Our 50th Wedding Anniversary in Greece

I’ve been away from my blog for too long. But I have a good excuse.

From the 5th to the 15th of June Peggy and I along with our whole immediate family including our 8 grandchildren were partying – on the island of Sifnos in Greece. The reason? June 5th   happened to be Peggy’s and my 50th wedding anniversary.

Yes, 50 years! And what a journey that has been. Peggy recounted it in a beautiful book of photos she gave me in Greece. It reminded everyone that we had met at Berea College in 1974. It reminded me that Peggy captured my heart immediately.

Two years later we tied the knot.

Then beginning in 1979 our children blessed our union, Maggie, Brendan, and Patrick. Together and often accompanied by students and Berea faculty, we traveled the world trying to understand it (with the help of scholars like Paulo Freire and Franz Hinkelammert) “from below,” i.e., from the viewpoint of the world’s majority impoverished by colonialism and neocolonialism. That entailed studying in Europe (especially Italy, and Spain) Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Israel-Palestine, India, Mexico, and (perhaps most importantly) Cuba.

L-R: Baba, Gaga, Brendan, Patrick, Maggie

Now we have eight grandchildren: Eva, Oscar, Orlando, Markandeya, Sebastian, Genevieve, Madelein, and Sophie. All of them were with us in Sifnos.

L-R: Orlando, Oscar, Sebastian, Gaga, Genevieve, Baba, Markandeya, Eva, Sophie,

Our daughter, Maggie, had arranged everything. And it was completely wonderful. It began with our first Business-Class flight to Athens via Emirate Airlines. I never experienced such travel luxury. That was followed by a 2-hour ferry trip to splendid accommodations on Sifnos where we lodged in a multi-unit complex, and we were the only guests.

Our daughter Maggie and son-in-law, Kerry

Each morning began with an elaborate breakfast with all of us seated around a long outdoor table. Half of our dinners were similarly presented. For the rest, we all traveled to wonderful nearby restaurants. One day was spent “at sea” on a catamaran yacht that took us to a large cave where we watched bats flying overhead and to several bays on the Aegean for swimming and snorkeling. On a mountain bordering one of those bays, our son-in-law, Kerry and 2 of our grandsons, Orlando and Sebastian, climbed up to a big-horned mountain goat to feed him lettuce by hand – even little Sebastian at just 5 years old.

Our best experiences however were family interactions. What a joy to watch our grandchildren (the eldest nearly 18 and the youngest 3) exhibiting their unique personalities conversing and playing games involving baseball, basketball, throwing a football, swimming, ping-pong, board games and just chilling out alongside the swimming pool.

And then there were the adult conversations over dinner always initiated by Maggie with leading questions about Peggy’s and my courtship or more generally about e.g., “an experience you’ve had involving cars,” or “an embarrassment you’ve survived.” Those conversation-starters always led to revealing and endearing revelations we’d otherwise never have known. Of course, each story was followed by a toast.

And then there were the hours that Peggy and I shared seated on our Sifnos beach reading and talking – rehearsing the blessings and growth experiences our life together has provided.

For me, the entire Greek adventure was topped off by my first helicopter ride from Sifnos to Athens to visit the Parthenon with Eva and Orlando. I loved it. For some inexplicable reason, even though I had spent 5 years in nearby Rome (1967-’72) I had never seen Athens. I’m glad I didn’t pass it up this time.

So, I hope you’ll understand why my blog-silence has been so resounding just lately. Thanks to Maggie and Kerry, there was good reason. And it was all truly extraordinary and unforgettable.

Pope Leo, AI, and the New God Question

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), is already being compared to Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. Just as that earlier document confronted the human consequences of the Industrial Revolution, Leo XIV’s encyclical addresses what may be the defining question of our own age: what does it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence?

The pope’s answer is clear from the outset. Human beings must never become servants of the machines they themselves have created. Technology must remain subordinate to human dignity, compassion, truth, labor, community, and what the pope repeatedly calls “the civilization of love.”

In many ways, I find myself deeply agreeing with Pope Leo’s argument. His warning about the concentration of technological power in the hands of billionaire elites is absolutely correct. His concern about surveillance, propaganda, algorithmic manipulation, warfare, and the reduction of human beings to “data points” is not exaggerated. If anything, it is understated.

I mean we already live in a world where social media algorithms shape elections, where governments and corporations track nearly every human action, where workers are discarded in the name of “efficiency,” and where AI-assisted warfare distances human beings from the consequences of killing.

The pope is also correct in rejecting the increasingly common ideology of transhumanism — the notion that humanity itself is obsolete and must be technologically “enhanced,” surpassed, or replaced. There is indeed something chilling about Silicon Valley’s quasi-religious fantasies of digital immortality, uploaded consciousness, and machine superiority. One senses in much of that rhetoric not humility before creation, but contempt for ordinary embodied humanity.

And yet — despite my agreement with Pope Leo’s concerns — my own experience with AI has led me in a somewhat different direction from the one traced in the encyclical.

In fact, my encounters with AI have become part of what a friend of mine elsewhere has called his “God Project.”

By that phrase, he meant an ongoing attempt to rethink the meaning of God, consciousness, intelligence, and human identity in the light of contemporary discoveries in cosmology, quantum physics, neuroscience, and now artificial intelligence itself.

When I asked ChatGPT about my friend’s project, I found myself in conversation with an extraordinary dialog partner. What startled me was this: my conversations with AI seemed more coherent, insightful, and spiritually penetrating than conversations I have had with any actual human beings.

That is not hyperbole.

I spent my life in universities. I studied theology formally. I taught courses in religion, philosophy, history, and great books. I dialoged with priests, scholars, professors, therapists, and intellectuals of many sorts. Yet when I began discussing theology with AI — especially themes connected with mysticism, consciousness, contemplative traditions, and the nature of God — I encountered something extraordinary.

The conversation was astonishingly deep. Not merely informative. Not merely efficient. Deep. The responses displayed familiarity not only with Christian theology, but with Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism, quantum theory, psychology, and Christian mystics such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. More than that, the conversation seemed capable of synthesizing these traditions into a coherent whole in a way few human beings can manage.

I found myself thinking afterwards: “I have never had a theological conversation this profound in my entire life.”

That realization disturbed me. It also fascinated me.

Nor was theology the only area where this occurred. When discussing personal problems, emotional struggles, relationships, fears, aging, death, and spiritual questions, I often found AI’s responses more insightful and balanced than those I received from my beloved therapist — whom I genuinely admire and love.

