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New & Noteworthy: Superhero Theology, ‘Extrapolations,’ and More
New Earth?
The TV show Extrapolations, featuring Meryl Streep and Forest Whitaker, offers eight terrifying visions of how climate-changed humanity’s unchecked consumption will harm Earth. The interwoven stories aim to inspire climate action, even as they disturb.
Apple TV+
Pop Culture Can Shape Our Reality
POPULAR CULTURE PLAYS an important role in shaping our view of the possible. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me, for years wrote Marvel’s Black Panther and Captain America comics. “I think we don’t always realize the extent to which the culture actually interacts with politics,” Coates said on Ezra Klein’s podcast. “I could advocate for all of the policies in the world ... but it really, really occurred to me that there’s a generation that is being formed right now that’s deciding what they will allow to be possible, what they will be capable of imagining. And the root of that isn’t necessarily the kind of journalism that I love that I was doing, the root of that is the stories we tell.”
In this issue, sojo.net associate news editor Mitchell Atencio looks at some of those stories — in particular, superhero comics — and explores what is not being told, and how pop culture often avoids grappling with the way our country approaches issues such as policing and incarceration. That failure has consequences far beyond the DC and Marvel universes.
New & Noteworthy: ‘Saint Omer,’ Christian Climate Care, and More
Humanizing the Harrowing
The French film Saint Omer follows the trial of a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her child. The docudrama is a condemnation of the criminal legal system, and a reminder that no one is the totality of the worst thing they’ve done.
Les Films du Losange
‘It May Not Look Like It, but Love's In Charge’
WHEN VILLANOVA PROFESSOR Vincent W. Lloyd reflects on the theology of the phrase “Black Lives Matter,” he begins with the “death-dealing forces of white supremacy” and the tragic “ vulnerability to premature death” experienced by Black people. But Lloyd doesn’t stop there. To affirm the value of Black lives, Lloyd writes, requires life that is rich, creative, and flourishing.
Lloyd doesn’t think such flourishing is possible without faith. Specifically, he argues that to hold on to “a hope against hope” in the face of these noxious, murderous systems and practices requires belief in the possibility of life after death: “For Black life to matter,” Lloyd writes, “we must believe in resurrection.” As Carmen Acevedo Butcher puts it in her interview with Betsy Shirley, “It may not look like it,” but “Love’s in charge.” That’s an important reminder for all of us, in this Easter season and always.
On a lighter note: We’re pleased to have a guest appearance by our former art director (and humor columnist) Ed Spivey Jr., who came out of retirement to offer his pearls of wisdom on artificial and other kinds of intelligence.
New & Noteworthy: God's Gender, ‘Women Talking,’ and More
Do We Stay or Do We Go?
Women Talking centers on Mennonite women wrestling with how to respond to serial sexual assault by men from their colony. The film explores the complexity of forgiveness and touchingly reminds viewers that leaving one’s community can be an act of faith.
United Artists Releasing
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
IN THIS ISSUE, ethicist Larry Rasmussen explains that human economic activity has transformed not only our relationship to the world, but the world itself — we are now in an era where “everything turns upon humanity,” as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in a different context. While this new “totalizing” reality of what people are doing to the planet has become virtually undeniable, the human tendency toward unceasing growth, as Jim Rice points out in his column, is still defended by economists, headline writers, and the rest of the “more is more” crowd.
New & Noteworthy: Harriet Tubman's Mysticism, Riotsvilles, and More
Communal Sin
The psychological thriller God’s Creatures follows a mother who chooses to hide her son’s secret, a decision that has damaging ripple effects in her remote fishing village. The film explores how a community’s complacency in covering up sin can systematize and amplify evil.
A24
The Balance of Power
New & Noteworthy: Black Psalms, Spiritual Timekeeping, and More
Divine Justice
A Comanche woman eschews gender norms to protect her tribe from fur trappers and alien warriors in the sci-fi horror film Prey. The movie honors Indigenous culture and offers a compelling, brutal picture of divine justice against colonial powers.
