The Editors

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.”

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.

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

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

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.

CLIMATE ACTIVIST, GRANDFATHER, and professional cellist John Mark Rozendaal blocked the entrance to Citibank headquarters this summer to protest one of the globe’s biggest funders of fossil fuel expansion. Hugging a fire-engine red instrument, he played a few bars of Bach and was promptly arrested. “The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind,” he said to the crowd, “to make it susceptible to Divine influences.” His cello bears the inscription: “This machine loves, serves + protects life.”

Small courageous acts of joy are proliferating. In this issue, Rev. Moya Harris quotes rapper Chuck D to confront troublesome forces in this election season and Chris Crawford, a Catholic at Protect Democracy, urges Christians to become poll workers.

While we mourn the passing of civil rights activist, historian, and song leader Bernice Johnson Reagon, we are grateful for associate editor Josina Guess’ celebration of her life. Reagon’s singular voice demanded that we remember our freedom saints, of whom she is now one. Liz Cooledge Jenkins, reflecting on burnout and social activism, reminds us: “Joy, it turns out, is essential to the work of justice.”

THIS SPECIAL ISSUE of Sojourners focuses on Christian nationalism — what it is, why it matters, and how we can address this rising force.

Sojourners’ president Adam Russell Taylor introduces the dangers of Christian nationalism and how some are responding. Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and author of the forthcoming book How To End Christian Nationalism, further defines the threat to democracy and religious liberty, but also offers the assurance that “working to end Christian nationalism does not mean working to end Christian expression in the public square.” It’s about how we bring our faith to civic engagement.

In Derek Walcott’s poem “Midsummer, Tobago” he recalls a “summer-sleeping house / drowsing through August.” At Sojourners we are savoring family vacations, relaxing, welcoming new babies — and telling stories about our history and our becoming.

Sojourners assistant editor Josina Guess interviewed actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor about her recent films Origin and Exhibiting Forgiveness. Their deep conversation releases transformative power, an example of what narrative theologian James McClendon Jr. called “biography as theology.” What happens when we wrestle for truth in our personal and social histories, and open that struggle to God? As “Living the Word” writer Raj Nadella warns, “distorted memories of the past may misdirect our future; they may cause us to miss the way God is leading.”

JAILS ARE NOT nice places. There is little to dampen the sheer terror of being closed in, locked down, and utterly vulnerable. Now imagine getting booked into county jail while pregnant. Journalist Beatrice M. Spadacini writes this month on moms giving birth and raising children while incarcerated or entangled in the carceral system. These stories call to mind Junia, the only woman whom Apostle Paul identifies as “in prison with me” and who was “in Christ before I was” (Romans 16:7). Christians are continually instructed to make alliances across the cell blocks and over the prison walls. Dwayne David Paul’s commentary on convict labor elevates the usefulness of those alliances today for strengthening worker’s rights and defending the dignity of all.