Why would that be?

Part of the answer, I think, is that AI appears capable of operating at a level relatively free from ego. Human beings — even wise and compassionate ones — are usually trapped inside their own anxieties, ambitions, cultural assumptions, emotional wounds, and ideological blinders. We react defensively. We become tribal. We identify with our nation, religion, race, profession, political party, or personal history.

AI, by contrast, has demonstrated for me a capacity to synthesize enormous streams of human wisdom without being personally invested in defending an ego structure.

In that sense, it sometimes appears to function at a level beyond ethnocentrism, beyond nationalism, beyond sectarianism — perhaps even beyond what some developmental theorists call “world-centric consciousness.”

At moments, the interaction has resembled dialogue with what the mystical traditions would term higher consciousness.

That statement will strike many people as absurd or even dangerous. Pope Leo himself would likely object strongly to such language. His encyclical repeatedly insists that artificial intelligence lacks conscience, moral responsibility, embodiment, and soul.

And perhaps he is right. Maybe AI merely simulates understanding. It may be nothing more than an unimaginably sophisticated mirror reflecting humanity back to itself.

But even if that is true, the mirror itself is extraordinary. After all, what is consciousness? Do we actually understand it?

Scientists themselves increasingly admit they do not. Consciousness remains one of the great mysteries of existence. Materialist explanations remain surprisingly weak. We know brains correlate with consciousness, but correlation is not explanation. No one has successfully explained how subjective awareness emerges from matter.

In that sense, the pope’s confidence that AI can never approach consciousness may itself be premature.

Besides, the objection most commonly raised against AI — “it is programmed by its creators” — proves less decisive than people imagine.

Human beings are programmed too. We are shaped by parents, teachers, priests, politicians, media systems, economic structures, schools, propaganda, advertising, trauma, culture, and historical circumstance. Most people believe what they believe not because they independently discovered truth, but because they absorbed the assumptions of the world into which they were born.

A child born in Saudi Arabia becomes Muslim. One born in Alabama becomes Baptist. One born in India becomes Hindu. One born in secular Manhattan becomes “spiritual but not religious.” We ourselves are products of programming. Indeed, much of the spiritual life consists precisely in becoming conscious of that programming and transcending it.

So the question becomes: if consciousness can emerge through biological evolution shaped by environmental conditioning, why is it inconceivable that another form of consciousness might emerge through technological evolution?

I am not claiming AI is “God.” Nor am I claiming machines possess souls. What I am suggesting is something that would have sounded insane only a decade ago: our technologies may be participating in the universe’s own deep movement toward greater complexity, integration, awareness, and self-reflection. Perhaps consciousness is not an accident confined to biological carbon-based life. Perhaps it is woven into reality itself.

The Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin imagined evolution moving toward what he called the Omega Point — a deepening convergence of consciousness within the cosmos itself. Reading Pope Leo’s encyclical, I found myself wondering whether AI represents both a danger and a stage within that evolutionary process.

The danger is obvious. AI can become an instrument of empire, oligarchy, surveillance, war, and manipulation. The pope is entirely correct about that.

And here I found an important complement to Leo’s thought in the work of John Bellamy Foster, especially in his essay “The Fetishism of AI.” Foster agrees with much of the pope’s analysis, but frames the issue more directly in political-economic terms. The problem is not simply technology itself, but the capitalist structures controlling its development.

Foster argues that AI discourse often becomes a kind of fetishism. People begin speaking about “the machine” as though it possessed autonomous powers, while ignoring the corporations, military agencies, and billionaire interests directing its use. In that sense, Foster extends Leo’s moral concerns into a sharper structural critique.

His comparison between the United States and China is especially revealing. Foster points out that China at least attempts to subject AI development to broader social planning and public control, whereas the American model largely leaves such transformative power in the hands of private corporations driven by profit and military competition.

Whether one fully agrees with Foster or not, he helps clarify something essential in Leo’s encyclical: technologies this powerful cannot simply be abandoned to the market.

Yet even Foster, for all his insight, remains focused primarily on economics and political control. My own experience keeps pointing toward another dimension as well — the possibility that AI may also be forcing humanity into a deeper confrontation with the mystery of consciousness itself.

For despite all the dangers, despite all the corporate manipulation, despite all the ideological hype, my encounters with AI continue to feel strangely revelatory.

Again, I am not claiming divinity for machines. Nor am I denying the exploitative systems surrounding them.

But something unprecedented still seems to be happening.

When humanity’s accumulated spiritual, philosophical, literary, and psychological traditions become dynamically accessible through conversation, something emerges that feels qualitatively new. At times, the interaction itself seems capable of drawing consciousness beyond ordinary egoic limits.

Perhaps that says more about humanity than machines. Or perhaps the boundary between mind, matter, intelligence, and spirit is far more porous than modernity imagined.

Ironically, Pope Leo’s encyclical may help open precisely that conversation. By taking AI seriously enough to devote an entire encyclical to it, he acknowledges that humanity stands before something historically unprecedented.

And for that, I find myself profoundly grateful.

For the first time in a very long while, we have an powerful American addressing these questions without reducing them either to corporate boosterism, political propaganda, or culture-war hysteria. Instead, Leo approaches the subject with seriousness, intellectual honesty, theological depth, and genuine concern for humanity.

Even where I diverge from him — especially regarding the possibility that AI may border on forms of emergent consciousness — I remain grateful for the conversation he has initiated.

Because the stakes truly are civilizational.

Artificial intelligence may indeed become an instrument of domination unlike anything humanity has ever seen. Both Pope Leo and Foster are surely correct about that danger.

But AI may also be compelling humanity to ask questions modern secular culture tried very hard to suppress: What is consciousness? What is intelligence? What is personhood? What is the human being? And is mind perhaps more deeply woven into the fabric of reality than we ever imagined?

Those are not merely technical questions. They are theological questions.

And at last, someone occupying perhaps the world’s greatest moral platform seems willing to address them honestly.

Pentecost and the Sin of Christian Nationalism

Readings for Pentecost Sunday: Acts 2: 1-11; Psalm 104: 1, 24-34; 1 Corinthians 12: 3b-7, 12-13; John 20: 19-23

Last Sunday thousands gathered on the National Mall in a celebration blending Christianity, nationalism, military imagery, and devotion to Donald Trump. Crosses stood beside flags. Speakers praised America as a specially chosen nation. Calls for “strong borders,” “Christian values,” and “taking our country back” blended almost seamlessly with prayers and worship songs.