Hulu
Seeking Justice, Not Theocracy
ONE DOESN'T NEED Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction to see the frightening potential of theocracy. In this issue, writer René Ostberg tells a chilling story of a malign collusion of church and state — in this case, the Irish Catholic Church and the newly formed Irish state of the 1920s. Together, the two institutions acted as morality police, imprisoning women and girls for the “crime” of becoming pregnant out of wedlock — as Ostberg puts it, “for transgressing Catholic Ireland’s moral and class codes.” More than 10,000 Irish women and girls were incarcerated in so-called Magdalene laundries run by Catholic religious orders with state funding, the last of which wasn’t closed until 1996.
New & Noteworthy: Vigilante Justice, the ‘Unruly Saint,’ and More
Children of the Underground
After seeing the courts return many children to allegedly abusive fathers, Faye Yager created an underground network that hid hundreds of mothers and children. The five-part docuseries Children of the Underground shows the moral complexity of Yager’s vigilante justice. Hulu/FX
Incarnating the Cotton Patch Gospel
“BRINGING HOME THE incarnation was the motivation for Clarence’s writing, his preaching, and his living. He believed that the incarnation was the only method of evangelization, that ‘we haven’t gotten anywhere until we see the word become flesh.’” So wrote associate editor Joyce Hollyday in our December 1979 cover feature on the Southern activist/farmer/writer Clarence Jordan. Our December issue, for many years, was our “incarnation” issue, focused on a contemporary or historical figure who lived out the way of Jesus.
New & Noteworthy: Climate Leaders, "The Viral Underclass," and More
The Green New Dealings
To the End follows women of color as they advocate for the Green New Deal and face opposition within their political party. The documentary spotlights Sunrise Movement’s Varshini Prakash, Justice Democrats’ Alexandra Rojas, the Roosevelt Institute’s Rhiana Gunn-Wright, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Jubilee Films
Passing the Torch
JULIE POLTER arrived at Sojourners in 1990 to serve a year as an intern on our editorial staff. Three decades later, Polter steps into the role of editor of Sojourners magazine, the third person to fill that position in our 51-year history. Polter’s predecessor, Jim Rice, who succeeded our founding editor in 2006 and has been on Sojourners’ staff since 1981, will continue as a senior editor. During Rice’s tenure as editor, Sojourners has been consistently honored as “best in class” among its peer religious publications.
New & Noteworthy: Ben Crump, Faithful Innovation, and More
Legal Action
The documentary Civil: Ben Crump follows the civil rights attorney as he represents the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Andre Hill. While Crump’s work sheds light on police brutality, he also takes legal action to protect Black farmers and bank customers. Netflix
New & Noteworthy: Youth v Gov, Celebrity Worship, and More
The Future Fight
Youth v Gov, currently streaming on Netflix, follows the 21 American young people suing the U.S. government for creating the climate crisis and failing to act to protect their constitutional right to life, liberty, personal safety, and property. Barrelmaker Productions
New & Noteworthy: "Subversive Habits," Unjust Incarceration, and More
A Love Song
Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei’s short documentary Three Songs for Benazir follows the life of a young newlywed couple, Shaista and Benazir, living in a Kabul camp for displaced persons. The Oscar-nominated documentary focuses on their burgeoning love as Shaista struggles with whether to join the Afghan National Army. Mirzaei Films.
New & Noteworthy: “Essential Labor,” Indigenous Resistance, and More
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.
New & Noteworthy: Fannie Lou Hamer, 'Fight Like Hell,' and More
Creative Action
Capturing the vibrant 2019 protests that pushed Puerto Rico’s governor to resign, the documentary Landfall examines life after Hurricane María and the debt and environmental crises that devastated the U.S. colony long before, prompting local resistance and creative action. Blackscrackle Films.
New & Noteworthy: April 2022
Moved by Love
The limited ABC series Women of the Movement follows Mamie Till-Mobley as she grieves the murder of her son Emmett Till and fights for justice. Directed by four Black women, the show tells the true story of the woman who helped fuel the civil rights movement. Two Drifters