Category: Justice

What American Christians Get Wrong About Israel

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banksy graffiti on the wall

Graffiti art by Banksy on the dividing wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories

Over the past month in Israel, violence has been ratcheting up towards the possibility of all-out war. I’ve noticed that Christian friends on social media have begun voicing support for Israel, or commenting on the inherent violence of Muslims. In bewildering circumstances like these, it’s easy to cling to simplistic ideas of good versus evil, typecasting individuals and societies as villains and victims. But until we deal with our unconscious biases and ignorance, we will not be able to see clearly what is happening, and we will not be able to respond effectively. A wise and faithful response to the crisis requires us to educate ourselves about the history and wider context of the conflict. As American Christians, what assumptions or beliefs may be obscuring our view?

We Equate Modern Israel with Biblical Israel

In Genesis chapter 12, God tells Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you,” which many Christians interpret to mean that believers have a responsibility to offer unconditional political support the modern nation-state of Israel. This is an inaccurate assumption because in reality, there are important differences between the twelve tribes mentioned in the Old Testament and the nation-state of Israel. Ancient Israel was a theocracy, governed by priests based on direct revelation from God; modern Israel is a secular democracy, established through the actions of the British colonial government and the United Nations in the 1940s. Furthermore, the nation of Israel is not synonymous with the Jewish people. Not only is there a global community of Jews who have lived outside of Palestine for thousands of years, but within the nation itself, 20% of the Israeli population is Arab, and Arab Christians and Muslims across the Middle East also trace their ancestry back to Abraham.

The belief that Christians are commanded to “bless” modern Israel tends to imply a divine stamp of approval for particular Israeli policies or military actions. But instead of unconditionally supporting Israel or any other nation, we as Christians should be evaluating a government’s laws and actions through the lens of the Kingdom Jesus taught: do they result in freedom for the oppressed, or protection for the vulnerable? Do they result in the naked being clothed, the hungry being fed, and the homeless housed? Or do they result in the opposite?

We Misunderstand the Abrahamic Covenant

The Abrahamic Covenant is God’s promise to guide and protect Abraham and his descendants, and to give them the land of Canaan; they are commanded to be circumcised as a sign of faithfulness to this covenant (Gen. 15, 17). God not only promises Abraham that his descendants will become “a great nation,” but declares that “all peoples on earth will be blessed by you” (Genesis 12:3). So, the Jewish people are chosen not as a special ethnic group who are more important to God than all other people, but as a conduit of blessing for the whole world. In the Old Testament, non-Jews like Ruth and Rahab join the covenant community through faithful action, and Jesus mentions Gentiles who were cared for or healed by God even when Israel was in distress (Luke 4:25-27).

Jesus fulfills this promise by widening the covenant to include not only people of Jewish descent, but anyone and everyone who joins the family of God through faith. As the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2, Jesus has made Jews and Gentiles “one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.” Paul goes on to say in Ephesians 3:6 that “through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” God’s loving plan for the whole world has been revealed in Jesus.

We Ignore the Occupation

Israel invaded Gaza and the West Bank during the Six Day War in 1967, and continues to occupy these territories today. Having their homes demolished, losing their land, facing mass incarceration without trial, and denied equal protection under the law, many Palestinians are losing hope of things ever changing. Gaza’s 1.8 million residents live in poverty, unable to access adequate food or safe drinking water, experiencing 40% unemployment; in the West Bank, Palestinians’ water supply is often cut off or destroyed by Israeli settlers. Crossing into Israel for work, Palestinians spend hours each day waiting at security checkpoints, and in emergencies, this restricted movement sometimes means that people die before they can reach a hospital. Palestinian Christians have voiced their belief that conflict will not end until the occupation ends, and they are calling on the international Christian community to hold the State of Israel accountable for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

The occupation creates an unequal society in which Israelis hold the vast majority of power, wealth, and land, and in which their safety and well-being is maintained at the expense of the safety and well-being of Palestinians. The segregated inequality in which the two groups live generates the fear, resentment, and hatred that breed violence in the first place, and the occupation is a barrier to peace because it depends upon exclusion and violence for its very existence.

We Forget about the Church’s Mission of Reconciliation

Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are called children of God,” and the apostle Paul makes clear that a large part of the Church’s mission in the world is reconciliation. Forgiveness, enemy love, and creative nonviolence are all things that Jesus modeled and taught, and throughout history there are numerous examples of this kind of “Kingdom living” bringing peace and healing in situations of conflict. God is the source of true peace, but He brings peace into the world by working in and through human beings.

