Jenna Barnett (she/her) is the culture editor at Sojourners and the producer of the award-winning podcast Lead Us Not. She was born in San Antonio and lives in San Diego. She has a B.A. in sociology and religion from Furman University and an M.F.A in Literary Reportage from New York University.
Before joining the Sojo team, Jenna managed the International Rescue Committee’s urban gardens in San Diego, and worked as a writer for the Women PeaceMakers Program at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.
She has written for McSweeney’s, Texas Monthly, the Belladonna, and New York Magazine’s Grub Street. You’re likely to find her playing basketball, watching women’s soccer, eating homemade flour tortillas, or taking her time in Scrabble.
Some Sojourners articles by Jenna Barnett:
Culture:
Brandi Carlile’s Radical Gospel of Gentleness
“What I'm talking about is radical, filthy, trembling, scary, life-changing, beautiful forgiveness,” the Grammy-winner told Sojourners in an interview.
Snorting Nutmeg at Vacation Bible School with Lucy Dacus
Her album Home Video could have just as easily been named “Youth Group” or maybe “Adventures in Suburbia.”
Features:
How Do We Recover When Our Leaders Betray Us?
Charismatic leaders like Jean Vanier can inspire our faith — or make it fall apart.
Let There Be Light
When sexual abuse occurred in their church, Rev. Heidi Hankel and her congregation refused to let it stay hidden.
Humor:
Footprints in the Sand (Unedited)
Lord, when I needed you most, why were you snacking on Flamin' Hot Cheetos?
John the Baptist’s Recipe for Honey-Crisped Locusts
Once the locusts are as hot as a wealthy hypocrite burning in hell (about 200 degrees), add the honey.
Posts By This Author
‘Live Laugh Love’ Untangles the Politics of White Christian Women
The walls are covered in shiplap paneling. Over by the spare toilet paper, an essential oil diffuser hums quietly as it emits Young Living’s “Purification” into the air. Two wide-eyed Precious Moments figurines watch you from the windowsill. A framed Bible verse declares, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” but you already knew you were in the bathroom of a white Christian woman; the signs and wonders were all around you. In Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Kristin Kobes Du Mez dissects those signs—and their political implications.
Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, landed on The New York Times’ bestseller list for Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, her scorching dissection of white evangelical masculinity. With Live Laugh Love, Du Mez turns her eye to white Christian femininity. Because, “demographically speaking, women are the center of American Christianity,” writes Du Mez, “we should look beyond denominational seminaries and theological treatises and read Christian romance novels instead.”
Why Is Hollywood Fixated on Nuns?
Disclosure Day and One Battle After Another both featured rebellious nuns, but we’ve seen this trend before.
WITHIN A YEAR, two blockbuster films have featured fugitives who seek refuge in a surprising place: a convent of religious women. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, the daughter of a revolutionary hides out with the fictional Sisters of the Brave Beaver. In Stephen Speilberg’s sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day, a government whistleblower carrying stolen information about alien life takes shelter at the monastery of St. Clare of the Dawn.
‘Disclosure Day’ Finds Faith Where Aliens.gov Finds Fear
On my last day of college, I went to my chaplain’s office to ask her a final theological question. “In case this comes up in the next few years and I don’t have a trusted faith leader nearby to ask: What does it mean for Christianity if we learn definitively that aliens are real?”
I wish I could recall her exact response. But I only remember that she was amused—and not worried at all about the existential impact of the extraterrestrial. If I had asked her today, she probably would have directed me to see Steven Spielberg’s latest aliens-are-real epic, Disclosure Day.
Words Across History That Expose America’s Deepest Divide
In All We Say, a former Obama speechwriter shares 15 speeches that defined America for better and worse.
In All We Say, Ben Rhodes, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, examines 15 speeches that have defined and shaped the history of the United States. If you were to read the final two speeches back-to-back, Obama’s “race speech” and President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address, you’d likely experience an emotional whiplash. The first is delivered by an acclaimed modern orator, the second by someone who tends toward bombast and offensive tangents.
The San Antonio Nuns Chanting ‘Go Spurs Go! And God Bless!’
The morning after the Spurs won Game 5 of the NBA’s Western Conference semifinals, I woke up, still reveling in the victory. As a born-and-raised San Antonian and die-hard basketball fan, the playoffs are something of a holiday season. Before leaving my bed, I added an infant Victor Wembanyama jersey to my baby registry and turned to Instagram for some game highlights.
There, I stumbled across a post by the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco in San Antonio, a Catholic order devoted to educating and supporting young people. Behind the sisters was a print of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, but their eyes were turned to another work of art: The Spurs up 52-37 in the second quarter. The sisters were all standing and clapping. Each wore their white habits, but three of them also wore Spurs jerseys (Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili—a holy trinity to Spurs fans) from a golden era of Spurs basketball, an era I pray we’re returning to.
