Last week, Christian church leaders in the city of Bethlehem announced the cancellation of traditional Christmas festivities in the place traditionally associated with the Jesus’ birth.
And this for at least two obvious reasons. For one, the genocidal killings by colonial settlers in Palestine’s occupied West Bank have made it impossible for tourists to come to Bethlehem.
For another, Palestinian residents of Bethlehem have themselves cancelled festivities in an act of solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Gaza victimized by Apartheid Zionists and their partners in genocide, the United States of America.
But there’s a third reason as well – a theological one that needs highlighting this Christmas weekend.
The motive was explained last Friday on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now.” Ms. Goodman began with a clip of the Reverend Isaac Munther, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem.
Standing before a nativity scene with the figure of Jesus in a keffiyeh surrounded by rubble, Rev. Munther said:
“Christmas is a ray of light and hope from the heart of pain and suffering. Christmas is the radiance of life from the heart of destruction and death. In Gaza, God is under the rubble. He is in the operating room. If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble. I invite you to see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble, in every child struggling for life in destroyed hospitals, in every child in incubators. Christmas celebrations are canceled this year, but Christmas itself is not and will not be canceled, for our hope cannot be canceled.”
Elaborating on that theme, Reverend Mitri Raheb, the president of Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University, offered an explanation that echoed the liberation theology perspective on Palestine that my wife and I encountered in the summer of 2006, when we visited the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
Dr. Raheb is the author of a book with a revealing title, Decolonizing Palestine: the Land, the People, the Bible. Here’s what he said:
“The Christmas story actually is a Palestinian story, par excellence. It talks about a family in Nazareth, in the north of Palestine, that is ordered by an imperial decree of the Romans to evacuate to Bethlehem, to go there and register. And this is exactly what our people in Gaza has been experiencing these 75 days. It talks about Mary, the pregnant woman, on the run, exactly like 50,000 women in Gaza who are actually displaced. Jesus was born actually as a refugee. There was no place at the inn for him to be born, so he was put in a manger. And this is exactly what also the kids that are coming to life these days in Gaza are experiencing. You know, most of the hospitals are damaged, out of service, and so there is no delivery places for all of these pregnant women in Gaza. And then you have the bloodthirsty Herod that ordered to kill the kids in Bethlehem to stay in power. And in Gaza, over 8,000 kids, they have been murdered for Netanyahu to stay in power.
And you have this message that the angels declared here, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth,” which was actually a critique of the empire, because glory belongs to the Almighty and not to the mighty. And the peace that Jesus came to proclaim is not the peace, the Pax Romana, the peace that is based on subjugation and military operation, but on human dignity, equality and justice. And this is actually what we call for. And I have to say I find it really a shame that in this season, where every church hears these words, “peace on Earth,” that the United States is vetoing even a ceasefire. It’s a shame.”
Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent:Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11; Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28.
Last week, Americans were treated to a high-level display of hypocrisy, double standards, and pure ignorance regarding higher learning. The spectacle occurred during a House Education Committee hearing about on-campus demonstrations supporting Palestinians in Gaza.
The procedure raised questions not only about alleged anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but also about the very purpose of higher education.
For me in the context of biblical readings for this third Sunday of Advent, the hearing also touched issues of faith and its dictates regarding the conflict in Gaza. As we’ll see, today’s readings suggest that Christians should stand with Palestinians in their conflict with an Apartheid state turned genocidal – and against the United States now unquestionably revealed (in the words of Scott Ritter) as “the world’s bad guy.”
Let me deal with each of those points successively.
The Hearing & Anti-Semitism
During the hearing just referenced, rightwing congress member Elise Stefanik (R NY) grilled Harvard president Claudine Gay, her MIT counterpart Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill about allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations on their campuses.
According to Ms. Stefanik, the demonstrations ran the danger of threatening pro-Zionist students.
Ignoring her own history of alleged anti-Semitic positions as well as her votes funding the Zionist genocide of Gazans, the congresswoman’s questioning deceptively linked the term “intifada” to advocacy of extermination of Jews.
Similarly ignoring Zionist claims to “Greater Israel” extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the congresswoman’s questioning implied that any use of the phrase “from the River to the Sea” uniquely threatened Jewish students. Clearly, Congresswoman Stefanik, along with many Democrats, was anxious to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on Campus.
For their part, the university presidents at last week’s hearing were correspondingly anxious to protect first amendment guarantees on their campuses in today’s context where any talk of Palestinian rights is interpreted as anti-Semitic.
The whole affair had commentators like Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, viewing the presidents’ grilling and its fallout as an attempt by champions of Zionism to distract from actual genocide (of Palestinians in Gaza) while centralizing highly marginal hypothetical speech about repeating Hitler’s horrendous genocide of Jews.
Meanwhile, right-wing commentators on Fox News offered outright condemnation of the three women presidents’ unwillingness to give a simple “yes” or “no” answer to loaded questions about a complex constitutional issue of free speech.
According to Bill Bennett, the former Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, the whole affair illustrated, how American education at all levels has declined into what some have called “cesspools of liberal propaganda.”
