Arts & Culture
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
IN HIS LATEST book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, Christian Wiman is not concerned with suspense. Two paragraphs into his first “entry against despair,” he discloses the fiercest nemesis of that tried-and-true doom and gloom. “The only true antidote to the plague of modern despair is an absolute — and perhaps even annihilating — awe,” he writes.
That’s probably why Wiman, writer, translator, and professor of communication arts at Yale Divinity School, begins Zero at the Bone by mining the wisdom of the world’s biggest experts on awe: children. His latest collection leans on the “visionary innocence” of a child “whose unwilled wonder erases any distinction between her days and her dreams.” Wiman has had daily access to two such visionaries: his twin daughters Eliza and Fiona.
Unfortunately, he has also had steady access to despair, most visibly through his 19-year battle with a rare, aggressive form of bone cancer. He is currently in remission.
reclaimingmytheology.com
Finding Faith Again
With breadth and depth, the Reclaiming My Theology podcast seeks to “take our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress.” Host Brandi Miller interviews diverse thinkers who are building a freer faith and traversing heavy topics, such as purity culture, with candor and diligent hope. reclaimingmytheology.com
Anthony Hopkins in One Life
ONE OF MY favorite literary quotes comes from David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas. When Adam Ewing, a 19th-century notary from California, decides to become an abolitionist and protest the transatlantic slave trade, he imagines his father-in-law declaring that Ewing is condemning himself to a meaningless life that will amount to nothing more than a drop in the ocean. Ewing responds, “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
I thought about that quote while watching One Life, a 2023 film based on the real life o fNicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who, in the year before World War II, rescuedmore than 600 Jewish refugee children in Prague by relocating them to England in what came to be called the Czech Kindertransport. Winton’s determination was indeed amazing, but as the drama shows, his efforts depended on many people who did what they could to help — many drops in an ocean of good.
Marge Erin Johnson preaching at Wake Forest Divinity School in North Carolina, March 2023
PREACHER ACTIVIST AND drag queen Marge Erin Johnson walked up to the wooden lectern at Fort Washington Collegiate Church in Manhattan wearing a sequin rainbow dress and high hot pink wig. “I want to give an extravagant welcome to the LGBTQIA+ community,” she said, “especially those of us that have been burned by the demonic homophobic and transphobic flames of the church. You are welcome here. And lastly, a special welcome to those who are here today — whether you are queer or straight — but for some reason, you feel more seen and comfortable and heard because there is a drag queen at the pulpit.”
Marge Erin Johnson is the drag persona of James Admans (they/them), a nonbinary minister, currently ordained, pending call, in the United Church of Christ. A graduate of Union Theological Seminary, Admans served as assistant minister at Fort Washington Collegiate Church where they coordinated an LGBTQ+ ministry called Beyond Labels, and edited the 2022 anthology Beyond Worship: Meditations on Queer Worship, Liturgy, and Theology. They are most well-known, however, for hosting drag church services where LGBTQ+ individuals can feel affirmed and welcomed back into spaces that may have caused immense trauma.
Marge told Sojourners that drag church “might be exactly what we need to remind us of the beauty and diversity and God’s infinite love for all.” But her ministry comes at a time when drag culture itself is under fire from U.S. conservatives. According to the ACLU, there are 319 anti-LGBTQ+ bills under deliberation or passed into law in the United States. These include legislation that would censor books with queer characters or ban trans youth from sports, and several anti-drag bills that could make performing drag to younger audiences illegal. These bills, often used to create moral panic by associating trans people and drag queens with sexual endangerment of children, are in large part created and supported by Christians.
Daneen Akers faced a dilemma: After moving away from fundamentalist Christianity, what books about God could she read to her kids? She went through the boxes in her parents’ basement, full of the books she’d grown up with — books that used exclusively male pronouns for God and talked about Jesus’ blood satisfying a debt owed for humanity’s sins. “The faith stories I had inherited, a lot of us had inherited, were just not sufficient. I wanted something expansive,” Akers said.
Photo courtesy Ashley Lynn Hengst. Graphic by Candace Sanders/Sojourners
Only 1 in 4 adults play sports each year, according to a 2015 study from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This is despite nearly three in four respondents reporting playing as kids, and a majority of adults saying sports improved their mental and physical health ... Ashley Lynn Hengst sees opportunities for the church to help decrease those disparities and build space for more people of all ages to play sports. Hengst serves in pastoral care at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., after a decade working for the Y in youth development.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
WHEN I MOVED to Washington, D.C., the second thing I noticed was the rats. (The first was that D.C. drivers are more aggressive than those from Indiana. I’ve since learned to use my horn liberally.)
