The Rising

Fresh evidence that religious language can be murdered in broad daylight came Wednesday morning when the Republican Caucus sang “Amazing Grace,” a hymn sung when the British Parliament ended the Atlantic slave trade. While the Tea Party crash this week has dressed itself in garments of martyrdom, mainstream Republicans continue to see nothing wrong with gerrymandering congressional districts and creating voter registration barriers—all designed to block access of Blacks, Latinos and other low income people across the country to their voting rights.

As this strange second Civil War continues people continue to use religious ideas to support the “truths” they prefer:  In the past, Africans were said to be biologically inferior and therefore slavery was a divinely inspired kindness to them. Capitalists, lucky enough to accumulate vast wealth used  it to polish an image as icons of divine blessing.

While almost no one really believes such stuff any longer, the irresistible temptation to use faith language to lay claims to truth helps conceal the huge power play unfolding as “the owners” not "the believers," take charge. They're the owners of the Shale oil system and its pipe and shipping lines; the corporate powers that own our politicians; the financiers who hold your mortgage and credit debt. 

The profound reason to hope the faith community will help is because its origins lie in the battle against just such demonic powers—by definition powers that claim to be doing everything for your own good. The modern gods no longer want your virgin daughter sacrificed on their altar, they want you to learn to submit to their inequality regime, to accept without resistance your extended family’s worsening and unequal status today. 

A first step toward resistance will require people of faith to abandon their neutrality. This means de-schooling ancient pastoral fantasies long nurtured in monasteries and seminaries (and at a great remove from a Moses struggling against Pharaoh, or a Jesus leading the common peasants into Jerusalem) people of faith, must practice a non-violent form of love that insists on justice. 

Such a faith is already blowing fresh winds in North Carolina. A huge start toward a non-violent and instructive social justice movement is underway there. A reaction to the Republican’s ruthless blockade of voting rights has led faith leader’s and many others to abandon the neutral center. 

Many thousands are marching on Moral Mondays in North Carolina cities inspired by faith leaders like Rev. William Barbour, an NAACP president and Disciples of Christ Pastor. The large coalition growing there is practicing coalition-building across disparate lines by focusing on the perceived injustices they face. Black and White people of faith have locked arms with LGBT advocates, labor unions, environmentalists, women’s rights leaders, intellectuals from the universities and many others, some of them people Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have called “the Saints without God.”  Not only do they share a commitment to the common good, but hundreds of them have been arrested while engaging in acts of civil disobedience, going to jail for their faith whether holy or secular.

A new spirit is blowing in this wind as people discover that when they embrace both love and justice many people can come together. This is "a rising" that needs to spread.