Sojourners

What Sojourners is

Sojourners is a nonprofit Christian media organization founded in 1971 by Jim Wallis and a small community of young evangelicals who wanted to apply the teachings of Jesus directly to questions of war, poverty, and race. It began as a print magazine — originally called The Post-American — and grew into a Washington, D.C.–based organization that publishes the magazine, runs the sojo.net website, produces email newsletters and podcasts, and engages in faith-rooted advocacy on Capitol Hill.

The current product is essentially three things wrapped in one brand. There is sojo.net, a free website that publishes news, commentary, columns, interviews, poetry, and reporting on faith and public life. There is Sojourners Magazine, a monthly print and digital publication with longer features and a more curated voice. And there is the broader organization — conferences, fellowships, advocacy campaigns, and partnerships with churches — that the magazine is the public face of.

Why progressive Christians keep coming back to Sojourners

The single biggest practical difference between Sojourners and the rest of the Christian magazine field is that social justice is not a section here — it is the editorial spine. Most Christian outlets have a politics column or a justice tag tucked alongside theology, worship, ministry, and culture. Sojourners is built the other way around. Theology, worship, ministry, and culture all get covered, but they are usually covered in conversation with race, poverty, immigration, peace, or climate. For readers who already see those topics as central to Christian discipleship, that integration is the whole appeal.

The second thing readers respond to is continuity. A lot of progressive-leaning Christian media has appeared and disappeared over the last twenty years. Sojourners has been publishing continuously since 1971, which means the archive itself has become a kind of reference work — the long arc of how progressive evangelicalism understood the Reagan years, the Iraq wars, welfare reform, immigration debates, the Obama era, and the Trump era is largely catalogued here, in real time, with bylines and dates attached.

Social justice and peacemaking: the differentiator

This is the beat Sojourners is best known for, and it is the beat that defines the publication in ways no other church magazine quite matches. Reporting and commentary cover immigration policy and immigrant communities, mass incarceration and criminal-justice reform, racial reconciliation, poverty and economic inequality, climate change, gun violence, and — distinctively — a long tradition of peacemaking and nonviolence rooted in the Anabaptist and historic peace-church streams as much as in mainstream evangelicalism. Pieces tend to combine on-the-ground reporting, interviews with practitioners, and theological reflection that explicitly grounds the advocacy in scripture and the example of Jesus.

In practice that means a reader who comes for, say, an immigration story will get not only the policy and the human stakes but also a sustained scriptural argument for why the writer believes Christians should care. Whether you agree with the conclusions or not, the work is doing something most general-interest outlets cannot do — it is trying to make a public-theology argument, not just a political one. That is the differentiator, and it is also the lens readers should evaluate the site through. Sojourners is openly advocacy-shaped. It does not pretend otherwise.

The Jim Wallis archive and the current contributor bench

Jim Wallis founded Sojourners and was its most visible voice for decades — his books, columns, and political commentary did more than anything else to put a progressive evangelical posture into the American conversation. The site’s archive of his writing is essentially a primary-source history of that movement, and for readers, researchers, or students of American religion that archive alone is a reason to know the site exists. Wallis has since stepped back from day-to-day editorial leadership, but his footprint shapes the institution’s voice in obvious and intentional ways.

The current contributor bench is broader than the Wallis era and noticeably more diverse — Black, Latino, Asian American, Indigenous, and women writers are regular bylines rather than occasional guests, and contributors come from a range of denominations including mainline Protestant, evangelical, Black church, Catholic, and Anabaptist backgrounds. The editorial perspective is recognizably progressive across that range, but the voices reading any given week are not monolithic, and that mix is part of what gives the magazine its texture.

Sojourners Magazine: the long-form anchor

The monthly print magazine is the part of the operation that most clearly reads like a magazine in the old sense of the word — commissioned features, longer reporting, essays, columns, poetry, book reviews, and occasional themed issues. It is where the longest-form work lands and where the editorial voice is most carefully shaped. Subscribers receive the print edition, a digital edition, and full archive access, which is genuinely useful given how much accumulated material lives behind it.

For a casual reader the free website is enough to get the sense of the publication, and a great deal of magazine work eventually surfaces on the site or in the email newsletter. But for readers who want the cover features in their original form, the deep archives, and the editorial sequencing of an actual issue, the magazine subscription is the version of Sojourners that is hardest to replicate elsewhere — and it is the part of the product readers tend to keep once they have it.

Pricing

Where Sojourners falls behind

Not a neutral newsroom. Sojourners is openly advocacy-shaped and progressive in editorial outlook, and the site does not try to hide that. Readers who come expecting a wire-service tone or a representative cross-section of American Christian opinion will find the framing consistently tilted, especially on contested political and social issues. That is the model, not a glitch — but it means the site does not function the way a general Christian news source like Religion News Service or The Christian Post is trying to function.

Light on doctrinal teaching. This is not where you go for systematic theology, verse-by-verse exegesis, denominational catechesis, or church-history primers. Theology shows up frequently, but almost always in service of a public-life argument rather than as the main subject. Readers looking for that kind of teaching content will be much better served by sites built for it — BibleProject, Got Questions, Enduring Word, Ligonier, Catholic Answers, Word on Fire, or Scripture Central, depending on tradition.

Conservative perspectives are usually the subject, not the partner. Across coverage of politics, sexuality, gender, and church culture, more conservative Christian positions tend to be analyzed or critiqued rather than represented at the table. There are exceptions, and the magazine does run pieces from a wider range of voices than its critics give it credit for, but the overall center of gravity is clear and consistent.

The flagship long-form work still lives in the magazine. The free site is generous, but the cover features, the most carefully edited essays, and the deepest archive access are tied to the paid subscription. That is a fair trade for a nonprofit magazine — it just means the experience of reading Sojourners at its best is not the same as the experience of reading the homepage for free.

Design and discovery are functional rather than inviting. The site is readable and the archive is searchable, but it does not have the modern, browsable feel of some newer church and culture sites. Most readers end up arriving by email, search, or social rather than by exploring the homepage — which is fine for finding specific pieces, less ideal for stumbling onto the back catalog.

Sojourners vs. Christianity Today vs. The Christian Century

These three magazines are the closest peers in American Christian media, and the easiest way to understand each one is in relation to the others. Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham in 1956, is the historic flagship of mainstream evangelical journalism — broadly evangelical in theology, more centrist than Sojourners politically, with strong reporting, book coverage, and ministry-focused features. The Christian Century is older still, founded in 1884, and serves as the long-running magazine of mainline Protestantism — theologically and politically progressive in a more academic, denominational register, with deep roots in seminary and pastoral circles.

Sojourners sits between those two in some ways and apart from both in others. It shares Christianity Today’s evangelical vocabulary and origins but takes a more openly progressive editorial stance, especially on social and political issues. It shares The Christian Century’s left-of-center politics but speaks in a more activist, movement-oriented register than the Century’s more contemplative one. Different strengths. Christianity Today is broader and more centrist on theology and church life. The Christian Century is deeper on academic theology and mainline ministry. Sojourners is sharper and more sustained on social justice, peacemaking, and racial reconciliation than either.

The honest recommendation is that a serious reader of American Christianity probably benefits from at least skimming all three, because the three together capture most of the conversation that thoughtful Christian writers are actually having. Picking one to subscribe to is mostly a question of which conversation you most want to be part of — broad evangelical (CT), mainline Protestant (Century), or progressive evangelical with a justice spine (Sojourners).

Alternatives to Sojourners