Birth Pangs or Death Throes?
David Ketchum
December 18, 2022
Watch the video HERE
Today, I’m offering the final of three reflections on the appeal made at the “7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions” (PDF), which met in Kazakhstan earlier this year. Roger began by taking us through the realities of our “tumbling world,” and I followed last week by reflecting on the role, or the possibility, of hope in such a world. Those are familiar topics, but the appeal then turns to a topic that is both more complicated and more personally challenging: the role of religion and religious communities in all these things. The appeal holds in tension both the conviction that “Religions are often part of the problem, not the solution” and that religions have something to offer to help us navigate through and transform the challenges that surround us.
As I’ve shared many times, religion and spirituality have been sources both of great pain and trauma in my life, and great joy and wisdom. Looking back, I don’t know if I would have survived my teen years without the spiritual practices I began at that time, and those practices have continued to nourish and sustain me through my entire life. On the other hand, harmful religious teachings also inflicted or set me up for abuse in the first place. If I identified with either of those experiences, I could easily conclude that religion was an overwhelming force for good, or an overwhelming force for bad. The truth is more complicated. In many ways, religions are a long-running, uncontrolled social experiment on the human condition and social change, and we’ve proved time and again that we can use religious beliefs, practices, and institutions to help or to harm.
This reality is also reflected in our collective perceptions, too; a 2017 survey by Ipsos asked more than 17,000 people from 23 countries the simple question: does religion do more harm than good? 49% said yes.
But both the framing of the question and the division we have over its answer invite us to look more deeply. If all cultural, including religious, systems, have been used to justify everything from the terrifying to the sublime, who gets to define what is a problem and what is a solution? Who gets to decide what is good, both individually and collectively?
Dorothee Solle called this the “double function” of religion: “as apology and legitimation of the status quo and its culture of injustice on the one hand, and as a means of protest, change, and liberation on the other hand.” (“The Christian-Marxist Debate of the 1960s,” Monthly Review, 36 (July-August): 20-26)
James Cone expressed this same teaching as the choice between two alternatives: “(1) to accept the oppressor's value system and thus be contented with the place set for them by others, or (2) to find a completely new way of looking at reality that enables them to fight against oppression.” (God of the Oppressed, New York: Seabury Press, 1975; page 33)
This sounds easy enough, and it feels like it should be easy. Yet we still manage to become divided over what is right and wrong. I have watched with a mixture of amazement and horror as my own friends and relatives and I have taken very different roads over the last twenty years. I would have never predicted people I used to respect defending cruelty, violence, and bigotry. Others have gradually accommodated injustice, a kind of creeping oppression that is accepted as just “the way things are.” I have felt my own energy lag. It can be easy to describe legitimation of injustice and liberation towards change in their ideal forms, but most of us live in a more messy, in-between place. Discerning which is which, and acting accordingly, is essential if we want our present troubles to be birth pangs of a new world, rather than the death throes of humanity.
I’ve been thinking about these things in my own life recently from a different point of view. Last year, a good friend wrote to me after many years of being out of touch. As we caught up with each other and swapped stories, we started noticing several similarities. When we last knew each other in the mid 1990s, we were both very earnest in our faith, and I at least was very naïve. We both took the vision of a just and peaceful world, proclaimed by Jesus and the Prophets, as possible and joyful. Neither of us were planning on doing anything like preaching. Instead, both of us were initially involved with music and then community programming. Our paths weaved through similar social issues, from food insecurity to Missouri’s methamphetamine crisis. And both of us experienced criticism and rejection for creating or joining those programs well before either of us ever taught something controversial.
A few stories have been more vivid in my mind as I sort through these memories. I was the pastor of a small, rural church. Even on that small scale, liberation was experienced as a threat to settled way of doing things, a way that had conveniently excluded all the people pushed to the margins. As you might guess, money often had a lot to do with it. On more than one occasion, the church treasurer would confront me while I was printing bulletins. This was a pretty brilliant tactic. The photocopier was in a very small room with one door. There was no where to go, no way to escape her scathing words. She would stand in the doorway and let me have it. Her criticisms often amounted to what became a refrain: “the people you bring to church cost more money than they give.” I was making the church’s finances unsustainable.
