Sojourners magazine has, for decades, spoken of faith and politics in the same veign; one cannot be “separated” from the other, becuase in their concept and understanding of the gospel, there is no such distinction, except to insist that to attempt to keep them apart is a form of heresy. I would say that it is a SOCIAL GNOSTICISM.

What’s Next?, Sojourners Magazine/January 2005

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne covered our “God is not a Republican or a Democrat” campaign as a real sign of hope. Days after the election, he said, “What’s required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are ‘moral values’ and that war and peace are ‘life issues.’

Life, and all that affects it, are moral and theological issues. The gospels, and also Paul, write with the challenges of living in the shadow of empire in mind.

Today, we have the challenges of living IN AND UNDER Empire in the United States. That challenge is heightened with the rise to power of the neoconservatives, and their alarmingly effective media blitz campaigns, and their “pundits” who have become darlings of the airwaves, as they feed on the fears and bigotries and greed of their listeners, encouraging their audiences to fear those who do not fit their own social strata, and to stir up a war against liberalism (which is increasingly defined as “those who disagree with us”).