Working for peace does not mean being neutral, but it does mean that we move past tribal alliances with the people who are most like us. Peacemaking means that we stand on the side of compassion, of life, and of justice, no matter whose government or ideology we find ourselves standing against.

The truth is that the only way for either Israelis or Palestinians to achieve the freedom and safety they want is for them to recognize the humanity in each other, to understand that their well-being is tied together, and to work towards a future in which all are respected and included, regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

The New Testament makes clear that our allegiance as Christians is not to any earthly government or ethnic group, but to God and his Kingdom (Matt. 6:24, Acts 5:29). So, I don’t stand with Israel. Neither do I stand with Palestine. I stand with every human being who is angry and afraid, and I stand against the occupation which blocks their shared future.

Like A Mighty Wave: the Power of People United for Justice

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There are different kinds of power. Power that liberates, power that oppresses; power hoarded, or power shared. There is the kind of power that comes from external props and circumstances, and then there is power that arises from within.

Today I’m reflecting on power, and remembering the brave women I marched with in India last year. The demonstration was a confrontation between two kinds of power, really–but soldiers and police with their guns and blockades were nothing against the strength of these women with their hearts set on justice. Read the story at SheLoves Magazine.

Going to college with Christopher Columbus

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christopher columbus

I’m not sure what Christopher Columbus was doing on our university campus. Maybe he had taken up residence on the commons because we were a Christian university and he was a Christian explorer, whose voyage to the “New” world had been funded with the property confiscated from European Jews during the Christian Inquisition. Maybe it was because he represented the “manifest” destiny of the Americas; God’s plan to give an entire continent as a Promised Land to Christian settlers (how Indigenous peoples figure into this supposed plan, other than as obstacles to the will of God, has never been explained to me).

For whatever reason, Columbus was allowed onto the school grounds, where he struck an authoritative pose there on his pedestal, pointing a commanding, bronze finger out towards the Pacific Ocean as if to direct manifest destiny even further west. Perhaps towards another ocean; another people to conquer.

I think he was welcome in our midst because we as descendants of Christian European settlers have yet to look critically at our heritage. We have not yet owned up to the brutality of massacres, rapes, and trails of tears that litter our history. Did you know that before he was elected president, Andrew Jackson and his men cut strips of flesh from the bodies of murdered Muscogee Indians, including women and children, and tanned them into human leather to make bridle straps for their horses? It’s the sort of blood-curdling violence we associate with sociopaths, but in this case the perpetrators were men who later returned home to their communities afterward as respected fathers, husbands, and members of local churches. The perpetrators were the U.S. army. This was typical of the genocide perpetrated against indigenous peoples across North America from 1492 onward.

Our ignorance of the past prevents us from understanding the ways that colonization continues unabated in the twenty-first century. For instance, did you know that in Canada, hundreds of thousands of First Nations children were forcibly taken away from their families and communities to attend mandatory, church-run residential schools designed to assimilate them into white culture? The last of these schools did not close until 1996. Or did you know that to this day, there is no law enforcement agency in the United States authorized to prosecute a non-Native person for rape, homicide, or any other crime committed on a Native American reservation?

Here we are, 523 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, still celebrating the colonizing oppressor and sweeping the colonized oppressed under the rug, as if they are not still here. As if they were never here.

Why do we do this?

Perhaps, our society celebrates in Columbus the idealized version of our own history that we want to believe. Perhaps the evil he perpetrated and continues to represent is the same shadow side we are unwilling to acknowledge in ourselves as a society to this day.

Now that I think about it, maybe the statue of Columbus on Pepperdine’s campus should stay exactly where it is. Not as a monument to any kind of discovery or heroism, but as a ghost from our own past to serve as a reminder of the incalculable evil that is possible when we refuse to acknowledge the personhood of those who are not like us, and when we take God’s name in vain, pasting it onto our own campaigns of self-interest and self-aggrandizement.

The Surprise Apocalypse

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Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray, Canada.

An apocalyptic landscape: Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, north of Fort McMurray, Canada.

