‘Light for the Way’

LOUISVILLE — Last month, Betsy Shirley, the editor in chief of Sojourners, 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.

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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,” published last month. 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? Change happens slowly, and the gospel has a lot to say about this,” especially among Jesus’ teachings.

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, who edits the PC(USA) journal Unbound, 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.”

Rather than “just one person’s thoughts or one style of writing,” 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.”

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Asked by Doong to discuss “Light for the Way,” Shirley said the project began with a shared document. Sojourners staffers were asked to list some of their favorite pieces published over the last 50 years. The Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, Sojourners’ publisher, wrote the conclusion, “inviting people to put it into practice, to move beyond underlining and sharing to doing something with your hands and your feet,” Shirley said.

The book touches on practices including simple living, “especially in a world of excess,” she said. The early Sojourners community “started with intentional communities. They shared a common purse and figured out a way to pay for the things they needed. That’s one model of simple living, and there are many others, which different authors express.”

Other practices the book explores include prayer, solidarity and accompaniment — “lots of ways not to just think about it, but to go out and do it,” she said. One example is an upcoming article describing “creative and practical ways folks in congregations have found to offer solidarity with migrant communities,” including helping workers get to their bus stop or to their job, or caring for children whose migrant parents have been deported.

Those featured in the piece have this message for readers, she said: “We’re going to bring groceries to those who are too scared to leave their home. What does it mean to love your neighbor? I will use my time and my money to make that happen.”

Sometimes, God calls us “to do things that aren’t comfy,” she said. “There are other times when we get all self-righteous and think, ‘This is all up to Betsy,’ and that’s personal hubris.”

She recalls a story she reported around the founding of the Poor People’s Campaign. Her interviewee was a retired person who’d been inspired by PPC’s co-founder, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. This man’s contribution to the Poor People’s Campaign was strictly data entry: he inputted forms people had filled out and created a spreadsheet the organization could use as an inventory.

“He said, “I’m logging data into a spreadsheet in the sky for Jesus,’” Shirley said. “I’m sure it wasn’t a fun job, but he saw it as a way he could tangibly contribute that matched his ability and what he was able to do, and I loved that.”

“People are powerful, and stories of people matter,” she said.

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