Duane Shank is Senior Policy Advisor for Sojourners. He has been on the staff since 1995. He monitors the news (and produces a Daily Digest for the God's Politics blog), and works closely with Jim Wallis and senior staff in developing strategy, program and communication initiatives.

Duane has been active as an organizer and administrator in the peace and justice movement for 35 years, beginning as a draft resistance and antiwar organizer during the Vietnam war. He has worked as a community organizer in the rural south, in interfaith coalitions, and in the nuclear weapons freeze and Central America solidarity movements of the 1980s. His positions have included Associate for the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors; National Coordinator for the Committee Against Registration and the Draft; Deputy Director and Acting Executive Director for SANE/Freeze; and Research Fellow for the Institute for Policy Studies.

Duane attended Eastern Mennonite University. He is a Anabaptist/Mennonite, and currently an active member and serves on the worship leadership team of the Community of Christ ecumenical congregation in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His views on faith and politics have been shaped by (among others), John Howard Yoder, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Oscar Romero.

Duane is married to Ellen Kennel. They have a daughter, Celeste, assistant editor of Mennonite Weekly Review and a graduate of Goshen College, IN, and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She is married to Josiah A. Groff, a labor attorney, and lives in Chicago, IL.

In addition to family, church, and work; his passions are baseball (Washington Nationals), blues (Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan) and bluegrass music (Ralph Stanley), and barbecue.

Selected writing:

Commentaries Seeking Common Ground. The common good is one of the ultimate moral values. January 2005 (Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 8-9).

An Open Letter to Young Activists. There are things in life worth being for--and things worth being against. February 2004 (Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 8).

Faith-Based Discrimination? Religious organizations and fair hiring. September-October 2003 (Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 17).

The (Church and) State of Our Schools. Will there still be public education for your children's children? November-December 1999 (Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 12).

Reviews Roots of a Mentor. June 2004 (Vol. 33, No. 6, pp. 42-44). Spiritual Leadership. The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson. January 2004 (Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 44).

In the Court of the Gentiles. March-April 2002 (Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 58).

Grounded in the Book. Recovering our Jewish roots. January-February 1998 (Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 50, 53-55).

Preaching the Blues. The power of live recordings. March-April 1997 (Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 58-59).

Complete Sojourners bibliography

Other publications The Wisdom and Foolishness of Peacemaking, Beliefnet, October 2002

War in Afghanistan, Was it Just?, Mennonite Life, March 2002