Palm Sunday and Oscar Romero

Franco Folini, Mural: Tribute to Archbishop Oscar Romero, https://www.flickr.com/photos/livenature/176581012

I had heard of Oscar Romero before. He’s been described to me as a liberation theologian (although he would not necessarily identify as such) and Salvadoran priest (even though he eventually became an archbishop, a rank higher than “priest”). But what I’ve learned through both the discovery of my ancestors’ own history and the theological imagination of other marginalized communities is that the particularities throughout human history matter, and they are deeply interconnected. Archbishop Oscar Romero bears the example to this praxis of deep solidarity, and the particularity of his context and life informed the way in which he lived out this life.

Alongside Mexico and Guatemala, El Salvador too was colonized by the Spanish in 1524, and such colonial effects lingered as the Salvadoran War started in 1979. Oscar Romero witnessed this war and the torture and killing of many people, one of them being a personal friend of Romero, Jesuit priest Rutilio Grande. Grande’s death prompted Romero to be more explicit and outspoken about his social and political convictions.[1] He felt a deep responsibility—a deep solidarity—not only to the poor and marginalized, but to those who were stripped of their basic human rights in El Salvador. Romero even outwardly criticized the ways that the United States contributed to the perpetual injustice by sending military aid. The interconnectedness of war, colonization, and social (in)justice was at the core of Romero’s convictions.

On March 24, Oscar Romero was shot and killed while celebrating mass at a small chapel run by a hospital specializing in care of the terminally ill.

Although this reflection is on the day of his death, it is truly meant to be a remembrance of his life. I think about how Archbishop Oscar Romero was often described to me, as “liberation theologian” and “priest.” Perhaps he did portray many of the values of liberation theology, and sure, he was a priest, but Romero made sure that the particularities of his history and life experiences informed his praxis. I had a realization that many do not even know what they mean when classifying him with such labels, nor do they know the significant ways that Romero impacted not only the people in El Salvador, but many around the world.

This year, March 24 coincidentally lands on Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday narrates the story of Jesus, who humbly chooses to enter the public square on a donkey. Jesus taught us the example of humility, deep solidarity with the poor and marginalized, and the model of a teacher who lived out theory and practice together. I would like to believe that Archbishop Oscar Romero followed closely to the example of Jesus. Maybe, then, it is not so coincidental.

About Michelle Navarrete

As a second-generation Latina who lives in between the Mexican and American cultures, my faith inevitably intersects with my culture and experiences. My passions stem from within the Old Testament, and I use storytelling in my academics to engage others and cultivate connection.  People are part of this passion and I want my work to reflect that. Currently located in the most diverse square mile of the United States in Clarkston, GA, I am a doctoral student of the Old Testament at Emory University. During my time at World Outspoken, I hope that my contributions will renew faith perspectives in a way that mobilizes restoring change within communities.

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Footnotes

[1] Michael A. Hayes and David Tombs, ed. Truth and Memory: The Church and Human Rights in El Salvador and Guatemala. Gracewing: Herefordshire, UK, 1988.

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A Language for the Pain

To borrow a line from Willie James Jennings, “The things I tell are precise accounts while being exact fabrications…everything I tell you, everything, is the truth. It is the truth in service of moving us to a new place of gathering.”

Mi Amiga

Her lowered head spoke as we sat in silence. So did her hands busily crumpling a napkin from lunch. I listened to mi amiga’s body language while she gathered her thoughts and braced to share her pain.

“This place is wearing on me, Professor Cartagena. I don’t know how much I can take. Some days I feel like I’m gonna loose it…like I’m going to explode.”

Mi amiga was silent for a moment. Her brown hands continued to work on the napkin.

“I can handle the big things—the in-your-face racism or sexism. They’re terrible, but they’re so big that people can’t pretend they didn’t happen, can’t pretend that you’re making something up. Does that make sense, Professor Cartagena?”

“It does, hermana. It does. I hear what you’re saying.”

“When students taped ‘Beaner’ posters on my dorm door, there was no hiding it, no denying it. When they dumped dried beans into my laundry, it was clear that they’d been racist and had violated my privacy and my roommate’s privacy—I mean, they went into our room and put the beans in my clothes hamper! And when white students post racist or sexist things about me on social media, my friends and I can take pictures. We have the evidence!” 

After briefly raising her head to look me in the eyes, mi amiga again gazed at the ground. Her napkin resembled a powder. The evidence of its existence was nearly gone.

“But you can’t screenshot the stares, Dr. Cartagena. You can’t make sure other people see the sideways glances and stink eyes. You can’t pause the question, ‘How did you get into this school?’ to make sure other people hear it. You can’t rewind and play the ‘You know we can date and mess around but can’t marry, right?’ question white males ask you to prove that they’re trying to exploit your ‘exotic’ body and sexuality. You can’t prove that these things happen. You don’t have the evidence, just your memory. And the pain…It’s so isolating, Professor Cartagena. And it adds up. These things add up. They take a toll on you, on your body and your mental health. Sometimes…sometimes the big racism is easier to face.”

A Language for the Pain: Microaggressions

Mi amiga was suffering. She’d experienced neon-light racism, the kind that makes skeptics about racism’s existence confident that, here, at last, is an instance of racism that they may, nay, must denounce. But if we listen to her words and her body, this form of racism wasn’t the greatest source of her pain. Something else had taken a toll, and still was.

What caused my friend to lower her head? What prompted her to dismantle a napkin? What overwhelmed her? What made her feel like she might explode? Stares, sideways glances, stink eyes, racist questions about ability, racist questions about gendered sexual exploitation—these were the culprits.

Race scholars call these culprits microaggressions. Harvard psychiatrist Chester Pierce introduced the term “microaggression” in his essay “Offensive Mechanisms” (1970). Reflecting on abusive behavior, Pierce writes:

Most offensive actions are not gross and crippling. They are subtle and stunning. The enormity of the complications they cause can be appreciated only when one considers that these subtle blows are delivered incessantly. Even though any single negotiation of offense can be considered of itself to be relatively innocuous, the cumulative effect to the victim and to the victimizer is of an unimaginable magnitude. Hence, the therapist is obliged to pose the idea that offensive mechanisms are usually a micro-aggression.

Pierce acknowledges that some abusive actions are glaringly gross and large scale. They include the neon-light racism and sexism mi amiga suffered. But not all abusive actions are this glaring or large. As Pierce notes, most aren’t. Instead, they are smaller slights and put-downs some people receive every day. Moreover, the cumulative effect of these smaller scale injustices takes a toll on victim and victimizer alike, leaving both bowed under these evils’ compounded weight.

In this and later work, Pierce develops the concept of microaggressions to account for subtle, quotidian forms of racism. He argues that antiracists “must not look for the gross and obvious [forms of racism]. The subtle, cumulative mini-assault is the substance of today’s racism.” Thus, Pierce encourages antiracists to look for the stares, sideways glances, stink eyes, and racist questions mi amiga suffered. He contends that “the relentless omnipresence of these noxious stimuli” fill the U.S.’s social fabric. “These cumulative, minor but incessant put-downs often remain psychopollutants in the social environment,” Pierce writes, “[and] their lingering intractability is a major contributor to the continuing traumatic stress” racialized minorities suffer individually and communally.

