| They [terrorists] can’t claim that their suicide bombings are martyrdom operations and that they become the heroes of the Muslim Umma [global brotherhood]. No, they become heroes of hellfire, and they are leading towards hellfire. There is no place for any martyrdom and their act is never, ever to be considered jihad. - Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, a London-based Pakistani Muslim scholar in a fatwa (religious ruling) against terrorism and suicide bombing. Ul-Qadri is head of the Minhaj ul-Quran religious and educational organization, founded in Pakistan in 1980 to promote peace and interfaith dialogue around the globe. (Source: Al Jazeera) + Sign up to receive "Verse and Voice" - our daily quote and Bible verse e-mail 
Immigration Reform: Change Takes Courage and Faith The window is closing on comprehensive immigration reform. At least that’s what the politicians in Washington are saying. They’re afraid of more demagoguery. They’re afraid of upcoming elections. They’re afraid of the politics of fear. But I am more and more troubled by how little they seem concerned about the worsening plight of many of America’s most vulnerable families -- about how families are being broken up by the U.S. government, forcibly separating children from their parents. And for the media, immigration reform is just another looming political conflict to report, more of the gamesmanship of Washington to cover. As always, the real stories of real people get lost in the win/lose politics of the nation’s capital. Yes, the nation is going through some tremendous challenges right now. And we all know that Congress is hesitant to tackle tough issues before mid-term elections. But while politicians can write off one more piece of legislation on a packed agenda, they won’t be able to write off, or ignore, a movement rooted in our faith communities. If our political leaders won’t make room for the “strangers” among us, we will -- because Jesus commands us to do so. Significant social change does not begin with Congress, and it doesn’t happen overnight; it usually takes a movement, and it always takes courage. Sojourners has been convening, educating, and mobilizing Christians nationwide through our Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform campaign for the past three years, and we are proud to be in good company with the growing interfaith movement fighting for dignity and justice for immigrants. On March 21, 2010, tens of thousands of supporters of immigration reform will join together in Washington, D.C. for the “March for America: Change Takes Courage.” In the faith community, we have amended the tagline to read “Change Takes Courage and Faith” because courage truly does come from our faith. Changes to our immigration system will simply not happen without both courage and faith. For many of us, faith is a catalyst to action that can solve the really big issues -- and this is one of the biggest ones we face now. People of faith will look beyond the political calculations and see this for the moral and family crisis it is. It will take people of faith to knock down the doors of Congress and bring the stories of immigrant friends, neighbors, and family members as evidence of the injustices that are experienced on a daily basis. Finally, we need faith in a God who is larger than we can imagine, the God who cries as we humans build border walls to separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters on the other side, the God of justice who isn’t persuaded by the political timetables of Washington, D.C. It’s time to stop playing politics with something that should have been dealt with long ago. The situation will only get worse for both citizens and immigrants if we don’t resolve it now. That’s why Sojourners is launching Voices of Immigration, a new campaign aimed at highlighting stories of immigration in our country and exposing the flaws in the current system. As people who believe that everyone is made in the image of God, we want to restore the human element to the conversation around immigration reform, including subsequent legislative and policy decisions. Each day next week a new story will be highlighted on God’s Politics with additional ones posted throughout March on CCIR’s Web site. It is our hope that bringing to light the human face of the social, political, and economic problems caused by the current system will demonstrate the urgent need for immigration reform. I hope these stories will inspire you to join us in fighting to fix a broken system that harms us all. We must boldly declare that it is morally wrong to keep families apart, and that it is morally right to fix the broken system so that immigrants are treated with respect and mercy. At this crucial turning point, we must take the call of our scriptures seriously and act prophetically for justice. If Washington fails to make room for the strangers in our midst, we need to make it clear to Washington that we will do it ourselves. +Click here to take action for comprehensive immigration reform
| INSIDE SOJOURNERS MAGAZINE |
Interview with Daniel Berrigan
 Jesuit Daniel Berrigan is no ordinary Catholic priest. In 1970, he was one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted. Ten years later, he hammered on nuclear missile nose cones at a General Electric manufacturing plant -- a symbolic act of “beating swords into plowshares” that eventually earned him a two-year prison sentence. These weren’t just youthful acts of rebellion; Berrigan’s faith-based nonviolent demonstrations have continued into his “retirement years.”
+Read our interview with Daniel Berrigan in the most recent issue of Sojourners magazine +Check out a Daniel Berrigan reading list
National Supermarket Week
This week is National Supermarket Week, and we want to take this opportunity to once again lift up the plight of agricultural workers, who work long days for little pay. Since 1993, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has organized low-wage agricultural workers in order to advocate for better pay and improved working conditions. Despite this, the Kroger Company -- the nation’s second-largest supermarket company -- has yet to work with the CIW to guarantee farm workers’ rights. +Join us now in calling the Kroger Company to ensure farm workers’ rights are respected.
| ON THE GOD'S POLITICS BLOG | + See what's new on the blog of Jim Wallis and friends Bearing Witness Against Cyber-Smears in the Immigration Debate
by Brian McLaren
As the health care debate moves toward a final up or down vote, more and more of these hysterical emails will start being forwarded through cyberspace, spreading misinformation and religious terror about the latest CONSPIRACY THEORY! You'll find out that the government wants to KILL YOUR GRANDMOTHER, or CONVERT YOUR CHILDREN TO SOCIALISM and that sort of thing. And then, as soon as the health care debate is over and we move on to immigration reform, I imagine that an even more dangerous kind of hysteria will be virusing its way to a computer near you.
