Mitchell Atencio is the senior associate news editor at Sojourners. He began as a contract reporter for Sojourners in 2020.
In his work, Mitchell is charged with further fortifying the award-winning reporting of Sojourners, ranging investigative reporting and breaking news to Q&As and features. He has reported on L’Arche founder Jean Vanier’s sexual abuse, the intricacies of Christian nationalism, backlash to pro-Palestinian theology, the evolution of Christian hip-hop, and more.
He co-leads the Sojourners Journalism Cohort and the Q&A series “The Reconstruct.” He has interviewed WNBA players, Biblical scholars, farmers, and bishops. Occasionally, he reviews art—from Kendrick Lamar to Godzilla; he would love to interview either one of them.
Mitchell is the author of a forthcoming biography of Clarence Jordan.
Born in Atlanta and homeschooled in Phoenix, he now lives in Chicago where he plays lots of tennis and donates blood as often as he can.
Posts By This Author
Wendell Berry, Voice for Land and Neighbor, Dies at 92
Wendell Berry, farmer, author, and activist died earlier this week. He was 92 years old.
Berry’s death was first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by a statement sent to Sojourners by The Berry Center where his daughter, Mary Berry, serves as executive director.
“The Berry Center and Berry family are heartbroken to announce the death of Wendell Erdman Berry, writer and farmer of Port Royal, Henry County, Kentucky. He passed suddenly and peacefully at home yesterday afternoon, August 31st,” the statement read. “His work continues, here and in every place where people aim to live according to nature’s measure, on and with and of their beloved home place.”
Andy Mineo and Wordsplayed Are Having the Most Fun in Christian Hip-Hop
Where do you think Ye keeps his Dove Award?
Oh, you forgot Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has a Dove Award—the Christian music industry award—alongside other illustrious winners like Kirk Franklin, Michael W. Smith, and Amy Grant? Fear not, the rap duo of Andy Mineo and John “Wordsplayed” Itiola are here with witty one-liners to remind you.
As long-time staples in Christian hip-hop, each has left a distinctive mark on the misfit subgenre.
Mineo spends a ruthless amount of time honing his craft, and it shows. He has helped lead CHH past cheap musical imitations of “secular hip-hop,” and past cheap lyrical imitations of Reformed sermons. Over trap beats, Latin drums, or the occasional electric guitar, he’s written the fullness of his life—from doubting God and deconstructing to his relationships with his parents.
Wordsplayed has consistently infused CHH with some much-needed levity. He toes the line with witty lyricism, mocking everything from the music industry to Creflo Dollar, internet pornography, and himself—all with a wink. Through lo-fi beats, infomercials for his Patreon, and stand-up comedy sets, he’s given every too-serious fan of CHH the type of laughter that provokes introspection.
R.L. Stollar’s Death Leaves Complicated Legacy as a Child’s Rights Theologian
Editor’s note: This story includes reference to suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
Ryan “R.L.” Stollar, a theologian and advocate whose work focused on children, abuse survivors, and homeschooling, died by suicide this week, leaving behind a legacy of tenacious and occasionally combustive activism. He was 41.
Stollar co-founded the blog “Homeschoolers Anonymous,” which garnered scores of media attention in the 2010s as more homeschool alumni began sharing stories of their experiences. He later helped found the organizations Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out and the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, both dedicated to resources and advocacy around safer homeschooling in the U.S. In 2023, Stollar published The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology with Eerdmans.
“We [adults] need to give children the freedom to be their own theologians — to discover and love who God is and what God values on their own terms,” Stollar wrote.
Zondervan to Pull Alan Chambers’ Memoir After Arrest
Zondervan will put Alan Chambers’s book My Exodus: From Fear to Grace out of print following the news of Chambers’ arrest for solicitation of a minor.
