Category: Social Justice

In the Immigration Debate, The Children Suffer Most

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My latest post at Sojourners’ God’s Politics blog –

It’s hard to ignore the children. As voiceless as children are in our world, when we hear stories of injustice being inflicted on children it is hard not to be moved. There is something about hearing the stories of six year old girls being kidnapped and forced to be sex slaves or young boys trafficked to work in cocoa fields that push us beyond the confines of our political opinions to offer help to the hurting. Politics can often obscure human rights issues as it did in our country with the early labor movement. It took revealing the horrors of child labor to get those opposed to reform to enter the conversation. For even when we can ignore or even support injustice against adults, most decent human beings innately know that it is wrong to harm a child (or fail to stop the harming of a child). We hear stories of such and the mama bear instinct kicks in – a child’s life is too precious for us to allow it to be terrorized.

From the Bible passages that remind us that true religion is to care for orphans and widows to Jesus’ command to welcome the little children, there is a strong biblical mandate for caring for the least of these. While loving our neighbor (no matter our politics) should be at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus, it often takes hearing the stories of the children who suffer and need our care to mobilize the majority of people to extend mercy and justice.

That is why I am grateful for Melissa Del Bosque’s fantastic article this week in The Texas Observer, Children of the Exodus: What becomes of kids who are deported without their families? The article tackles the polarizing topic of immigration, but does so through telling the often tragic and heartbreaking stories of the children caught in the political mire.

She situates her story in a Mexican Immigration office where children who have been apprehended and deported by U.S. Border patrol have been delivered. These are kids desperate to join their parents in the United States after the death of their caretaker grandparents, the babies and young kids whose mothers died of exposure in the harsh desert crossing, and the kids the drug cartels have kidnapped and use as drug smugglers. Their stories are complex, as complex as the tales of adult immigrants, but they strike us more poignantly because they are children. And these children are suffering.

On paper, the officials say that all children who are deported back to Mexico can only be claimed by a relative with proof of relation. Yet documents are often forged and there is little to no follow up of the children once they are released into the hands of “a relative.” Officials who desired to remain anonymous out of fear reveal that often (with the police’s knowledge and aid) the children end up in the hands of the drug cartels to be trafficked or used for smuggling drugs. But beyond that well known “secret,” even the government admits that not all the children are claimed and are left to fend for themselves. As the article states, “In 2008, a Mexican congressional committee reported 90,000 children had been sent back by U.S. authorities to border cities … At least 13,500 were never claimed.” For when parents live in the U.S. or die in the crossing there is no family to come claim these children. But when governments of either country don’t want to be bothered with these kids, there are vultures waiting to snatch up weak and innocent.

What these children experience – injustice, trafficking, kidnapping, separation from family – has to be part of the story that gets told as part of the immigration debate. We can argue the legality of the immigrant’s decision or from our place of plenty question what parent would ever leave a child to go try to make a better life for that child until we are blue in the face, but meanwhile the children suffer. If our debate doesn’t make room for caring for these children, then we truly have lost our way as a nation.

I appreciated how the author called for immigration reform at the end of the article with the needs of these children in mind. She first suggests ways that both the U.S. and Mexico could actually follow the laws already in place to protect children by doing things like setting up a simple database to monitor these kids and not let them slip through the cracks. She also called for U.S. immigration reform that helps reunite families not punish them for trying to do whatever they can to help each other. And finally, most importantly, she asserted that until the underlying problems like poverty are dealt with these children will continue to be caught in the middle facing this pain. For when people are pawns in lofty government economic programs, they will continue to be pushed to seek out a better life in order for their family to survive. Justice is needed here on all levels. And maybe with the telling of the story of these children even the hardest of hearts will be opened to loving the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner sojourning in our land.

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Singing the Songs of Babylon

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I arrived home at midnight last night after three exhausting days at the Emergent Village Theological Conversation. I’ve been to Emergent events in the past and have returned home inspired, ignited, and hopeful, but this event was different. As friends mentioned after the event, in the past we have gone home ready to change the world and pumped up with the joy of friendships and yes, even the navel-gazing affirmation of our own spiritual intelligence. Those events shaped the conversation and inspired us to build something new. This wasn’t that sort of event.

Since leaving yesterday, I’ve been walking around with an ache in my heart. I feel wounded and broken – my soul has been permanently changed and now feels alien in its own skin. What we heard these last few days changed us. And I am beginning to realize that we can’t unlearn what we heard this week, the stories we heard have altered our very being. We can choose to deny what we heard or refuse to let what we heard move us to action, but there is no going back to the people we were before this conversation – for us as individuals or for the organization Emergent Village.

Strange thing is, I wasn’t expecting this conference to affect me so strongly. I knew about the horrors of colonialism. I’ve read books on liberation and postcolonial theology. I speak up for justice and believe the call for Christians is to end oppression. I admit my complicity in ongoing oppression and colonialism and strive to repent of such sins. All those things I knew in my head. But sitting down and listening to the stories and the prophetic words of people who speak the truth about their own experiences with such things is something entirely different. I hope over the next few weeks to write about some of what I heard there, but for right now all I can do is attempt to process the space I am in at the moment.

