Nonviolence: the Power of Protest Squared

Today is the anniversary of the violent end to the weeks of peaceful protest at Tiannamen Square back in 1989.  I remember driving to my grad school class and listening in shock.  It was an interesting time, as we watched the unraveling of the Communist bloc (but it was before the events of the German border that would bring down the wall), so I was hopeful that the peaceful protest would prevail.  I felt like weeping when the tanks rolled in.

It feels like we're at a similar crossroads today.  We see a mix of peaceful protest which sometimes stays peaceful and sometimes explodes into violence.   I have written many times about the power of nonviolent protest (for example, here and here).  In these days of protest, many of us are considering the best way to respond.

Bill McKibben has written a wonderful article in The New Yorker about planning for not just what's happening now, but what might be about to happen:  "Events are now moving at high speed in this country—every day, President Trump and his crew gallop past new lines, so that the morning’s flagrant usurpation is legitimized by the evening’s even more outrageous improvisation. (Firing tear gas at a crowd in order to be able to stand menacingly in front of a church holding a Bible is hard to top, but I wouldn’t bet against it.) A danger of this is that we’re always reacting to what came before. So perhaps it’s worth skipping a few steps ahead, to places where we haven’t gone yet but very well may."

He reminds us of the power of nonviolence, while noting that most of our 20th century experiences with nonviolence might not be wise in a time of highly contagious global pandemic.  And boycotts may not be possible in a time when big events aren't happening.

McKibben points to these encouraging statistics:  "As the Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth has shown, less than five per cent of a population engaged in resistance is often enough to cause huge shifts in the zeitgeist and make it much harder for illegitimate authority to rule."

Mckibben also mentions the work of Gene Sharp, who spent a lifetime cataloging methods of nonviolent action.  What a wonderful list of possibilities!  It's a good reminder that we don't have to be in the streets with the protesters.  We can pray.  We can have sit-ins and other methods of teaching.  We can "communicate with a wider audience"--and he wrote this list before we had so many opportunities that social media gives us.

These dark days, where the president threatens to use the military to hurt its own citizens, have me reaching for Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny.  It's an important book.  But Gene Sharp's list is also important.  We need to resist, while we prepare for what might be coming next.  One way that tyrants solidify their power is by wearing down resistance.  These days, we must not let that happen.

Walter Wink and the Modern Congregation

At my church, when our pastor goes away, he tries to find one of us to preach.  It saves our tiny congregation the cost of a supply pastor, plus some of us have considered going to seminary and have some advanced training, so he has congregational resources.

If I'm in town, I say yes when my pastor asks me to preach.  I understand that it's a rare opportunity for lay person in most congregations, and I think that having some additional voices is a bonus.  I often don't know the text in advance, because we're often off lectionary.

When I realized that I'd be preaching on the part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew that instructs us to turn the other cheek, give up our garments, and walk the extra mile, I knew that I would bring in Walter Wink.  While I don't think his interpretation is particularly radical, I know that it's different from what most of us learned along the way.

Weeks ago, I told my pastor what I planned to do:  "I plan to talk about active resistance that keeps us alive vs. passivity (which has been a gospel too often preached to those who suffer violence.  Reading Walter Wink on this subject changed my life!"

He responded:  "Great - way too many folks fail to grasp the implications of these texts as active resistance."

I also made a point of telling the congregation that I had told our pastor that I would talk about Walter Wink and the book Engaging the Powers, which was published by a Lutheran publishing house--I wanted them to know that I wasn't going out on a shaky limb all by myself.

I expected people to be more upset than they were.  On the contrary, they thanked me for explaining the backstory to the text, about how the right cheek had significance--Jesus specifies the right cheek, which means it's a backhanded slap meant for inferiors.  If I turn the other cheek, I'm putting the aggressor in an impossible place--he can't hit me, and I've said through my actions that I will be treated with dignity. 

It's the same with being forced to walk a mile.  Modern readers wouldn't realize that the subtext is that it's a Roman soldier forcing a person to walk a mile carrying gear--but only a mile, because Rome fancied itself to be civilized and a soldier could be punished if the civilian walked more than a mile.

We also looked at the passage about praying for enemies.  I didn't want to make assumptions about how we all feel about U.S. political leaders. 