Chambers, a leader and later renouncer of ex-gay ministry Exodus International, was arrested by the Orlando Police Department on May 19. According to case details first reported by ABC affiliate Channel 9 Orlando News, Chambers is charged with three felonies he messaged a detective posing as a 14-year-old boy. The Advocate reported that he “frequently discussed meeting up and engaging in sexual activity during that time, as well as concerns about their age difference and if he would get in trouble.”
Chambers joined Exodus International in 2001, leading the ministry until 2013 when Chambers gave a public apology for the organization’s efforts to promote sexual orientation change. He later supported bans on “conversion therapy” for minors and spoke at Pride events. In 2015, he told Religion News Service that he believed same-sex relationships could be holy.
A ’90s Christian Hit Song Is Now Blooming as a Queer Anthem
If you grew up listening to contemporary Christian music in the mid-’90s and early-2000s, brace yourself, I am about to get a song stuck in your head.
You may recall “Testify to Love,” as a bubbly, infectious CCM hit from 1997 by the pop quartet Avalon. Originally a cheery anthem to God’s love, Ty Herndon and former Avalon singer Michael Passons have re-released the song with an added layer: LGBTQ+ affirmation.
For Passons, the re-recording of his CCM hit was a moment for the song to come full circle. The Nashville-based artist left Avalon in 2003, at the time saying it was to pursue a solo career. In 2020, he revealed to Billboard that he’d been fired by the band because he is a gay man. Passons took a long hiatus from singing but kept close friendships in the music industry. One of those friendships was with Herndon, one of the first openly gay male artists in country music. Herndon was the one who invited Passons to re-record the song. At first, Passons wasn’t sure how his voice would respond when he stepped in the booth to record.
How the DC Shooting Suspect Misunderstands the Bible
Before allegedly attempting to assassinate the president, Cole Tomas Allen reportedly wrote his motivations and answered objections in a brief, 1,000-word manifesto. The first objection was that Christians ought to turn the other cheek.
How Pope Leo XIV Understands His Role in Politics
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV responded to ranting criticisms from President Donald Trump, saying in part that he had no interest in being perceived as a politician.
“The message of the church, my message, the message of the gospel: Blessed are the peacemakers,” Leo told journalists as he arrived in Algeria. “I do not look at my role as being political, a politician.”
Trump attacked Leo late Sunday night as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” at the beginning of a lengthy post on Truth Social.
“I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States,” he wrote. “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” The president also posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, though he later deleted the post and claimed he thought it was him as a “doctor … a Red Cross worker.”
She Led a Progressive Seminary Through a Generation of Politics and Protest
Rev. Serene Jones is looking forward to waking up naturally, without an alarm clock. After 18 years as president of Union Theological Seminary, Jones announced last summer that she would be stepping down after the current school year.
Justin Giboney Wants Us to Stop Co-opting the Civil Rights Movement
As founder and president of the AND Campaign, Justin Giboney has championed an approach to politics that seeks to overcome, in his words, Left-Right culture wars.
He has galvanized Christians, especially evangelicals, around a platform that aims to maintain a commitment to traditionally conservative Christian morality while championing traditionally progressive views on race and economics. His organization’s name and its ampersand logo represent an unwillingness to cede either value in service of a political party.
An attorney and political strategist, Giboney explains in his new book, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around: How the Black Church’s Public Witness Leads Us Out of the Culture War, the ways his upbringing and study of the Civil Rights Movement informs his work. In particular, Giboney criticizes Christians on the Right for allowing conservative politics to shape their views on race, immigration, and economics; he criticizes the Left for allowing progressive politics to shape their views of sex and abortion. At one point, the AND Campaign’s tagline was “Social Justice (&) Biblical Values.” In recent years, it has shifted to “Social Justice (&) Moral Order.”
The Chaplain Helping the Timberwolves Stand in Solidarity with Minnesota
As a lifelong resident of Minnesota’s Twin Cities and a minister trained in deescalation, Matt Moberg has spent many of his past mornings at the Whipple Building in Minneapolis alongside those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement descending on their cities. He’s spent his nights at the 19,000-seat arena in the Target Center, as a chaplain to the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves.