A Language for the Pain: Racial Battle Fatigue

Building upon Pierce’s work, race scholars such as William Smith study the toll that racial microaggressions enact upon racialized minorities like mi amiga. Within an interdisciplinary framework called “racial battle fatigue,” Smith and fellow investigators examined how the cumulative stress of microaggressions impacts Latin@s and Black Males in historically and predominately white schools. The following chart details the cause and stress responses they uncovered.

Smith, William A., et al. “Racial Battle Fatigue and the MisEducation of Black Men: Racial Microaggressions, Societal Problems, and Environmental Stress.” The Journal of Negro Education, vol. 80, no. 1, 2011, pp. 63–82.

Microaggressions cause physiological, psychological, and behavioral stress responses in racialized minorities. The twenty physiologically responses Smith records include headaches, hives, intestinal problems, and insomnia. Similarly, the sixteen psychological responses range from irritability to hopelessness. And the seventeen behavioral responses vary from overeating to procrastination.

In subsequent conversations, mi amiga mentioned suffering from headaches and insomnia. She told me that she struggled with frustration and feelings of helplessness. And wondered aloud why she’d grown impatient and struggled to do easy class assignments.

“Professor Cartagena, I feel like I’m falling apart. What’s wrong with me?”

“You’ve suffered greatly, hermana. And your body has kept the score.”      

Returning to Mi Amiga

Each time I spoke with mi amiga, a passage from James Baldwin’s “Uses of the Blues” came to mind. Reflecting on Black suffering, Baldwin writes:

You’ve seen these black men and women, these boys and girls; you’ve seen them on the streets. But I know what happened to them at the factory, at work, at home, on the subway, what they go through in a day, and the way they sort of ride with it. And it’s very, very tricky. It’s kind of a fantastic tightrope.…And I know that some improbable Wednesday, for no reason whatever, the elevator man or the doorman, the policeman or the landlord, or some little boy from the Bronx will say something, and it will be the wrong day to say it, the wrong moment to have it said to me; and God knows what will happen. I have seen it all, I have seen that much.

When mi amiga said, “Some days I feel like I’m gonna loose it…like I’m going to explode,” I thought, “I know what happened to you. I know what happened to me. I know what we go through in a day.” But I didn’t share these thoughts with her. I didn’t even recommend that she read Baldwin—at least not yet. Instead, I shared the words “microaggression” and “racial battle fatigue.” I offered her language that illuminated reality and empowered her to name her experience. Naming the causes of our festering wounds is an important step toward our healing.

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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The Grace of Babel

Very few Latin@s in the Christian faith know the importance of small town Ruidoso, New Mexico. There, in a little hacienda in the late 80s, a group that would become some of the leading Latin@ voices in theology and biblical studies made a choice that changed the Brown Church for the next thirty years. The scholars gathered to imagine a new theological association for Latin@s. They discussed the challenges facing Latin@ immigrants to the US and the faith experiences of their people. Nestor Medina had the opportunity to interview Orlando O. Espín, a participant at this gathering, and he summarized the group’s decision by writing: “Aware of their differences and of the wrong perceptions they had of each other’s communities, they decided to downplay the differences that divided them and instead emphasize the suffering and marginalization they had in common” (emphasis added).

Downplay the differences. Emphasize the common struggle. This became the standard style for Latin@ theology in the US. To downplay the differences, the group of scholars adopted mestizaje as a central hermeneutic for understanding Latin@ identity and experience. Three decades later, theologians are asking if flattening the differences between Latin@s made certain struggles – like that of Afro-Latin immigrants who face the “double punishment” of anti-immigrant and anti-black bias – more difficult to overcome. By disaggregating the category “Latinos,” these younger academics reveal the greater challenges facing Latin@s made invisible by the homogenizing work of the past. Many today argue for a dispersion of Latin@s into smaller, specific designations rather than larger monolithic categories. Perhaps it can be said that Latin@s need the scattering of Babel. It’s time we speak in different languages.

For many, the Tower of Babel is a story of curse and punishment. The people in the story gathered to build a city and a tower to reach the heavens. After reviewing their project, the Lord thwarted their work by changing their tongues. Unable to speak to one another, the people scattered across the earth. It is common for this reading of Genesis 11 to be accompanied with a reading of Pentecost (Acts 2) as the reversal of Babel. In Genesis, God cursed the people into language diversity; in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit makes people understand one another. Several biblical scholars have challenged this reading of Babel and Pentecost, and it is important to reconsider these stories in light of the question of Latinidad. How are Latin@s one together? Must our oneness equal sameness? Must we focus only on our commonalities while ignoring our differences? How might a rereading of these stories provide a new biblical vision?

Eric Barreto points to the particulars of Acts 2 to note the disconnect between it and Babel. If God intended to reverse a curse, would God not have caused the people to speak the same language? Instead, the Holy Spirit causes those diverse speakers to hear and understand the good news in their own tongue. Language diversity remains intact. Therefore, it seems unlikely that God intended language diversity as a punishment, and the Holy Spirit does not appear to be undoing such diversity. If Acts 2 honors the diversity of languages, how does that change the way we read Genesis 11?

Pablo R. Andiñach proposes that we read the story of the Tower of Babel as an anti-imperialist story. He observes in the story an ironic use of the name Babel that relies on similarities in different languages. In Akkadian, the city is named Bab-il, which means the “door of God.” This was the short form of the full word, babilani¸ “the door of the gods.” A careful reading of Genesis 11 notes the motivation credited to the builders of the city. They wanted to make a name for themselves (v. 4). These builders, says Andiñach, were attempting to establish their supremacy by declaring their city as the gateway to the gods. Their city was to be the city, and their empire was to be endorsed by the gods connected there. It was their intention to establish this city as the seat of power. Already, Genesis 11 foreshadows the hegemonic vision of domination embedded in Babylon. The Hebrew writers mock this city when they write that God scattered the builders, and it is for this reason the place is now named Babel (Hebrew: confusion). God renames. God does not choose Babylon, nor does God permit the imperialists to absorb all peoples into their kingdom. The empire has been confused, scattered, left in disarray. What does this mean for language diversity?

“Destroy, O Lord, divide their tongues; for I see violence and strife in the city.”

— Psalm 55:9

Andiñach argues that language control, like the naming of a place, city, or people, is tied to power. Babylon is the biblical name for the empire, one which Israel would later enter as prisoners of war. The Israelites would one day be forced to speak the language of the empire, forced to live under the cultural hegemony of its oppressors. Genesis 11 is a foreshadow of God’s intention for Babylon. God condemns Babylon’s supremacy claims. God scatters the empire, and in doing so, God privileges those the Babylonians would eventually oppress. The story indicates God’s intention for the world. God does not want monolithic absorption into the empire’s ways of being. Instead, God forced the peoples back out to continue to fill the earth with teaming and flourishing. Language diversity is what God intended for the world. Babel was dismantled because it threatened God’s intended order. The rest of the Hebrew Bible cyclically shows God destroying Babylonian echoes; wherever monolithic violence is the dominant form of being, God dismantles it.

