Emeritus professor of Peace & Social Justice Studies. Liberation theologian. Activist. Former R.C. priest. Married for 48 years. Three grown children. Eight grandchildren.
Forgive me if Covid-19 isolation is finally getting to me. But (like many of you, I’m sure) I find there are just so many things to be upset about these days. So, let me relieve the pressure and mention just three: the attack on the capitol, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R Ga.), and the Super Bowl.
Capitol Attack
Did you see the film presented by the Democratic impeachment team last Tuesday? If not, click on the video above. I found that collage both disgusting and perversely empowering. On the disgusting side:
It was ultimate proof of white privilege, wasn’t it?
I mean, during BLM protests right-wing media and Republicans were outraged when some businesses were set on ablaze.
However, those same media along with those Republican officials – the very ones under attack during the insurrection – find excuses to downplay white supremacists ravaging the nation’s congress. Can you believe that?
Imagine if the insurrectionists were black, armed and destroying capitol property – roaming about looking for officials to kill.
Don’t tell me that a lot of black protestors wouldn’t have been shot.
We’d never hear the end of it.
For sure, police protection would have been much heavier. (If you’ve been to DC during protests, e.g., against the war in Iraq, you know the place is always absolutely crawling with cops lining the streets in phalanx dressed in heavy riot gear just waiting to pounce.)
Or what if the insurrectionists had been Muslims? We’d be bombing some poor country like Yemen right now in self-righteous response.
And what about all that money DC (and every other city in this great country of ours) spends on policing? You mean, they couldn’t prevent that fiasco?
Nonetheless, while disagreeing with its cause, I somehow felt rebelliously good about the insurrection.
It showed that revolution is possible — what it would look like if we followed the advice of Thomas Jefferson about regular citizen uprisings.
I loved the thought of Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi (and Mike Pence!) hiding under their desks.
Their lives shouldn’t be threatened, but they do need to be afraid of us. They’re not. And disgracefully, beneficiaries of white privilege are the only ones at this historical juncture whom the system allows to intimidate irresponsible politicians.
I mean, Pelosi and McConnell are not our friends.
Neither are Biden and Harris.
And of course, neither is Trump.
None of them represents us; they exclusively represent their donors.
They won’t even consider universal health care during an actual pandemic. They refuse to keep campaign promises to increase the minimum wage to $15 and to send out $2000 (not $1400!) checks when so many have been out of work for nearly a year.
Yes, those were democratic campaign promises! It’s how they won Georgia.
They lied!
No wonder people are angry.
Marjorie Taylor-Greene
And don’t get me started about U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R Ga).
So, she wants Obama executed?
She’s called for the murder of Nancy Pelosi – specifically with a bullet to the head?
Imagine if Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib had said that about Mitch McConnell — a bullet to his head.
Even if you or I uttered such monstrosities, SWAT teams would be at our doors right now with battering rams.
But she’s allowed to continue serving as a government official.
Double standards, anyone?
White privilege?
The Super Bowl
And then there’s the Super Bowl with white people complaining about the NFL’s predominantly black workforce calling attention to wanton police murders of their unarmed racial counterparts.
Whites’ response to the reduced Super Bowl TV audience? Too much mixture of politics and sports. “Get woke. Go broke,” they say.
They ask, “Why politicize a football game?”
Good, that’s what I say! In fact, I’ve been saying it for years. I mean why play the National Anthem, “honor our troops,” and normalize war with special flyovers of air force weapons of mass destruction (aka fighter planes) at every major sports event you care to name? What’s the connection? I don’t get it. (Imagine if your boss had you stand for the National Anthem before work each day.)
At least Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks) is on the right page on this one. He’s decided to eliminate playing the “Star Spangled Banner” before any home games. Good idea, Mark. If everyone followed suit, it would save me from wondering whether to stand or not.
Readings for 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Job 7: 1-7; Psalm 147: 1-6; 1 Cor. 9: 16-19, 22-23; Mark 1: 29-39.
Tomorrow, 6,000 Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama will vote on unionization. Of course, their decision will affect workers throughout Amazon’s mammoth enterprise – most of them non-white. The company employs 798,000 full-and part-time employees. In 2019, its net revenues were around $280.5 billion. Its CEO, Jeff Bezos, is himself worth about $184 billion. He’s the second richest man on the planet.
Work at Amazon
Despite company profits and the wealth of its chief, there’s good reason for the unionization drive including alienated labor resulting from:
Low pay: Recently, Amazon raised its wages to $15 per hour. It also extended to its workers a $2 per hour bonus for “heroic” service during the pandemic. However, the company has since removed that extra pay in the light of its claims that the pandemic’s severity has diminished. Amazon workers dispute that assertion, while maintaining that $15 per hour remains inadequate remuneration for their heavy workloads. And besides, Amazon workers’ unprecedentedly profitable production increases during the pandemic need due reward.
Intense surveillance of workers: Sophisticated AI technology tracks every move of each Amazon worker – to such an extent that those not meeting production goals can be threatened with imminent job termination by a robot without intervention from a human supervisor.
Union-busting: That same sort of technology makes sure that workers on break do not congregate for purposes of conversation related to union organizing. Those caught engaging in such exchanges have been summarily fired.
Wage theft: Last Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission fined Amazon $61.7 million for actually stealing tips from Amazon’s Flex drivers over a two and a half-year period. Flex drivers are hourly workers who receive no benefits and use their own cars to make deliveries.
Dangerous working conditions: Work at Amazon is three times as dangerous as employment across the private sector and twice as dangerous as warehouse work in general. 911 records show that on the job mental episodes and even suicides are common in the Amazon workplace.
PR to the contrary: The Amazon website proclaims that it supports the Black Lives Matter movement. However, according to Amazon’s largely non-white workforce, the items just listed tell another story.
Today’s Readings
I bring all of this up, because this Sunday’s readings suggest themes of work, overwork, and low pay. They implicitly compare the alienated work of “hirelings” and “slaves” to that of the self-chosen pro bono work done by Yeshua and Paul in service of the poor. Both types of work are exhausting. But one is human, the other not.
What I’m driving at is reflected in my translations of these thoughtful readings about work. Please check out the originals here:
Job 7: 1-7:
Joining Job
On his stinking POS
Wage workers know
That life is hard
When a plague requires
Months of misery
Sleepless nights
Overtime work
And hopeless days
That drain their lives
And have them wondering
If they’ll ever
Smile again.
Psalm 147: 1-6:
Brokenhearted,
Some look to “God”
And still find words
Of prayer,
Praise and thanks
That transform
Even bricklayers’
Tattered blueprints
Into transcendent plans
Of infinite intelligence,
Power, and wisdom
That one day will find
Bosses humiliated
And poor workers
Finally earning
Their just wage.
1 Cor. 9: 16-19, 22-23:
Paul’s proud labor
Was teaching
Which he too found
Underpaid and driven
As he gave hope to
Those too poor to pay
Just as his Master had
In order to help them
Regain that grin.
Mark 1: 29-39:
Yes, Jesus too
Worked hard
As a day-laborer
Become faith healer
First of his friend’s
Feverish in-law
And then
Of the insane
And those afflicted
With unnamed infection
Of every type.
Sustained by prayer
At early dawn,
He too soon returned
To his tireless grind
As a selfless
Pro bono physician
Without borders.
