Sojourners

Sojourners, more specifically Sojourners Ministries, is a U.S. Christian Left interest group, formed in 1971. It states its mission as articulating "the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world."

Its immediate predecessor was the Sojourners Community, located in Southern Columbia Heights, an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, D.C. This, in turn, came from a student group at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, which discussed the relationship between their faith and political issues, particularly the Vietnam War.

The term "sojourners" is Biblical, referring to people as pilgrims—"fully present in the world but committed to a different order." As opposed to many groups of the Christian Right, which are principally made up of Protestant Evangelicals who, for example, do not accept people of alternate sexuality as full participants, "Sojourners are Christians who follow Jesus, but who also sojourn with others in different faith traditions and all those who are on a spiritual journey. We are evangelical, Catholics, Pentecostals and Protestants; progressives and conservatives; blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians; women and men; young and old. We reach into traditional churches but also out to those who can't fit into them." Note that their statement does include American conservatives, but not those insistent that the United States must be a Christian nation, or, such as Patrick Buchanan, emphasize an Anglo-Saxon nativist culture.

They specifically see a role in religiously-oriented community organizing as contributing to the building of social capital.