Quotable: Citizenship
By Jay Phelan, President of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, in his weekly letter to the community:
Tuesday's inauguration ceremony was beautiful, marking a triumph of love, courage, solidarity, and justice over not just 8 years but centuries of hatred, fear, alienation, and oppression. A redemption, indeed, but not the Resurrection and not the Restoration in which we as citizens of God's kingdom place our hope.
We are the Empire, my friends. The United States of America was founded not purely on ideals of human equality (at the time 'men created equal' applied only to white European males who could afford/invade and defend land) but on the genocide of Native Americans and the slavery of millions of Africans. Obama moves into a mansion built by the hands of slaves, children of God kidnapped from their homes, reduced to property in the eyes of their 'owners', and forced to sweat and bleed so that others could live in luxury and idleness. No Northern smugness, please; Yankee factory owners got rich on cheap cotton from the South and many of our ancestors dressed much better than they could have if the shirts on their backs had not been subsidized by stolen human lives.
Let's not forget that it took the stubborn, blind, anemic hearts of this nation's privileged class a whole century to get from abolishing the legal 'right' to buy and sell people to establishing some basic laws asserting that all people ought to be treated as such. And fifty years later we have quite a long way to go. A few years ago at camp, I was giving a little girl a piggyback ride and she said, "You don't act like white folks. I like you." After only 8 or 9 years of life in this world (specifically the unofficial apartheid of inner city Gary, Indiana) she understood already that she is less welcome here due to the color of her skin. What kind of a childhood is that? 'Created equal' remains a noble but hollow sentiment as long as pigmentation and birthplace (neighborhood or nation) stack the deck against most of the residents of this planet. For every disadvantaged child who beats the odds and makes it big, there are millions who barely get by (no matter how hard they work) and thousands who don't make it at all.
Let's also not forget that 2,000 years ago the cross was an instrument of torture and the ultimate symbol of imperial oppression. Rome has the final say on life and death, y'all. Don't mess with Texas. Caesar is Lord, it doesn't get better than the Pax Romana, and anybody who begs to differ has an ugly, slow, painful death waiting for them, right in public view.
But the tomb was empty, Life had the last word, and the cross became a symbol of hope instead!
However, human history stayed messy and somewhere between Constantine and Christopher Columbus the cross started being used in ugly ways again. Christendom's global expansion agenda has hardly been an unqualified good. Gold and glory for us; grief and poverty for you. Jesus loves you, but our guns are bigger and we have our nation's treasury and our own wallets to think about. Business is business. And besides, who needs neighbors when they're taking up space on perfectly good land that could be put to much better use dismembered as raw materials for factories and paved with sugarcane, bananas, coffee, cattle, and tobacco for the good, more deserving Christian white folks to buy? It doesn't get better than the Pax Americana.
(This story, too, is far from over. Open an atlas sometime and look at all the cute, tidy little symbols depicting what each country 'exports'. Then wonder to yourself what that land looks like now, who used to live there, what happened to them, and whether they were entirely willing and eager to part with what the Invisible Hand in its infinite wisdom has taken away. Next, wonder how many pieces of someone else's broken world are sitting in your refrigerator and closets or buried in a landfill somewhere, never to move through the Circle of Life again.)
Homeless? Hungry? Overworked? Underpaid? What are you complaining about? You should be grateful that we tried to 'save' you at all. God helps those who help themselves, so we help ourselves to as much as we can get our hands on. The sun never sets on the Almighty Dollar. The truth will probably get you in trouble; the Marketplace will set you free.
"Christians live between Romans 13 and Revelation 13—between the powers that be, ordained of God, and the beast rising out of the sea—between the state punishing evildoers and the state persecuting the saints. Christians neither wholly affirm nor wholly condemn the state. We can and should love our countries and cultures for the good they can offer the world. But we are also called to prophetic witness when the state is oppressive and destructive and when it claims loyalties that it is not due. And we are always called to a loyalty to the community composed of every nation, tribe, and tongue—the Church of Jesus Christ. We live as outposts of God’s kingdom, sacraments of that coming new heavens and new earth. As much as we can we live out that kingdom life, that Kingdom of God, in the midst of a brittle human community. In all of this we seek the good of all God’s people, all God’s creation and every nation of the world."
Tuesday's inauguration ceremony was beautiful, marking a triumph of love, courage, solidarity, and justice over not just 8 years but centuries of hatred, fear, alienation, and oppression. A redemption, indeed, but not the Resurrection and not the Restoration in which we as citizens of God's kingdom place our hope.
We are the Empire, my friends. The United States of America was founded not purely on ideals of human equality (at the time 'men created equal' applied only to white European males who could afford/invade and defend land) but on the genocide of Native Americans and the slavery of millions of Africans. Obama moves into a mansion built by the hands of slaves, children of God kidnapped from their homes, reduced to property in the eyes of their 'owners', and forced to sweat and bleed so that others could live in luxury and idleness. No Northern smugness, please; Yankee factory owners got rich on cheap cotton from the South and many of our ancestors dressed much better than they could have if the shirts on their backs had not been subsidized by stolen human lives.
Let's not forget that it took the stubborn, blind, anemic hearts of this nation's privileged class a whole century to get from abolishing the legal 'right' to buy and sell people to establishing some basic laws asserting that all people ought to be treated as such. And fifty years later we have quite a long way to go. A few years ago at camp, I was giving a little girl a piggyback ride and she said, "You don't act like white folks. I like you." After only 8 or 9 years of life in this world (specifically the unofficial apartheid of inner city Gary, Indiana) she understood already that she is less welcome here due to the color of her skin. What kind of a childhood is that? 'Created equal' remains a noble but hollow sentiment as long as pigmentation and birthplace (neighborhood or nation) stack the deck against most of the residents of this planet. For every disadvantaged child who beats the odds and makes it big, there are millions who barely get by (no matter how hard they work) and thousands who don't make it at all.
Let's also not forget that 2,000 years ago the cross was an instrument of torture and the ultimate symbol of imperial oppression. Rome has the final say on life and death, y'all. Don't mess with Texas. Caesar is Lord, it doesn't get better than the Pax Romana, and anybody who begs to differ has an ugly, slow, painful death waiting for them, right in public view.
But the tomb was empty, Life had the last word, and the cross became a symbol of hope instead!
However, human history stayed messy and somewhere between Constantine and Christopher Columbus the cross started being used in ugly ways again. Christendom's global expansion agenda has hardly been an unqualified good. Gold and glory for us; grief and poverty for you. Jesus loves you, but our guns are bigger and we have our nation's treasury and our own wallets to think about. Business is business. And besides, who needs neighbors when they're taking up space on perfectly good land that could be put to much better use dismembered as raw materials for factories and paved with sugarcane, bananas, coffee, cattle, and tobacco for the good, more deserving Christian white folks to buy? It doesn't get better than the Pax Americana.
(This story, too, is far from over. Open an atlas sometime and look at all the cute, tidy little symbols depicting what each country 'exports'. Then wonder to yourself what that land looks like now, who used to live there, what happened to them, and whether they were entirely willing and eager to part with what the Invisible Hand in its infinite wisdom has taken away. Next, wonder how many pieces of someone else's broken world are sitting in your refrigerator and closets or buried in a landfill somewhere, never to move through the Circle of Life again.)
Homeless? Hungry? Overworked? Underpaid? What are you complaining about? You should be grateful that we tried to 'save' you at all. God helps those who help themselves, so we help ourselves to as much as we can get our hands on. The sun never sets on the Almighty Dollar. The truth will probably get you in trouble; the Marketplace will set you free.
posted by Ingrid at 3:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home