Alienated Labor or Not
Do you see what’s happening in those readings?
The first one from the Book of Job indirectly reveals reluctant wage labor (a la Amazon) to be like sitting on top of Job’s famous pile of excrement (Job 2: 8-13). It’s pure drudgery. It’s slavery. Its misery leads to sleepless nights, and a shortened life entirely deprived of happiness.
By way of contrast, the second and third readings describe unalienated labor. In both the case of Paul and Yeshua, the work is completely exhausting and without monetary remuneration – but by their own choice. (The gospel reading’s description of a typical “day in the life” of Yeshua the Christ is actually quite detailed. It’s up in the early morning for prayer and then dealing with a constant stream of impoverished peasants seeking relief from diseases both mental and physical. Then it’s on to the next town for a round of the same – all without charge.)
Of course, the difference between the work Job’s text references and that of Yeshua and Paul is that the latter determined their own workload and pace of activity. They exhausted themselves because they freely chose to do so – not in the service of a distant wealthy slavedriver like Bezos, but in service to Life Itself.
Though union organizers don’t put it this way, that’s the ideal of the labor union movement – a humanized workplace, where workers have voice and some control over conditions in the place where they spend fully half of their waking hours.
As economists like Richard Wolff point out, an even more humanized workplace would be run entirely by workers. They’d determine for themselves every aspect of their workday – what to produce, where to produce it, the pace of work, and what to do with the profits. In such a cooperative there’d be no alienation, no intense surveillance, no dangerous working conditions, no underpayment or wage theft.
Conclusion
Naturally, all of us have to work. But exhausting labor too (like that of Yeshua and Paul) can bring a sense of joy and participation in creation of the universe like that described in today’s responsorial, Psalm 147.
Even work for Amazon could be dignified – absent the intense surveillance, constant race against the clock, low pay, and wage theft at the hands of one of the wealthiest companies in the world run by the globe’s second richest man. That sort of work can and does drive people over the edge even to the point of suicide.
The efforts by Alabama’s Amazon employees to unionize represent an attempt by wage earners to humanize all of that harshness. Within the capitalist system as we know it, unionization is the closest workers can get to escape slave-like conditions and completely alienated labor. The real humanization however would come from transforming the workplace into a cooperative where employees would be self-empowered.
As always, the call of today’s readings is to do what our faith tells us the Great Father-Mother God did: become human. In today’s instance that means humanizing the workplace. That means opposition to Amazon’s exploitation of workers. It implies support of unions everywhere. It suggests support of the co-op movement.
Religion is in extremis – on its deathbed; it’s breathing its last.
That’s the unmistakable conclusion reached by Dr. Ronald Inglehart, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Michigan. He was interviewed recently by OpEdNews editor-in-chief, Rob Kall.
Over the last 40 years, Inglehart has overseen a study of the worldwide viability of religious belief and practice in every inhabited continent on the planet. The work of his international World Values Research Team has covered the beliefs of 90% of our globe’s inhabitants.
The survey’s results have been published in Inglehart’s new book, Religion’s Sudden Decline: What’s Causing It and What Comes Next. And if Rob’s interview is any indication, it shouldn’t be missed.
I say that as a liberation theologian whose discipline has long anticipated the conclusions reached by the World Values Survey.
Let me explain.
Religion’s Sudden Decline
Personal experience (even with our own children) tells most of us that despite the dominance of white evangelicals over the Republican party, and despite the claim of most Americans to “believe in God,” religion has largely lost its power.
What’s surprising about Inglehart’s study, however, is its claim that the decline has reached a “tipping point” over the last ten years.
That is, after a post WWII surge in religious fervor from 1947 through the early 1950s, disaffection with religion has gradually increased not only within the U.S. population, but worldwide. Over the last decade, it has reached an epidemic point of no return. That’s what “tipping point” means.
All of that raises the question of the meaning Inglehart assigns “religion,” and (for me) that meaning’s relationship to liberation theology.
For Inglehart, religion represents a cross-cultural survival mechanism found in every human community on the planet. In the face of their overwhelming insecurity in the face of wild animals, famine, wars, unpredictable weather patterns, and high infant mortality rates, humans have traditionally sought refuge in religion’s moral order that ensured most prominently survival of the species. The resulting morality of survival mandated:
Large families
That women’s bodies be controlled as “baby factories”
That they stay at home and care for their offspring
That human morality adopt a prohibition of birth control, abortion, divorce, and unproductive sexual behaviors such as homosexuality
However, with the advent of modern medicine, decline in infant mortality, and the emergence of the welfare state, such restrictions became unnecessary. The role of women changed.
And with that mutation, the door almost imperceptibly began to swing open towards a world without religion. That new context even showed signs of accepting non-binary sexuality.
Another factor contributing to that liberation has been the progressive decline of authoritarian government and the spread of democracy. Inglehart recalls that ancient hunter-gatherer tribal societies were more egalitarian. (For more than 50,000 years they worshipped female goddesses.)
However, with the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, power became increasingly centralized in palaces and manors while the majority of the world’s population remained disaggregated and relatively powerless.
To maintain that situation, kings, royal classes, emperors, popes, and priests emerged. They hijacked the more democratic popular religious beliefs and practices of matricentric societies. Increasingly, the divine was imagined as masculine.
The resulting patriarchy used religion to shore up its power and to justify the consequent wealth disparities. This entailed creating and invoking their “divine right” which enabled the minority of rich and powerful patriarchs not only to rule over their inferiors at the local level, but (where possible) to impose their sway over weaker neighboring peoples in the form of empires. The point of it all was to transfer wealth from the weak to the strong.
Once again, on Inglehart’s analysis, the decline of empires following the Second Inter-Capitalist War simultaneously undermined the reigning political order and religious beliefs in the ideological remnants of that dispensation. No more divine right of kings.
Moreover, the decline in question was accompanied by new conceptualizations of governments’ very purpose and the emergence of the welfare state. No longer was the state’s raison d’etre to be defined from the top-down. Instead, (as Rob Kall says) it became a “bottom-up” affair.
Increasingly (and most successfully in Scandinavian countries) the point became (at least modest) wealth transfer from the top to the bottom and the provision of free health care and education, along with subsidized housing and transportation.
In other words, as Inglehart would have it, the rapid decline of religion’s influence was due to liberation movements in general – most prominently, to the women’s liberation movement and anti-colonialism – that have swept the planet since the Second Inter-Capitalist War.
Liberation Theology
All of that brings us to liberation theology and its alternative reconceptualization of religion.
In its Christian form (and there are parallels in Judaism, Islam, engaged Buddhism, etc.) liberation theology is reflection on the following Yeshua the Christ from the viewpoint of the poor and oppressed committed to the collective improvement of their lives economically, politically, socially and spiritually.
Put otherwise, liberation theology is a champion of anti-imperialism, and anti-colonialism. It is pro-women’s liberation and stands on the side of the LGBTQ movement. In that sense, it is anti-religion as understood by Dr. Inglehart’s study. It welcomes the death of traditional faith.
Moreover, liberation theology’s critical approach to the Bible (along with 90% of biblical scholars over the last century) recognizes the “battle of the gods” implicitly described by the World Values Survey.
Its understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition exposes the class struggle over the biblical God within the pages of the Bible itself. Fundamentally, the conflict pitted the God of Moses against the God of David and the royal classes.
