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New and Noteworthy: Combatants for Peace, ‘You Can Trust a God with Scars,’ and More
Combatants for Peace
The film There is Another Way profiles former Israeli and Palestinian combatants working toward collective liberation, showing the courage required to break cycles of hatred. “We are strong. We are fierce. But we will not meet them with their violence,” says one activist. Reconsider
The Grit of Incarnation
You Can Trust a God with Scars: Faith (and Doubt) for the Searching Soul presents a Christianity that embraces doubt and a God who understands suffering intimately. Jared Ayers uses art, scripture, music, and literature to explore “the dazzling mystery ... that the Maker stooped to become what had been made.” NavPress
Justice Can Prevail
Geared toward readers ages 8-12, A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez, by María Dolores Águila, is a lyrical telling of the first successful school desegregation case, Alvarez v. Lemon Grove, two decades before Brown v. Board of Education. Roaring Brook Press
The Editors: Bearing Witness to Gaza
AS WE NEAR the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, we don’t forget the hundreds killed that day. Neither do we dare look away from the cascade of human rights abuses Israel has unleashed upon the Palestinian people since. As Mae Elise Cannon and Ben Norquist report, this ongoing war has even turned water into a weapon — and the people of Gaza are dying of thirst.
The late theologian and longtime Sojourners contributor Walter Brueggemann would remind us that we have alternatives. A poll in July showed that 74% of Israelis back an agreement with Hamas that would release all hostages at once in exchange for an end to the war on Gaza. In May, 600 Israelis led an anti-war protest along Israel’s border with Gaza. In the U.S., college students have led the largest anti-war demonstrations seen in years, despite a targeted smear campaign to label pro-Palestinian groups as “terrorist support networks.” We can be conscientious objectors to war profiteering and join with Palestinian American memoirist Sarah Aziza in conspiring against the forces of destruction and erasure to relentlessly pursue life.
New and Noteworthy: ‘Loved Into Being,’ Measuring Skirts, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
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Divine Love
Loved Into Being is a tender five-part film series inviting us to rediscover our belovedness in God. James Finley — who was mentored by Thomas Merton — explores how “the divinity that shines forth out of broken places” can heal our wounds and reimagine community. The Work of the People
The Editors: Moving With Joy
An introduction to the August 2025 issue of Sojourners.
New and Noteworthy: ‘Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,’ Pregnant in Prison, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
From Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
When a Child Sees War
Adapted from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight centers 8-year-old Bobo’s life on her white family’s farm in what is now Zimbabwe at the end of the wars for independence and racial equality. We see both sides of the war through Bobo’s eyes. Sony Pictures Classic
The Editors: First U.S.-Born Pope
An introduction to the July 2025 issue of ‘Sojourners.’
Andre Afamasaga is a Samoan human rights advocate who spent 11 years as a pastor in Australia and New Zealand. He founded the Alofa Project, an organization that calls Pacific community leaders to LGBTIQ+ inclusion. / Illustration by Jonny Ruzzo
An introduction to the July 2025 issue of Sojourners.
New and Noteworthy: ‘Lower Than the Angels,’ Waves of Wisdom, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
Lower Than the Angels by Diarmaid MacCulloch
Layperson’s Terms
Each week, The Bible for Normal People podcast offers deep cultural and historical context to scripture. Hosts Peter Enns and Jared Byas have challenging and engaging conversations with notable guests, including Richard Rohr and Amy-Jill Levine, on topics like biblical inerrancy and mental health. thebiblefornormalpeople.com
The Editors: ‘America Is Not Special’
An introduction to the June 2025 issue of ‘Sojourners.’
Jovita Idar (1885-1946) was a Mexican American journalist, teacher, suffragist, and the first president of La Liga Femenil Mexicanista. She worked for publications including La Crónica, El Progreso, Evolución, and El Heraldo Cristiano, a Methodist journal. / Illustration by Clarissa Martinez
An introduction to the June 2025 issue of Sojourners.
