Lefty Sojo Ignores Jesus in Easter Email

Lefty Sojo Ignores Jesus in Easter Email

on April 19, 2017

The progressive social justice group Sojourners claims “to seek the truth as informed by our biblical roots.” But clear biblical truth was nowhere to be found in Sojo’s email to subscribers on Easter Sunday. Although the subject line read “Happy Easter from your friends at Sojourners,” the email made no mention of Jesus Christ, the Resurrection, or the Gospel. If fact, other than the subject line, no obvious reference to Easter appeared anywhere within the body of the email.

Instead, the email contained a poem by Pulitzer-prize winning poet Mary Oliver with no additional context or commentary from Sojo. Titled “Why I Wake Early,” the poem describes the life-giving sun as the “best preacher that ever was.” But considering that Oliver is openly lesbian and non-religious, she probably had not explicitly intended to allude to any Easter related themes.

Oliver’s poem undoubtedly expresses innocent feel-good sentiments, and there is nothing obviously objectionable in the poem itself. But what would likely puzzle Christian readers is why Sojo selected this poem as its only message to its email subscribers on Easter, without any additional comments. The poem reads as follows:

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Granted, Christian author and blogger Kaitlin Curtice wrote an essay for Sojo on Easter Monday that specifically discussed Jesus and the Resurrection. Not surprisingly, she also used Easter as a springboard to emphasize social justice causes near and dear to Sojo, including “sustainable living” and racial reconciliation. Curtice concluded her essay by describing Easter as an “opportunity to re-create grace and Mystery and sacred love in our own lives.”

  1. Comment by Jacob Brenton on April 20, 2017 at 11:44 am

    Is there something inherently wrong with talking social justice and resurrection in the same context? They seem to fit well with one another, and Christ preaches justice quite a bit.

  2. Comment by Mike Ward on April 20, 2017 at 11:57 am

    The point here is that their Happy Easter email didn’t talk about social justice, resurrection, and Christ. There was no mention of Christ or the resurrection. SoHo isn’t a Christian organization. It’s a liberal political organization that only pays lip service to Christ and sometimes forgets to even do that.

  3. Comment by Dawn M. Flower Blundell on April 21, 2017 at 9:24 am

    You’re right, SoHo is a neighborhood in Manhattan. SoJo, on the other hand, is a deeply Christian organization who lives out the Gospel as Jesus preached, lived, died, and lived again for it.

  4. Comment by Dawn M. Flower Blundell on April 21, 2017 at 9:22 am

    Amen.

  5. Comment by Kaz on April 21, 2017 at 11:59 am

    Did you get the memo? All the “social justice” churches are in steep decline and it’s only going to get worse.

    Curious thing about churches that call themselves “inclusive” and “relevant” – no one wants to be included, which seems to indicate that they aren’t relevant at all.

    Left-wing Christianity has no attraction. People can get plenty of SJW indoctrination without having to drive to church on a Sundy.

  6. Comment by Mike Ward on April 21, 2017 at 2:25 pm

    Left-wing Christianity DOES have an attraction. It’s attractive to formerly conservative and moderate Christians who want to leave the church and take the church with them so to speak.

    Progressive churches die because they don’t reach the unchurched and, they don’t pass faith on to their children, but they will always exist because as the old ones die, new ones are formed by formerly conservatives Christians.

  7. Comment by Dawn M. Flower Blundell on April 22, 2017 at 2:41 pm

    You might like to take a look at some of the nationwide surveys in which people who have left churches to become “nones” or “unaffiliated” tell why they left. They are the fastest growing religious group in America, and they say that the top reasons they leave are that the Christian church contradicts science and insults their intelligence, and that they express disdain for LGBTQ people, thus making a joke out of Jesus call to love one another. In other words, the conservative Christian agenda, as loud and well funded as it is, is perceived as fake, hypocritical, and ridiculous, repelling people from the church.

  8. Comment by John McAdams on April 29, 2017 at 12:10 am

    People who think like that aren’t Christians, and are logical enough leaving the church. If one is fundamentally secular, that’s an honest thing to do. But people who call themselves “Christian” while being fundamentally secular are fooling themselves, and being dishonest.

  9. Comment by Dawn M. Flower Blundell on April 30, 2017 at 8:27 am

    I’m not sure I’m following you there.

  10. Comment by David MacKenzie on April 20, 2017 at 11:49 am

    For grace’s sake, one might want to believe otherwise. Yet, it’s likely not anyone’s imagination. Out of the distractions of the heart, the mouth may well be silent.

  11. Comment by Mike Ward on April 20, 2017 at 11:55 am

    Step 1: Jesus
    Step 2: Jesus + Marxism
    Step 3: Marxism

  12. Comment by Eternity Matters on April 21, 2017 at 6:03 am

    That’s creepy, even for those “Christian” Leftists.

  13. Comment by Dawn M. Flower Blundell on April 21, 2017 at 9:27 am

    Mary Oliver, by the way, is too private a person for anyone to know one way or another about her faith. I do know that her poetry has been used by many excellent preachers over the years.

  14. Comment by virginiagentleman on April 28, 2017 at 6:39 pm

    I was part of the very original Post-American group at Trinity College / Seminary. I left once their Leftist anti-war / anti-capitalism focus became obvious (long before they ever heard their “call” to move into Chicago’s Wilson Avenue neighborhood).
    I notice that in the intervening years these folks look like they’ve missed very few meals and always seem to have $$$ available to travel to the latest conclave of the well-spoken progressive activists. They even have the $$$ necessary to travel to far-distant places in order to be symbolically arrested.
    Sojourners are Left-Wing shills. They don’t wear Rolexes but their Birkenstocks are up-scale!

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