This ache in my heart, this realization that opening myself up to hearing these words means that I can never return to who I was before is difficult. It is an uncomfortable liminal space to inhabit. And it is in that uncertain space of discomfort that we ended the conference. No moments of feeling theologically astute for chatting with some famous theologian, no triumphal feeling of understanding the emergence of the church in postmodern times – simply people stripped raw, uncertain how to move forward. For me, the uncomfortable strangeness of that discomfort was manifest in how the event wrapped-up.

Here we had spent three days discussing the effects of the colonial project. The speakers had led us to see how the Bible is used as a colonizing text and how the rituals and trapping of the Western church have colonized the minds of indigenous peoples. Their dream is to find ways to do distinctly indigenous theology and develop spiritual practices that are native to who they are. They pleaded with us to stop seeing Western theology, philosophy, academia, and liturgy as the norm that all others must aspire to or at least subjugate their spiritual language to. And above all to not just allow native peoples space to pursue those paths, but to join in with them valuing their voices just as much as we value Western voices.

So after all that we closed with a time of communion where we stood serving the broken body of Christ to one another. And as we served someone started singing hymns. Old hymns. Traditional hymns. The hymns of the great Western churches. As others shakily joined in, I sat in my chair stunned and silent feeling that something was deeply wrong. And then Musa Dube, the Botswanan biblical scholar who had been sharing and challenging us about the need to re-imagine our theology and rituals started singing “How Great Thou Art.” She later shared how singing is how she has always been able to connect with God. And it was in that moment that the tears started to fall. I couldn’t help but weep that when confronted with our own complicity in the sins of empire the only way we knew how to respond was by singing the songs of Babylon. That in even this moment of worship all we knew to do was speak the language of empire. Part of me wanted to believe that in that moment it was enough to be who we were, but part of me also wanted to stop the whole thing and beg Richard Twiss or Musa Dube to give us the language to move beyond ourselves. Yet all I could do was weep at my inability to do anything but sing the songs of Babylon as an offering of reconciliation to the God who brings freedom to the oppressed. And that has left the ache in my heart that has stripped me raw.

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Citizens or Neighbors?

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Last week a Tennessee man’s house burned to the ground while firefighters stood by and watched. Gene Cranick hadn’t paid a $75 insurance fee that opts him into his county’s fire protection services, according to him he simply forgot to send it in. So when his house caught fire, firefighters showed up and watched his house burn (with his pets inside). They worked to save a neighbor’s field (who had paid the fee), but simply stood by as his house burned to the ground. There is much to-do being made about following the laws of the land and the safety of firefighters working in a place they aren’t insured to protect. Comparisons are (rightly) being made to instances where people die in the ER because they are refused treatment since they don’t have health insurance. What we see is that the system rewards those with privilege any money who can afford protection, but denies help to those who fall outside that group.

Those, of course, aren’t the only laws that prevent help from reaching people. Numerous cities have passed laws against panhandlers. Included in these laws are rules that forbid giving handouts to beggars. These laws make it against the law to feed the hungry – giving a sandwich to a homeless guy on the streets is technically illegal in many areas. Also there are the laws about not giving aid to immigrants. Pastors cannot offer shelter, food, or sanctuary to the needy if they are illegally in this country. Doctors cannot treat the wounded for fear of lending aid that is against the law. We have allowed ourselves to be consumed by a system where we have essentially forgotten that the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

Somewhere along the way we have started caring more about being a good citizen than being a good neighbor. It’s strange, because we still attempt to instill in our children the idea of being a good neighbor – to help even those that oppose us. With two young children at home, I see a lot of the TV shows and movies aimed at kids. I see Dora going off to help out her arch-enemy Swiper when he gets in trouble. Or in the new Tinkerbelle movie, I see the fairies mounting a rescue attempt for the one fairy that always tries to ruin their lives. No matter who those people are or how bad they have been, the message gets sent that if they are in trouble you help them no matter what. In the same way we teach our kids the story of the Good Samaritan, emphasizing that racial, cultural, and economic lines do not matter when it comes to how we should help others who are hurting. We say that we value being a good neighbor, but how quickly that gets abandoned when it gets in the way of being a good citizen.

Allowing the laws of the land to stand in the way of love is not what it means to live out what Jesus was encouraging in that parable. Standing by and watching a house burn down and pets be burned alive because of a $75 fee is not being a good neighbor. Nor is letting someone die because they aren’t rich enough to afford insurance. From a certain political perspective it can be justified as being a good citizen, but that is not even close to being the same thing. Perhaps we need to listen more to the lessons we teach our children. Being a good neighbor means taking care of people no matter their economic, racial, or political status. It means loving them no matter how badly they may have treated us or offended our sensibilities. It means we have to stop being the Priest or the Levite who let the excuses of legality and red tape justify our crossing to the other side of the road and walking right past those who suffer. Being a good neighbor means revering compassion and love above following the letter of the law. The laws were made to serve, not to prevent us from actually serving.

