Founded in the 1970s, the Sojourners movement has a long history of making a Christian case for liberal/progressive politics — and has vehement disagreements with the Religious Right and far-right white evangelicals.
Christianity, as Sojourners see it, is more compatible with the left than with the right. And while President Donald Trump is quite popular with the Religious Right — which aggressively supported him in 2016, 2020 and 2024 — Sojourners are blistering critics of Trump and the MAGA movement.
In an interview with Salon's Chauncy DeVega, the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor (president of Sojourners) outlined the role that Christianity and other "faith traditions" can play in combating the second Trump Administration.
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Taylor told DeVega that Trump's second president is turning out to be even "worse than I had feared or expected."
"I knew that President Trump would reverse the executive orders from the Biden Administration and would seek to push the limits of his power and authority," Taylor argued. "However, the unaccountable power of Elon Musk is a new and increasingly dangerous element, as is the degree of carelessness and callousness of many of the policies they have pushed forward, including trying to end birthright citizenship, pardoning practically all of the January 6 insurrectionists…. seeking to freeze federal grants that directly impact people's daily lives…. and giving inordinate power to Elon Musk and DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) to run freelance and roughshod across our federal government to illegally cripple and shut down agencies such as USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) are alarming and represent a real abuse of power."
Taylor stressed that religion that played a prominent role in liberal/progressive politics during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and can do so again.
The Sojourners president told DeVega, "I believe that the faith community needs to be careful about mirroring some of the 'us versus them' framing and hyper-partisan and fear and grievance-driven tactics of the Religious Right/Christian nationalist movement….. We also need to weaken and counteract the rising appeal of the heretical ideology that is Christian nationalism…. I often refer to a quote by Dr. (Martin Luther) King that 'The church at its best is not called to be the master or the servant of the state, but to be the conscience of the state.'"
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Taylor continued, "We want and need faith leaders and organizations to show up and serve as the conscience of the state right now, including by making a faith-rooted and moral argument around defending our democracy and protecting the most vulnerable, so ultimately, we can transform our democracy into becoming a truly just, inclusive multiracial one."
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Read Chauncey DeVega's full Salon interview with the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor at this link.