We have to pick a fight

the call to political life

This week, news was reported that border officials in Texas were ordered to throw child refugees back into the Rio Grande.

The order allegedly came from Greg Abbott, the Catholic governor of Texas.

The trooper who came forward stated they were ordered to push migrants back into the waters, and that drinking water be denied to women, men, and children trying to cross the border during Texas’ latest heat wave.

This is what fascism looks like: The governor using state resources to enforce racialized terror on Black and brown migrants fleeing countries the U.S. destabilized.

The militarization and violence at the border is not Abbott’s or Biden’s alone.

God damn the religion that makes peace with the violence of the border, the degradation of the working class, colonialism, racism, misogyny, and queer people being pushed to premature death. This is evil.

Our faiths don’t fall from the sky complete. They are passed down by and among people. They are shaped by the interests—and moral limitations—of those who pass them down. Together we have to judge what was handed down in the light of human experience. That’s all we got.

Last week we wrote about how fascists create and shape their world, that the faithful must understand how this country, and all empires, were built. Finally, we left off trying to understand what an antifascist religious life could look like.

What more can the faithful do to challenge fascism?

If our theologies don’t justify the liberation of the oppressed, then it justifies their subjugation. There is no neutral stance. We jettison anything that justifies the subjugation of our siblings on the basis of their caste, gender identity, sexual orientation, indigeneity, national origin, and immigration status. We must understand that no religion is neutral, no faith is removed from the political, from the quotidian.

There is no ideal thing called “religion.” It’s a historical process. Whether it is humanizing or repressive is up to us. We must assert a liberating faith. Religion is fluid. There are liberatory ideas and language that can advance justice, particularly values that prioritize poor and vulnerable people in communal life. When oriented toward justice the world’s classical religions can still be a source of wisdom.

In our desolate world, the prophetic voice is more necessary than ever. The world is still crying out for the truth. Neither a charismatic religious leader nor a celebrity activist can be that voice. It requires communal effort from all religious peoples. The crises we face require rank-and-file prophets with S/spirit-filled moral and political clarity. It’s our collective voice that’s needed to denounce the conditions that produce indignity and announce the fact that it need not be this way and that we can work to change things.

Clergy and theologians must engage in public life beyond preaching and teaching. These activities have political significance only when they are an extension of organized political life. On their own, they’re just sanctified punditry. Our faiths, confronted with the urgency of the moment, are calling us into organized political activity. Currently, however, the civic life of religious communities consists largely of either repressive political organizing or volunteerism.

We must feed and clothe those who are bused to our cities. In the Bronx and throughout New York City, migrants are taken in and supported by immigrant families. The mosque down the block, every week, feeds the people of my neighborhood; and when rent cannot be paid, my community rallies to raise funds. Community members are also giving food, water, hand sanitizer, and masks to houseless men who try to rest and survive on the benches in our green spaces.

In 2021, 60.7 million Americans volunteered through an organization, performing on average 68 hours of volunteer labor annually. Studies consistently show that about one third of this volunteer workforce comes from religious organizations. That’s wonderful! It requires commitment, discipline, and organization—all virtues needed for prolonged efforts to transform our world. But that can’t be all. That working class people’s lives continue to decline alongside these volunteer efforts speak to their limitations.

Eventually, though, our congregations need to get over the fear of “getting political” because they already are. Our silences are deeply political. Our faiths are calling us into the arena of organized, sustained political life to confront the very conditions that make our volunteerism necessary in the first place.

The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren Program shows how charity and justice can be compatible when the former is incorporated into the organized pursuit of the latter. The political pressure created by the Panthers’ radical organizing coupled with meeting the urgent needs of their community won concessions from the federal government in the form of the School Breakfast Program that we take for granted today.

Given the massive levels of precarity people are experiencing, here and worldwide, people of faith need to leverage whatever moral authority their faiths have. We need to use this authority to not just continue to meet the needs of our people but to also counter the organizing of the religious right who weaponize religious language.

We have to pick a fight.

In solidarity,

Olga & Dwayne

We must understand what we are resisting

We are fighting for our lives

Religion in Revolt