Prophetic Activism

Progressive Religious Justice Movements in Contemporary America

Helene Slessarev-Jamir

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780814783856
• eBook ISBN: 9780814741245
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

While the links between conservative Christians and politics have been drawn strongly in recent years, coming to embody what many think of as religious activism, the profoundly religious nature of community organizing and other more left-leaning justice work has been largely overlooked. Prophetic Activism is the first broad comparative examination of progressive religious activism in the United States. Set up as a counter-narrative to religious conservatism, the book offers readers a deeper understanding of the richness and diversity of contemporary religious activism.
Helene Slessarev-Jamir offers five case studies of major progressive religious justice movements that have their roots in liberative interpretations of Scripture: congregational community organizing; worker justice; immigrant rights work; peace-making and reconciliation; and global anti-poverty and debt relief. Drawing on intensive interviews with activists at all levels of this work—from pastors and congregational leaders to local organizers and the executive directors of the national networks—she uncovers the ways in which they construct an ethical framework for their work. In addition to looking at predominantly Christian organizations, the book also highlights the growth of progressive activism among Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists who are engaged in reinterpreting their religious texts to support new forms of activism.
Religion and Social Transformation series

1
An Introduction to Prophetic Activism

All religious traditions have certain sacred holidays that embody their core narratives. Within Judaism, Passover commemorates the Israelites’ flight from bondage into freedom, while within Christianity, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. The weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday are an extremely busy time, yet in 2008 nearly 1,000 people gathered at Disneyland in southern California to take part in a posada. Posadas are Mexican celebrations of Jesus’ birth in which people go from house to house in remembrance of Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging in Bethlehem. This posada had been organized by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) in support of workers from the three Disneyland hotels and their children. The hotel workers were members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE) who were in contract negotiations with the Disney Corporation.

During the posada, Christmas wish letters written by the workers’ children were left for the managers of each of the hotels. The crowd stopped at the front entrance of one hotel to recite a liturgy written by the clergy active in CLUE, explaining why they were performing the posada at Disneyland. It read in part:

We also are reminded that Christ entered the world in a manger, where animals eat. … In the Christian tradition, we see that our King was one that identified fully with the poor and the stranger to teach us of a kingdom marked by holiness, justice, love and peace. … Today, as it occurred many centuries ago, there are many people seeking lodging and hospitality, like our sister and brother workers of the Disneyland hotels. … We, as religious leaders, will accompany them in this modern day Posada as we stand in solidarity with the workers who are on this long journey.

The liturgy then invited the hotel managers to have a conversion of the heart because “Our workplace should also reflect God’s justice by ensuring that those who are seen as ‘lowly’—janitors, housekeepers, cooks—are lifted up and not sent away hungry.”¹ Afterwards, everyone gathered in a nearby parking lot where the children were given gifts donated by various community and church groups while the adults drank delicious Mexican hot chocolate.

While CLUE reinterpreted the traditional religious meaning of a posada to become a call for Disneyland to treat its workers justly, the Jewish World Watch (JWW) has reinterpreted the Passover seder as a pedagogical tool that highlights the broader concept of all people’s rights to freedom. The Jewish World Watch, which has sixty-four member synagogues in southern California, sees Passover and the Jewish High Holidays as important moments for educating its supporters on the genocides occurring in Darfur and the Congo. As one of Judaism’s most sacred holidays, Passover serves as an ideal forum for Jews to explore present-day cases of genocide. Every year JWW distributes forty thousand pieces of educational material designed to be used at a seder, which normally takes place at a family’s dining room table. At the seder the ritual seder plate contains six food items, which each symbolize the Passover story of suffering, liberation, and renewal. In 2008, JWW created a small fold-out companion brochure that connected each food item to discussion questions designed to provoke small group conversations around the table about the contemporary meaning of the seder in the context of ongoing genocide in Darfur. In this way, the seder guests were invited to participate in a very traditional Jewish method of study based on one-on-one conversations in which participants reflected on how they might be willing to respond in the face of contemporary genocide.