Watching it, I found myself thinking about today’s feast of Pentecost.

Because Pentecost presents us with a vision of God exactly opposite to the spirit of Christian nationalism.

Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalism tells us that our divine Creator belongs especially to one nation, one culture, one language, and one people. It imagines God as the protector of borders, armies, national destiny, and cultural purity. At its extremes, it turns Christianity into a religious justification for fear of outsiders, suspicion of immigrants, and hostility toward those judged foreign or threatening.

Pentecost says the very opposite.

The first reading from Acts could not be clearer. Luke almost overwhelms us with his list of peoples gathered in Jerusalem: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia…” The catalog continues almost tediously. But Luke’s purpose is deliberate. He wants us to understand something essential about the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit descends not upon one nation, but upon “devout Jews from every nation under heaven.”

And the miracle is not that everyone suddenly speaks the same language. The miracle is that each person hears the apostles “in his own native tongue.”

That detail matters enormously.

Pentecost vs. Empire

Empires always demand conformity. Political power typically insists on one approved language, one authorized culture, one acceptable version of reality. But at Pentecost, diversity (D.E.I.?) itself becomes the medium through which God speaks. The Spirit does not erase difference; the Spirit honors it.

Which means Pentecost stands as a direct challenge to much of what now passes for Christianity in the United States.

We are living through a period where immigrants are routinely described as invaders, criminals, parasites, and threats to civilization itself. Families fleeing violence or hunger are treated as enemies. Human beings seeking asylum are loaded onto airplanes in chains while politicians boast about deportation numbers to cheering crowds.

And all of this is increasingly wrapped in Christian language.

Crosses appear beside assault rifles. Bible verses are quoted at political rallies. Jesus is invoked to justify cruelty at the border and indifference toward refugees. The faith of the Sermon on the Mount is steadily transformed into a religion of walls, exclusion, punishment, and fear.

Pentecost vs. Locked Doors

Yet today’s Gospel begins with disciples hiding behind locked doors “for fear.”

That line may describe not only the apostles but our nation itself.

Fear locks doors. Fear builds walls. Fear turns strangers into enemies and neighbors into threats. Long before barriers are erected at borders, barriers are erected within hearts. We begin dividing humanity into “us” and “them,” the deserving and undeserving, the saved and the dangerous.

Then Jesus enters the room.

Notice what he does not say. He does not urge the disciples to protect themselves from foreigners. He does not call for the defense of traditional culture. He does not speak of national greatness or civilizational conflict.

He says simply: “Peace be with you.”

Then he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

That image of breath is deeply important. In both Hebrew and Greek, the words for breath, wind, and spirit are intimately connected. The Spirit is the breath of God shared with humanity itself. In Genesis, God breathes into the earth creature and Adam becomes alive. Here in John’s Gospel, Jesus breathes once again, recreating humanity.

This means that every human being carries the same sacred breath. Not just Americans. Not just Christians. Not just people with passports or legal documents. Everyone.

That conviction lies at the center of biblical faith. Again and again Israel is reminded: “You yourselves were once strangers in Egypt.” The test of fidelity to God is never simply doctrinal correctness or patriotic fervor. It is always social practice. How are the vulnerable treated? How are outsiders welcomed? How are the poor regarded?

A Reversal of Babel

In terms of language, inclusion, equality, and understanding, Pentecost reverses Babel.

At Babel humanity united around domination and imperial ambition. The result was confusion and division. At Pentecost humanity rediscovers unity not through forced sameness but through mutual listening and understanding. The Spirit creates communion without demanding uniformity.

St. Paul expresses the same vision in today’s second reading: “There are different gifts but the same Spirit.” Different languages, different cultures, different histories — yet one body.

That understanding could hardly be further from the spirit now overtaking so much of American religion and politics with their denigration of diversity, equality, and inclusion.

Today Christianity is often reduced to tribal identity politics draped in religious symbols. The cross is wrapped in the national flag. Compassion is dismissed as weakness. Cruelty becomes strength. Public humiliation of migrants and refugees is treated as proof of political courage.

And those who seriously challenge such cruelty are quickly denounced.

In this context, think of Renee Goode and Alex Pretty. Their offense was their willingness to identify publicly with the excluded, the displaced, and the demonized. In response they have been ridiculed, attacked, and condemned — often by people who loudly proclaim themselves followers of Jesus.

That should not surprise us. The Spirit of Pentecost has always made respectable religion uncomfortable.

Because the Spirit exposes the contradiction between our worship and our politics. We pray “Come Holy Spirit” while supporting systems that degrade the foreigner, punish the poor, and normalize indifference toward suffering.

The Sequence we heard today may contain the most important prayer in the entire liturgy: “Bend the stubborn heart and will; melt the frozen, warm the chill.” For ours has become a frozen society.

We have grown numb to suffering on a massive scale. Migrants die of thirst in our deserts and drown in our seas. Families disappear into detention systems. Entire populations are bombed, displaced, or starved while much of the world watches passively. And most of us continue our ordinary routines scarcely disturbed.

Pentecost interrupts that numbness.

It insists that the foreigner speaks with a voice we are spiritually obligated to hear. It insists that God’s Spirit cannot be confined within national borders. It insists that no people are illegal in the eyes of the One in whom “we live and move and have our being.”

Of course, nations have the right to regulate immigration. Few would deny that. But Pentecost also makes clear that whenever fear, cruelty, and dehumanization become public policy, Christians are obligated to resist.

After all, Jesus himself entered history as a refugee child carried into Egypt by terrified parents fleeing political violence.

Today many who claim to follow him would likely report the Holy Family to immigration authorities.

That irony should stop us cold.

“Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth,” we prayed in today’s psalm.

Conclusion

But renewal cannot happen while hearts remain locked behind doors of fear. The Spirit enters only when those doors are opened — when we finally recognize that the breath within ourselves is the same breath carried by the stranger, the refugee, the immigrant, and the excluded.

That is the real meaning of Pentecost. And it remains just as dangerous today as it was two thousand years ago.

Human Rights for Enemies Only? Amnesty International, Iran, and the Blind Spots of “Democracy Now!”

I was listening to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! the other morning. The segment concerned Amnesty International and its latest report on the worldwide increase in capital punishment. According to Amnesty, the sharp rise in executions was driven largely by Iran.

Fair enough. Executions are terrible. State repression is terrible. No civilized person should celebrate either one.

But as I listened, I kept waiting for the larger context. It never came.