I’m not in the habit of writing apocalyptic poetry, but I wrote this a few months back as I reflected on what I’ve been learning about the industrial food system, the global economy, and climate change. We often use the word “apocalypse” to refer to the idea mass destruction or the end of the world, but in the original Greek it means “uncovering”: the lifting of a veil; a revelation.  For people who seek to be shaped by the Biblical narrative, its important to know who we are, and where we are, in the story. Imagining all kinds of evil outside of ourselves or our own community without recognizing our role in contributing to life or to destruction is worse than useless–it actually distracts us from using the power available to us to take meaningful action.

I grew up in churches where we talked about the end of the world fairly often, but it was all mystifyingly spiritual–beyond our control and even beyond our understanding. We rarely discussed any of the real-world destruction going on around us in the form of wars or other man-made disasters. We never imagined that we might be benefiting from, let alone contributing to, the very systems of power that were destroying God’s creation or the lives of our fellow human beings.

St. John wrote the book of Revelation to help his readers understand the times in which they lived and to help them respond faithfully to their situation. Here is what it might look like to interpret the book of Revelation in our twenty-first century context of climate refugees, mass extinction, and a worldwide economy that depends on ecological and human exploitation to sustain its perpetual growth:

 

Apocalypse

I nightmared of the rapture

From the age of ten

Looking out for all the signs

That would mark the end:

 

The blood-red moon,

The rebuilt temple,

Rumors of famine and war

It was simple

 

To keep watch and prepare

For the tribulation:

A mysterious age

When the world would be one nation

 

With power concentrated

In a single pair of hands:

The evil antichrist

Against whom we would stand

 

We brave, holy Christians

Ready to be martyred

If we hadn’t been raptured already

By the time the suffering started

 

Yes, this was the revelation

According to St. John

And Tim LaHaye

And on and on

 

They proclaimed with confidence

All those fiery preachers

They understood it all;

They were inspired, spiritual teachers

 

The evil they envisioned

Was otherworldly; other

It had nothing to do with us,

With how we lived with one another.

 

But what if apocalypse does not depend

On events beyond our knowing?

What if the world will meet its end

At the hands that should have been sowing

 

Gardens of perpetual abundance

Instead of economies of perpetual growth

Contentment instead of greed

So that life would not be choked?

 

“Rule over all the earth,and subdue it,”

Say our scriptures in the beginning.

“Tend this garden in my stead,”

But already our heads were spinning…

 

With ways to turn this mandate

For protecting the work of God’s hand

Into the right to rape and plunder

like warlords on stolen land.

 

God said that it was very good

But we couldn’t just take that at face value

There was still untapped potential

For air-conditioning and indoor bathrooms

 

And look, God approves–

With wealth He does bless!

Convenience, comfort,

More is always better than less

 

But somehow we missed the signs

Of the snowballing destruction

That we “the faithful” brought about

With our affluent consumption.

 

“Fallen! Fallen

Is Babylon the Great!”

Her sins are piled to heaven,

Judgment will no longer wait.

 

The saints and apostles

and prophets rejoice,

But we wealthy who made merry

Cannot find a joyful voice

 

“Come out of her,” the Lord had said

But we all felt just fine

It was difficult to leave—

We all had drunk her wine

 

Drunk with power, and distraction

It was difficult to see

all the blood there on our hands

as we lived our lives in ease.

 

For our finely-built houses

We turned forest land to sand

For our juicy beef burgers

We drove peasants from their land

 

But this all was done by proxy,

Please try to understand,

We would not have done this dirty work

Directly with our hands.

 

“Woe! Woe, O great city,

O Babylon, city of power!”

All your horses and chariots and tanks

Could not prolong your life by an hour.

 

For your growing empire was rotting

All along, from the inside out,

Destroying the very nourishment

That you could not live without.

 

You sought to trade

and buy and sell

Human bodies and souls

ecosystems as well

 

You poisoned your own rivers

And you counted it as profit

The important numbers grew,

But you never measured losses.

 

Why think about the future?

In the present, you could thrive.

No need to let inconvenient fact

Intrude on your way of life:

 

Freedom of choice

Freedom of trade

Slave labor hidden

In everything that’s made.

 

Poison air that burns the lungs

Of the workers making shoes

“Pleather weather” over factories

That produce for me and you

 

Ocean waves enclosing

An island homeland beneath the surf

That’s the end of someone’s world,

If not the entire earth.

 

Famines, droughts, deforestation,

And wars waged over water

This certainly will end the lives

Of certain sons and daughters

 

Genocides of birds and of fish

And bees and soil, too.

