'For Still the Vision Awaits Its Time'

As I finally sit down to write for this 20th anniversary issue, I'm quite conscious of being late. The deadline for my article on "the vision of Sojourners -- past, present, and future" was several days ago. I suppose that's appropriate. Over the last two decades, many deadlines have been missed. Karen Lattea, our managing editor, is being understanding -- again. We always somehow make it, she reminds me. Sojourners issues have been completed and sent out to do their work 198 times with this issue.

The topic I am to write about is quite formidable, and the time is short. That seems familiar, too. For 20 years, the task has often felt daunting, while the necessary resources of people, time, energy, and money feel so very small. The biblical story of Gideon's little army has always been a personal comfort, but I suspect old Gideon must have really wondered whether he and his tiny band were up to the job.

If we were just doing a magazine, and I was just an editor, we would probably make our deadlines. Instead, we crisscross the country and the world, speaking and listening. We stay rooted in the life of a poor, violent, and desperately struggling inner-city neighborhood in Washington, DC with all the time and energy that takes. We try to remain connected to each other and faithful to the great experiment of community which fills our lives, at various points, with deep sorrow and real joy, with bitter disappointment and fervent hope.

We protest injustice and war while trying to find alternatives. In the churches, in the streets, in the courthouses and jails, and in the corridors of power, we try to proclaim a better way and, indeed, to say that faith requires one of us. All of this has been undertaken because of a decision we made a long time ago: to try to practice what we preach -- not simply to say it but to do it.

Our goal was never just to produce a magazine. We've been trying to build something these past 20 years -- a movement, an extended family, a vital network of people and communities with a common vision and a determination to make a difference in the church and in the world. But it does indeed seem daunting some days. It does today as I write.

THE TRIP I JUST returned home from yesterday bore all the pain and promise of our endeavor and reminded me often of Sojourners' history. Perhaps the article deadline hanging over my head helped prompt the reflections.

A two-day meeting at St. James AME Church in Newark, New Jersey brought together a steering committee representing a wide and diverse coalition of groups and constituencies committed to an alternative commemoration of the Columbus quincentennial in 1992. This historic black church heroically ministers in a devastated inner-city neighborhood much like ours in DC. Most Americans have no comprehension of how many places in this country now look like the neighborhood where I just spent the weekend -- vast stretches of urban and rural territory where life has come unraveled for growing numbers of people. During our meeting, an angry street protest occurred outside the church over the killing of a young girl from the neighborhood, in what appeared to be a racial incident.

The planning for 1992 is creating community among people -- Native American, African American, Latino, Asian, and white -- who are talking together about new and different visions for a more inclusive, just, and genuinely pluralistic American future. It hasn't been easy. But the bonds between us are steadily growing -- the most important result of the many meetings.

With the country becoming even more polarized along racial lines and white political leaders deliberately fostering the divisions, the Newark gathering took on deep importance for me. White fears of falling down the economic ladder are leading to scapegoating so-called minority groups, who at the same time are increasingly fighting with one another over scarce resources in a shrinking economy. All the racial fury is helping to obscure the most important questions: Who controls the economy and the way it is structured? And why couldn't there be enough for everyone?

Confronting racism figures prominently in Sojourners' past, present, and future. We have referred to it as "America's original sin." Sojourners was inspired and shaped by the civil rights struggle, and we have joined in freedom movements ever since. The black church, in particular, has had a decisive influence over Sojourners, and that partnership will only get stronger in the years ahead, as will our connection to American Indian, Hispanic, and Asian communities. The only viable future we have is one that we shape together. The road ahead is both treacherous and exciting, and it can only be walked together.

What the Newark gathering represented was not only a racial and ethnic diversity, but also a great ecumenical spectrum. That has also been a distinctive hallmark of Sojourners over the years. From the beginning, Sojourners brought together evangelicals searching for a social conscience, liberal Protestants wanting a biblical base, Catholics seeking to combine justice and spirituality, Mennonites hoping for a real peace church, black Christians needing support and allies, activists and contemplatives looking for each other, and people from many places yearning for a faith capable of transforming both their lives and the world they live in.

