In this space in the last month, colleagues from different traditions have written about positive actions one may take in these times that are so challenging. They have expressed a moral urgency regarding our nation’s military moves and threats against other nations, and the challenges befalling people living peaceably in our own country.
They joined the voices of many across our nation pleading for change. Yet the assaults become more appalling, and the crisis is deepening.
Every great religion upholds the dignity of the human person. Some teach that humans are created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27). When one degrades the dignity of another, there is a violation that raises alarm bells with moral urgency.
In my Christian tradition, the great commandments are to love the Lord our God with all one’s heart, soul and mind; and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Matthew 22:7-40). In Jesus’ last discourse before his arrest and execution (Matthew 25:31-40), he described the “judgment of the nations,” in which those who did not respond with care to the needs of the hungry, the stranger, the unclothed, the sick and the imprisoned were condemned.
Those who had fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, nursed the sick and visited the imprisoned were told that they had done this for Christ himself.
Assaulting the human dignity of another doesn’t only harm the one being assaulted. The one performing the hateful deed also has their own humanity degraded.
I am deeply troubled by the reality of masked federal agents moving in packs and drawing weapons while hunting individuals and families for detention and removal. I am deeply troubled by the modern-day slavery that exists when people put in immigration detention centers are working for $1 a day, and allegedly threatened with solitary confinement, withholding of food, or other punishments if they do not “volunteer” to do so.
These for-profit prisons are extracting the labor of people who are there against their will.
When in our collective life those using the weapons of the state assault the vulnerable, we all have a big problem.
Now, this is not new. Slave patrols and later Jim Crow laws terrorized Black people seeking their own freedom. Governments kidnapped Indian children and forced them into boarding schools, where they met cultural death and sometimes physical death. Japanese Americans were taken out of their communities and put into detention.
We can decry all these things and fail to recognize the urgency of this moment.
Clear doesn’t always mean easy. Moral clarity is the first and critical step that must lead to action. When evil deeds are being perpetrated against one’s neighbor, righteousness requires non-cooperation with evil. Silence in the face of evil is complicity with it.
As people are exercising their First Amendment rights to speak and assemble, some are sustaining injury and arrest. These are true neighbors and also true patriots, as they call our nation back to the principles of the rule of law and the liberties described in the Bill of Rights.
So-called Christian Nationalism is not Christianity at all but rather is idolatry. Jesus proclaimed a kingdom of God that was never to be confused with any political regime of any time or any place. His rhetoric, in fact, described that it is idolatry to have a first allegiance to any nation, political party or person over God and over the well-being of humanity in general.
Our churches, our religions, are not national but international bodies of believers who worship God and serve the neighbor. I believe that makes us better citizens. I pray for all of us to have clarity, truth, hope, community and communion amid the challenges of these days.
Finally, I would like to invite you to the next installment of the Interfaith Community’s Faith of Our Neighbors: Lifecycles series. On Feb. 1 from 3-4:30pm, leaders in the Liturgical Christian Tradition (Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian) will share and answer questions about our traditions’ practices throughout our lives. This will be at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 651 Broadway, Gilroy.
Rev. Anita R. Warner (pa*****@*************an.org) serves as Pastor of Advent Lutheran Church in Morgan Hill and is a founding member of the Interfaith Clergy Alliance.
