Mitchell Atencio is the senior associate news editor at Sojourners. He first served as a contract reporter for Sojourners in 2020.
Mitchell believes his role as a journalist is to ask compelling questions of the right people and to tell stories that impact the actions of readers. He loves writing stories of the radical or unique — especially within faith. Before joining Sojourners, Mitchell was a reporter in Kirkland, Wash. At Arizona State University he was a passionate and dedicated member of the award-winning, independent, student-newspaper The State Press. He also graduated with a degree in journalism and mass communications, but he doesn’t care as much about that part.
Although he didn’t stay long enough, Mitchell is proud to have been born in Atlanta and dreams of returning.
In journalism and elsewhere, Mitchell advocates for the physical medium. He is a vinyl record collector; a film photographer who shoots, develops, and scans his own film; a magazine subscriber; and a fan of writing letters on the family typewriter. In his spare time, he reads liberation theology, practices Zen, watches a lot of tennis, rants about the evils of pickleball, and makes coffee with a variety of methods. Mitchell is discalced out of religious commitment; he concedes it probably makes him a hippie.
Posts By This Author
Trading Apologetics for Humility
Newly-dug graves for Ukrainian soldiers who were killed in battle during Russia’s attack on Ukraine, are seen at the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, March 28, 2022. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
Proximity and humility are sometimes an answer for our beliefs.
This Spring, Let Truth Bloom
Photo by Biegun Wschodni on Unsplash
This spring, I’m thinking about the season as a blooming period for the complexities of truth. That’s not to say that truth itself is complicated, but that the application, acknowledgment, or apprehension of truth can be a sticky mess. Truth will set you free, but then we get to wrestle with freedom and the responsibility that comes with it: Realizing that racism is ingrained in the church is important, for instance, but acting to rid the church of that sin is paramount.
Grab Your Helmets, Let’s Do Some Myth Busting
Brad Stine performs. By Hope4ASU via Flickr.
When I was a kid, Christian comic Brad Stine yelled at me about wearing a helmet while riding my bike. He also yelled about seatbelt and car-seat laws, smoking laws, and gay marriage through his stand-up routine that I sat in the front row for.
Back When the World Was Grayscale
A retro portable television. Via Alamy.
If we analyze our current conditions, avoid circular debates, stop waiting for heroes to save us, speak honestly about our past and present, and try to change today, we might just save tomorrow.
Christian Scholars Think We’re Spending Too Much on War
CODEPINK marches with the peace tank during the Deadline for Democracy protest at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 6, 2021. For this event, a number of social justice organization in the Washington, D.C., area collaborated to shut down access to the Capitol as a means of pressuring Congress to act on key pieces of the Democratic agenda. (Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto)
In the letter, the scholars criticize the budget being set $25 billion higher than President Joe Biden had requested. They write that the country urgently needs to “shift our security and foreign policy strategy” to break cycles of violence, cultivate peace, and practice constructive conflict.
What Does ‘Christian Nonviolence’ Actually Mean?
A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence, by David C. Cramer and Myles Werntz, will be released in February 2022.
For most folks, Christian nonviolence evokes unified images of civil rights marches, Vietnam War resisters, and bumper stickers calling us to “turn the other cheek” or “beat swords into plowshares.” Yet Christian nonviolence isn’t a single school of thought, “but rather a rich conversation wrestling with what it means to live out the biblical call to justice amid the complexities of ever-changing political, social, and moral situations.”
The Perfect Soundtrack for MLK Weekend: What Our Editors Are Reading
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1963 via Reuters.
One of the best jobs I ever held was assistant manager at Grace Records. I was a founding staff member at the new and used vinyl shop in Arizona, a father and son venture that was a thrill to work at.
Until the Year Wears Out: What Our Editors Are Reading
I’m not sure when it becomes too late to wish someone a happy new year. Some restrict the salutation to just the first three days, others extend it out to the first week, or even all of January. I tend to just wish a happy new year until the year wears out (a very fluid standard, I know).