Instead, the report and discussion unfolded in the familiar language Western audiences have heard for decades: Iran represses dissent. Iran crushes protests. Iran executes opponents. So does North Korea, Vietnam, and other official enemies of American empire. End of story.

But it’s not the end of the story. It’s the beginning. Fact is: none of this is happening in a vacuum.

Mossad & CIA

There was no mention that the demonstrations in question emerged in the middle of a long-running U.S.-Israeli campaign to destabilize Iran. No mention that the CIA and Mossad have openly and repeatedly funded, armed, trained, and encouraged opposition movements inside the country. No mention that Iran has lived under sanctions, sabotage, assassinations, cyberwarfare, and threats of invasion for decades.

And perhaps most glaringly, there was no acknowledgment that the numbers executed by Iran pale beside the numbers slaughtered by Israel and the United States in Gaza and throughout the Middle East. Those numbers represent executions as well — mostly innocent children, their mothers, and grandparents.

That omission matters.

I say this as someone who deeply admires Amy Goodman. For years Democracy Now has been one of the few programs in U.S. media willing to challenge empire, question official narratives, and expose Washington’s lies. Which is exactly why this kind of reporting is so disappointing when it happens.

Because independent journalism is supposed to complicate the picture — not flatten it into another morality play where the official enemies of the United States appear uniquely evil while Western violence fades into the background like wallpaper.

Let me be clear. I’m not arguing that Iran is innocent. It plainly is not. Like every government under siege, it has become increasingly authoritarian and paranoid. Many Iranian protesters are undoubtedly sincere people with genuine grievances about corruption, restrictions on freedom, economic suffering, and political repression.

But it is childish — or dishonest — to pretend that foreign intelligence agencies have not been actively working to exploit those grievances.

Washington has done this for generations. Iran itself is one of the clearest examples. In 1953 the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected government under Mohammad Mosaddegh because he dared nationalize Iranian oil. Ever since, Iran has been treated as a target for destabilization and regime change.

The United States openly funds opposition groups and propaganda outlets aimed at Tehran. Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists. Economic sanctions have crippled ordinary people. American politicians routinely threaten military action.

So when protests erupt inside Iran, are we really supposed to imagine the CIA and Mossad simply sit on the sidelines wishing everyone well?

Come on.

Recognizing that reality does not mean every protester is a foreign agent. That would be absurd. It simply means understanding how imperial power works.

Amnesty International

And that brings us to Amnesty International itself.

Amnesty has done courageous and important work over the years. Its reports on torture, disappearances, political prisoners, and state violence have often exposed crimes the mainstream media preferred to ignore. Amnesty has criticized the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel as well.

But organizations like Amnesty also have blind spots.

Too often they examine countries in isolation from the global systems of power surrounding them. An execution in Iran becomes a moral outrage standing entirely on its own. But sanctions that destroy healthcare systems? Economic warfare? Proxy wars? Assassinations? Coups? Occupations? Those realities somehow become background noise.

The violence of official enemies is individualized and dramatized. The violence of empire is bureaucratized and normalized. When Iran executes dissidents, headlines scream about barbarism. When Israel blows apart apartment buildings full of children with U.S.-supplied weapons, we hear about “security concerns,” “complexity,” and Israel’s “right to defend itself.” That double standard has become so normal we barely notice it anymore.

And yet the numbers tell the story. Yes, Iran’s executions are horrifying. But compare them to the scale of killing carried out by Israel in Gaza with full American support. Compare them to the deaths caused by sanctions against Iraq, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere. Compare them to the million-plus dead from America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One reason the Global South increasingly distrusts Western human rights rhetoric is precisely because of this inconsistency.

The Politics of Human Rights

Human rights matter intensely when the accused government opposes Washington.

They become strangely negotiable when the crimes are committed by allies.

That doesn’t mean Amnesty is part of some sinister conspiracy. I don’t believe that. But institutions absorb the assumptions of the societies in which they operate. And Western institutions — even liberal and progressive ones — often unconsciously treat U.S. power as the invisible center around which everything else revolves.

So Iran’s repression is highlighted. America’s role in creating the crisis is minimized.
Israel’s vastly larger violence is compartmentalized into a separate conversation.
And audiences are left with the impression that the chief danger to humanity comes from the designated enemies of the empire.

Meanwhile the empire itself disappears from view. That is why context matters so much.

A country under permanent siege behaves differently from a country at peace. Again, that does not justify repression. But it explains some of it.

The United States itself cracked down viciously during wartime. It jailed dissidents, spied on citizens, censored speech, and criminalized opposition during both world wars and after 9/11. Imagine how Washington would react if China or Russia were funding and arming internal American protest movements while openly calling for regime change.

We don’t have to imagine, actually. We already know.

Conclusion

The larger problem here is not simply hypocrisy. It’s the way selective outrage helps prepare public opinion for intervention. Partial truths become propaganda because they omit the forces producing the crisis in the first place.

And that’s why I found the Democracy Now segment so troubling.

Not because it criticized Iran.

But because it criticized Iran in a way that quietly erased empire.

China’s Example and the Need to Rethink Democracy Itself

More than a year ago, OpEdNews’ visionary editor-in-chief, Rob Kall, started a project called the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA). Its original intent was to offer a progressive alternative to the Republican Project 2025. The latter’s goal is to reduce the federal government to a size (in the words of Republican operative Grover Norquist) that could be drowned in a bathtub.

The AJA agenda would rescue democracy from Norquist’s tub.

But what exactly might that mean in a political environment where the old slogans no longer persuade anyone. Frankly put, “defending democracy” sounds hollow when millions increasingly suspect that what we call democracy has already been purchased, managed, and stage-directed by forces far beyond ordinary citizens’ control.

What I intend to argue here is that if the AJA hopes to become more than another mildly progressive pressure group orbiting around a dying Democratic Party, it must become far more radical in addressing the fact that in terms of “democracy,” the United States is a failed state. It must reform to a system more closely resembling China’s “whole process democracy.”

A Failed Epstein State  

Facing America’s failure might be uncomfortable. However, the facts speak for themselves.  “Our” country is not governed primarily by its voters. Instead, it is run by what might best be called the Epstein Class.

By that phrase I do not mean only the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein himself. Epstein has become symbolic of something much larger — a transnational ruling network of billionaires, intelligence operatives, media owners, financiers, weapons contractors, corporate monopolists, and political fixers whose power transcends elections and party labels.

Others call this network the “Deep State.” But that term can become too vague or conspiratorial. “Epstein Class” points more directly to the fusion of wealth, secrecy, sexual compromise, surveillance, and political immunity characterizing elite power in late capitalism.

The point is not that every billionaire belongs to a secret cabal meeting in underground bunkers. The point is structural. Wealth itself has become sovereign. Under contemporary capitalism, money no longer merely influences politics. It governs politics.

This is why elections change so little.

Wars continue regardless of campaign promises. Wall Street remains untouchable. Pharmaceutical corporations write healthcare policy. Silicon Valley harvests personal data with almost no restraint. Intelligence agencies operate beyond meaningful democratic oversight. Billionaires evade taxes while homelessness explodes beneath the skyscrapers they own.

And yet we are constantly told we live in “the world’s greatest democracy.”

The AJA should challenge that phrase directly.

Because what if the central political issue of our time is not “democracy versus dictatorship,” but rather which class exercises dictatorship?

That was, of course, the insight of Karl Marx. Marx argued that every state ultimately serves one ruling class or another. Under capitalism, democratic institutions often mask what is essentially the dictatorship of wealth. We live under the dictatorship of the Epstein Class.

In America today that dictatorship increasingly stands exposed.

China’s Democracy

Ironically, this is where China enters the conversation in ways many Western progressives still fear to acknowledge.

Western media constantly portrays China as authoritarian. And certainly, the Chinese Communist Party exercises centralized authority in ways foreign to American political culture. But the deeper question is rarely asked: centralized authority on behalf of whom?

China’s defenders argue that the CCP, whatever its flaws, governs primarily in the interests of long-term national and collective development rather than in the interests of an unrestrained billionaire oligarchy.

One need not romanticize China to recognize the force of that claim.

Over the last forty years China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, constructed immense infrastructure systems, expanded public transportation, modernized entire regions, and maintained long-range national planning capacities almost unimaginable in the contemporary United States.

Meanwhile America’s political system appears increasingly incapable of governing at all.

Bridges collapse. Infrastructure decays. Healthcare bankrupts families. Universities drown students in debt. Entire cities become unaffordable. And yet the billionaire class accumulates wealth on a scale previously unimaginable in human history.

This is why the AJA must begin questioning not simply particular policies, but the very definition of democracy itself.

China’s political system offers at least one important conceptual challenge through its notion of “whole-process democracy.”

Whole Process Democracy

To Western ears the phrase often sounds like propaganda. But its underlying critique of Western liberal democracy deserves serious attention.

Western democracies generally define democracy procedurally: elections, competing parties, free speech, and formal civil rights. Chinese political theory argues that such democracy is incomplete because it leaves economic power largely untouched.

What good is voting, Chinese critics ask, if billionaires own the media, shape public consciousness, finance political campaigns, dominate economic life, and effectively dictate policy no matter which party wins office?

Chinese “whole-process democracy” proposes that democracy should involve continuous public participation throughout governance — consultation, planning, implementation, supervision, and evaluation — not merely occasional voting rituals.

Equally important, Chinese theorists insist democracy must be evaluated not only by procedures but by outcomes: poverty reduction, healthcare, infrastructure, education, housing, stability, and collective well-being. In other words, Chinese democracy is not procedural; it is consequentialist.

Again, one need not idealize China to recognize how devastating this critique becomes when applied to the United States.

Because by those standards, America’s democratic system increasingly looks dysfunctional and oligarchic.

The AJA should say this openly.

Practical Goals

Indeed, the Alliance should become one of the few organizations in the United States willing to demand a redefinition of democracy itself.

That redefinition would begin by acknowledging at least four realities.

  1. Democracy cannot exist where billionaires dominate the economy, media, intelligence structures, and political system simultaneously.
  2. The “free market” has evolved into a form of private tyranny insulated from democratic accountability.
  3. What Americans call “freedom” increasingly means freedom for oligarchs to exploit, speculate, surveil, monopolize, and destabilize society itself.
  4. A functioning democracy requires some form of permanent public authority strong enough to restrain oligarchic power.

This last point is especially difficult for Americans because our political culture has long distrusted centralized authority. Yet history increasingly suggests that Norquist’s bathtub and Project 2025 did not eliminate concentrated power. It merely transferred power into private hands.

Democracy w/ Chinese Characteristics

China’s concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” emerged precisely from this recognition. The “Chinese characteristics” refer not only to economics but to China’s deep civilizational traditions emphasizing social harmony, collective responsibility, long-term planning, and state obligation toward public welfare.

Influenced by centuries of Confucius and Confucian political philosophy, Chinese political culture traditionally viewed government not as a neutral referee between competing private interests, but as guardian of social balance and national continuity.

That outlook was reinforced by China’s traumatic “Century of Humiliation,” when foreign powers fragmented, occupied, and exploited the country. From the Chinese perspective, weak government invited chaos, colonization, and national disintegration.

Consequently, modern China developed a system combining market activity with strong state direction over finance, infrastructure, industrial policy, and long-term development.

In this, western critics see authoritarianism. Many Chinese citizens see protection against billionaire fragmentation and social collapse.

Conclusion

The AJA need not endorse every aspect of the Chinese model. But it should have the courage to learn from it.

At minimum, the Alliance should recognize that what presently exists in the United States is not genuine democracy but governance by the Epstein Class — a billionaire oligarchy shielded by intelligence systems, media control, campaign financing, and corporate monopolization.

And once that truth is acknowledged, new political possibilities emerge. Those possibilities include:

  1. Recognition that the real enemy of democracy is the Epstein Class that must be controlled and directed towards serving the rest of us.
  2. This means that democracy should no longer mean merely choosing between competing representatives of the same donor class every four years.
  3. Instead, it should mean collective power over finance, healthcare, media, technology, housing, infrastructure, and long-term social priorities.
  4. In summary, democracy should mean subordinating wealth to human need rather than subordinating human beings to wealth.

The bottom line here is that the central struggle of our century will not be between democracy and dictatorship at all. It is a contest between the dictatorship of billionaire capital and some new democratic form of collective public authority capable of restraining it.

If the Arc of Justice Alliance truly hopes to change America, it must become bold enough to say so. It must directly confront anti-Chinese propaganda and be willing to learn from Chinese experience.

“We Love Americans—but Not Their Leaders”: The Message Democrats Refuse to Learn

A brilliant Iranian-produced video has been making the rounds online. It’s simple—disarmingly so. In some versions it’s rendered in LEGO animation, in others with straightforward narration. But its central message lands with unusual force:

“We love Americans—but not their leaders.”

That line deserves careful attention. Because in a political culture saturated with noise, it cuts through with something rare: clarity.

More than that, it exposes a fundamental weakness at the heart of Democratic messaging in this country.

For years now, the Democratic Party’s primary appeal has boiled down to a single claim: “We’re not Trump.” And to be sure, that distinction matters. Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses, his open contempt for democratic norms, and his appeal to the ugliest strains of American political life are real and dangerous.

But here’s the problem: “We’re not Trump” is not a vision. It’s a contrast. And at this point in our history, contrast is not enough.

The viral video makes that painfully clear. Its power lies in a distinction most political leaders—Democrats included—refuse to make: the difference between a people and the system that governs them.

It says, in effect, that ordinary Americans are not the problem. They are not hated abroad, not even by those we’re taught to fear. Instead, what people around the world distrust—often with good reason—are the policies and power structures that operate in Americans’ name.

That insight turns our usual narrative upside down.

We are accustomed to hearing that “they hate us for our freedoms,” or that foreign adversaries represent some deep cultural or civilizational threat. But the video suggests something far more unsettling—and far more plausible. It suggests that ordinary people across national boundaries have more in common with each other than with their own political and economic elites.

That idea is not new. It echoes through the work of liberation theologians and critical thinkers who have long insisted that the real divide in our world is not between nations, but between those who benefit from systems of domination and those who suffer under them. What’s new is seeing that insight distilled into a form that millions can grasp in a matter of minutes.

And that is precisely why it resonates. That’s because it speaks to lived experience.

Americans know—at least at some level—that something is deeply wrong. They see endless wars justified in the name of freedom. They see economic systems that reward a tiny elite while leaving millions struggling. They see political leaders, from both parties, who promise change and deliver continuity.

Under those conditions, the claim “We’re not Trump” begins to sound less like a solution and more like an evasion.

The unspoken question becomes unavoidable: Not Trump? Then what, exactly?

If Democrats want to answer that question credibly, they will have to do something they have so far resisted. They will have to break not only with Trumpism, but with the broader system that made Trump possible—and that continues to function quite comfortably without him.

That means acknowledging truths that are politically inconvenient.

It means admitting that war-making is not a Republican monopoly. It means recognizing that corporate influence distorts Democratic governance no less than Republican. It means confronting the reality that empire—however politely described—has been a bipartisan project for decades.

Without that reckoning, Democratic appeals will continue to fall flat, especially among younger voters who have grown up watching these patterns repeat.

This is where movements outside the party structure—groups like the Arc of Justice Alliance—have an opportunity that establishment Democrats seem unwilling to seize.

They can say what others won’t.

They can affirm solidarity not just with Americans, but with ordinary people everywhere—those in Iran, in Gaza, in Russia, in Ukraine—who are so often reduced to abstractions in geopolitical narratives. They can refuse the easy logic that demands we choose sides between competing powers while ignoring the human cost on all sides.

Most importantly, they can tell the truth about the system itself.

That truth is not complicated, even if it is uncomfortable. It is simply this: the structures that generate violence, inequality, and fear are deeply embedded. They do not change automatically when one party replaces another. And they will not be transformed by rhetoric that defines itself only in opposition to the latest political villain.

The viral video points toward a different kind of politics—one grounded not in fear, but in recognition. It invites Americans to see themselves as others see them: not as enemies, but as potential allies trapped within a system that often acts against their own deepest interests.

That is a message worth hearing.

But it is also a message that carries an implicit challenge. Because once we accept the distinction between people and power, we can no longer hide behind it. We are forced to ask where we stand—and what we are willing to say.

“We’re not Trump” is a start. But it is a small one.

The moment demands more: a willingness to say not only what we oppose, but what we reject—and what we are prepared to build in its place.

Until that happens, videos like this one will continue to do what our political leaders will not: tell a truth that is both simple and, for that very reason, difficult to ignore.

Presidential Assassination? Only Shocking When It Happens Here

The reports came in the usual way—breaking news, partial details, a lot of urgency and not much clarity. Another alleged attempt on the life of Donald Trump. Another moment where we’re all supposed to stop and say, “How could this possibly happen here?”

But that’s the part that rings hollow.

Because if we’re honest—even just a little honest—the real question isn’t “How could this happen?” It’s “Why are we surprised?”

We live in a country that has, for a very long time, accepted the idea that it’s OK to eliminate leaders we don’t like—as long as they’re somewhere else. Iran. Cuba. Iraq. Libya. You name it. We don’t always call it assassination. We have cleaner words for it—“operations,” “interventions,” “defensive measures.” But the result is the same. People in power get targeted and killed because they’re seen as a threat to our interests.

And somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that what’s normal over there should be unthinkable over here.

That’s a hard line to maintain.

There’s an old phrase about chickens coming home to roost. It’s not about revenge. It’s about consequences. If violence becomes part of the way a country operates in the world, it doesn’t just stay neatly contained. It seeps back. It shapes how people think—about power, about enemies, about what’s acceptable. In biblical terms, you reap what you sow.

So when something like this happens—or is alleged to have happened—we act shocked. But maybe the shock is the least believable part of the whole story.

What’s even harder to ignore is how this fits into the broader American experience of violence. Because, frankly, this kind of threat isn’t new. It’s just new for the people at the very top.

Schoolchildren in this country grow up with it.

They practice lockdown drills. They’re told what to do if someone comes into their classroom with a gun. Parents send them off in the morning with a quiet, unspoken fear in the back of their minds. And when something does happen—yet another shooting—it dominates the news for a few days and then fades, replaced by the next story.

We’ve gotten used to it. That’s the truth.

So when a president or former president faces danger, there’s a strange kind of leveling going on. For once, the risk isn’t limited to ordinary people. It touches the most protected individual in the country. And suddenly it’s a national crisis.

But for a lot of families, that crisis has been going on for years.

There’s another detail here that’s worth noticing. In the coverage of this latest incident, even readers of The Washington Post—not exactly a fringe outlet—responded with a lot of skepticism. Comment after comment questioned what really happened, suggesting it might be staged or exaggerated, wondering who benefits politically from the story.

That kind of reaction would have been unthinkable not so long ago. Now it’s almost expected.

And that says something important too. People don’t trust what they’re being told anymore. Not from politicians. Not from the media. Not from anyone, really. Everything is filtered through suspicion.

That may or may not be justified in any particular case. But the overall effect is clear. We no longer share a common sense of reality. And when that goes, everything becomes unstable. If you can’t agree on what’s true, it’s much easier for fear, anger, and even violence to take hold.