Education’s Purpose
All this raises questions about the purpose of education in general and of higher education in particular. What is it for?
What do you think?
The relatively new prevailing answer equates the university’s function with pre-professional training. If courses don’t directly prepare students for “the world of work,” they’re a waste of time.
That approach, of course, discards traditional approaches to learning in general as preparation for living meaningful lives that transcend considerations of jobs and income in favor of free discussion and representation of all points of view – even those advocating genocide.
This more traditional approach unabashedly believes that free speech and debate will broaden students’ horizons. And doing so will inevitably challenge students to move from positions of egocentrism and ethnocentrism, from narrow tribalism and patriotism to something like world-centrism and even to cosmic consciousness.
In fact, many educators (like me) would say that’s the whole purpose of education – to help students and professors grow beyond egocentrism and ethnocentrism towards world centrism (where all humans are seen as brothers and sisters) and even to the mystical viewpoint that concludes “there is really only one of us here.”
In fact, reaching that cosmic vision is arguably the whole purpose of life. At least that seemed to be the position of all the world’s great religious traditions including their Judeo-Christian branch. Reaching that point of course would automatically exclude wars of any kind on the grounds that they are all suicidal.
Today’s Readings
And that brings me to the biblical selections for this third Sunday of Advent. Transcending even academic “objectivity,” today’s passages call us to take sides. They call us to side with the Palestinians against their apartheid colonial butchers.
For the readings reveal what scripture scholars call our Great Mother-Father God’s “preferential option for the poor.” They reveal that the Great Spirits themselves take sides. They demand justice for the poor (like the children of Gaza and their mothers) in their struggle against the rich [like the Apartheid Zionists and their genocidal IDF with its (U.S.-supplied) planes, bombs, missiles, and tanks].
Let me show you what I mean by “translating” today’s liturgical selections. Please read the originals here to see if I got them right.
Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11
If you’re possessed by the Holy Spirit, if you have Christ consciousness, you must imitate the Great Mother herself. You must make a “preferential option for the poor.” It prioritizes healing hearts broken by imperial powers. Begin by recognizing the fact that poverty and debt render the poor hostages and prisoners of the rich. However, just like the wealthy, poor husbands and their brides deserve their own sparkling jewels. Put otherwise, wealth redistribution is a simple matter of divine justice which imitates the abundance and generosity of Nature herself.
Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54
Yeshua’s mother recognized all this. Myriam was a poor peasant herself. And yet she, rather than some rich woman, was chosen as the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. So, she militantly praised the Divine One for feeding the hungry while specifically rejecting the rich. She glorified the Great Source for standing with Myriam’s people when they were unjustly occupied by imperial Rome.
1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24
Paul of Tarsus experienced Myriam’s consciousness as well. It expressed, he said, the Spirit of Yeshua himself whose prophetic program was identical with Isaiah’s (Luke 4:18). Yes, Paul said, Yeshua’s “preferential option for the poor” represents the criterion separating authentic interpretations of the Lord’s message from those of deceptive charlatans. The latter “solve” problems by war, rather than by peace which respects soul, body, spirit, and the absolute integrity of human community.
Isaiah 61:1
Lest you forget, we repeat: Christ’s Good News is addressed primarily to the poor, not the rich.
John 1: 6-8, 19-28
That’s what John the Baptizer recognized too. He was poor people’s alternative High Priest. His Temple was the Jordan’s wilderness, not Herod’s urban Temple. Yet, neither John, nor Elijah before him, nor any of the great prophets was anywhere near as radical as Yeshua. John merely baptized with water; Yeshua, his disciple, would administer a baptism that conferred the very Spirit of God – the fiery Spirit that preferred the poor to the rich.
Conclusion
Like secular universities, religious people within the Judeo-Christian tradition should never censor free speech. That’s because good-willed people hold all kinds of opinions. Even advocates of genocide deserve places at the table, in congressional hearings, at teach-ins, discussion groups, and bull sessions. Our Constitution’s First Amendment (every bit as important as the Second) demands that.
But today’s readings invite subscribers to the Judeo-Christian tradition to go further still. They summon followers of Isaiah, Myriam, Paul, and Yeshua to stand with the poor and powerless – with victims of empire and colonialism. The readings urge adoption of the divine “preferential option for the poor” by imagining what today is impossible, but as our aspirational North Star. And that means standing with Gazans against their genocidal oppressors.
To me at least, that further means:
Getting informed about the tragedy unfolding before our eyes.
Recognizing and naming the crime of genocide even when its perpetrators were once victims of genocide themselves.
Denouncing all violations of international law as such including indiscriminate attacks upon and wholesale slaughter of children, women, and the elderly.
Also including policies of collective punishment, carpet bombing, destructions of medical facilities, use of chemical weapons (such as white phosphorous) and assassinations of teachers, doctors, and members of the press.
Identifying “national leaders” like Israel’s Netanyahu and U.S. “Genocide Joe Biden” as international criminals.
Calling for the latter’s arrest and trial by the international court. (If that can be done for Russia’s President Putin for much lesser crimes, why not for Netanyahu and “Genocide Joe?”)