But I fear we have it all backwards in our society as we constantly seek to find new and more creative ways to avoid doing the hard work of actually following Jesus.

Update – For a perfect example of this messed up worldview, read these comments arguing that letting the house burn down was the “Christian” thing to do since having compassion means you follow a weak “feminized” Christianity that doesn’t care about responsibility or prosperity.

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The Church Needs a Prophetic Voice

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We have all heard the old saying that Satan’s greatest ploy is to get people to stop believing in him. For when people aren’t looking to fight his evil then that evil has more room to flourish. I fear something similar is occurring in our country in our rejection of social justice. Instead of gathering the people of God together to work against injustice like Jesus commanded us to do; those with interests in allowing injustices (especially economic injustice) to continue are attempting to convince the church to shun the very idea of justice itself. The easiest way for the evil of injustice to flourish in this world is for the church to believe we should be doing nothing about it. And as crazy as it seems, that tactic is succeeding. The public is being encouraged to flee churches that teach about justice, to equate social justice with the atrocities of Nazi Germany, and to believe that supporting social justice will result in the elimination of all religious liberties. Basically, to embrace the exact opposite of the justice-seeking way of life that Jesus demands of his followers.

Glenn Beck’s recent tirade against those that care about justice illustrates this revisionist view of justice. He states that people who support justice for the oppressed are promoting a state sponsored church similar to the Nazi controlled churches in Germany. Playing on people’s fears, Beck convinces them that unless they stay silent on justice issues then the government will take over their churches. According to Beck, “when you combine church and state, and you take… a big government and you combine it with the church, to get people to do the things that the state wants you to do, it always ends in mass death.” His solution is to silence the voices for justice and let faith simply be about individual private commitments. What Beck fails to realize is that silencing the voices for justice within the church is simply a passive way of giving control of the church to the powers of this world. Empires (the State in both political and economic realms) can either directly control the church (as Hitler did) or it can control the church by rendering it impotent.

Beck’s example of Hitler’s Nazi controlled church, reminds me of the Barman Declaration (1934). An ecumenical group of Confessing Christians in Germany did stand up to the State controlled church, sending the message that they had no Fuhrer but Jesus. It was a bold move, but in demanding their autonomy they also gave up the right to speak truth to power. In creating for themselves the space to worship as they choose without interference, they inadvertently gave the state control of their voices, leaving the Confessing Churches little room to speak up on justice issues (like the extermination of the Jews). For this reason Dietrich Bonhoeffer disagreed with Karl Barth over the drafting of this declaration – it sacrificed justice for the sake of supposed autonomy. While there is much to be admired in the Barman Declaration, I have to wonder how Jesus can truly be the leader of the church if that church has allowed itself to be silenced in regard to justice issues.

Beck is correct in pointing out that throughout history the church has been controlled by the state to disastrous ends. But this is never because the state cared too much about justice. On the contrary, it was when the state controlled “church” ceased speaking out on behalf of justice for the oppressed that power was corrupted, liberty was denied, and mass deaths did occur. One thinks of Persian-controlled Ezra casting the foreign wives and children of the Jews into the wilderness to die as his religious zeal cleansed the land. Or of Charlemagne forcing the conquered Saxons to be baptized at the point of a sword. Or the silence of the church in places like Liberia, Kenya, Bosnia or Rwanda when their “Christian” rulers oppressed the people. The state controlled church can commit atrocities, but a church controlled through silence on justice issues is just as complicit in those atrocities.

The church must retain a prophetic voice. It cannot be a puppet of the state, but it also cannot be manipulated into silence. The church is never just a collection of individuals desiring their own private worship experience; it is the Body of Christ called to do his will. Standing up to Empire (political or economic) on behalf of the oppressed is simply part of what it means for the church to be collectively faithful. That prophetic voice has to call for an end to injustice, and since Empire is often the cause of much of the injustice in the world, it is going to have to be Empire that takes the steps to undo that injustice. If Christians abandon the right to push the State to repent of (undo) the wrongs it has committed (even if that undoing makes our lives uncomfortable), then we have just granted the state the freedom to control us all.

I look to the people of faith in recent years who have done the hard work of helping the church find its voice as it not only speaks truth to power, but does so in ways that seek justice through reconciliation. When Fr. Andre Sibomana was named administrator of the Rwandan diocese of Kabgayi in August 1994, he knew the church had to find a way to repent of its silence and complacency during the genocide. So he suspended all baptisms, first communions, confirmations, and weddings until Christmas and called the church into a period of confession and penance. He knew that the church could not move forward into new life until its political sins had been dealt with. Similarly Desmond Tutu was the Christian voice calling for justice for years in South Africa. Once Apartheid ended, it was only through the church working directly with the state through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that healing was able to begin. The church as prophetic voice had to call the state (and its own members) to justice and at the same time grant healing through the transformative power of Jesus Christ. Or as Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongale suggests, the church can never be just another NGO; it has to be a body that witnesses to a “different world right now.”

