faith and shame?
Matthias Roberts: Many of us who grew up within purity culture have rejected the strict, moralistic guidelines around sex and sexuality we were raised with, but aren’t sure what beliefs we do still hold. As a counselor, I noticed coping mechanisms that aren’t necessarily the mosthealthy ways to work with our sexuality. I hope to name what those unhealthy coping mechanisms are and chart a way forward.
What is sexual shame? Shame is a core response that we have that makes us turn away. When things within our sexuality make us want to turn away from either ourselves or other people, we get sexual shame. Sexual shame affects us relationally—and not just within our sexual relationships. It can look like secrecy and avoidance: We’ve been taught we can’t express sexuality outside of particular contexts and yet most people are, so we hide that away, lie about it, or pretend it’s not there.
Holy Fools and the Carnival de Resistance
The wry 20th century theologian saw the “radical and wondrous splendor” of the big top as an image of the kingdom of God: miraculous, death-defying stunts; an impending sense of both calamity and delight; parodied pantomimes of social convention—all enacted by a company of the “freaks” snubbed by polite company. “The circus is eschatological parable and social parody,” wrote Stringfellow. “It signals a transcendence of the power of death, which exposes this world as it truly is while it pioneers the kingdom.”
Drawing inspiration from the biblical covenants between God, people, and land—as well as Stringfellow’s beloved circus and other resistance traditions, including Brazilian Carnivale parades, Burning Man, West African drumming, and the warnings of Indigenous elders—the members of Holy Fool Arts pitched their tents in Philadelphia this summer to stage the seventh Carnival de Resistance, “a traveling carnival, village, and school for social change bridging the worlds of art, activism, and faith.”
During the week, the troupe partnered with local groups to paint murals, work in gardens, teach Bible studies, and join creative acts of protest. On weekends, they staged ceremonial theater performances (with a bike-powered sound system), demonstrated fossil-fuel-free living in their eco-village, and hosted an interactive carnival midway, complete with sideshow attractions, art installations, crafts, and games.
“Carnival traditions are about simultaneously subverting the dominant order while temporarily inhabiting an alternative world of festive celebration, playful mockery, and embodied community,” director Tevyn East told Sojourners. “We at the Carnival de Resistance seek to honor these long-standing traditions and spark the prophetic imagination through acts of resistance and incarnation.”
Robert E. Lee Worshipped Here
JP Keenan / Sojourners
IN A SERMON that lasted less than 11 minutes, Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley suggested something no one had said from the pulpit in the long history of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Va.
“What if,” asked Adams-Riley in his faint South Carolina drawl, “we begin a conversation here at St. Paul’s about the Confederate symbols here in our worship space?”
He listed examples: “The Davis window there, that identifies Jefferson Davis with St. Paul himself, in his imprisonment. Or the Lee windows there, that identifies Robert E. Lee with Moses,” he said, pointing around the sanctuary. “And there are the plaques on the walls, and two kneelers up by the old high altar. They [the kneelers] each have a little Confederate flag on them.”
The sermon was remarkable in its restraint. It wasn’t a jeremiad against the church that had, up until the 1960s, emblazoned its official stationery with “Cathedral of the Confederacy.” Nor did it mention the words that would ripple through the congregation in the months that followed, words like “racism,” “slavery,” and “reconcile.”
In fact, there weren’t many words at all. Adams-Riley’s preaching style is spare and impressionistic; his tone, much like his personality, gentle and encouraging. He quoted the Wisdom of Solomon: “The generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them.”
“Generating. Building up. Giving life,” repeated Adams-Riley. “Strengthening. Healing. Bringing wholeness. That is what God does. And we, being made in God’s image, find our greatest fulfillment in doing likewise.”
At Play in the Fields of Church and State
IN JUNE, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ruled in favor of a Lutheran church in Missouri seeking state funding to replace the gravel yard of its playground with a softer surface made of recycled tires. But was it a victory for religious freedom or a violation of the principles separating church and state? Sojourners associate editor Betsy Shirley interviewed Charles C. Haynes, founding director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, to help sort it all out.
Sojourners: Let’s start with the basics: Where does the idea of “separation of church and state” come from?
Charles Haynes: The Establishment Clause—or, more accurately, the “no establishment clause”—is the part of the First Amendment that separates church from state, preventing the entanglement of religion and government that has been the source of repression and conflict for much of human history. But it also protects the right of religious groups and individuals to participate fully in the public square of America.
