We're Getting the Message

During our August 1991 20th anniversary festival, I held several discussions with magazine readers about the future of Sojourners. We were in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but the participants had come from all over North America. At the first session, about 50 people voiced their needs and concerns. One of the first comments made was from someone who stood up and said, "I am from Waterloo, Ontario, and I really want to meet other Sojourner people in my area." At that, another person across the room jumped up to say, "Hey, I'm from Waterloo too, and I feel the same need." They had never met before, but were soon off in the corner talking.

The need to make connection with "other sojourners" became the theme of those discussions. In a rising tide of voices, I've since heard that same need expressed over and over as I travel around the country. After a great day this week with students and faculty at Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas City, the same question emerged, as it always does now, "How can we get together, and where do we go from here."

People who read the magazine or respond to our speaking on the road consistently tell us that they want to meet others who share a kindred spirit in their own communities and to feel connected to diverse people seeking a common vision in other parts of the country and the world. They regularly challenge Sojourners to help make that more possible.

We're getting the message.

Our "Connections" page in the magazine has been a free space for that to happen for some time now. From the brief ads placed there, people have found one another, jobs have been filled, support groups have formed, new communities and projects have been established, and, I'm told, some marriages have even come about! Obviously, connections are being made. But we've been consistently told that more is necessary.

I think it's because people find new energy and hope when they begin to put their faith into action. That step leads to the desire and need for real community. We've been so fragmented and divided in the churches; Christians who are taking the exciting and risky path of bringing the gospel message into the world are naturally eager to make contact with those from other traditions and constituencies who are doing the same thing. We are learning that we need each other, and the rich diversity of the church's life becomes available to us when we begin to cross denominational and racial lines.

The desire for connection and ecumenical community may also be the result of the growing realization that we are, indeed, in the midst of a profound social and spiritual crisis. Public disaffection with the nation's political leadership has become the most important revelation of this election year. The longing for new and more ethically rooted political values and leadership is everywhere (see "Can Politics Be Moral?" November 1992). But the agenda of the Religious Right is genuinely frightening to many Americans.

OVER THE LAST TWO decades, a real alternative in American religious life has emerged, despite the media's lack of recognition. A faith-based constituency for social change has steadily grown and begun to make a difference in both the church and the society. It relates biblical faith to social justice, personal conversion to the cry of the poor, spirituality to politics, and, at its best, transcends the categories of liberal and conservative that have for so long held the church captive.

While not quite yet a movement, its presence is felt in virtually every part of the churches--Protestant and Catholic, evangelical and mainline--including all our racial and ethnic diversity. It holds the possibility of creating a new theological center in the church's life and offering new visions to a society desperately in need of them, on the basis of what South African Bishop Desmond Tutu is now calling "the spirituality of transformation."

That new possibility will never become a spiritual and social movement until its various streams begin to flow together into a river much wider than we now are. But the streams are already flowing in the same direction, and they long to be refreshed and strengthened by each other's waters.

To nurture those streams and bring them together is the work Sojourners has been about for many years now, even when we didn't fully recognize it ourselves. The magazine provides us with a regular meeting ground; through these connections we have become and now think of ourselves as a network.

In response to our readers' requests, we are developing new ways to build that network and help make that river of hope more inclusive and sustaining. We have become convinced this is a work that God is doing in our time for the sake of the church and a society in such crisis.

This month you will receive a letter that details some of our plans and asks for your involvement. The January 1993 issue of Sojourners and subsequent issues will devote more attention to the networking and community-building task. As in everything we have ever done, we desire your feedback, participation, and support.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.