As I mentioned, I was very naïve and thought I had a solution. I got the board to approve a restructuring of my salary. I would reduce what I got paid every week in order to create a community fund. This way, when people came to us needing assistance, or there was a special ministry opportunity, we would have a small budget to meet those needs. I knew enough that I shouldn’t be in charge of that fund, so at least two deacons needed to approve of any request. But this still was not enough; I faced a new criticism. The gossip became that I wanted to reduce my salary so I wouldn’t have to tithe as much to the church. That one never made any sense to me, but it didn’t stop the rumor from going around.
On one occasion, I was providing pastoral care for a terminally ill man. Years before, he had been an active member of the church, but a messy conflict had driven him away. We worked through a lot of those issues as he made peace with his imminent death. Before he died, he told me and his wife that he wanted to have his funeral and be buried at the church. It was very moving, a sacred moment of healing and hope. So I’m glad he didn’t live to see the fallout. My misstep this time was that I didn’t realize that, because he reconciled himself to the church, his family was then entitled to a ham dinner after the funeral. This was a significant, but not huge, expense, and some church members resented having to foot the bill. Instead of celebrating the sacred work of dying with peace, we argued over who would buy the hams. I can confess to some passive-aggression here, as I volunteered to pay, but I reduced my offering to the church by that same amount. I was so angry that this kind of petty, selfish bickering could spoil something holy.
These kind of memories have helped me rethink how liberation and legitimation work. It is often through small, seemingly unimportant habits. Any one of the habits might seem inconsequential, something we just need to overlook. This is just the way things are. We don’t notice that, taken together, the cumulative effect is to create a powerful culture and system. This is how oppression often establishes and sustains itself, not just through the gross and obvious injustices, but through the little, small habits of accommodating harmful behavior, leaving conflict unresolved, avoiding uncomfortable conversations, and being reluctant to take meaningful action.
In the case of opposing slavery, Quakers did adopt a broadly abolitionist stance much earlier than most civil or religious groups in either Europe or the colonies. But by the time that Quakers in Pennsylvania formerly condemned participation in the slave trade in 1758, that was already built on nearly a century of activism and labor. The conversation began in the 1670s in Barbados, where Quaker colonists raised the question. Then, in 1688, three Quakers and a Lutheran in Pennsylvania openly opposed slavery. The movement would ripen in the 1700s, through the work of people whose names are more familiar, such as Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet. Even early adoption, the best-case scenario, was slow work, and many of those who began it did not live long enough to see the fruit.
Even then, the success of condemning slavery as a practice did not mean all Quakers were suddenly in the right about everything. The liberation commitments existed alongside legitimation commitments, and conflict bubbled up and sometimes overflowed. Again, it is vital that we know these fuller stories, and this is why historical accounts like Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice by Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye are so important. This more complete history is, as Cathy Wald described it, “a roller-coaster ride from the heights of admiration for my religious community to the depths of embarrassing chagrin.” Far from being discouraging, these more realistic accounts of human limitations and human transformation can be vital to encouraging one another today. When we understand that our spiritual ancestors had an equally messy set of conditions, and yet persevered in doing what was right, that can affirm our own perseverance. And there is much to learn about the practical side of working for change and what sustains us, as individuals, communities, and movements.
In the case of the Grimke sisters, their convictions eventually made them outcasts in their Orthodox Quaker community in Philadelphia, and they eventually left that meeting. Despite the Quakers’ and the city’s reputation for abolitionist sentiments, Sarah and Angelina’s views were considered to go too far, too fast. Mark Perry, author of Lift Up Thy Voice, described their situation.