Similarly identifying Apartheid Israel and its enabler the United States of America as criminal nations.
Calling for their expulsion from a restructured United Nations that strips a nation representing 4.2% of the world’s population from overriding the will of the overwhelming majority of the U.N.’s membership.
I just reread George Orwell’s Animal Farm. That was because I was trying to help my 11-year-old grandson understand the “isms” portrayed in the book, which his class has been assigned for reading and discussion. I’m talking about Marxism, communism, capitalism, socialism, mixed economy, and fascism. They’re all there. And at its early stage of development, my grandson’s class is trying to understand what those terms mean with the aid of Orwell’s allegory.
So, let me try to explain them one-by-one, and then draw some simple conclusions about Orlando’s Orwellian project.
Economic Systems
To begin with, Marxism (simply defined as the philosophy of Karl Marx), hangs over the book like the specter he and Friedrich Engels warn about in the first line of their “Communist Manifesto.” That philosophy holds that (1) capitalism necessarily exploits the working class and the natural environment, (2) workers will rebel against such exploitation substituting socialism for capitalism, and (3) socialism will eventually evolve into communism.
That’s the basic story of the animal farm allegory. A drunken Farmer Jones runs Manor Farm without concern for the pigs, horses, donkeys, chickens, cows, ducks, dogs, cats, and even rats. All the latter live under the capitalist system with its (1) private ownership of the means of production (Manor Farm itself), (2) free and open markets (where eggs and milk are sold), and (3) unlimited earnings (all horded by Farmer Jones). Under that arrangement, Jones gets rich while the animals find themselves overworked, underfed, and highly resentful.
So, they revolt against their master and take over his farm, even changing its name from Manor Farm to Animal Farm. They replace Farmer Jones’ capitalism with socialism which is the exact opposite of capitalism. It’s about (1) public (i.e. community) ownership of the means of production, (2) controlled markets, and (3) earnings limited by considerations of human welfare – reinvesting profits above that into improving community life.
At least in the beginning, all that works out quite well because the animals are guided by a “North Star” ideal called communism (expressed in their popular anthem “Beasts of England”). Communism is an unrealizable ideal (like the Kingdom of God) that guides the planning of socialists. It shoots for (1) abundance for all, (2) consequent elimination of economic classes, and (3) no need for a state (i.e. for a central authority to impose on entire communities the will of the dominant class, be it capitalists or workers).
Eventually however, the Animal Farm project finds itself threatened by a counter-revolution led by Farmer Jones and his fellow capitalists who want to reverse the gains of the animals’ socialism and reclaim their lost private property. Together the dispossessed capitalists launch violent attacks on the socialist experiment. They kill and maim the Farm residents. They destroy their infrastructure (most notably a windmill that would provide electricity for Animal Farm giving workers there with more leisure, light, warmth, and power for labor-saving machinery).
Eventually too, the leadership of the commune realizes that it needs goods and services that it cannot provide for itself, such as iron, nails, and paraffin oil. This realization causes the community to move from a socialist economy to a mixed economy. Mixed economies combine the best features of capitalism and socialism. They incorporate (1) some private ownership and some public ownership of means of production, (2) some free markets and some controlled exchanges, and (3) earnings which though limited allow capitalists to earn profit.
For a while, this new system works. However, Animal Farm leadership becomes so comfortable with their former sworn enemies (the capitalists led by the lawyer, Mr. Whymper) that the community governors gradually identify more with their outside trading partners than with the Animal Farm community. They end up dressing like the capitalists and adopting their ways (such as drinking previously forbidden alcohol, sleeping in luxurious beds, excluding animals from their meetings, and adopting the practice of capital punishment).
All of this enrages Animal Farm residents not only against the capitalists, but against their own increasingly repressive leadership. Rebellion simmers once again on the farm. The capitalists and their Animal Farm allies feel threatened causing them to institute a system of fascism (i.e., capitalism in crisis featuring a union of interest and policy between government and capitalists). Fascism might be defined as (1) capitalism in crisis, (2) forced on resentful workers by a police state and (3) blaming the system’s dysfunctions on “the usual suspects,” viz., communists, socialists, Jews, non-whites, immigrants, and sexual “deviants.” In the case of Animal Farm, Snowball the Pig is a stand-in for all the latter. He’s blamed for everything!
Conclusion
So, what’s the bottom line of Animal Farm? Many see it as a diatribe against socialism and communism illustrating the old saw: “Communism is great in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice.”
Perhaps more discerning conclusions would be that:
The book illustrates the clear superiority of socialism over capitalism. The animals were much happier under communal ownership of the means of production than under Farmer Jones.
However, capitalists do not give up easily. They inevitably launch counter revolutions involving mayhem, murder, and cynical property destruction – all aimed at making workers dissatisfied with their new situation.
Capitalists can also buy off socialist leaders with money, gifts, prestige, and privilege causing them to identify more with their former enemies than with the people they are supposed to serve.
Revolution is not a one-off affair. It is a constant process always in need of periodic renewal.
Or as Thomas Jefferson put it: “Every generation needs a new revolution.”
About Things That Matter 