{"id":446,"date":"2011-05-09T14:24:55","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T18:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/?p=446"},"modified":"2011-05-09T14:24:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T18:24:55","slug":"sojourners-rejects-an-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/sojourners-rejects-an-ad.html","title":{"rendered":"Sojourners rejects an ad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among contemporary progressive religious organizations that have sought to exercise the prophetic office, the foremost is Sojourners<\/a>, Jim Wallis’ evangelical ministry-cum-magazine that for 40 years has styled itself as speaking truth to power. If it’s government programs for the poor, health care, and immigrants, Sojourners has been for it. If it’s government war-making and international belligerance, Sojourners has taken the dim view. “Our mission,” they say, “is to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.”<\/p>\n

Up to a point. For when it comes to gays and lesbians, Sojourners has sounded an uncertain trumpet. Yes, Wallis has urged<\/a> Christians to oppose the bullying of gay kids. He’s supported<\/a> according same-sex partners certain legal rights. But Sojourners does not have a policy on same-sex relationships, nor is it prepared to say that churches should welcome gays and lesbians as members–or even to make room at the inn for those who do so.<\/p>\n

For the full story, look at Robert Chase’s account<\/a> over at Religion Dispatches. In a nutshell, a mainline Protestant parachurch organization called Believe Out Loud<\/a> launched a Mothers Day campaign to urge churches to welcome gay members, and was denied the opportunity to buy an ad by the powers that be at Sojourners. The centerpiece of the campaign is a video<\/a> showing a congregation giving the hairy eyeball to a young boy and the two female partners he’s with as they search for a pew. At the end, the pastor says, pointedly, “Welcome. Everyone.”<\/p>\n

Sojourners has not been shy about invoking Jesus’ name in urging people to support its positions–as in its current “What would Jesus Cut?” campaign<\/a> to oppose GOP efforts to slash spending on social programs. So it’s fair to ask whether the guy who let the prostitute minister to him in Luke 7<\/a> would have welcomed or rejected the kid with two mommies. I’m guessing the former.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among contemporary progressive religious organizations that have sought to exercise the prophetic office, the foremost is Sojourners, Jim Wallis’ evangelical ministry-cum-magazine that for 40 years has styled itself as speaking truth to power. If it’s government programs for the poor, health care, and immigrants, Sojourners has been for it. If it’s government war-making and international…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[34,33],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-believe-out-loud","tag-sojourners"],"yoast_head":"\nSojourners rejects an ad - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/sojourners-rejects-an-ad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sojourners rejects an ad - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Among contemporary progressive religious organizations that have sought to exercise the prophetic office, the foremost is Sojourners, Jim Wallis’ evangelical ministry-cum-magazine that for 40 years has styled itself as speaking truth to power. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}