How To Atone For Your MAGA Era
Leaving MAGA? Here are three Kid Rock-free steps toward repentance.
DONALD TRUMP’S APPROVAL ratings are hitting all-time lows, even among white evangelicals. One month into his second term, 55% of evangelicals were “extremely or very confident Trump acts ethically in office.” One year later, that has dropped to 40%.
At long last, could evangelical Christians be coming around to the idea that the 34-count felon president might not be the Christ conduit they hoped? If you are one of those disillusioned Christians, welcome to the other side! It’s not any more fun over here (ICE watches and doomscrolling really eat into hobby time), but at least the food and music are more flavorful.
How Long Can a Marriage Ignore the Wound?
The film Midwinter Break opens with an intimate flashback to the Troubles of Ireland: A very pregnant Stella is shot by an Irish Republican Army sniper; the milk bottle she just purchased shatters to the ground, her own blood pooling alongside the spilt milk. The trauma is vivid, but its extent is not yet known.
The novel on which the film is based, also named Midwinter Break, begins far more quietly. Rather than announcing its central wound at once, it allows the trauma to surface gradually, disclosed in fragments as the chapters unfold.
Larry the Cucumber Should Headline TPUSA’s Halftime Show
And other really good, really plausible ways this event can live into the biblical call to social justice.
FOR MONTHS, I’VE tried to understand the outrage over the selection of rapper Bad Bunny as headliner of the Super Bowl LX halftime show. What’s not to like about the Puerto Rican reggaeton star? He’s won three Grammys, boosted Puerto Rico’s economy by at least $400 million with his concert residency, and through his “Good Bunny” foundation annually delivers thousands of Christmas gifts to Puerto Rican children—even though it would be far more on-brand for him to deliver Easter baskets.
Still, after the announcement, conservatives across the country revolted (sent out angry tweets on X, which somehow still exists). They wanted a Christian, American halftime show, not a secular, Puerto Rican halftime show! Soon they learned that every Puerto Rican is a U.S. citizen and that by nearly every metric of religiosity, Puerto Rico ranks as the most Christian jurisdiction of the United States. These facts didn’t assuage their anger.
In ‘Rental Family,’ Brendan Fraser Loves His Neighbor by Lying to Them
In Rental Family, Brendan Fraser’s character Phillip does a lot of pretending. While looking for gigs as an American actor living in Tokyo, he lands a strange role: “token white guy.” And it gets weirder, the more Phillip learns about it: His new employer, a company called “Rental Family,” doesn’t cast for the stage or the screen. They hire actors—“surrogates”—to play roles in people’s lives, to “help people connect to what’s missing.”
Phillip becomes whatever the company’s clients need him to be: a mourner at a staged funeral, a groom for an anxious bride, the dad who’s finally part of the picture. Sometimes he pretends to be these people for 30 minutes, sometimes he has to pretend for weeks on end. Soon, Phillip comes to love the job he was initially so skeptical of.
Sojourners’ Top Movies of 2025
For five years now, Sojourners has created a list of our favorite films of the year. And because we’re Sojourners and not Vulture or IndieWire, our list follows a different set of priorities. We only focus on films that are concerned with spirituality or justice (or when we’re really lucky, both).
This year, more than any of the other four years we’ve done this round-up, I was struck by the sheer number of films grappling with faith and justice.
‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk’ Is a Must-Watch Documentary
In early 2024, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi felt compelled to document life in Gaza. Ultimately, she couldn’t gain access to the Strip, but she connected with a photographer who’d lived all 25 years of her life there: Fatma Hassona.
The documentary Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk is almost entirely composed of their monthslong correspondence. Farsi weaves Hassona’s portraits of an increasingly battered Gaza between a steady exchange of audio messages, spotty video calls, and text messages.
‘Nuremberg’ Wants to Humanize Nazis. Should It?
Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, was known as “the best dinner party guest you’ll ever have.” That’s according to James Vanderbilt, the co-writer, co-producer, and director of Nuremberg, the new film dramatizing the origin story of the Nuremberg trials, when, for the first time in history, international law held individuals—not just nations—accountable for crimes against humanity. Göring, played by a precise, brilliant Russell Crowe, was the high command of the Nazi Luftwaffe. He was also, as Vanderbilt told me during a Zoom interview, “funny, charming, and magnetic—none of the things you would associate with a Nazi.”
The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and arrives in theaters Nov. 7, opens with Göring surrendering himself to the Allied troops in 1945. He directs his driver to wave a white flag...ish (the lace material that he rips from the bottom of his wife’s slip). And just like that, we learn that one of the most powerful Nazi leaders is resourceful, is brazen, is husband.
