How many children in the United States do you think are repeatedly raped for a tidy profit, pimped out by a relative, kept at a truck stop or hotel against their will for sexual servitude, or photographed for online porn? “As many as 100,000 girls are trafficked as sex slaves within the U.S.,” reports Sojourners, a magazine devoted to social justice. And the average age of entry into child prostitution or pornography? Between 12 and 14 years old.

Human sex trafficking might strike us as a distant overseas problem that plagues countries like Thailand and Cambodia, writes Sojourners, but “the United States has also been a leader of the pack.” The U.S. child sex trade is neatly facilitated through seemingly benign classified ad sites like Backpage.com and Craigslist.com, where users can purchase anything from a used Honda to an escort, stripper, or other “adult job”—except by no means are all the people performing the sex work limited to adults, nor are they there by choice. “Girls as young as 11 have been identified in ads,” writes Andrea Powell in a Huffington Post article about ways to fight sex trafficking online. “Traffickers like the online world,” writes Powell, “because rather than having to move girls around, risking arrest, they hide in hotels where their victims are out of sight and much less likely to try to run away.”

To be a part of the solution: 1) Sign a Change.org petition to stop child sex trafficking on Backpage.com. 2) Think before you masturbate. By partaking of many online porn sites, you are very likely contributing to the sex trafficking of minors. 3) Educate yourself. Polaris Project and FAIR Girls are two excellent nonprofits devoted to ending sexual slavery in our country. 4) Shop on Etsy. Really? Yes—the online marketplace’s JewelGirlsShop features handcrafted jewelry made by former trafficked girls who are now being empowered through art therapy. 5) Ask your political representatives to turn their attention and resources to the domestic child sex trade. As Sojourners points out:

The meager federal resources spent on human trafficking ($60 million per year) are 333 times less than the $20 billion per year Washington has squandered on the drug war—it’s apparently all right to sell children, but not drugs.

Source: Sojourners (requires free registration), Huffington Post 

Image by clairecarey, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Danielle Magnuson is an associate editor at Utne Reader. Follow her on Twitter @DnlMag.

Some of our UIPA nominees for Body/Spirit coverage have chimed in on two of the issues dominating headlines across the country. (No, not the royal wedding. If you’re looking for an appropriate response to that, there’s this headline from Democracy Now! that pretty much sums it up: “Frenzy around Britain’s Royal Wedding ‘Should Embarrass Us All.’”) 

First, Valerie Elverton Dixon at Sojournersstruggles with being a Christian when it comes to what she feels is an appropriate response to Donald Trump’s obsession (read: media ploy) with Obama’s birth certificate.

It is the moments when I am most angry and most disappointed in particular people and circumstances that I find it very, very difficult to be a Christian….When commentators asked why the president had not [released his long-form birth certificate] sooner, I screamed back at my television: “Why should he have to do it at all?”

Dixon rightly notes that the fact that the President of the United States felt forced into revealing this document is “not only a national embarrassment; it was an insult to every American who voted for him, and a special offense to African Americans.” She ends up finding her Christian footing, ultimately asking her God to “forgive [Trump] because he does not know what he is doing.” Unfortunately, I can’t get myself to that point; I think he knows exactly what he’s doing.

At The Christian CenturySteve Thorngate brings into his discussion of the House Republican budget, the still-overlooked budget plan from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. (Why “still overlooked”? Here’s what Rachel Maddow thinks is the reason.) After detailing some of the “provisions in the bill that deserve a dose of public outrage” Thorngate goes on to make a fantastic point:

Meanwhile, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a detailed rival plan that includes some serious tax hikes. It'll never pass, but that's not the point: the budget negotiations will involve à la carte solutions and much compromise. The Progressive Caucus's menu of ideas will help counteract the bad ones detailed above—and its existence will make it harder for the Republicans to take Obama's moderate, pre-compromised approach, paint it as insanely and dangerously liberal and then get him to compromise even further.

 Lastly, at TikkunMichael Hogue has some stronger words about Ryan’s “courageous” plan, calling it “revoltingly immoral and unjust” and “insidiously wicked.”

There is NO religious framework or lifeway that, except through disingenuous hermeneutical backflipping, could possibly justify these principles. And if that’s the case, and if these principles (which are usually dressed up a bit in public) undergird the Ryan proposal and most other Republic sensibilities about the deficit, then there is NO way that there should be any religious support for this budget proposal. Is there anything in Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Religious Humanism, or Religious Naturalism, or Unitarian Universalism that so brazenly endorses the accumulation and concentration of wealth among a very few at the expense of the very many, and especially at the expense of the vulnerable? Absolutely not.