I said, "I'll use Vladimir Putin, and you fill in the blank thinking of the person in politics who most fills your Facebook feed with anger and fuming." I thought it was an elegant approach. I said that I needed to remember to pray for Putin, not just to be infuriated by his actions. I needed to remember that God loves Vladimir Putin every bit as much as God loves me. I need to try to see the face of Christ in Putin, as hard as it may be.

I talked a bit about God and free will and demanding that God take action on social justice issues. I said, "I know some of you are now expecting that lightning will come from the sky and strike me dead for presuming to talk to God that way. But we're allowed to do that--read your Psalms, if you don't believe me. I'm allowed to say, 'Hey, God, you need to do something about your man Putin."

I ended by reminding people that we're not put on earth to suffer and die so that we get a good spot in Heaven.  No, Jesus comes to tell us that the Kingdom of God is being created right now, and we can be part.  I said, "And that, my friends, is the Good News that Jesus proclaims again and again."

I was much more eloquent, and I can't quite capture it here.  I think that's because the Holy Spirit was talking through me--before I said it, I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to end.  And suddenly the words flowed.

It was one of the best services I've ever led.  In part, it was because I had a great text.  And I've come to realize that there are days when it all goes well--or badly--for no reason I can discern.

I'm grateful that Sunday's service went well--as my pastor said, it's an important message for people to hear, this necessity of resisting evil in ways that don't make us evil and part of the problem.

Muhammad Ali as Social Justice Warrior

In the hours after most of us realized that Muhammad Ali had died, I was struck by how many people mentioned his social justice work--although they might not have seen it as social justice work. 

I'm thinking in particular about his stand against the Vietnam War, and how much of a personal sacrifice it was, in terms of lost titles and lost income.  From 1967 to 1970, he couldn't fight, and he made it clear that he refused to be drafted for intensely moral reasons, not just in a desire to save his life.  He said, "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father.... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail."

Ali's stance inspired many--some believe that his stand was responsible for Martin Luther King's shift on the war and gave him the courage to speak out against it, to set aside the worries of alienating the Johnson administration, who had made such gains in the Civil Rights arena.

I heard a clip of Bernie Sanders speaking and reminding us of Ali's Muslim beliefs, and I had a vision of Ali bringing us together in ecumenical solidarity in death--and of course, my hope would be that it would lead to more peace, more recognition of similarities, even in our differences--as he did throughout much of his life.

Non-Violence Training

In a discussion about the film Selma, NPR's Linda Holmes notes that she grew up around Quakers, and she was interested in how the film showed the strategizing of use of non-violent tactics.  She says, "Non-violence is not passive.  Non-violence doesn't just mean you don't do anything. . . . There was a tremendous amount of strategy."

I plan to see the movie tomorrow, so today's blog post will not be about the movie.  I wanted to think about non-violence, and how few of us are trained in non-violent tactics these days.  And then I tried to remember how I was trained.

It wasn't in standard church youth groups.  The most my youth groups did in non-violent training was to talk about peer pressure and how we could resist. 

I got some non-violence training in Lutheran Student Movement retreats.  But then we didn't go out and protest, so perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly.  I remember a few events in the D.C. area where we went out to peacefully assemble and/or march, and leaders reminded us of what to do if the police showed up.  I remember a retreat during that time when we were taught how to go limp and make our bodies heavy, should the police show up.

I've never thought about this before this morning, but the training I got in resisting peer pressure and resisting violence/arrest were remarkably similar in this one thing:  I never really had to use that training, at least not in the ways that the trainers imagined.  No one has ever tried to get me to take a drug.  I am a white, middle-class (and now middle-aged) woman--I am allowed to assemble in peace.

Now that training has helped me in other ways, no doubt.  I have always thought that if a rapist ever tried to drag me away, I know how to make myself even heavier than I am.  Thankfully, that hasn't happened.  But every day, I face peer pressure of some sort, but it's usually the pressure to join in the whining, the negativity, the suspicion of others in the work place.  I'm not always successful in resisting that peer pressure, but at least I'm aware of it.

I think about church youth groups and how we might assume that once teenagers are older, they're safe from peer pressure.  But the best churches know that believers will always be facing all sorts of peer pressures.  They may seem not-so-dangerous, but they can be every bit as insidious as those shadowy peers offering me drugs that my church youth group leaders feared.