Sojourners Magazine back issues from July 2008:
Inside story.(Editorial)
Jul 01, 2008 ... News and images of the world food crisis have been hard to bear these last few months--skyrocketing food prices have provoked desperate rioting in many countries, including Haiti, Kenya, Mexico, and Pakistan. Millions of people are in trouble, and it's hard to know what to do. ...
Biblical basics.(Letter to the editor)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Your focus on faith and finances (May 2008 issue) truly inspired me to ensure my finances are supporting just causes through my giving, banking, and investing alike. The article on "Extreme Charity" (by Julie Polter) particularly challenged me, but I was disappointed by the statistic that ...
Feasting on change.(Letter to the editor)
Jul 01, 2008; ... I just subscribed to Sojourners, and in my first issue I was thrilled to read the article "Kitchen-Table Giving" (by Julie Polter, April 2008). I am the chapter leader of Dining for Women (DFW) in Massillon, Ohio. DFW is a giving circle dedicated to supporting international grassroots ...
A low-meat diet?(Letter to the editor)
Jul 01, 2008; ... I was disappointed that "A Low-Carbon Diet" (in "Between the Lines," compiled by Rose Marie Berger and Alexis Vaughan, March 2008) did not, in fact, address our diet. In most discussions about how to reduce our carbon footprint, diet is overlooked. In fact, animal agriculture contributes ...
An evangelical manifesto.(HEARTS & MINDS)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Thirty-five years ago, I was one of a group of evangelicals who issued a call for the movement to become more involved in social action. The 1973 "Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern" pledged "to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and oppressed," to "deplore ...
'We belong to each other': the pope challenges U.S. individualism and materialism.(COMMUNITY)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Much of the media coverage of Benedict XVI's recent U.S. visit focused on what he didn't say--and that silence was significant. The pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the church's chief enforcer of orthodoxy, did not choose to publicly scold those U.S. Catholics who challenge his ...
Overheard.(COMMENTARY)(quotation from Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson )(Quotation)
Jul 01, 2008 ... "Blackfellas will get the words, the whitefellas keep the money." --Aboriginal leader Noel ...
Carbon colonialism: real conservation is sidelined by carbon trading's bad math.(ENVIRONMENT)
Jul 01, 2008; ... "Recently a woman was buried alive. She died on the site [picking rubbish, killed by a dump truck offloading]. I could have saved her life."--Sajida Khan Sajida Khan spent her life advocating for the closure of the notorious Bisasar dump in South Africa. Opened during the ...
A better path: is it time for a Palestinian Ministry of Nonviolence?(MIDDLE EAST)(Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy)(Organization overview)
Jul 01, 2008; ... What would it take to elevate the role of nonviolence in the struggle for Palestinian justice? For Lucy Nusseibeh, forming a "ministry of nonviolence" would be an important step "to always keep the nonviolent options in the forefront of all Palestinian official actions." ...
Land of the free?(SNAPSHOT)(number of prisoners)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... People in prsion and jail U.S. 2.3 million (one of every 99 adults) China 1.5 million (one of every 708 adults) Source: Pew Center ...
How in the world are we doing?(STATS)(Millennium Development Goals Monitor )(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... The Millennium Development Goals Monitor tracks how countries are doing in their efforts to meet the eight MDGs set by the United Nations in 2000 for raising the global quality of life by 2015. Here's a look at progress (and regress) in the critical region of sub-Saharan Africa: ...
Beyond evangelical right and left.(CHURCH)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... Prominent U.S. evangelicals launched "An Evangelical Manifesto" on May 7 in Washington D.C. to address the confusion about who evangelicals are and what the proper role of evangelicals in public life should be (see "An Evangelical Manifesto," page 5). The statement identifies ...
Difficulty eating?(Between the Lines)(Sainte Claire's Catholic Church's community service to feed 1,000 people )(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Children line up for food outside the gates of Sainte Claire's Catholic Church in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 30. Father Gerard Jean-Juste and his community serve ...
The church has left the building.(TEXAS)(HighPoint Fellowship)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... An Exxon gas station in Cedar Park, Texas, was taken over by members of HighPoint Fellowship church on April 27 as part of "Faith in Action'" Sunday. Church members worked the pumps and subsidized prices so gas could be sold for $1 less than average. "We were dreaming up how we could help ...
