Senior Editor, Sojourners magazine

Rose Marie Berger is a Catholic peace activist and poet. She has been on Sojourners staff since 1986, and worked for social justice movements for 40 years. Rose has rooted herself with Sojourners magazine and ministry. She has written hundreds of articles for Sojourners and other publications and is a sought after preacher and public speaker. After living in Washington, D.C., for 35 years, she moved to Oak View, Calif., in 2022.

Rose’s work in Christian nonviolence has taken her to conflict zones around the world. She is active in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project of Pax Christi International, and served as co-editor for Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World, the fruit of a multiyear, global, participatory process to deepen Catholic understanding of and commitment to Gospel nonviolence. Her poetry has appeared in the books Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting a Bioregional Faith and Practice and Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry: Conversations on Creation, Land Justice, and Life Together. She is author of Bending the Arch: Poems (2019), Drawn By God: A History of the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries from 1967 to 1991 (with Janet Gottschalk, 2012), and Who Killed Donte Manning? The Story of an American NeighborhoodShe has also been a religion reviewer for Publishers Weekly and a Huffington Post commentator. Her work has appeared in National Catholic Reporter, Publishers Weekly, Religion News Service, Radical Grace-Oneing, The Merton Seasonal, U.S. Catholic, and elsewhere. She serves on the board of The International Thomas Merton Society.

With Sojourners, Rose has worked as an organizer on peace and environmental issues, internship program director, liturgist, community pastor, poetry editor, and, currently, as a senior editor of Sojourners magazine, where she writes a regular column on spirituality and justice. She is responsible for the Living the Word biblical reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, poetry, Bible studies, and interviews – and oversees the production of study guides and the online Bible study Preaching the Word.

Rose has a veteran history in social justice activism, including: leading the first international, inter-religious peace witness into Kyiv, Ukraine, following the outbreak of war in 2022, organizing inter-religious witness against the Keystone XL pipeline; educating and training groups in nonviolence; leading retreats in spirituality and justice; writing on topics as diverse as the “Spiritual Vision of Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, and Warhol,” the war in the Balkans, interviews with Black activists Vincent Harding and Yvonne Delk, the Love Canal's Lois Gibbs, and Mexican archbishop Ruiz, cultural commentary on the Catholic church and the peace movement, reviews of movies, books, and music.

Rose Berger has taught writing and poetry workshops for children and adults. She’s completed her MFA in poetry through the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. Her poetry has been published in Sojourners, The Other Side, Radix and D.C. Poets Against the War.

Rose grew up in the Central Valley of California, located in the rich flood plains of the Sacramento and American rivers. Raised in radical Catholic communities heavily influenced by Franciscans and the Catholic Worker movement, she served for nine years on the pastoral team for Sojourners Community Church; five as its co-pastor. She directed Sojourners internship program from 1990-1999. She is currently a senior editor and poetry editor for Sojourners magazine. She has traveled throughout the United States, and also in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosova, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and El Salvador visiting primarily with faith communities working for peace in situations of conflict.

Rose was born when atmospheric CO2 was at 319.08 ppm and now lives with her wife Heidi Thompson in Oak View, Calif., in the Ventura River watershed on traditional Chumash lands. Learn more at rosemarieberger.com.

Rose’s articles include:

Rose Marie Berger is available to speak at your next event. Please review our speaker instructions and guidelines or check out our full list of Sojourners speakers.

Speaking Topics

  • Christian nonviolence, peace, war
  • Catholic Nonviolence Initiative
  • Climate change, creation care, watershed discipleship
  • Bible study, liturgical year
  • Poetry
  • Spirituality and social justice
  • Any topic covered in Sojourners magazine
  • Catholicism

Speaking Format

  • Preference for virtual events, but willing to discuss in-person events on case-by-case basis

Posts By This Author

Feeding Owls on Good Friday

by Rose Marie Berger 01-10-2024
Lent is a season for reclaiming our identities as free people liberated by God.
The illustration shows an owl swooping with open wings and a focused, determined gaze.