More specifically, the Moses tradition celebrated the liberation of slaves from Egypt as its foundational event. Slave liberation led to a loose confederation of nomadic tribes whose decentralized religious “covenant” prioritized the rights of widows and orphans while mandating hospitality to strangers – just as Dr. Inglehart describes.
For its part, the Davidic tradition’s covenant had Israel’s God assuring dynasty to David and his sons – to Judah’s royal crime families with their wealth exploitation of disaggregated peasants along with imperial ambitions that sacrificed young men’s lives in pointless wars. To that end, the royals and their scribes advanced an idea of a blood-thirsty war God who delighted in the slaughter of “enemy” men, women, children and animals.
In the meantime, the biblical prophetic tradition stood on the side of the Mosaic covenant.
In the first place, the prophets opposed the creation of royalty at all (1 Samuel 8). In the second place, their social criticism advocated the interests of those widows, orphans and strangers (https://www.openbible.info/topics/widows_and_orphans). In the third place, they suffered the predictable consequences experienced by all (then and since) who speak truth to the patriarchy. They were ostracized, exiled, imprisoned, assassinated or formally executed https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Killing-Prophets
Yeshua the Christ appeared in the prophetic tradition. As such, his story emerges as profoundly anti-religious in Dr. Inglehart’s sense. His incarnation took place not in a palace or temple, but among the poorest of the poor – in a stable and on the banks of the Jordan river as a disciple of a harsh critic of the temple priesthood and its co-dominion with Rome’s imperialists.
All of that (and so much more) identifies Yeshua as a great prophet in the tradition of Moses, the liberator of slaves in Egypt, and of predecessors like Amos who defended the poor, criticized the rich, and scandalized everyone by condemning temple sacrifice and imposition of laws that penalized the poor and favored the rich.
And besides, Jesus was more than a prophet, social critic, and movement organizer. He was also an incisive mystic, a seer. He saw and taught the fundamental unity of all people and of all creation. He taught love of neighbor as oneself, because he evidently recognized that one’s neighbor is in fact oneself. There is really only one of us here. Or, as Paul of Tarsus put it, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female (Galatians 3:28).
Conclusion
Nevertheless, if religion has been historically so retrograde and negative, why bother with it? Why continue reading something like the Bible? Why claim adherence to the teachings of Yeshua the Christ?
More personally, why should I continue to work as a theologian and contribute to an OEN series called “Homilies for Progressives”? Why not follow the implications of Dr. Inglehart’s study and jettison faith altogether along with its supporting documents?
For me, the answer to all these questions is threefold:
First of all, because though undeniably in decline, religion remains a potent source of meaning for the world’s majority. You might even say that its stories supply their popular “philosophy.” It organizes their experience. They might not know much about history, economics, or political parties, but they know what they’ve been told about the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, or the Holy Koran. To ignore this truism is to tragically surrender a potential tool of human liberation to its enemies.
Second and relatedly, because even in the face of encroaching irrelevance, patriarchal religion remains that powerful tool in the arsenal of the oppressors of women, widows, orphans, immigrants, gender nonconformists, and the current empire’s oppressed and slaughtered subjects. (Of course, I’m speaking here of the United States.) The servants of patriarchy invoke religion at every turn. They use it to justify their wars. They employ religion to rationalize massive theft of natural resources across the globe. They need it to explain the wholesale destruction of the earth as subject to God-endorsed human domination. Religion’s liberation potential therefore needs to be understood and exposed as a countervailing, in-kind force for good. In this context sound biblical theology is an indispensable instrument for dismantling “divinely sanctioned” structures of oppression.
And thirdly, because the mystical strain found in the Judeo-Christian tradition (as well as in all major religions) addresses life’s most fundamental questions –about the nature and meaning of life at its deepest level; about our relations with one another and with the environment, about those mistakenly perceived as foreigners and enemies, about power, love, money, and justice.
Readings for 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Deuteronomy 18: 15-20; Psalm 95: 1-9; I Corinthians; 7: 32-35; Mark 1: 21-28
Today’s readings once again raise the central biblical question of prophets and prophecy.
We should read them carefully remembering that prophets are not fortune tellers focused on the future. They were and today remain social critics focused on present injustices committed against the original beneficiaries of Life’s covenant with Moses – the poor and oppressed (widows, orphans, and resident aliens). Insofar as they predict the future, the prophets’ threat is usually that neglect of the poor will lead to national tragedy.
Yeshua the Christ, of course, appeared in the prophetic tradition which is always confused by the fact that the Great Mother’s spokespersons are inevitably contradicted by their fake counterparts. This Sunday’s readings highlight that point.
Prophets Then
I was reminded of all this last week during a Zoom “Talk Back” responding to our pastor’s Sunday sermon on the fictional story of the prophet Jonah. That tale was centralized a week ago in the liturgy of the word. Towards the end, the pastor herself asked the question, “Who today is speaking the harsh truth that the Book of Jonah expressed?”
(As we saw last week the little Jonah parable (only 48 verses) is about a reluctant prophet who eventually has to face the fact that those imagining themselves to be the People of God (Israel) were quite the opposite. Meanwhile those whom Israel viewed as their corrupt enemies (Assyrians) were more responsive to God’s word.
In my own response to our pastor’s question, I observed “That would be like our hearing during the Cold War that Russians (communists) were more on God’s side than Americans. Today, it would be like being told the same thing about the Chinese or Muslims, or (worse still) al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”
Yes, that’s the way the Book of Jonah would have been heard in the middle of the 8th century BCE – as the Assyrian hordes massed on Israel’s borders ready to descend on “God’s People.” Eventually, they’d come (as Lord Byron would put it) “like the wolf on the fold.” They’d destroy the Northern Kingdom and take large masses of its people off to the Assyrian capital, Nineveh – as slaves. The book of Jonah dares to identify Assyrians as godly.
Imagine if some prophetic preacher today actually echoed Jonah saying, “You American exceptionalists believe that you’re especially pleasing to God. The exact opposite is true. In fact, your designated ‘enemies,’ Muslims, the Russians, the Chinese, and those you imagine as terrorists are actually God’s favorites.”
How hard would that be for Americans to hear?
Prophets Now
But (to answer our pastor’s question directly) there actually have been and are religious prophets among us who have said such things and who are saying them today. I’m thinking of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jeremiah Wright, William Barber II, the Rev. Liz Theoharis, Dorothy Day, and even Pope Francis. Here’s what they’ve said in the name of God:
Malcolm X: “I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver — no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”
Martin Luther King: The United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Jeremiah Wright: “When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. . . The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America“. No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America. . . as she tries to act like she is God, and she is supreme”
William Barber II: “. . . I, too, am an atheist. . . if we were talking about the God who hates poor people, immigrants, and gay folks, I don’t believe in that God either.”
Liz Theoharis: “Jesus led a poor people’s campaign.”
Dorothy Day: “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system.”
Pope Francis: “This system is by now intolerable: Farmers find it intolerable; laborers find it intolerable; communities find it intolerable; people find it intolerable.”
Those are not voices most of us are accustomed to hearing as representative of a Christian message that has been completely dominated by right-wingers who have effectively silenced the political voice of the one Christians pretend to recognize as the greatest of all prophets. They silence Yeshua’s authentic voice by focusing exclusively on the fiction of American Exceptionalism and on personal “salvation.”
The Prophet Yeshua
Instead, the very life of Yeshua the Christ was highly political from start to finish. He literally embodied God’s prioritization of the needs of the poor while specifically condemning the rich and powerful of his day. That’s why he had to be assassinated at a very young age — same as Malcolm, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton. . .
Think of it this way: Isn’t it true that Christian belief holds that Yeshua was the fullest revelation of God? If so, isn’t it therefore significant that the revelation site supposedly chosen by God was a poor man from the working class? Isn’t it theologically meaningful that he was born out-of-wedlock to a teenage mother (LK 1:34), was houseless at birth (LK 2:7), experienced immigrant status as an asylum seeker (MT 2: 13-15), traveled with a band of young people who had no visible means of support, was thought insane by his mother and close relatives (MK 3:21), was identified as a terrorist by the most powerful nation then on earth, and finished a victim of its torture and capital punishment?
I’d say that believers should find all of that extremely revealing.
Moreover, the highly political Yeshua is reported to have made radical statements about wealth and poverty, e.g.:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:16-22)
“Blessed are you poor, yours is the Kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).
“Woe to you rich, you have had your reward” (Luke 6:24).
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).
“So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33)
“If you want to be whole, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).
Still more, his followers took their teacher literally as they practiced a kind of primitive communism:
“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need” (Acts 2: 44-47).
“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 2: 32).
All of that identifies Yeshua as a great prophet in the tradition of Moses, the liberator of slaves in Egypt, of Amos who defended the poor and criticized the rich, of Karl Marx, the last of the great Jewish prophets, and of the contemporary troublemakers listed above.
Today’s Readings
Keep all of that in mind as you review today’s liturgy of the word which centralizes the question, “Who are the true prophets among us?” What follows are my “translations.” You can find the originals here to see if I’ve got them right.
Deuteronomy 18: 15-20:
More than 500 years
After the Great Prophet’s Death
Moses was remembered
As predicting the advent
Of another Great One
For a people deathly afraid
Of hearing God’s voice directly.
Problem was:
There’d be false prophets too
Claiming to speak
In the name of Yahweh,
But actually representing
False gods
Whom, if listened to
Would bring to believers
Severe punishment.
(Hmm.
Where does that leave us?)
Psalm 95: 1-9
It leaves us confused
And in danger
Of letting our own self-interest
Harden our hearts
To the authentic voice
Of our loving Mother-Father God
Our firm refuge
Benefactor and guide.
Her wonderful handiwork
In creation itself
Reveals more
Than any prophet’s words.
So, believe and embrace
What you see
With your own eyes.
I Corinthians 7: 32-35
The case of St. Paul
Illustrates our confusion
About what to believe –
What our eyes tell us
Or the words
Of an anxious
Celibate prophet
Like Paul
Who’s been interpreted
To say that
Eros is somehow “improper”
And a huge “distraction”
For anyone serious
About what’s truly important.
(For, doesn’t Life Itself teach
That Eros is
A primary source
Of God’s revelation
About the nature of Life
And Love?)
Mark 1: 21-28
Jesus, on the other hand
Had no such reservations.
His followers believed
Him to be the Great Prophet
Predicted by Moses.
He taught astonishing truths
With authority and certainty
Unlike the temple scribes
(And the doubt-filled Paul).
He terrified unclean spirits
While delighting
The (married) women and men
Who hung on his every word.
Conclusion
The disparity between the nationalistic and exclusively personal understandings of the prophet Yeshua on the one hand and the highly political nature of his life and discourse on the other is extremely important to confront.
That’s because (as Caitlin Johnstone has recently reminded us) those who control cultural narratives control the world. And no narrative is more important to history’s control than the religious one we’ve just considered. That’s because religious faith addresses life’s most fundamental questions – the ones so thrillingly addressed by the prophets we’ve considered here: about the nature of life; our relations with one another, human connections with the environment, about foreigners, power, love, money, and justice.
I’ll even venture to say that religious story supplies the popular “philosophy” of most people in the world. It organizes their experiences. They might not know much about history, economics, or political parties, but they know what they’ve been told about the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, or the Holy Koran.
To ignore this truism is tragically to surrender an essential tool of social justice to its enemies. On the other hand, exposing the radical social justice character of the Judeo-Christian narrative while challenging its domestication by false prophets represents an essential element of any attempts to shape the world by controlling its narrative.
Even completely secular social justice warriors should take note.
Readings for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Psalm 25: 4-9, I Corinthians 7: 29-31; Mark 1: 14-20.
The liturgical readings for this Sunday are about designated enemies often being readier to recognize and respond to divine wisdom than are believers who consider themselves God’s People.
Accordingly, the selections present the mind-blowing discovery of the reluctant chauvinist prophet Jonah (he of belly-of-the-whale fame) alongside the habitual people-centered attitude of the courageous universalist prophet Yeshua the Christ. Together, the readings’ call is to open ourselves to the wisdom and goodness of despised foreigners and the non-elite.
That theme (explained below) reminds me of China and its bipartisan vilification by U.S. politicians and mainstream media. Like the Ninevites in today’s first reading, China has gradually and unquestionably become the enemy du jour as described not only by outgoing Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo but by his incoming counterpart, Antony Blinken.
The Case of China
Like Jonah’s assessment of Nineveh, neither can say a good word about China, even though (according to western polls) its government enjoys something like 90% approval by the Chinese people. (Furthermore, according to Dorinda Elliot of the China Institute, rather than diminishing its popularity, the government’s success in dealing with Covid-19 has made it more popular than ever.)
Still, on his way out the State Department door, Mr. Pompeo denounced China not only for stealing western intellectual property, but for its policies on Muslims and ethnic minorities in its western Xinjiang region. According to Pompeo, those policies constitute “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.”
In his testimony before the U.S. Senate, Antony Blinken fully agreed with Pompeo’s assessment. Both painted China as an enemy rather than a hugely successful competitor with whom our country might well cooperate and from whom we might learn. Relative to crimes against humanity, both Pompeo and Blinken ignore the facts that their own country’s policies:
Continue to kill Muslims every day in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia
Imprison and torture them in Guantanamo and other black sites
Have done so for nearly 20 years
While maintaining concentration camps and baby jails for immigrants and asylum seekers on its southern border.
Despite all of that, Mr. Blinken had the temerity to criticize China’s use of reeducation camps as its particular method of dealing with Muslim terrorist threats rather than “our” method of endless wars, bombings and drone strikes. (In Iraq’s illegal war, such have taken the lives of more than 1 million people — with no official mention of genocide or crimes against humanity.)
Moreover, Pompeo’s and Blinken’s denunciations ignore the facts that China’s system of political economy has (in Jonah’s terms) “repented.” It has self-consciously departed from the inefficient and destructive ways of capitalism-as-we-know-it. Yes, China’s way involves a large free-market sector. But a huge part of its economy is under direct government control. The results of that combination have been astoundingly successful.
Moreover, according to economist Richard Wolff, accusations against China’s alleged stealing of intellectual property are nonsensical. According to Wolff, the transfer of intellectual property was part and parcel of the bargain long since struck between U.S. companies and the Chinese government when those companies were given access to Chinese labor and the country’s markets. On China’s part, the understanding was: we give you access to our market and cheap labor; you share profits with us and give us the right to reverse engineer your technology. It was an at least implied quid pro quo agreement that everyone understood.
