Meanwhile ... On the God Beat

Thousands of women gathered in Detroit over Halloween weekend for the Women’s Convention, a conference meant to build upon the energy of January’s Women’s March—the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Our Women and Girls Campaign Associate Jenna Barnett attended the gathering to learn what role faith played in this Convention. She was surprised by what she saw and heard.  

With the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in limbo, our Associate Web Editor Dhanya Addanki talked to Patrice Lawrence and Mwewa Sumbwe of the UndocuBlack Network about what the end of DACA could mean. This network was founded by undocumented black immigrants who wanted to center the voices of black undocumented people that are often left out of the immigration conversation. Listen in as they explore the intersections of being black and undocumented in the U.S. and the struggles and joys those identities hold. Click here to sign a petition telling congress to save DACA: http://bit.ly/2wqOgfS Learn more about the UndocuBlack Network at undocublack.org.

Video games have long been dismissed from mainstream audiences as shallow or immature, but can they be something more? Our multimedia editor JP Keenan traveled to the "Games For Change" festival to talk with game designers about the power of "empathy games" and learn about future of virtual reality to see if it's the game changer everyone is selling it out to be. More links from the story: Sojourners magazine article about That Dragon, Cancer  Chris Milk's TED Talk Media company behind "Blindfold VR" Planned Parenthood VR experience That Dragon, Cancer official site

In January 2017, 18 anti-death penalty activists were arrested and taken to jail for protesting against the death penalty on the steps of the supreme court. On this episode, our Associate Web Editor, @dhanyaddanki, talks to three of the 18 arrested death penalty abolitionists about why they fight against capital punishment. @ShaneClaiborne, Derrick Wayne Jamison, and SueZann Bosler tell us how their faith inspires them into action. These are their stories.  Click here to watch the death penalty teach in that Shane, Derrick, and SueZann were part of at the Sojourners office. 

On today's episode, our deputy web editor @chwoodiwiss chats with with journalists @sullivanamy, @dawn_cherie, and @ayshabkhan about something journos usually don’t like talking about: when doing our job becomes too much. We discuss the public's rising suspicion of journalism, dealing with traumatic images, fending off Twitter hate, and—whew—why we still love the work. For more, read our companion piece in the July issue of Sojourners: http://bit.ly/2sMXaBH.

On today's episode, we sit down with Eliel Cruz — writer and organizer on religion and LGBTQ identities — to chat translating theology for nonreligious audiences, and where to look for the next big LGBTQ-religion stories. 

When 14-year-old Bresha Meadows shot her father after allegedly enduring a lifetime of his abuse, she could have just been one more girl processed through what’s become known as the abuse-to-prison pipeline. But instead, the #FreeBresha movement arrived to question the harsh, punitive nature of our juvenile justice system. Sojourners' Women and Girls Associate Jenna Barnett traveled to Ohio to see how pastors, advocates, and Bresha's family members felt about the case. Listen here to understand the case, and to find out what the church can learn from a social media movement and the 14-year-old girl it rallied behind.

On today's episode, our web editor sits down with Emma Green and McKay Coppins — both political reporters (with a religion bent) for The Atlantic — to chat about the state of religion reporting in mainstream media and how The Atlantic approaches the Godbeat. We talk about the challenges and opportunities, we break some news, and we give a hefty plug for the Religion News Association.

Immigrants and workers are banding together for a day of action — highlighting how labor and immigration are intricately connected in 2017. Jessica Cobian takes us inside immigration work at Sojourners, and why we'll be at the #MayDayAction on Monday.

Climate justice means more than caring about the Earth — it also means caring for the Earth's people. Alaura Carter takes us inside climate justice work at Sojourners, and why we're headed to the #ClimateMarch on Saturday.

On Saturday, thousands of scientists and science appreciators will descend on D.C. for the March for Science, a massive rally to support funding for science research and education. We talked with scientists about the links between science and religion — and why both will be at the march.

Last week, we told you that we were headed up to Princeton Seminary to cover Rev. Tim Keller's lecture on campus and the controversy surrounding it. We talked with students on campus and seminary President M. Craig Barnes. What we learned led us to a much more nuanced story than the swirling op-eds about the denominational differences throughout the Christian media. Here's that story. Read the full transcript of our interview with President M. Craig Barnes here.   

In an effort to follow the story of D.C.'s missing girls — while rumors and false assumptions swirled around social media a couple of weeks ago after DCPD started posting missing alerts to Twitter — some of Sojourners' online editors talked to local activists about the roots of why so many black and Latina young women have gone missing and concerning theology that leads to public indifference. 

Christian Twitter exploded a couple of weeks ago after well-known pastor Tim Keller received an award and was invited to speak at Princeton Seminary. The award has since been rescinded, but Keller has still agreed to speak at the seminary's annual Kuyper Lecture, set for April 6. Here, we dive into what spurred the controversy and preview our coverage of the event.