Christian Resistance

In the late sixties, I participated in the draft resistance movement as part of the effort to stop the war in Vietnam. Our symbol was the Greek letter omega, which also represented resistance in physics. So as a Christian, even one loaded down with questions and skepticism, I was part of the Christian resistance.

While religion can be and has been used to control and exploit people, it has also been fuel and fire for movements of liberation and resistance and revolution.

The film Amistad tells the story of a revolt on a slave ship bound for the Caribbean coming in the 1840's. The Africans are put on trial, somewhere in New England. The leader speaks with bone chilling power and says `I want free.' The film sears our consciousness with the pain and demonic evil of slavery.

As the slave ships were leaving Africa, priests were shown blessing them on their way. We know pieces of the story of the churches complicity with the evils of slavery. Religion has been and is now used to exploit and even enslave people. As I mentioned in the last blog, that is clearly one of the purposes of religion.

How do we do battle against those systems of exploitation that live in our society and in our consciousness?

At the trial of the Africans, Christians opposed to slavery, some Quakers and some Congregationalists, protest against the slave trade and work to support the Africans. Resist evil. Resist the draft and the war. Resist those systems of exploitation that brutalize God's people and God's world.

Jesus overthrew the tables of the moneychangers in the temple saying that the temple system had become a system of exploitation, a den of robbers. Follow Jesus into the temples of today's robbers and tear the place apart. I mean, isn't that what the Bible says. Isn't that what following Jesus is about? Indeed, remember what Jesus did and then go and do likewise.

In the Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church, we faithfully and joyfully sang the great hymn O Holy Night at the late service on Christmas Eve. The lyrics include a phrase saying that this holy night is about the soul feeling its worth. The incarnation embodies the beauty, mystery and holiness of the human body/soul. All souls are worthy, honorable, redeemable, loved ultimately by the Creator even as they are being called to radical repentance.

And the song proclaims that `in his name all oppression shall cease.'

Of course, oppresssion continues to rage through the world. Of course, religious peole and institutions use power, sometimes hocus-pocus power, to exploit and even kill people. But that is not what the Incarnation is about. That is not why Jeuss came to dwell among us full of grace and truth. He calls us oer the tumult of life's wild and restless seas to resistance. Christian resistance.