📧 “Follow Up” to Sojo
I wouldn't necessarily agree with each of your characterizations, I'll outline those below.
If y'all want an idea of recent projects I could turn into an essay, here's the titles of a few I have in development:
“And the Tribune also was afraid” Paul’s civilian privilege
“Praised by everyone”? From Zebulun and Naphtali to Korea and Vietnam
“What about us?” The Earliest Christian attitudes to military service
Say His name: the politics of “Jesus”
Or, if you’re interested in the more secular/newsy stuff like what I wanted to do with the TCCW, there’s my recent Oregon Senate testimony, the slew of violent anti-military hate crimes the DoJ hasn’t prosecuted and/or the weaponization of those same protections to disparage service members in the press.
As for your message, there's only a few points I feel I need to correct.
I don't think '[I have] been pulled back from' is appropriate, as though I am the agent of my own indignity. If you (and Sojourners) truly believe "all media is biased," then my position is something more like "How does Sojourners justify its bias toward military families?"
If Sojourners, as you have stated, lacks "certain expertise and experience," that's because it has exercised "[y]our rights to reject or accept any article" that fails to adhere to biased assumptions about minorities like myself. Unless you think my academic and literary qualifications somehow don't count as "expertise."
Bias was not just disclosed by "rejection of offers to write," it also included the decision to ignore veteran-led events, turning down invitations for public correction, sending veterans condescending emails about them being "distraught," taking ad money from for God is a Grunt without reviewing it... I could work up a comprehensive list if you want, but I'd use that on my website so I didn't waste my time and labor.
It's the epitome of entitlement to acknowledge, and then shrug off, bias against the very group that secures everyone else's rights. But that IS, paradoxically, your right. It is MY right, however, to disassociate from Sojourners if it chooses to exercise its rights in ways that demean, marginalize, and erase the labor and dignity of minorities like me.
For the record, "print publication" is incidental; when Christianity Today used my face to falsely characterize me as "War Torn," they could not take back the thousands of copies sent to divinity schools and seminaries around the world. But they could, and did, change their online offering because it is a persistent media; it remained in their control in a way "print" artifacts do not. I don't care what your policies are, or that Sojourners is willing to violate its own stated (editorial?) Mission and Values. Be duplicitous all you want, to anyone you want, and make as much money doing it as you like, but keep me out of it. (*unless you are willing to adhere to those Values when they afflict YOU in YOUR comfort)
Remove my unpaid work from the assets Sojourners controls, or repent of your duplicity by allowing me the opportunity to qualify the nature of my earlier work within the context of civilian bias I experienced at your hand. The power, and the choice, is (and always has been) in your hands.
Prayerfully,
Logan
