Feature
Illustration by Chris Buzelli
The ivory-billed woodpecker has been called “Lord God Bird,” for its massive size; “Grail Bird,” for the fervor with which people seek it; and “Ghost Bird,” for the way it hovers on the murky edge between existence and extinction. But Cornell ornithologist Tim Gallagher, author of The Grail Bird, calls it “Lazarus Bird,” after the story of Jesus resurrecting his friend Lazarus four days after he died.
Growing up in the church, I was never sure what to do with resurrection. My father’s faith didn’t emphasize the idea that Christ died for my salvation, or that Christ’s believers would be raised from the dead, but these beliefs were everywhere—in the hymns we sang in the various United Methodist churches where he served as pastor, in the creed we recited every Sunday: I believe in ... the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
From my seat in the pews, the promise of everlasting life rang hollow. I did not expect decomposed bodies of believers would one day be reconstituted, nor did I see this as desirable for myself or the people I loved. But metaphorical interpretations of resurrection also fell short: A body raised symbolically from the dead is still very much dead. In graduate school, I read about Thomas Jefferson’s excision of miracles, including the resurrection, from his Bible with a sense of relief. The stories I couldn’t believe literally or understand figuratively, could be simply cut away. But as I’ve grown older, these stories resist neat excision. To dismiss resurrection entirely feels increasingly fraught: Why did faith matter if it did not transform real bodies, real lives, here on earth?
Illustration by Julian Rentzsch
If you drove down Filbert Street in Center City Philadelphia in February 2025, you might notice a few things. The street is not very wide. There’s a train station. And a large, boarded-up building, surrounded by fencing—it used to be a Greyhound Bus terminal. A sign on a pedestrian walkway says “Fashion District.”
Soon, you’d see an “All Traffic Must Turn Left” sign. And since you are traffic, you turn left — and quickly realize you’re in Chinatown. Make another left to Arch Street, and you’ll find Chinese characters on almost every storefront, even on “The Bank of Princeton.” On nearby Race Street, there’s a historical marker that reads:
Philadelphia Chinatown
Founded in the 1870s by Chinese immigrants, it is the only “Chinatown” in Pennsylvania. This unique neighborhood includes businesses and residences owned by, and serving, Chinese Americans. Here, Asian cultural traditions are preserved and ethnic identity perpetuated.
But remember Filbert Street and that boarded-up bus terminal? In summer 2022, the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia 76ers announced that they wanted to build an 18,500-seat new arena right there, taking up a third of the Fashion District (a shopping mall formerly known as The Gallery), sitting directly above the train station, connecting to the old Greyhound terminal, and removing Filbert Street from the city grid. At the time, the bus terminal was in use, not fenced off — isn’t it funny how things can sometimes work out just how billionaires want them to?
Residents, especially those from nearby Chinatown, almost immediately raised concerns. Two Pennsylvania-based organizations — the Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance and Asian Americans United — formed a coalition to oppose the building of the arena; about 50 other organizations soon joined. A 2023 survey by the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation found that 93% of business owners and 94% of residents opposed the arena, citing concerns about gentrification, parking, traffic congestion, the deterioration of Chinatown’s culture, and increasing rent and displacement.
Some faith leaders, eager for the jobs new construction might provide their congregants, supported the arena. Many others, including clergy from Black, mainline, and Catholic churches, joined the coalition to protect Chinatown — even though most of their congregations weren’t located there. They were allies. But they weren’t motivated by immediate existential threats to their community.
And then, there was Rev. Wayne Lee.
Illustration by Taylor Callery
A CENTURY AGO, the baseball-player-turned-evangelical-revivalist Billy Sunday preached a gospel supercharged by conspiracy theory and nationalism. He spoke against the backdrop of World War I to masses seized by national security anxiety directed at immigrant communities. Deploying a message made urgent and relevant by its conspiratorial frame, Sunday preached, “They call us the ‘melting pot.’ Then it’s up to us to skim off the slag that won’t melt into Americanism and throw it into hell or somewhere else.”
Hellish rhetoric has a long history in the United States for animating theological paranoia in service of supremacist political power. It’s also been part and parcel of American evangelicalism.