Both CLUE and JWW are creatively drawing upon sacred events in their religious traditions to remind adherents that they ought to commemorate their religious origins as outcasts by embracing the demands of today’s outcasts for freedom and justice. These stories are two examples of an increasingly broad range of progressive religious justice organizing occurring in the United States, which is motivating growing numbers of people to act on behalf of justice for the marginalized. Yet, the extent of these forms of religious activism may come as a surprise to many Americans who have become far more accustomed to religion, especially Christianity, being used to support conservative political causes. Religion is becoming increasingly contested as it is mobilized to lend credibility to very divergent political agendas. This is especially true of Christianity since it is the faith embraced by the majority of the country’s religious adherents. During George W. Bush’s eight years as president, Christian conservatives gained unprecedented levels of political power by successfully championing what they portrayed as a “Christian” political agenda.

At its most extreme, conservative Christian rhetoric sought to project an image of the United States as a nation uniquely ordained by God to assume the mantle of the world’s hegemonic superpower. Claims that the United States is invested with divine power have a long history, dating back to the nation’s earliest days when British colonialists proclaimed their colony in the Americas to be the New Jerusalem, “the shining city on the hill.” American exceptionalism gained renewed vigor in the early nineteenth century as Euro-Americans pushed into the far western reaches of the continent, displacing the indigenous people they encountered and eventually laying claim to the northern states of Mexico. This territorial appropriation was commonly viewed to be the United States’ “God sanctioned mission to fulfill” its “Manifest Destiny.”² Interestingly, this rhetoric reappeared in Sarah Palin’s speeches during the 2008 presidential campaign and was no doubt an animating force behind the new conservative populism that emerged in response to Barack Obama’s presidency. More than thirty-five years ago, the activist theologian William Stringfellow offered a prophetic critique of this worldview.

To interpret the Bible for the convenience of America … represents a radical violence to both the character and content of the biblical message. It fosters a fatal vanity that America is a divinely favored nation and makes of it the credo of a civic religion which is directly threatened by, and hence, which is anxious and hostile toward the biblical Word. It arrogantly misappropriates the political images from the Bible and applies them to America, so that America is conceived as Zion: as the righteous nation, as a people of superior morality, as a country and society chosen and especially esteemed by God.³

There have been times in recent years when these triumphalist voices became so loud that it almost appeared as though they were the singular possible construction of the nexus between religion and politics. In reaction, there were calls, both in the United States and abroad, for a return to a purportedly older, liberal secular version of American politics in which all references to religion are banished from public political discourse. Many secularists would prefer that all mention of religion would once again be confined to the private sphere.

This book demonstrates that there is a third option: religion can be and is being used to frame a progressive politics that prophetically calls for justice, peace, and the healing of the world. Indeed, some of the most significant social movements of the twentieth century emerged from exactly such interpretations of ancient religious texts that pointed to the essential dignity and equality of all human beings as rooted in God’s love for all humanity. From Gandhi’s rereading of the sacred Hindu texts to Dr. Martin Luther King’s use of the Sermon on the Mount to construct a nonviolent movement for racial change to the emergence of liberation theology within the Latin American context, religion has served as a powerful motivator for social change among the marginalized.

In offering a far-reaching analysis of contemporary social justice activism in the United States, which emerged out of progressive religious ideals, this book acts as a counternarrative to conservative Christians’ narrow constructions of politics that became the embodiment of religious activism over the past twenty years. While conservative Christians strive to impose their singular set of religious ethics upon a religiously diverse American body politic, progressive religious activists’ interpretations aim to broaden American politics by incorporating people who currently have no voice within the political process.

While conservative religious leaders also often use the word “prophetic” to describe their critiques of the societal status quo, I employ it throughout this book to reference a religious understanding of politics defined by its inclusiveness, its concern for the other, for those who are marginalized. Borrowing a phrase from Howard Thurman, the grandfather of African American theology, it is religion that speaks to those who live with their backs against the wall.⁴ In the midst of the chaos and pain of the present, prophetic politics envisions an altered future in which human relationships to one another and the natural world are repaired. Within Judaism, this is known in Hebrew as tikkun olam, which means repairing the world. Prophetic approaches allow activists to ground their present actions, no matter how difficult or even life-threatening, in a vision of hope for a transformed future in which justice will be realized, right relations between nations restored, and peace ushered in.

