MAYBE YOU’VE NEVER noticed it, snuggled up there under our logo, on the cover of every issue: “Faith in action for social justice.” In magazine-speak, this slip of text is called the “tagline,” a snappy description of what the magazine is all about, and our tagline is a pretty good summary of what we try to do in Sojourners: faith, action, social justice—words that convey our call to imitate Jesus’ abiding love for those on the margins.
Or so we thought. As Jordan Rasmussen tells Brad Roth in this issue, social justice “can be an off-putting term for rural residents.” That doesn’t mean those living in small towns are unconcerned about addiction, poverty, and other injustices that threaten their community, explains Roth, but these folks think of their work as caring for their neighbors, not “activism.”
Yet rural areas are no monolith; some people squirm at the phrase “social justice,” others, including Highlander Center co-executive director Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, embrace it. “I’m grateful faith exists because I don’t know if we can build social justice movements that win without it,” says Henderson in “The Next Generation of Rural Organizing.”
Of course, no tagline, logo, article, or hashtag—no matter how snappy—can possibly contain the fullness of the gospel call to be the body of Christ in our messy world. And that pushes us to continue experimenting: with new language, with new models of doing church, and with new ways of creating space for all in God’s family to be their full and authentic selves. As Teresa P. Mateus explains in the cover story, “When you’re trying to lift, create space for, and have sensitivities around people’s diverse identities, there’s constantly room to improve.”
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