Like many kids growing up in evangelical culture in the 1990s, I was extremely familiar with hell. Popular preaching led with hell before it ever spoke of heaven. It described a place of terror reserved for the unbelieving, who always happened to be from the wrong political party or country. In those days, evangelical churches hosted so-called hell houses to “scare straight” teenagers who strayed from a very narrow moral code. My own church did annual dramas depicting people in hell. I prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer” more times than I could count, hoping I really meant it enough to save me for good. If you were to ask me then: “Do you believe in hell?” I would have said “Of course! I’m a Christian!” Belief in hell went hand in hand with belief in Jesus.
My faith today requires me to dismantle the understanding of hell I received as a child and the cultural use of hell popular today in the rise of Christian nationalism. Hell, in the Trump era, is a rogue theological element, unmoored from the Christian story. When Donald Trump says, “I want to make the country great again. This country is a hellhole,” he casts himself, theologically, in the role of Christ, dispensing judgment on who is good and who is bad.
Trump wields diabolical power to throw people to political hells — and that’s what he’s doing. This isn’t new. Poet Langston Hughes wrote prophetically in 1936, “Fascism is a new name for that kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America.”
In this stream of prophetic thought, we are roused to consider our own responsibility today. We cannot look away from the political hells rising up around us, including indiscriminate ICE raids at churches; repurposing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to hold migrants; freezing funding for critical family services and health programs in the U.S. and around the world; dispossessing hundreds of thousands of civil servants from their livelihood; and blocking asylum access for those in fear for their lives — all creating indescribable suffering for those who don’t fit a very narrow white supremacist or libertarian agenda.
From Conclave / igoriss / iStock / Focus Features
SINCE ITS PREMIERE in late 2023, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days — a quiet, contemplative film about a janitor who cleans Tokyo’s public toilets — has been showered with accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Palm d’Or nomination, an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature, two Japan Academy Film awards for Best Director (Wenders) and Actor (Kōji Yakusho), and even an Ecumenical Jury Prize, an independent award created by international Christian media organizations SIGNIS and Interfilm.
All these honors more or less speak for themselves, except — perhaps — the last one. Perfect Days is, after all, neither a Christian film nor an explicitly religious one. Except for the occasional reference to concepts related to Buddhism, such as meditation, karma, and nirvana, the only time protagonist Hirayama seems to make contact with some sort of higher power is when he listens to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” on his way to work each morning.
Fortunately for Wenders, Ecumenical Juries — which attend film festivals across the world — don’t limit themselves to the likes of Jesus Christ Superstar or The Passion of the Christ. At least, not anymore. “Initially, the focus was on films reflecting the Christian worldview,” says S. Brent Plate, a professor of religious studies at Hamilton College in New York, longtime Ecumenical Jury member, and author of Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-creation of the World. “Over time, we shifted toward a broader interpretation of that focus, looking for films that, even if they don’t directly address religion, promote humanistic, progressive values.”
As a result of this shift, the Ecumenical Jury’s mission has come to raise worthwhile questions for film aficionados and religious scholars alike: Can movies function as a mode of religious instruction, bringing us closer to the divine the way a sermon might? Can they teach us how to be better people, inspiring us to lead more fulfilling lives by untangling the mysteries of the human condition? And, most important perhaps, can they nourish our spirit, impart morality, and help us overcome moments of personal crises in an age where the historical provider of such services in the West — the church — is losing its longstanding influence?
Illustration by Hokyoung Kim
I HAD A friend. He died last summer. Actually, to say “He died,” is too passive. He was killed. He was killed as I held him, as those who loved him and those he had hurt watched. On June 26, 2024, the state of Texas executed Ramiro Gonzales for the rape and murder of Bridget Townsend. In 2001, Ramiro was 18 years old, suicidal, violent, and struggling against the chains of addiction; but 23 years later the state took the life of a 41-year-old man who was sober, faithful, and deeply considerate of everybody who surrounded him. He was loved. I miss him terribly.
Ramiro and I first connected in 2014 as pen pals. What started as an exchange of letters blossomed into a friendship spanning more than a decade. There are some who only knew Ramiro for the vicious violence he perpetrated. I’m sympathetic to their anger, but this is not the Ramiro I came to know. As our friendship deepened, Ramiro cherished my children, sending them birthday cards and artwork. We shared in both the sacred and mundane of our daily lives. We also discussed his crimes, his grief, and his profound shame.
After entering the order of ministry in the United Church of Canada, I became Ramiro’s spiritual adviser. This designation allowed me to be with him in the execution chamber, my hand on his chest, singing and praying over him as Texas used a lethal injection of pentobarbital to kill him. It was one of the most haunting and devastating experiences of my life. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Ramiro, about Townsend, or about everything that went wrong that brought us to that deadly day.