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Standing Up for Justice

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Should you not walk in the fear of our God?

This is the question Nehemiah addresses to the people of Judah when he sees the way they are treating the poor in the land. The families of the educated, aristocratic, and wealthy Jews had been exiled during the Babylonian occupation while the peasants had been allowed to stay in the land. When the Persians allowed these upper-classes to return to Judah, they immediately started oppressing the people who had remained in the land. Times were tough, but the rich continued to take advantage of the poor of the land sending them into debt slavery and taking their lands from them. So the oppressed people came to Nehemiah and said “Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others.” (Neh 5:5)

Theirs is a story told over and over again in our world today. Families in India find themselves in a position where they must borrow money to pay for a doctor and the lender takes advantage of them by imposing high interest rates. To attempt to pay off the debt their children must work rolling cigarettes or shaping bricks. But of course the debt never gets paid off and the children become debt slaves. Or to earn enough money to feed the family, a father in China arranges for his daughter to work a job in a big city factory, only when she arrives she discovers that she is actually captive in a brothel where she is repeatedly drugged and raped. These stories happen every day as economics and greed instead of love guide our actions. Or a wealthy country sends an occupying army into another land (for their “protection”), claiming the best strips of land and resources for themselves. They leave the country ravished and then offer high interest loans to help the country get back on their feet. The rich then continue to be sent payments from the poorest countries in the world.

Our flesh is the same as their flesh. Our children are the same as their children. But our children go to school, eat three meals a day, have toys to play with, are vaccinated against disease, and enjoy the luxury of the innocence of childhood which their children can only dream of. Their daughters are ravished, their lands have been stolen by corporations, their children trafficked or tricked into slavery under the economic system that helps us remain rich and in power.

When Nehemiah heard the plight of the people he burned with anger. After much thought, he brought charges against the nobles and the officials telling them, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God?” And the scripture says that the people were silent and could not find anything to say. They didn’t call him a socialist or complain that he suffered from white guilt. They heard the messenger of the Lord and were humbled by their sins. They pledged to stop taking advantage of the people who worked the land, promising to return whatever they had unjustly taken from them. And it wasn’t just a pledge to cover their rears or get them re-elected. It was an oath before the Lord, with the understanding that whoever failed to abide by their pledge would be ruined and cast away from God.

This weekend marks the Stand Up, Take Action event – an annual worldwide mobilization where citizens around the globe spread the message and take action against poverty and toward reaching the Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty by 2015. Part of the call is to tell the world leaders who have pledged to stop injustice and oppression and reduce poverty that “we will no longer stay seated or silent in the face of poverty and the broken promises to end it!” It is celebrated in conjunction with Jubilee Sunday, a day dedicated to praying for global economic justice, deepening our understanding of the global debt issue, and for taking concrete action for debt cancellation for all impoverished countries.

This weekend is a reminder to listen to the words of Nehemiah and examine if we do truly walk in the fear of the Lord. To ask in what ways are we contributing to oppression and injustices worldwide and to pledge to put an end to such actions. We are God’s people, committed to following his ways. To take advantage of our brothers and sisters for our own material gain is in direct defiance of the way of life God calls us to. We must instead make good on our pledge to follow Christ. To take a stand against poverty and oppression and commit to ending such injustices worldwide. And like the people who heard the charge from Nehemiah respond not with grumbling or excuses or entitled justifications, but by saying “Amen,” praising the Lord, and doing as they had promised.

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If My People…

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America’s propensity to see ourselves as God new chosen nation has often led us to claim scripture directed at Israel (or Judah) as promises for ourselves. While such thinking generally makes me squirm, I can re-apply such interpretations to see how they apply to the modern world. Granted, such direct application is woefully historically inaccurate and the nationalistic (and narcissistic) assumption that the good ole US of A has magically replaced Israel as God’s chosen people seemingly ignores the sacrificial act of Jesus on behalf of all nations – but I can still see how it works. I trust in the words of the prophets, and can believe that the principle of their commandments transcends culture even as they were original situated in particular cultures themselves. So while I have trouble reading passages that talk about requirements of or blessings for God-s people as applying to the citizens of the USA, I have no problem applying such commands to the church as the new representations of God-s people.

That said, I do find it curious which passages those who see the USA as God-s new chosen nation see fit to claim as applying directly to us. For many years the theme verse for the National Day of Prayer was 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” In context, the passage refers to God helping heal the land from drought and swarms of locusts, but it more often these days is a request for God to rid our land of abortion and liberals. But whatever the context, I find it most intriguing that this verse suggests only personal piety (prayer and repentance) as the required acts that God will reward. This promise of “If we pray, God will heal” fits nicely into the modern Evangelical culture that stresses piety as the necessary work of the people. Many churches shy away from acts of charity or justice due to the fear that they might become acts of “works righteousness” or distract us from personal habits like prayer and worship (as if such things are an either/or).