The Contours of Prophetic Activism

Contemporary prophetic activism has grown in direct response to the steady reversal of both formal and substantive rights triggered by the shift from national to global capitalism and the accompanying rise to power of conservative free-market politics. In this country, conservatives gained national political power in part by vilifying the marginalized, including “welfare moms,” young urban black and Latino men, gays and lesbians, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims. Prophetic activism has also expanded in response to the exigencies created by the globalization of capital and production that has contributed to the exacerbation of income inequalities in wealthy countries and the deepening impoverishment of the poorest nations. These conditions have in turn fueled regional violence, especially in parts of Africa and Latin America, as national leaders make use of paramilitaries to engage in acts of genocide against marginalized groups in their own countries. Moreover, the religious peace movement in the United States was reinvigorated in reaction to the aggressive nature of American empire in the wake of 9/11 that left the country mired in two wars.

Present-day practitioners of prophetic politics are characterized by a commitment to nonviolent social change. Their thinking has been heavily influenced by paradigms that emerged over the course of the twentieth century, beginning with Mahatma Gandhi’s powerful example of building a spiritually grounded, nonviolent mass movement capable of driving the British out of India in 1947. This was followed by an equally powerful, spiritually grounded movement to end racial apartheid in the United States that succeeded in contextualizing Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha or active nonviolence to the struggle for African American civil rights.⁵ Both of these movements were grounded in the fresh reinterpretations of Hinduism and Protestant Christianity that affirmed the sacred and reciprocal quality of all human life, out of which flowed a call to do justice to the other. Similar processes of reinterpretation have occurred within Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam.

Another commonality of contemporary practitioners of prophetic organizing is their incorporation of aspects of liberation theology into their work. Having first emerged within Latin American Catholicism, elements of liberation theology’s message have now been rearticulated within a variety of American contexts. It is particularly common among Christian activists who are engaging in solidarity work both within the boundaries of the United States and beyond. It is less common among organizations whose primary focus is influencing the national legislative arena. However, when used, it shapes organizations’ moral call to action, and it articulates commitments to give voice to those who are marginalized, to empower those lacking rights to gain the capacity to act on their own behalf, and to stand in solidarity with people in developing countries who are suffering at the hands of regimes allied with the United States.

Although many of the activist organizations whose work is featured in this book remain grounded within the Christian prophetic tradition, in some cases, their self-understandings are expanding to embrace more diverse faith and spiritual practices. This is possible in part because this work exists independently, outside of the strictures imposed by direct denominational control that would be more likely to impose doctrinal limits on such work. Certainly, denominations do still connect and support prophetic activism, yet their priorities lie elsewhere. They tend to be more comfortable drafting position papers, doing educational work, holding press conferences, and engaging in legislative lobbying than directly engaging in prophetic activism. Independence gives present-day prophetic activists—and the organizations and networks they have created—the flexibility to respond to the ever-changing American political landscape, refocusing their religious lenses to respond to newly emerging issues and constituencies. None of the various organizations we examine in subsequent chapters are isolationists. Instead, they all work with a broad array of other religious organizations, secular advocates, and institutions including human rights organizations, legal advocates, unions, schools, health-care institutions, foundations, and even sports clubs. There is also a strong multireligious presence, especially within religious peacemaking, along with a growing Jewish presence in congregational community organizing, and in worker and immigrant rights work.

In this book’s final chapter we discuss a set of global justice organizations that have been birthed since 9/11 and are not overtly religious, yet some members of their staff and volunteer supporters engage with the issues they champion out of their religious convictions. It is probably not a coincidence that two of these organizations have the youngest supporters and staffs of any organization featured in this book, given the Pew Charitable Trust’s findings that eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds are considerably less religious than older adults.⁶ Another one has developed a set of religious resource materials for use in four of the world’s major religions, which they make available on their Web site. This pattern may well be the harbinger of an emerging trend: to be simultaneously secular and religious.