New and Noteworthy: ‘Sacred Parenthood,’ Unconditional Love, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
Sacred Parenthood: Spiritual Practices for the Highs and Lows of Parenting, by Aizaiah G. Yong and Nereyda Yong
Parenting With Grace
Aizaiah and Nereyda Yong are married ministers and parents to four kids. In Sacred Parenthood, the authors break down “contemplative parenting,” offering simple practices parents can implement to be more intentional and present with their families. Herald Press
Soft Spaces
Liz Walker offers an intimate account of a Black church’s trauma-healing ministry, emphasizing the importance of sharing grief and providing “soft spaces” for healing. No One Left Alone reveals how vast pain can be transformed into hope and connection through the power of community. Broadleaf
Unconditional Love
In Queer & Christian, Brandan Robertson reclaims faith for LGBTQ+ Christians. Through accessible scholarly insight and personal narrative, he challenges the “clobber verses” of the Bible, celebrating queer saints and offering hope for anyone seeking inclusive spirituality. Macmillan
The Editors: A Thousand Paths to Liberation
An introduction to the May 2025 issue of Sojourners.
Illustration by Hazel Mason
An introduction to the May 2025 issue of Sojourners.
New and Noteworthy: ‘I Tried to Be Straight,’ Mary Myths, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
I Tried to Be Straight / Patreon
Queer Healing
Nate Peters and Susie Aguirre are Christians reconciling their faith and sexualities. The I Tried to Be Straight podcasters are reconstructing their faith on a firm foundation and bringing others along, including an ex-conversion therapist and a retired NFL player. Patreon
Mary Myths
Unmaking Mary, by Chine McDonald, challenges the idealized notion of mothering projected onto the Virgin Mary. Weaving her experiences as a mother with theological insight, McDonald dismantles impossible standards to offer a liberating and profoundly human vision of motherhood. Hodder & Stoughton
Redirecting Rage
In The Tears of Things, Richard Rohr explores how Jewish prophets transformed their rage into compassion, promoting empathy in our turbulent world. “Prophets and mystics recognize what most of us do not — that all things have tears and all things deserve tears,” he writes. Convergent
The Editors: Marathon of Hope
An introduction to the April 2025 issue of Sojourners.
Illustration by Becki Gill
FROM SOJOURNERS’ OFFICE in Washington, D.C., we can almost hear shattering glass from Elon Musk’s smash-and-grab looting spree of the U.S. Treasury Department and his dodgy gang’s rampage through national security statutes, privacy rights, and the Constitution. Amid the weaponized sturm und drang, people’s lives are dangerously upended. José Humphreys III recalls Jesus weeping over Jerusalem while self-identifying as a hen protecting her little ones; that feels too timely.
For our cover feature, associate editor Josina Guess interviews retired Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor. Both live on small farms in north Georgia. Their conversation covers goats, neighborliness, and Good Friday. (Chickens, too.) Jared Stacy picks up Holy Week themes in a provocative essay contrasting Christ’s harrowing of hell, remembered by the church on Holy Saturday, with Trumpian saviorism today.
While we defiantly “sweep up the glass” through heightened political pressure, solidarity with the vulnerable, and the risk of arrest for following Jesus, we know that we are in, as Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel wrote, a “marathon of Hope.”
New and Noteworthy: ‘People Watching,’ Fictions of Moral Convenience, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
Album cover for Sam Fender's People Watching
Indie Imago Dei
In the title track of his new album, People Watching, indie rocker Sam Fender sees the face of God in the strangers he passes: “Envious of the glimmer of hope / Gives me a break from feeling alone / Gives me a moment out of the ego.” Polydor Records
Prophetic Dispatches
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a lament and rallying cry from Egyptian-Canadian journalist Omar El Akkad. With honest prose, he debunks American “fiction[s] of moral convenience,” including ideologies that fuel U.S. support of a genocide in Palestine. Knopf
Saints and Sinners
Characters in Jared Lemus’ debut collection, Guatemalan Rhapsody, are as broken and beautiful as their country. Among them are a band of thieving siblings, who justify their crimes by invoking Saint Dismas: “He stole because he had to ... and God forgave him.” Ecco
The Editors: Singing Like Sparrows
An introduction to the March 2025 issue of Sojourners.
