“Be Not Silent,” an interview with Sister Joan Chittister by James Kullander, first appeared in The Sun magazine in June 2007. Part of that interview was selected to be reprinted in this month’s issue, as part of their “One Nation, Indivisible” feature, which uses excerpts from their archives which relate to the current political moment.

Sister Joan Chittister: I wouldn’t be involving myself with social questions if I weren’t a Benedictine Sister. I am not a politician. Nor was Jesus. But he kept pointing out how the system failed the people it purported to serve.

Benedictines read from the Scriptures three times a day, every day. We start on page one of Genesis and continue on, reading a little at a time, until we reach the last page of Revelations. Then we start all over again. I would not be doing what I’m doing now if I were not hearing the psalmists and the prophets dealing with much the same problems in their time, and if I did not have the story of Jesus walking from Galilee to Jerusalem, picking people up out of the dust, raising people from the dead, curing lepers, and giving sight to the blind.

The Sun: I had an Old Testament professor at Union Theological Seminary who said she saw the trials and tribulations lamented by the psalmists and the prophets every day in the headlines of The New York Times.

Chittister: That’s exactly right. My own efforts are not political acts for me. What I do has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with justice, equality, compassion, and mercy. We’re here to take care of the garden, but we’re tearing it apart. If you have a religious heart, how can you not speak to this? How can you not be there with the poorest of the poor, who are bearing the brunt of the sins of this system? This, for me, is a religious and spiritual obligation—nothing more and nothing less.

—from The Sun Magazine, November, 2017