Source: Sojourners, The Christian Century, Tikkun 

Image by ssoosay, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Our library contains 1,300 publications—a feast of magazines, journals, alt-weeklies, newsletters, and zines—and every year, we honor the stars in our Utne Independent Press Awards. We’ll announce this year’s winners on Wednesday, May 18, at the MPA’s Independent Magazine Group conference in San Francisco. From now until then, we’ll post the nominees in all of the categories on our blogs. Below you’ll find the nominees for the best body/spirit coverage, with a short introduction to each. These magazines are literally what Utne Reader is made of. Though we celebrate the alternative press every day and with each issue, once a year we praise those who have done an exceptional job.  

 
First published in 1884 as the Christian Oracle,The Christian Century epitomizes what it means to think critically and live faithfully, asking readers to turn a thoughtful eye toward world hunger, immigration, AIDS work, health-care reform, and other issues of great import to all of us—whatever our faith.

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Progressive Christianity has come to and gone from American life in the 86 years Commonweal has been giving voice to it. From its pacifist declarations during World War II to the battles over sexual orientation in our time, Commonweal has been a beacon.

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“Holy mischief in an age of fast faith” is the mission of the radical, left-leaning Christian journal Geez. In every issue, its creators offer up a collage of irreverent stories on everything from awkwardness to “experiments with truth.” 

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Resurgence has made an art of pushing its writers to the uncomfortable edges of environmentalism and spirituality, covering stories on issues ranging from “the tyranny of trends” to farmer suicides in India. Beautifully designed and richly sourced, this British magazine is as unique as it is essential. 

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Faith and politics are often deranged bedfellows. In the pages of Sojourners, the relationship is treated as a sacred one. In this institution of progressive Christianity, the left’s orthodoxies are rarely questioned—but rather are infused with the searching qualities of a living, breathing faith. 

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Illuminated by the Jewish faith but accessible to all, Tikkunaims to “mend, repair and transform the world,” and that dream may just start with its readers. We are inspired by its measured, heavy-hitting features, which feature everything from queer spirituality to godless environmentalism to mental health, celebrity culture, and corporate greed. 

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Magazines that celebrate Buddhism sometimes feel redundant. Too few gurus cycle through too frequently. Tricycle searches out obscure and marginalized voices to reach beyond the mainstream, finding wisdom that turns faith into a lifelong journey. 

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YES! Magazine, a magazine of “powerful ideas, practical actions” published by the nonprofit Positive Futures Network, gives us information and tools to build a more sustainable, just tomorrow. Readers cannot help but be inspired by the quarterly’s celebration of human potential and community well-being.

See our complete list of 2011 nominees. 

Image by quinn.anya, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Sure, we love our laptops and iPads, but they’ll never have the romance of a typewriter. Check out this gallery of authors and their beloved machines.

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A cultural history of the river baptism.

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It was announced yesterday that later this year, Glenn Beck will end his show on Fox. Sojourners—one of Beck’s progressive targets over the years because of their radical idea that Christians could be and should be committed to social justice—has rounded up a number of their responses to the blubbering, bullying Beck.

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Save NPR! But please put PBS out of its misery.

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Looking to explore uncharted waters? Travel 36,201 feet under the sea in billionaire Richard Branson’s deep-sea submarine.

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The autism-vaccine debate is not over yet.

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Fast Company points to a fascinating series of infographics detailing how America describes itself in dating profiles. (Teaser: Looking for naughty fun? You might consider moving to West Viginia or New Mexico.)

Our library contains 1,300 publications—a feast of magazines, journals, alt-weeklies, newsletters, and zines—and every year, we honor the stars in our Utne Independent Press Awards. We’ll announce this year’s winners on Sunday, April 25 at the MPA’s Independent Magazine Group conference in Washington, D.C. and post them online the following Monday. We’re crazy about these publications, and we’d love it for all of our readers to get to know them better, too. So, every weekday until the conference, we’ll be posting mini-introductions to our complete list of 2010 nominees.

Before I landed at Utne Reader, I had all but given up on magazines on the "spirituality" rack. I have seen the light! Here are eight of our favorites...