We must be cautious about how we judge the Latin@s of the past as they faced the empire’s monolithic violence. In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the US was operating an assimilationist vision for racialized minorities. This vision dates back even further to the early 1900s, as Daniel Burnham and other prominent city planners imagined field houses where immigrants would be taught the “American way of life.” These field houses would also host language classes, and it was Burnham’s vision that immigrants be required to attend these classes. This vision didn’t fully materialize in Chicago, Burnham’s city, but the spirit of this planning continued in similar political programs. The goal was to produce one way of being, according to the logics and visions of white leaders in power. In the face of assimilation programs like these, the scholars of the past resisted by naming themselves and honoring their own traditions and cultures. The protection of identity and culture is, in part, what drove the Latin@ scholars meeting in Ruidoso to collaborate. To understand their decisions, they must be reviewed against the Babylonian operations of the US.

Latin@s and Asian Americans

As mentioned earlier, the hacienda meeting is the origin of mestizaje as a significant theological tool for Latin@s in the US. Those present chose to use Virgilio Elizondo’s work as a central hermeneutic for understanding the Latin@ experience. To this day, mestizaje remains the dominant way of understanding Latin@ identity. We are the mixed people of the borderlands. Those who are ni de aquí, ni de allá (not from here or there). We are, according to the logic of mestizaje, neither white nor black; we are “brown.” Mestizaje presented the possibility to speak of our in-betweenness. The usefulness of the identity marker was its gathering power. Latin@ theologians from Cuba, Mexico, the US, and Puerto Rico could now speak as one “mestizo” people. They could live under one name.

This decision is not strange for its time. In the late 60s, student activists in California went on strike for an ethnic studies curriculum. In an interview for Asian Americans Generation Rising, Penny Nakatsu says she heard the term “Asian American” for the first time in 1968 while attending these strikes. The 60s and 70s were a time of coalition building, of gathering people from diverse nationalities under a single name. With their larger numbers this group could apply political pressure to get their needs met. Like the Latin@ theologians, Asian American students were most concerned about the shared suffering and marginalization of their peoples. They gathered to resist a common oppressive regime.

In 2021, Asian American, Latina/o, Hispanic, and other similar designators are contested by politically active students and scholars who share the motivations of their counterparts in the 60s and 80s. Today’s activists use a greater diversity of identifiers with the expressed desire of advocacy for unseen groups. This commitment is an echo of the past, but many in this younger generation believe the terms of the past are too homogenizing. Too monolithic. Among Latin@s, some even accuse the scholars of the past of essentializing the Latin@ identity. Essentialism is the inflection point. Yet the turn to more specific identities may not solve the essentialism problem. In a video about the erasure of black Latinas from reggaeton music videos, La Gata suggests we reinstate the brown paper bag test to ensure sufficiently dark Afro-Latinas are cast; Afro-Latinas with the potential to “pass” are her concern. In a desire to do justice, she risks essentializing Afro-Latinidad around the boundaries of pigment.

Missed in the tension between generations is the origin of the essentializing/naming problem. The marginalization of distinct groups in the 60s, which demanded a gathering response, and today’s homogenizing of minorities into a single “othered” group, which demands a scattering response, are both operations of white supremacy. These machinations are part of what Emilie Townes refers to as the fantastic hegemonic imagination of the US. “The fantastic hegemonic imagination traffics in peoples’ lives that are caricatured or pillaged so that the imagination that creates the fantastic can control the world in its own image.” The fantastic is not limited to works of art, marketing, or media. Townes argues that images of and about minoritized peoples shape the very fabric of the everyday. Yolanda M. Lopez reveals this most vividly in her 1994 art installation The Nanny, from the Women’s Work is Never Done series, in which she sets the uniform of a nanny, often worn by Latinas, between two marketing posters depicting white women exploiting Latinas. The marketing, in this case a tourism ad and a wool fabric promotion from Vogue magazine, continues to perpetuate an imagination that negatively shapes material conditions for the most abject.

Artworks like The Nanny demonstrate what Townes calls the cultural production of evil. The ads, uniform, and other elements of the installation demonstrate the way little everyday things perpetuate evil imaginings of minoritized peoples; they maintain the fantastic hegemonic imagination. The ubiquity of things that perpetuate this imagination ensures that everyone internalizes it. Townes again: “It is found in the privileged and the oppressed. It is no respecter of race, ethnicity, nationality, or color. It is not bound by gender or sexual orientation. It can be found in the old and the young. None of us naturally escape it, for it is found in the deep cultural codings we live with and through in US society” (emphasis added). How, then, do we avoid the cultural production of evil that consistently marginalizes whole collections of diverse peoples? How do we resist the fantastic hegemonic imagination and its tendency to group, name, and define people according to its own image? How do the generations work together to resist the empire?

ESSENTIALISM AND WEST SIDE STORY

In the 60s, when Latin@ scholars chose to live under a single name, they did so to gain greater political power within a system that ignored them unless they assimilated. The system, however, turned their gathering efforts into a tool in the fantastic hegemonic imagination, and it was used to perpetuate visions of Latinidad that further marginalized the people it named. This is perhaps most evident today in Spielberg’s recent remake of West Side Story. During a recent panel discussion with leading Puerto Rican scholars, Grammy-nominee Bobby Sanabria shared about his involvement on an advisory board that consulted Spielberg, Tony Kushner, and their team on the cultural issues to consider for their remake. Sanabria explained that the original film resonated with him personally because he remembered having to join a Puerto Rican gang in the 50s “to protect ourselves from the white gangs that didn’t ‘dig us’ too much…” He continued, “it’s a reality that happened and is still a reality today.” Brian Eugenio Herrera, another panelist, pushed back, noting that the reality of gangs was and is certainly true, but the impact of West Side Story is that it filled the US imagination with images of Caribbean Latin@s as criminal gang members.

The image produced by the film is not of gang life as self-defense but rather gang life as violent criminality. Over the 60 year period since the release of the original film, young Afro-Latinos have resisted this perception. What had been impactful for Sanabria was poison for the next generation. The problem, as explained by Herrera, was the development of an aesthetic archetype, a permanent caricature of what it means to be Puerto Rican. The film may have portrayed something specific to its time, but this image became the universal, essential description of Latino youth even beyond Puerto Ricans. With the release of this remake, the question of essentialism returns to the fore.

RESISTING THE AESTHETIC ESSENTIALISM OF BABYLON

The debate about West Side Story runs along the grain of the generational tensions already described here. An older generation praises the film; a younger generation resists it. Some within the older generation perceive positive power in it. A younger generation feels debilitated by it. Herrera rightly notes that the film, like the scholars of Ruidoso, set the style for what it means to represent Latin@ people. The scholars of the hacienda in Ruidoso also set the theological style for Latin@s, adopting mestizaje as their tool to downplay their differences. To resist the empire today, however, perhaps what we need to do is release the hegemonic controls of style and aesthetic. Again, we need the grace of Babel and the affirmation of Pentecost.

