The Haymarket Square rebellion of 1886 was a watershed moment in the history of U.S. radicalism.
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Aaron McCarroll Gallegos 3-01-1997
Rev. Daughtry's reflections on his ministry to Tupac Shakur show us the patience and tolerance for ambiguity required in the task of ministering to those wrapped up in what some call the "thug life."
Julie Polter 1-01-1997
Photo via Halfpoint / Shutterstock
Work that is a trap, work that demeans, work that slaughters, work that destroys souls or the world—this isn't divinely ordained, nor divinely blessed.
Diana L. Chambers 11-01-1996
IT WAS A WONDERFUL sunny Sunday morning in June 1996. In high spirits our group left the Franciscan monastery at Rama, in central Bosnia, to drive to the small mountain village of Podhum.
Rose Marie Berger 11-01-1996
It's 4:20 p.m. I'm standing over the Olympic soccer stadium in Sarajevo. From one goal post to the other are graves-headstones of various sizes and shapes, most unmarked.
Harvey Cox 9-01-1996
A century and a half ago, a young congressman from Illinois became unpopular with his home constituency and was forced to leave office. It had been rumored that he had little respect for the church or religion; furthermore, he was obviously unpatriotic for opposing the U.S. war with Mexico.
A decade later the same man returned to political life, became a vociferous critic of slavery, and was eventually elected president of the nation. This is the man who in his second inaugural address made one of the most explicitly biblical statements in the annals of the American presidency:
Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war might speedily pass away. Yet, if God will that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether" (Psalm 19:9).
The life of Abraham Lincoln reminds us of two things about religion and American political life. First, they have always been mixed together. Second, church people do not have infallible political judgment.
As citizens of what the historian Sidney Mead called "the nation with the soul of a church," most Americans have thought from the colonial period on that their religious convictions had something very important to do with their political choices. The present highly visible involvement of Christian and other religious groups in political life, including presidential campaigns, is hardly novel.
Jim Wallis 9-01-1996
After reading the first issue of Sojourners' precursor The Post-American in 1971, Sen. Mark O. Hatfield wrote to the editors, "I believe you may be helping to ignite a new movement of the Spirit in our land." Hatfield, an evangelical Christian and a Republican from Oregon, has remained a friend (and served as contributing editor) of Sojourners since that introduction. He announced earlier this year that this term in the Senate, his fifth, will be his last. Sojourners editor Jim Wallis interviewed Hatfield in July at his Senate office in Washington, D.C.
—The Editors
Jim Wallis: It's hard to believe, in some ways, that you're leaving the Senate. Ever since I've been politically conscious, you have been, in my view, the political conscience of this body. You have raised moral questions that no one else was raising.
I remember years ago you gave a wonderful Prayer Breakfast speech about Vietnam, and President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were there, and you talked about the war as a sin. You have always been one to raise what you felt to be the moral question, which derived for you from your Christian faith. Is it possible to link faith and politics in a place like this?
Sen. Mark Hatfield: I'm not one of those who believes you can compartmentalize between your public and private life, between your spiritual and secular life. As I understood my commitment to Christ, it was an integrated commitment in all aspects of my life. I often say that my first commitment is to the Lord, my second is to my family, and my third is to my constituents. Keeping them in that order, I feel, puts me in the best position to serve my constituents.
I'm not suggesting my voting record should be blamed on the Lord. It's from my experiences, mixed with study, analysis, and intellect, that I take this position or have that viewpoint.
Bill Bradley 9-01-1996
In American political life, there is an issue about which we hear endless talk dealing with surfaces, and very little movement deep down in the body politic. Unless faced, it will prevent us from realizing our potential as a pluralistic democracy with a growing economy, and, instead, it will foster a poisonous resentment, even a hatred, that kills much of life's joy. The subject is race. Frequently, Americans have been unable to see deeper than skin color or eye shape to the heart and individuality of all our citizens. There were times when we allowed destructive impulses to triumph over our deeper awareness that we are all God's children. Occasionally, the violence of the few elicited the fears and seething anger of the many and prevented the possibility of racial harmony. It's an old story, and a sad one, too.
In 1963, four African-American girls in white dresses were talking prior to Sunday services in the ladies lounge of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Suddenly, the church was ripped apart by a bomb that killed the young girls instantly. There had been other bombings in Birmingham aimed at halting blacks' progress toward racial equality but they had not penetrated the national consciousness. After that Sunday's explosion, people of all races and all political persuasions throughout the country were sickened in spirit.
Coming 18 days after Martin Luther King Jr. had shared his dream for America from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the bombing was a stark reminder of how violently some Americans resisted racial healing. Yet the sense of multiracial outrage and solidarity that came out of this tragedy--combined with the seminal leadership of President Lyndon Johnson--led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to the hope that the search for racial equality could lead to the emergence of a spiritually transformed America.
Doug Tanner 9-01-1996
My first encounter with Jesse Helms came in the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity room at Duke University in 1966. That was the site of the closest television to my room, and Jesse Helms came on every weekday evening for a live commentary on Raleigh station WRAL.
"Listen to this guy if you have any question about what a redneck area this is," advised my friends. When Jesse sought corroboration for his reactionary thoughts he called "Cousin Chub" Seawell into the studio. Seawell's folksiness was more entertaining than Helms' often bitter diatribes, but the message came out pretty much the same. We watched them assail everything we believed in.
Sometimes we laughed; sometimes we became infuriated. Always we looked down on them. We derided them as they derided us. Never did we take them seriously, except as examples of the narrow backwardness that summoned us to become liberal instruments of enlightenment.
I was a senior when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Roughly 2,000 of us joined a vigil on the quad for several days. The vigil was an instrument of our grieving and a voice for racial justice on Duke's campus. Higher wages and union recognition for the non-academic employees—cooks, food-servers, maids, and janitors, most of whom were black—became the focal issue. We sat peacefully and largely silent day and night, studying for finals, listening to Dr. King's speeches and singing "We Shall Overcome" every hour. To this day I count it as a major event in my spiritual formation.
Jesse Helms came on the television and said that all of the students sitting on the quad at Duke should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to "marry a Negro" (Duke students were practically all white in those days). Unless the student's parents approved of that prospect, Helms advised, he or she should go back to class. We all took the words as vindication for our cause.
Rose Marie Berger, Brett Grainger, Dennis Covington 7-01-1996
An interview with author Dennis Covington
Harry C. Kiely 5-01-1996
Jesus answers our cry for spiritual deliverance. A Bible study on Mark 5:1-20.