Anastasiia Ovsiannykova / iStock 

IN HER MOST famous poem, “Not Waving but Drowning,” Stevie Smith offers an unsentimental vignette of standers-by on a beach watching a man drown. Is he waving to us or drowning? The title holds the dead swimmer’s response.

I recalled Smith’s line this fall when one image from the carpet-bombing of Gaza pinned itself to my memory. A girl’s hand in the rubble, waving around, trying to attract the attention of rescuers. We stand speechless before our own human brutality. We are all complicit in this supply chain of suffering.

Lent is a time of great silences. Silence can be duplicitous. Silence can be traumatic. Silence can be holy.

Last Lent, I was feeding owls on Good Friday at the raptor rehab center where I volunteer. Wings in flight across the mews are felt, not heard. A ripple of air. A slow shadow. The warning clack of a beak.

The prophet Isaiah names owls as one of the first to return after the Lord has laid waste to empires that God had found guilty of hoarding wealth and acting like there was no God. Isaiah describes the rubbled landscape: “They shall name it ‘No Kingdom There,’ and all its princes shall be nothing” (34:12). Owls are birds of desolation. In the half-light of the aviary, a great horned flicks its ears, stretches one wing, turns its yellow eyes to me.

A Group of Mistreated DC Tenants Finally Received Justice

by Rose Marie Berger 10-26-2023
After a decade-long fight, they won.
The photo shows a large group of people smiling for a photo underneath a banner that reads "We Will Not Be Moved." The people are standing in front of the door to their apartment complex.

Neighbors and tenants at their Washington, D.C. apartment building in October 2012. / Tenant Association file photo 

FIDEL WAS FOUR years old when I met him in 2014. His family lived in an apartment building around the corner from us in Washington, D.C. He liked to fly around the apartment entryway with arms extended, making airplane sounds. He liked to say “no.” He played with toy cars during tenant organizing meetings.

Fourteen families shared the 26-unit building, which had decades of deferred maintenance. The absentee landlord (a Palm Beach-based Episcopalian, real estate magnate, and attorney, who preserves wealth for his children, practices elite philanthropy, and once served as protocol officer for Spiro “Bag Man” Agnew’s reelection campaign) had abandoned the building—except for rent extraction.

In Fidel’s one-bedroom apartment, he maneuvered around handfuls of roach motels and rodent snap traps. His mom sealed his clothing in airtight plastic bags to keep out the night-crawling, blood-sucking bed bugs. Upstairs, a neighbor slept with her “rat stick.” Water from the tap often ran brown or didn’t run at all. Stoves were rusted. Toilets leaked. Frigid winter air poured in through broken windows or damaged frames. Ceilings collapsed. Lead paint and mold flecked the baseboards where Fidel played and slept.

The tenants submitted repair requests. The building manager ignored them or responded inadequately. The sooner he could drive them out, the sooner the owner could flip the property to luxury condos and realize astronomical profit. One day, the owner notified tenants of a 31.5 percent rent increase. Failure to pay risked eviction. The owner’s preferential option for profit over people sent Fidel a clear message: You are disposable.

A Prayer for Peace in Israel and Palestine

by Rose Marie Berger 10-09-2023

A rescuer reacts as he works with others to remove Palestinians from under the rubble of a house destroyed in Israeli strikes, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 9, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa 

“They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain...” —Isaiah 11:9

Dutch Military Arrest 25 Nonviolent Anti-Nuke Protesters

by Rose Marie Berger 08-10-2023

A photo of protesters in the Netherlands. Courtesy The Nuclear Report. 

Dutch military police arrested 25 people nonviolently protesting against nuclear weapons and carbon dioxide emissions at Volkel Air Base about 80 miles south of Amsterdam on Aug. 8 and 9, according to Dutch News and Nukewatch.