Just a few years ago, the thought of me — a Toronto pastor — sitting inside a Texas death chamber would have seemed unimaginable. Yet, there I was, due to a significant shift in Texas’ execution protocol. The state had moved from allowing only its own appointed chaplains to accompany the condemned in the moment of their execution to granting inmates the right to the spiritual adviser of their choice, a result of years of legal battles over questions related to religious freedom and equity. My journey to that chamber was also defined by the moral dilemma of opposing capital punishment, while simultaneously taking on a vital role within the execution process of someone I cared for deeply.
Collages by Candace Sanders
“WE ARE FULL of fear, but we are not helpless,” said Giselle, a 40-year-old living in a mixed-status immigrant family in Chicago. “We have the power of God, the power of the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit on our side,” she said. (Sojourners is withholding Giselle’s last name due to her sensitive immigration status.)
Giselle is the mother of two children who are U.S. citizens. She is long settled in Chicago, having arrived two decades ago from Michoacán, Mexico. She lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Little Village — known as the “Mexico of the Midwest” or “La Villita” by locals — and works as a bookkeeper and worships at a local Pentecostal church where, she told Sojourners, there are other immigrants without permanent legal status singing next to her on Sundays. She volunteers and donates to local charities and generally tries to be a good neighbor — offering her time, talent, and treasure to others in her little corner of Chicago. Giselle said she has built her life in the U.S. and that her adolescent children know nothing else. “We are proud to be Mexican American, to live life here and be part of this community,” she said.
Like thousands of others across the U.S., Giselle and her family do not know how the Trump administration’s stated mass deportation policies will play out. But as policies are put in place and enforcement efforts ramp up, questions keep running through Giselle’s mind: How will I protect my family? What will happen to my immigration status? How will I be able to seek safety in the U.S.? “These are just some of the questions that handicap my ability to live,” she said.
As the Trump administration continues to implement its mass deportation plans, a swirling vortex of pain, fear, and uncertainty dominates the conversation among immigrants and faith communities across the nation. People of faith are responding with hope, resilience, and a steady resolve to be the best neighbors they can be to immigrants in need.
iStock / aelitta
SEEING THE RISE of right-wing populism globally, several months ago I began to lead scenario-planning and writing about what might happen if Donald Trump won. I played out strategies for how folks might meaningfully respond. Yet when he won, I still found myself deep in shock and sadness. In the days after, I reached out to my community to try to assess and get my feet back underneath me.
Being grounded is difficult when the future is unknown and filled with anxiety. Trump has signaled the kind of president he will be: vengeful, uncontrolled, and unburdened by past norms and current laws. If you’re like me, you’re already tired. The prospect of more drama is daunting.
As a nonviolence trainer working with social movements across the globe, I am blessed to have worked with colleagues living under autocratic regimes to develop resilient activist groups.
My colleagues keep reminding me that good psychology is good social change. For us to be of any use in a Trump world, we must pay attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion, and constant disorientation. As someone raised by a liberation theologian, I’m reminded of how we lean hard on community and faith in tough times.
In that spirit, I offer some ways to ground ourselves for the times ahead.
Illustration by Ryan McQuade
AT A KEY JUNCTURE in Luke’s narrative of Jesus’ public ministry, the Nazarene spins the short, foreboding cautionary tale of Lazarus and the rich man (16:19-31). It is set in the afterlife, where a rich man who is a model of entitlement and denial encounters Abraham, the primal progenitor of his people. They have a tense and terse exchange, albeit at a distance.
Abraham tries to explain to him two truths about the economic life and world the rich man has just left. First, his wealth was predicated upon a fatal sociological, moral, and theological condition the patriarch calls a chasma mega (“huge gulf”). It separated and insulated him from people who were impoverished and dehumanized by the system that created and sustained his privilege, people whose pain can only be grasped from their side of that social chasm. Second, to find the will and way to eradicate this cruel gulf, the rich man must reread his sacred scriptures.
This tale lies at the center of a series of seven decidedly unflattering portraits of rich men in Luke’s gospel. This series forms the backbone of the middle section of the longest gospel. It is framed before and after by two indictments: of a rich farmer’s selfishness (12:16-21) and of wealthy lawyers’ exploitation of poor widows (20:45-47; 21:1-4). This middle parable functions as Luke’s “narrative fulcrum” and articulates his keystone theme.