'Too Blessed to Be Stressed'
Sean Bear/ Shutterstock
IN A GIVEN YEAR, about one in five U.S. adults will experience mental illness of some kind. And though mental illness does not discriminate, African-American adults are more likely to experience serious mental health problems, but less likely to seek treatment, than white folks, due in part to the lasting effects of slavery, segregation, and other forms of race-based exclusion—effects that translate into socioeconomic factors such as poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse which are, in turn, risk factors for mental illness.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the factors that keep African Americans from receiving mental health services include a lack of health insurance, a distrust of the medical community, and conscious or unconscious bias among practitioners resulting in misdiagnoses. But NAMI also named another barrier to African-American mental health: the church. While one’s “spiritual leaders and faith community can provide support and reduce isolation,” explained NAMI, the church can also “be a source of distress and stigma.” The report noted that even when medical care is necessary, African Americans turn to their families, communities, and churches rather than turning to health-care professionals.
None of this comes as a surprise to Monica Coleman, a professor of constructive theology and African-American religions at Claremont School of Theology in Southern California. Throughout her new memoir, Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman’s Journey with Depression and Faith, Coleman navigates the challenges of race, gender, and the church as she heals from rape (committed by her then-boyfriend in seminary) and wrestles with a faith that ebbs and flows like the cycles of severe depression that began as she entered adulthood.
Sojourners assistant editor Betsy Shirley spoke with Coleman about mental health, social justice, and how the church might become a place that more fully fosters both.
Resilient Immigrants in an Unhealthy System
LAST SUMMER, THE FUTURE of for-profit prisons seemed bleak. The U.S. Department of Justice announced it would begin phasing out its use of privately run prisons and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security quickly followed suit, declaring that it would reconsider its use of privately run detention centers. Stocks for companies that ran for-profit prisons plunged.
But then Donald Trump was elected president, and private prison stocks immediately soared. The nation’s largest prison company, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), reported a boost of more than 40 percent in the value of its shares. Given Trump’s promises to “create a new special deportation task force,” investors bet that privately run detention centers will play a key role.
And the investors may be right. Every year, DHS detains about 400,000 undocumented immigrants in 250 centers nationwide, and 62 percent of the beds in these centers are operated by for-profit corporations.
According to Maria-José Soerens, a licensed mental-health counselor serving undocumented immigrants in Seattle, there are two major problems with for-profit detention centers. First, for-profit centers are not held accountable to the standards that govern federally run centers. In her work in these centers, Soerens has heard complaints ranging from a lack of medical attention to inadequate opportunities for parent-child visitation; one young woman who was having suicidal thoughts was kept in solitary confinement until she told guards she was “better.”
But the deepest problem, explains Soerens, is that most detention centers only exist because corporations saw a “business opportunity.” Beginning in the early 2000s, for-profit prison companies successfully lobbied Congress to expand drastically the number of beds in the immigration detention system—a move that doubled the revenue of the two largest for-profit prison companies. In 1998, there were 14,000 beds available for immigrant detention; today, there are 34,000.
The Power of the Poor
Image via poorpeoplescampaign.org / CC-BY-ND-4.0
BY MOST MEASURES, the day had been a success. On the morning of Dec. 4, 2017, nearly 300 people crammed into a small room near Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill to reignite the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. Camera crews filmed while clergy, Indigenous leaders, Fight for $15, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and state groups from around the country pledged their support.
From there the leaders marched to the U.S. Capitol to deliver a letter condemning the then-looming tax bill. “Woe to those who make unjust laws,” they read from Isaiah 10, “to deprive the poor of their rights.”
Later, the same crowd—plus locals lured by a lineup featuring Sweet Honey in the Rock, Maxwell, and Van Jones—gathered at D.C.’s Howard Theater to celebrate. Faith leaders and activists who’d linked arms together in places such as Flint, Mich., Charleston, S.C., and Standing Rock in the Dakotas sipped drinks and ate free ice cream provided by Ben and Jerry’s. The overall vibe was part social-justice pep rally, part family reunion.
But Rev. William Barber II wasn’t feeling it.