Choosing such passages of promise involves direct acts of selection and interpretation. The Bible is full of other such promises to Israel – telling them what is required of them in order for God to bless them – but those aren’t often selected. For instance, take Jeremiah 7:3-7 –

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.

If we do justice and take care of the immigrant and the poor and the homeless, and if we refrain from violence, and if we refrain from seeking after the idols of our age then God will be with us in our land. Why don’t we hear church leaders applying those words to America? Why don’t we have Evangelical churches mobilizing for National Days of Justice or Peacemaking or Welcoming and Caring for Immigrants? If we claim other words of worship requirement and blessing that were directed at Israel as mandates for ourselves in the modern church, then why aren’t we claiming these words as well?

Our acts of worship and sacrifice – of taking our lives and making them holy by giving them to God – define our relationship with God. There should be nothing divisive or political about the decision to worship with acts of prayer or with acts of justice. God seemingly requires both of us. But we have allowed our politics to guide our interpretation of scripture – even to the point of which passages we claim as our own. We, like those Jeremiah calls out, seem to trust in the deceptive words “The Temple of the Lord.” Instead of listening to all of God’s words about worship and acting rightly, we assume that our group’s interpretation is correct and holy. We hide behind the name of “biblical Christian”, or “compassionate Christian”, or “progressive Christian” or whatever other deceptive mantra we choose to repeat as a way to drown out the voice of God.

I really don’t care about God healing or blessing America – God is far bigger than the petty boundaries of a nation. But I do care about the church following the path God has called us to – a path that listens to all of God’s commands and doesn’t run away from the acts of worship required of us. Which is why I think we should listen to whenever God says “If my people…”

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Caring While We Still Can

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Between July 30 and August 3 a reign of terror was released upon villages in the Congo’s Eastern mining districts. Some 200- 400 Rwandan and Congolese rebels raided villages in the North Kivu Province and gang-raped nearly 200 women and children. Women reported being raped in their homes in front of their husbands and children – often repeatedly raped by three to six men. Aid workers have also treated four young boys (ages 1 month, six months, one year, and 18 months) who were also raped. A UN Peacekeeping force of 25 attempted to do what they could, but when they would arrive in a village the rebels would flee into the forest and return as soon as the peacekeepers left. Survivors said the attackers were Congolese Mai-Mai rebels who had joined forces with the Rwandan rebel FDLR group (a group that includes perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide who fled across the border to Congo in 1994).

Terror and rape as acts of control is common in the Congo, especially in the mining towns where the rebels have much to gain from controlling the mines that supply much of the world’s coltan and cassiterite (necessities in our ubiquitous modern electronics like cell phones and laptops). The locals, far from benefiting from supplying such minerals to the world, call the minerals a curse for bringing such terrorism to their homes. And these rebel groups stay in power as they continue to receive funds from all of us willing to pay them to just continue our supply of cheap cell phones no matter the cost to others. A cost that apparently includes the gang rape of one month of babies.

It is so disgusting and twisted that it is hard to put into words the rage it elicits. While America is in a dither about being offended by the presence of Muslims in our midst, this is what is happening in the world right now. We talk about fearing terrorism, but this is terrorism in the flesh. At some point we have to move beyond talk. We have to stop watching films like Hotel Rwanda just so we can seem caring and enlightened at our church “God at the Movies” night, and start working to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Hatred, power, and money are all still fueling atrocities – we have to get over our poor track record of only caring about such things in hindsight. Feeling bad about the Holocaust, or Rwanda, or Bosnia, or Japanese internment camps is trendy years later. What takes guts is standing up and doing something about such things as they happen. That is never popular, and will get you called some nasty names as you encourage society to change and care. But what does it say about the state of our souls if we don’t at least try?

To that end, I see three areas where we can start to take steps forward to deal with the larger issues at play here. And, yes, these are beyond the immediate care that is needed for these women and children and the instability of the moment. These try to get at the heart of the issues in society and culture, which is why they are hard and unpopular.