The result was the Chinese Way that enjoys huge success not only internationally, but domestically. According to Bloomberg News, the Chinese economy is set to grow by 2.5 percent this fiscal year, despite the ravages of Covid-19.
In other words, Chinese “repentance,” its unprecedentedly rapid response (in just over 40 years) to the needs of its people, has saved it from the destruction our version of capitalism has arguably made inevitable for us. Like the prophet, Jonah, our politicians and business elite don’t want to hear any of that.
Today’s Readings
As I’ve been saying here, all of this is closely connected with today’s readings. In the first selection, the Spirit of Life sends Jonah to learn from Nineveh, Israel’s archenemy. He’s completely surprised to discover that the Ninevites, like China, are more responsive to the way of Yahweh than Jonah’s own people.
Similarly, in today’s Gospel selection, Jesus departs entirely from conventional wisdom. He selects illiterate workmen (rather than temple priests or members of his country’s elite) as recruiters for his Kingdom of God Movement bent on creating a world governed by divine principle rather than Caesar’s brute force.
Here’s the way I translate today’s readings about the superior ways of those (like China) whom we routinely despise as foreign and inferior. You can find their original forms here to see if I’ve got them right.
Jonah 3: 1-5, 10
The reluctant prophet Jonah
Braved Nineveh’s
Hostile urban jungle
To announce Yahweh’s
Urgent call
For Israel’s Great Enemy
To change its entire
Unjust system.
To the patriotic prophet’s
Great chagrin
The enemy listened
Changed completely
And transformed
Its destructive way
In just 40 days!
Psalm 25: 4-9
So, Great Mother-Father
Teach us the way
Of the Ninevites.
For the enemy’s
Path of justice
Humility, love
Kindness, good
Truth and compassion
Is your way too.
I Corinthians 7: 29-31
Our time for such willing
Social transformation
Is quickly running out.
Choosing it
Is more important
Than sex,
Our little trials
And triumphs
Our trinkets
And work.
But actually,
Our Great Father-Mother’s
Drastically New World
Is inevitable.
Mark 1: 14-20
Yeshua recognized
That inevitability
After conservative forces
Arrested his mentor,
The Great prophet,
John the Baptist.
Ordinary workers
With simple names like
Simon, Andrew,
James and John
Saw it too.
So, they left everything:
Work and companions
Father and mother,
Wives and lovers
To join Yeshua’s
Working class movement
For the sake of
Good News
To laborers like themselves
About the Great Mother-Father’s
In-breaking New Order.
Conclusion
Like Yahweh in the days of Jonah and Jesus centuries later, the Spirit of Life today is calling us in so many ways to repent and imitate the equivalents of Jonah’s Ninevites. Like Paul in Corinth, the Great Mother-Father tells us that the time is short. Climate chaos itself underlines that urgent message. Our task is more important than anything our culture presents as essential.
China’s example of repentance, its departure from capitalism-as-we-know-it, its construction of an economy based above all on meeting the needs of its huge population represents a path forward – if not for imitation, for inspiration and instruction.
It tells us that we must reorient away from profits and wealth for the few towards the creation of a society with room for everyone and abundance for all – just what the working man, Yeshua, demonstrated in his choice of working-class people to introduce the Kingdom’s new heaven and new earth.
We’re called today to listen to the prophets of such unconventional wisdom rather than to Pompeo and Blinken’s misdirection.
I’ve just finished Barack Obama’s remarkable autobiography, A Promised Land. Its biblical title invites reflection about the theological orientation and resulting policies of the man the book portrays. By his own testimony, that direction was originally set by Jeremiah A. Wright, Mr. Obama’s former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side.
James Cone, the father of Black liberation theology has described Dr. Wright as Black liberation theology’s foremost contemporary exponent. So, in Mr. Obama, the United States experienced not only its first Black president, but its first chief executive to have been shaped spiritually by liberation theology.
With all of that in mind, the point of the following review of The Promised Land will be that had Mr. Obama employed what he learned at the feet of Jeremiah Wright, his policies would have been markedly different from their actual forms. Practically speaking, they would have more resembled those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt than a continuation of the neoliberal legacy of Bill Clinton. They would have set the country on a profoundly different and more widely beneficial trajectory from the one we are currently following.
Professed devout Catholic, Joe Biden, should take note. The radical biblical tradition espoused not only by Wright and Cone, but by King and William Barber – i.e., championed by thought leaders among Mr. Biden’s most crucial constituents – won’t support a return to “normalcy.” It requires policies that prioritize the needs not of Wall Street, but of the poor. It demands departure from Barack Obama’s business as usual.
Liberation Theology
And that brings me precisely to liberation theology.
In case you’ve forgotten, liberation theology is reflection on the following of Yeshua the Christ from the viewpoint of the poor and oppressed committed to improving their collective life economically, politically, socially, and spiritually.
Its Judeo-Christian orientation is about political and economic starting points and end points.
Sociologically speaking, it begins (as OpEdNews’ Rob Kall would say) from the “bottom up.” In the case of the Jewish tradition, it starts with the liberation of slaves in Egypt by a Life-Force they called “Yahweh.” It ends with Yahweh’s pledge to give the enslaved (as Mr. Obama’s book title reminds us) “A Promised Land.”
In its Christian form, the tradition starts with a poor houseless child who grows into a prophet. He promises dispossessed victims of the Roman Empire the end point of “the kingdom of God.” By this he meant a world where God is king instead of Caesar – a world with room for everyone. For liberation theology, that’s the North Star – the guiding vision meant to shape all of life, economically, politically, socially, and spiritually – a world where no one is excluded or marginalized
Following that star, liberation theology emphasizes what the Christian Testament’s Paul of Tarsus calls “the wisdom of God” contrasted sharply with “the wisdom of the world” (I Cor. 2: 1-16). In modern terms, the wisdom of the world is trickle-down; it begins with the well-off. It holds that if the wealthy prosper, the tide that lifts their luxury yachts will lift all boats. By contrast, God’s bottom-up wisdom begins with the well-being of the poor.
Unfortunately, the policies, Mr. Obama describes in A Promised Land ended up reflecting the former over the latter.
Jeremiah Wright’s Influence on Mr. Obama
That reflection contrasts dramatically with what scandalized America’s right wing when it first encountered Jeremiah Wright’s liberation theology. The discovery occurred soon after they realized that Barack and Michelle Obama not only were parishioners of a fiercely radical black pastor, but that he had officiated at their wedding (A Promised Land 23).
That sent conservatives scurrying to unearth evidence of Wright’s (and by extension Obama’s) unacceptably extreme viewpoints. In fact, what their excavations uncovered nearly terminated Mr. Obama’s political ambitions (140).
That’s because (true to liberation theology’s form) Wright’s words explicitly foregrounded the experience of the poor as victims of what he called U.S. terrorism. His sermons often traced it from the genocide of Native Americans, through the enslavement of Africans, to Middle Eastern policies that, he said, invited the tragic events of 9/11/2001. It led him to refer to his country as the “USA of KKK,” and to conclude, “Not God bless America,” but “God damn America” (140).