How Do I Become a Disciple to This Clay?

by Rose Marie Berger 08-02-2023
Next week, I’ll sit again at the wheel. Perhaps this is already centering me.
A painting of a white person's hands carefully molding cyclical contours into tan-colored clay.

LazingBee / iStock

“CENTER THE CLAY.” I had one task for class and three hours to complete it.

Take two pounds of raw potential. Place it on the potter’s wheel. Use the strength of your hands and forearms to force the clay into balance.

For the full three hours, I failed. Unable to find the calm point of pressure to rest my human musculature between the universe’s centrifugal and centripetal forces. The clay fought back. It bucked and shimmied, slid and skidded. I pushed and pulled.

The teacher said, finally, “This clay does not yet want to be a bowl. You have not shown it how.” A gentle correction that expertly undermined my fixation with “the primacy of the real,” as French philosopher Gaston Bachelard calls it. Really, shouldn’t I be able to subdue this clay?

The Holy Task of Recording the Dead

by Rose Marie Berger 05-31-2023
Keeping a "death scroll" can remind us of our human right to mourn and memorialize loved ones.
An illustration of an open scroll with swirling, sandy textures across its blank page.

kzkz / Shutterstock

IN THE EARLY days of the pandemic, I started a death scroll. Not to be confused with “doomscrolling” (a malady related to one’s smartphone), my death scroll was a physical length of paper on which I penned names and death dates as I learned of them.

Across the top I scrawled: “Blessed are you, Lord Our God, Who Is Keeper of the Book of Life. Today, we learned that Sister Death called ...” On March 13, 2020, I wrote the first name: Barbara Clementine Harris. A towering figure in the American church, Harris registered Black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s, marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, and was one of the first 11 women “irregularly” ordained as Episcopal priests in 1974 and the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. But, because of the COVID lockdown, no churchwide memorial service was held for her.

Pandemics bring death. And, as Christians, it’s impressed upon us to remember. Remember the Sabbath. Remember that your ancestors were slaves in Egypt. Do this in remembrance of me. Remember my chains. But ... I have a very bad memory. So, I made the scroll. When I stopped collecting names in late 2022, my scroll held 36. How many names would your scroll hold?

Many Nations Deliver Babies Free of Charge. Why Can't America?

by Rose Marie Berger 03-16-2023
In a post-Roe world, we need to imagine easier access and greater services for pregnancy and childbirth — no strings attached. 
A silhouetted black illustration against a pink background; a baby and dollar sign on both ends of a weighted scale; the baby outweighs the dollar sign.

bubaone / iStock

“Wisdom speaks her own praises, in the midst of her people she glories in herself.” What a luscious, full-bodied image from the biblical book of Sirach (24:1). Wisdom has sass! In an increasingly combative society, I’m drawn to Sirach’s prudence, poetic excess, and the authoritative agency of Lady Wisdom.

I’ve been keeping phrases from Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus, in mind as post-Roe legislation rolls across the states. The health of women and children (born and unborn) has been weakened, rather than strengthened. Political and social platforms ring out with dangerous nonsense about making criminal statutes apply at the time of fertilization, allowing the death penalty for abortion, or, conversely, promoting violence against “pregnancy crisis centers.”

How do we stop the howl when we feel urgently that lives are on the line? Sirach, which is part of the Catholic canon, says, “The fear of God is an abundant garden; its canopy higher than all other glory” (40:27). “Fear” means “body-trembling awe” before our Creator. Amid so much that I don’t understand and don’t know what to do about, this strange scriptural juxtaposition feels like Lady Wisdom speaking to our present condition.

You Can't (Fully) Blame Your Distraction on Your Phone

by Rose Marie Berger 12-26-2022
An unsettled, restless, disquiet mind is as old as humanity — and makes it hard to meet God.
An illustration of a person on a purple backdrop. She wears a tired expression and is surrounded by twisting arrows weaving around her and pointing in all directions.

yokunen / iStock

HAVE YOU EVER had one of those perfect moments?