It also speaks plainly to our historical moment. We live in an era in which persistent economic disparity threatens social coherence, democratic prospects, and ecological viability. But Luke also assures us that the biblical vision of Sabbath economics represents ancient medicine that can animate the political imagination necessary to heal this otherwise terminal disease.
Jesus’ earlier beatitudes (6:20-26) and disciples’ prayer (11:1-4) proclaim good news to the poor. His realistic parable of the “Defecting Manager” (16:1-12), on the other hand, addresses those caught between the conflicting demands of Sabbath economics and plutocracy or rule by the wealthy (this includes most of us in North America). The “Defecting Manager” parable concludes with an ultimatum: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (16:13). Sabbath economics is rooted in God’s instructions to dismantle, on a regular basis, the fundamental patterns and structures of stratified wealth and power, so that there is enough for everyone.
It is then, to show us the consequences of failing to deconstruct systems of violent social and economic inequality, that Jesus offers the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, a surreal image of a dark mirror. Here, the brutality of disparity is purgatory: for the poor in their daily life; for the souls of the rich here and hereafter; and for all our prospects of peaceable equilibrium in society. Here too, the flames of Hades become a contemporary allegory for our warming planet under climate crisis.
Since mammon ultimately ravages both haves and have-nots (if in different ways), our parable challenges all of us infected with affluenza to view the world upside down — because the truth of social divides can only be seen from their other side.
Photograph by Betsy King-McDonald
A LITTLE OVER a year ago, members of Ann Arbor’s Zion Lutheran Church in Michigan stood on an L-shaped plot bordering their church garden. Those 800 square feet of ordinary lawn were on the cusp of transformation, about to become the source of Zion’s own Communion bread.
While Christians traditionally think of Communion as transforming partakers during the church service, project leader Betsy King-McDonald wanted to explore the life-giving properties of the Eucharist at an earlier stage — starting in the soil.
“How can we foster life in all the choices we make to the table?” she asked. This question led King-McDonald, a doctoral student at Western Theological Seminary, to partner with Zion Lutheran in growing heirloom wheat for their Communion bread.
In the slanting October light, members rototilled the church lawn. Youth lugged wheelbarrows of wood chips from the parking lot. Then Joet Reoma, a local master gardener and board member of Project Grow, a local nonprofit that facilitates community gardens, directed participants in a complex ritual that resembled making a dirt lasagna. The “lasagna” was not for humans, but for the microbial life in the recently turned soil.
In a trademark black cap with tag still attached, his name scrawled on the tag in bold black marker, Reoma called out basic permaculture steps: First, spread fresh wood chips, high in nitrogen but slow to decompose. Next, add a layer of vermicompost — worms with their eggs and castings, ready to break down the organic matter. Sprinkle cornmeal on top, energizing the worms and kick-starting mycelial growth in the wood chips. Finally, two more layers; one of decomposed wood chips and one of compost. Now, the soil community was ready to receive the wheat seeds.
This elaborate process of feeding the soil that would nurture the church’s Communion wheat expressed a deep eucharistic truth — the process and the produce hold the power of life.
Rarely do churches interrogate how liturgical elements support life all along the way — from soil to markets to table. As King-McDonald found, tending to the process clears a path for deeper place-based Christian discipleship.
After poking neat rows of holes in the living soil, Zion Lutheran’s team dropped wheat kernels into the darkness, covered them, and spread a layer of straw over it all.
Residents of the Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem protest in 2023 a land deal that threatens to displace them from a site Armenian Christians have lived on since the 5th century. / Maya Alleruzzo / AP Photo
JERUSALEM'S OLD CITY has often been a focal point of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but within its walls lies a lesser-known story of occupation and resilience. The Armenian Quarter, a Christian enclave that has endured for centuries, now finds itself under threat.
In the context of occupied East Jerusalem, where Palestinians continually face displacement and erasure of their cultural and physical presence, the Armenian community’s struggle reflects a larger pattern. Though they make up a small portion of the city’s population, Armenians have called Jerusalem home for more than 1,700 years, surviving waves of conflict and colonial powers.
As a critical component of a shared Jerusalem between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the Armenian Quarter has been a haven for this Christian community since a group of Armenian monks and priests established St. James monastery there in 420 C.E.
The enclave is now fighting to preserve its heritage amid mounting pressures. In April 2023, the community was shaken by plans from an Israeli-Australian developer, Xana Capital, to construct a luxury hotel on land purportedly owned by the Armenian Patriarchate. This development mirrors the land confiscation and settlement expansion that Palestinians know all too well.
