Arts & Culture

Tyler Huckabee 7-24-2025

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Stephen Colbert arrives for the Saturday Night Live 50: The Anniversary Special at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, Feb. 16, 2025. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
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In 2022, Dua Lipa appeared as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and asked him about the role his faith plays in his work.

“Does your faith and your comedy ever overlap?” she asked. “And does one ever win out?”

Colbert first offers a little quip (“I think, ultimately, us all being mortal, the faith will win out in the end”) and then launches into a lengthy and eloquent treatise on how Catholic teaching has trained him to wield humor as a defense against despair.

Tyler Huckabee 7-22-2025

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Photo by Diego Molina. Graphic by Ryan McQuade/Sojourners.
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You can add Nathan Evans Fox to the list of artists who are in the country music scene without entirely being of it. Or maybe it’s better to say Fox is operating in a purer, livelier stratosphere of country music that neither needs nor wants the approval of the Nashville ruling class. So far, he’s doing just fine. His “Hillbilly Hymn (Okra and Cigarettes)” made a viral splash; a rich tune in the tradition of old Appalachian spirituals that envisions a cop-free Heaven where “the rich get scared” and “the guns are all for shootin’ clays.”

Hojung Lee 7-15-2025

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Picture of Austin Channing Brown. Graphic by Ryan McQuade/Sojourners.
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Some may want me to stay quiet, but I want to be loud. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to embrace the full spectrum of my humanity, the same way that author Austin Channing Brown has learned to embrace herself. In her upcoming book, Full of Myself: Black Womanhood and the Journey to Self-Possession, she details this journey.

Jim McDermott 7-15-2025

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Carl Bean / 'I Was Born This Way'
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If asked to pick one Lady Gaga song to encapsulate who she is and what she stands for, you’d be hard pressed to come up with a better choice than “Born This Way.” Released in 2011, the song is a vibrant, full-body dance anthem that calls on listeners to celebrate who they are. “God makes no mistakes,” she sings in the refrain. “I’m on the right track, baby / I was born this way.” The song was immediately embraced upon release, particularly by the LGBTQ+ community. 

As it turns out, this wasn’t the first time a song by that name made that kind of impact. In 1977, Motown Records released the disco anthem “I Was Born This Way,” an upbeat tune featuring a largely unknown Black gospel singer who responds to critics with a refrain that was a head-turner for its time: “I’m happy. I’m carefree. And I’m gay. I was born this way.”

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'Superman' / Warner Bros / Courtesy Everett Collection
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Superman has always reminded me of Jesus.

In director James Gunn’s latest interpretation, Superman, Clark Kent is once again the heroic savior — thrust into battles against villainous forces and multi-dimensional threats. But this time, the stakes are political.

Ezra Craker 7-10-2025

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Googly Eyes, Joy Oladokun &amp; Allison Ponthier / Jesus and John Wayne / YouTube
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Released five years ago, Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation is no orindary history book. Since it published, the treatise on militant Christian masculinity has shaped conversations about Trumpism in both Christian and secular spaces. A surprise New York Times bestseller, the book resonated with many readers who found that it clarified their own experiences of growing up in the American evangelical subculture — and it drew criticism from others who found it to be an unfair takedown of conservative Christianity.

Now, it has a theme song.

The Editors 7-24-2025

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From<em> Loved Into Being</em> by The Work of the People
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Divine Love

Loved Into Being is a tender five-part film series inviting us to rediscover our belovedness in God. James Finley — who was mentored by Thomas Merton — explores how “the divinity that shines forth out of broken places” can heal our wounds and reimagine community. The Work of the People

Abby Olcese 7-24-2025

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From <em>Murderbot</em>
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I’VE SPENT MOST of my life explaining to people why movies and TV shows are more than just a way to pass time. My favorite screen stories — serial or cinematic — help me connect with their creators or the depicted characters. Narratives help us make sense of our experiences and recognize ways we can help others consider their own. Jesus knew this when he told parables, using stories to communicate some of his most important teachings on how we should live generously and faithfully.