Repairing the breach.(Isaiah Funds)(post-disaster reconstruction)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... The first U.S. interfaith loan fund to provide support for long-term domestic disaster recovery was launched in New Orleans on May 15. The Isaiah Funds--sponsored by Catholic, ...
Our plastic home.(REAL PRODUCT)(Creation Globe)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Don't know what to get for the person who bought a lifetime family membership to the Kentucky-based Creation Museum? Try the "Creation Globe" from David C. Cook. This toy "increases motor and size relationship skills while teaching the Biblical Creation story." Six plastic nesting globes ...
Catholic Worker movement turns 75.(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... The Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933, celebrated its 75th anniversary on May 1. Started as a radical Catholic newspaper amid the Great Depression, the Catholic Worker soon became a movement of Christian urban "houses of hospitality" and farms for ...
A human-made disaster: 10 factors that led to the world food crisis (and how to keep it from happening next time.(WORLD FOOD CRISIS)(Cover story)
Jul 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The writer of the biblical book of Revelation, commenting on a Roman food crisis, expressed outrage that a day's wage was not enough to feed a laborer's family. Part of the problem was that local grain production had been undercut by cheap Egyptian imports ...
A mandate for action: addressing the food crisis is a matter of political and spiritual will.
Jul 01, 2008; ... The price of everything has gone up, from fertilizer to gasoline. People in India and China are demanding a better kind of food, including meat, which means that it takes more grain to feed the populations in those countries. The crop yield is down in Africa. There are droughts going on, ...
The shortage isn't food, its democracy.(WORLD FOOD CRISIS)
Jul 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] News broadcasts report a horrific "world food crisis." But there is no food shortage. In fact, there's more than enough food to make us all chubby--even counting only the "left-overs," what remains after turning more than a third of the world's grain and ...
The 'Zambia food crisis': all politics is local--food politics even more so.(WORLD FOOD CRISIS)
Jul 01, 2008; ... "KAYA KWAMENA TEYENDA, mitengo yavinto iyenda cheba pamwamba!" That cry coming from "Mrs. Mumba," a woman in one of Lusaka's large shanty compounds (slums) expresses her complaints about recent increases in many basic food commodities in local markets: "mealie meal" (corn meal), beans, ...
Investing in second chances: an innovative program helps prison inmates make a fresh start--and a business plan.
Jul 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] DOZENS OF GUESTS ARRIVE BY THE CARLOAD FROM HOUSTON and Dallas just before sunset on Friday night. After showing ID, they're escorted to a carpeted room with leather couches, warm lighting, and OutKast's "Hey Ya" blasting. Among the new ...
'Through the desert goes our journey': in the 1880s, a band of Russian Mennonites began a long trek to Uzbekistan, seeking the second coming of Jesus. What they found instead testifies to a different kind of faithfulness.
Jul 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LATE MORNING, June 3, 2007. Already the air hangs thick with a dusty, humid heat. We're wandering the tumbled-down remains of a sandy graveyard located between two sets of train tracks. Twenty-odd Americans, wiping off the mostly illegible faces of ...
Mrs. Logan's Garden Hose.(POETRY)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2008; ... <Pre> Mrs. Logan's Garden Hose She spoke softly, calmly recountingher pain through a furnace of litaniesthat helped her hold on to the unbeliefthat the boy who hanged himselfin her basement was the same boysilent in the glossy photographthat she ...
'History will honor your action': a letter from the Imperial County jail.
Jul 01, 2008; ... [Illustration Omitted] It was the evening of October 16, 2007, and Stephen Kelly, SJ, and I were due in court the next day for our nonviolent witness against torture nearly a year earlier. That night we received a call from retired Maj. Gem. Antonio Taguba, the man who wrote the ...
The mirrors of history: members of a prominent slave-trading family confront the wounds of the past and present.(Culture Watch)(James DeWolf)(Traces of the Trade)(Movie review)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Katrina Browne was in seminary when she received a booklet from her grandmother that outlined their family ,history. It's a history some part of her knew but had chosen to forget: Her ancestors, the DeWolfs of Bristol, Rhode Island, had not only been involved in the slave trade for three ...