The Best New Movies Coming Out This Fall and Winter
Oscar season hasn’t even started, and 2025 is already shaping up to be a strong year at the movies. We’ve seen small-budget standouts, from the thought-provoking body horror of Together to the empathetic dramedy of Sorry, Baby. Even the superhero blockbusters—Superman, Fantastic Four—had more to say about justice and community than I’ve come to expect from spandex cinema. And then there was Sinners, which was perfect.
Ministering To—and Learning From—Those With Dementia
I've grown tired of this question: “How do we get young people to come to church?”
Yes, I know that 49% of Americans born in the 1940s or earlier attend religious services at least once a month. And yes, I know that when it comes to my ilk, people born in the 1990s or 2000s, that percentage cuts in half. Those numbers don’t scare me.
The Vatican Has Got a Guy
We’ve put together a list of (unverified) hometown facts about Pope Leo (Chicago Man) XIV.
<p>
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
</p>
SHORTLY AFTER THE Vatican announced that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native, would be the next pope, the Cubs changed the iconic Wrigley Field sign to read, “Hey, Chicago, He’s a Cubs fan!” Then Pope Leo’s brother John refuted the claim. Apparently, Leo loves the White Sox, which is convenient, given that their colors more closely match the papal vestments. While this revelation is a big loss for the Cubs (they’re used to that, fortunately), it’s still a huge win for the city of Chicago. In June, Chicagoans (even Cubs fans!) swarmed to the White Sox’ Rate Field to hear Pope Leo address his hometown’s faithful via Jumbotron in what Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich called “the sermon on the mound.”
Clearly, the new pope’s love of the Windy City runs deep, so we’ve put together a list of hometown facts about Pope Leo (Chicago Man) XIV. While all unverified by the Vatican, some truth could be hidden here. Stranger things have happened: a man on the moon, an American in the popemobile.
14 Rachel Held Evans Quotes on Doubt and Other Key Parts of Christian Faith
Rachel Held Evans, outside her home in Dayton, Tenn., in November 2014. Credit: Robin Rayne/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News
Sometimes I am haunted by Glennon Doyle’s forward to the late Rachel Held Evans’ book Searching for Sunday. Doyle begins: “Whenever I want to scare myself, I consider what would happen to the world if Rachel Held Evans stopped writing.” In 2019, about four years after those words were published, Evans died. She was 37, survived by her husband, two kids, and Christians around the world who found comfort in her faith-rooted advocacy for racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and egalitarianism.
10 Quotes From Mary Oliver, the Patron Saint of Paying Attention
Silhouettes of flying geese at soft colored sky. Photo: olandsfokus / Alamy
Mary Oliver often explored big existential questions with the unlikeliest of philosophical partners: moss, roses, geese, dogs, waves. They all had interesting things to say to her. In a 2015 interview with Krista Tippett, Oliver explained that there is nothing more interesting to her than spirituality. “So I cling to it,” she said. “I have no answers, but have some suggestions.” Her poems are riddled with those suggestions. Here are some of my favorites
Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst
Bulk batteries and other sundries in my go bag inspired by the “Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids.”
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
FIRST, I WILL tell you what “The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids” is not:
It is not a dark comedy starring Kristen Wiig, Kristen Stewart, Kristen Bell, and six other Kristens about a bachelorette party’s riverboat cruise crashing on the shores of a money-crunched Christian summer camp.
“The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids” is also not a Sufjan Stevens song about the 10 different types of clouds that hang over Lake Michigan in late autumn, just as wedding season draws to a close.
And, like most campfire tales Jesus told, it is not singular in its meaning.
Worship Songs for the Disillusioned
Joy Oladokun’s ‘Observations From a Crowded Room’ will resonate with all the skeptics who still pray.
Observations From a Crowded Room, by Joy Oladokun / Verve Forecast/Republic Records
I WANT TO believe there’s a live band at a church somewhere in the U.S. playing Joy Oladokun’s latest album, Observations From a Crowded Room. After all, Oladokun is no stranger to sanctuaries: By the time she was 16, Oladokun was leading the worship music at the charismatic nondenominational church her family attended. But around the age of 24, she quit, explaining in an interview with NPR, “I just felt like so much of my attention was going towards taking care of people and singing the right songs and not saying the wrong thing on Sunday.”
I think, for a long time, I’ve been looking for a church willing to risk singing the wrong thing on Sunday—to risk singing something like these lyrics from Oladokun’s “Dust/Divinity”: “I’m a skeptic who still prays / ... ’Cause though it hurts me to believe / It kills me not to / And I am trying to find my way through the middle / And I am desperate to receive every good thing / From now until eternity / From dust until divinity.”
Sojourners’ Top Movies of 2024
The films below feature characters — real and fictional — who doubt, who sin, who ask for forgiveness, and who try to carry on and seek justice in a universe full of violence, corruption, and sickness, but also humor, love, and reconciliation.