Bekah McNeel

Early in The Book of Belonging, a long-anticipated children’s story Bible, author Mariko Clark includes this paragraph: “Think about how cozy and special you feel when someone asks you about your day or wants to learn more about your favorite foods or hobbies. God made us to belong with God! That means God wants to be close and cozy with us. So all questions are welcome!”

About a month into her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has begun to reveal glimpses of her proposed White House policy agenda. The big-ticket items — child tax credits, housing incentives, and inflation relief on groceries — are aimed at the segment of the population most affected by the skyrocketing cost of living: young working families. It’s a focus child welfare advocates are welcoming.

Starting on Thursday, July 18, between 35 and 125 Mennonites and interfaith allies from the U.S. and Canada made steady progress on their 11-day, 141-mile “All God’s Children March for a Ceasefire” trek from Harrisonburg, Va., to Washington, D.C. Upon arrival in Washington on Sunday, July 28, the marchers urged Congress and President Joe Biden’s administration to support an immediate, permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages and political prisoners, an end to military aid to Israel, and a political solution that ends the occupation of Palestine, ensuring peace for Palestinians and Israelis. And on Tuesday, July 30, 46 of the people were arrested by Capitol Police during a protest.

Daneen Akers faced a dilemma: After moving away from fundamentalist Christianity, what books about God could she read to her kids? She went through the boxes in her parents’ basement, full of the books she’d grown up with — books that used exclusively male pronouns for God and talked about Jesus’ blood satisfying a debt owed for humanity’s sins. “The faith stories I had inherited, a lot of us had inherited, were just not sufficient. I wanted something expansive,” Akers said.

The waiting room of a fertility clinic was one of the most sacred places Elizabeth Wanczak had ever experienced. Most of the people sitting around her had weathered trauma and grief like hers — stories of repeated miscarriage, medical catastrophe, and what felt like endless longing for a baby that had not yet come. And yet, she said, the presence of these people in the waiting room signaled hope. They had not yet given up.

IT WAS DARK. Totally dark and empty. Andrea Smith felt a familiar hopelessness. “Of course I’m all alone,” she thought. “It’s my greatest fear.”

Smith, a pastor in the United Methodist Church, was at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore, in the first moments of a psilocybin trip designed for clergy.

“I didn’t know crap about psychedelics leading into it,” Smith told Sojourners. Through work with the center before her 2019 experiment with psilocybin (a psychoactive ingredient found in some mushrooms), she was prepared to possibly meet her greatest fears — some participants even reported seeing their own death. At first, that’s exactly what happened.

Smith’s profound childhood trauma — her mother suffered a fatal aneurysm in front of her at age 9 — had instilled an existential fear of being alone, she realized, which had led her to the brink of self-destruction. Burnt out in ministry, avoiding the truth about her husband’s infidelity, and grieving the death of her father, Smith entered the Johns Hopkins study in a fog of depression. She was considering returning to the antidepressants she’d stopped years before. “I was broken,” Smith said. “I was just exhausted and spent.”

During Smith’s psilocybin treatment, something shifted. She described moving “in and through” increasingly abstract and light-filled imagery that led her on what was ultimately, she said, a journey of redemption and forgiveness. She never got back on antidepressants, because the depressive fog lifted almost immediately after her psilocybin treatments. Smith credits the psilocybin experience with her ability to make major life changes.

The scientists at Johns Hopkins paved the way for contemporary research into the unique pharmacological properties of organic and synthetic compounds known collectively as “psychedelics.” In 2000, the Johns Hopkins team obtained the first regulatory approval in the U.S. to restart research into psychedelic use with healthy voluntary subjects. In 2006, the team published the first wave of results on the “safety and enduring positive effects of a single dose of psilocybin,” which helped catalyze a worldwide resurgence of psychedelics research.

When Israeli troops stormed Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, the ensuing chaos effectively shut down the hospital, with soldiers forcing women and children to leave the maternity ward according to Doctors Without Borders. The invasion of the hospital underscored the heavy toll the Israeli assault has had on pregnant people and infants. Doctors Without Borders described Israel’s incursion as forcing “inhumane” birthing conditions.

I asked my 3-year-old niece, Ember, what she learned in church. She said she learned about Jesus. “Who is Jesus,” I asked. “Where does he live?” She looked at me like I was an idiot, and then said, “Jesus is in our heart. Jesus helps us not be scared and not be afraid.”

Many of today’s parents of young children represent a culture shift in regard to corporal punishment. Statistically, many of them were spanked as children but won’t continue that practice in their own parenting. Since the late 1990s, a growing body of research has led experts to advise against spanking, and parents have started to listen. But one group in particular stands by the practice: Christians.