Prophetic activism is not a new phenomenon. It has manifested itself in this nation’s long, colorful history of religious activism on behalf of the abolition of slavery, the creation of a national labor union movement, the prevention of war, and most significantly for our present era, on behalf of African Americans’ civil rights. Many current activists are motivated to take action by a strong sense of connection to this historical legacy. So, for example, the Progressive Jewish Alliance organizes against sweatshops in Los Angeles, in part out of its sense of responsibility to Jews’ own history of immigration to the United States in the early twentieth century. Not only had Jewish immigrants worked in the sweatshops, they also became the leaders of some of the unions that continue to organize immigrant garment workers today.⁷ Yet, despite its long presence as an important current in American politics, present-day forms of prophetic activism have remained largely submerged, hidden from widespread public view. For example, while there was considerable media coverage during the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer in the early 1980s, it was rarely if ever mentioned by the mainstream media that Developing Communities Project (DCP), the organization for which he worked, is a congregational-based community organization. In fact, it is affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation, one of the four large national congregational-based organizing networks. Not only did this omission leave the impression that DCP was a secular organization, it also hid an important manifestation of President Obama’s own religious identity.

Many of the contemporary prophetic organizations situate themselves as the descendants of earlier social movements and include participants who were personally involved in the civil rights movement, farmworker organizing, anti–Vietnam War mobilizations, the Nuclear Freeze campaign, and the Central American sanctuary movement to name just a few. As one issue faded, participants moved into new areas of activism. Many of the older organizations now have multiple generations of activists within their ranks, who respond and engage with issues very differently. Still others, faced with the aging of their most loyal members, are struggling to stay alive, let alone attract younger adults. Interestingly, certain organizations’ concerns about membership decline are not unlike those facing the historic Protestant denominations with which they often share overlapping memberships.

The current flourishing of varied forms of prophetic activism is particularly significant because religious commitments create possibilities for people to act in ways that defy the dominant models of rational, self-interested actors found in most current theories of political behavior. Religiously constructed activism certainly has the capacity to sustain marginalized people in the face of great opposition. This brand of activism also has the power to create the ethical foundations for solidarity between the politically marginalized and those with privileged access to political power. By evoking humanity’s sacred bonds with one another, religious organizing can straddle the existing gulf between places of marginalization and places of privilege. Doing so opens up new spaces for broader social change campaigns. In fact, the last major period of progressive social reform that led to a large-scale expansion of formal and substantive citizenship rights during the mid 1960s was an outgrowth of exactly such broad alliances, albeit tenuous and short lived. Certainly one of the lessons of that earlier period of national reform is the central importance of strong grassroots activism integrally connected to effective advocacy within the national legislative and executive branches.

Prophetic activism is fundamentally concerned with the well-being of the marginalized both within the United States and within poor and violent regions in developing countries. A person’s well-being is fundamentally determined by their access to basic human rights, which rest on a universal understanding of the dignity of all human beings.⁸ Much of the activism highlighted in this book should be understood as a struggle for the attainment of basic human rights that are supposedly universally affirmed by the language of the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Thus, religious activism in support of workers’ rights can be conceived of as a struggle for human rights since the declaration claims that access to work is a fundamental prerequisite of human well-being. Article 23 recognizes the right to work, along with the right to equal pay for equal work, and the right to form or join a trade union as fundamental human rights.⁹

Yet, in the United States and elsewhere, those rights are often flagrantly violated. In modern democratic societies, well-being is integrally tied to access to basic legal and substantive citizenship rights. Within the world’s wealthy democracies, there are inherent citizenship rights that people acquire by virtue of their membership in a particular sovereign nation-state. These include positive rights such as the right to vote, the right to work, the right to fair remuneration for work, and the right to form associations, in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1 An Introduction to Prophetic Activism
• 2 Identifying the Qualities of Prophetic Activism
• 3 Organizing in Borderlands Communities
• 4 Religious Organizing for Worker Justice
• 5 Immigrant Rights Activism
• 6 Peacemaking
• 7 Global Justice Organizing
• 8 Conclusions
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author