Daniel José Camacho

Burton and Dreher share similar aesthetic views about Christianity and the past. 

The federal government is big, and it intervenes. The question is, for whom?

Today, the United States and Iran are two countries on the precipice of war with ruling elites who quote Rumi.

I'M HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS of the growing obsession with genetic ancestry tests. 23andMe. AncestryDNA. People can now scrape their inner cheek with a swab, mail it to a company for $99, and brag to you about a cultural or racial epiphany they’ve had based on being 4.7 percent of something. Who knows how this personal genetic information might be used. I suspect these companies respect people’s privacy as much as Facebook does. I’ve heard that governments and police departments are already using this information to track people.

And yet, I would be lying if I said I haven’t thought about purchasing a DNA kit for myself. Yes, I know that such tests provide limited and potentially misleading information. Yes, I understand that they fuel problematic framings of race that tie race to genetics when race is actually something socially and politically constructed. But I’m still curious!

I don’t know if I will ever take a test. I ask myself: Should I be contributing to this system? Could I convince Sojourners to pay for my test if I were to write an article about it, thus shifting some of the ethical burden away from me as an individual?

In May 2017, Juana Luz Tobar Ortega took sanctuary at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Greensboro, N.C. Originally from Guatemala, she had received a deportation sentence that would have separated her from her husband, four children, and two grandchildren, after living and working in the United States for over 20 years. Juana’s story, which is one among many harrowing stories of families harmed by aggressive immigration policies under the Trump administration, is now the subject of a documentary film.

In the essay “How The Idea Of Hell Has Shaped The Way We Think,” published in the Jan. 21 edition of the New Yorker, writer Vinson Cunningham examines The Penguin Book of Hell and launches into a stunning and far-ranging reflection on how the doctrine of hell relates to our concerns about the here and now. As a staff writer for the New Yorker since 2016, Cunningham has written on a variety of subjects including Pope Francis, theater, and the NBA. Prior to this, he was a columnist at McSweeney’s and served as a staff assistant at the Obama White House.

Lately, I have been asking myself the following question: How can sincere Christians embrace white nationalism? My question stems less from surprise and more from a desire to understand the mechanics. In church circles and in seminary, I heard about Barth, Bonhoeffer, and those who resisted. But I rarely heard about the majority of white Christians who supported a demagogue whose rhetoric had violent consequences.

“How can we afford it?” That’s the perennial question that confronts anyone who dares to propose progressive policy changes. A recent example is CNN’s Jake Tapper grilling congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over whether tax money could fund items on her platform such as Medicare for all, a federal job guarantee, and cancelation of student loan debt. For those who are religious and politically progressive, this question is particularly challenging. While many are good at articulating the moral imperative of providing health care to all or protecting the environment, they can stumble on the issue of economic feasibility. So, when I was told about an economics conference in New York City that might connect to this topic, I was intrigued.

A new study by the Public Religion Research Institute reveals deep divides over support for political candidates accused of sexual harassment. The most striking divide may be among major Christian groups.

The survey asked respondents about the likelihood of them voting for someone accused of sexual harassment by multiple people. PRRI provided Sojourners with a breakdown of responses to this question by religious affiliation.