Demonic Drums, Transgender Housing, and 8 Other Quotables from Our June Issue

It’s hard to overlook the peppy pink pig who appeared on the cover of our June issue, but maybe you missed the lyrical beauty of Senior Associate Editor Julie Polter’s review of Sufjan Stevens’ newest album, or Eboo Patel’s surprising lesson on what Thomas Jefferson’s 1764 copy of Islam’s holy book can tell us about the 2016 elections. The June issue taught us how to stop funding what we hate, how a housing-first model saved the life of a homeless transgender woman, and how prison guards are earning degrees alongside inmates.

Below, read our top 10 quotes from the June 2015 issue of Sojourners.

1. "Right now, there are two different conversations going on in our churches about race: one in our white churches and one in our churches where people of color are the majority. Instead, we need to be talking to each other."

—Jim Wallis, "Building Beloved Communities" 

2. "Investing in genocide is inexcusable, and it is time we tell our banks, pension funds, and insurance companies to stop financing the bomb."

—Wilbert van der Zeijden, "Divest from Nuclear Weapons: Don't Bank On the Bomb"

3. "‘Companies don’t have a conscience, someone has to hold [them] accountable."

—Mark Langerman, as quoted in Rose Marie Berger’s "Divest from Terrorism: The Achilles’ Heel of Terror" 

4. "I earned my bachelor’s degree while working full time as one of the youngest correctional officers at the jail."

—Tobias Winright, "A Matter of Degrees" 

5. "She becomes the only person in the gospels, man or woman, who outwits Jesus in a public debate."

—Reta Halteman Finger, "Testing Jesus" 

6. "‘I never intended to become homeless,’ Curry said. ‘My job meant everything to me. But, being empowered as a transgender woman, I encountered a lot of adversity and eventually suffered burnout.’"

—Dee Curry in Verena Radulovic’s "‘They Saved My Life’" 

7. "To demonize the drum is to demonize the songs and the stories that go with it — and the entire genre of traditional Native music."

—Richard Twiss, "A Sacred Beat" 

8. "Some schools, mostly small, Northeastern liberal arts colleges, have abolished fraternities and lived to tell the tale. If U.S. higher education is going to fulfill its historic promise as an equalizer of opportunity, more will need to follow suit."

—Danny Duncan Collum, "Epic Bad Behavior" 

9. "These songs are also psalm-like in their hunger for a God who may be just out of [Sufjan Steven’s] reach, but that he believes is there — glimpsed in the stars and ocean breakers, or in a young niece who seems to bear hope when everything else seems futile."

-Julie Polter, "‘That Song You Sing for the Dead’" 

10. "I wish the churches would just stand up. Faith without works is dead. So what are your ‘works,’ and are they making you uncomfortable?"

—Erika Totten, "Short Takes: 5 Questions for Erika Totten" on how she wishes the churches would participate in the Black Lives Matter movement.