All creatures that eat food will die.

Eventually, humans do.

 

No showy Armageddon;

Just a slow fading out:

Like a self-inflicted wound

That finally brings death round.

 

Or like the drug addicted

Overdosing on the sidewalk

En masse, of course, but just as

accidental and suicidal.

 

This, the self-made apocalypse

Of prideful, self-made men

More predictable than what we sought

In our cryptic verses back then.

revelation apocalypse

Choosing Love Over Fear When It Comes to the Refugee Crisis

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Palestinian refugees in Damascus at Yarmouk camp, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a blog for the Huffington Post about what it means to respond as Christians to the plight of Syrian refugees.

This week, I’ve continued to read news stories about the refugee crisis–a crisis which had been unfolding for quite sometime before the Syrian civil war produced enough refugees and enough shocking images at one time to awaken our collective conscience. I attended a town hall meeting here in Vancouver last Tuesday where I learned that despite that bloody civil war and the expanding empire of ISIL, the vast majority of the world’s refugees still come from Africa rather than the  Middle East. At Kinbrace, I’ve also spent time talking with refugees and refugee claimants from Ethiopia, Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan, and other countries, and their stories remind me that even in places that don’t make the headlines, millions of people fear for their lives every day because of oppressive government regimes and armed conflict.

These stories fill me with sadness, but also with frustration and anger over the way that many of us in the West have allowed fear to prevent us from extending compassion to those who are in urgent need of our help. Hungary has now closed its borders to Syrians fleeing the conflict, and the government is arresting those who deem an illegal crossing their best bet for survival. Refugees continue to drown in the Mediterranean as “Fortress Europe” deliberately refuses to help as a matter of official policy, in order to deter further immigration. But those who are desperate enough to risk the lives of themselves and their children on the rag-tag dinghies of human smugglers will not be deterred from making these deadly voyages, because they clearly have no choice. These journeys are their last hope: either they risk losing their lives, or lose them for sure by staying where they are.

Many in Europe are afraid that the influx of Muslims will threaten the “Christian identity” of Europe, but as Giles Fraser so starkly pointed out in an article for the Guardian newspaper on September 4, the Christian identity of Europe is threatened not by Muslims, but by Christian politicians who refuse to live out the Biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and care for the oppressed.

And what about North America? Canada welcomed 19,233 government assisted refugees in 1980, but that number has plummeted to just 6,900 in 2015. Furthermore, despite the government’s promise to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over 3 years, Canada has settled just over 1,000 Syrians so far. Meanwhile, the United States has taken in fewer than 1,000. So far, we North Americans haven’t shown ourselves to be any more hospitable than Europe.

Another security concern that has been raised is the possibility of terrorists slipping in amongst the flood of legitimate refugees seeking asylum. Security experts have already addressed the unlikelihood of this happening. Yet few people have talked about the way that welcoming refugees from Muslim countries actually offers our nations an opportunity to address the root causes of terrorism: poverty, lack of opportunity, traumatization and loss of loved ones in conflict zones, and hatred of the West due to foreign policy and military interventions which negatively impact Muslim civilians in the Middle East. This is a chance to show genuine love and concern to our Muslim neighbors, and to provide a secure future for exactly the kind of children who might otherwise be at risk for radicalization by opportunistic terrorist organizations who prey upon those who are impoverished and discontented.

As citizens of a world increasingly interconnected by economic ties, military involvement, and technology, the refugee crisis is not some distant issue from which we can pretend to be entirely separate. The current situation forces us to confront our political and military contribution to the crisis, and challenges those of us who follow Jesus to live out some of the core tenets of our faith.

What Jesus Can Teach Us About Confronting Racism in Ourselves

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Racism is obvious to us in hateful individuals who may utter racial slurs or openly support groups like the KKK. Unless we are willing to look more closely, racism is less obvious when embedded in the day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system, or when subtly continuing to shape the socioeconomic landscape of our country. But the most difficult place to see and acknowledge racism is likely within ourselves. Today I’ve written an article for Sojourners about what we can learn from Jesus on that difficult path of self-exploration. Strange as it may sound, even the Son of God had to conquer ingrained prejudice. Here’s an excerpt:

Many whites balk at the suggestion that their views and assumptions might be racist because they know themselves to be moral people who live decent lives and maybe even have some black friends. They certainly don’t hate anybody, and they aren’t supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. Because they understand racism on an individual rather than systemic level, it seems impossible to hold together an image of oneself that contains both “good person” and “racist.”