We have learned that we need each other. None of our faith traditions has all the answers. The days ahead will call forth all that is within us. That faith must be as broad, and deep, and rich as the Spirit's many and varied movements. Sojourners has lived for 20 years at a blessed ecumenical intersection of people and communities, traditions and streams. That has enabled us to become the largest and most ecumenical faith-based movement for justice and peace in this country. The reality of that always fills me with a sense of deep gratitude and responsibility.

I have been asking some of our readers and friends for their input on the occasion of our 20th anniversary. The consistent response I have received is that Sojourners should take its role and identity as a movement -- not just a magazine -- more and more seriously. Many people express the need for more nourishment, resources, and connection to one another, and suggest that Sojourners take a more active role in creating a more concrete network of people, communities, and congregations for both support and action. They tell me that Sojourners Community is much broader than our little group in Washington, DC, and that our "extended community" needs to be brought together.

We have been considering for some time how Sojourners might help to foster and support the development of small communities -- both inside and alongside congregations and parishes -- and connect them together. I suspect that direction is one we will take, and -- based upon feedback from our constituency -- it should play a critical role in our future.

ANOTHER striking feature of the Newark meeting and the wider coalition it represents is the leadership of women. Both women of color and white women have played key roles in the formulation of the 1992 vision and network.

From the beginning of Sojourners, women have played a central role in shaping the direction of both the magazine and the community. We arose in the early 1970s, as the modern feminist movement was just getting off the ground. The influence of women and a Christian feminist perspective have been core factors in the development of Sojourners.

With the political and cultural backlash against feminism and the dramatic increase in violence against women, a radical commitment to genuine equality between women and men takes on ever greater significance. In addition, the leadership role of women in the church is absolutely essential to its renewal. Without the strong participation of women, the churches simply cannot and will not be changed.

Women provide a backbone to Sojourners' constituency. Invariably, as I travel around the country, church women are at the center of the most creative projects in ministry, community, social justice, liturgy, and theology. I'm often asked after preaching why so many of the stories I tell are about women. I reply that the stories merely reflect what is happening in various places around the globe; women are usually in the middle of the events that are transforming the church and the world.

Newark also revealed one of the most important developments which has occurred in the churches over these past 20 years. That is the crucial partnership between the church as movement and the church as institution. Grassroots groups, national organizations, churches, councils of churches, and whole denominations are now working closely together on a variety of concerns, including 1992. That creative cooperation now makes many things possible that were not possible before, and undergirds the church's witness on many critical issues. The close collaboration between movement groups in the churches and institutional leadership was the real secret to the strength of church-based opposition to the war in the Persian Gulf.

Sojourners has always been in the movement, or renewal, stream of church history. Our history goes back far more than just 20 years. We trace our lineage through Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement; Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm; the black churches of the United States and the base communities of Latin America; the resisting church in South Africa and the confessing church in Nazi Germany; the radical evangelicals of 19th-century America, the Wesleyan revival, and the 16th-century Anabaptists; the Franciscans and other monastic communities; and every renewal movement in history which has sought to return to the faith and spirit of the early church, apply it to its contemporary circumstances, and challenge the institutional church to recover its true heritage.

The tension between the church's renewal and institutional streams has sometimes been a source of great conflict, and at other times, has been a dynamic and creative relationship. When Sojourners began as The Post-American in 1971, we were clearly on the edge as far as the church was concerned. The magazine helped spark a movement of radical discipleship and Christian conscience that grew up alongside the church and found a home mostly at its margins.

In the 1980s the concerns Sojourners addressed moved from the margins to the center, with significant numbers of clergy and active lay people joining on. As we now move into the '90s, Sojourners enjoys the best relationships we have ever had with bishops, heads of denominations, and other institutional church leadership. However, Sojourners is still a movement more than an institution, with our heart and practice rooted at the grassroots rather than in church hierarchies -- but anxious to cooperate with the church at every level (along with those outside the churches) for social and spiritual transformation.

After our meeting ended in Newark, a few of us headed up to New York City for dinner with Daniel Berrigan. An evening with Dan is always a treat, and that night was no exception. The conversation and the company filled my soul with old memories and grateful reminders of what has occurred in two decades.

