Betsy Shirley, the editor in chief of Sojourners, recently told the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” that resilience in difficult times such as the present can be strengthened by knowing what our forebears went through, and what helped them to stand.
Shirley joined the podcast, hosted each week by Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe, to also talk about the Sojourners compendium, “Light for the Way: Seeking Simplicity, Connection and Repair in a Broken World.” Listen to her 53-minute discussion with the hosts here.
When Shirley hears a reference to “resilience,” she said she thinks about “the Christians who have come before us who have been through, maybe not the exact same issues we’re facing today, but have lived through issues or timelines … where people seem to have forgotten how to share, whether that’s power or resources.”
“We’re not the first people to experience that,” she said. “God has been faithful through those people and those situations, and that gives me a little more confidence to say, ‘This is not the world as we would prefer it to be, and yet God is present, as God has ever been in the past.’”
For months now, “our readers and our staff and I have had this feeling of anxiety,” Shirley said. “Are we doing enough to protect the people being harmed by this onslaught of policies? Are we showing up in the right ways?”
One thing that’s important to remember is “the United States has never been a place where the national ideals of liberty and justice for all have ever been realized,” Shirley said. “We can look at people in our church and in our cities who have not experienced radical flourishing for themselves or their communities.”
Catoe asked Shirley to describe some of the impacts that Sojourners articles have had on readers and on others.
She noted that the word “magazine” comes from the root for “storehouse.” Shirley said in her mind, a magazine is like “a pantry full of all kinds of snacks. The variety is an important part of what it means to have a magazine.”
Sojourners includes reporting, opinion pieces, Bible studies and more. “We have spiritual reflections and the fun stuff that happens in our culture. It’s a real intentional mix,” she said. “We have a mix of authors who write for us, and I’m grateful for that.”
The mission at Sojourners is to articulate the biblical call to social justice, she noted. “We don’t want to be the journal of the right opinion on Christian justice. That’s impossible,” Shirley said. “We are a table around which a lot of people are gathered.” The editors try to “bring conversations we think are important to this ongoing conversation and to be in dialogue with others who are asking these questions and living these issues.”
As a reader, “that’s what I want from publications,” she said.
Last summer Shirley interviewed Jarvis Williams, a former pastor who’s now a pro-democracy organizer. “I was sharing with him some of these anxieties,” including worries around “are we doing enough?” she recalled. “He very kindly answered my questions, and then he said to me, ‘Let me put on my pastoral hat for a second.’” Then he said, “If you think the world is all evil and you are just bringing the goodness to help it, you have thought a thought that is not Christian. You are telling yourself a story that’s not even authentic to the Christian faith. Humanity didn’t just start having these problems this election cycle.”
“Whew!” Shirley told the hosts. “I thought that was really powerful and important.”
“I have moments of greed and prejudice and disliking things and not being true,” she said. “It’s not, ‘Let me and my posse come and help with these problems or solve the issues those people have caused.’ It’s more a sense of, ‘We are all facing these, and yes, certain people bring different things to the conversation, but we’re all in this together’” in an effort to bring about “mutual flourishing and liberation.”
New editions of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast" drop here every Thursday.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Teresa Bidart, Mission Specialist, Self-Development of People, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Ricky Blade, Customer Service Representative, Constituent Ministry, Presbyterian Life & Witness
Let us pray:
Dear Lord, we lift up your children who are burdened with the trauma of their childhood. We pray that your healing peace might wash over them, so that they might overcome their history and become light for others. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment