Beyond the Story with Jim Rice

IN THE AUGUST issue of Sojourners, editor Jim Rice raises questions about the ethics of military chaplaincy in his column, “Grain of Salt.” Editorial assistant Liz Bierly spoke with Rice, who joined Sojourners in 1981, about how he became editor of Sojourners, his commitment to environmental activism and peacemaking, and how he lives out the values of the magazine. Read his most recent column.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Liz Bierly, Sojourners: How did you first come to be connected to Sojourners?

Jim Rice: I came to Sojourners through voluntary service. I was in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, working at Georgetown University on peace issues. I started working in collaboration with the peace ministry folks at Sojourners specifically around the nuclear weapons freeze campaign. Long story short, I got hired and came to work on the peace ministry here at Sojourners, and I’ve been here ever since.

I became editor of the magazine in summer 2006. One thing I find most compelling is that we may do the same round of things issue after issue, but the content of what we deal with is always different. There’s always new material to learn, issues to learn more about, amazing stories about what people are doing to make a difference in the world, and it’s very inspiring to be part of that month after month.

What does the work you do for Sojourners mean to you, and what makes you so excited about communicating in the magazine about these issues?

Sojourners has never been just writing about issues. We’re not just reporting on the world – that’s never been our goal – we want to make a difference in the world. We would like to affect change and make the world a better place.

To live out the gospel means you put your beliefs into practice in the world. It means following Jesus. And the way of Jesus is transformative. There is a spiritual element, to be sure, but it’s also about the transformation that happens in my life and the lives of those around me. It has a social dimension. The gospel makes a difference in our time. To paraphrase Martin Luther: “If you preach the gospel in all aspects with the exception of the issues that deal specifically with your time, you’re not preaching the gospel at all.” That’s true with Sojourners: It’s the putting it into practice that makes it real.

 

How do you put what you are writing about into practice in your own life, and how can readers make what they’re reading in the magazine actionable as well?

I think everything – in the gospel but hopefully in our pages as well – can affect how we treat our neighbors and how we treat the world around us. I think it has done so with me. I try to live my life with integrity and to live out the values that we talk about every month in Sojourners, and it affects everything I do, from the smallest decision up to the largest.

 

It’s the overarching nature of it. Every time my work has been more focused on some particular aspect or more narrow issue – “narrow” like militarism and war – it’s very connected to environmental issues, and that’s true for any other issue I’ve worked on. My first job I had in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps was at the Oregon Center for Peace and Justice. I worked on hunger issues, and that was very related to resource use, the environment, and energy use. The issues are all intertwined, and they all come back to how we care for our Earth.

 

Climate change is the water in which we swim or the air we breathe. It’s not just another issue; it’s the context for all our work. We can’t be about the very important work of racial justice, of battling misogyny and sexism, and all the very important work we need to be about – we can’t do that if we don’t protect the environment around us. I think it’s important to keep that in mind: These things are not at odds with one another. We’re not talking about a hierarchy of choices; they all fit together, and they all intersect at the point of justice.

 

Issues of energy and the environment have been really important to me since college days. The first national conference that I attended was in Denver in the late 1970s when I was a college student. It was organized by the U.S. Catholic Bishops, and it was focused on energy and the environment. Since those days, I’ve worked on environmental issues along with a lot of other things here at Sojourners. The environment has been a central issue for five decades at Sojourners and that hasn’t changed.