I’m not proud of my initial response to these furry children of God. I shrieked. I complained. I was frightened to go outside at night, because with every step I took, I heard them scurrying. I could practically feel their long, pink tails tickling my ankles. I filled their burrows with dirt and rocks, covering them with bricks. I was proud of my resourcefulness, until I found the bricks shoved aside and the burrows reestablished. These rats were strong and resilient. Touché, rats. Touché.
As winter approached, the rat population shrank. Small communities could still be found dwelling near dumpsters, and I realized that like me, the rats were just trying to survive. I began learning about the plight of the urban rat and became convicted that as Christians committed to social justice, we must open our hearts to Rattus norvegicus.
You might roll your eyes and ask, “Is a Christian response to rats really necessary?” I assure you, it is. We don’t bat an eye at squirrels (also rodents), yet we are universally disgusted by rats, which are, in case you’ve forgotten, also part of God’s creation. We are so possessive over our trash that we would rather kill the rats than let them enjoy our chicken bones. We must do better.
That’s why I’m launching NIBBLE (Nonviolent Interventions By Bible-Loving Evangelicals), a nonprofit focused on improving human-rat relations in accordance with the gospel. Here’s a preview of our five-step plan for building Beloved Community with neighborhood rats:
'Civil War,' Murray Close / A24
Especially for those churches who imagine ourselves to be a mediating middle path in a country where every issue has become sharply partisan, Civil War illustrates that objectivity ends where the suffering of vulnerable people begins.
'Immaculate' / Neon
The gospel writers were not fixated on Mary’s sexual history; it’s the institutional church that objectified her — casting her as a perpetual virgin, elevating her sexual experience (or lack thereof) to be the most important thing about her
'Dune: Part Two,' Warner Bros.
The Dune series’ ambivalence and criticism about the role of the messiah lends some light on one of scripture’s more enigmatic ideas: the messianic secret.
'Time,' BBC One, Sally Mais
The series, which stars Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who), Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us), and Tamara Lawrance (Kindred), uses the setting of the prison as a vehicle for exploring the immense pressures that society places upon women, particularly mothers.
BBC
Dispatches of Devotion
The BBC weekly podcast Heart and Soul dissects religion’s ubiquitous and misunderstood presence in public life. Imbued with a refreshing human sensitivity, weekly episodes cover a range of faith topics — from Russian Orthodoxy in Kenya to a Sikh music revival. BBC
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
LAST WINTER I woke up to 24 text messages on the family chain, which could only mean that someone had died, or someone was pregnant, or the San Antonio Spurs had finally decided to end their rebuild and trade four first-round draft picks for star point guard Trae Young. But I was wrong. My 2-year-old nephew Sébastien had asked his first theological question. The question arrived, according to my sister, around 6 a.m., an ungodly time for existential matters.
“What is a soul, mama?” Séb asked her. My nephew had been running through the lyrics of “Frosty the Snowman,” wondering what it meant to have a “jolly, happy soul.”
I FaceTimed my sister to learn more. “How did you respond?” I don’t have any kids — yet — so her anecdote was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
Illustration by Lauren Wright Pittman
DURING THE COP 28 climate change conference in Dubai, participants deliberated at length on the climate crisis and rightly set ambitious goals to address the challenges. As may seem natural, much of the conversation centered on securing a planet habitable for humans. But as Christians we must wrestle deeply with sharing God’s covenant with other creatures. Seeing creatures and the natural world as having no meaning other than how they serve human interest is a failure of human vision. The 2007 documentary Earth poignantly highlighted how an anthropocentric worldview and the human-caused environmental crisis have imperiled other creatures in a miraculously delicate system.
Perhaps out of species self-interest, much environmental work focuses on how climate shifts impact current and future human generations. But as people of faith, we can take a more wholistic view that also demonstrates commitment to the well-being of all God’s creation — animate and inanimate — because all are interdependent. In the context of the climate crisis, corrective justice requires addressing the concerns of communities disproportionately affected by climate collapse, as well as ensuring the welfare of nonhuman creatures. It is incumbent upon us to challenge the anthropocentric lens and champion biocentric approaches that affirm the sanctity of all life and creation. Our scripture readings this month present nonhuman creatures as equal partners on God’s planet and speak forcefully about their right to exist and thrive alongside our human communities. They feature animals dancing in open spaces, frolicking in the sea, and celebrating life in its fullness. Everything in nature reflects God’s glory, participates in God’s salvation, and reminds us of the divine presence.
Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo
Surely I betrayed her at least three times:
eighteen months of bone-grinding hip pain,
a list of life stories never recorded, and
leaving her exposed to suffering because
I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was so hard to die.
