Sojourners Magazine: August 2012

FROM FICTIONAL bloodsuckers to all-too-real super PACs, the diseases of our society’s relationship to wealth are unpacked in this month’s Sojourners—along with some suggestions for hope and healing. Looking at the real-life body politic, Nick Penniman’s cover story, “Rotten to the Core,” tells us just how badly our broken campaign finance system has corrupted democracy; he also points to specific strategies a “strange-bedfellows army” is using to tackle the problem. Surveying the U.S. economy as a whole, Gar Alperovitz’s “More Bullish Than You Think” explains how, though wealth inequality has literally gone medieval in scope, the “new economy” movement is demonstrating change in many ways, from credit union membership to worker-owned businesses to land trusts.

In our CultureWatch section, Kathryn Reklis describes how, far from being pure escapism, the vampire and zombie stories so popular today help to unveil the addictive and ultimately mindless desire fostered by consumer society. While the sexy, powerful protagonists of True Blood and other contemporary vampire fare make lust look glitzy and appealing, the mindlessly hungering zombie, emptied not just of self-control but of self and of human connection, is its true endpoint.

How do you fight vampire-like forces of corruption? Let God’s sunshine in.