After Investigation, Preemptive Love Founders ‘Will Not Be Returning’
Headshots of Jeremy Courtney and Jessica Courtney, and the Preemptive Love logo. Screengrabs from Preemptive Love website.
Preemptive Love Coalition’s board of directors announced on Jan. 4 that the organization’s founders, Jeremy and Jessica Courtney, would not be returning to the organization in any capacity, after an investigation into the Courtneys’ leadership.
Former Staff Accuse Preemptive Love Founders of Abusive Leadership
A model wears a T-shirt available for purchase at Preemptive Love Coalition’s website. Image via preemptivelove.shop
Former employees at Preemptive Love Coalition, an international relief organization, have alleged that its leaders created an abusive environment. On Dec. 15, Ben Irwin, the organization’s former director of communications and public relations, wrote on Twitter and in subsequent posts to Medium, that Preemptive Love’s founders, Jeremy and Jessica Courtney, “abused, gaslit, threatened, and mistreated dozens of staff over the years.”
All 3 Men Found Guilty in Murder of Ahmaud Arbery
A woman reacts outside the Glynn County Courthouse after the jury reached a guilty verdict in the trial of William "Roddie" Bryan, Travis McMichael, and Gregory McMichael, charged with the February 2020 murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, in Brunswick, Ga., November 24, 2021. REUTERS/Marco Bello
A jury in Brunswick, Ga., found all three defendants guilty of murder Wednesday for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery while he was out on a run in February 2020. Faith leaders across the country showed gratitude for the verdict while noting the grief for Arbery’s family and the work of justice still to be done.
Nothing New Under the Sun: What Our Editors Are Reading
By Jason Blackeye via unsplash.com.
Even with the mass upheaval of our societal patterns and expectations brought by the pandemic, and the spread of global protests against racism and police brutality, our material conditions are not changing at the pace of our rhetoric.
‘God Is Weeping’: Faith Leaders React to Rittenhouse Verdict
Judge Bruce Schroeder listens during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Nov. 19, 2021. Sean Krajacic/Pool via Reuters.
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty of homicide, attempted homicide, and reckless endangerment by a Wisconsin jury on Nov. 19, following a trial that lasted nearly two weeks.
Rittenhouse, then 17, shot and killed two people and injured a third in Kenosha, Wis., during August 2020 protests against police brutality and racism after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back in the presence of three of his children, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
The defense team argued that Rittenhouse, now 18, traveled to the protests to provide medical aid and defend a used-car dealership from property damage; they argued that Rittenhouse only fired his weapon in self-defense.
“Kyle was a 17-year-old kid out there trying to help this community,” Mike Richards, Rittenhouse’s defense attorney, said in his closing statements.
The prosecuting attorney, Thomas Binger, told the jury, “This is a case in which a 17-year-old teenager killed two unarmed men and severely wounded a third person with an AR-15,” saying that Rittenhouse was not defending his home or family, and that Rittenhouse had stayed out past Kenosha’s citywide curfew.
Rittenhouse’s case elevated national conversations over self-defense, vigilantism, and gun access.
Web 3.0 and the Church
Illustration by Glenn Harvey
IN 1995, Bob Sabath, then-administrator of Sojourners’ new website, wrote about how the World Wide Web might expand and change faith communities. “This next decade may show that the greatest social impact of the computer is not as an office automation tool, but as a communication tool, as a community-building tool.” Sabath, a founder of Sojourners and now director of web and digital technology, wrote that the web “could become a useful tool for helping us find each other and the resources we need to do the work we feel called to do.”
This was a prescient view on a technology that was only at its early stages. Of course, no one could predict exactly how monumentally transformative that technology would be. Sabath wrote during “Web 1.0,” also known as the “read-only” era. Web 1.0 essentially provided digital brochures (or, for churches, bulletins); it gave users a way to access and read information but minimal opportunities for interaction.