Yet individual guilt and hatred often have little to do with white America’s unwitting participation in the institutional racism of our society. We can’t avoid bearing a resemblance, warts and all, to the culture that raises us… (read the rest) 

This is the challenging, humbling work of repentance. If we desire to see the Kingdom come in the world, we must first be willing to clear the way for it to break into our own souls.

what Jesus can teach us about confronting racism in ourselves

Who’s paying for your vacation?

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vacation

photo credit: womansday.com

Summer is prime time for vacations. School is out, and the warm weather is perfect for outdoor adventure, or just lounging at the beach or the pool. For many of us, vacations are a way to relax, recharge, and escape the stress of everyday life, but we often don’t realize the implications of our vacationing practices for the people and places we visit.

Back in June, I wrote an article  for a magazine called Christ and Pop Culture about how to vacation without checking our ethics at the door. The magazine offers their readers a digital subscription for tablets and iPads, so the article has been behind a pay wall until now–but today it’s being featured on the website for free. Here’s how it starts off:

          “From royals relaxing at summer palaces to wealthy Americans seeking out natural surroundings for the sake of health during the Victorian era, vacations have historically been a privilege of the social elite. It wasn’t everyone who could afford a second house by the sea or a trip out to the wilderness to escape the cramped conditions of cities. Yet both rest and connection with nature have always been basic human needs whatever your station in life.

          These days, the world’s cities, cultures, and natural landscapes are often marketed as prepackaged commodities available for consumption to anyone who can pay the ticket price (which still includes people with money, and excludes people who are poor). But this purely materialistic understanding of vacation is a destructive oversimplification of God’s creation. As consumers, we are encouraged by industry executives and advertisers to narrow our focus to the monetary cost of our trip. But as followers of Jesus, we are called to be concerned about the rest, health, and wholeness of the places and people we visit as well as our own…”

 

Click here to read the rest of the article, in which I examine the unsavory specifics of cruises, all-inclusive resorts, and air travel, and offer practical advice for vacationing in ways that are just and compassionate.

ethical vacations

Things that happened while I was gone

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flags

Over the weekend, Andy and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. We were out in the woods on a small island off the coast of BC, building small cabins that will serve as “hermitages” for people on silent retreat who need a place for deep solitude and prayer. It felt good to do some manual labor, to see tangible progress as we worked, and to feel good and tired by the end of the day, in a sore-muscle rather than a screenburned-eyes or overwrought-mind sort of way. Our motley construction crew was made up of people from all over the place, some in their teens and some in their fifties, and it was fun hanging out with people of all ages—that doesn’t happen very often outside of family reunions, and intergenerational friendship is one of the things Andy and I had enjoyed so much about living in India. After spending a long Saturday on the work site, we enjoyed a brisk swim at an isolated beach. There were Canadian geese sitting on the water around us, so it definitely stretched my idea of what summer at the beach looks like!

Apparently while we were hammering away in the woods and sleeping in rustic cabins without electricity and running water, a lot was happening back in civilization, and particularly in the country of my birth.

There was the courageous act of protest by a brave woman named Bree Newsome, who scaled the flag pole in front of the state capitol building in South Carolina to take down the symbol of white supremacy and racial violence that had flown over the seat of the state government there for more than a hundred and fifty years. Civil disobedience is intended to show the moral absurdity of laws through breaking them and willingly suffering the consequences of one’s actions. Bree’s action did exactly that: South Carolina police (including a black officer) were forced to arrest a peaceful black woman, who quoted scripture aloud as they handcuffed her, for the “crime” of removing a banner under which black Americans have been enslaved, raped, murdered, beaten, intimidated, and systematically oppressed for over a century. No scene could have more pointedly demonstrated the righteousness of her cause: the law was against her, but justice was certainly on her side. She now faces up to 3 years in prison and a fine of up to $5000 for her heroic act. All of us who follow Jesus can learn from this woman’s sacrificial example.