At its inception, Sojourners was one of the then very few clear religious voices against the war in Vietnam. In my student days, I looked long and hard to find a Christian testimony to peace in the face of a war that was tearing our young hearts to pieces. The one I remember was the Berrigan's. In his kitchen the other night, I told Dan again how his voice literally kept the possibility of faith alive for me during those dark days, and what his consistent support and friendship have meant ever since. Daniel Berrigan is one of our saints. Along with Dorothy Day, Bill Stringfellow, Thomas Merton, Fannie Lou Hamer, Clarence Jordan, Martin Luther King Jr., and others, he is from a generation of radical Christians on whose shoulders Sojourners has literally been built. They are part of the "cloud of witnesses" that I can almost feel sometimes hovering around us, cheering us on, encouraging us to keep the faith. Dan still encourages close at hand -- and continues to make some of the best dinners in New York City.

Around his table, we lamented how Generals Schwarzkopf and Powell had recently held forth from the pulpit of New York's Cathedral of St. John The Divine. But this time around, we could recall another cathedral service -- one in January in Washington, DC, when 10,000 people came to pray and march for peace. This time, we could celebrate the many church voices against the war -- not just a radical priest or two, but countless numbers of Christians, including some very courageous church leaders.

WHAT'S AHEAD FOR Sojourners?

The ancient biblical proverb is with me all the time these days: "Without a vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29:18). That's where I believe we are -- dying for lack of vision.

I see it happening in my own neighborhood just blocks away from the White House, where children are shot in the streets, die from drugs, are born with AIDS, or live without health care, education, housing, or family. I see it in urban areas that have become war zones and rural communities that can't survive. It's even more visible and overwhelming in the so-called Third World, where the poor are suffering and dying almost beyond our capacity to count. Both at home and abroad, whole areas of the world and huge segments of humanity are seemingly just being written off.

But I see it also at the shopping malls, where the human heart is slowly dying for failure to recognize that we were created for more than consumption. At the upper end of the world's hierarchical chasms, the affluent drown in loneliness and anxiety, while their young wander aimlessly in a society in which there is always more to buy but nowhere to go.

Because we've been no kinder to the earth than to the poor, we are all are paying the price; and the environmentalists tell us we have less than 40 years to turn things around. The world isn't working, and all our victory parades will not successfully cover up the reality.

Vision is the key now; it is literally the most important thing. New vision and a renewed sense of community are the requirements of the future. Indeed, they are necessary even to have a future.

We need to regain our bearings and find the kind of values that can hold people together, give them a common sense of purpose, and point the way forward. We need to remember where we've come from, discover who we are, and together decide where we're going.

We need to understand the connections between all the issues we face -- economics and the environment, racial justice and cultural pluralism, gender and power, nonviolence and mutual security, the priority of the poor -- and the spiritual foundations that undergird them all. We must begin to restore the covenant we've lost with our neighbors on this planet and with the creation itself. At root, we need to return to our spiritual identity as the children of God.

There is an alternative. That's the message of Sojourners. We want to help enable ordinary people create the visions we need and put them into practice. We don't want simply to put out new ideas, but to make it possible for people to become part of new communities. We won't be content to inform people about the problems of the world; we want to try to assist them in discovering how their lives can make a difference.

After 20 years, I am more clear than ever that social change will not take place without spiritual transformation. New politics and new spirituality go hand in hand. Sojourners will continue to make that vital connection.

We will continue to turn to the resources of the Bible and the way of Jesus to ground our lives, center our activity, inform our politics, chart our course, and sustain our journey over the long haul. For us, radical has always meant "rooted"; and the explosive mix of biblical faith and radical politics that ignited Sojourners will continue to fuel our pilgrimage and light our way.

We will do our best to help people stay supported and connected. Through the magazine and other resources, we'll offer practical help with everything from raising children to discerning the signs of the times; from finding a creative and responsible lifestyle to learning to celebrate more; from putting together commitments and work to relating to the church; from becoming involved in the most important things to finding the kindred spirits to do it with; from feeling a part of social change to being at rest with God.

The other scripture that I live with these days comes from the book of Habakkuk and could serve as a call for what may lie ahead for Sojourners and for all of us.

And the Lord answered me:
"Write the vision;
make it plain upon tablets,
so he or she may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its time;
it hastens to the end -- it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay."
--(Habakkuk 2:2-3)

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.