Like the rest of the Christian population in the Old City, including the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Ethiopian Orthodox, the Armenian community is navigating increased challenges, from economic strain to political pressures and demands to shift the historic status quo. These communities, increasingly pressured by Israeli authorities and settlers, face a myriad of problems, including property disputes, confiscation of church lands, new and prejudicial tax demands, and occasional acts of vandalism against religious sites. All Christian groups are grappling to maintain their historical presence in the face of growing threats in this contested city.
Sahlan Hayes / Fairfax Media / Getty Images
I WAS VISITING my sister and niece in Maine with my middle daughter when we learned that Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon died. Our aunt in Oakland sent the obituary to our mom in Ohio, then Mom texted us: “Thought immediately of you both and all that she and her music meant to us. Long, lovely memories.”
Even in the news of her passing, Reagon, the founder of the celebrated music ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, was connecting women across generations, geography, religious, and racial categories. The music of Sweet Honey helped my mom, a white Quaker woman and Methodist pastor from rural Ohio, find her voice. It also shaped my sister and me as biracial Black women growing up in Washington, D.C. in the ’80s and ’90s. I took a course from Dr. Reagon during my senior year in high school. I never saw her again. Waves of grief and gratitude washed over me.
The day we got the news, we woke in a tent after camping near where the sun rises first over North America. As we drove past towering pine trees, taking in the news of one more passing — each death stirs up the sadness of all the other losses and more to come — my sister and I played our favorite Sweet Honey songs. We sang along to Reagon’s “I Remember, I Believe” from the 1995 Sacred Ground album: “My God calls to me in the morning dew / The power of the universe knows my name / Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way / I raise my voice for justice, I believe.”
Photograph by Kirth Bobb
WHEN RAHIEL TESFAMARIAM was 5 years old, she and her mother flew from Eritrea to New York City, arriving in the United States with six-month tourist visas to help prepare for Tesfamariam’s eldest sister’s wedding. After the six months had passed, Tesfamariam’s mother began packing clothes for a return trip to Eritrea, but Tesfamariam adamantly refused to leave. Tesfamariam’s brother recalls being at the airport and watching their mother step to the gate; Rahiel stepped back and said, “Bye, Mommy.” And so it was: Rahiel Tesfamariam remained in the United States in the care of her siblings, out of the shadow of the Eritrean War of Independence, with an expired travel visa.
The rest of her story could be told this way: She became a legal permanent resident of the United States, graduated from Stanford University, became the youngest-ever editor in chief of The Washington Informer, received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale University, and launched Urban Cusp, an online community for Black millennials interested in the intersection between faith, culture, and justice. Tesfamariam worked as a columnist for The Washington Post; led #NotOneDime, a national Black Friday economic boycott during the 2014 Ferguson protests; and was named by Essence magazine as one of its “New Civil Rights Leaders.” She got married. She became a mother. It could be said that Tesfamariam pulled herself up into the American dream.
Tesfamariam’s book Imagine Freedom: Transforming Pain into Political and Spiritual Power (Amistad), released earlier this year, tells that story, but with a difference. Telling only that version, like the American dream itself, would be insufficient. Tesfamariam spoke with Sojourners associate editor Darren Saint-Ulysse in April about how she carries Africa within, political power’s ephemeral nature, and God’s command to free the captives. — The Editors
Illustrations by Mariana Ocejo
ALL THE SUNDAY School classes were gathered at a plaza in Buenos Aires. After months of preparation, we were there for the churchwide tournament. Participation was mandatory; the competition was public. Glory or shame for all to see. Our task was to recite by memory an arbitrary list created by the teachers — the Lord’s Prayer, Psalm 23, names of all twelve apostles, the books of the New Testament and, for extra credit, the Old Testament ... in order. A church elder stood ready to score children in each category.
My arrogant 9-year-old self stepped up first. Everyone knew I was going to be a pastor. My parents had helped me. My sister and I had practiced. I had to know this stuff. The elder at the “Lord’s Prayer station” nodded for me to begin.
“Padre nuestro que estas ... .” He began to shake his head. “En los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre ... .” He made a noise with his tongue; his face looked like he had sucked a lemon. “No” he commanded, waving his hands. “In Taiwanese!”