“Sports can be done and sports can be held—and I think the Timberwolves in particular do it well—not as a distraction from real-life unfoldings,” Moberg told Sojourners. “It's a way to go, we’re still going to come together, not in spite of that, but because of that, and figure out how we can move forward together.”
Now, Moberg’s found himself in a small spotlight after his words reflecting on faith and social justice went viral on social media, where he chastised churches for “posting prayers for peace and unity today while my city bleeds in the street.”
“Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness. Don’t call silence ‘peacemaking,’” he wrote. “Don’t light a candle and think it substitutes for showing up.”
How You Can Support Minnesota, According to Local Faith Leaders
After federal agents shot and killed two people observing federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota, many across the country started looking for ways to express solidarity with those peacefully resisting the surge of violent government intervention in the Twin Cities. As the local movement continues to grow, national interest in providing support is growing along with it.
As activists, organizers, and everyday citizens mobilize to protect their neighbors, Sojourners asked Minnesota faith leaders how those outside the state can offer support with time, resources, and spiritual practices.
FBI Arrests Leaders of Protest Inside Minnesota Church
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Thursday morning that the FBI had arrested at least two leaders of a demonstration inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., protesting one of the church’s pastors works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The FBI arrested Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and activist in the Twin Cities, and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a community organizer and schoolboard member, according to Bondi’s posts on X. Bondi called Levy Armstrong a key organizer of the “coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
“WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP,” Bondi wrote, adding a prayer hands emoji.
Minneapolis Faith Leaders Amplify Demands for ICE to Repent
After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good, faith leaders in Minneapolis joined demands that ICE leave their city and repent.
“We have our demands. Hundreds of clergy across this state who have gathered together across faith traditions are standing with the rest of Minnesotans to say not again,” Minister JaNaé Bates Imari, co-executive director of ISAIAH, a multiracial interfaith nonprofit, told a crowd of Minnesotans at a press conference.
The press conference, organized by ISAIAH, drew more than a hundred leaders from numerous faith traditions, representing the breadth of the city’s religious communities. ISAIAH presented its demands: That ICE agent Jonathan Ross be arrested, charged, and prosecuted for killing Good; that ICE immediately cease its surge in operations in the state; and that Congress investigate the Department of Homeland Security.
What Your Church Can Do if ICE Comes to Your City
Learning from Chicago Christians’ creative companionship.
AS ORGANIZERS IN her city began preparing for the No Kings protest in October 2025, Erin Groble thought seriously about whether she should attend. On the one hand, she felt the need to do something. She was raised Lutheran and attended the Jesuit Loyola University in Chicago, and the increased presence of federal agents in Chicago challenged her to figure out what it meant to love her neighbor. On the other, she was genuinely scared at the possibility of being physically harmed or getting into conflict with authorities.
“I realized it just wasn’t really authentic to who I was. It just didn’t feel like the right thing for me to do,” Groble told Sojourners. “But then I started thinking, ‘OK, well, what is the right thing for me to do?’”
Groble was already part of a group chat organized by Brendan Curran, a Catholic priest and community organizer with The Resurrection Project. Curran had brought her block about 50 yard signs advertising “Know Your Rights” information via QR codes. Groble and her neighbors had planted a few of the signs, but there were plenty sitting in her neighbor’s home. “Yard signs are kind of hard to put up—especially in the city!” Groble said. “You have to find a place to put them; there’s a lot of concrete here and a lot of the soil is compacted. So, you need a lot of determination. I just went on my normal walking route, and in front of schools, by parks, by bus stops, I put them all up.”
This Museum Director Won't Let Trump Win the War on Black History
As I write, the federal government remains shut down, and with it, the Smithsonian and its numerous museums.