Also over the weekend, President Obama delivered a eulogy for Clementa Pinkney, a black pastor who was among the slain in Charleston on June 17. I don’t know what opinion you hold of Obama as a person, or a politician—I can’t think of him without remembering the countless drone attacks he has authorized against innocent civilians in the Middle East—but his eulogy for Pinkney is one of the best sermons I have ever heard, and is probably THE most powerful speech I have ever heard from a head of state. Perhaps the fact that, as President, he has made important public decisions with which nearly every one of us has disagreed at some point or another makes him exactly the kind of flawed, imperfect human being who can speak with authority about grace. Seriously, if you haven’t yet listened to the speech, please, please do. It is a heartfelt lament of the ways that we have deeply wounded one another in America, an inspiring reminder of the resilience and love that have continued to grow even in the midst of violence and oppression, and an eloquent call for us to move forward together as a nation towards forgiveness and justice, extending God’s grace to one another in every facet of our lives.

“Justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other,” he remarks at one point. “My liberty depends on you being free, too.” One can hear in these words the echoes of both Jesus’ call to love our enemies, recognizing our neighbor-hood with them, and MLK Jr.’s assertion that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The other big national news of the weekend was the legalization of same-sex marriage across the United States. The reactions of many American Christians have already become an embarrassing adventure in missing the point, but I still hold out hope that we as a Church will be able to let go of our fearful siege mentality and recognize this opportunity to love and extend grace to people who may not share our sexual orientation or our theology. I’ve always been confused by the political kerfuffle over trying to legislate a Christian lifestyle into the laws of the state, since God has never called the Church to control the government. We have been given the task of modeling the Kingdom in our own lives, creating a community that images God’s hospitality and love, and inviting others into freely-chosen, loving relationship with God.

Using legal means to force non-Christians into choices and behaviors that Christians have specifically chosen as disciples of Christ seems not only pointless, but controlling and counterproductive to our true mission in the world. If we send the message to the people around us that we are more concerned about policing their sex lives than about caring for them as people, then we’ve not just lost the “culture wars”—we’ve lost the respect and trust that would have laid the foundations for any relationship with people outside the church to grow. We’ve lost our credibility as God’s ambassadors of love. We’ve lost our purpose as a community.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be involved in wider culture—we certainly should. But even in the realm of sex and relationships, why not concern ourselves with the destructive forces of pornography, trafficking, sexual abuse, and domestic violence that are destroying vulnerable individuals and families and marriages? Which will give a clearer picture of God: a Christian reacting with fear-mongering and angry statements in protest of same-sex marriage, or that same Christian instead demonstrating a mature ability to be gracious with people who disagree with them, whose lives and choices are different from his own? Some Christians have compared homosexuals with Hitler, referred to them as “Gaystapo,” or likened the court’s ruling to the 9/11 Terrorist attacks. Regardless of what we believe about homosexuality, angry antics like these should offend our consciences as Christians. Would Jesus be stirring up fear and hatred at a time like this? Or would he be inviting a same-sex couple over for dinner to hear their story and get to know them as people, refusing to reduce the complex beauty of their humanity down to a single political issue or life decision? I get the sense that he’s probably prompting us to do that right now.

supreme court ruling on same sex marriage

The Charleston Church Shooting Is Nothing New

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grief

photo credit: nola.com

Two days ago, a young white man gunned down nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

When confronted with such a brutal, violent act, it is tempting to dismiss the killer as an anomaly—mentally ill or emotionally disturbed, perhaps—instead of recognizing the roots of his behavior in the shared history, culture, and institutions of our society. But viewing these murders as an isolated incident obscures their connection to a larger pattern of racial violence that is as old as the United States of America.

I recently read the memoir of a lawyer named Bryan Stevenson who spent years working to free innocent men on death row, and advocating for children and individuals with mental illness or intellectual disabilities who are serving life sentences or awaiting execution. His book Just Mercy is a heartbreaking look at mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America, and his decades of personal involvement in the criminal justice system reveal the blatant influence of race in determining how Americans are treated by police, courts of law, and prison authorities.

