Julie has been a member of the Sojourners magazine editorial staff since 1990. For the last several years she has edited the award-winning Culture Watch section of the magazine. In her time at Sojourners she has written about a wide variety of political and cultural topics, from the abortion debate to the working class blues. She has coordinated in-depth coverage of Flannery O’Connor, campaign finance reform, Howard Thurman, the labor movement, and much more.
She studied English literature at Ohio State University and has an M.T.S. (focused on language and narrative theology) from Boston University and an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from George Mason University.
Julie grew up on a farm in the northwest corner of Ohio. She has been fascinated by the power of religious expression in and through culture since she can remember. Obsessively listening to her older sister’s copy of the Jesus Christ Superstar cast recording when she was 10 was an especially crystallizing experience. In addition, Julie’s mother often argued about doctrine and the Bible and took her at least weekly to the public library, both of which were useful background for Julie’s current work.
She lives in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C. and is a member of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church (where she had an unlikely four-year reign as rummage sale czarina). Her personal interests overlap nicely with her professional ones: Music, books, reading entertainment, culture, and religion writing, art, architecture, TV, films, and knowing more celebrity gossip than is probably wise or healthy. To make up for all that screen time, she tries to grow things, hike occasionally, and wonder often at the night sky.
Some Sojourners articles by Julie Polter:
Replacing Songs with Silence
Censorship, banning, blacklists: What’s lost when governments stifle musical expression?
Extreme Community
A glimpse of grace and abundance from - of all things - reality TV.
The Cold Reaches of Heaven
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Bill Phillips talks about his faith.
Just Stop It
Daring to believe in a life without logos. An interview with journalist Naomi Klein.
Women and Children First
Developing a common agenda to make abortion rare.
Obliged to See God (on Flannery O’Connor)
Posts By This Author
To the Public Square
Can the words "Christian" or "faith" appear in proximity to political issues? And if they do, what should they mean?
The Enola Gay: History's Fallout
When is a fuselage not just a fuselage? To many World War II veterans, the Enola Gay-the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima-is an icon of their deliverance.
Obliged to See God
All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. -Flannery O'Connor
Dancing Toward Peace in Northern Ireland
A tense, cautious hope for a peaceful future in Northern Ireland emerged with the cease-fire called on August 31 by the Irish Republican Army...
Grateful for the Hands that Labor
Workers picking up strawberries in strawberry field, Salinas, Calif. Photo: Juan SiLVA / Alamy
Labor Day: Justice. Workers. Solidarity. Sweat of the brow. Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
Or...Picnics. Beaches. Hot dogs. TV telethons.
This is the common dilemma of Labor Day. This day of rest, set aside to honor labor, is usually remembered more for the fun things you do on a day off than for the workers it honors. This is certainly not unique—look at Memorial Day or Christmas and how easy it is to be so busy enjoying them that we forget what they're supposed to be about.
Ending Welfare As We Know It
A welfare mother is a black woman, with several children, who spends her entire life on welfare, having another kid whenever she needs more money—at least according to prevalent stereotypes
Distracted by Beauty
God created and saw that it was good. But since then things have been more ambiguous.
Annie Get Your Gun
Aprototypical white suburban mom walking toward her minivan in a dimly lit parking garage glances fearfully over her shoulder at some real or perceived threat lurking off camera.
A Matter of Justice
The Constitution, not unlike the Bible, draws radically different schools of interpretation.
Sex, Thighs, and Women's Mags
What's glossy, colorful, and makes women hate their thighs?
Dashikis and Overalls
Arrested Development stitches the sounds of city and country