Victor Anderson, Professor of the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies and Religious Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, observes a similar generational tension in the work of his black students. According to Anderson, students continue to ask questions he thought were resolved by the previous generation of scholars. Questions like, “What makes one black? Must black scholarship be political? Are black films, literature, and arts anything produced by a black person? To what extent may black scholars embrace multiculturalism as a mode of difference and remain distinctively black? Is not there something about being black that is shared with no other race?” These questions echo contemporary questions about Afro-Latinidad and Latin@s more generally.

Instead of essentialized styles that restrict the identity to one form, Anderson proposes that black scholars conceive their work as expressions of the manifold manifestations of blackness. For Anderson, blackness should be understood as an “unfinished state” and a “complex subjectivity.” By unfinished state, Anderson is suggesting that the final, definitive word on black identity remains unsaid. Each new generation contributes to the shape and formation of black identity; they add another manifestation to the manifold. Complex subjectivity is an acknowledgement that each person within a group is multi-site, connected to other worlds that shape their identity. As Emilie Townes puts it: “we do not live in a seamless society. We live in many communities – often simultaneously.” Together, the ideas of these scholars point to a post-Babel world that affirms the desires of both generations and opens to a diversity of peoples.

The story of Babel and Pentecost reflect God’s affirmation of a diversity of peoples. Again, Babel is not a curse into diversity, nor is Pentecost a reversal into homogeneity. In both stories, God affirms the minoritized other and does so in contrast to the empire. (Pentecost serves as an early encounter between the Church and Rome.) How do we reconcile the two generations and avoid the essentializing tendency of Babylon? There are at least three lessons presented by the scholars discussed here.

1)    Resist the fantastic hegemonic imagination inside us

Emilie Townes stressed the real possibility that the hegemonic imagination can be internalized. This is just as true for the older generation as it is for the younger. Is it possible that the older generation failed to see the inherent essentialism in their advocacy? Yes, of course. However, to critique them without acknowledging the ways they resisted hegemonic forces of assimilation in their own day is to reduce their story. Is it possible that contemporary discussions about Afro-Latinidad risk essentializing blackness in Latin@ communities? Again, yes. But, to ignore the ways black experience was made invisible since mestizaje became an archetype would align us with the empire’s tendency to erase and assimilate. All peoples are non-innocent regarding the empire. To remember the Latin@ story in detail, that is part of our resistance. To acknowledge what inspired students in California to adopt “Asian American,” to remember why Latin@s adopted mestizaje, to remember why their differences were less important than their shared struggle, this is what’s required if we are to collaborate against the empire’s operations.

2)    Celebrate “Complex Subjectivity” as the grace post-Babel

While trying to explain her womanist theo-ethics, Emilie Townes writes, “life and wholeness (the dismantling of evil/the search for and celebration of freedom) is found in our individual interactions with our communities and the social worlds, peoples, and life beyond our immediate terrains.” The point is that diversity does not equal a society without seams. Diverse communities, however distinct, continue to have points of intersection. And, as Townes says so well, wholeness demands we work within our distinct group and with others beyond our tribe. We can delight in and celebrate the gift of Babel, the gift of diversity in language and peoples, while still connecting along the seams of connection. To say it differently, we can now celebrate the differences instead of downplaying them. This celebration should parallel our continued work against our common struggle. Celebrate difference. Resist the common struggle. That should be the formula going forward.

3)    Work in the Everyday (lo cotidiano)

For Latin@ and Black scholars, the everyday is the location for resistance. The artwork of Yolanda M. Lopez reminds us that the fantastic hegemonic imagination of the empire produces everyday objects of evil. So, our resistance must also operate in the everyday. Everyday we must be attuned to the ways our imagination is being shaped, and everyday we have an opportunity to make otherwise worlds. As non-innocent, complex subjects who live together in the grace of God’s work in Babel and Pentecost, we can create virtuous cycles of cultural production that set people free to live into their language and identity. Everyday arts, everyday products, everyday words can liberate people from the monolith. Everyday rituals can point people to the Word that judges Babylon and sets its captives free to testify of His goodness in their tongue and tribe.

About Emanuel (Ricky) Padilla

Emanuel Padilla is president of World Outspoken, a ministry preparing the mestizo church for cultural change. Emanuel is committed to serving bi-cultural Christians facing questions of identity, culture, and theology. He also serves at The Brook, a church on the northwest side of Chicago, along with his wife Kelly.

Follow him on Twitter to learn more.

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Poor Because They Are Lazy

Richard Delgado’s words stunned me. Putting his essay down, I meditated on this unsettling passage: 

[U.S. Latin@s] suffer disproportionately from poverty and school drop-out. A U.N. study showed that if all Latinos residing in the United States were considered as a separate country, that country would rank thirty-fifth in the world in a combined index of social well-being that included income, education, and access to health care.

Delgado was citing the UN’s 1993 Human Development Report. That same document noted that “In the United States, with the HDIs of white, black, and hispanic populations separated, whites rank number 1 in the world.” The U.S. Latinx community was thirty-fifth; the U.S. White community was first. And as Delgado observed, “the racial disparity noted in the 1993 report has widened and deepened.” The UN’s 2001 Human Development Report revealed that whereas U.S. Whites remained near the top of the world’s HDI index, U.S. Latin@s had dropped to sixty-eighth.

Seeing the suffering of Mi Gente

Reading these grotesque numbers carried me back to my first experiences with Puerto Rico’s poverty. Mi abuela was driving. I sat in the passenger seat. As we rode through dilapidated communities, my young eyes, raised in a middle-class New Jersey neighborhood, poured out tears. I had never seen such catastrophes. These were mi gente, my people. And they were languishing in extreme destitution. 

“Mira, Nathan,” mi abuela said. “Ellos son muy pobres y están sufriendo; they are very poor and are suffering. God calls us to love and care for the poor. We cannot look away.”

Later that visit, I spoke with a family member about the poverty I’d seen. “Oh yes, there are many poor people here in Puerto Rico. But they are poor because they are lazy. You see the same thing in the mainland.”

My relative’s callous tone and comments jarred me. Abuela had said nothing about laziness while we witnessed our people’s misery; she spoke about our divine call to love and care for the poor. Granted, abuela never explained mi gente’s poverty. But the contrast between her focus on neighbor-love and this relative’s reductive explanation for severe poverty shook me.

Returning to the Present

Chills jerked my body as I recalled these experiences. I picked up Delgado’s essay and reread the arresting passage. How to understand these truths, the poverty I witnessed, or what my relatives told me?