Web 2.0, or the “read-and-write” era, gave people a way to interact with others and generate their own content. Myspace, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all represent read-and-write usages, but do so with online forums and web applications. It’s the type of internet most people are familiar with, even if not by name.
The currently developing era of the internet is known as Web 3.0. While definitions vary, decentralization is often a key component of technologies that fall under Web 3.0. Blockchains are one of those technologies, and they enable cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin and Ether) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs)—the digital art that exploded in popularity over the last year.
The Unorthodox Love of Venus and Serena’s Father
Demi Singleton as Serena Williams, Will Smith as Richard Williams, and Saniyya Sidney as Venus Williams in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘King Richard.’ Photo credit: Chiabella James, courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
The film opens when Venus and Serena are already near teenhood and tennis stardom. We don’t suffer through scenes of the two first learning to swing a racket, and this allows the movie to focus on the true challenge the sisters faced: the classism and racism of rich, white, tennis institutions that had little time for two Black girls from Compton, Calif. — an issue that has improved but still exists in U.S. tennis.
(Don’t) Know It All: What Our Editors Are Reading
By Gabriella Clare Marino via unsplash.com.
I know enough to know what I don’t know.
What We Left on the Moon
A photo of the type of Hasselblad cameras used on the moon, in the “NASA - A Human Adventure” exhibition at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore. By superjoseph, via shutterstock.
The most incredible part of landing on the moon is not the making it there, but the safely making it back. NASA’s missions to the moon and back were feats of engineering, math, and creativity. The stories are oft retold from a variety of angles and perspectives, and I will never tire of it.
Some people may not know that when we went to the moon, we left a lot of junk there. Lighter space crafts can escape gravity easier, so anything that didn’t need to come home didn’t. Included on the list of things that didn’t need to come back from Apollo 11 through Apollo 17: Twelve Hasselblad camera bodies and lenses. (Another fun fact: Until recently, one of the cameras that was supposed to return had been missing for nearly 50 years.)
‘That Doesn’t Sound Like a Seminary.’
Campus photo of Hartford Seminary. Photo courtesy of Hartford Seminary.
Joel Lohr, the president of soon-to-not-be “Hartford Seminary” sat with Sojourners’ assistant news editor Mitchell Atencio in late September to explain why the school is changing its name and what that change says about the future of theological education — and the church — in the United States.
I Got Nothing: What Our Editors Are Reading
By Max Shilov via unsplash.com.
Last week, I told my colleagues that I never struggle to write these introductions. As you can predict, that meant this week’s introduction became extremely hard to write — as I deserve. The job of this introduction is to briefly whet your appetite, give you some connecting thread for our recommended stories, and maybe say something profound. I'm learning, however, that not every story needs a moral.
‘For All Mankind' Believes Travel To The Moon Will Solve Racism. It's Not That Simple
Image from For All Mankind
ONE DOES NOT need to look hard to find a new myth forming about the great beyond. The narrative is that space travel will solve our woes—specifically the woes of racial capitalism. And this myth is appearing everywhere, in reality and fiction.
Take, for example, billionaire Richard Branson’s comments before Virgin Galactic’s suborbital mission in early July.
“Imagine a world where people of all ages, all backgrounds from anywhere, of any gender, or any ethnicity have equal access to space,” Branson told the press. “And they will in turn, I think, inspire us back here on Earth.”
Branson and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos are in a 21st century space race, trying to justify their extreme spending to commercialize the cosmos with the idea that space travel can dissolve a litany of struggles.
The new space race is not so different from the first—the winner advances their power and reach. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union raced to space, then to the moon, largely for the same reason. The U.S., it might be said, won the space race by being the first to the moon (and we are still the only nation to have ever put people on the moon).
But what if things were different? This is the question explored by For All Mankind (Apple TV+), which released its second season in April. It is an exploration of a world in which the Soviets win the race to the moon, thereby extending the space race in perpetuity. The first season takes place in the ’70s, the second jumps to 1983, and the decade-jump trend will continue for all seven seasons, according to the creators.