  1. We need to campaign for conflict-free cell phones (and other electronics). Companies that purchase minerals from these areas need to be held accountable at all levels of the process. Buying from middlemen who buy from the terrorists does not absolve a company of guilt. Putting out a product as cheaply as possible should never be an excuse for supporting terrorist groups that maintain control through mass gang rape. I want the companies I support to be transparent in who they deal with. The world needs to know what their money is actually funding when they buy a cell phone. While it is probably too much to ask that companies educate and inform us of what we are actually buying, they can at least work on abiding by US trade law and not import goods obtained through such acts of terror. Consumers can also demand conflict free items, letting the companies know that we are willing to pay what it costs to guarantee that we are not funding such rebel groups when we purchase a product. The consumer sets the demand, and it is up to us to demand a product that doesn’t support gang rape. But first we have to start caring more about the people being terrorized than we do about our latest model phone.
  2. We need to start treating peacekeepers with the same respect we do the military. Peace is a dirty word in our country, while our troops are sent care packages, given discounts, and revered as heroes. But soldiers trained to otherize everyone have a hard time waging peace. Train a soldier to eliminate empathy for the other so that they can kill enemies and it is hard to then expect them to switch into roles of protector, healer, and peacekeeper. We need more people strictly devoted to caring for and protecting others. 25 UN Peacekeepers to protect thousands from guerrilla fighters isn’t enough. Instead of just sending out troops to destroy (in the name of protection), we need armies of people devoted to caring for others. And for that to be a reality, that job needs to be just as attractive and honored as those trained to eliminate others. Peacekeepers need the free ride to college, they need that half price movie ticket, they need parades in their honor, and days set aside to honor the work they do. To give the world the help it desperately needs, we need to raise up armies of peacekeepers willing to empathize, care, and protect so that the evil powers of this world will terrorize no more. But first we have to stop demonizing the very idea of being a peacekeeper.
  3. Finally, we need to emphasize the full equality of women. Men who are raised to see women as inferior (in whatever way) are more apt to objectify us. When women are inferior objects for a man to use – as a subservient housewife, as a porn image, as a prostitute, or as a rape victim – we become less than human. Men seek to control us physically, sexually, emotionally, and mentally. Controlling something that is inferior or weaker for one’s own pleasure (be that sexual pleasure or the pleasure of power and money) is at the root of much injustice in this world. So often women bear the worst of any injustice because men were taught to see us simply as objects to be used in the power plays of life. All too often those that seek justice brush aside concerns regarding women’s equality as merely a distraction – something to be dealt with once the real justice issues are resolved. But as we see here, how women are viewed and treated is at the heart of the matter. Women are being gang raped as an act of control – their bodies are currency in the international games of commerce and trade. They should never be an afterthought. Caring for their wellbeing – of not just their broken bodies, but of their souls is as important as resolving the conflict over minerals. They should not be brushed aside as unfortunate victims of a larger issue; they deserve to be treated as equals worthy of intervention and advocacy. Men should not permit women to continue to suffer simply because our equality is considered too political, or liberal, or insignificant to bother with. Changing the way the cultures of the world (including our own) view women is at the core of ending these injustices. But first we must care about women enough to be their advocates even when it is unpopular.

This list is a start. It isn’t the solution – there are too many factors at play here for that. These are simply three action steps that we can start with. It is easy to be paralyzed with rage at these atrocities and feel like there is nothing we can do. But we can start pushing for change – even if that means starting with ourselves and how we view consumption, or the role of peacekeepers, or the equality of women. Choosing to care and make a difference while there is still time is difficult. Maybe it would be different if it was our family – our mothers or sisters or babies – who were being raped. We would turn the world upside down for their sakes. Is it too much to ask that we start with a few small changes for the sake of these mothers and sisters and babies?

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Justice and Women

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We live in a world full of pain and injustice; there is no getting around that fact. We can hide from the truth or try to protect ourselves from reality, but just because we don’t want to know about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist. Our world does its best to hide its dark side from consumer eyes and our school boards do their best to hide most of history from our children. It takes work to keep our eyes open wide enough to see reality. Thankfully, there are people out there who do try to be informed, who try to end injustice, to heal past wounds, and to make amends. Yet recently, as I was reading Eduardo Galeano’s classic book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent, I came across an almost casually mentioned atrocity that jolted me with the reminder that even for the people who are out there actively seeking to fight injustice, there remains one injustice that many would prefer to continue to ignore – the oppression of women. Across the world it is women who often face the worst injustices and yet are often brushed aside as not important enough to seek justice for.

In writing about how the sugar cane industry has destroyed the land and economies of many Latin American countries and led to numerous human rights abuses, Galeano mentioned that in certain plantations in Brazil (at least as of his writing) it was common practice for the plantation owners to claim jus primae noctis, or, right of the first night with the daughters of their workers. Most commonly known to us from the movie Braveheart this is a medieval custom giving to the Lord of an area the right to the virgin night of all the women he ruled. Although in Medieval times the actual consummation was rarely if ever practiced as many families chose the option of “giving” the Lord the bride’s dowry instead (what the Lord was after anyway), Galeano reports that on the plantations the owners would demand the right to have their way with their workers’ 11-12 year old daughters in exchange for the worker remaining in their employment.