This multi-faceted question becomes more pointed when you engage updated data. Ed Morales writes that “on average, prices [are] about 21 percent greater in Puerto Rico than in the United States.” Though this percentage is like “major metropolitian areas like New York and Miami,” those cities only have poverty rates of “12 percent and 24 percent, respectively” whereas Puerto Rico’s “41 percent poverty rate (compared to the United States’ average of 14.3 percent) represented a much higher percentage of the population that has a difficult time just grocery shopping.” Morales presses the point. “This high rate reflects the concentration of poverty you’d expect to see in peripheral areas of US cities, showing how “American” socioeconomic problems are reproduced in an isolated island territory.” Morales wrote two years ago. Now Puerto Rico’s poverty rate is 43.5 percent—over two times higher than Mississippi’s, which has the highest poverty rate among US States.

These ghastly percentages testify to profound human suffering. And they force us again to ask: How to understand these truths, the poverty I witnessed, or what my relatives told me? Let me offer three biblical reflections that should inform every Christian’s answers.

Biblical Reflection One: Laziness and Want

Scripture identifies laziness as a cause of poverty. As Esteban Voth writes, “the book of Proverbs states that one of the causes which had contributed to the existence of poverty is laziness.” Consider the following passages.

Laziness brings on deep sleep;
    an idle person will suffer hunger. (Proverbs 19:15)

The lazy person does not plow in season;
    harvest comes, and there is nothing to be found. (Proverbs 20:4)

Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty;
    open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread. (Proverbs 20:13)

The craving of the lazy person is fatal,
    for lazy hands refuse to labor. (Proverbs 21:25)

Three verses link laziness to hunger; one links it to death. Thus, these texts reveal their agrarian context. Thus, they establish laziness’s lethal consequences.

Yet each of these passages address individual poverty, not its communal form. Three verses specifically reference a lazy “person.” The “you” of Proverbs 20:13 is singular. This limited scope matters, for as Ibram X. Kendi argues, “Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals. But policies determine the success of groups.”

When Isaiah and Amos chastise Israel for its oppressive treatment of the poor, they highlight how Israel’s anti-covenantal policies and practices—in this context, those opposed to the Mosaic covenant and law—produce or perpetuate poverty. Isaiah writes:

The Lord rises to argue his case;
    he stands to judge the peoples.
The Lord enters into judgment
    with the elders and princes of his people:
It is you who have devoured the vineyard;
    the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people,
    by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. (Isaiah 3:13-15)

The LORD condemns an elite group—elders and princes—for establishing and exacerbating poverty through their practices and anti-covenantal policies. Likewise, Amos declares:

Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Israel,
    and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they sell the righteous for silver,
    and the needy for a pair of sandals—
they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,
    and push the afflicted out of the way;
father and son go in to the same girl,
    so that my holy name is profaned;
they lay themselves down beside every altar
    on garments taken in pledge;
and in the house of their God they drink
    wine bought with fines they imposed. (Amos 2:6-8)

Israel’s elite exploit and oppress the poor, gorging themselves upon this community’s limited resources, and so worsening the poor’s plight. None of these condemnations come in an individualist key. All focus on groups and group dynamics. And each echoes texts in Proverbs.

Biblical Reflection Two: Injustice and Poverty

Though Proverbs identifies laziness as a cause for individual poverty, it also identifies societal level injustices as a cause for communal poverty. As Esteban Voth observes, because the same book “proposes that many times poverty is caused by injustice,” its readers “cannot generalize and attribute the existence of poverty to laziness alone.” Consider the following verse

The field of the poor may yield much food,
    but it is swept away through injustice. (Proverbs 13:23)

Whereas verses from Proverbs we considered in the previous section linked individual laziness to individual poverty and hunger, Proverbs 13:23 links the bareness of poor people’s fields to societal injustices. Thus, Proverbs 13:23 bears a striking resemblance to the texts from Isaiah and Amos we considered. 

Similar commonalities also hold. Voth argues that “In contrast to the wisdom literature, for the prophets the true cause of poverty was found in the presence of injustice. This injustice had been institutionalized in royalty as well as in the clergy.” We noted such institutionalized evils in the previous section. Here we note proverbs that echo what we and Voth read in the prophets.

A ruler who oppresses the poor
    is a beating rain that leaves no food. (Proverbs 28:3)

Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker,
    but those who are kind to the needy honor him. (Proverbs 14:31)

Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself,
    and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss. (Proverbs 22:16)

Do not rob the poor because they are poor,
    or crush the afflicted at the gate;
for the Lord pleads their cause
    and despoils of life those who despoil them. (Proverbs 22:22-23)

Isaiah and Amos chastise royalty for perpetuating poverty. So does Proverbs 28:3. Isaiah and Amos rebuke Israel’s elites for exploiting the poor. Proverbs 22:16 and 22:22-23 anticipate this rebuke. And Isaiah and Amos highlight how Israel’s elites have insulted God because they oppress the poor.

Reflecting on the totality of Scripture’s witness, Elsa Tamez argues, “For the Bible oppression is the basic cause of poverty.” Tamez has communal poverty in view. She continues: “The oppressor steals from the oppressed and impoverishes them. The oppressed are therefore those who have been impoverished, for while the oppressor oppresses the poor because they are poor and powerless, the poor have become poor in the first placed because they have been oppressed.” In a prophetic, proverbial register, Tamez concludes, “The principal motive for oppression is the eagerness to pile up wealth, and this desire is connected with the fact that the oppressor is an idolater.” Isaiah and Amos do not rebuke Israel’s poor for laziness; they do not exhort them to try harder and pick themselves up. Instead, they rebuke Israel’s ruling elites for unjust policies and practices that bear the mark of idolatry.

Biblical Reflection Three: Legal Injustice and Poverty

Rulers and ruling-class elites often promote exploitation and poverty through law. Isaiah condemns Israel’s elites for this very sin.  

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
    to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
    and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
    and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10:1-2)

These unjust laws stand in sharp contrast to the laws God instituted in the Mosaic covenant. There we read:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:9-10);

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,  who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. (Deuteronomy 10:17-20) 

God establishes laws to care for the poor and remediate poverty. Loving and worshiping God involves knowing that he executes justice for the marginalized and opposes oppressive, poverty-inducing regimes like Egypt’s.

Concluding With Puerto Rico

We return to the grotesque data about Puerto Rico’s poverty and our multi-layered guiding question: How to understand these truths, the poverty I witnessed, or what my relatives told me? In reverse order, we see that mi abuela was right to stress God’s call to care for the poor. We must love them—and so love their and our Maker. In contrast, we see that my relative’s linking of laziness to Puerto Rico’s wide-spread poverty is biblically dubious. Whereas Scripture links such societal level poverty to societal injustices perpetuated by ruling elites, my relative settled for a reductive and false linkage with individual behavior.

Biblically speaking, we must evaluate Puerto Rico’s poverty in terms of systemic evils perpetuated by ruling elites and the policies and practices they promote. This requires us to analyze and chastise elites on the island. But it also requires us to analyze the elites of Puerto Rico’s colonizer: The U.S. What Delgado says of Latin@s generally applies to Puerto Rico particularly: Latin@s require freedom from “the badges and incidents of conquest, including loss of ancestral lands, destruction of culture, suppression of their native language, and a public school system that systematically renders their history invisible.” And as I’ve written elsewhere, White U.S. elites crafted the laws governing US-Puerto Rico relations to solidify these badges and their accompanying poverty. These laws and the economic structures they protect trample Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico’s poor. Moreover, scholars such as Ed Morales and Teresa Delgado have shown that Puerto Rican elites like Ricardo Antonio Rosselló added cronyism and domestic domination to these evils. And unlike Zacchaeus, the island’s oppressive elites never repaid what they stole. Decolonizing this multi-sourced catastrophe requires confronting Egypt- and Rome-like exploitation and idolatry.

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Tempted to Silence

Stage Setting

To borrow a line from Willie James Jennings, “The things I tell are precise accounts while being exact fabrications…everything I tell you, everything, is the truth. It is the truth in service of moving us to a new place of gathering.”

Here is a temptation story. Does it sound familiar?

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En El Parque

We sipped our coffees between sympathetic sighs and pain-laced chuckles. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. That’s why we agreed to grab café and walk to a park where we could talk freely. We knew our colleagues wouldn’t be there. We knew the police rarely patrolled it; no need to worry about “inquiries.” Sometimes you must escape modes of surveillance so you can be—so you can listen and cry en conjunto.

Our visit did not start with sipping and sighs. Because our coffees were too hot to drink and our stories too agonizing to share without the security of a secluded space, we carried our coffees and swapped fun family updates while we walked to the park. We had much to celebrate. We had jokes to tell. Smiles adorned our faces and joyous laughter filled the space between us as we spoke. These laughs were divine gifts. We needed them and we knew it.

We reached the park and scanned the grounds. No one was there. Relieved, we selected a place to sit. Some burdens demand stillness. Sometimes movement fosters avoidance.

Our moods changed as we began discussing our personal pains. So did our cadence. Nervous, trauma-infused laughter filled the space between us. We had suffered greatly and we knew it. The brown bench bowed under our weight.

“Remember the racist meme?” I ask.

“Of course. How could any Latino or Latina forget it?”

“During a conversation, an institutional leader asked me if I had to use the word ‘victim’ when I talked about being pictured in that anti-Latin@ meme. ‘Perhaps another word is more appropriate?’ If I’m not a victim for being pictured in a racist meme that hundreds of people viewed on the internet, when would I be a ‘victim’?”

“Right? Sometimes these attempts to ‘reframe’ things to appease the constituents of historically white Christian spaces like ours leave you wondering: ‘Did I just hear that, or am I going crazy? You can’t be serious. Is it still the 1950s or something?’”  

“Exactamente. The subtle efforts to nudge Latinx folks into more ‘respectable’ speech—the kind that won’t rock the Anglo boat—infuriate and terrify me. They require so much vigilance! I’m telling you: It’s easy to become a cooked frog, assimilating to every minor temperature adjustment designed to keep ‘certain’ Anglo constituents appeased.”

“And when you resist, when you ask, ‘Why are you adjusting the water temperature?” they look you in the eyes and say, ‘What are you talking about?’”

“Preach.”  

“You see their hand on the nob. You watch them turn up the heat. But when you ask them why they’re doing that, they say they aren’t doing anything. The blatant gas-lighting is gross.”  

“Sure is.”

“Ever notice how often these leaders gas-light you right before charging you with being a troublemaker?”

“Ah—the dreaded T-word. Not sure any racialized minority can recover from being labeled a ‘troublemaker’ in a historically or predominately white institution.”

I sip my coffee; my friend is silent. No one sighs. Our muscles tense. Apprehension fills the space between us.

“Nathan, you know people are calling you a troublemaker, right?”

“I know some people are calling me much worse than that!”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too…”

“Okay, but hear me. I’m worried about you. People are labeling you a troublemaker, hermano—and some are trying to keep you from getting a seat at important institutional tables.”

“I know…and I’m grateful for your loving concern. You unfortunately have good reasons to worry.”

“Yes I do. We both do.”

“This reminds me of a line from Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction. Du Bois says that the U.S. will never have a truthful history ‘until we have in our colleges men [and women] who regard the truth as more important than the defense of the white race.’ What Du Bois says about U.S. higher education generally holds for U.S. Christian higher education in particular—especially in historically white institutions. My speaking out against the histories of racism, white supremacy, and U.S. Anglo-Saxon imperialism has upset some folks.”

“Sí; it has.”

“Fans of white Christian Nationalism are outraged. Some have called for my job. ‘He’s racist and a liar!’ they say. ‘Fire him, or I’ll stop financially supporting your institution!’”

 “Got to love the financial power plays coming from the very people who decry ‘cancel culture.’ I wish you never faced those threats. It must be anxiety inducing.”

“You know they are, because you get them too. Nothing like having to trust God for your daily bread when people are calling for your job or labeling you a troublemaker.”

We both look down. The bench remains bowed. My hands start to sweat as I raise my coffee to drink with my friend. We sip. We shake our heads and sigh. Then we look at each other. My friend continues.

“If you dialed it back—and I’m not saying you should—I suspect you could shake the label ‘troublemaker.’”

“I can’t dial it back. We both know that. If anything, I have been too quiet. Mi gente in Puerto Rico are the world’s oldest colony. They continue to suffer from U.S. white supremacy and economic exploitation. God has called me to bear witness to their miseries and amplify their voices in places where they have gone unheard.”

“You and your people have suffered greatly. And I agree about your calling. But I worry that your pace and the labels you carry may keep you from amplifying these voices in the halls of power. I mean, just look at how I’ve been ostracized and disrespected—and I’ve said far less ‘incendiary’ things than you have.”

Pain radiates from my friend’s eyes. Psalm 35 comes to mind as I consider my next words.

“I hear you,” I begin. “And I’m sorry you’ve suffered so much for confronting institutional racism. I hate it. I wish yours wasn’t a vocation of agony.”

“Thanks, Nathan. Me too.”

“The ‘reprimands’ and gas-lighting you’ve faced have been egregious. Simply egregious.”

“Seeing the institutional underside has been rough. I’ve shed many tears while crying out to Jesus. You’re right: It’s been a vocation of agony.”  

“I got that phrase from MLK. He says promoting justice is a vocation of agony in ‘Beyond Vietnam.’”

“I haven’t read that.”

“It’s so good. That’s where King says there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

“Some Latinx folks justify their institutional silence by saying that we need to go poco a poco.”

 “Yeah. I’ve received this counsel several times. It flies in the face of history. And it’s eerily similar to the gradualism King denounces in ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’”

“Ever the race scholar…But you’re right: Those are good connections.”

“Thanks...I wish they weren’t. I wish those pieces weren’t relevant to our lives.”

“If only…”

“Silence and gradualism remain enticing temptations. But often silence is betrayal and gradualism is an ideology that sooths flawed consciences while it perpetuates exploitation and oppression. ‘Don’t worry: We’re moving prudently—with ‘all deliberate speed.’”

“But Nathan, don’t you see, ‘We’re making big strides: We’ve written statements. You should be impressed—and grateful.’”

“You and I have heard those lines time and time again, haven’t we?”

“Yep.”

“So many evangelical institutions and institutional leaders repeat this mantra. It’s painfully predictable.”

“And it often accompanies gas-lighting.”

“You’re right.”   

We pause to sip our coffees. They’re nearly empty.

“Even when we do the work God’s given us,” my friend says, “promoting justice for and amplifying the voices of Latinx folks, we still end up in a position where we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we promote justice and amplify our people’s pains, people ostracize us, removing us from institutional or societal places of power. But if we’re silent or play the institution’s desired gradual game, we’ll get accolades and mammon—but we and our people suffer, though in different ways.”

“I hear you. That’s it, isn’t it? Nothing like being stuck between a rock and a hard place while you’re trying to stand firm upon the Rock.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“It sure is. Racial battle fatigue is no joke. We must recognize it. We need to take time to recover from it. I say this knowing that, for some reason, the LORD keeps preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies, keeps calling us to a Eucharistic feast in which we participate in Christ’s sufferings.”

“In these circumstances, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to remain silent or ‘work’ for ‘gradual change.’” Those paths are less painful and the fast tracks to fame, money, and power. ‘Forget all this misery. Isn’t Christ’s yoke supposed to be light? This isn’t light—it’s heavy!”

“You got me thinking about Jesus’s temptation. We face something similar. ‘If you just bow an assimilated knee,’ figures in historically or predominately white institutions tell us, ‘all these kingdoms can be yours. No need to suffer.

And why not better position yourself to empower your people?’ As if we could have those kingdoms and advance the Kingdom. As if we could support our people by selling them out.”

“Can’t serve God and mammon. No wonder some of the nudges and calls to assimilate feel satanic.”

“Now that’s a word.”

We wrap up our conversation expressing our gratitude for friendship. We stand and the brown bench creaks in relief. It is no longer holding our burdens. Our burdens aren’t gone; our coffee cups are empty. Still our cups runneth over.  

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About Dr. Nathan Luis Cartagena

A son of the US South (Mom) and Puerto Rico (Dad), Dr. Cartagena is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College (IL), where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy, and is a fellow in The Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies. He serves as the faculty advisor for Unidad Cristiana, a student group working to enhance Christian unity and celebrate Latina/o cultures, a scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, and a co-host for the forthcoming podcast From the Underside. He’s also writing a book on Critical Race Theory with IVP Academic.

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Cuida tu testimonio: A public theology of repentance

When I was a child, my mother would always say to me, cuida tu testimonio (watch, or take care of, your testimony). Whether she was dropping me off at school or going to a friend’s house, this dicho served as a reminder to always be on my best behavior. As the years have passed, this saying has become a guiding principle in my life, and my understanding of it has grown more profound. While as a child it only meant to not do anything that would embarrass myself or my parents, today it represents living in a manner that is worthy of my God. Mi testimonio is my Christian witness. It is the evidence of the supernatural work of Jesus in my life and my most powerful evangelistic tool for a suffering world in need of a Savior.  Mi testimonio is an expression of the image of God in me. It is my attempt to live as God’s royal representative on this side of eternity. 

I have also come to believe that while this principle applies to individuals, it also applies to collectives such as businesses, organizations, and even religious institutions. When an individual or institution fails to abide by the principle cuida tu testimonio, the integrity of their testimony is compromised, and often discredited. I believe this is the crisis of the evangelical church that has resulted in the loss of the credibility of the Church’s prophetic witness in the public square today. Ed Stetzer observes that, “tempted by power and trapped within a culture war theology, too many evangelicals tied their fate to a man who embodied neither their faith nor their vision of political character. As a result, we are finally witnessing an evangelical reckoning.”[1]

My mother also used to say, dime con quién andas y te dire quién eres (tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are). The apostle Paul similarly warned the Church at Corinth, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”[2] In the evangelical church’s desperate attempt to gain power, influence, and control through the veins of American democracy, it has lost the hearts of its people and in turn, compromised its public witness. And while not all evangelicals have engaged in these practices, we collectively bear the name and consequences of those who have. How then can the evangelical church regain its credibility so that it can once again be a transformative agent for the American conscience and the public square? I believe the answer lies in a public theology of repentance. 

The reality of the saying, cuida tu testimonio, is that while we seek to live in a manner worthy of God, there are times that we fall short of Gods calling on our life. In the same way, just as individuals sin from time to time, so also do religious institutions, as they are comprised of individuals. To this, mi iglesia pentecostal (my Pentecostal church) taught me that the Church’s altars are always open for anyone and everyone who is willing to repent for their sins, and that Jesus is ready to meet them in that sacred place to renew and restore them once again. It is in our brokenness and not our perfection that the confidence of nuestro testimonio lies. 

For the individual, the decision to repent from one’s sin is a central element of the gospel message; it is necessary to transform the human heart. For the collective, it serves to jumpstart the process of systemic and institutional change, which can be theologically understood as a form of “social sanctification.” The evangelical church’s adoption of a public theology of repentance has the potential to result in the restoration of the integrity of its public witness by living consistently with the very message it proclaims: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”[3]  

I imagine some Christians might have reservations about the evangelical church taking a position of humility by acknowledging its sins as counterproductive to the Church’s witness to the world. After all, the Church is meant to reflect the Kingdom of God as holy and set apart from the world. Therefore, to admit any type of fault would tarnish its character. However, I believe there is no act more Christian then that of repentance, whether individual or communal. In fact, the majority of the Bible is about a loving God who restlessly calls a rebellious people to repent from their sinful ways. Furthermore, if the Church does not model the central message of the Kingdom of God to this world, how then will the world ever learn what it means to repent from one’s sins and believe in Jesus Christ? 

Therefore, the most Christian response the evangelical church can practice to cuidar su testimonio and the credibility of the gospel message it proclaims is to repent. It must repent for placing its hope in false messiahs and partisan politics, for neglecting and suppressing the cries of black, brown, and minoritized communities, and for its companionship with white supremacy and its supporting leader(s) as exemplified at the Capitol insurrection. In embracing a public theology of repentance, the evangelical church has the opportunity to demonstrate to the world what it means to turn from sin, and even teach the world how to acknowledge and address its own historical evils through Christ’s message: “repent and believe.” In doing so, the evangelical church creates room for the Spirit to renew the credibility of the Christian message, restore the testimonio of the evangelical church, and enable the gospel message to produce spiritual transformation and social change. 

The people of Israel demonstrated this firsthand, as they knew that their public repentance would lead to the spiritual and social transformation of their community. It was only the righteous kings of Israel who were brave enough to acknowledge and properly respond to Israel’s sinful condition by removing the high places, tearing down the idols, cleansing the temple, and reestablishing their covenant relationship with God. This in turn led to the restoration of their community and the blessing of their nation. Repentance attained through the purging of evil, and belief proclaimed through the renewal of covenant relationship, the message of Christ to “repent and believe” is a timeless characteristic of what it means to be a Christian community. Should the evangelical church receive the call to “humble themselves, pray and seek God’s face, and turn from their wicked ways,”[4] perhaps then, the world will believe the gospel message they proclaim as good news indeed.