My wife and I sat on a bench at the farmers market with a plate of steaming hot tamales before us and a bag of crisp fennel bulbs, Pink Lady apples, and fresh spinach at our feet. The air smelled of salt and cooking oil. A deep yellow and iridescent gold light wrapped around us. Every noise fell away in a holy hush. We met, however fleeting, the “still point of the turning world” described by poet T.S. Eliot. Held and beheld.

To be honest, I usually miss these moments. Though I try (religiously) to keep custody of my mind and attention, the world we live in now beeps, dings, buzzes, and updates 24/7. It’s hard for God to break in. Perhaps this description of digital architecture’s pointed intrusions into our one beautiful life is too minimalist. Most days, I’m holding my breath against the crushing dynamics of digital onrush and knowledge outflow. I miss the still points between the crest and lip of that wave.

Ukrainians Embody the Power of Peaceful Protest

by Rose Marie Berger 10-28-2022
In the face of Russia's “special military operation,” citizens are leaning into over 100 years of nonviolent history.
A wall of graffiti made by Sergii Radkevych called "Fragments of Hope" that depicting two hands grasped the blade of a sword and breaking it in two.

"Fragments of Hope" / Sergii Radkevych

YOU NEVER KNOW where you’ll see the hands of Christ.

In central Kyiv, a mural depicting two elegant hands breaking a sword is surrounded by towering apartment buildings. Painted in 2016 by Ukrainian artist Sergii Radkevych, “Fragments of Hope” was one of a series of murals organized in response to the 2014 conflict in eastern Ukraine. It was public art on a mission to inspire a Ukrainian vision for peacemaking.

Radkevych combines religious iconography with street graffiti and realism. He pays particular attention to expressive hand gestures. “Fragments of Hope” became a frequent gathering point for protests in solidarity with eastern Ukrainians in 2017 and 2019. “This is my manifesto against violence and cruelty, a call to mutual understanding,” said Radkevych at the time. When I was in Kyiv in May, after more than three months of intensive Kremlin-led violence, I was grateful to find the mural still standing.

Why Our Faith Delegation Went to Ukraine

by Rose Marie Berger 08-02-2022
Our public message was simple: “We have come to Kyiv in solidarity to pray for a just peace.”
A collage of photographs from the faith delegation in Ukraine. In one corner, a soldier embraces a man. In another, a woman looks into the distance with her hands folded in prayer. In the background are maps of Ukraine.

Photographs by Dawid Gospodarek / Photo collages by Candace Sanders

Our public message was simple: “We have come to Kyiv in solidarity to pray for a just peace.”

Why I Prayed in Kyiv When I Could Have Prayed at Home

by Rose Marie Berger 06-07-2022
Three people walk amid rubble in a damaged building with a ceiling that is blackened.

Alek Temkin, Sr. Sheila Kinsey, and Rev. Mae Elise Cannon walk in the rubble of the Irpin Cultural Center near Kyiv bombed by Russian forces in March. Credit: file photo / 2022 Religious Delegation to Kyiv

I went to Ukraine to hear Jesus speak in the language of the Ukrainian people, to see their suffering and their creative determination, to touch their wounds and understand how the word of life is surviving there. As a Catholic I believe in the “real presence” of Christ — so being really present in the flesh is part of my call and mission. The “real Presence” is the miracle that changes the “absolutely impossible” to a glimmer of the possible.

‘Before God There Are Yet Other Languages Than Those of Words'

by Rose Marie Berger 06-06-2022
Our ancient biblical stories remind us how complicated silence is — and that some transformations only emerge within it.
Illustration of a pinecone emerging from the bell of a green bugle

Illustration by Matt Chase

DEEP IN OLYMPIC National Park in Washington is the quietest place in the United States. In 2005, one square inch of Hoh Rain Forest—marked by a small red stone—was designated for sound protection.

The logic is simple, according to acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton: If anthropogenic (human-caused) noise can impact many square miles, as scientists have observed, then a natural point of silence, protected from such sound, can also impact many square miles around it.