A sci-fi series about a robot who struggles to relate to human beings may seem an unlikely example of how good storytelling helps us walk through the world. But that’s what the Apple TV+ show Murderbot offers.

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The University of North Carolina Press
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MELANIE R. HILL’S Colored Women Sittin’ on High is a love letter to Black women preachers. “From the cradle, I was surrounded by Black women preachers,” she writes. “Black women who prayed, Black women who preached and prayed, Black women who laid their hands on me and prophesied a destiny full of hope and fulfilled dreams.” For Hill, womanist sermonic practice isn’t confined to just the pulpit. These preachers include the aunts and grandmothers, artists and activists who have “created a healing and restorative space beyond the four walls of the church for the surrounding community and region.”

Hill, an assistant professor of both global racial justice and American literature at Rutgers, utilizes Alice Walker’s definition of womanism as laid out in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, focusing closely on how womanists are “committed to survival and wholeness of entire people.” She addresses the ways that womanism and Black women’s literature have informed the work of Black women preachers, attending to their voices in what she terms “womanist sermonic practice.” Through this practice, Black women preachers demonstrate how to love ourselves and the Black bodies that we inhabit and how to love others and fight against systems of oppression.

Colton Bernasol 7-24-2025

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Basic Books
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MICHAEL ALBERTUS’ THESIS is both simple and grand: “Land is power.” From the earliest settlements of Mesopotamia to the land reforms of Communist China, Albertus insists that control of land has played a central role in intensifying economic disenfranchisement, ecological destruction, and racial and gender inequality. Too often, a minority has centralized land to plunder for resources, no matter the cost.

In Land Power, Albertus, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, calls the past two centuries of large social redistributions of land the “Great Reshuffle.” These transformations, which continue today, have taken various forms.

Jenna Barnett 7-24-2025

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Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
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SHORTLY AFTER THE Vatican announced that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native, would be the next pope, the Cubs changed the iconic Wrigley Field sign to read, “Hey, Chicago, He’s a Cubs fan!” Then Pope Leo’s brother John refuted the claim. Apparently, Leo loves the White Sox, which is convenient, given that their colors more closely match the papal vestments. While this revelation is a big loss for the Cubs (they’re used to that, fortunately), it’s still a huge win for the city of Chicago. In June, Chicagoans (even Cubs fans!) swarmed to the White Sox’ Rate Field to hear Pope Leo address his hometown’s faithful via Jumbotron in what Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich called “the sermon on the mound.”

Clearly, the new pope’s love of the Windy City runs deep, so we’ve put together a list of hometown facts about Pope Leo (Chicago Man) XIV. While all unverified by the Vatican, some truth could be hidden here. Stranger things have happened: a man on the moon, an American in the popemobile.

Matt Bernico 7-03-2025

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Image from <em>28 Years Later</em>
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In 2002, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland released a post-apocalyptic horror movie that would redefine the zombie genre forever. 28 Days Later was not only ambitious for its experimental cinematography and reliance on relatively obscure actors, but also because of its critical commentary on violence and militarism. Boyle and Garland have partnered up again for the newest installment in the 28 Days Later film series, with the release 28 Years Later (now playing in theaters).

There’s nothing wrong with a gross and scary zombie movie that just stops there, but the 28 Days Later film series offers more than jump scares and blood-barfing, fast-moving zombies, which are called “infected” in the films.

Jim McDermott 7-24-2025

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Scene from the 1973 film adaptation of <em>Jesus Christ Superstar.</em> / Alamy and Getty
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MORE THAN FIVE decades ago, two young Brits with dreams of writing musicals came up with the audacious idea of a rock opera about the Passion of Jesus Christ, told from the point of view of Jesus’ betrayer, Judas Iscariot. From the very moment composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and songwriter Tim Rice proposed it, Jesus Christ Superstar provoked both adulation and condemnation. And five decades have done nothing to diminish either the show’s fire or the intensity of audience reactions.

In August, the Hollywood Bowl will host the musical with another innovative twist: Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo plays Jesus and rock star Adam Lambert takes on Judas, in a one-weekend-only production directed by Tony and Emmy Award winner Sergio Trujillo. Some have already condemned the production for giving a queer Black woman the role of Jesus, decrying it as “intentionally blasphemous” — a complaint that has been made about various aspects of the show (including its casting) from the beginning. But the show’s actual history reveals that Superstar has been anything but a blight upon Christianity. Generations of artists have found within it fertile ground to reflect on faith and justice, sacrifice and society.

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Centennial Exhibition / Jonathan Blanc / New York Public Library
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IN MAY, THE Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, located in Harlem, N.Y., celebrated its 100th anniversary. Originally known as the 135th Street Branch Library Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints, it is named after Arturo Schomburg, a Black Puerto Rican from Santurce, Puerto Rico. He moved to New York City when he was 17 and is widely considered one of the great luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

Schomburg recalled an encounter with his fifth grade teacher, who told him, “Black people have no history, no heroes, no great moments.” That moment left an indelible mark. He would go on to dedicate his life to collecting artifacts, papers, and works of art from Africa and across the African diaspora. In his seminal essay, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” Schomburg referred to his 10,000-item collection as “vindicating evidences.”

Since learning about Schomburg, I have reflected on how, as a Latino, Schomburg could have chosen to suppress the story of his own Blackness. Instead, he embraced his full Puerto Rican identity, Blackness and all.

The Editors 7-24-2025

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John-Michael Tebelak (1949-1985) was a playwright and director who wrote the original version of <em>Godspell</em>, a 1971 musical based primarily on the gospel of Matthew. / Illustration by Bijou Karman
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An introduction to the August 2025 issue of ‘Sojourners.’
Zachary Lee 6-27-2025

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'How to Train Your Drago' / Universal Pictures
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Sojourners spoke with DeBlois about the film’s relevancy, the importance of wonder in the creative process, and filmmaking as an act of faith.

Georgia Gray Coley 6-25-2025

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Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, and Pedro Pascal of 'Materialists' / A24
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Celine Song is just two films into her career, but she’s already established herself as a storyteller who infuses the tumult of modern love with ancient wisdom, and a kind of transcendence that breathes poetry into a disenchanted world.

Abby Olcese 6-16-2025

'Life of Chuck' / NEON

“Inside the soul of this accountant who loves his job and loves his wife and loves his son, is this dancer,” Hiddleston said during a press conference. “And that might be true of anyone you know or anyone you see on the street … Inside that human being is greater breadth and depth and range than we could possibly imagine.”

Alfonso Sasieta 6-13-2025

A Tuesday night celebration at L'Arche Highland House. Photo by Rachel Schrock

L’Arche challenges the notion that a group home is predominantly a place to provide care services. We have learned over time that the health of our community is rooted in how we gather, celebrate, and make known the unique gifts of every person. This does not diminish the work of competent caregiving, but rather, it places it in a larger context that recognizes how ritual and gathering emphasize a person’s gifts and beauty rather than their diagnoses.

FILE PHOTO: Kendrick Lamar, winner of the Record Of The Year, Best Rap Performance, Best Rap Song, Best Music Video, and Song Of The Year awards, poses in the press room during the 67th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 2, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

Kendrick Lamar is a prophet — and a multimillionaire. Through his music, he tells the stories of the oppressed and marginalized, even as his own net worth surpasses $140 million. He calls for spiritual and political resistance to empire yet stood center stage at the Super Bowl halftime show — America’s most-watched spectacle of capitalist excess. At the end of it, he delivered a moment of rebellion, urging viewers to “turn the TV off,” subverting the very platform that elevated him. And yet, the performance also propelled his music sales and deepened his entrenchment within the industry’s elite. At a sold-out Pop Out show, he brought together feuding Bloods and Crips in a powerful gesture of peace and unity — sponsored, ironically, by Amazon, a corporation widely criticized for its union-busting, exploitative labor practices, and surveillance capitalism.