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Magazine

Sojourners Magazine: August 2008

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Cover Story

When it comes to our health-care crisis, some argue for market-based solutions, saying that "consumer-directed care" will give us more freedom to choose the plan that's right for us. But what they really mean is "you're on your own."

Feature

Six myths about single-payer health care
A Kenyan peacemaker talks about the power of listening in the midst of violence.
Phyllis Tickle talks with Becky Garrison, senior contributing writer for The Wittenburg Door and author of Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, about how to deal with the seismic shifts occurring in Christ­ianity.
A three-day event features prayer, worship, and a call to put faith into action.
Every 500 years or so, the church—and the world—experience huge social, political, economic, and cultural shifts. What does this revolutionary evolution mean for the church?

Commentary

Health care for all is a moral imperative.
Churches and ex-prisoners help each other find the way.
In Ohio, a victory over predatory lending.

Columns

Why do we bear the fractured order of love?
Putting stickers on cars is a different kind of superpower.
Unequal access to medical care has made death a social disease.

Culture Watch

An excerpt from Gary Haugen's new book, Just Courage.
Book review: The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, edited by Robert Ellsberg.
Do it yourself—and also with others.
Christian conservatives aim for—and hit—the mainstream sweet spot.
Book review: From Stone to Living Word: Letting the Bible Live Again, by Debbie Blue.
It’s My Life! A Guide to Alternatives After High School, by Janine Schwab and the AFSC; Women in Church History, by Joanne Turpin; Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction, by Rodney Clapp; Chant: Music for Paradise.
Film review: Take, directed by Charles Oliver.

Departments

Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle A.
Thanks for your column in the June issue about the military budget (“A Theft from Those Who Hunger,” by Frida Berrigan).
In a retrial in May, a Brazilian court acquitted Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, one of two ranchers who allegedly ordered the killing of 73-year-old Catholic Sister Dorothy Stang three years ago.
Globally, the price of food is skyrocketing, causing riots in developing countries. In the U.S., food banks are running low on donations and high on visitors.
Each month, 60,000 Iraqis are forced to leave their homes due to continuing violence, according to a Sept. 2007 report by the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Since 2003, when the U.S.
With the party conventions approaching, the presidential campaign officially heads toward the homestretch, and many of us are evaluating the proposals that the candidates and their parties believe
It is encouraging to hear how the new generation is approaching religion (“Making Their Mark,” June 2008). They seem to want authentic religious experience and service.
Promoted as the first pope to own an iPod, Benedict XVI is sculpted here in perfect polyresin, standing a towering 7 inches high.
In 1994, Iphigenia Mukanta­bana’s husband and five of her children were brutally murdered by her Hutu neighbors.
The May 2008 issue on “Putting Your Money Where Your Heart Is” suggests many fine ways of doing just that. However, investing in tax-free municipal bonds was not mentioned.
I expect the whitest dove, purity as the Spirit breaks apart firm blue of our ceilinged sky, a tapered shape, an elegance. But Picasso was right.
In May, representatives from more than 100 nations met to forge a global agreement to ban cluster bombs, aerial weapons that release tiny “bomblets” over a wide area and kill indiscrimi