Despite all of that, and notwithstanding his eventual repudiation of his former pastor, President Obama’s testifies in A Promised Land that Rev. Wright remained an important part of his consciousness (142). And so, throughout his narrative, the former chief executive gives indications of critical truths often reminiscent those voiced (albeit more forcefully) by his one-time pastor. For instance, Mr. Obama recalls that:
Personally
As part of a generation willing to question the U.S. government (456), he frequently found Wright’s black liberation theology inspiring and as channeling the understandable rage of black people in general (119, 141).
Not only did Rev. Wright’s disturbing insights become part of his consciousness, but so did the radical thought of W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash (11) – along with those of the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi and the belatedly revered socialist, Nelson Mandela (598).
He realized that despite the convictions of many liberals, America’s race problems are far from being solved (128).
He felt impatient with having to soften blunt truths that whites find disturbing (121).
He himself had often experienced police harassment (395).
Internationally
He found sympathy with the assessment of critics like Wright that America’s “. . . ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to be complicit in a game that was rigged from the start” (xv).
In fact, after World War II, the U.S. had “. . . bent global institutions to serve Cold War imperatives or ignored them altogether . . . meddled in the affairs of other countries, sometimes with disastrous results;” and its “. . . actions often contradicted the ideals of democracy, self-determination and human rights. . .” (329).
America’s war in Vietnam was no less brutal than the Soviet Union’s repression of Hungary (469).
The criminal U.S.-supported Shah of Iran and his feared SAVAK secret police were typical of murderous client regimes supported by America in the Global South following World War II (310, 450-1).
The Shah’s regime was part of U.S. Mideast policy that needlessly alienated Muslims throughout the world. That policy tolerated corruption and repression in the region and routinely humiliated Palestinians (358).
China represents an attractive alternative (to the United States’) model for the developing world (481).
That’s true especially after so many Global South countries embraced the illusory “wisdom” of the Washington Neoliberal Consensus and thus followed America over a fatal precipice (330).
Obama’s Repudiation of Wright(and radical change)
Despite such insights, Mr. Obama’s presidential ambitions not only made it necessary for him to repudiate Jeremiah Wright, but evidently to adopt a series of policies that contradicted the tenets of liberation theology. His policies prioritized the welfare of the rich over those of the working class and poor. Accordingly, the president ends up admitting that:
Because of the financial crisis, he did not follow through on his campaign promises to U.S. workers (177).
For him, the financial markets (presumably as opposed to wage earners) were the only audience that really mattered (304).
His interventions alone were responsible for saving bankers from wage earners’ justified anger and retaliation (297).
Resulting white working-class anger, e.g., in Pennsylvania about jobs lost through such neoliberal policies, was justified (144).
In retrospect, bank nationalization and prosecution of crooked bankers might have been a better solution to the Crisis of 2008 than the bailouts favored by his economic team (280, 296, 305).
By avoiding that solution and bowing to bankers’ interests, Obama consciously missed a once-in-a-generation chance to reengineer the overall economy in a bottom-up way reminiscent of FDR’s New Deal (304).
He could have done so, because of his 70% approval rating coupled with the super majority he possessed in the Congress at the outset of his first term (225, 378, 243).
Nowhere in his autobiography does Mr. Obama reveal his repudiation of Wright’s outspokenness than in the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil tragedy of 2010. There, BP Oil had unleashed the most devastating oil spill in the history of offshore drilling. It lasted for 87 days and pumped out into the ocean at least 20,000 (and possibly 50,000) barrels of oil daily (569).
As time wore on and scientists and engineers scrambled to cap the leaks, Republicans increasingly blamed the president for the failure to do so. They even referred to it as “Obama’s Katrina” (569).
What Mr. Obama’s best instincts told him to say in response was reminiscent of Wright’s candor – this time in favor of perhaps the earth’s most oppressed being, Mother Earth Herself. According to the former president, he should have said:
“. . . the only way to truly guarantee that we didn’t have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn’t going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face, and in the absence of such disaster, the media rarely covered efforts to shift America off fossil fuels or pass climate change legislation, since actually educating the public would be boring and bad for ratings; and the one thing I could be certain of was that for all the outrage being expressed at the moment about wetlands and sea turtles and pelicans, what the majority of us were really interested in was having the problem go away, for me to clean up yet one more mess decades in the making with some quick and easy fix, so that we could all go back to our carbon-spewing, energy-wasting ways without having to feel guilty about it” (570-71).
Again, that’s what, Obama admits, he wanted to say: stop drilling altogether, get rid of your big SUVs, pay the true price of gasoline, and pass courageous climate change legislation despite effects on the “American Way of Life.”
Instead, the president describes his Casper Milquetoast response with the following words: “. . . I somberly took responsibility and said it was my job to ‘get this fixed.’”
Missed Opportunities
In other words, in contrast to liberation theology’s and Jeremiah Wright’s “preferential option for the poor,” Obama’s policy preference supported the corporate status quo. He short-changed those represented by what he elsewhere describes as “his kind of crowd” from the days when he worshipped at Trinity United – “democracy activists, heads of nonprofits and community organizers working at a grassroots level on issues like housing, public health, and political access” (466).
That in a nutshell encapsulates Obama’s choice not to follow the outspokenness not only of Jeremiah Wright, but of FDR’s ghost with whom POTUS #44 wistfully compares himself throughout his memoir (177, 239, 240, 264, 388, 524, 547, 549).
Following Roosevelt, Mr. Obama’s legacy could have been different. He could have bailed out wage earners instead of the bankers. He could have instituted a 21st century New Deal prioritizing health care, infrastructure renewal, clean energy technology, and a green counterpart to the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Moreover, Barack Obama was more up to selling those programs than any president within living memory. He was better equipped for game-changing fireside chatting than even Roosevelt himself. No chief executive since FDR enjoyed his natural charm, charisma or eloquence.
Yet by his own admission, he wasted what that other Roosevelt called his “bully pulpit” by failing to persuade the American people to support legislation in their own best interests regarding single-payer health care, immigration reform, clean energy, nuclear disarmament, and cessation of endless wars (594).
Conclusion
None of this is to say that his own words in A Promised Land reveal President Barack Obama as somehow nefarious or intentionally two-faced. As presidents go, he emerges as a decent man. And no one can deny the significance of his enormous achievement as the first black man to overcome the tremendous obstacles barring election to the highest office in the land. Moreover, once in office, #44 acquitted himself with impeccable moral integrity (595). His staff worked extremely hard. Mr. Obama was the kind of boss most of us would like to work for – upbeat, sensitive, inclusive and willing to laugh at himself (534). He is also a gifted writer.
Neither is any of this to say that Mr. Obama should have been as outspoken as Jeremiah Wright. Such style might be appropriate for a prophetic pastor on Chicago’s south side, but it’s surely not the way to get elected president.
As a theologian however, I find it regrettable that the former president so completely cut himself off from the lessons learned at the feet of his early mentor. (And this is where Catholic Joe Biden has something to learn from his boss’ admitted regrets.) Had President Obama quietly embraced Dr. Wright’s lessons, had he ignored the Geithners, Emanuels, and Sommers, had he prioritized the needs of the poor, had he offered us another New Deal, we’d likely be living in a far greener country with far less wealth disparity, injustice and anger ( 522, 524).
And judging by Mr. Roosevelt’s success with the electorate, the Democrats would today enjoy much firmer standing in the White House and halls of Congress.
Biblically speaking, Barack Obama would have brought us all that much closer to A Promised Land.
