Category: Social justice

Religious liberals and the Occupy movement

I’ve been reading Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition, the new book by Dan McKanan, the professor of Unitarian Universalist studies at Harvard Divinity School. McKanan points out that although we think of abolitionism, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement as separate movements, they are actually part of one continuous tradition of American leftist politics. McKanan also points out that religion has always been intertwined with the American tradition of radicalism — not that established religious institutions have embraced leftist politics in America, for no denomination or broad religious institution has done that, but rather that many American leftists have been deeply religious, and have drawn on their religious tradition for support and inspiration.

With that in mind, I was not surprised to learn that when Occupy Oakland was broken up by the police yet again last week, most of the 32 people who got arrested were at the Interfaith Coalition tent — including Unitarian Universalist ministers Jeremy Nickel and Kurt Kuhwald, and seminarian Marcus Liefert. (Jeremy even made the news in a small way: AP photographer Paul Sakuma snapped Jeremy’s photo as he stood handcuffed and surrounded by three police officers near the Interfaith Coalition tent.) Jeremy has been blogging about his participation in the Occupy movement, and his posts offer a good example of the connection between liberal religion (especially Jeremy’s Unitarian Universalist commitment to democratic process) and his leftist politics — just what Dan McKanan is talking about. Here’s Jeremy’s post about getting arrested — and here’s a follow-up post.

Gary Dorrien on the Occupiers

Christian Century magazine interviews social ethicist Gary Dorrien on the Occupy Wall Street movement. The interview is a promotional piece for an essay by Dorrien in the latest issue of Christian Century, but it’s worth reading on its own. Best bit from the interview:

As a social ethicist whose field was invented by the Social Gospel movement, I treasure the Social Gospel’s emphasis on just distribution and the common good, along with Reinhold Niebuhr’s realist emphasis on power politics and the faults of liberal idealism. But liberationist criticism adjudicates what I take from the Social Gospel and Niebuhrian traditions. Social justice must not be reduced to concerns about the fair distribution of things. It is also about giving voice to oppressed communities and being liberated from structures of oppression and dependency.

Read the interview.

Clergy action at Occupy Oakland

Tomorrow, clergy can participate in the “General Strike and Day of Action in Support of Occupy Oakland” which is planned for tomorrow. Below is the relevant information, which I’m passing along from Rev. Jeremy Nickels, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Fremont, California. Here’s Jeremy’s note, slightly edited:

1. There will be a tent called the “Sacred Space Tent” that will be the clearinghouse and meeting place for clergy-related information and events. The tent will be interfaith, and non-faith welcoming. It will have a very high flag or other identifying markings. It will be staffed from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. by a clergyperson of some faith tradition. If you are interested in helping staff this group, show up early to sign up for a time slot.

2. All clergy should gather at the “Sacred Space Tent” a half hour before the three march times (9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 5 PM) so that we can all march together and multiply the effect of our presence. Those meet-up times at the tent are: 8:30 a.m.; 11:30 a.m.; 4:30 p.m. These are very important meet-up times and should be spread as widely as possible through all of your networks.

3. There will be trainings going on all day Tuesday, November 1, for anyone (clergyperson, layperson, etc.) who wishes to learn more about non-violence and how to embody the principles of Gandhi and King in the actions that we will be participating in on Wednesday.

4. Finally, we ask that you not only come on Wednesday, November 2, but that you bring as many people with you as you can, spread this information through all your networks and contacts!

7 billion, plus or minus

The United Nations Population Fund picked the date of October 31, 2011, as the day when the earth’s population reached seven billion human beings. The news media have dodged the real story — the real story is that there are too many human beings on earth — and instead have been creating the story that we don’t really know exactly how many people there are on earth right now. In other words, instead of reporting on the disaster of human overpopulation, the news media are reporting on something that really isn’t at all important.

There are seven billion people on earth today, plus or minus a few tens of millions. All our current ecological crises have roots in overpopulation. There are too many people, and too many people require too many resources and cause too much pollution, so we are wiping out other species at an unprecedented rate, and there is every likelihood that soon we will wipe out our own species. This is the story that most of the news media are refusing to report on; I expect they think this story is too scary for the people who consume their news stories, too scary even for Hallowe’en. Heaven forbid the news media should lose even a few consumers by reporting the true state of affairs.

