Commentary
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America is fighting to figure out who we are. We are unmasking terrible truths, coming to terms with racist and oppressive ideals that have long been part of our foundations, and asking what change is supposed to look like.
The past four years, Sojourners has created an International Women’s Day roundup of women faith leaders who are bringing us hope and inspiring us to action. This year’s group includes pastors and environmentalists, writers and theologians, nurses and poets.
A computer image created by Nexu Science Communication together with Trinity College in Dublin, shows a model structurally representative of a betacoronavirus which is the type of virus linked to COVID-19. NEXU Science Communication/via REUTERS/Files
Economic, social, and political inequality affects everything — including the new coronavirus: who gets it, how they are treated, the chances for recovery, job security, etc. Our Sojourners team looked at that question this week: How is our deep and shameful inequality in America at play as the threat of the new coronavirus rises? Here is what we found.
Illustration by the author
Isaiah 58 talks about a fast that loosens the bonds of wickedness. It undoes the straps of the heavy yokes that keep people oppressed and let them go free. It leads to food for the hungry, a home for the homeless, clothing for those without, and restores families. God says forthrightly, “This is the fast I desire."
Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks as Senator Bernie Sanders raises his hands during the tenth Democratic 2020 presidential debate at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, S.C., Feb. 25, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Matthew 25 isn’t meant to be a warm and fuzzy, feel-good passage.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Amid the reality of racism, resistance, and restraint, I witnessed my grandfather commit his life to bettering the place he’s always known as home. The servant leadership of my paternal grandparents highlights my family’s legacy in South Carolina.
Image via Candace Sanders.
When who you are has been defined by outside representatives, to keep from slipping away you have to grasp onto what is tangible, what is real, what you know to be you. There is a consistent reconciliation of self, from you to your audience, you to your work, and you to yourself.
Jean Vanier
On Saturday, L’Arche International — a network of more than 154 communities in 38 countries where people with intellectual disabilities and those without intellectual disabilities live together in community to "work together to build a more human society" — announced the results of an investigation it commissioned last year into L’Arche founder Jean Vanier, who died in 2019. The investigation revealed that that Vanier “has been accused of manipulative sexual relationships and emotional abuse between 1970 and 2005, usually within a relational context where he exercised significant power and a psychological hold over the alleged victims,” as Tina Bovermann, Executive Director of L’Arche USA put it in a letter describing the investigation and its findings.
"William Wilberforce" 1828 by Sir Thomas Lawrence
The acknowledgment of Wilberforce’s addiction does not tarnish his story — it completes it. His life can teach us that while addictions are harmful in and of themselves, many of the other negative consequences we often associate with addiction are created or exacerbated by how we treat those with addictions.
Photo via The Inheritance on Facebook
In The Inheritance, currently on Broadway through mid-March, a century-old English novel (E.M. Forster’s Howards End) gently soundtracks, or perhaps orchestrates, the lives of gay men in their 30s during the period when President Obama was moving out of office, President Trump was moving in, and many of us wondered just where on earth we were.
Photo by Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash
A report today released by the United Church of Christ identifies the nation’s “Toxic 100” super polluters, naming the factories and facilities responsible for nearly half the toxic air emissions in hundreds of neighborhoods across 28 states. Alongside the report, Breath to the People: Sacred Air and Toxic Pollution, the UCC provides an interactive map, because they believe parents have the right know where these polluters operate. Like toxic water, toxic air is irreversibly harming children across our nation.
Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash
Today, the Reclaiming Jesus elders are again calling us to liberation in public witness, but through means other than a rousing church service and candlelit procession to the White House. This time, the journey moves through time (40+ days) rather than space, and the destination is not the presidential residence but something a bit closer to home, if more difficult to reach: our own souls.
This is a delicate moment for our small Pacific nation. We are in desperate need of voices of compassion and the nonviolent way of Jesus. And yet Christian conferences in Aotearoa New Zealand which draw thousands often feature communicators who were at The White House praying for Trump in October.
Stacey Abrams speaks at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Photo by Christian Smutherman / Sojourners
Voter suppression tactics jeopardize the very legitimacy of the 2020 election. They also represent an assault on human dignity and imago dei, because as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly put it, “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.”
Photo by Alvin Engler on Unsplash
On-the-ground solutions to environmental challenges are becoming the most effective and practical strategy. Cities today are leading the way on climate resilience strategies, which are specific to the city’s infrastructural, geographic, spatial and topographic makeup, through initiatives like 100 Resilience Cities and Climate Ready programs, which help cities prepare for the long-term impacts of climate change.
Recently I had the opportunity to read Aundi Kolber’s newest book, Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode — and into a Life of Connection and Joy. The book quickly became a regular part of my self-care routine. Aundi is a licensed professional counselor and public speaker, and her work reflects the gentleness that so many of us need in a time in America when we are all a little (or a lot) frazzled by the social, political, and religious climate around us. We need books that help keep us tethered to the work of self-care so that we can do healthier work in the world. Try Softer is a book that can get us there.
September 2019: President Donald Trump visits a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Otay Mesa, California. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo
The administration is pursuing every tactic at its disposal – many of which have been temporarily stalled by the courts – to impede the path to citizenship and to reduce legal immigration avenues to the U.S.
When we started questing the bible, everything falls apart. What can we even trust or believe in? But I think the second fear is that it will drive a wedge between us and this community that is really important to us especially as Asian Americans because we’re a super community oriented culture. So I think that a lot of Asian American Christians are afraid to do that and I think for legitimate reasons. Those fears are not unwarranted.
Witness Paul Feldsher is questioned by lawyer Donna Rotunno during Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in New York. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg/File Photo
If it wasn’t already true on the face of it, Denhollander’s comments and the responses to her reveal that the “burden of safety” does not lie with the victim, and a victim certainly doesn’t share blame for putting themselves “in that situation.”