While the DJ played ’80s hip-hop, Barber lumbered onto the stage unannounced. He didn’t have a microphone, so he just started yelling. The perplexed stage crew scrambled to find a working mic, but Barber was impatient. The DJ cut the music and the theater grew quiet.
“My brothers and sisters,” boomed Barber once he had a mic. “This is a Poor People’s Campaign mass meeting and concert; this is not a party.”
‘Make this nation cry’
For the next 10 minutes, Barber worked his way through the litany of injustices that he and Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the campaign, had repeated from countless pulpits over the past year as they crisscrossed the country recruiting people for the Poor People’s Campaign: deaths caused by lack of health insurance, the rollback of voting rights, corporate drilling on Native American lands, homelessness, police violence, an unlivable minimum wage, Flint’s inability to provide its citizens with clean water, political corruption. He spoke without notes, rambling at times (“I don’t have time to be scripted because the evil that’s happening is not scripted”), but it didn’t matter; as he neared the end of his list, the mood of the room had grown somber.
Erica Lea to Become First Openly LGBTQ Lead Pastor of Mennonite Church USA
Erica Lea. Image via Erica Lea.
Albuquerque Mennonite Church will announce today that they have called Erica Lea to be their pastor — the first openly LGBTQ person to serve as a lead pastor in the Mennonite Church USA, a denomination that claims more than 70,000 adult members in the U.S.
Matthew Desmond Talks About the Church’s Response to Housing Instability
Harvard Magazine
It’s awkward to become famous for writing about poverty. Just ask Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, whose book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. For his research, Desmond spent more than a year living in trailer parks and inner-city rooming houses to document the housing struggles of eight Milwaukee families—struggles that Desmond could not forget.
“I couldn’t help but translate a bottle of wine placed in front of me at a university function or my monthly daycare bill into rent payments or bail money back in Milwaukee,” writes Desmond in Evicted. “It leaves an impression, this kind of work. Now imagine it’s your life.”
Desmond used the proceeds from Evicted to create two foundations: Just Shelter, which highlights organizations preserving affordable housing, and another to directly assist the families he writes about in the book. But Desmond doesn’t want to be lionized; he wants to reframe the conversation about poverty in America.
“When we talk about the poor, it’s almost as if we talk about them as isolated from the rest of us, as if their lives aren’t connected to ours—but they absolutely are,” Desmond told Sojourners associate editor Betsy Shirley. As he sees it, that means we all need to consider “how we receive some benefit that others don’t—and ask hard questions about the fairness of that.”
Christians Call out Paul Ryan, GOP Health Care Plan
Almost immediately after House Republicans unveiled the health care plan they hope will replace the Affordable Care Act, a number of Bible-quoting, justice-loving Christians began pointing out that the GOP's proposed replacement doesn't quite live up to Jesus's command to "heal the sick."
7 #CalvinistPickupLines You Wish You Knew in High School
Image via VGstockstudio/Shutterstock.com
In the last 24 hours, a steady stream of #CalvinistPickUpLines have leaned heavily on the five points of Calvinism — lines that surely would have made Lyman Beecher blush.
A Martyr of 'Laudato Si'?
Activist Berta Caceres. Image via Goldman Environmental Prize.
The deadly environment for activists is closely tied to recent Honduran history. Following the 2009 coup, in which democratically-elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was deposed, the new government declared Honduras “open for business” and granted profitable contracts to transnational companies looking to capitalize on Honduran natural resources — including resources on indigenous land. When leaders like Cáceres demanded the rights guaranteed to indigenous people by the U.N and the International Labor Convention — including the right to determine how indigenous land is used — it wasn’t great for business. The death threats followed.
'This Is My Church Too'
DC_Aperture / Shutterstock
IN OCTOBER 2014, at the age of 35, Ingrid Olson stood before her church of many years. “I am loved,” she told the 80 or so members of her congregation seated in the sanctuary on that Sunday evening. “I am God’s child. I am accepted—completely.” Olson listed other parts of her identity: her curiosity, athleticism, passion for music, Swedish heritage, her tendency to be passive-aggressive. “I am a sister, a daughter, a niece, a granddaughter, a friend,” she continued. Then she added something most people in the church didn’t know: “I am a Christian, lesbian woman.”