Preserving natural silence and setting limits on our human sonic footprint, on land and underwater, is a leading edge of ecological practice and regulation. Similar to the dark-sky movement to reduce light pollution, Hempton cofounded Quiet Parks International to defend natural silence.

For billions of years, the Earth was very quiet. Only the low pounding of waves, rivers of wind, thunder. No birdsong, no frog choruses, no insect beatbox. With flowers came winged pollinators and, eventually, an explosion of nature’s creaturely orchestral arrangements.

Duane Shank, First Mennonite Draft Resister to Vietnam, Dies at 70

by Rose Marie Berger 05-09-2022

Duane Shank (right) 18 yrs. old, of Lancaster, Pa. is first Mennonite during Vietnam War to be prosecuted for nonregistration for the US draft. Here Shank talks with John A. Lapp, MCC Peace Section, about his options in 1970. Courtesy of Mennonite Archival Information Database.

Duane Shank, a Mennonite peace activist, community organizer, and author, died on April 20 in Goshen, Ind., after two years in hospice. He was 70. The cause was complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to his family.

Praying to Hear the Ukrainian Nightingale Sing Again

by Rose Marie Berger 03-23-2022
“Our churches must become centers of service to our people in times of adversity.”
Illustration of a nightingale singing on top of a missile against a red background

Illustration by Matt Chase

THE RUSSIAN BEAR has once again swatted the Ukrainian nightingale.

In response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody adventurism in Ukraine, thousands of Russians defied harsh anti-protest laws to hold anti-war demonstrations. Even before rockets exploded over Kyiv, his pro-Kremlin proxies took over eastern Donbas in 2014, killing 13,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, and displacing more than 850,000. Human rights abuses in the breakaway regions skyrocketed. There is no free and independent media. Journalists are targeted. Religious persecution against Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and other religious minorities is constant and harsh. Both Ukrainian and pro-Russia armed groups detained hundreds of civilians charged with “espionage” and held them in undisclosed locations, often subjecting them to torture. The slow unraveling of the fragile ceasefire brokered in 2020, in addition to COVID-19 restrictions, left Ukrainians gasping and afraid.

Churches too are caught in the literal crossfire as well as the crossfire of contested histories. As the hot war started, Valery Antonyuk, head of the All-Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Baptist Churches, called on all congregations to prepare to open their churches to the displaced. “Our churches must become centers of service to our people in times of adversity,” he said, emphasizing that his pastors were not leaving.

As Russia Advances, Ukraine's Churches Say ‘No’ to Military Solution

A woman attends church in Kyiv, Ukraine

A woman attends a liturgy at the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ of the Greek Catholic Church, after Pope Francis called for an international day of “prayer for peace” to stop the Ukraine crisis, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Jan. 26, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

The forces that incite and fuel war can feel inevitable. Even as the Olympics events proceed — a time traditionally greeted by at least temporary truces — reports show that the Russian Federation is once again amassing troops and military hardware along its border with Ukraine. U.S. military and intelligence assessments estimate that a conflict could result in as many as 50,000 Ukrainian civilian casualties and create up to 5 million refugees — all because of a power struggle between NATO, Europe, the United States, and Russia for dominance in the region and control over fuel supply chains. While the forces of imperialism seem inescapable, the role of the church is to show the way out.

Shipwrecked in America: A Lenten Meditation

by Rose Marie Berger 01-31-2022
Here is my heart, O God. Let me be like you in all my ways.
Illustration of a loaf of bread floating sideways in a tempestuous sea

Illustration by Matt Chase

THE ROUGH VOICE of the aging priest is muffled as he bends forward to touch his head to the marble altar. Face down is better than face out, he thinks, where his failure is on full display.