The cock’s crow was just basic kidney physiology,
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
MANY YOUNG CHRISTIANS grow up with special “adventure Bibles” composed of a curated selection of Genesis stories. Featuring colorfully illustrated characters and simplified, “age-appropriate” plot lines, these stories are admittedly easier for children to absorb. Take, for instance, the adaptation of Genesis 3 found in Zondervan’s The Beginner’s Bible: We meet Adam and Eve walking the arcadian Earth. Their bodies are hidden behind carefully placed branches and auburn waist-length hair. Acting alone, Eve takes a bite of bright red fruit and loses paradise. It’s a simple story. It’s also inaccurate.
Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis presents a much more complicated portrait of the first book of the Bible. She invites us to return to these ancient tales and allow the figures to re-introduce themselves. In Robinson’s telling of Genesis 3, Eve is much more dynamic. She is “the mother of all living” who, alongside Adam, “disobeyed, doubted, tried to deceive,” and as a result, brought about “human agency, responsibility, even freedom.”
Grove Press
IN ONE OF her visions, the 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich saw all of creation in the palm of her hand. She observed that it was round as a ball and small as a hazelnut. “I marvelled how it might last,” she wrote, “for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness].” In other words, she thought it might vanish for being so small.
This is the feeling that pervades Samantha Harvey’s lyrical novel Orbital, which follows six astronauts as they circle the Earth and conduct scientific research. Hailing from various countries, they experience together a God’s-eye view of the planet they left behind. Continents roll past, political borders disappear, and a sense of urgency emerges. In a way only astronauts can, they absorb the simultaneous vitality and fragility of their collective home and reckon with the human-caused calamities that threaten it.
From The Wounded Healer
IN THE WOUNDED HEALER: Ministry in Contemporary Society, Catholic theologian and priest Henri J.M. Nouwen analyzes how the church fails to address the heart of our collective pain and longing. Nouwen presents a paradigm for renewed Christian leadership and care founded on the archetype of the “wounded healer.” More than 50 years after the publication of The Wounded Healer in 1972, we continue to struggle — both individually and societally — with the “wounds” Nouwen names: alienation, separation, isolation, and loneliness. Whether we’re ministers or not, we need the gentle wisdom of the wounded healer to build a more loving, just world.
While the concept goes back at least as far as Plato, the term “wounded healer” was coined by psychoanalyst and doctor Carl Jung. To demonstrate the link between personal suffering and the capacity to care for others, Jung draws on the Greek myth of Chiron. Chiron is a centaur who, due to severe physical pain, becomes an important healer and teacher. Nouwen extends this principle to ministry, calling for church leaders to cultivate “a deeper understanding of the ways in which [they] can make [their] own wounds available as a source of healing.” For both Jung and Nouwen, this work develops depth and compassion. Nouwen writes, “For a compassionate [person] nothing human is alien: no joy and no sorrow, no way of living and no way of dying.”
From The Virgin Suicides
THE REMAINING LISBON sister are sprawled in their bedroom when the priest knocks on their door.
“Hello girls, I thought we could talk. Do you feel like talking?”
Their returning stares are vacant and unknowable, and the priest wears only the pretense of concern. Both parties maintain their false decorum, neither fully able to acknowledge their shared grief: the suicide of Cecilia, the youngest Lisbon sister, only 13 years old.
From 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture
WHEN THE FULL Revised Standard Version of the Bible was released in 1952, the translation used “young woman” instead of “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14, which so enraged conservatives like Rev. M. Luther Hux that he publicly burned that page of the Bible. This would not be nearly the most impactful RSV translation, however, as the new film 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture seeks to explain.
1946 (named for the year the RSV New Testament was released) aims to measure the drastic effects of the RSV being the first Bible translation to use the word “homosexual.”
The film follows the research by Kathy Baldock and Ed Oxford on the RSV translation, with supplementary scholarship from other academics who help explain the RSV’s rendering of the Greek words malakoi and arsenokoitai as “homosexual.” It also traces the cultural ripples of this translation, which the film asserts helped anti-LGBTQ+ Christians demonize and ostracize queer people. Finally, it shows the relationship between the film’s director Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, a lesbian, and her father Sal Roggio, a conservative pastor.
Translating portions of the Bible can be tricky business. As scholars note, arsenokoitai is a word with few other uses across the ancient world and may have been invented by the apostle Paul. Literally, it is a combination word that means “man who beds with males,” connotating a sexual usage. Malakoi means “soft,” and is understood as referring to “effeminate” men.
In the American Standard Version, a common translation that preceded the RSV, the translation used for arsenokoitai is “abusers of themselves with men.” The RSV later changed its translation to “sexual perverts,” though at the time, this was code for LGBTQ+ people. After the RSV, the New International Version used “men who have sex with men,” while the New Revised Standard Version used “sodomites.” The NRSV’s Updated Edition, released in 2021, uses “men who engage in illicit sex,” while noting that the meaning of the Greek is uncertain.