+ Click to continue Mixed Victory: A Better Poverty Measure Counts More as Poor
by Aaron Graham
Over the last few years Sojourners has helped to lead a charge to change the poverty measurement. We have written about it in our magazine, sent action alerts, and emphasized the change during our Mobilization to End Poverty. We have also been pushing the Obama administration from the inside to make this change. So we are celebrating a small but significant victory!
+ Click to continue Tea Party Militias?: Telling Mainstream Conservatives from Right Wing Extremists
by Alan Bean
The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a frightening report on the explosive growth of extremist organizations on the radical right. It is hard to know how to account for this phenomenon. How do we distinguish, for instance, between mainstream conservatism and right wing fanaticism.
+ Click to continue Nouwen on Lent: Strength in Dark Places
by Christine Sine
I was reading through Lent and Easter: Wisdom from Henri J. M. Nouwen . It is a great collection of Nouwen quotes for reading during Lent and Easter that I picked up a couple of years ago. I was struck again by this quote, not because I myself am in a place of struggle and pain but because so many around me are -- from those in Haiti who are now inundated with floods in the aftermath of the earthquake, to friends who have lost jobs and others who are being treated for cancer.
+ Click to continue The Question of Climate Change is Secondary to the Need for Creation Care
by Tracey Bianchi
Whenever I run my mouth off these days about what we should care about in this world, those who generally disagree instantly bring up either the chilly temperatures of their midwestern winter or the climate scandal from the UK. They ask, "so what do you do if climate change is not real?" As if to say that if climate change is not real then somehow we are all just off the hook, we can do whatever we want? It's like people who ask how I would live my life if there was not God. Would I suddenly decide to cheat on my husband and take up recreational drugs?
+ Click to continue Peace is Patriotic: Anabaptists and the National Anthem
by Duane Shank
The recent decision by Goshen (IN) College to begin playing an instrumental version of the U.S. national anthem before some sports events after never having done so has sparked a firestorm of protest. Those who oppose the decision, such as my Goshen College graduate colleague on God's Politics, most often cite what they see as its relation to militarism. So it may come as a surprise that as a Mennonite who has spent four decades as a peace activist, I don't oppose the decision.
+ Click to continue We Sentence Innocent People to their Deaths
by Andrea Woods
It is Death Penalty Awareness Week, and supporters of human rights across the country have turned their attention to a uniquely complicated injustice -- the implementation of capital punishment in the United States.
+ Click to continue What I Learned From the—Gasp!—Word of Faith Movement
by Aaron Taylor
Unless a theological movement can bring God from the head to the gut, it runs the risk of having a form of godliness, but denying its power.
+ Click to continue Constantly Seeking Transfiguration
by Jen Owens
As an adolescent, I had a lot in common with my youngest brother in terms of my approach to my faith. I was constantly seeking what I called "a spiritual experience." So I feel like I understand where Peter, John, and James are coming from in this week's reading from the gospel of Luke.
+ Click to continue Excitement and Depression in the Potential for Change in Health Care
by Ernesto Tinajero
I have been reluctant to write about health care recently. My 11-month-old son will be going in for major brain surgery in April, and my psychological tendency is to put it out of my mind. I'd rather hear him in the mornings as he plays in his crib.
+ Click to continue So I'm a Heretic
by Julie Clawson
While I understand the people that instinctually engage with fight or flight when presented with anything other, what I don't understand are the people who go through the charade of pretending to engage with other ideas only to reassert their original belief because they feel like they have to.
+ Click to continue Regulating Wily Predators in Ecosystems and Economies
by LaVonne Neff
People who mess with nature and the economy often make mistakes. Some make big mistakes. But we no longer live in Paradise, and all of our natural and financial ecosystems are imperfect. When the imperfections are in precarious balance, many individuals prosper. But given half a chance, some individuals (and packs and corporations and governments) inevitably terrorize others. Think mosquitoes. Bacteria. The slave trade. Colonialism. Industrial barons. Corrective intervention is often necessary to restore balance.
+ Click to continue The Cost of Doing Nothing About Health Care
by Jim Wallis
What are we to make of the current bill? While it is deeply flawed, it nevertheless does extend coverage to 30 million people currently without insurance and provides subsidies for them to purchase it. And despite many disappointments with what a real health-care reform bill could have been, covering 30 million more people is still a big deal. But the most telling argument for finally passing something is that the cost of doing nothing about health care is far greater.