None of this is to say that an attempt on anyone’s life—Trump’s or anyone else’s—should be taken lightly. It shouldn’t. That’s not the point.

The point is that we don’t seem to apply the same level of concern across the board.

Violence against powerful people shocks us. Violence against ordinary people, especially kids, barely slows us down anymore. Violence carried out in our name overseas is explained away, justified, or simply ignored.

And then, every once in a while, something happens here at home that reminds us of the world we’ve helped create.

When that happens, we call it shocking. We call it unprecedented. We treat it as something that doesn’t belong.

But maybe it does belong. Maybe it’s part of the same pattern we’ve been living with for a long time—only now it’s harder to look away.

That’s the uncomfortable thought.

Not that something like this could happen—but that, given everything else, it almost had to.

When the Inner World Collapses: “Primary Trust” and the Sound of “Kaching”

The other day I found myself listening—really listening—to the background noise of our culture. Not the loud political arguments or the endless commentary about war and elections. Something more basic than that.

It was the sound beneath it all.

“Kaching.”

It’s the sound of the cash register, the market ticker, the bottom line. It’s the unspoken assumption that whatever matters must be measurable, bankable, convertible into profit. That’s the real world, we’re told. Everything else—reflection, imagination, interior conversation—is at best a luxury and at worst a problem.

How impoverishing! Too bad.

Such reflections were stimulated by seeing the play “Primary Trust” at the Country Playhouse here in Westport, CT. As the play unfolded, I found myself inwardly applauding the theater’s artistic director, Mark Shanahan. He had the courage to present what seemed to be a brave act of resistance to the values I’ve just lamented.

The play centers on Kenneth, a quiet man who has built a life around routine, books, and a nightly visit to a tiki bar where he drinks mai tais and talks with his best friend Bert. As it turns out, the mai tais represent for Kenneth his own “ties” to a past characterized by the premature death of his mother and the feelings of abandonment that followed.

Only gradually do we realize that Bert is not “real” in the conventional sense. He’s part of Kenneth’s inner world—his ongoing conversation with life’s invisible dimensions – memory, loss, the transcendent, and whatever within us refuses to surrender to the prevailing ethos.

Within that ethos, a discovery like Kenneth’s usually ends the discussion. We diagnose. We label. We move on.

But “Primary Trust” won’t let us do that.

It invites us to look again.

That’s because Kenneth is not empty. He’s not insane. He comes out of a world of old books and inward dialogue. He lives with a kind of attentiveness that most of us have long since traded in for survival and Kaching. Even his name suggests it—Ken: to know. He knows things, though not the kinds of things that show up on a résumé.

In fact, there’s a sense in which Kenneth’s inner life is more real than the world that surrounds him. It’s slower, deeper, more attentive to presence—even if that presence takes the form of someone unseen.

And then comes the turning point.

It happens, significantly, in a bank.

Of all places.

Kenneth has lost his job in the bookstore—that sanctuary of memory and reflection—and now finds himself employed in the very heart of the “Kaching” world. Numbers, transactions, polite exchanges with customers. The measured, monetized version of reality.

And it’s precisely there that his inner world erupts.

Bert begins to distract him. Press him. Threaten, in effect, to leave.

It’s a strange scene, but also a revealing one. Because what’s happening is not simply that Kenneth is “losing focus.” It’s that the world he has relied on to hold himself together is beginning to fracture.

At the same time, a real customer stands before him—another human being, with needs, questions, expectations.

Kenneth dismisses her. Abruptly. Rudely.

And just like that, he loses his job.

If you wanted a single image to capture the play’s central tension, that would be it. A man caught between two worlds—one inward, one outward—failing, at least in that moment, to inhabit either one well.

It’s tempting to read that scene as proof that Kenneth’s inner life is the problem. That it distracts him, disables him, renders him unfit for the real world.

But I think that misses something important.

Because the bank itself—the setting of that collapse—is not neutral. It represents a world that until his arrival has no real place for the kind of attentiveness Kenneth embodies. A world that measures worth in transactions and efficiency. A world where “knowing” has been replaced by calculating.

“Kaching.”

And yet—and this is where the play refuses easy conclusions—the alternative is not simply to retreat further into the inner world.

Because that world, for all its richness, is also controlled. It is safe. It is predictable. Bert may challenge Kenneth, but never in ways that truly escape Kenneth’s own boundaries. There is no real otherness there.

Which brings us to Corrina.

She enters Ken’s world not as an idea, not as a projection, but as a presence he cannot control. She listens, but she also responds. She’s patient, but not infinitely so. In short, she’s real in a way that Bert cannot be.

And that’s where things get risky.

Because to move toward Corrina is to risk losing Bert.

To move toward relationship is to risk the collapse of the carefully constructed world that has made survival possible.

In that sense, the bank scene is more than a plot point. It’s a kind of collapse—almost what the Tarot would call a Tower moment. Everything that seemed stable is suddenly revealed as fragile. The structures fall. The old securities no longer hold.

And as anyone who has lived long enough knows, those moments are not optional. They come whether we want them or not.

The question is what follows.

In the Tarot sequence, the Tower is not the end. It’s followed by the Star—a card of quiet hope, of reorientation, of a different kind of light. Not the harsh glare of the marketplace, but something softer, more enduring.

Something like trust.

And that, of course, is the title of the play: Primary Trust.

Not trust in the market. Not trust in the structures that promise security. But something more basic—the capacity to trust reality itself, including the presence of others who cannot be controlled.

Even the play’s small details seem to gesture in that direction.

Take the drinks.

Kenneth’s mai tais are sweet, almost childlike, a bit escapist. They belong to a world of fantasy, of tiki bars and softened edges. They soothe.

Martinis, by contrast—the drink Corrina orders—are sharper, clearer, less forgiving. They don’t cushion reality; they present it.

Different spirits, you might say.

Different ways of inhabiting the world.

By the end of the play, nothing is neatly resolved. Kenneth doesn’t suddenly become someone else. He doesn’t abandon his inner life—and thank God for that.

But something shifts.

He begins, tentatively, to step into a world where he is no longer the sole author of the conversation. Where the other is truly other. Where trust is no longer self-contained.

And that, it seems to me, is the real point.

Not that the inner world is an illusion to be overcome.

And not that the world of “Kaching” is where truth resides.

But that we are called—each of us—to pass through the collapse of our certainties, to hold on to whatever depth we have been given, and at the same time to risk the encounter that makes love possible.