Olson is a lifelong member of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), a denomination with Swedish-Pietist roots and 850 congregations in North America. Though the central identity of ECC churches is found in six “affirmations,” including the authority of scripture, the importance of missions, and the experience of personal rebirth, the ECC is not what’s known as an “affirming” church—one that encourages LGBTQ members to participate in the full life of the congregation, including marriage, church leadership, and ordination. Delegates at the 2004 ECC annual meeting voted to make binding a resolution that asserts the “biblically rooted” position on human sexuality is “heterosexual marriage, faithfulness within marriage, abstinence outside of marriage.” While the ECC might not say that being gay is a sin, it would certainly say that pursuing a same-sex relationship is out of the question.
Short Takes: Nia Zalamea
Nia Zalamea is a board-certified general surgeon. After five years in a traditional medical practice in rural Virginia, she joined the Church Health Center, an organization in Memphis, Tenn., that seeks to reclaim the biblical commitment to care for our bodies, minds, and spirit. She is one of two general surgeons in the U.S. who does full-time charitable work.
1. Why did you leave traditional medical practice? I went into medicine to serve; it was the one craft and skillset I could offer to an individual in front of me. But after five years, I found out that I wasn’t actually living my mission; I had put five people into bankruptcy. What I saw in rural America was that even one operation could completely derail not just one generation but multiple generations. Not just in terms of economics, but in terms of social capital, education, and everything we know that affects health and medical care.
2. What exactly does the Church Health Center do? The Church Health Center is a medical wellness home for the underserved, the uninsured, and the underinsured of Memphis. We provide surgery on a sliding scale; if someone can’t afford the surgery, it gets written off. The hospital supports the surgery in not charging the hospital fee, which is a huge chunk of the cost. So it’s not free, but the out-of-pocket cost for the patient is extremely low. We just make it affordable.
3. What are some of the barriers that prevent your patients from having access to health care? We have ongoing workshops during open enrollment to get people on to Affordable Care Act plans, but what is deemed “affordable” is not always affordable; the majority of my patients are 150 to 200 percent below the poverty line. Another barrier is access: Just because you have an insurance card doesn’t mean the doctor will see you. And this is where a lot of the injustice lies; many doctors’ offices and businesses have closed their doors to new Medicaid patients. Finally, the Affordable Care Act doesn’t cover everyone; my patients include undocumented immigrants, refugees, and patients from other countries whose children are being treated nearby at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
The Gay Christian Network Conference Just Met in Houston. Here's Why That's Significant.
Gay Christian Network founder Justin Lee.
Less than 10 weeks after Houston voters — many persuaded by local Christian pastors — repealed a city ordinance that would have protected Houstonians from discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity (as well as race, religion, and other traits), 1,450 people gathered in the city for the Gay Christian Network conference, the world’s largest annual event for LGBT Christians and their allies.
Short Takes: Julia de la Cruz
Julia de la Cruz / JP Keenan
Julia de la Cruz, originally from Mexico, is a farmworker, an organizer, and a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). After forging agreements with 14 of the largest food retailers in the U.S.—including Walmart, McDonald’s, Trader Joe’s, and Chipotle—to establish labor standards and fair wages for tomato workers, CIW launched the Fair Food Program, a partnership among growers, farm workers, and retail food companies ensuring fair pay and humane working conditions on participating farms. This interview was conducted in English and Spanish, with Elena Stein, a faith organizer for Alliance for Fair Food, translating.
1. Why have farm workers in the U.S. continually faced unfair wages and inhumane working conditions? The body that was most responsible was not the growers who employ us, but actually the corporations at the very top of the supply chain who use their enormous purchasing power to demand artificially low costs of the produce we harvest. That demand results in growers cutting costs in the one place where they can: labor. And there you get the poverty and exploitation that we have experienced for decades.
2. Does it help farm workers if consumers stop purchasing products that are grown in bad working conditions? More and more we hear this idea of voting with your fork: this idea that consumers affect conditions based on how they use their dollar. But the truth is that if somebody chooses to refrain from buying a good, the impact really won’t be felt by corporations such that they’ll be forced to change their policies. But corporations will be impacted and forced to change their policies when a worker-led campaign forces them.
So we’d ask consumers to build consciousness by listening to farm workers and their experience and their analysis of the food system that nourishes each of us. The second thing we’d ask for is commitment—and that can mean a lot of things, but it definitely means getting to the street and protesting the corporations that have turned a blind eye to the abuses they have perpetuated.