Last week, I had lunch with my friend Mike-the-science-fiction-fan. He half-jokingly suggested that we should apply the cap-and-trade principle to the human population: each person gets the right to have, say, two offspring; if you want to have more than two (that would be four offspring per couple), you would have to go out and buy the rights to have additional children from someone who has no children. Mike and I both liked this idea because neither of us has children, and we could both use a little extra money. — And yes, we were laughing uproariously as we talked about this, for this is a completely silly and impractical idea. Outside of China, it is impossible to conceive of a political situation in which you could actually implement such a scheme.

Nevertheless, it would be nice if our society were kinder to people who choose not to have children. Carol and I have chosen not to have children, and we still get people saying to us, “Oh, but you should have children, you’d make such good parents.” I’m not convinced that we would make good parents, but that’s not even the point. Instead of having a social norm that we are supposed to encourage people to have children whether they want them or not, we really need to evolve a new social norm. We should thank the people who do have children for taking the time and making the sacrifice that raising children inevitably involves, and we should also thank the people who choose not to have children for helping to reduce overpopulation. — And yes, now you can begin laughing uproariously, for this, too, is a completely silly and impractical idea.

Big government, or big business? Neither.

This morning, Carol was reading aloud from an opinion piece in which the author took the Occupy Wall Street protesters to task because they didn’t criticize big government enough.

“That means he’s a right-winger,” I said. “Right-wingers all believe that big government is the problem. Left-wingers all believe that big business is the problem.”

Carol laughed, and the conversation moved on to something else.

But it’s true: in the U.S., as soon as a commentator reviles big business, you can bet that person is sympathetic with the Democratic Party, or the Green Party, or some other leftist organization. And as soon as a commentator reviles big government, you can bet that person sympathizes with, or is a member of, the Republican Party. Political differences in the United States have been reduced to that level.

This may be why I feel uneasy with both the left-wingers and the right-wingers in the United States. Even though most people would call me a leftist, I am skeptical of both big government and big business, especially since both devote little attention or energy to helping persons who happen to be poor. As a religious liberal, I want a society that is grounded in strong moral and ethical values. I maintain that, in these days of consumer capitalism, big business has given up all pretense of moral and ethical values, because it looks only to quarterly profits; while big government still clings to at least some pretense of adhering to moral and ethical values. Thus, because I revile big business more than big government, I must be a leftist.

At this point, I feel more comfortable with Occupiers than with the Republicans or the Democrats. The big problem in our society at this moment is neither big business nor big government: the real problem is that too many powerful people have abandoned moral and ethical precepts in favor of naked greed. As long as at least some of the Occupiers are willing to say that in public — as long as they are willing to excoriate naked greed — I consider that they are doing good work in the world. They still haven’t gone far enough in articulating a set of moral and ethical values I can affirm, but they’ve gone farther than anyone else.

Dan McKanan on Tavis Smiley

Dan McKanan, the Ralph Waldo Emerson professor of Unitarian Universalist studies at Harvard, gets interviewed by Tavis Smiley, talking about McKanan’s new book Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition. It’s a good eight minute interview.

The book comes out in November from Beacon Press. You can pre-order it from the independent Seminary Coop Bookstore.

Tense standoff at Occupy Oakland

Occupy Oakland was broken up early this morning. Citing allegations of drunkenness, sexual assault, and health violations, the city sent in the police at 4:30 a.m. to take down the camp. Given the timing of the police action, it’s hard to believe that drunkenness and health violations constituted a real part of the reason for eviction, and one sexual assault had been reported several days before. Nevertheless, the police broke up the encampment, and city workers removed all tents and equipment, presumably destroying the garden that Everett and I saw yesterday.

