Commentary
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
IN MARCH, THE National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service sent recommendations to Congress for changes to the Selective Service System, the military draft. For people of conscience, the issues at the heart of our concern were the expansion of Selective Service and the draft and protection of the rights of conscientious objectors (COs). Conscientious objectors are defined by the Defense Department as those with “a firm, fixed, and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms, by reason of religious training and/or belief.” Some consider draft registration to be participation in war and a violation of their conscience.
During the commission’s two years of public hearings and debate, religious communities and peace organizations advocated for the commission to recommend that the Selective Service System be put into deep standby, as it was between 1975 and 1980. Short of that, we advocated for a process for COs to make their objection to war known at the time of registration with a “CO check-off box.” The commission ultimately rejected that option, stating that though it “would probably require minimal expense,” it would cause “confusion, during a draft, for those who indicated their intent to file for conscientious objector status.”
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
DURING THE COVID-19 pandemic, most Americans have respected government directives to keep in place and avoid participating in large gatherings. Now, several months into this crisis, governors are loosening restrictions or expanding exemptions, including for religious institutions. An April poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 77 percent of Americans oppose such loosening.
However, there is a contingent of Americans openly opposing self-isolation policies, especially among the religious community. A third of white evangelical Protestants support loosening restrictions, and their pastors have thumbed their noses at health and safety restrictions. Even in April, President Trump was pushing hard to have churches packed by Easter, in contradiction to the directions of public health authorities.
Why are so many willing to risk their lives—and the lives of others—to attend a worship service? For centuries, a sector of American Christianity has believed itself to be citizens of “God’s special nation,” and they are willing to risk contracting the potentially deadly COVID-19 to prove they are God’s chosen.
Americans are outliers regarding levels of religious fervor. As income and industrialization increase in nations, religiosity is expected to decrease—the U.S is the exception and the most religious nation (by statistics) among its industrialized counterparts. Religion is so deeply entwined with American culture that a 2015 PRRI poll found that two-thirds of Americans agree that believing in God was very or somewhat important to being truly American.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
WHILE WE WERE not strangers to grief before the pandemic, these months have been something of a master class. “Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint,” writes grief counselor David Kessler. “But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed.” We are witnesses to one another’s grief.
In our witness, we must acknowledge that loss is not equally distributed. Those of us with privilege have allowed this to happen, and we have much to answer for before God; there is so much that we must work to change. And we don’t have all the time in the world.
I hear empathic grief in parents who can’t spare their children the sudden disruption of their lives and the loss of rites of passage for which they have spent years preparing. And I hear it in children of elder parents who are sick with worry, and in family members of those deemed essential workers who, by choice or compulsion, risk their lives each day. I hear it in the business owners doing everything they can to keep employees on the payroll; in teachers, caregivers, advocates, and in my fellow clergy.
Grief propels us to do whatever we can to make things better and to offer hope and meaning for those we love. Spouses stand outside nursing-home windows with signs that say “I love you”; lines of cars drive by the house of a child celebrating a birthday or graduation; concerts are organized via Instagram; volunteer networks provide food and essential supplies to undocumented families. This is grief mobilized for good, helping us to do something to redeem the time we’re in.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
AMERICAN CHURCHES HAVE long harbored suspicion of certain types of government aid.
During the 1930s, clergy worried that federal relief would supplant the churches’ role in local communities and undermine their status. Theologically, church and state often are viewed as rivals. State overreach can lead to dangerous empire, a false idol, or threats to religious freedom. Church overreach can court theocracy. The U.S. Constitution requires the government to walk a careful (and sometimes ambiguous) line between enabling religious freedom and avoiding its establishment.
Yet, in a global pandemic with concurrent economic collapse, the state is crucial in protecting public health while also delivering relief to the millions facing financial hardship as the economy grinds to a halt.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
AS ISRAELI PRIME Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared this spring to annex significant chunks of the West Bank and further tighten control over Palestinians, with the acquiescence of erstwhile rival Benny Gantz, the blueprint and rationale for his actions has been clear: Donald Trump’s so-called “peace” plan. Since the announcement of the U.S. plan in late January, some have explained why it is harmful to even the most basic requirements for peace—but few have analyzed how the Trump plan dealt with Palestinian Christians.
The architects behind the so-called “Peace to Prosperity” plan prefer the nonexistence of Palestinian Christians. These authors share an ideological bias that is troubled by the fact that Christians are an integral part of the Palestinian people.
The plan mentions Jews and Christians on one side and Muslims on the other, as if to communicate that this is a religious conflict between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam. While this may serve the partisan domestic purposes of Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, this is not our lived reality as Palestinian Christians.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
PRESIDENT TRUMP “DISCOVERED” this spring that African Americans are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. “Why is it three or four times more so for the black community as opposed to other people?” he asked during a live coronavirus task force briefing in April. Black social media erupted.
One friend wrote, “The white man said it, but we have been screaming this for years.” Another person posted, “Blackness is not a risk factor. Anti-blackness is the comorbidity.”
I began to seriously consider the impact of race on health while becoming a registered nurse. Combating health disparities in the black community eventually brought me to midwifery. As a health care provider, the language of “comorbidity” (two or more chronic health conditions) and “modifiable health risk” (a risk factor for illness that can be lowered by taking an action) has become part of my vocabulary.
Following Trump’s question at the press briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded, “When you look at the predisposing conditions that lead to a bad outcome with coronavirus ... they are just those very comorbidities that are unfortunately disproportionately prevalent in the African American population.” A few days later, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams noted that minorities are not more predisposed to infection “biologically or genetically,” but rather they are “socially predisposed” to it.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
IN 1998, I was 24 years old and had just been hired as an assistant to Harvey Weinstein, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Within two months, my new boss attempted to rape me in a hotel at the Venice Film Festival.
I wanted to report Weinstein to his superiors; instead I was silenced by an egregious and restrictive nondisclosure agreement that prevented me from speaking to family, friends, doctors, lawyers, or therapists about what happened. I was imprisoned in this silence for 20 years.
Two years after The New York Times and The New Yorker broke the Harvey Weinstein story, I broke my nondisclosure agreement. I also published an op-ed in The New York Times: “Harvey Weinstein Told Me He Liked Chinese Girls.”
I was deluged with messages of support from the Asian American community, from the Christian community, and a few from the intersection of the two. One message from a member of my home church stopped me in my tracks: “I’m so sorry you felt unable to share your struggles with us, back in the day. I wish we had been able to pray with you.”
Nondisclosure agreement aside, could I have come to my church for support at the time of the assault?
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
HOW HAS AMERICA honored its avowed commitment to human rights over the last four years? Fellow nations will consider that question later this year during the Universal Periodic Review, a quadrennial evaluation by the U.N. Human Rights Council to which all member states are subject.
The review, scheduled for this spring before postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, promises a thorough accounting of U.S. progress and failings on human rights at home. Given the Trump administration’s withdrawal from global processes designed to safeguard human rights and its dubious moves to redefine the scope of human rights protections, this review is vital.
Central to human rights and our modern conception of justice is the idea of equality. No one is above the law. All should be treated fairly, without bias or favor—a value reflected in the biblical juridical instruction to not “be partial to the poor or defer to the rich” (Leviticus 19:15).
This principle of equality animates the review, a uniquely democratic process in which every nation can speak truth to every other and none is exempt. “Universality, impartiality, objectivity, and non-selectivity” are guiding principles. With no regard for American “exceptionalism,” the UPR’s egalitarian structure aims to blunt the politicized use of human rights, in the U.S. and elsewhere, against adversaries alone.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
WE DON'T KNOW the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic. We know of the many who have died as a direct result of infection. We know that whole countries have turned on a dime to shield themselves from the shadow of death as it passes over. We don’t know where it will lead.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Rebecca Solnit wrote, “Horrible in itself, disaster is sometimes a door back into paradise, that paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister’s and brother’s keeper.” Solnit reminds us that disasters and plagues sometimes signal liberation.
COVID-19 has forced the human community into mourning. In our retreat from the work-a-day world, it has imposed a global sabbath and Jubilee. Staring into this “cruel scourge,” as John of Ephesus described the Justinian plague in the year 545 C.E., can we also see that another world is possible?
The Jubilee legislation found in Leviticus 25 lays out a vision for “social and economic reform unsurpassed in the ancient Near East,” according to Robert K. Gnuse. The Jubilee laws declared that Yahweh was the rightful owner of all the earth, and therefore all Israelites—rich and poor—have an equal right to its abundance, within limits. In an economic system based on land and its produce, this was a radical transformation. The legislation undercut wealth disparities by preventing land speculation and by mandating debt forgiveness and interest-free loans. Finally, it ordered the release of the enslaved and those in debtors’ prison.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
WHEN SOMEONE IS dying, most of us know how to offer support. We don’t question their treatment choices. We bring them meals and rake their leaves and shovel their sidewalks. When a congregation closes—or dies—such acts of kindness are no less important. As a Lutheran interim pastor who has led two congregations to “holy closure,” I offer some suggestions for how to accompany a congregation as it ends.
Don’t make a decision to close more difficult by questioning it. A closing congregation has likely tried all the stewardship programs, read all the church-growth books, and revamped its outreach program a hundred times. For any number of reasons, none of those worked. Members feel as though they have failed in mission for God. What they need from the wider church is compassion and a reminder that Christians are people of resurrection who believe that life can spring from death. In fact, sometimes something needs to die so that something else can be birthed in its place. They will struggle to believe that, and you can remind them as often as they need to hear it that closure can be a faithful choice.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
IN OCTOBER LAST year, protesters stood silently in the streets of Kraków and Szczecin in Poland. This gathering was not criticizing the ruling political party. Instead, their banners bore the slogan “We Want the Church Back,” echoing “We Are the Church” movements directed at the Catholic hierarchy by laity around the world.
These Roman Catholics call to account sermons offered by conservative Polish clergy. The clerical leadership is “dividing people and spreading hostility toward others instead of teaching about our merciful God,” the group explained in a petition. Many Catholics in Poland feel homeless because they experience hostility, condemnation, and exclusion from the pulpit. They want to publicly demonstrate that the Catholic Church is larger than priests and bishops; that everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or minority status, should be able to find a place in the church that calls itself catholic (which means “universal”). Finally, they demand that the priests and bishops not reject Pope Francis’ message and that Catholic social teaching, the church doctrines on human dignity and common good in society, be returned to the mainstream of Catholic life.
A month later in Gdańsk, 150 members of the archdiocese protested the bishops’ negligent handing of sexual abuse cases. They were responding to a study by the conference of bishops released in March that noted nearly 400 cases of Polish priests accused of abuse of minors between 1990 and 2018 and to the release of a documentary, Don’t Tell Anyone, in which priests are confronted by their victims. The hierarchy refused to investigate reported incidents and failed to openly support the victims. Lay Catholics also specifically criticized Gdańsk’s Archbishop Sławoj Leszek Głódź for his lavish lifestyle and confrontational communication style.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
PRESIDENT TRUMP SPENT a large portion of his State of the Union speech in February touting his economic accomplishments, including cutting taxes and “job-killing regulations.” But what has America gotten in exchange for the 2017 Republican tax overhaul?
First, 2018 showed the largest drop in household charitable contributions since the Great Recession and the first drop in more than five years. Despite steady economic growth over the past 10 years and a more than 5 percent increase in individual giving the year before, this dramatic decline has left many organizations—including local churches, food pantries, and homelessness services—struggling to meet the needs of those they serve.
The Republican-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was the most sweeping overhaul to the federal tax code in decades. Among other things, it doubled the standard deduction. It is no longer cost-effective for most Americans to itemize donations. This creates a “giving gap” between middle-class donors and ultra-wealthy donors.
Even some Republicans found these changes controversial. They were unable to hide that most benefits would accrue to Americans with incomes in the top 5 percent.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
ON AN OTHERWISE quiet Thanksgiving weekend last year, the riverbank next to Revere Copper and Brass, the company known for making pots and pans that also made parts for nuclear weapons, collapsed into the Detroit River. The event was missed not only by many Detroiters but by most Americans, who remain largely unaware of the dangers of our crumbling former nuclear weapons sites. Michigan state agencies claimed that no radioactivity was released by the literal “fall-out”—or in this case, “fall-down”—but can they be trusted? Decades of misinformation about our nuclear weapons plants should put everyone on guard.
Work on the United States’ first atomic bomb took place at Detroit’s Revere site during World War II, and the facility continued to make uranium rods during the Cold War. During this era, intensive nuclear weapons production systematically contaminated lands surrounding such Department of Energy sites as Rocky Flats in Colorado, Pantex in Texas, and Hanford in Washington state. As we enter a new era when these now-defunct sites are either remediated or left to crumble, what do we need to know?
Water safety is only one concern. The fact that Michigan’s state agencies only found out about the spill after the Canadian side reported it should be a red flag. It took a full week for the state’s environmental agency to test the water at the Revere location, just downstream from the intake pipes for drinking water for most southeast Michigan residents. Michigan especially should be vigilant regarding water safety, with Flint residents still waiting for safe drinking water.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
ELECTIONS ARE A chance for voters to throw their support behind leaders they think are going to best bring about our hopes and visions for what this country can be. But there are a lot of reasons why eligible Americans may have a hard time casting a ballot that counts. One reason is sloppy purges of the voter rolls.
Purges are a practice—often controversial—of election administrators removing or cancelling voters from registration lists in order to update state registration rolls. We all benefit from clean and accurate voter rolls, which are used by poll workers to identify who is registered to vote. There is no real dispute that people who are not eligible should be removed from the rolls. Too often, however, purge processes are shrouded in secrecy, prone to error, and vulnerable to manipulation.
Part of the reason purges are so controversial is because more voters are being purged than in the past, and there is no satisfying explanation as to why. Between 2006 and 2008, the U.S. purged about 12 million voters. Between 2016 and 2018, however, the U.S. purged about 17 million voters. That’s an increase of more than 33 percent—during a time when total population growth was about 6 percent and the number of registered voters increased by 18 percent.
Another reason purges are controversial are their locations. Battleground states like Ohio and Wisconsin have had recent purge flare-ups. Ohio has a practice whereby voters who miss one election are put on a track for removal from the rolls. While voters can take steps to get themselves off that track, many believe that starting the process after missing only one election is too aggressive.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
IN LESS THAN two weeks in late 2019, three heads of government (in Iraq, Lebanon, and Bolivia) agreed to step down under pressure from mass protests. Earlier last year, long-standing military dictators in Sudan and Algeria were forced from power following popular uprisings.
On their own, these events are remarkable. What makes them truly extraordinary is that they came amid a worldwide protest wave from Hong Kong to Manipur to Chile that has toppled governments, led to new social policies, and challenged basic economic structures.
Authoritarian regimes are not protesters’ only targets. In Chile, considered an oasis of stability in South America, protests triggered by a hike in subway fares have grown into popular demands for an end to corruption and economic inequality. And the global climate movement has used walkouts, sit-ins, and civil disobedience to dramatize the need for urgent action. In each case, popular dissatisfaction with traditional institutional approaches has encouraged a turn to extra-institutional (and at times extra-legal) resistance.
Surprisingly, this proliferation of people-power movements has taken place amid a period of declining effectiveness for movements. While around 70 percent of major nonviolent movements in the 1990s succeeded, only around 30 percent did so from 2010 to 2017. Protests have been easier to start but more difficult to resolve. So, have the movements of 2019 broken these trends?
We link the declining rates of effectiveness and their potential reversal to the emergence of parallel global networks of protesters and repressive governments (both dictatorships and democracies), who use increasing access to global information to rapidly learn from one another. This means that ideas, symbols, and tactics that both help movements succeed and successfully suppress them spread quickly from their origins to other struggles. In the past, waves of successful protests often lasted years. What we are seeing now—and are likely to see more of in the future—are short, sharp waves of successful protests followed by short waves of failures.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
ON A COLD January day in 2010, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens felt so strongly about the dangers of corruption that he delivered a rare oral dissent in the Citizens United case. Decrying the majority’s “crabbed view of corruption” that focused on quid pro quo arrangements exclusively, Justice Stevens countered, “There are threats of corruption that are far more destructive to democratic society than the odd bribe. Yet the majority’s understanding of corruption would leave lawmakers impotent to address all but the most discrete abuses.”
In retrospect, the striking thing from that winter morning was not so much the existence of Steven’s oral dissent (though notable), but the basic agreement on all sides. No one on the court contested the idea that corruption poses a threat to “democratic society.” The majority and the minority simply split on whether the specific practice at issue constituted a form of corruption.
Ten years later, we cannot take the same presupposition for granted. Instead of identifying corruption as a danger to the republic, we are all too ready to treat it as an inescapable part of American life. Indeed, the rationalizations have now become as predictable as they are depressing: It may be distasteful, but both sides do it. It is a necessary evil. Get over it.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
ON ASH WEDNESDAY the dust from which we came and to which we return is daubed on Christians’ foreheads. It is an intimate reminder that the Spirit of God breathes in us and we live; without the Spirit we crumble.
To be more Christlike means facing death in all its forms—the death of reputation, the death of truth, and the bodily death of our beloveds. Lenten scriptures keep before us stories of temptation, failure, and the heavy machinery of this empire or that, always shifting into position to crush those who threaten human power and wealth. There are hints of resurrection in the lectionary readings, but the pain and destruction of dreams and life that comes before is given its full due.
We are too well acquainted with the world and its ways not to imagine what massacre or plague filled that valley with dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision. And, in John’s gospel, Jesus is confronted by Lazarus’ grieving, accusing sister. Why did you not come when called? Mary demands, while Lazarus was alive and could be healed. The story is raw with the pitch of her rage and Jesus’ own tears.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
IN 2016, CANDIDATE Donald Trump vowed to halt “endless wars.” The Democratic candidates running for president this year have made similar promises.
Yet, following the drone-strike killing of Iran’s senior military commander in early January, more troops are going to the Middle East and military tensions have increased. U.S. forces continue to drop bombs and conduct combat operations in Afghanistan and other countries, as Washington’s propensity for military intervention shows little sign of abating. The power of the Pentagon has increased and will grow further in the years ahead as the 2020 military budget doubles down on money and weapons to wage war across the globe.
When most of us hear the term endless war, we think of Afghanistan. Rightly so, as the war is now in its 19th year, with no end in sight. For years we were told by political leaders, including President Obama, that the Afghanistan conflict was a legal and justified war, as opposed to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Our persistent efforts, we were told, were paying off in countering terrorism and advancing democracy and human rights.
Now we know this was a lie. The release of the so-called Afghanistan Papers in December revealed systematic deception and failure. Based on 2,000 pages of confidential interviews with those who fought and directed the war, the Afghanistan Papers confirm that Pentagon and White House officials made claims of success they knew to be false and refused to admit the war was unwinnable.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
I CAN NAME Emma’s favorite foods: roasted sweet potatoes and acai smoothie bowls. I’ve spent hours with her two sisters and classmates. We’ve traveled across the country together and danced to all her most-loved songs.
Week after week, with one tap on my screen, I instantly enter Emma’s world. As we laugh and smile at each other, it feels as if I am spending time with a friend, albeit a virtual one.
Emma Abrahamson is one of the countless Generation Z video bloggers on YouTube (some with tens of millions of followers) who are re-creating the nature of human friendship and experience.
The next presidential election will include a wave of Gen Zers voting for the first time. Who are they? What do they care about?
Beginning with those born in 1995, the same year as the commercial internet, Gen Zers only know a life of navigating multiple realities. While I (a millennial) am part of the generation shaped by the arrival of instant communication, Gen Z is the generation shaped by the arrival of instant experience. They are constantly living on the cusp of the virtual and the physical—and, just like Emma, draw the rest of us in.
Some worry that such a technology-centered existence, filled with YouTube friends and instantaneous everything, leaves young people isolated and ill-equipped to live with uncertainty. Researchers claim it is leading to the highest rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide ever recorded.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
BEFORE SUNRISE, the Chicago Federation of Labor team hit the city streets in an SUV packed with fresh donuts and hot coffee. We were bringing encouragement to picketing Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) Local 1 and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 members. A cold front swept through on the first day of the Chicago public schools strike, which launched tens of thousands of public school teachers and school support staff into the streets in October, but it could not chill the fire for justice in the union members. They wanted something better not just for themselves but for the children they taught and cared for and the communities they came from.
Our first stop was Pulaski International School in Logan Square, home to nearly 900 students. The teachers and support staff were already on the sidewalks—wearing red for CTU and purple for SEIU 73. The teachers and staff at Pulaski identified class sizes and more prep time as key challenges.
We drove south to East Garfield Park, stopping at Westinghouse and Marshall high schools. Several NBA and NFL stars and other notable Chicagoans graduated from these schools. Sadly, during the strike, gunfire claimed the life of a Marshall student. Teachers and staff said more counselors and nurses were needed. Cardenas and Castellanos elementary schools also needed counselors. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have traumatized many of the children, who have seen relatives and classmates disappear.
One of the last schools we visited was Ida B. Wells Elementary in Bronzeville, where poverty is the school’s biggest challenge. Dozens of students showed up at the closed school because they had nowhere else to go and nothing to eat.