Arts & Culture

JR. Forasteros 12-22-2021

Dr. Strange casts a spell on behalf of Peter Parker in Spider-Man No Way Home. Matt Kennedy, Marvel Studios

Spider-Man: No Way Home is the end of a lot of things. It's the end of the (first) Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man trilogy. It’s the end of a lot of speculation about how the multiverse will play into the MCU’s future (since the Loki TV show broke it open). But it also signals the end of the MCU’s innocence — and by extension, superhero movies in general. Spider-Man: No Way Home insists that true heroism looks markedly different from what superhero movies have offered thus far.

On Dec. 14, siblings Bekah, Caleb, and Joshua Liechty, collectively known as Girl Named Tom, became the first group to win NBC’s The Voice after 20 seasons of solo winners. In a blind audition, the siblings delighted the four celebrity coaches with their tight harmonies, but each of the three got a chance to shine throughout their performances. With the enthusiastic support of their coach, Kelly Clarkson, the trio presented new arrangements of beloved classic rock, country, and folk hits.

The Liechty siblings grew up attending Zion Mennonite Church in Archbold, Ohio, and brothers Caleb and Joshua are graduates of Goshen College, a Mennonite college. While Bekah and Joshua, who spoke with Sojourners, consider their faith identity to be “in exploration,” they continue to be rooted in Mennonite community.

Olivia Bardo 12-21-2021

Photo by Laura Kapfer on Unsplash

Novelist Edwidge Danticat expressed a similar sentiment in Create Dangerously, her 2010 memoir about making art in exile. Reflecting on the aftermath of the earthquake that had struck her home country of Haiti that year, she wrote, “I did what I always do when my own words fail me. I read.” We share this human practice of story sharing and story seeking. Danticat writes of her “desire to tell some of [her] stories in a collaged manner, to merge [her] own narratives with the oral and written narratives of others.” Through the transformative power of creating and remembering, we connect to the threads of humanity, discovering the woven patterns that are formed through our stories.

Josiah R. Daniels 12-17-2021

During this Advent season, Sojourners has featured a heavy dose of Mary-oriented stories. As a Protestant, I was taught, similar to Amar Peterman, that we should “be wary of those who spoke of Mary ‘too much.’” But what’s so scary about Mary? Some evangelical Protestants say the reason we should be leery of revering Mary is because if we honor her too much, our faith becomes a cult.

Josina Guess 12-17-2021

bell hooks in her living room with Phoebe Guess (Josina Guess’ youngest daughter). Berea, Kentucky, June 2018. Photo courtesy of Josina Guess.

When I met bell hooks three years ago, I had all four of my children in tow and I wasn’t sure what to say. A mutual friend arranged a short visit to her home. My heart was bursting with gratitude for all the ways hooks wove race, gender, class, faith, place, and love into her work. My mind was racing with ways to express some fraction of my appreciation and awe.

Jenna Barnett 12-13-2021

Graphic by Candace Sanders

In season two of Ted Lasso, our favorite stubbornly positive coach struggles with anxiety. Unfortunately, the king of talking-it-out doesn’t initially trust talk therapy. In an uncharacteristic display of disrespect, Ted — who doesn’t want to dig up his past traumas — calls the work of the team’s sports psychologist, Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, “bullshit.” Somehow, Fieldstone keeps her cool. “I can’t be your mentor without occasionally being your tormentor,” she tells Ted.

Josiah R. Daniels 12-09-2021

Photo of John Coltrane via Reuters. Photo credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy.

Did you know jazz musician John Coltrane was canonized by the African Orthodox Church in 1982? Coltrane was canonized at the behest of a religious community in San Francisco which founded a church in his name, and St. John Coltrane Church is still alive and well today.

Jenna Barnett 12-08-2021

Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer.

Spencer is the ultimate I-won’t-be-home-for-Christmas film. It is Black Swan meets Jackie meets (to a far lesser degree) the The Family Stone. Which feels poignant in 2021, a year in which many of us are afraid to go home. The omicron variant will undoubtedly keep some of us away from our families. But others who can travel home for Christmas may feel anxious about the prospect of returning to houses divided by politics, theology, misinformation, or all three.