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About Daniel Montañez

Daniel Montañez was born in Visalia, CA to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father. He is a Ph.D. student at Boston University in the area of Theology, Ethics, and Philosophy, and an adjunct instructor for the Latino and Global Ministries Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the founder and director of Mygration Christian Conference, a non-profit organization that seeks to explore God’s heart through the stories of migration in the Bible. He is also the national director for the Church of God Migration Crisis Initiative, a ministry that seeks to provide church leaders with the biblical, pastoral, and ministerial preparation to positively and proactively respond to the crisis facing our immigrant communities in the United States. Daniel is dedicated to serving his Latino/a community at the intersection of the Church, the academy, and the public square.

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Footnotes

[1] Stetzer, Ed. “Evangelicals Face a Reckoning: Donald Trump and the Future of Our Faith.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, January 11, 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/10/after-donald-trump-evangelical-christians-face-reckoning-column/6601393002/?fbclid=IwAR2rJ3hrI0ld4HHRUCok788ZvoPD6B7k3lkbU3UylAVed17ZAT9NUYNchJ8. 

[2] 1 Cor 15:33 (NIV)

[3] Mark 1:15 (NIV)

[4] 2 Chr 7:14 (NIV; paraphrased)

What We Forget

Advent is the season encompassing the four Sundays which precede Christmas. Traditionally for Christians these weeks mark the beginning of our year and are defined by themes of remembering and waiting. While these weeks are latent with meaning for all Christians, I want to suggest that, for white Christians who are growing to care deeply about racial justice and reconciliation, Advent can provide an especially helpful starting point for our discipleship.

Remembering and waiting. We remember the lineage of faith to which we belong, including the generations of God’s people who anticipated the coming of the Messiah. We hear the longing in Isaiah 40:10-11, “See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” And we wait as a people who expect our Savior’s return. We understand that life as we know it in a world groaning under sin will not last forever. A day will come when the will of God will be done on earth as in heaven.

What is it about these Advent themes that can help white Christians grow in our commitment to racial justice and reconciliation? Before exploring this question, we ought to acknowledge why so many of us need to mature in these areas. For as long as there have been white churches and Christians in this country, there has been a deficit in our discipleship. Time and again, we chose racial exclusion over embodied solidarity with the rest of Christ’s body. The segregation in our churches today is not the benign result of personal or cultural preference; its roots run deep through the soil of racism and racial supremacy.

Of course, this isn’t how most of us think about ourselves or our churches. But over the years, many Christians of color have warned us about our captivity to segregation and complicity with racial injustice. For example, in 1898 Rev. Francis Grimke, the African American pastor of Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., pointed to the silence of most white Christians in response to the lynchings that ran rampant throughout the country. In his sermon he asserted, “Another discouraging circumstance is to be found in the fact that the pulpits of the land are silent on these great wrongs. The ministers fear to offend those to whom they minister… This is the charge which I make against the Anglo American pulpit today; its silence has been interpreted as an approval of these horrible outrages.”

Why has it been so hard for white Christians to confess our conformity to this wicked status quo? In large part, it has to do with what it meant to become racially white. When my ancestors arrived in this country, they did not think of themselves in racial categories. They were immigrants from Sweden and Germany and they brought with them the particularities of their histories, culture, language, etc. But upon landing on these shores, they faced a new racialized reality in which those who were white had the greatest access to the American Dream. On the other end of that hierarchy were African American and indigenous people, those most likely to experience racial oppression.

In order to assimilate, my ancestors had to discard their cultural characteristics and pick up the more recent social construct of race. They had to become white. This exchange away from cultural particularity to racial homogeneity carried innumerable consequences. As Isabel Wilkerson writes in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, “Each new immigrant had to figure out how and where to position themselves in the hierarchy of their adopted new land. Oppressed people from around the world, particularly from Europe, passed through Ellis Island, shed their old selves, and often their old names to gain admittance to the powerful dominant majority.” Because the country’s racial hierarchy was built on the plunder and exploitation of Black and Native people, newly arrived immigrants internalized these forms of racism as a necessary feature of the path toward the country’s promises. But there were other implications as well which bring us back to Advent.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

When my ancestors became white, they were engaging in an act of forgetfulness. They set aside some of the important attributes which had defined previous generations in order to access power and privilege. This was the price of admision required by the racial hierarchy and it continues to exact its toll today.

We see this legacy of forgetfulness in how many white people struggle to talk about race and racism. When I facilitate racial reconciliation workshops, it is always the white participants who stumble when asked to describe their racial identity. The difficulties only increase when we begin considering the impact of the racial hierarchy. Rather than coming to these conversations with curiosity and humility, white Christians have often reverted to defensiveness, deflection, and denial: I never owned slaves! I have Black friends! I don’t have a racist bone in my body! We’re all Christians so we shouldn’t focus on our differences!

The forgetfulness of our race engenders a false sense of innocence. Because we have not remembered the cost - to ourselves and to our neighbors of color – of becoming white, we interpret our society with the kind of boot-strapping possibility only available to the privileged. If we think about racial segregation and oppression at all, it’s with a vague evaluation of someone else’s choice. We certainly don’t assume responsibility in this story; we are but innocent bystanders.

Only we’re not. And as Christians we ought to be quick to confess not our innocence but our susceptibility to sins of all kinds, including pernicious racial ones. As Isaiah admits in another common Advent passage, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (Isa. 64:6) Why, for a people whose hope is so rooted in the grace of God which meets us as we confess our sins, is it so painful to acknowledge that we have, in the Apostle Paul’s language, conformed to the pattern of the world? We have forgotten.

Advent, with its invitation to remember, is the antidote that many of us need. As we approach our Savior’s birth, we are reminded of the danger posed to our faith by forgetfulness. We hear the stories of those like Simeon and Anna who recognized God’s Messiah precisely because they remembered. We hear the prophets pleading with God’s people to remember who they were - a sinful people in need of God’s comprehensive salvation.

If we listen closely enough, we’ll also hear the summons to remember our own troubled stories and histories. Advent beckons us to cast off our innocence and self-righteousness, to be done with the defensiveness, deflection, and denial which keep us from unity and solidarity with our sisters and brothers of color.

Remembering is not easy; there are reasons we’d rather forget. But as with every generation who has preceded us, when we choose to remember our histories – the losses, the complicities, the sins – we will also encounter the God has not never forgotten his people, who remembers his covenant with us. And with this memory newly refreshed, we can resolutely turn to the work of justice and reconciliation, freed of the forgetfulness and false innocence which has long kept us from our family in Christ.

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About David W. Swanson

David is the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church, a multiracial congregation on the South Side of Chicago. He also serves as the CEO of New Community Outreach, a non-profit organization working to reduce causes of trauma and raise opportunities for equity.

David’s book, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Discipleship, is available now. Read more from David at his website, dwswanson.com.