Reading that affected me in a visceral way. In the midst of a litany of oppression, I was reminded that women truly bear the brunt of injustice worldwide. Their bodies are chattel, they aren’t deemed worthy of education, and they are fed leftovers if they get food at all. Because they are women their oppression is magnified. Not only must they endure the poverty and the colonialism, but also the objectification of their bodies and the required subjugation of their wills. When voices for liberation or revolution arise the women are called upon to endure hardships and make sacrifices, but it is never their liberation that is fought for. The few that call out for women’s needs to be addressed and for liberation to come to women are told that in light of the greater injustices and oppression that their cause is just a selfish distraction. I hear it all the time in the church – there are just too many more important things to spend energy on than trying to bring justice to women. We aren’t even worth the effort of those that make it a point to care about injustice and the oppressed.

Feminist postcolonial theologians are quick to point out this imbalance. They ask how can we say that we truly desire liberation if in achieving that liberation women still remain oppressed? They repeatedly insist that equality and respect for women should never be an afterthought to be sought sometime after the real work of combating injustice is done, but an instead should be at the very foundation of what it means to seek liberation itself. Nations and races cannot ever fully work for reconciliation and mutual respect if those nations are built upon oppression from within. But sadly, theirs are not the voices that are commonly heard.

In reading non-Western theologies recently (both postcolonial and evangelical), I have in fact encountered the very opposite. Men, who write on combating injustice and prejudice by calling the church to learn from say Korean or First Nation theologies and church practices, insist upon, as part of that process, an affirmation of gender roles that give men a strong (and sole) leadership role in the home, the community, and the church. They see a firm affirmation of this hierarchy of men over women to be integral to ending race divisions in the church itself. So not only are the needs of women ignored, healing and justice are proposed through the continued oppression and sacrifice of women.

Injustice and oppression make me sick and prompt feelings of rage inside of me. But reading about these young girls being raped as pawns in the never-ending cycle of colonial and commercial oppression left me feeling raw. This isn’t just about greed and economics. It isn’t just about racism and power-plays. It’s rooted in a subjugation of women that denies our worth and turns us into mere objects for men to use as they see fit. Most of the Western world hides behind their ignorance of history and injustice (often willfully sought) as an excuse to uphold the status quo. But when even those who claim to care about justice say that speaking out of behalf of women isn’t worth the effort I can barely respond. How can justice be justice if it is only for men?

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Celebrating the Overturning of Prop 8 with the Body of Christ

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I wrote this post last week as a submission to Sojourner’s God’s Politics blog.  But Sojourners is not yet sure of if they will respond to the Prop 8 verdict or what that response will be.  Maybe this will get posted there eventually, maybe it won’t.  So I’m just going to post this here because I feel it has to be said.

I’ll be perfectly honest – I had a hard time writing this post.  I’ve had multiple people ask me recently why there has been nothing at the Sojourner’s blog about the overturning of Prop 8 or about the struggle of LGBT folks for basic rights.  My queer friends who deeply respect the organization as a defender of justice for all ask why no one is writing about justice for them or celebrating when such justice is achieved.  My usual response has been, “yeah, someone really should write about that for Sojourners.”  That is until I was called out on my hypocrisy.  Why was I so willing to stick my neck out (and be ripped apart) for so many other oppressed groups, but not for homosexuals?  Why was I remaining silent?

Those challenges hit me hard.  They opened old wounds and deep regrets of a time when I had been silent before that still cause me pain.  Tim was one of my closest friends in high school.  We knew each other from church youth group and would spend hours together discussing books or playing cards in some coffee shop.  We went to college in different states and in those pre-cell phone and pre-Facebook days when AOL was still pay-by-the-minute, we drifted apart.  I heard through the grapevine that he had come out of the closet and that all of our other youth group friends refused to associate with him anymore.  But even then I didn’t reconnect with him, caught up as I was in my own college life.  After graduation, I had no way to get in touch with him, but the desire to contact him and just let him know I still was his friend weighed heavy on my heart.  I always thought that someday I would find a way to reach him.  But then a few years ago while I was still living in another state my mom called and mentioned offhand that Tim had died after being hit by a car while walking home from a grad school class.  Apparently many of our former close friends from high school had refused to even attend the funeral in protest of his orientation.

I had remained silent for too long.  I don’t know if he assumed I condemned and rejected him like the rest of our youth group friends, I never got the chance to tell him otherwise.  I missed an opportunity to show love to the hurting and I will forever regret my silence.  And I miss my friend.

So I knew that I could not remain silent now.  Even as I am unsure of what exactly to say, I knew I had to be a voice standing in solidarity and celebration of the overturning of Proposition 8.  Our LGBT brothers and sisters need to see now more than ever that they are loved by the church – that we can come alongside them and mourn when they mourn and rejoice when they rejoice.   They need to see that the church sees them more than just as objects to be debated.  If we remain silent now by failing to publicly celebrate this momentous occasion we will have missed our opportunity to show love to the hurting.