Progressive Christianity has come to and gone from American life in the 86 years Commonweal has been giving voice to it. From its pacifist declarations during World War II to the battles over sexual orientation in our time, Commonweal has been a beacon. www.commonwealmagazine.org

Magazines that celebrate Buddhism sometimes feel redundant. Too few gurus cycle through too frequently. Tricycle searches out obscure and even marginalized voices to reach beyond the mainstream to find wisdom that turns faith into a lifelong journey.
www.tricycle.com

From endemic farmer suicides in India to the “tyranny of trends,” Resurgence has made an art of pushing its writers to the uncomfortable edges of environmentalism and spirituality. Beautifully designed and richly sourced, this British magazine is unique and essential.
www.resurgence.org

There are few university magazines that, like Portland, can be described as simply profound. At its core,the University of Portland’s beautiful publication is a Catholic endeavor, but faith isn’t so much the subject matter as the fuel for essays and reportage that challenge and inspire.
www.up.edu/portland

“Holy mischief in an age of fast faith” is the mission of the radical, left-leaning Christian journal Geez. And its creators fulfill their desires in every issue, by offering up a reverent collage of irreverent stories on everything from awkwardness to “experiments with truth.”
www.geezmagazine.org

There’s no magazine quite like Lilith, whose tagline is “independent, Jewish, and frankly feminist.” Whether they’re tackling feminist funerals or domestic rituals, the editors are constantly betraying a passion that blends past and present, joy and grief, tradition and discovery.
www.lilith.org

Faith and politics are often deranged bedfellows. In the pages of Sojourners, the relationship is treated as a sacred one. In this institution of progressive Christianity, the left’s orthodoxies are rarely questioned—but rather are infused with the searching qualities of a living, breathing faith.
www.sojo.net

For 30 years, Shambhala Sun has been documenting Buddhism in America. That the magazine still inspires and feels fresh is testament to its commitment to its subject and its avoidance of the consumerism and gimmicks of the too often Westernized religion.
www.shambhalasun.com

Want more? Meet our health and wellness and science and techology nominees.

This past September, the United Church of Canada (UCC) commissioned four established aerosol artists to paint their interpretations of faith on a wall donated by a Toronto church, reports Sojourners. The vivid mural looks to be the first of many: The UCC has already scheduled a second “Paint Your Faith” event in Vancouver during April.

Source: Sojourners

Christian radio is becoming less, well, Christian, reports Sojourners—and the shift is treating stations well. By including more “family-friendly” songs (i.e., less overtly religious) and paring down bible-thumping programming, Christian stations have grown their pool of listeners, even nabbing listeners outside the faith who are simply looking for uplifting music.

Not all Christians are fans of the trend. Daniel Radosh, whose rollicking book Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture is excerpted on Utne.com, tells Sojourners that “the fact that committed Muslims can listen to Christian music actually says quite a bit, and I think not anything very good about Christian music these days.”

Christian music’s new listeners tend to disagree. Christian stations and artists “have an opportunity to offer the mainstream market the kind of inspiration and hope that people really need,” a Muslim listener tells Sojourners. “I appreciate it if they can touch the hearts of people like me.”

Source: Sojourners

In the latest issue of Sojourners, Onleilove Alston lays out a brief how-to guide to mindful and inclusive organizing against poverty and racism. Her model is a group called The Poverty Initiative, formed at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. 

“I have experienced well-meaning Christians from more privileged backgrounds who feel called to serve poor people,” she writes, “but instead end up negating their autonomy and enacting charity, as opposed to justice.”

She writes her “seven ways” in frank Christian language, but her wisdom could easily be adapted to secular groups. Here is an excerpt from her list:

Make a habit of supporting indigenous leaders: If you are called to relocate to serve a different community, first seek out existing local leaders in that community. No one can be “given” a voice; instead, those of privilege must step aside so that everyone’s voice is heard.

  Socially locate yourself: In my work with the Poverty Initiative, we talk about our experiences with poverty or privilege and what has brought us to this work. Within the Poverty Initiative’s work, this practice has given a voice to white poverty, an issue ignored by many anti-poverty movements.

Find strong, detail-oriented critics who will judge your actions, not just your intentions; listen to criticism without panic or anger: We need to have people around us who can gently critique our actions to ensure that we are not operating in racism, classism, sexism, or some other “ism” that will hinder the movement.

Sources: Sojourners 

Reading magazines like Sojourners or Commonweal all the time, you might think that all Christians are crazy, love-thy-neighbor kinds of people. The Onion has an editorial from someone who wants people to know that all Christians aren’t like that. Here’s a key quote:

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That's all. Just the core beliefs. You won't see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden.