Magazine
IN THE ADJUNCT UNDERCLASS, Herb Childress addresses a pressing issue of justice in higher education: the mistreatment of more than half the nation’s college instructors. Childress explores the making of adjuncts—contract workers (like rideshare drivers) who teach on a class-by-class basis, earning a fixed rate that is less than half what a “full-time” professor would make for the same work. Most receive no benefits and no assurance of future classes.
After a boom in college attendance 20 years ago and the foolish assumption that population growth and a robust economy were constants, the higher education system is scrambling to make up for greedy mistakes. The price for those mistakes is being paid by teachers, who should be concerned about educating students, not struggling for survival on subsistence wages. And so the real cost is to education itself.
The Adjunct Underclass is masterfully written and thorough, covering budgets, expansion, accreditation, hiring, and the ambivalence of tenured faculty. Adjuncts offer horror stories of scraping by while waiting on empty promises of an established position. These stories demand moral outrage.
A YOUNG WOMAN armored in her blazer, caffeinated and tethered to the phone line of a Manhattan hedge fund, hardly seems the optimal audience for an artist whose work hinges on stillness and contemplation. And yet—if you saw an enormous book of James Turrell’s installations perched on your desk, how could you not open it?
That was my reasoning as I re-encountered Turrell’s oeuvre, third cappuccino in hand. I didn’t know it then, but Turrell’s artistic framework would provide a new way to think about New York City. More specifically, his clarity of vision vis-à-vis light and space stands in contrast to a city replete with people the critic John Berger describes as “resigned to being betrayed daily by their own hopes.”
The city that allegedly never sleeps is wonderful in many ways, but by the end of my tenure there I was increasingly overwhelmed by the hustle, noise, and collective anxiety around, well, everything. Temping at a capital investment firm, while a welcome paycheck, was not my idea of meaningful work, and sitting like a bird in a glass tower, detached from the people below, even less so. Reaching for Turrell’s book, which was likely deemed politically neutral enough for an office setting, was an act of desperation and belief that I could still be surprised, awed even. And I was.
TERRENCE MALICK HAS long been associated with spirituality. The director’s philosophy background, poetic style, and love of nature results in art that urges viewers to engage deeply with the world: Ask difficult questions, doubt, and believe.
But A Hidden Life, Malick’s latest, may be the most faith-oriented film yet from the director of The Tree of Life and The Thin Red Line. Through the story of World War II-era martyr Franz Jägerstätter, Malick explores what it means to wrestle with Christian conscience during rising xenophobia and violence. Jägerstätter (played by August Diehl) was an Austrian farmer executed for refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler. For Malick’s purposes, he becomes an audience surrogate as he encounters his community’s reactions to the Third Reich, and later a Christ figure.
Malick spends significant time establishing the beauty of Jägerstätter’s life before the war. We’re given glimpses of his village and farm, witness romantic moments with his wife, Franziska (Valerie Pachner), and fall in love with them and their home.
IN 1948, A HERMIT was made known to the world by another hermit. Like many Christian holy men, the Jewish-born Catholic contemplative and poet Robert Lax had his early spirituality enshrined in a book: The Seven Storey Mountain, the bestselling autobiography authored by his friend, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton.
“He had a mind naturally disposed from the very cradle to a kind of affinity for Job and St. John of the Cross,” Merton wrote about Lax. “And I now know that he was born so much of a contemplative that he will probably never be able to find out how much.”
Better known to many for what was written about him than for what he wrote (and he wrote a lot), Lax, who died in 2000 at age 84, wanted, according to his archivist Paul Spaeth, “to put himself in a place where grace can flow.” For Lax in the 1940s, New York City was not such a place. Though he worked with the poor at Baroness Catherine de Hueck’s Friendship House in Harlem, and had enjoyed jazz with Merton, he balked at the gaspingly fast pace and materialism of the city. He was also unhappily employed at The New Yorker.
“MY SHIFT ACTUALLY starts at 6:30 a.m., but I punch in at 6:25, get my coffee, and then we have a thing called ‘stand up’ where the managers talk about safety, what they expect for the day, and building announcements. They try to motivate people to pick faster. And then you’ll go to your station and you’ll start your job. In my case, it’s picking.
The screens display which item I need to pick out of a particular bin, and I’ll pick that item and put it in the yellow tote. Once the tote is full enough, I’ll set it down and replace it with another tote. That’s pretty much what I do for my whole 10-and-a-half-hour shift.
We get a 30-minute break at 10 a.m., after four and a half hours. Our next break is from 1:30 p.m. until 2. And then we work until 5 p.m. Yesterday I picked 1,300 items the first period. Second period I picked over 900 items.
EACH WEEK IN my immigration-literature graduate seminar, we examine one book that focuses on the immigrant experience. So far, we have read about Norwegian, Italian, and Japanese experiences. Our upcoming texts center the experiences of Polish Jews, Koreans, Nigerians, Senegalese, Mexicans, and Muslims, among many others. Faith plays a central role in each book we’ve read so far, both fiction and nonfiction. In each text, the matriarch of the family brings the faith of her mother country into the United States. The matriarchs are themselves the texts for the survival of the faith in these families.
In my family, my grandmother was the compass for our faith traditions. We grew up Catholic and later became nondenominational. We explored many expressions of faith before we found one that fit. As a family, we retained many of our Catholic traditions, because they are woven into who we are. It’s a complicated relationship, and one that we greatly value.
SINCE MOST OF AMERICA seems to wake up most days looking for something to be outraged by, I try to keep my indignation in check. Still, the news that members of North America’s Hymn Society had chosen “Holy, Holy, Holy!” as the greatest hymn of all time—beating “Amazing Grace” in an early round by a 70-30 margin—struck me as an affront to all that is good and, well, holy. Sure, who doesn’t like singing a resonant Anglican ode to the tenets of trinitarian theology? But up against “Amazing Grace”? C’mon, now.
I’m actually a little used to this kind of hymnal-based resentment, because some years ago denominations began actually removing one of my great favorites, “Once to Every Man and Nation.” As the head of the Episcopalian hymnal committee put it, James Russell Lowell’s great poem, written at the height of the crisis over slavery, was unorthodox because “its basic premise denies the fact that God repeatedly forgives his people and gives them more than one opportunity to amend their lives.”
LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I have spoken out more times than I can count under the literal and metaphorical banner of “Silence Is Violence,” my voice growing louder and louder in the past several years.
Yet recently, on one matter, I found myself having fewer words, not more. Gun violence rendered me mute.
The death counts that rise in real time. The fact that before we have comprehended one shooting, another has occurred. The relativizing of value and shifting calculus of loss we have begun to accommodate this “new normal.” The reality—contrary to what one would think based on media attention and political rhetoric—that mass shootings account for less than 2 percent of U.S. gun violence (suicides, by contrast, account for nearly 66 percent).
EVERY EMPIRE IN human history has used the tactics of fear. This fear is evident in the fact that for generations a dark skin hue has automatically made a person at best suspect, at worst a criminal. The empire identifies those whose language and nationality are different as less than human. Dehumanization becomes a tool to justify heinous laws, promoting them as necessary to protect citizens from a horde of savages, criminals, rapists, thugs, or whatever new word is used to instill fear.
Our sacred texts tell the stories of emperors, rulers, and pharaohs who justified mass extermination to maintain power. Herod the Great is one example. Herod was a ruler so deranged and paranoid about losing power that he had his wife, brother-in-law, and three sons murdered to wipe away any trace of royal blood who might challenge his throne.
It is under Herod’s rule that we encounter the revolutionary words of Mary as she proclaims her song of praise, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). For generations, Christians have reduced the Magnificat to a simplistic, spiritual song from a docile, obedient girl chosen by God. The political undertones and demands for justice against rulers and laws that oppress God’s people are rarely elevated.
A FEW MONTHS AGO, I was driving from Peterborough, Ontario, to my home at Six Nations Reserve. The route took me through the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe.
I began to feel and smell the spirit of the ancestors. On the right were farmlands; on the left, townhouses. In the distance, I could see the metropolis of Toronto. This is where Anishinaabe walked, hunted, gathered, and lived for years before first contact with Europeans. When the settlers came, they built structures to suit their needs. They took over the land by force, trickery, and other means. The concept of buying and selling land is absent from the Indigenous way of life. You cannot sell what the Creator has given you.
Many churches in Canada were built on Indigenous land, first by the Church of England and then the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC). Six Anglican churches were built on the Six Nations where I live. They are a part of my Anglican history; I can trace my Anglican roots to the early 1700s. It is a rich history. And complicated.
IN JERUSALEM'S OLD CITY, prices are seldom posted. Negotiating is not only welcomed but necessary. It is customary for the merchant to initially ask for a price far in excess of what both parties know to be reasonable. When such an offer is made, it is perfectly valid for the customer to reject the offer; only then does the real negotiation begin. But if the merchant’s counteroffers get progressively higher, it is perfectly justifiable for the customer to question whether the vendor is genuinely interested in selling.
For the past 30 years, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has often resembled a dysfunctional bazaar transaction. With each round of negotiations, Palestinians have been asked to pay a higher and higher price. The Trump administration plan released in June, called “Peace to Prosperity,” is no exception. But why are its terms so unacceptable to Palestinians?
Palestinian political leadership has consistently expressed its aim to establish a sovereign state in which the Palestinian people can exercise national self-determination. As Israeli-Palestinian peace talks over the past quarter century have demonstrated, the issues of borders, Israeli settlements, and Jerusalem are all negotiable to some extent, but any plan that requires Palestinians to relinquish the fundamental aim of national sovereignty is setting the price too high.
FOR SOME OF US, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays may be the only time all year that we see some of our relatives. Some probably harbor anxiety or even dread at the difficult conversations on politics and faith that surface during meals with family members who see the world very differently than you do.
In Advent, our thoughts turn to the meaning of Christ’s coming and the deep significance of the season for followers of Jesus—“waiting” for him to come, which has special and poignant meaning for us in the deep political and moral crisis in which we find ourselves. In many ways Advent is my favorite liturgical season, because it demands of Christians that we do the work of preparing our hearts for what it means that God came and lived as one of us in a world that needed (and needs) to be changed.
IMAGINE A MAN seized by a demon. He cannot be bound by chains or confined within walls. He is a danger to himself and everyone around him. In Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan M. Metzl lays out a compelling case that white folks are so convinced of an ideology of whiteness that we are willing to kill, and even to die, for it. One Christian way to talk about this would be to say that white people are possessed.
In his book, Metzl examines three public health case studies: gun culture in Missouri, particularly white male suicide; the failure to expand Medicaid in Tennessee; and the gutting of public schools under cruel budget and tax policies in Kansas. For each, he calculates the years of life lost because of poor political decisions made under an ideology of white supremacy.
THE WORD THAT comes to mind when considering American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time is gift. Edited by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, this anthology of poems from 50 living American poets addresses the nation with generosity. In her introduction, Smith describes American Journal as “an offering” for us to expand, renew, or establish our relationship with poetry and each other. She writes that she loves poems because they invite her to “sit still, listen deeply, and imagine putting [herself] in someone else’s unfamiliar shoes.”
American Journal presents 50 different takes on the American experience: a school field trip (“The Field Trip,” by Ellen Bryant Voigt); war (“Personal Effects,” by Solmaz Sharif); the shouldering of inequity on young, brilliant lives (“Mighty Pawns,” by Major Jackson); addiction (“My Brother at 3 AM,” by Natalie Diaz); work (“Minimum Wage,” by Matthew Dickman); language (“Music from Childhood,” by John Yau); and hope (“For the Last American Buffalo,” by Steve Scafidi).
DISUNITY IS SO often seen as an evil: the breakdown of relationship, of community, of cohesion. But disunity doesn’t have to mean destruction. In the arguments and protests born from our disunified state, we hear hard but important truths that push back on our assumptions and our hubris. In our willingness to confront our own doubts, and others’, about things we’ve always assumed to be true, we are invited to discover new and deeper understandings of truth. In disunity, our differences and limitations and failures clash against one another, sometimes violently, but those clashes can also be an invitation for us to be stretched and expanded—or at least to understand that the world and humanity are more expansive than any one of us. Our hunger can turn us into enemies, seeking to deprive one another so that we ourselves might have enough. But our hunger also reminds us that we need more than ourselves; we are not sufficient alone. And even when our disunity puts us utterly and irrevocably at odds, when it demands that we be separate, that gulf between us offers space for each of us to grow—perhaps even toward each other.
THIS NOVEMBER CYCLE of lectionary readings encourages our stillness and trust in God in times of persecution (Psalm 46). It also asks us to reconsider the signs and wonders of Jesus’ public ministry as an invitation into his redemptive plan.
In Luke 19, Jesus extends mercy in the form of table fellowship to the wealthy and despised chief tax collector Zacchaeus, setting off alarms. Everyone who saw divine hospitality in motion “began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner’” (verse 7). The taxation system of which Zacchaeus is a part, by profession and association, is no doubt inherently corrupt and socially abusive. Ironically, salvation comes to Zacchaeus with “breaking of bread,” table fellowship, and in the context of divine hospitality.
Luke 20 presents one of several vignettes that raise questions about the nature and origin of Jesus’ authority. Here a dispute pits Sadducees, the keepers of the Torah who do not believe in resurrection, against Jesus, the rabbi who scrambles and puzzles their logic. What is revealed is a strictness of theological imagination on the Sadducees’ part and radical truth-telling grounded in well-timed perception on the part of Jesus. Then in Luke 21, Jesus foretells terror, the kind which we 21st-century, world-redemption seekers would do well to hear: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes ... famines and plagues ... and great signs from heaven” (verses 10-11). You will be hated, Jesus says, but “by your endurance you will gain your souls” (verse 19).
Notes on Compassion
In Kishi Bashi’s fourth studio album, Omoiyari, he examines what history can teach us about America today. The forced relocation and internment of more than 117,000 Japanese Americans during World War II is evoked through poignant lyrics that paint parallels between then and now. Joyful Noise
EVERY U.S. PRESIDENT since Richard Nixon has complained about his news coverage. But the man who lives in the White House now is doing something about it.
In August, Politico reported that the Trump administration is drafting an executive order to counter “liberal” bias in story selection and search results on the platforms Facebook, Twitter, and Google (owner of YouTube). According to this report, both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission may be tasked with enforcing the neutrality of the digital platforms and the algorithms that prioritize stories and topics.
“Social media bias” must work well as a Republican fundraising pitch, because the administration and its allies in Congress have been harping on it for the past year. In September 2018, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey was hauled before the (then-Republican-controlled) House Energy and Commerce Committee and roasted over arcane and unproven claims of his company’s anti-conservative bias. The next day, Jeff Sessions (then still U.S. attorney general) called a meeting of his state-level counterparts to discuss possible actions against the alleged bias.
SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA, surely there lies a graveyard filled with racist bones. It’s abandoned and dry as Ezekiel’s valley. No one is asking if these bones can live, least of all the many people who proclaim they don’t have a racist bone in their body. Better they turn to dust, lest they be DNA-tested and matched.
But Ibram X. Kendi is laying claim to his. Founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in D.C. and award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Kendi identifies his own racist beliefs and actions in his latest book, How to Be an Antiracist, a deeply researched blend of history, sociology, law, and memoir.
“One of the central messages in How to Be an Antiracist is that we’re all on a personal journey to move away from our upbringing in a racist nation. And that journey must be deeply self-reflective and self-critical,” Kendi told me. “This is hard work. It’s easy to be racist. It’s extremely hard to be antiracist. But it’s possible, and I wanted to model how we could do that.” Kendi defines a racist as anyone (including a person of color like himself) “who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.” Likewise, an antiracist is anyone “who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.”
IN THE PAST two years, prominent pastors and church leaders—including Willow Creek’s Bill Hybels, the Village Church’s Matt Chandler, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Paige Patterson—have been accused of perpetrating or enabling abuse within their large institutions. By the time this story goes to print, another once-trusted person or institution will likely be proven to be corrupt, unreliable, and abusive.
While he was a youth pastor, Wade Mullen heard many of these hard stories from the teens and families he served. But when Mullen reported this abuse to his supervisor in accordance with state protocols, he was shocked when the church leadership dismissed it out of fear for what could happen to the institution. “Do you realize what reporting could do to that family? To this church?” asked a pastor. “These kids could take us all down with their storytelling.”
Despite this resistance from church leadership, Mullen reported the abuse to the appropriate civil authorities. After working for months to make clear why following reporting protocols was important for the safety of the vulnerable, he eventually resigned from the church.
The experience spurred Mullen to pursue a doctorate in organizational leadership, with a dissertation that examined how organizations respond to events that threaten their image. In his research, he told Sojourners, he “collected and analyzed nearly 300 media reports of American pastors of evangelical churches charged with a crime in the years 2016 and 2017.” Mullen, who now runs the M.Div. program at Lancaster Bible College’s graduate school, was profoundly affected. “I was stunned to discover that more than 200 were sex crimes, the vast majority of which were committed against children,” he said. “I was filled with grief and anger as I read descriptions of child sexual abuse, rape, child pornography, sex trafficking, and prostitution committed by those in positions of trust.”
In other words, Mullen became an expert on the very questions many of us have been asking lately: How do these systems end up enabling perpetrators while silencing victims? And—more importantly—how do so many of us let it happen, especially within the church?