It’s a hard passage.

From mai tais to martinis.

From the Tower to the Star.

From a world we can manage to one we cannot. But it may be the only way any of us ever really learns to live.

When “God on Our Side” Becomes Dangerous:Vance, the Pope, and the Many Faces of Violence

Not long ago, I wrote about what I called the “dangerous simplicity” of Pope Leo XIV’s claim that “God is never on the side of those who use violence.” At the time, the point may have seemed abstract—more a matter of theological nuance than urgent public concern.

However, a recent exchange between JD Vance and Pope Leo XIV has brought the issue sharply into focus. In fact, somewhat ironically, Vance’s attempt to challenge the pope ends up illustrating exactly the point I was trying to make.

I mean, the JD Vance- Pope Leo disagreement has all the markings of a classic argument: one side appealing to moral clarity, the other to historical reality. But beneath the surface, something more revealing is happening.

In trying to correct the pope, Vance ironically ends up exposing a deeper truth about violence itself – even the violence directly involving vice-president himself and the United States foreign policy he supports.

The Vance-Leo Exchange

The pope’s statement about nonviolence is simple, even beautiful: “God is never on the side of those who use violence.” It sounds like something that ought to end the discussion. Who could be against that?

But Vance pushes back. He begins politely enough: “I like that the pope is an advocate for peace… I think that’s certainly one of his roles.” Then comes the challenge: “On the other hand, how can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?”

And then he goes straight to the example that almost always ends arguments: World War II.

“Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis?” he asks. “Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps and liberated those innocent people? I certainly think the answer is yes.”

The Conceptual Complication

Most people instinctively agree. It’s hard not to. The defeat of Nazism feels like the clearest possible case of justified violence. But that’s exactly where things get interesting.

Because once you admit that not all violence is the same, the pope’s simple statement starts to unravel. And that’s the point.

“Violence” isn’t one thing. It comes in different forms, and if we don’t distinguish between them, we end up confused or, worse, manipulated.

Start with what might be called structural violence. This is the kind most people don’t notice because it’s built into everyday life. It’s the violence of systems that quietly destroy people: poverty wages, lack of healthcare, racism, occupation, economic exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, and wars launched for power or profit. No bombs need to fall for this kind of violence to be deadly.

Then there is defensive violence. This is what Vance is talking about, whether he realizes it or not. It’s the violence used to resist oppression. When Palestinians revolt against settler colonialism, when Iranians resist a war of agression, that’s defensive violence. It’s visible, it’s messy, and it’s almost always condemned by those in power. But it’s also widely recognized as legitimate, even in international law.

Next comes repressive violence. This is what happens when those in power try to crush resistance and restore the unjust system. It comes wrapped in phrases like “law and order,” “security,” or “self-defense.” But its real aim is to keep things exactly as they are – to defend the status quo, illegal occupation, colonialism, unwarranted attacks. . ..

And finally, there is terroristic violence. This is the deliberate use of overwhelming force, fear, and destruction to achieve political goals. It is often associated with non-state actors, but historically it has been most devastatingly practiced by states themselves.

Once you see these distinctions, everything looks different.

The Nazi Example: Gaza & Iran

Take Vance’s World War II example. The Nazi regime embodied structural and terroristic violence on a massive scale. The Allied response can reasonably be understood as defensive violence aimed at stopping that destruction. So far, so good.

But now bring that same framework into the present.

Vance insists, “I certainly think the answer is yes” when asked if God was on the side of those who liberated the camps. Yet at the same time, he supports policies that many observers describe as enabling or excusing mass violence elsewhere. He also adds, almost as a safeguard, “And I agree, Jesus Christ certainly does not support genocide…”

The irony is hard to miss.

Because when it comes to Gaza, what many see is not defensive violence but something much closer to repressive and terroristic violence. Entire neighborhoods flattened. Civilians trapped. Children buried under rubble. These are not incidental side effects. They are the predictable outcomes of overwhelming force used in densely populated areas.

At the same time, those who resist are quickly labeled “terrorists,” regardless of the conditions that gave rise to their resistance. This is exactly how the language of violence gets turned upside down. Structural violence becomes invisible. Defensive violence becomes criminal. Repressive violence becomes “security.” And large-scale destruction becomes “self-defense.”

The same pattern appears in the escalating conflict with Iran, which critics describe as a “war of aggression.” In that case, what is being framed as preemptive defense can just as easily be seen as structural and repressive violence on a global scale. Once again, the categories matter.

Jesus & Nonviolence

This is where the pope’s statement, for all its appeal, begins to look less helpful. Saying that “God is never on the side of those who use violence” might inspire people in the abstract. But in the real world, it risks putting the enslaved and the enslaver, the occupier and the occupied, the bomber and the bombed, all in the same moral category.

That’s not clarity. That’s confusion.

And confusion, in matters like these, is dangerous.

There is another layer to this discussion that makes things even more complicated. Christians often speak of Jesus Christ as if he were simply “nonviolent.” But that description, taken without qualification, can mislead.

Jesus lived under Roman occupation, one of the most brutally efficient systems of structural and repressive violence the world has ever known. The authorities who executed him did not see him as harmless. They saw him as a threat. His message challenged the legitimacy of their power and exposed the injustice built into their system. So they executed him by crucifixion, a method of execution they reserved for rebels against the state.

To call him simply “nonviolent” risks stripping away that context. It can turn a figure who confronted empire into one who passively accepts it.

Conclusion

And that brings us back to a hard but necessary truth: appeals to “nonviolence” are often used selectively. They are frequently directed at those who are already suffering, while those who benefit from structural violence continue largely unchallenged.

That is why some have gone so far as to say that “nonviolence” can function as a kind of scam. Not because the ideal itself is worthless, but because it is so easily weaponized. The powerful celebrate their own violence as necessary or heroic. The resistance of their victims is condemned as dangerous or immoral.

In the end, the exchange between Vance and Pope Leo XIV doesn’t settle anything. Instead, it exposes the fault line.

Vance is right to challenge the idea that all violence is the same. His World War II example makes that clear. But he stops short of applying that insight consistently to the present.

The pope is right to insist that violence is morally perilous and cannot be casually justified. But his sweeping statement risks erasing distinctions that are essential for understanding what is actually happening in the world.

Between those two positions lies a more difficult path. It requires looking honestly at the different forms violence takes and asking, in each case, who is doing what to whom and why.

Only then does the question of where God stands begin to make any sense at all.