Leigh Rogers

Beatitudes Society 2007 Fellow - Sojourners

Most Beatitudes members or Fellows are in seminary trying to assess what it means to be Christian. For me, however, I am still assessing what it means to be religious. I didn’t grow up in a religious home. I didn’t even grow up in a pro-religious home. Rather, I grew up in one of skeptics. My parents saw the bad sides of their religious upbringing, and rejected it.

I sort of did, too. I went to church when I was younger, a Methodist church, not because my parents had some kind of conversion but because my mom wanted me to “experience” religion. Unfortunately, it was a stale, stagnant and status-quoed congregation. My mom bribed my sister and me with donuts, making us go. It’s awful, but true. We usually skipped Sunday School and played on the playground instead. After Confirmation, my family ceased going to church altogether.

In high school, I had a minor conversion after being involved in Young Life. In college, I infiltrated the more conservative Campus Crusade for Christ to show that there are liberal Christians out there. They didn’t give. After rejecting the philosophies of Campus Crusade, feeling like Christianity was a bunch of blindly led biblical literalists, and despairing the results of the 2004 Presidential Election, I rejected the Christian label altogether. I couldn’t subscribe to a right-wing theocratic agenda, the only Christianity I saw.

This: even as a religion major studying all kinds of alternative theologies—Rosemary Radford Ruether, James Cone, Kelly Brown Douglas, Jurgen Moltmann—who showed that justice is Jesus’ true message. These theologies led me to Union Theological Seminary in New York, which of course shocked my parents, who asked, “Does this mean you’re…religious?!?” Oh, the horrors!

My first year at Union and this summer as a Beatitudes Fellow at Sojourners give me hope. Both communities feel more like family than school or work, and each has risen above my expectations in modeling a true Christian community working actively for social change. The Beatitudes Society has inspired me to build a chapter at Union, and to look for ways to contribute to the faith-justice movement. I’m motivated to extend my connections through the Beatitudes Society and Sojourners to the local grassroots campaigns at Union, specifically the Poverty Initiative—a poor-people-led organization to end poverty. As for my personal faith, I look forward to watching it heal and expand in hope that the work we do today will make a difference tomorrow.

Strengthening the progressive Christian network for justice, compassion, & peace