Peter Armstrong is the Executive Assistant at Sojourners. After growing up in Sonoma County, Calif., and going to Russia for a year with the National Security Language Initiative for Youth, Peter thought international politics would be the name of his game, so he went to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Gradually, however, that changed: Though initially nonreligious, he found the Catholic environment to have a much greater influence on him throughout college than the D.C. political scene. Peter graduated in 2015 with the plan to spend a year with the Episcopal Service Corps in St. Louis, where he worked as Digital Missioner for Christ Church Cathedral, managing their social media and website. Throughout that year, he focused his free time on exploring the intersection of faith and social justice, so when he found out, midway through that year, that Sojourners had a similar internship program based on the principles of living together in community, he knew right away that that was where he was bound to go next.

Peter is a practicing meditator and novice Oblate in the World Community for Christian Meditation. Though passionate about standing in solidarity with oppressed peoples of all kinds, he finds himself most drawn to questions about God and who She is (and can be) for people of the 21st century. He is currently in the discernment process for priesthood in the Episcopal Church, and can be found on his bike dodging traffic through the streets of D.C., in coffee shops engaging in conversation or writing about his interests, or singing at your local Taizé service.

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Georgetown's Changes Are About Atonement, Not Reconciliation

by Peter Armstrong 09-02-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

The continued use of the language of reconciliation around this news obfuscates the need for real, full-fledged atonement.

At a moment like this, while the nation watches Georgetown takes this opportunity to correct the sins of its past, white Americans must not demand reconciliation. We must take the work of atonement upon our own shoulders. To do otherwise is to live as if Jesus’ life were not a gift, but something God owed to us from the beginning.