Illustration by Raz Latif
IN HER REFLECTION on the work of poet Gwendolyn Brooks, Sarah James sees Brooks’ poetry as asserting “our collective right to dream of a humane world.” At Sojourners, we ground our “dream of a humane world” in God’s dream for all creation to thrive — each sparrow, each planet, each one of us. And yet, our adversary attempts to occupy our souls like a “roaring lion” (1 Peter 5:8). It’s not just you who is overwhelmed, destabilized, scared. We mark five years of living with covid-19, as Céire Kealty reflects. President Trump is staging an all-out attack on immigrant families, as Ken Chitwood reports, while churches work to offer protection in the face of harsh deportation policies. When surrounded by the deafening “roaring lion,” it’s tempting to become small and defensive. But, as Edgar Rivera Colón writes in our cover feature, God invites us into life-giving soul work to sustain us in risky love and activism. Even when our hearts are shattered, God is ready to fuse them together. Just ask. Brooks wrote, “Life is for us, and is shining. / We have a right to sing.” Let’s be like the sparrows and sing.
The Best Faith and Justice Books of the Century (So Far)
Graphic by Ryan McQuade / Sojourners.
Since our earliest issues, Sojourners has maintained that culture coverage is just as much a part of our mission to articulate the biblical call to social justice as news stories and commentaries. And after reviewing the list below, we suspect you’ll see why. The books on this list span many genres, but they all circle the same core question: What does our faith call us to do in the face of injustice?
New and Noteworthy: Unconditional Love, ‘Shame-Sex Attraction,’ and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
From Hard Truths
Love is Patient
In the film Hard Truths (written and directed by Mike Leigh), the main character yells at strangers — Pansy is angry at the world. But her sister Chantelle sees the sadness behind the rage, offering Pansy the unconditional love we all need: “I don’t understand you,” says Chantelle, “but I love you.” Bleecker Street Media
The Editors: True Confessions
An introduction to the January/February 2025 issue of Sojourners.
Illustration by Laura Freeman
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.
New and Noteworthy: ‘Unholy Power,’ Black Utopia, and More
Three culture recommendations from our editors.
Unholy Power
Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Carl Byker’s short documentary, For Our Daughters, displays the evangelical church’s dangerous pattern of protecting abusive men — from the pulpit to the White House — to maintain social and political power, often to the detriment of women. www.forourdaughtersfilm.com
The Editors: Welcome. You Belong.
An introduction to the December 2024 issue of Sojourners.
Ernesto Cardenal (1925-2020) was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and revolutionary. / Illustration by Junyu Lin
POET MARY OLIVER describes the world calling us “like the wild geese, harsh and exciting.” As we approach Advent, Christians ponder words like annunciation, waiting, and hope. Midwife Julie Dotterweich Gunby plumbs the theological depths of expectation and asks if we are truly “ready for Christmas.” Before we celebrate Christ’s birth, we must wade through the consequences of a U.S. election. (This issue went to print before November.) If we zoom too far out, our vision becomes binary — red/blue, us/them, win/lose. If we look more closely, we see active civic engagement, and a robust obligation to protect the democratic process. We also glimpse ties that bind us around the world. Stephen Schneck chronicles Nicaragua’s fall into autocracy, a cautionary tale. Chris Hedges and Mae Elise Cannon take readers to Palestine and Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter, respectively. Liuan Huska travels to Ann Arbor, Mich., to report on a “farm-to-altar” Communion bread project reminding us that we are what we eat. “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,” concludes Oliver, the world is “announcing your place in the family of things.” Welcome. You belong.
Prayers Lifted: Here's Where You Can Pray for the 2024 Election
Photo by Paul Brady / Almay via Reuters Connect.
According to recent polling, 7 out of 10 Americans are feeling anxious about the 2024 presidential election. And as Election Day draws near, many churches and faith groups are trying to help alleviate some of that anxiety by opening their doors — and virtual spaces — for prayer.