So I am celebrating with friends who can now enjoy the same cultural and legal benefits of marriage as I can.  Who can now visit their partners of many years in the hospital and include their spouse in their health coverage.  And I join them in their hope that one day these basic civil rights will not only be available in a small handful of few states, but all across our great nation.  At the same time, I express my sympathy as they and their families continue to be thrust into the centers of controversy – forcing them to fight to hold onto basic civil rights in our society.  I don’t even pretend to understand their struggle to simply live normal lives and the day to day pain that causes, but I do know that I can’t contribute to that continued pain by choosing to remain silent.  I can’t wait for someone else to speak up for me – I can’t outsource loving my neighbor.  And so I rejoice with the parts of the body of Christ who are celebrating being granted one small portion of the privileges I already enjoy.  It seems almost pathetic and nowhere near enough, but it’s all I can think to do.

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A Neighborless Christianity

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I want to thank Glenn Beck. His recent tirade against liberation theology has granted that particular conversation more press time than it’s been given in years. It’s hard to make a theology that bangs the drum of the preferential option for the poor sexy in our land of excess and wealth. Sensationalized stories of sex slavery make the airwaves from time to time, but a theology that makes us take a hard look at economic injustice of our culture, not so much. So, thank you Glenn Beck for introducing a new generation of Americans to liberation theology.

But, obviously, Beck’s portrayal of liberation theology wasn’t exactly positive. Besides calling it socialist (seriously dude, stop being such a one trick pony), he said it wasn’t Christian because it focused on social sin and “collective salvation” instead of the strictly personal salvation message that is at the heart of Beck’s interpretation of Christianity. Granted, Beck knows his audience. His average viewer most likely believes that the message of Christianity can be reduced to this concept of one’s personal relationship with God. The message one hears in many conservative evangelical American churches can be boiled down to “Jesus died for ME. God demands MY worship. I must attend church to strengthen MY faith.”

To question this self-focused religion (even by proposing an outward purpose for our faith) is tantamount to heresy. For instance, I’ve been reading critiques of the evangelical feminist movement and many of them mock the movement because it prompts people to focus on the needs of women and men instead of solely focusing on God. These books suggest that if we were true Christians, we would only care about our relationship with God and not the petty needs of other people. To serve others or to care for people apparently have nothing to do with our personal relationship with God and so therefore must be cast as a deterrent to faith.

I’ve heard the same reasoning applied to Christians engaging in environmental action. I got in trouble when I was in junior high for wearing a “save the dolphins” necklace. I was told that in caring for the dolphins I was worshiping the creation and not the creator. My time and energy should be devoted only to developing my personal relationship with God – which at the time was defined as reading my Bible, praying, doing devotions, singing, and attending church. And as I’ve written about before, I received a similar response at a moms group when I mentioned how important ethical consumption was in my life. I was informed that as a wife and a mother, God does not expect me to care for the poor, but to only make sure I am fulfilling my role in tending to my family (since that is how a woman best serves God).

This “it’s all about me” religion generally masquerades as being “all about God.” In fact in such circles books, buttons, and bumper stickers that say “it’s not about me” are quite popular. And while I think there are serious issues with some of the self-deprecating, soul-silencing, and passion-erasing messages that such a stance often promotes (like telling women they are selfish for pursuing a career or that to cure depression one just needs to get over oneself and pray more), on the whole this sort of religion is very self-focused.

But the disturbing consequence of making Christianity all about MY personal relationship with Jesus is that we eliminate our neighbor. Oh, we are taught to pray for our neighbor in order to strengthen our own faith. We are taught to fear the corrupting influence of our neighbor. And, above all, we are taught to condemn our neighbor. But we have inoculated ourselves from having a neighbor to love. If we are not to care about the plight of women, or the destruction of the environment, or the oppressed third world farmer because it would take away from our complete devotion to God, then the idea of loving our neighbor becomes a meaningless concept. That command then becomes so confusing that we have to start focusing on the “as yourselves” part of the verse instead – making sure that each of us loves ourselves enough to devote ourselves only to God.

Having no neighbors to love does make our faith easier. As long as we aren’t going on murder sprees, cheating on our spouse (or looking at porn), and only gossiping in the form of “prayer requests” we don’t have to do the hard work of repentance very often. But add social sin into the mix and say that part of worshiping God involves caring for the poor and oppressed and faith becomes exponentially more difficult. None of us could claim a good relationship with God by those standards. And most of us would have to drastically alter our consumeristic lifestyles in order to avoid daily sin. So therefore it is easier to ignore the parts of the Bible that tell us God hates our worship and closes his ears to our prayers unless we are caring for the poor and the oppressed than to actually figure out how to do it. It is easier to label (and mock) such things as socialism or to say that loving our neighbor distracts us from loving God than it is to repent of social sin. It is easier to say, “MY faith is all about ME and MY relationship with God” than it is to making living sacrifices of ourselves.

So Glenn Beck gets it right – at least when it comes to understanding the felt needs of his target audience. Who cares if you are ignoring scripture and rewriting Christianity, the best way to keep ratings high is to define right living and true religion as looking out for number one. Because, seriously, who needs a neighbor to love when we have ourselves?

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