The Editors: True Confessions

TRUE CONFESSIONS: WE hoped this issue of Sojourners might be commenting on the first woman U.S. president. It would have felt like progress to see Kamala Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian heritage, in conversation with other female heads of governments, such as those in Mexico, Peru, Italy, Thailand, and Tanzania. We also planned for election results that would take time to finalize. Then, just days before our deadline, Donald J. Trump won the election — and by Electoral College votes it wasn’t even close. We feel weary and defeated. Like many of you, we worked hard to protect voters’ rights to a free and fair election. We trust that’s what we got. But the results have also moved a well-funded authoritarian movement closer to its goals, as journalist Katherine Stewart explains in our interview with her. This anti-democratic movement has hijacked parts of our Christian faith. We say it here plainly: The principles, methods, and policies of white supremacy and authoritarianism are incompatible with the message of Christ. As senior editor Rose Marie Berger writes, “The new authoritarians amassing around Trump see themselves as Nietzsche’s ‘supermen’” — superior to all others and with an immoral drive to dominate, not democratize. We will undermine them with revolutionary love every step of the way.”