Say what?(NEW AND NOTEWORTHY)(In Crazy Talk: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jul 01, 2008 ... In Crazy Talk: A Not-So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms, editor Rolf Jacobson and others put plain English (and fun) back into theological terms from absolution to YHWH--the latter defined as, "Th Hbrw nm fr Gd, whch w dn't ...
Visions of a new Earth.(NEW AND NOTEWORTHY)(Renewal: Stories from America's Religious-Environmental Movement)(Movie review)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... The film Renewal: Stories from America's Religious-Environmental Movement contains eight compelling stories of faith-based activism around the country--including how evangelicals have mobilized against mountaintop removal in Appalachia, the ...
Beating the bling.(NEW AND NOTEWORTHY)(In Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire)(Brief article)(Book review)
Jul 01, 2008 ... In Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, theology professor William Cavanaugh proposes a "theological microeconomics"--but don't let that scare you. In this slim book, he takes on the free market, consumerism, ...
Living history.(NEW AND NOTEWORTHY)(In Dare Not Walk Alone)(Movie review)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008 ... In Dare Not Walk Alone, director Jeremy Dean trains his camera on St. Augustine, Florida, a major battlefield during the civil rights movement. Combining footage of the protests in 1964 with present-day interviews of key players in the ...
A voice for the home front.(CULTURE)(Drive-By Truckers' Brighter Than Creation's Dark)(Sound recording review)
Jul 01, 2008; ... For most of the past decade, the rock band Drive-By Truckers has woven a musical saga of white Southern working-class life from the inside out. In a series of albums that began in 2001 with Southern Rock Opera and ran through The Dirty South (2004), the Truckers inhabited the lives of a ...
Turning the camera around.(Katrina Browne talks about her film Traces of the Trade)(Interview)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Filmmaker Katrina Browne talked with Sojourners associate editor Molly Marsh about the impetus behind Traces of the Trade. How have you experienced this work as a "calling?" I was in seminary when my grandmother sent all of us grandkids the booklet summarizing our family ...
The poetry of exclusion.(Exiles)(Book review)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Exiles, by Ron Hansen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ron Hansen's Exiles delicately displays the conjoining of the literary with the historical, biographical, philosophical, and even the theological. Once again Hansen's imaginative range surprises and entertains. The author of such ...
Ancient-future Christians.(Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices)(Excerpt)
Jul 01, 2008 ... A more holistic and integral concept of spiritual formation has begun to emerge. The architects of this emerging approach have often been described as "ancient-future" Christians. On the one hand, they have reached back, drawing from pre-Protestant sources--Orthodox, Catholic, Celtic, and ...
What binds us together.(A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America from the Politics of Division)(Book review)
Jul 01, 2008; ... A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America from the Politics of Division, by Chris Korzen and Alexia Kelley. Jossey-Bass. Politics in the United States, especially in an election year often seems to be a contest of competing special interests ....
Life lessons.(BIBLE STUDY)(Brief article)
Jul 01, 2008; ... "That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables ..." (Matthew 13:1-3). Most of the gospel readings ...
Come Out and Play: July 6.(Living the Word)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45:10-17; Romans 7:15-25; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 In a gospel that calls us repeatedly to hear and listen, we begin with a noisy passage full of calling, quarreling, wailing, and flutes. This first reading is the odd one out in a month of ...
Abundant Harvest: July 13.(Living the Word)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Genesis 25:19-34, Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 Although we read allegorical explanations of the parables in this week's gospel readings, a parable is not an allegory with a single interpretation and a one-to-one correspondence with the world. Parables ...
Seeds and Weeds: July 20.(Living the Word)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Genesis 28:10-19; Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 Biblical and botanical dictionaries tell me that the weed, or tare, in our gospel parable is a specific plant---darnel---a grass that grows in the same zones where wheat is produced. Darnel looks ...
A Pearl Like a Fishnet: July 27.(Living the Word)
Jul 01, 2008; ... Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 What do a seed, yeast, buried treasure, a pearl, and a fishnet have in common? They're all like the kingdom, right? Actually, no. When we read these diverse and troubling kingdom parables ...
A calendar to set your clock: it's Ordinary Days, the Miller Time of the liturgical year.(HUMOR)
Jul 01, 2008; ... July is a special month. And not just because it's the birth month of our nation, which was inaugurated in 1776 when Benjamin Franklin, having already invented the iPod, introduced the hot dog, which George Washington ate two of, and in the process triggered our young nation's first ...