Tears burned down my cheeks. I should have known. It wasn’t so much our faith on trial that day, but the degree of our “Taiwanese-ness.” My Taiwanese Presbyterian Church was raising not just Christians, but Taiwanese nationalists. The language of the church had to be their version of “pure” Taiwanese. I knew it could never be Mandarin Chinese but Spanish was unacceptable too. As my moment of glory turned to shame, I ran into the park to cry alone.
Illustration by Arūnas Kačinskas
THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY of North American Christianity, the church has vacillated in its view of the intersection of evangelism and social justice. For a significant portion of that history, the church has been a moral voice on behalf of the “least of these” and advocated for justice in the public realm. Many Catholics and other Christians have not wavered in this work.
Since early in the 20th century, however, U.S. evangelical Christians in particular have focused primarily on personal evangelism and separated it from the justice witness of the church in public life. One of the negative consequences of the divorce of evangelism from justice has been the inability of evangelicals to engage politics in a biblical manner. Because evangelicals have seen social justice as a “secular” activity, our understanding of how justice works in the public square has been shaped more by the secular political imagination than by a biblical political imagination.
In the absence of a political imagination rooted in Jesus’ gospel of sacrificial love and the prophetic tradition, dysfunctional expressions such as Christian nationalism, conflating faith with a specific party, and extreme polarization have emerged as the de facto position of much of the church in the political realm. The public sphere is captive to divisive and contentious rhetoric and characterized by a quest for power, and the desire to hold and wield that power over and against one’s political opponent. The goal of many Christians in U.S. politics has deteriorated into aquiring power rather than serving the common good.
Much of U.S. evangelicalism has seemingly fallen into this trap — in contrast to the historical call of the church to be an advocate for the voiceless and powerless. How would engagement in the public realm change if the political imagination of evangelicals were to shift from this grab for power toward the Jesus’ teaching to be servants of all? How can scripture and biblical examples offer insight in this fraught political season?
A return to the biblical text can help us better understand the foundations of the church and, therefore, the full role of the church in the public arena. Our calling as the church is not only to save individual lives from a “wrecked vessel” but also to honor the imago dei in every individual and offer hope by caring for the very least of these — by being salt and light in the world.
Illustration by Hazel P. Mason
AUNJANUE ELLIS-TAYLOR, known for such roles as Hippolyta Freeman in the HBO series Lovecraft Country and Mama in The Color Purple (2023), approaches her acting as an artisan, searching for the right tools with which to craft her characters, she told Sojourners’ assistant editor Josina Guess this spring. Two recent films — Origin (2023) and Exhibiting Forgiveness (2024) — feature powerful performances by Ellis-Taylor and tap into her own yearning for a world in which justice and truth prevail.
Origin (written, produced, and directed by Ava DuVernay) is a biographical drama inspired by Pulitzer-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s process of writing Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). The film depicts a quest for the origins of why we separate ourselves from one another, even though it destroys us physically, spiritually, and politically. For her moving performance as Wilkerson, Ellis-Taylor traveled to Germany and India, tracing Wilkerson’s observations about the connected histories between Nazism, the caste system, and racism in the United States — deepening our understanding of these bitter human wounds.
Exhibiting Forgiveness is an autobiographical film written and directed by artist Titus Kaphar, whose process-oriented works on canvas, sculpture, and film reveal the layered reality between history and the present. In Exhibiting Forgiveness, an artist named Tarrell experiences rising success while haunted by flashbacks of a childhood riddled with addiction and family violence. Ellis-Taylor plays Joyce, the artist’s mother, who begs her son to forgive because “it’s what the Bible says.”
Both films invite viewers to wrestle with themes of reckoning and healing on a personal and societal level. Ellis-Taylor spoke with Guess about the lessons of Origin in this election year, what she sees as the “burdensome” work of Black forgiveness in the face of ongoing harm, and her commitment to speaking and living into truth, including embracing her queer identity while remaining in the Black church. —The Editors
Co-founders Aurora Conley (left) and Philomena Kebec (right) of Gwayakobimaadiziwin Bad River Harm Reduction in Northern Wisconsin at a community event. / Photos by Alison McKenzie, Illustrations by Eduardo Ramón Trejo
“WE ARE IN the midst of an overdose crisis,” said Hill Brown, southern director of Faith in Harm Reduction. “We say overdose crisis and not opioid crisis because right now overdose is the crisis. We’ve had opioids forever.”