+ Click to continue To Dye or Not to Dye: How Do We Honor Aging Gracefully?
by Kathy Khang
Living in the tension of Asian and American I'm finding that with age comes experience and opportunity. What does it mean to age gracefully? So much of my life was drawn out between absolutes -- Christians do this and not that. Success looks like this and not that. Children should be like this and not that. Americans do this, but Koreans do that. I suppose that is why my knee-jerk reaction is to make a list of do's and don'ts.
+ Click to continue Evangelicals, Global Relief, and 'the Sin of Sodom'
by Rodolpho Carrasco
There's a remarkable article in Saturday's New York Times by Nicholas Kristof: Learning from the Sin of Sodom. The article gives a fair shake to Evangelicals in foreign aid and singles out World Vision and Rich Stearns. This is a very positive portrayal of the important work of Evangelicals in global poverty fighting. On the other hand, there is an interesting comment thread connected to the article that contains Olympic-level criticism of Christians in global relief.
+ Click to continue Mennonite College Will Now Play National Anthem Before Sporting Events
by Sheldon C. Good
I respectfully disagree with Goshen's decision to use the national anthem as a gesture of patriotic hospitality. Because we are, as the college affirms, global citizens who make peace in all its forms. After all, it's a Mennonite institution that declares that peace is not only the absence of war or hostility but the presence of "justice, openness, shalom, common ground, understanding, and stewardship." I support showing hospitality, but not if it means compromising one's values.
+ Click to continue Beauty and Ugliness in a Shooting's Aftermath
by Shane Claiborne
As we gathered with dozens of other Christians from around Philadelphia to pray for peace, we were met by a counter-demonstration that had been organized by gun-rights groups. As we started a sacred moment of silence to remember Papito and the other kids killed with illegal guns, the silence was pierced with insults and meanness. As we prayed the Lord's Prayer it was interrupted with the singing of "God Bless America."
+ Click to continue Black History Month Syndrome
by Edward Gilbreath
I've been kicking around in my mind this notion of "Black History Month Syndrome." Now, stay with me a minute. What is Black History Month Syndrome? I'll define it roughly as "the national, institutional, or personal tendency to reduce the value of racial, ethnic, or cultural awareness and celebration to a designated day, week, or month of the year."
+ Click to continue Let's Get Theological on Health Care and Warfare
by Jim Wallis
The largest single government discretionary expense is for the military, for fighting wars. Military spending is also, historically, the most wasteful form of government spending with cost overruns, fiscal abuse, political corruption, and shameful pork barrel interests all part of standard operating procedures. So why is there a continual refusal from Republicans to apply their concerns about waste, fraud, and abuse about government expenditures to those expenditures? How does that square with the biblical call to peacemaking and the Christian doctrine that is, at least, suspicious of war as the answer to the problems of human conflict, which should either be outright rejected or very reluctantly accepted as an absolute last resort?
+ Click to continue Real Life on Food Stamps
by Jennifer Wheeler
Some people have a stereotype of food stamp recipients as lazy, and are taking advantage of taxpayers. I am not lazy and worked almost my entire life and am not looking for a handout. I am very embarrassed to have to use them. Occasionally, I purchase Diet Coke for myself or ice cream for a treat for my son. A woman behind me in line a few weeks ago noticed I was using the EBT card and rolled her eyes and said "I am a taxpayer and it angers me that you can buy stuff on my dime." I was humiliated.
+ Click to continue Four Friends' Perspectives on Tiger Woods' Buddhism
by Cathleen Falsani
Apart from the Dalai Lama, who reportedly had never heard of him until earlier this week, Tiger Woods is the most famous Buddhist on the planet. But until Woods invoked his Buddhist identity during a televised mea culpa for cheating on his wife and a spectacular fall from grace, like most of his fans, I had no idea the golfer was a follower of the Eight Fold Path.
+ Click to continue + Sign up to receive our "Daily Digest" e-mail - the latest headlines on critical issues Top Stories:
Morality and the Economy
KUER
The theologian and activist Jim Wallis sees an opportunity in the economic crisis. He says it's a chance to ask questions we couldn't ask before. If ideas like "greed is good" and "it's all about me" got us into this mess - then how do we want to come out of the recession? +Click to continue
How the GFC will change us
CathNews.com
Others say change has to come about at the level of individuals. Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners, a Washington-based Christian social justice group, says the necessary questions in the wake of failed banks and 10-percent unemployment are not “When will this economic crisis end?” but rather “How will it change us?” +Click to continue
Jim Wallis on the economy and morality
Minnesota Public Radio
Evangelist Panel Discusses Religion in Politics
The Harvard Crimson
Health Care Reform's Final Round?
Christianity Today blog
"Sojourners in the news" articles are the most recent news clippings that mention Sojourners in any way - whether favorably or unfavorably. Though we provide the text on our site for your convenience, we do not necessarily endorse the views of these articles or their source publications. | 
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