The near-empty church extends into shadow. A handful of worshippers avoid close contact. They grip the wooden pews with desperation, the half-drowned scrambling for a gunwale. “The hulk of the shipwreck behind them,” as the poet says. Their children won’t come to church, the hypocrisy too much to bear. He knows the saints in high niches are no match for the idols in their children’s pockets, provide no relief from their hollowed-out fatigue. He glances up. I am the captain of this ship, he thinks, and we are going down. The bread sits lifeless in the paten. The wine a flatline. Instead of Christ at the Last Supper, the priest recalls Odysseus clinging to the fig tree while the sea greedily sucks down his ship and men. Is that what you get for rustling the gods’ cattle, he wonders.

Translating Women Back Into Scripture

by Rose Marie Berger 11-17-2021
A paradigm-shifting lectionary embraces the Bible's liberating power.
Illustration of the silhouette of a Black woman's head overlaid on an old manuscript

Illustration by Matt Chase

NEARLY 1.4 BILLION Christians around the world receive their weekly exposure to the Bible through a lectionary. In the U.S., as many as 60 percent of Christians attend services in churches that follow a lectionary. For many Christians, this is their only regular exposure to our faith’s sacred narrative.

Even for those who love the ecumenical unifying energy of a common lectionary, we also acknowledge that the scripture snippets we hear on Sundays are chosen almost exclusively by Euro-Anglo male scholars, using Bible translations that reflect the same. (The translation committee for the 2011 Common English Bible was the first to include scholars of color.) It’s hard to embrace the Bible’s liberating power when you can’t find yourself in the story, and it’s even harder to show up when you learn you’ve been edited out of it.

Enter A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, by Wilda C. Gafney, a professor of Hebrew Bible, offering not only an entirely new Christian lectionary but also rigorous and fresh Bible translations that restore women and feminine references to scripture, as well as text notes and preaching prompts—all in accessible language.

Between Disaster and Paradise, a Motorcycle-Riding Monk Found His Way 

by Rose Marie Berger 09-22-2021
His mortal remains are tucked in the earth—while his soul cracks jokes with the saints.
An illustration of two street signs, "Disaster Blvd" and "Paradise Ave"

Illustration by Matt Chase

A MONK DIES much as he lived—in holy obscurity. That’s the goal at least.

Father Maurice Flood lived as a Trappist for 64 years. At his funeral in August, his abbot described Maurice’s monastic journey as “atypical.” And so it was.

To enter the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), one vows silence, stability, poverty, chastity, continual conversion, and obedience to Christ (in the person of one’s abbot). When I met Maurice in 1980, he was uproariously funny and riding his Harley-Davidson around the U.S. with a homemade telescope strapped to the side. Though neither silent nor “stable,” his other vows appeared to hold firm.

Will the Equal Rights Amendment Threaten Religious Liberty?

Greater support for women and LGBTQ rights aligns with greater religious freedom protections. A study by Brian J. Grim at the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation found that “the average level of religious freedom is 36% higher in the countries with higher levels of support for LGBT rights than in countries with low levels of support for LGBT rights.” The expansion of human rights is good for religious freedom. This shouldn’t surprise us: A culture that values human rights for women and LGBTQ people will also value human rights for religious people.

What Otters Can Teach Us About Dismantling Empire

by Rose Marie Berger 06-22-2021
When empire is “game master,” Jesus-followers should interrogate the “play.”
A drawing of an otter looking like it is floating on the pages of an open book.

Illustration by Matt Chase

TOURISTS SPOTTED OTTERS in the Potomac River this spring. Not unheard of, but rare.

North American river otters are the only otter species in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. For millennia they were an apex species that served as “doctors” for healthy ecosystems by maintaining population levels of fish, frogs, and insects. The Colonial-era transnational fur trade, and its modern-era descendants of land destruction and water pollution, brought otters to the brink of decimation.

Now the otters are returning, a signal that decades of reparatory work to protect the Chesapeake watershed is having modest success.

The word most associated with these agile water weasels is “play.” Play is a fundamental way of interacting in the world; it’s how creatures “practice into being” what we can only imagine at first. Play develops communal trust, agility, resilience, strength, and strategy—and situates the soul firmly in the individual and social body.