• Evangelical Christian ministry that preaches radical leftwing politics
• Championed Communist revolution in Central America   

Founded by Jim Wallis, Sojourners is a Washington, D.C.-based Christian evangelical ministry professing a devotion to the pursuit of "social justice." Formed in Chicago in 1971 by religious students enrolled at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, Sojourners was originally known as the People's Christian Coalition (PCC). The PCC community relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1975, at which time it adopted its new name. 

An allusion to Biblical pilgrims, the name "Sojourners" signifies, to the organization's members, commitment to a radical social order. "For us," Sojourners declares, "the word 'radical' has always meant 'rooted.' The explosive mix of biblical faith and radical social renewal that ignited Sojourners in the beginning will continue to fuel our pilgrimage … in the years to come."

Sojourners' statement of faith spelled out the organization's key tenets: "Violence and war will not resolve the inevitable conflicts between people and nations"; "We refuse to accept structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class"; and "We believe that gospel faith transforms our economics, gives us the power to share our bread and resources, welcomes all to the table of God's provision, and provides a vision for social revolution."

As one of its first acts, Sojourners formed a commune in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Southern Columbia Heights. Members shared their finances, participated in various activist campaigns, and organized events at both the neighborhood and national levels. The themes of these campaigns, echoed monthly in the pages of the group's in-house publication Sojourners, centered on attacking U.S. foreign policy, denouncing American "imperialism," and extolling Marxist revolutionary movements in the Third World.

Giving voice to Sojourners' intense anti-Americanism, Jim Wallis called the U.S. "… the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life, the great master of humanity and history in its totalitarian claims and designs."

In the 1980s the Sojourners community actively embraced "liberation theology," rallying to the cause of communist regimes that had seized power especially in Latin America, with the promise of bringing about the revolutionary restructuring of society. Particularly attractive for the ministry's religious activists was the Communist Sandinista regime that took power in Nicaragua in 1979. Clark Pinnock, a disaffected former member of Sojourners, revealed in 1985 that the community's members had been "100 percent in favor of the Nicaraguan revolution."

Opposing the policies of the Reagan administration that aimed to undercut the Sandinista regime, Sojourners initiated a program called "Witness For Peace," under whose auspices Americans traveled to Nicaragua and returned with reports of humanitarian disasters wrought by the Reagan-backed anti-Communist guerrilla forces. The Sojourners delegates insisted that any efforts to undermine Sandinista power violated the Nicaraguan people's "right to self-determination."

Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, ministry leaders Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of Communist revolutions in Central America. Titled "Promise of Resistance," this document called on activists to carry out various acts of civil disobedience in order to obstruct any attempt by the United States to invade Nicaragua. CISPES, the propaganda arm of El Salvador's Marxist guerrilla movement, was invited by Sojourners to participate in acts of resistance in the event of American military intervention. Nearly 70,000 activists signed the document, which was sent to Congress, President Reagan, the Defense Department, and the CIA.

Steadfast advocates of the nuclear freeze movement, Sojourners members maintained that a U.S. nuclear buildup was "an intolerable evil" irreconcilably at odds with Christian teaching, and that "[t]he Reagan Administration remains the chief obstacle to the first step in stopping the arms race." While assailing the Reagan administration's defense buildup, Sojourners activists downplayed the threat posed by the Soviet Union, chastising U.S. policy-makers for their tendency "to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts."

With the end of the Cold War, Sojourners turned its attention to causes such as environmentalism. In one 1990 Sojourners article, for example, writer Bob Hulteen mounted the argument that environmental activism was a logical outlet for the notions of justice long championed by the ministry. "Justice-seeking work without concern for the earth is naïve and narrow minded," Hulteen explained.

The ministry also reviled welfare reform as a "mean-spirited Republican agenda" characterized by "hatred toward the poor" and mounted a defense of affirmative action.

In the fall 1994 issue of Sojourners, writer Martha Orianna Baskin assailed the American trade embargo against Cuba. Similarly, the ministry declared against every American military intervention in the 1990s and, more recently, the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition to publishing Sojourners, the ministry now sends out a weekly email newsletter, called Sojomail. Another recent addition is a blog authored by Jim Wallis, who penned the 2005 book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

The editors of Sojourners magazine currently offer a program called "Preaching the Word." For an annual fee of $44.95, religious leaders who share the ministry's commitment to reading scripture through the lens of leftist politics can receive articles to supplement their sermons. According to Sojourners editors, "Preaching the Word" is designed for pastors who preach "with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other." 

Sojourners also runs an internship program for "anyone 21 years or older who is single or married without dependents," aiming to cultivate a new supply of evangelical activists. Residing, like Sojourners of old, in a shared household, Sojourners interns are employed full-time at the ministry (or at its sister organization, Call to Renewal), where they work on an "Overcome Poverty" program to advance economic initiatives through specially organized "preach-ins" and public demonstrations.

Sojourners is a member organization of the Win Without War and United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalitions. It condemns the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where several hundred terrorist suspects are being held by the U.S. government. Said the Sojourners website on June 10, 2005:

"Guantanamo Bay has become not only a symbol of the U.S. government's hypocrisy and dishonesty -- or 'disassembling,' as President Bush might put it -- around the war on terror. The prison camp has become one of the more egregious examples of the cost of unaccountable power. Human rights groups have long documented the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo, including desecration of the Quran. ... The 540 prisoners at the facility have been held incommunicado, denied access to legal counsel, and, in fact, denied the most basic aspects of legal process. ... Guantanamo should be closed. But simply closing the facility -- and either moving the detainees to another location or returning them to their country of origin -- is not enough. If the United States is to regain any credibility as an advocate of human rights around the world, it must begin to practice what it preaches in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and everywhere else. The erosion of respect for human rights by U.S. personnel didn't begin at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, and the responsibility for it goes all the way to the top."

Sojourners is supported by the Cawley Family Foundation, Crystal Trust, the Delaware Community Foundation, the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Gill Foundation, the Laffey-McHugh Foundation, the Longwood Foundation, the MBNA Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Peninsula Community Foundation, and the Philadelphia Foundation.