Thankfully, our country may at last be entering a pre-revolutionary period. Forces of both right and left are emerging hell bent on social change.
Of course, I’m referring to the recent riots in Washington DC and the threat of further violence this inauguration week. I’m also referencing last summer’s largely peaceful Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations mis-portrayed in the media as setting entire cities aflame.
Mis-portrayals or not, both rebellions have the United States government on the run and ready to tamp down the disturbances with drastic policy changes.
Moreover, participation in the uprising by DC police, former military, and psyop officers indicates that society’s armed forces – local law enforcement and some military rank and file – are beginning to come over to the side of revolution. (Historically speaking, such switching of sides is an absolute prerequisite for any revolution’s success.)
The whole configuration has government officials like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence hiding under their desks for fear for the mobs with pitchforks.
Thank God.
After all, we should be clear about this: none of them, not Pence or McConnell, not Schumer or Pelosi is our friend. Quite the opposite. Their loyalties lie elsewhere – with the natural enemies of wage earners like us. They are friends of the one percent who have been exploiting the rest of us for decades. None of them deserves our sympathy or respect. It’s gratifying to see them frightened out of their wits.
It’s quite ironic, isn’t it? Those whom Dr. King called the world’s greatest purveyors of violence now have their tables turned. A week after voting to spend more than $2 billion a day on war and armaments, they’ve suddenly become pacifists obsessing about violence!
And the rest of us will be seduced by their outraged discourse unless we understand that the term “violence” is more complicated than most of us think. In fact, there’s a lot to be said in favor of revolutionary violence.
Violence Is Multi-Dimensional
Sadly, as was the case with the birth of this country, revolution necessarily involves violence. But let’s face it: so does maintenance of the system at hand. As we’ll see below, the social arrangements we experience every day are based on a violence responsible for untold suffering and death. In the eyes of many, the only rational response is to defend ourselves in kind. And the violence is often justifiable.
Speaking precisely as a theologian, I’ll say, they may be right. In fact, even Catholic bishops like Brazil’s Dom Helder Camara and St. Oscar Romero of El Salvador made a similar argument years ago during their peoples’ own revolutions against U.S.-supported dictatorships.
Both prelates pointed out that “violence” is more complicated than most of us think. It actually has four dimensions – and only one of them (the one usually most ardently vilified in our culture) is by any stretch justifiable. The levels include (1) structural violence, (2) the (often revolutionary) violence of self-defense, (3) reactionary police violence, and (3) terrorist violence. According to Camara and Romero, only the second level can claim any legitimacy.
Let me explain.
Structural Violence
The riots I’ve been referring to here are an indication that U.S. citizens are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Consciously or unconsciously, we’re mad about unjust structures – about economic, social, and political arrangements – whose short-list includes:
A government that has criminally mishandled a pandemic it has allowed to kill 400,000 of us (and counting)
Completely inadequate health care that few can really afford
A rigged electoral system
Police repression unevenly targeting people of color
A bailout of the rich and powerful and a middle finger to the working class, unemployed, and uninsured during a crisis that has record numbers of us unemployed and plagued by inescapable debt
Inadequate wages that have most of us up to our ears in hock
Unaffordable education along with overwhelming student debt
Unpayable rents coming due
The maintenance of a military system that spends more than $2 billion each day, while increasing numbers of Americans are sleeping in the streets and under bridges
An embarrassing infrastructure that is falling apart before our eyes making our cities, transportation systems, breadlines and beggars on the street look like Brazil used to look.
Government inaction about climate change and immigration
Again: all of that (and more) represents structural violence. It causes untold suffering and kills people every day. However, it has been such a part of our daily lives that few of us even recognize it as deadly, criminal and even homicidal.
And if someone is trying to kill you, anyone has the right to self-defense.
Violence of Self-Defense
And that brings me to Camara’s and Romero’s second level of violence, the response of oppressed people to the first level.
Self-defense is a human right. Perhaps the heroic among us – like Gandhi, King and those who followed them – can forego its invocation. However, let’s not fool ourselves, the vast majority of Americans – in fact the vast majority of Christians – is not and has never been pacifist.
Far from it, most of us – even religious people – are enthusiastic advocates of “just war,” always rationalized as self-defense. (That $2 billion we allow our government to spend on “defense” each day is proof enough of that.)
Even more to the point, our nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, underlines the right of citizens to engage in the very type of violence displayed in Washington last week. Referring to the origins and aims of government, Jefferson and his co-signers declared: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Judging from the violent actions of our founders, those words arguably justify Americans’ assuming arms, destroying property, and arresting criminally negligent officials administering a government as dysfunctional as the one described above.
Police Violence
The inevitable reactionary response of violent institutions to citizen rebellion constitutes the third level of violence. It’s what we saw last summer in response to the (again) largely peaceful demonstrations of BLM activists precisely against out-of-control police forces.
This level of officially sanctioned violence took the form of tear gas, pepper spray, beatings, mass arrests, and running over protestors with squad cars.
It’s here, of course, that the problematic differences between the revolutionary forces of the left and those of the right come under blindingly bright light. Our system’s endemic racism and its accompanying white privilege prompt police and military forces to align with white revolutionaries, while crushing their black and brown counterparts.
The difference in response ignores the commonality of complaints shared by basically working-class protestors. (The disparity describes the arena of dialog and cooperation that must be recognized and entered by all participants. But that’s another story.)
In any case, because this third level of violence supports a criminal status quo, it is just as illegitimate as the first level.
Terrorist Violence
The fourth level of violence is that represented by terrorism – in the case of the DC riots, domestic terrorism.
The FBI defines domestic terrorism as “violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”
According to this characterization, what occurred in Washington on January 6th fits the category. Its acts were violent and against the law. They were committed by a group seeking to further goals stemming from domestic influences – in this case, that of a sitting U.S. president inciting action to reverse an officially sanctioned and repeatedly court-vetted election.
Likewise, the definition’s parameters could justify classifying some of last summer’s BLM protests as terroristic. After all, they sometimes involved property destruction and were motivated by religious, social and racial concerns.
All of this reveals however the system-serving nature of terrorism’s official definition. It too supports the status quo and forbids revolutionary action of the type supported by the Declaration of Independence. Hence, like the system itself, the definition is entirely questionable.
Such conclusion is further justified given the fact that its proponents (the FBI and U.S. government) themselves stand accused of domestic and international terrorism on a scale that absolutely dwarfs the pre-revolutionary events of 2020. By all accounts, state terrorism is a far greater and more destructive problem than any domestic form.
Conclusion
So how should we look upon the pre-revolutionary events currently fomented by social activists at both ends of the U.S. political spectrum? The answer is: with both enthusiasm and caution.
Enthusiasm because this country needs a revolution – even entailing destruction of property. Our government no longer represents anyone but the 1%. Its police forces support that government and terrorize black and brown people. Its electoral system is completely corrupt. “Our” representatives are standing by idly while literally thousands are needlessly dying every day. Etc., etc., etc. etc.
As Helder Camara, Oscar Romero and Thomas Jefferson posthumously suggest, the crucial moment may have thankfully arrived. And if history provides any indication, the moment may sadly witness desperate people doing desperate things – in ways that are completely understandable and arguably justified.
Those who recognize the need for revolutionary change are patriots, though many of them have been badly misinformed to the point that they are punching downward rather than above.