I suspect, however, that many in the executive branch aren’t losing sleep over a lack of access to publicly funded, rich, beautiful histories ranging from natural sciences to African American history. In the past year, the Trump administration has demanded those museums shape their presentation to his preferences, cut funding to these institutions, and lambasted the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in particular.
Amid these attacks on a truthful telling of history, I spoke to Harry Singleton III, the faith-based director of the International African American Museum, to understand how a liberation theologian approaches the task of museum work. Singleton is the son of a Baptist minister; a native of South Carolina, where the museum is located; and a scholar who spent most of his time in academia before transitioning to the museum in June.
How ‘Reconstruction’ Changed Lecrae’s View of American Christianity
For as long as Lecrae has been a public figure, he has been a lightning rod for white evangelical racism.
A spearhead for the movement that turned Christian hip-hop from a misfit genre to a powerhouse industry, Lecrae has consistently endured racism thinly veiled as theological critique. While he was earning deep respect from hip-hop luminaries—Sway In the Morning and Kendrick Lamar, for example—he was fighting a Christian industry that only begrudgingly came to accept that CHH was here to stay.
Early on, critics claimed “Christian” and “hip-hop” were contradictory terms, and Christian rappers like Lecrae were putting godly messages second to godless culture. Then, as the U.S. began another reckoning with racist police violence, Lecrae was accused of division, partisanship, and putting “political issues” like racism before “biblical issues” like abortion. When he attempted dialogue, white pastors told him to his face that chattel slavery was a “white blessing.”
Woe to Politicians Who Call Nonviolence Violent
I’ll be honest, I always thought the prophet Isaiah’s “woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” would play out a little more subtly in modern politics. Instead, last week gave us two explicitly straightforward examples of intentional, unjust redefinitions.
On Sept. 25, state Rep. John Gillette, a Republican from Kingman, Ariz., said earlier in the week that U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, should be “tried convicted and hanged.” After the Arizona Mirror reported on his comments, Gillette said he was simply referencing the “longstanding statutory penalty for treason.” But Jayapal, as the Mirror reported, was not calling for treason or a violent overthrow. Instead, she had been advocating for nonviolent resistance and protests. In a review of the entire session, the Mirror found there were “no calls to violence or advocating for overthrowing the government.”
A Woke Sermon Drove This Fundamentalist to Leftism
This interview is part of The Reconstruct, a weekly newsletter from Sojourners. In a world where so much needs to change, Mitchell Atencio and Josiah R. Daniels interview people who have faith in a new future and are working toward repair. Subscribe here.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: If you see a book about politics published in 2025, it’s very possible the world is different than what the author hoped for when they pitched it.
Layoffs at Faith in Public Life Reflect Struggles Across the Sector
Faith in Public Life, a nonprofit that organizes clergy and faith leaders toward progressive causes, laid off 90% of its staff, CEO Jeanné Lewis confirmed to Sojourners.
Lewis said the decision, which reduced FPL’s staff from 19 to just two on Aug. 1, was both strategic and financial, in response to changes from institutional philanthropy and grant-makers. FPL and its sister organization, Faith in Public Life Action—which Lewis also heads—will scale back programming as a result of the shift.
How Divinity School Led Riley MacLeod to a Career in Games Journalism
Recently, I saw a clip that claimed to show video game players performing the “first Fortnite baptism.”
Fortnite, for those unfamiliar, is an online battle royale-style game that boasts over a million active players. At its peak, it claimed over 14 million players. In the video, two characters, standing in a virtual lake exchange the questions: “Do you confess that Jesus is your Lord and Savior?” “Will you follow him for the rest of your days?” Followed by a Trinitarian baptism, and exclamations of “Let’s goooooo!”
As I watched this theologically questionable exchange, I started thinking about Riley MacLeod. MacLeod is editor and co-owner of Aftermath, a worker-owned publication dedicated to games journalism and blogging. But I also knew MacLeod was a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and someone broadly interested in faith and social justice.