“After Angelina’s letter to William Lloyd Garrison appeared in The Liberator, the sisters met with a chilly reception at the Fourth and Arch Street [Friends] Meeting. They were also unwelcome, now, in Catherine Morris’s home, especially since Angelina had questioned her about the society’s policy of making its black congregants sit on separate benches during Quaker services. … Catherine was shocked and dismayed by Angelina’s query. She said that she agreed with the seating practice, that there were firm reasons for the existence of the ‘colored bench,’ and that such questions should not even be asked. She believed in the efficacy of ‘silent witness,’ the practice of leaving change to conscience and good works. Sarah and Angelina accepted Catherine’s reasoning, but they found the Fourth and Arch Street Meeting’s services increasingly stifling, and they resented the disdainful looks and verbal reproaches they received during their own public shows of devotion. Angelina was angry; Sarah felt rejected. Both felt they were being treated as outsiders.”
The sisters understandably felt “Embittered by and alienated from their own meeting”. But they did not settle for that feeling. Instead, they held firm in their convictions, eventually embraced their status as “lapsed Quakers,” and transformed their rejection into a deeper commitment and courage to act. In Perry’s words,
“Sarah and Angelina’s years of struggle with their religion, and their conversions from Episcopalians to Presbyterians to orthodox Quakers and finally to lapsed Quakers, served them well. No longer fearful of such changes, they now welcomed them. Nor were they intimidated, as they had once been, by the judgments of others; they were now willing to disagree openly with those whom they most admired.” (Lift Up Thy Voice)
This is a good example of James Cone’s insight that we are constantly navigating choices between accepting “the oppressor’s value system” and finding “a completely new way of looking at reality that enables them to fight against oppression.” So how do we work with all of our human limitations and access our human possibilities for social change in the direction of social justice? In 2017, I tried to make the case for four approaches that religious and spiritual communities could use to support us in being part of the solution, instead of part of the problem:
1) providing opportunities to expose, understand, and subvert oppressive systems and cultures, including our own roles in them as those who suffer injustice and those who inflict or benefit from injustice (the prophetic role, supported by critical theory);
2) teaching and modeling tools that integrate such critical reflection with mindful action in a cycle of emergent strategy (the contemplative role, supported by reflective practice);
3) transforming how we relate to one another so that we nurture wholeness, instead of oppression, in our relationships with each other and the earth (the role of community, supported by community development and transformative justice practices); and
4) connecting folks with resources, organizations, and actions from around the world that empower them to act in meaningful and effective ways (the role of movement building, supported by community organizing and networking).
I find those four approaches still compelling and relevant. Your list may be different, and that is also part of our work of building communities and movements for change. Because the heart of the question of whether religion and spirituality can be of any help in our present times comes down to the decisions we make. Becoming aware of and resisting all the ways we are complicit in legitimizing injustice is spiritual growth. Actively participating in movements liberating us toward peace and justice is spiritual growth. Rather than dividing us up between good and bad, categorizing ourselves as supporting liberation or legitimation, transformation or oppression, we can become aware of how we are each making these choices all the time. As I shared some years ago in a reflection on prayer,
“This world is both beautiful and terrible. Humanity is both beautiful and terrible. The line between the two [can be] very fine, between the sublime and the brutal, and the burden is sometimes overwhelming. Joy that cannot be contained, sorrow that cannot be contained. There is only room in my small heart if I make the room. So I make it my practice to make the room, to take the bounds of this small life of mine and make them boundless, my heart and mind wide open both to the suffering and to the exuberant joy of living. I read and sing and walk and plant wildflowers. Paying attention, I learn how to love. … we do not have to resign ourselves to the injustice of oppression, or humanity to the vacuous pursuit of accumulating money, power, and pleasure; … we do not have to lose ourselves in the resistance to this injustice, but … we can preserve our own humanity in the face of it, by finding ways to care for the earth, for each other, and for our shared future. And that is the best prayer I can think of, or know.”