In 2020 and 2021, during the height of deaths and extreme social isolation from COVID-19, deaths from overdoses surged in the United States before reaching a new baseline. The CDC estimates nearly 110,000 overdose deaths in the 12 months ending November 2023. That’s up from 71,350 deaths in the 12 months ending November 2019. Nearly 70 percent of these deaths were related to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. For people 35 to 64 years old, the overdose death rate was highest among Black men and American Indian/Native Alaskan men at around 60 per 100,000 persons. Overdoses have become the third largest cause of death among teens 14 to 18 years of age, behind firearm deaths and vehicle collisions, rising to an average of 22 per week in 2022, largely driven by fentanyl in counterfeit prescription pills.
While churches have long hosted recovery groups focused on abstinence from drugs, some faith leaders are exploring how churches and other religious institutions can serve people who use drugs (PWUDs). By offering safer drug use resources such as sterile syringes and smoking supplies, fentanyl test strips, safe consumption sites, naloxone (an overdose reversal drug) training, and counseling, they are also working to extend this welcome and compassion without moralizing about drug use or judging PWUDs.
Collectively known as harm reduction, these practices were originally envisioned as strategies to curtail the spread of HIV. In this context, harm reduction aims to reduce the negative consequences associated with drug use. Its values include viewing PWUDs as sacred and beloved, believing love is greater than the law, allowing PWUDs to exercise choice, and centering a person-first approach that embodies compassion, dignity, and justice.
A pregnant inmate at Western Massachusetts Regional Women’s Correctional Center in Chicopee, Mass., poses for a portrait in the facility’s visiting area in 2014. / Dina Rudick / The Boston Globe via Getty Images
KADIJA CLIFTON LEARNED she was pregnant with her second child while being booked at a Maryland county jail. She had no idea that she was expecting. She was halfway through her pregnancy before she got her first ultrasound. On that day, two armed sheriffs escorted her to the medical facility with her wrists cuffed in front of her belly. A female correctional officer sat in the corner of the room while she was being examined. Clifton felt she had no privacy — “it was invasive and not fun at all.”
Clifton, who has been out for several years and is raising her son with her parents’ support, recalls that she spent the rest of her pregnancy in the county jail worrying about the health of her unborn child. She was already anxious about leaving her then 5-year-old daughter to be raised by her ex. The news of the pregnancy made things even more complicated.
“During those months I remember simply wanting a comfortable place to sit, versus plastic chairs or stools with no back support. I was seriously pregnant,” says Clifton. “Then there was the food, or lack of it. You have a limited amount. You get three meals a day, and if you are pregnant, it is just not enough.” Luckily, by the time Clifton was due, she was able to pay the bail bond and was awaiting trial at home.
I first met Clifton at a graduation ceremony in Alexandria, Va., for Together We Bake, a workforce training program. Clifton shared her life story in front of a handmade collage while hugging her then-5-year-old son. She had completed a 10-week training, learning about food safety, business administration, job readiness, and other critical life skills. Two months later, she became a senior adviser to a podcast on reentry I was producing at the time. Clifton now works as a night supervisor in a facility that hosts at-risk LGBTQI+ youth. Her daughter, now 14, still lives with her dad, but she and Clifton speak regularly.
Illustrations by Sam Lubicz
“ONE OF THE TRADITIONS of St. Patrick is an old prayer that he wrote called ‘St. Patrick’s Breastplate,’” explained Father David Rose of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Rincon, Ga., to the half-dozen men who’d gathered around him. “It’s more like an epic poem, like an old epic Celtic poem, but it’s a prayer.”
“I bind unto myself today / the strong Name of the Trinity,” he continued, reciting stanzas of the 1,500-year-old prayer. “By invocation of the same / The Three in One and One in Three / Of Whom all nature hath creation / Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation / Salvation is of Christ the Lord!”
Father Rose wasn’t addressing his fellows from the pulpit, however, nor were they gathered in the basement or rectory of St. Luke’s. Instead, he was speaking to a group of Dungeons & Dragons players at Savannah Lion Games in Pooler, Ga., at a table covered in rulebooks and dice rather than Bibles and hymnals.
Welcome to Game Church.
Illustration by Guang Lim
Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared on sojo.net on Jan. 9, 2024 as “What DEI Trainings and Evangelical Retreats Have in Common.”
JONATHAN TRAN TELLS a story he encountered while researching his book Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism, about Chinese immigrants who lived in the Mississippi Delta during the Reconstruction period. After the Civil War, Tran says, white people not only prevented Black people from living in certain neighborhoods and attending schools with their white children — they discriminated similarly against people of Chinese descent.
But dissimilar to the Delta’s Black population, the Chinese immigrants were able to open modest grocery stores, which allowed them to accumulate wealth thanks to Black patronage. In this way, the Delta Chinese immigrants saw their material conditions improve — but this improvement came under a system of white supremacy, which necessitated the exclusion of the Delta’s Black population.
Tran tells this story to demonstrate the ways that capitalism and white supremacy have become intertwined. In a nod to the Black radical tradition, Tran refers to this system as racial capitalism. The account also demonstrates Tran’s commitment to storytelling. He doesn’t explain the negative effects of racial capitalism in a removed or abstract way; rather, he leans into the complicated histories that have pitted racially marginalized groups against one another.
Tran, an associate dean of Baylor University’s Honors College and an associate professor of theology, understands how stories are influenced by material reality — which is why, for Tran, criticism of racism that does not also include a critique of the capitalist system is wrong-headed. But Tran doesn’t just critique racial capitalism or anti-racist enterprises that avoid economics. Tran believes that Christian theology offers an alternative story to racial capitalism, one that finds its locus in the “divine economy.”
Tran talked with sojo.net associate opinion editor Josiah R. Daniels last fall about Christian theology, anti-racism, W.E.B. Du Bois, and what it means to live into a reconstructed reality. — The Editors
Author Diana Keough, center, with her mother, Christine, and father, Roger, in the den of their Milwaukee home, circa 1980. / Courtesy of author
“IN THE BEGINNING was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” I had no idea what the words I recited in front of the church meant. My Mary Janes hurt my feet and my dress was so tight it left angry red welts in my armpits. Mom looked so proud; Dad, too, sitting in the front row, smiling. I didn’t want to disappoint them, especially here.
As far back as I can remember, my parents started churches in our suburban Milwaukee home. They were nondenominational, Independent, Calvinist, Fundamentalist Baptist. Initially, just a few families gathered, with Dad leading the service in our living room. Before long, our house overflowed, and the adults started raising money to construct a church. Once the building was complete, dissension began and my parents would leave, claiming the church was now too liberal. They disapproved of so many things: changes to the prayer book, Black people joining their all-white communities, homosexuality, women in ministry, the Equal Rights Amendment, anyone who questioned the literal translation of the Bible, adding rhythm to traditional hymns, accepting Catholics as fellow Christians. We were the “Chosen.” Predestined and proud of it.
My parents were also active members of The John Birch Society (JBS), the extreme right political organization, founded in 1958, which is known to be racist and antisemitic. They hosted monthly JBS chapter meetings in our living room. It was hard to know which belief system drove them more: the conservative politics of the JBS or the fundamentalist Christian fear of the rise of the Antichrist. Either way, to them the possibility of a communist invasion was a real threat.
They hired a handyman to build a hidey-hole in the back of the closet in our basement, where our whole family could hunker down if communists invaded the United States. Because we were Christians, educated, and part of the ruling class, Mom told us our family would be among the first to be imprisoned, then executed. Most of my nightmares as a child involved communists finding us in our hiding place.
I grew up listening to Mom and her friends, drinking coffee around our kitchen table while they animatedly discussed which group of people was ruining our country and if former President Dwight D. Eisenhower was really a communist agent.
I never quite understood what all the fuss was about. All I knew was that I adored listening to my Dad talk about politics and preach. I loved memorizing the verses he gave me about fleeing evil and avoiding temptation. I believed the words he spoke to be true. For me, he embodied the Heavenly Father he taught me about.
I didn’t feel the same about my mother. After every church service, whenever I’d overhear her describe someone as a person who “loved the Lord,” the hair on the back of my neck would stand straight up. If she caught me rolling my eyes as she quoted scriptures, I knew I had it coming. As soon as we got in the car, she’d slap my face.
My mother hitting me wasn’t unusual. Quite often after one of the regular beatings she gave me, she’d make me kneel in front of her, as she reverently prayed, eyes closed, “Please forgive Diana, Lord. She doesn’t know how to respect or obey me.” Never knowing when she’d strike, I was constantly on guard.
I believed in God as a child and deeply felt Jesus was my friend, responding to an altar call when I was 6. But Mom smugly told me Jesus could never love a naughty, backsliding little girl like me. Because of that, I was never sure my salvation stuck, so I made at least half a dozen more trips down the aisle. My teenage years and early 20s did little to reassure me of God’s love. I didn’t want to go to hell. It seemed like a scary place. But when I was 25, hell found me anyway.