The Oakland Tribune has been liveblogging the events today, and as of 6:30 p.m. (20 minutes ago), about a thousand protesters are in front of city hall at the site of the encampment. Police have demanded the protesters disperse, but the protesters aren’t going:

The protesters, possibly as many as 1,000 people, are all gathered at 14th street and Broadway. Over the last 30 minutes, police have launched wooden dowls and some concussion gernades into the crowds. It was not immediately known how many protesters, if any, were hit. An Oakland Tribune news photographer was hit with something launched by police. At least two people have been arrested since the rally and march kicked off at 4 p.m. Many in the crowd are wearing bandanas, possibly to protect themselve if the police use tear gas. Sirens are sounding, motorcycle police from many agencies are in downtown and there is general chaos as police try and clear out the massive amount of people.

I talked with Everett a couple of hours ago, and we agreed that we were glad we had seen the encampment — more of a village, really — before the city destroyed it; and from what had had seen of the occupiers, we also agreed that we would not be surprised if they returned. But what will happen tonight is anyone’s guess.

Occupy SF, Occupy Oakland

Everett Hoagland and I went down to the Interfaith Clergy Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street San Francisco today. We walked to various banks where two dancers, labeled “Equality” and “Justice,” set up a golden calf, representing the idolatry of money, and ritually covered the idol with a cloth:

A poem started bubbling up for Everett, so he dropped out of the march to do some writing. I kept walking. There were something on the order of 150 to 200 clergy and other faith leaders marching; I counted ten Unitarian Universalist ministers, and half a dozen of our seminarians. TV news coverage of today’s event: Rev. Jeremiah Kalendae of the Unitarian Unviersalist church in San Francisco is quoted in the text portion of Channel 5’s (CBS) coverage. Link to ABC’s live coverage. Radio coverage on KQED (story begins 0:37).

In the afternoon, Everett and I went over to Occupy Oakland, and spent an hour or two there, talking to some people, and just trying to lend our support. I was impressed that the occupiers have a children’s program during the day, a library, classes and committee meetings, and they have started a garden:

The city of Oakland keeps threatening to arrest all the occupiers — nevertheless, with accommodations for children, and a garden, they are planning for the long term. More on the Oakland occupation: From KALW today, “A Day in the Life of Occupy Oakland” (audio with transcript).

Occupying the kingdom of God

We’re in Boston right now visiting family, and to day I read this on the front page of today’s Boston Globe:

When Occupy Boston protesters complain about greedy bankers, corporate jets, and the wealthiest Americans, Henry Hegelson feels as if he is one of the prime targets.

Hegelson, 37, said he is not only in the top 1 percent of American earners, but also founded a financial company and an airplane charter business. He said the protesters don’t seem to care that he built his wealth from scratch….

In that last sentence we see the chasm that lies between the understanding of the occupiers and the wealthy: Hegelson believes that he created all his wealth completely “from scratch,” while the occupiers believe that the financial system is basically rigged in such a way that the vast majority of people simply cannot build their wealth “from scratch.”

I come at it from a third perspective. Theologian Bernard Loomer pointed out the intellectual accomplishments of Jesus of Nazareth, and in particular Loomer’s intellectual conception of the “Kingdom of Heaven,” which Loomer himself prefers to call the “web of life.”

Based on this intellectual conception of the way the world works — that we are all inter-related in a web of life — Jesus pointed out the damaging effects of wealth. Too much wealth cuts you off from other persons, and indeed from all living and non-living things, in destructive ways. If you want to be fully supported by and participating in the Kingdom of Heaven, you must get rid of wealth. Too much wealth leads you to exploit other human beings, other living things, and non-living things — to live counter to the Web of Life.

Thus, when the rich young man comes to Jesus and says that he follows all the rules of religion, wand wants to know what else he must do to have access to the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus tells him (as translated in the King James Version): “Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thous shat have treasure in heaven.” The rich young man is “sad at that saying,” and wanders off and out of the story.

We never learn if the rich young man in the story actually sold everything he had and gave the proceeds to the poor. But we can be pretty sure that Henry Hegelson has no intention of doing anything of the kind; and so Hegelson has shut himself out of the Kingdom of Heaven. Unlike the rich young man, Hegelson isn’t even “sad at that saying”; he’s just baffled why anyone doesn’t think he is a hero.