Stevenson illuminates the concrete effects of racism on the lives of black Americans by explaining “four institutions in American history that have shaped our approach to race and justice”:

  1. Slavery. African Americans were considered property rather than human beings with rights.
  1. The “Reign of Terror” between Reconstruction and World War II. After 9/11, it was common to hear news anchors and politicians alike referring to this attack as the first time Americans had experienced terrorism within our own country. But as Stevenson explains, the fear of violence was nothing new for African Americans who grew up in the South between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. As one man told him, “We grew up with terrorism all the time. The police, the Klan, anybody who was white could terrorize you. We had to worry about bombings and lynchings, racial violence of all kinds.” Stevenson argues that “America’s embrace of speedy executions was, in part, an attempt redirect the violent energies of lynching while assuring white southerners that black men would still pay the ultimate price.” Today, the pairing of a black perpetrator with a white victim still results in the death penalty more often than crimes involving a white perpetrator or a black victim.
  1. Segregation and human rights violations under “Jim Crow.” The Supreme Court didn’t strike down laws against interracial marriage until 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, but marriage between whites and blacks remained illegal under the Alabama state constitution until the year 2000 (and even then, 41% of Alabama voters cast their ballots in favor of upholding the ban). In 1945, Stevenson points out, “the Supreme Court upheld a Texas statute that limited the number of black jurors to exactly one per case,” and after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, many southern states continued to exclude African Americans from serving on juries at all.
  1. Mass incarceration today. The United States has the highest rates of incarceration of anywhere in the world, and the vast majority of the 2.3 million people currently in prison are black or brown. People of color are often arrested and sentenced for the kind of nonviolent drug offenses that white teenagers and college students engage in without consequence, and frequent police harassment increases the likelihood of black and Latino teenagers developing criminal records. Stevenson argues (as did Michelle Alexander in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow) that mass incarceration functions to control and disenfranchise African Americans in much the same way that Jim Crow did in the past. Some states permanently take away the right to vote from anyone with a criminal conviction, which means that there are now several states in which a higher percentage of African American men are barred from voting now than were disenfranchised before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

These institutions stretch from the birth of the American nation down to today, showing that racism is not an imagined problem, a historical phantom long since put to rest, or the extreme ideology of some fringe individuals in society. Racism is embedded in our history, our culture, and our civic institutions. It’s not something that will fade out automatically—it’s a glaring problem that all of us need to confront as a nation and in our own hearts and minds.

Recognizing our fears or ignorance about people who are unlike us does not make us bad or hateful people. If we want to walk in the truth and to love our neighbors well, then we must be willing to acknowledge the ways we subtly buy into untrue assumptions about people of other races, or support policies and institutions which negatively impact their lives. An ongoing process of critical self-reflection is necessary for anyone who wants to live a just and compassionate life, and it is especially important for those of us in the racial majority who have never experienced discrimination.

In the wake of yet another tragedy, I am grieving with the families of the slain. But grieving is not enough. White America has two choices: we can continue to look away from the festering wound of racism in our society, or we can confront our past and our present in order to pursue a different future on the basis of truth and reconciliation.

Gambling Together

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P1100091

This week’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) package was “slim pickings” as our neighbor/urban farmer told us when she dropped it off this evening. With so many days of unseasonable heat, she told us, lots of plants are going straight to seed instead of following their usual growth cycle and developing into the mature veggies we depend on for food.

This is our first summer in Canada, so Andy and I have been enjoying the warm weather and the sunny, blue skies, amused by our northern friends’ extremely low tolerance for heat (they get the last laugh when winter rolls around and we are comically unprepared). But locals tell us that while these summer days are great for the beach, what we should be experiencing right now is “June-uary,” a return of colder weather and–most importantly–rain. Since Vancouver is located in a temperate rain forest, rainfall is extremely important for the plants, the animals, and, ultimately, the people who live here.

Because we’ve already had cloudless skies for so long, forest fires which would usually be a possibility in August are happening right now, and trees with shallow roots that depend on a certain level of moisture in the ground to keep them structurally stable are likely to be uprooted and fall. A changing climate means that growing seasons change, and many plants that might have thrived in the past are no longer viable.

It’s unfortunate to receive fewer fruits and vegetables through our CSA membership than we had expected, but that scarcity in itself demonstrates why community shared agriculture is so important in the first place, especially in light of the unpredictable effects of climate change on local ecosystems. When they pay for seed, labor, irrigation, and other inputs ahead of time, farmers are financially investing in their crops before knowing what the yield will be. They may put in months of work and go into debt for a harvest that is either to small to be profitable, or too plentiful to earn fair prices at the market. Either way, the conventional system expects farmers to take this gamble alone, even though every one of us depends on their hard work and investment in order to survive.

In community supported agriculture, consumers share the risk of agriculture with the farmers who feed us by paying for a share of the harvest at the beginning of the growing season. However things turn out, we’re in it together, and no single person will be economically devastated no matter how weather, pests, or economic forces may influence the harvest.