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Magazine

Sojourners Magazine: February 2017

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In the past several months, there’s been no better story of holy resistance than the Standing Rock Sioux. In this month’s cover story, writer and photographer Gregg Brekke documents an interfaith gathering of clergy who—at the request of the Standing Rock Sioux—traveled to North Dakota to stand with the tribe and repudiate the theologies that granted Western colonizers the right to dominate Indigenous people and lands. It was an act of repentance and embodied solidarity, a way to join the “water protectors” in resisting the lie that business and profit trump the well-being of Indigenous people and the environment we all share.

Cover Story

Credit: Greg Brekke
The resilient action at Standing Rock offers a model — and a sign of things to come. 
The primary goal of law enforcement in these situations ought to be peacekeeping, not the protection of corporate interests. 

Feature

Proclaiming a word from beyond ourselves can set us free from our captivity. 
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation calls for repentance as well as celebration. 
Popova Valeriya / Shutterstock.com
In the Augsburg Confession, activists see the key to Lutheranism that better reflects the diversity of its people. 

Commentary

How to organize civil resistance against democratically elected authoritarian leaders.
Why would Israel make false accusations against an evangelical humanitarian aid organization?
Protestants turned the world upside down once. Is it time to do it again on climate change?

Culture Watch

Image via The Sanctuaries Facebook
The Sanctuaries collective creates a new kind of sacred space for art and justice. 
You Want It Darker, by Leonard Cohen. Columbia
The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton's Advice to Peacemakers, by Jim Forest. Orbis Books. 
Love, Henri: Letters of the Spiritual Life, by Henri J.M. Nouwen; edited by Gabrielle Earnshaw. Convergent Books. 
 vnews.tv / Shutterstock.com
Steve Bannon helped make Breitbart.com, as he later boasted, “the platform for the alt-right.”
Image via Picturebookmakers.com
Four February culture recommendations from our editors.
Image via Moonlight Facebook
2016 was a year that emphasized cinematic empathy—crossing lines of difference, even while national politics were keeping people apart.

Departments

Letters to the Editor from Sojourners readers 
Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle A
I see you but you do not see me/ I am made invisible by your special powers

Columns

Adapted from Poeloq / Shutterstock
The human heart and the American promise is wider than we ever imagined.
Funny Business by Ed Spivey Jr.
Standing Rock represents a taste of the battles to come to protect creation during the Trump presidency.
Are we American Christians or Christians in America?