Betsy Shirley 12-09-2021

“Above all else, guard your heart,” warns Proverbs, “for everything you do flows from it” (4:23). But can any of us say we’ve made it through the past few years with our hearts in good repair? 

Yet whenever I’d crack open a book, something stirred; stories have a way of seeping in where tweets, memes, and news alerts fail.

Olivia Bardo 12-07-2021

The yassified Christ. Via shutterstock. 

“Yassification” is a recent meme spreading across social media. To “yassify” something is to heavily edit the original image with multiple filters until the figure is blurred, airbrushed, and entirely unrecognizable. Many of these images come from Twitter user “@YassifyBot,” who primarily yassifies famous paintings, actors, and politicians. Religious leaders, however, are not immune from yassification: Pope Francis, Martin Luther, and Joan of Arc have all been yassified. Anyone can be yassified these days — even Jesus.

Jenna Barnett 12-06-2021

The Parkers wanted to limit small talk at their annual family Christmas party, fearful that conversation would veer into politics, or religion, or whether Pete Davidson is unconventionally attractive. So they organized a harmless white elephant gift exchange. By night’s end, they would be full of carbs and regret, vowing to play charades next year.

Betsy Shirley 12-03-2021

A lot of people I admire are fascinated with Hallmark Christmas movies. Chief among them is Mariame Kaba, founder of Project NIA, a leading advocate of prison abolition, and a self-described “Hallmark Channel devotee.” “I love the anthropological whiteness of those films,” Kaba told public radio in 2018. “I’m pretty sure there are white people who live like that. I don’t know any of those white people. I find it fascinating for that reason.”

Jenna Barnett 11-24-2021

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. If we’re being honest, most of the food tastes better the day after the feast. Cranberry sauce becomes a sandwich spread, ham goes into a breakfast taco, bones go into a pot to make enough broth for several weeks of soup. Some happenings are so big that there’s always much leftover.

But not all leftovers are good. Trauma, for instance, can linger for months or years after the initial act of violence.

Mitchell Atencio 11-19-2021

By Jason Blackeye via unsplash.com. 

Even with the mass upheaval of our societal patterns and expectations brought by the pandemic, and the spread of global protests against racism and police brutality, our material conditions are not changing at the pace of our rhetoric.

Julie L. Moore 12-09-2021
An aerial view of two rivers flowing around a green area of land

The Tigris and Euphrates, which flow to the west of the estimated location of the biblical Gihon River, wind through the desert.

I am the angel who heard their euphony:
the Hebrew prophet’s words turning to
                                                                                                                             lamb
topaz on Ethiopian tongue, their voices
wedded together, gleaming
                                                                                                                             knife
beneath the desert sun. Imagine it:
you are Qinaqis, born beside
                                                                                                                              ewe
the Gihon River that once flowed from
Eden, marked for exile
                                                                                                                             mute
from family, from choice,
from even the faith
                                                                                                                             sheared
you one day will embrace,
despite your pilgrimage through
                                                                                                                             torment
the wilderness.

Joey Chin 12-09-2021
Illustration of a bar graph with the gates of heaven sitting above the tallest bar

Illustration by Melanie Lambrick

AS WE APPROACH the new year, the more fortunate among us will be taking time to organize their lives by rebalancing their financial portfolios and considering new investments. While taking care of your cash, it’s important to remember that a wise teacher once said, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy.” I still don’t know what vermin is (it’s probably bad because it’s in the same sentence as moths), but I think the teacher might have been telling us that in additionto tending to our finances, we should also tend to our spiritual portfolios.

If you’re wondering about how exactly to do this, here are three rules to spiritual wealth that I think will prove helpful.

Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, by Michael J. O'Loughlin / Broadleaf Books

AFTER TWO YEARS of COVID-19, the world yearns to move forward. Meanwhile, we commemorate 40 long years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. The first years were characterized by silence, as government, churches, and other institutions generally ignored people living with HIV and dying from AIDS. However, compassionate individuals broke the silence and offered care and advocacy. In Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, Michael J. O’Loughlin gives voice to Catholics who followed the gospel call to serve these marginalized in the U.S. in the 1980s and ’90s.

Hidden Mercy, based on the podcast series Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and the Catholic Church, focuses on the experiences of a few individuals—including a nun in the Midwest, a gay artist priest, and a lay Catholic nurse. One championed the first public HIV/AIDS education program—notably held in a Catholic church. Others advocated for hospital beds for HIV patients, established hospice homes, or ministered to the homeless and persons of color, who were—and still are—disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. They facilitated pharmaceutical clinical trials that included persons of color. Others led interfaith memorial services. These Catholics ministered to the sick while the institutional Catholic Church was first silent, later insensitive, and at times heartless in written and verbal statements targeting gay people with HIV/AIDS.

Elinam Agbo 12-09-2021

Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge / Algonquin Books

WHAT IS FREEDOM, really? When we first meet the titular narrator of Kaitlyn Greenidge’s novel Libertie, the year is 1860 and Libertie Sampson is a child in Kings County, New York, witnessing a miracle: Her mother, Dr. Sampson, raises a man escaping slavery “from the dead.” Her father, a former slave who died before her birth, named Libertie after his “longing” for “the bright, shining future he was sure was coming.” Libertie grows up watching her mother work, learning about the body’s ailments alongside the plants and remedies that can allay suffering. Perhaps this—the ability to heal, to gain access to a position other Black women could not, to guide others to life outside slavery—is the freedom Dr. Sampson envisions for her daughter, who is raised to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

But Libertie soon learns that she and her mother do not have the same privileges: Where her mother’s light skin allowed her access to medical school, Libertie’s dark skin means she cannot enter the same rooms as her mother. When white patients recoil from Libertie’s touch—and her mother does not defend or shield her—Libertie begins to lose faith in her mother’s version of freedom.

Mitchell Atencio 11-18-2021

Demi Singleton as Serena Williams, Will Smith as Richard Williams, and Saniyya Sidney as Venus Williams in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘King Richard.’ Photo credit: Chiabella James, courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

The film opens when Venus and Serena are already near teenhood and tennis stardom. We don’t suffer through scenes of the two first learning to swing a racket, and this allows the movie to focus on the true challenge the sisters faced: the classism and racism of rich, white, tennis institutions that had little time for two Black girls from Compton, Calif. — an issue that has improved but still exists in U.S. tennis.

Danny Duncan Collum 12-09-2021
An image of the stars of Dopesick with OxyContin pills floating around them

From Dopesick

THERE'S A MOMENT in the Hulu miniseries Dopesick in which a Drug Enforcement Administration officer walks into her supervisor’s office to talk about the wave of opioid addiction that was, in the early 2000s, already rampant in central Appalachia. Earlier she’d been told that the higher-ups weren’t interested in “pill mill” doctors and pharmacy burglaries. They wanted to go after the cartel. Well, says Agent Bridget Meyer (played by Rosario Dawson), she’s found the cartel—and proceeds to recite the Stamford, Conn., address of Purdue Pharma Inc.

Over the past few years, documents uncovered in various lawsuits have made it clear that Purdue Pharma, privately owned by members of the Sackler family, was “the cartel” behind a plague of addiction and overdose that has so far killed more than a half-million Americans. And the kingpin of this cartel was Purdue’s Richard Sackler, former company president and co-chair of the board of directors.

In 1996, Sackler conceived an ambition to cure the world of chronic pain—and multiply the family fortune—with the “miracle drug” OxyContin, a powerful time-released painkiller. Sackler hired an army of attractive young sales reps and aimed them at small-town doctors in parts of the country with lots of painful workplace injuries from things like logging and coal mining. Misery, dependency, and death followed as the drug spread unchecked like wildfire for an entire decade.