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Magazine

Sojourners Magazine: April 2009

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Free mp3 downloads from Derek Webb and Ashley Cleveland!

In-depth interview with writer and sociologist, Robert Brenneman, about his research on Central American gangs.

A free mp3 download from Tierra Nueva chaplain and musician Chris Hoke.

Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier discuss the church's unique call to community.

A video introduction to L'Arche member and artist Eileen Schofield.

More resources on eating disorders from Elizabeth Palmberg.

Soong-Chan Rah talks about the future of evangelicalism in this audio interview.

Ed Spivey Jr. turns to the Home Shopping Network in these days of fiscal uncertainty.

Cover Story

A growing number of Nashville-based Christian musicians are discovering that their faith compels them to play and work for social change.

Feature

Inside Guatemala's gang prisons.
An interview with L'Arche founder Jean Vanier and theologian Stanley Hauerwas.
In a society that glorifies thinness and individualism, the occurrence of eating disorders has risen sharply. How can Christians help heal broken minds and bodies if we idolize those same values?
In Central America, Christians are countering gang and government violence armed only with faith and the belief that no one -- not even the worst criminal -- is beyond hope.

Commentary

Rent-a-jails are no place for immigrants and asylum seekers.
We can't tell if we're making progress without a new poverty measure.
Congo Sabbath Initiative helps churches stand with rape survivors.

Columns

With the nation facing fiscal uncertainty (actually, complete and absolute certainty—just like the in­evi­table wedgie I got every day in junior-high gym class), maybe it&rsq
If we can learn new habits of the heart from this economic crisis, perhaps the suffering can be redemptive.

Culture Watch

A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story, by Diana Butler Bass. HarperOne.
Major record labels haven't adapted to the wired age -- and they're losing.
The End of Poverty? written and directed by Philippe Diaz. Cinema Libre Studio.
Excerpt from The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.
God Drops and Loses Things, by Kilian McDonnell; 15 Days of Prayer, series from New Press; Servant or Sucker, by Beth Templeton; and CompassionArt: Creating Freedom from Poverty, by Martin Smith.
A pop culture Word for a pop culture world.

Departments

Regarding Eboo Patel’s “Three Myths about Islam” (February 2009): I have to take issue with his simplistic attempt to debunk myth two.
Christian Churches Together (CCT), a three-year-old ecumenical group representing more than 100 million U.S.
Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary for April.
How the earth now struggles into spring.How the cold hangs on, each morning cracking to begin.
Regarding “Make a Joyful Silence,” by Ruth Haley Barton (February 2009): We Quakers figured out more than 350 years ago that the presence of God is best understood through the “ga
It is sad to see that in an otherwise excellent editorial (“A New Faith Coalition,” January 2009), Jim Wallis reinforces racist discourse.
"The Coalition Provisional Authority [in Iraq] failed to keep detailed accounts of how most of the Iraqi money was spent,” according to an audit report released in February by the Office of S
When two more African na­tions ratify the Pelindaba anti-nuclear weapons treaty, the globe’s Southern hemisphere will become a nuclear weapons-free zone.
The Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing published a report in January that found U.S. seminaries and rabbinical schools were sorely lacking in sexuality training.

Web Extra

Robert Brenneman is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Notre Dame studying Central American gangs.
Free Music Downloads from Sojourners Half-Handed Cloud, All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray
In What to Do If Someone at Your Church Has an Eating Disorder, from the God's Politics bl
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove interviews L'Arche founder Jean Vanier and theologian Stanley Hauerwas about the ways Jesus calls us to engage this violent and broken world.
Soong-Chan Rah is the Milton B. Engebretson Assistant Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Illinois.