SOJOURNERS HAD A wonderful in-person retreat this spring in Washington, D.C. Our gathering of editorial colleagues from California, Washington, Georgia, New Jersey, and D.C. sparked creativity, deepened commitment and community, and increased our love and respect for one another and our readers. Unfortunately, we also shared COVID — so we delayed the printing of this issue by a week to allow for rest and healing. (Hopefully, you didn’t notice.)
Imagine our delight when we received a pitch from Tim Brinkhof to interview theologian Katya Tolstaya, a relative of Leo Tolstoy, on her quest to rescue the complex beauty of Orthodox Christianity in Russia from appropriation by Vladimir Putin and his ideologues. Empire always attempts to enslave religion to its own purposes; this is how the devil works (see Luke 4) and why the gospels recenter us in God’s “divine economy.” As Baylor University theology professor Jonathan Tran says in this issue, as Christians we are not resisters to empire and racialized capitalism. “Rather, we’re proclaimers,” because there is no contest between God and evil. God wins. Justice is built into the very order of creation. “We’re simply living into that structured reality,” says Tran.
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