And that’s where the caution comes in. For any revolution to serve all of the people, forces at both ends of the political spectrum must recognize their shared common ground. The short-list shared above makes that point quite clearly. Trump’s supporters have far more in common with Black Lives Matter advocates than they do with their cult leader.
Rather than echoing the official chorus uncritically denouncing undifferentiated “violence,” forces on both the left and right need to think more critically about the topic. We need to unify against our common enemy and threaten its supporters with consequences for their treasonous misrepresentation.
Readings for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: I SAM 3: 3B-10, 19; PS 40: 4, 7-10; I COR 6: 13C-15A, 17-20; JN 35-42
This week’s readings are about wakefulness. They tell the stories of five great prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition. (Prophets, remember, are not fortune tellers. They’re the spokespersons for the Great Father-Mother God however s/he is named.)
Prophets were never popular with the authorities of their day. But the poor loved them, because their words comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable sleeping peacefully behind their temple and castle gates.
Prophetic words lit fires in those ready to hear them. They awakened those in oblivious slumber – sleepers like you and me.
As a disciple of the one he identified as the greatest man ever to draw breath (MT 11:11), Yeshua was like that. He passed his inherited mantle on to Peter – another working man like himself, just as Eli had willed his mantle to his disciple, Samuel.
Today’s readings are specifically about the awakening of Samuel and Peter. They should sound alarm bells for us as well. Here are my translations of this Sunday’s selections. (You can find the originals here.):
I Samuel 3: 3B-10, 19
Prophets sometimes fall asleep
Even telling would-be disciples
To ignore the summons
To fullness of life
In favor of slumber’s cheap comfort.
Old Eli did that to young Samuel.
However, the Mother-God’s persistence
Eventually awakened
Both the ancient mystic
And his young apprentice
Until their shared prayer became
“Speak, Great Mother,
For your servants are listening!”
From then on,
Neither permitted any Goddess word
To be spoken without its effect.
Psalm 40: 4, 7-10
Let that be our prayer as well:
“Here I am, Great Mother,
I come to do your will.”
The invocation will give
New melody to our life’s song.
It will replace old time religion
With sharp vision
And attentive ears
That reveal justice’s demands
Already inscribed
In our very hearts
As the Goddess’
Inescapable Law of Life.
I Corinthians 6: 13C-15A, 17-20
Yeshua shared the awakened consciousness
Of old Eli and young Samuel.
He taught that
Placing ourselves at the Goddess’ disposal
Would transform our lives too
Making us avoid the immorality
Of injustice towards others
As crimes against our own bodies
And against the Great Spirit
Who resides within each of us.
John 1: 35-40
For that reason
Even the Great John the Baptist
And his disciples
Recognized the unschooled
But wide-awakened Jesus
As rabbi, teacher, Messiah
And Goddess favorite.
One of them, changed his name
On the spot
To signify his newly awakened self-consciousness
Wrought by
A single afternoon’s conversation.
So, please speak to us too,
Dear rabbi Yeshua,
As you did to young Peter.
Your servants are listening indeed.
May none of your words
Remain without its effect.
Last week, Michael Moore asked an important question on OpEdNews. He wondered “Why Are We Not Uprising?” His revolutionary issue was the lack of single-payer healthcare so relentlessly highlighted by the worldwide covid-19 pandemic. Why no revolution, he asked, when so many are dying from clearly remediable causes – when the vast majority of Americans want single-payer?
Response to Moore’s article showed that he had indeed touched a revolutionary chord.
But then last Wednesday, when an actual uprising took place, everyone, it seemed, wanted to join hands across the proverbial aisle separating left and right. They jointly lamented the shocking breakdown of law and order. (The “Risings” Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti provide an example of that shared reaction.)
Think about it, everyone said: the rioters actually “desecrated” the Capitol Building’ “sacred” space! They broke some windows. They took selfies of themselves standing at the podium of the House of Representatives. They ransacked poor Nancy Pelosi’s office! They forced Mitch McConnell and Co. to run for their lives.
Washington policemen responded with a wink and a nod.
The horror of it all!
Something similar (with important differences) happened this summer, when Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators took to the streets. Theirs’ was a largely peaceful uprising in the spirit of Martin Luther King. But then, agents provocateurs (and perhaps some demonstrators themselves) had the temerity to break into and loot Wal-Mart’s “sacred” precincts. Windows were smashed; fires were set.
That time, police responded with an iron fist. Demonstrators were beaten, tear-gassed and arrested.
Yes of course, there were those important differences between the two insurrections just cited. The DC protagonists were Trump supporters and right-wing fanatics. Their issue was election fraud. The cause of the BLM demonstrators was police brutality directed towards black and brown people.
Despite those distinctions however, don’t you see what’s happening? Michael Moore’s wish has come true! The first phase of the revolution is unfolding before our very eyes. But even its protagonists don’t recognize its portent and promise.
That’s because they’ve been hoodwinked into seeing each other as the enemy. Rather than joining forces against their common overlords, they’re punching down. The rightists think their enemy are blacks and immigrants whose numbers are rapidly changing U.S. demographics. Meanwhile, leftist demonstrators are the very ones mistakenly vilified by the rightists and their sympathizers among the police.
The empowering solution is for all of us to see the common revolutionary terrain on which we’re standing, namely:
Citizen anger, be it left or right is entirely justified
Both what happened In DC this week and in streets across the country (and world) last summer are the initial stirrings of a widespread working-class revolution.
Michael Moore is right. He’d agree, I think, that the real violence in question here is not breaking windows or setting fires. It’s a system that in the midst of a worldwide pandemic refuses (despite agreement between Democratic and Republican majorities) to refund our taxpayer dollars in the form of single-payer healthcare and guaranteed income for workers displaced by forces beyond our control.
That’s our money they’re not returning to us in this emergency!
Everyone can also agree with Trump supporters that our election system is entirely fraudulent. Voting machines are completely questionable; they should be replaced by paper ballots. Campaign contributions are nothing but legalized bribery. Voter suppression’s many forms (from unnecessary ID laws to the dismantling of the U.S. post office) are a sad fact of American life. Gerrymandering is hideously anti-democratic. So is the Electoral College. The list of fraudulence goes on.
Pelosi and McConnell do not represent us, but their donors. Following the example of our Founders (cf. Jefferson on this!), we should force them all to flee for their lives from outraged citizens and their pitchforks whether the attack comes from the right or the left.
The offices of our mis-representatives deserve to be ransacked.
Ordinary people should seize congressional podia and make their voices heard.
The police too are working class people misled into identifying fellow workers as the enemy while defending their own natural enemies.
I’m currently reading Barack Obama’s autobiography, The Promised Land. It’s an account of a well-meaning ambitious young black man whose rise to the pinnacle of political power gradually but inexorably transforms him into the servant of a class he initially identified as inimical to the interests of the people he wanted to help. It’s the story of an imperceptibly slow cooptation, early-onset blindness, and betrayal of ideals and common sense in favor of power, profit and prestige.
A similar cooptation threatens all of us at this pre-revolutionary moment. It will succeed if we allow our overlords to sell us a narrative that covers up the workers’ revolution that has the Pelosis and McConnells of the world frightened out of their wits. Like young Mr. Obama, we’re overlooking how the rich and powerful are blinding us to our common cause as wage-earning Americans.
Michael Moore (and the rest of us) should take note.
About Things That Matter 