Sojourners

I need to level with you: The 2026 midterms are not a normal election. Faith groups like Sojourners have long talked about the importance of elections. I have written about elections extensively in the past. But this year is different. Specifically, there is a great risk that the Trump administration and its allies will attempt to disrupt or deny the election results; these attempts could very well succeed if we don’t act—or if they create enough chaos and fear to deter people from voting.

I’m at the point where I’m a bit at a loss for what to say about Palestine. It has been three years since the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, when Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted another 251 people. That date also marks the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, which continues despite the ceasefire. More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by the state of Israel. Palestinians are losing faith in nonviolent resistance, and I honestly can’t blame them.

The recent botched attempted executions of Christa Pike and Tony Carruthers in Tennessee have laid bare what it is we are doing in my state in the name of justice—and people of faith are horrified by it. As an anti-death penalty advocate, I have noticed a growing concern about the death penalty within many Christian communities here. Jury decisions in predominantly Christian Tennessee reflect that, with only five new death sentences since 2013.

I was 20 years old before I told anyone else in my life that I had gender dysphoria. Or, as I said back then, “all these gender feelings.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell anyone. Throughout many different seasons of my childhood and teen years, I’d tried to write letters and speeches to tell my parents and friends what I’d been experiencing. From what I’d absorbed in media, though, “coming out” was a dramatic proclamation.

We’ve seen it before: the tale of a Christian disillusioned with evangelicalism and its culture of exclusion. What we are still learning, however, is the assuredness with which Christian communities will shun one of their own—even one of their most skilled artists. Jason Ikeler’s new documentary Safe for the Whole Family: How to Make a Christian Superstar, which premiered Sept.

Toward the end of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he notes that his young protégé Timothy will be visiting soon and goes out of his way to tell the church to be nice to him. “When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord” (16:10). Some scholars have taken this to suggest that Timothy was not a naturally easygoing person—maybe he was anxious or shy.

“You need to wait for people to catch up,” the pastor said. It was 2015, and I was visiting the church offices to talk with this pastor about changing parts of the liturgy to make it more inclusive for genderqueer parishioners in this open and affirming congregation. The well-meaning pastor’s response hung heavy in the church office. Over the first few years of my coming out as transgender in a Christian church, pastoral staff and close friends tried to be the community I needed them to be.

Faith-based organizers across the U.S. are mobilizing with increasing fervor to protect the integrity of the 2026 midterm elections. At the national and local level, nonprofits are spending their efforts on a variety of tactics to help people vote and ensure every vote is counted. Groups that traditionally held get-out-the-vote campaigns or hosted polling sites in their buildings are now also recruiting poll chaplains and training them in de-escalation.

Director Poh Si Teng’s damning and incisive documentary, American Doctor, follows three American physicians and the medical work they do for those suffering in Gaza. The film chronicles the work of Jewish American orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Palestinian American physician Dr. Thaer Ahmed, and Zoroastrian surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa from Christmas 2024 to Christmas 2025, before and after the “so-called” 2025 ceasefire.

Living in an age where rage is a currency, where anything and everything is a financial stressor, and where our political machine’s main function is to sow division, clinging to positive platitudes like “Things will get better!” or “Just hold out hope!” can feel like an expression of willful ignorance, or at best, stupid naivety.