A reflection from The Rev. David Hoster
Dear People of St. James’,
Last week I read an op-ed piece that I found disheartening. Contrasting major demonstrations and civil unrest in the late 1960s with those we’re seeing today, the commentator said that demonstrations of fifty years ago were directed toward a government that could and did—however incompletely—attempt to respond. Given that divided politics of our day have paralyzed Congress—and given the reduced capacity of our government agencies—today’s demonstrations can do little to affect governmental policy and action. So, in this commentator’s view, it is all wasted.
As I say, I find that disheartening. However, the depth and duration of the demonstrations testify to a deep and persistent upsurge of hope and aspiration on the part of an unexpectedly significant proportion of our population. It is real. It is genuine. It must be heard. The question is, by whom? Who is there to hear what is being said?
When government fails, we the people remain. If government is deaf and paralyzed, then the people will hear. What we are seeing is one major part of our population signaling to another major part of our population that the time for change—change long yearned for, sought and believed in—is finally coming round at last.
Demonstrations are sounding this clear message to all our people:
We see the politics of division and domination. We see the power deployed through the whip, the rope, denial of voting and education, ghettoization, and now discriminatory, violent policing. We reject power that inflicts harm in order to silence. In its place, we call on good souls. We call on good souls in police departments, good souls in our nation’s heartland and suburbs, good souls in Evangelical and Catholic churches—we call on good souls everywhere to wake up from fevered dreams of domination and join together in building the moral nation our founders dreamed, the nation where all are created equal, with liberty and justice for all.
This message comes to us as we enter a hinge of fate in our nation’s history. We all know demographics are changing. By the mid 2040s white Americans will no longer be a majority in our country. In 2016, our President appealed to fear of this demographic change by presented himself as the last chance his voters had to keep America great in the old-fashioned way. We see what he meant when he threatens to deploy federal troops, in the words of his Secretary of Defense, to “dominate the battlespace.”
The demonstrators today, along with the women who poured into the streets in massive numbers after the Trump Inaugural, signal a different vision. They are the first of many waves to come that will eventually dissolve the sclerotic deployment of power by a dying regime. They are signaling good souls everywhere to join in a genuine national community, a new partnership rejecting systemic domination of one group by another, a dream long cherished by our deepest dreamers.
This vision stands a chance of succeeding because it is a vision not of those who dominate but of those who suffer domination. These are people who have been taught that having enemies is not the way to go—the same message about enemies first sounded by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. You cannot treat a lynch mob, southern county sheriffs or Swat police as your enemies and strike out against them. They have the power. They will kill you. It has been clear to the victims of oppression for over three hundred years that only the moral solidarity of a community that sees and perceives, values and respects the souls in one another and in their opponents can heal and grow their way into the future. Those once dominated know better than to seek domination. The pain in their hearts says so.
That moral community is the vision on offer in these demonstrations. That is the message when “Black Lives Matter” is painted on a city street in front of the White House in letters large enough to be visible from outer space. That is the message of people who say to the police, the heartland and suburbs, churches Evangelical and Catholic: don’t hold up the Bible and brandish it like a weapon. Open the Bible, read it and take it to heart. Yesterday’s weapons will not stand up to justice rolling down like a mighty river, righteousness like an every-flowing stream.
The Rev. David Hoster
