![This Month's Cover](https://sojo.net/sites/default/files/styles/huge/public/magazine/soj0812.jpg?itok=G3OY2pqf)
Magazine
Sojourners Magazine: December 2008
Subscribe to Sojourners for as little as $3.95!
Watch a video of the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School.
Listen in on our conversation with poet Rachel Guido deVries as she reads her poem, Imperfection, and talks about the inspiration for writing it.
Writer and activist Demetria Martinez reads an excerpt from her short story, La Anunciacion, and talks about what drives her main character, Lupe.
Ed Spivey Jr., art director and humor columnist extraordinaire, makes his video debut. Watch as he reads this month’s column, “It’s All His Fault.”
Cover Story
The good news: God's sustaining power is not tied to the Dow.
Feature
Forming relations with people of faith in the Holy Land could help transform the U.S. role in the region.
How a Howard Thurman lecture series has transformed a university -- and much more.
When President Bush leaves office in January, he’ll take with him the cadre of neo-cons who shaped the administration’s foreign policy over the last eight years.
Why Africa is a land of endless possibilitiy -- and how that should guide U.S. relations with the continent.
Columns
The great wheel of the Christian liturgical year is turning once again.
The following is an excerpt from economic philosopher Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations treatise, one of the driving intellectual forces behind contemporary market theory.
Culture Watch
In Disciples of the Street, Eric Gutierrez weaves three storylines into a narrative about the role of hip-hop in Christian ministry.
Fred Rogers, the creator and host of the children?s TV show, Mister Rogers?
Departments
In her September-October 2008 letter (“Don’t Speak for Me”), Lisa Clark writes that she is not guilty for taking part in slavery, and that she does not want her state representati
Shame on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program for not accepting sex offenders (“Investing in Second Chances,” by Catherine Cuellar, July 2008
Move over Guitar Hero, Guitar Praise is the new toy for the Christian heavy metal and power-rock set.
Imperfection is the place where the spirit enters,
the small hole in your shirt, the loosening threads
of carpet, the ache in your soul for forgiveness.
The Gulf Coast—and New Orleans, specifically—is far from recovered after being ravaged in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Northern Iraq is part of the contested homeland of ethnic Kurds—and until recently a safe haven for those escaping Baghdad’s violence, especially Chaldean Christians.
In 2003, Ugandan Jewish coffee farmer J.J. Keki asked himself what he could do to stop religious violence.
In her article “Changing Our Minds” (September-October 2008), Frances Moore Lappé suggests that the real barriers to an egalitarian society are the assumptions we have about pove
By the new year, the Vatican will go solar. In September, engineers began installing 2,000 solar panels designed by the German firm SolarWorld and given to the Vatican as an Epiphany gift.
The economic crisis presents particular challenges and questions for people of faith: What is the appropriate Christian response?
Web Extra
Founders of the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School discuss their vision to preserve the precious music of the Appalachian Mountains.