Commentary
EVERY POLITICAL LEADER on the planet should be stuck aboard a jet and taken north to see the Greenland ice sheet—it would be well worth the carbon emissions to show them just how fast climate change is now happening.
Case in point: I was aboard a boat en route to the Qaterlait glacier in August when I looked up at the GPS unit above the captain’s head. It showed an icon of the boat, steaming rapidly across ... solid land. That’s because when the chart was drawn a decade ago, the bay we were crossing didn’t exist: It was still solid ice.
I had the great fortune of journeying to the ice sheet with two young poets—a Greenlander named Aka Niviâna and a native of the Marshall Islands, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. These two remarkable women were at opposite ends of the same story—as the ice melted, the traditional life of Greenlanders was beginning to disappear. And the water that poured into the oceans is now drowning low-lying islands such as the Marshalls.
A NEW VISION for peace has broken out in the Horn of Africa. For nearly two decades, Ethiopia and Eritrea have been locked in one of the most intractable conflicts in Africa. From 1998 to 2000, nearly 75,000 people on both sides were killed in the war.
That changed in July when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki signed a joint declaration of peace and friendship, which ended the war and promised cooperation. Abiy declared, “There is no border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Instead, we have built a bridge of love.”
The stalled peace process rapidly progressed after Abiy was elected in April. Phone lines have reopened between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and flights between the two neighbors have resumed after 20 years. Families separated by the war are now able to communicate and reunite; many Ethiopians in the diaspora may now return home.
Abiy’s philosophy is that everyone should be included in the peace process. Speaking at a dinner with Eritrean President Afwerki, Abiy defined the idea of medemer (inclusion and multiplicity) in the peace process as “[t]ender love instead of abject cruelty, peace instead of conflict, love over hate, forgiveness over holding grudges, pulling instead of pushing ... Handled wisely, our differences are our assets.”
Abiy’s commitment to an inclusive process is rooted in his doctoral studies at the Institute for Peace and Security in Addis Ababa, where he focused on the role of religious communities in overcoming conflict. Abiy has highlighted the central role religion must play in reconciliation efforts between the two nations.
Ethiopian and Eritrean religious leaders have long worked for peace, even as political solutions lagged. Catholic bishops have asked every parish to offer special prayers and to organize events for peace. Cardinal Berhaneyesus Souraphiel, head of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, commented, “It is very pleasing to the Catholic Church that the prayers of the people of both countries have been answered ... steps taken so far by both governments prove that Africans have the wisdom to solve their problems themselves. The Catholic Church will continue to pray both for Ethiopia and Eritrea.”
Protestors in Managua, Nicaragua rallied on August 18, 2018 against President Ortega's imprisonment of hundreds of citizens in Nicaragua due a social-political crisis. Will Ulmos/Shutterstock.com
TENS OF THOUSANDS of Americans took the Pledge of Resistance in the 1980s to oppose funding for a U.S.-backed militia formed to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Now that government, led by Daniel Ortega, is accused of gross human rights violations against student protesters. What happened?
After nearly 12 years in office this time around, Ortega and what remains of the Sandinista movement now cling to power through repression, threats, and intimidation. Many of those who fought alongside the Ortega brothers to free their country from the Somoza dictatorship and joined arms to defend the revolution from Ronald Reagan’s contras have left the Sandinista party out of disgust or were purged by an increasingly autocratic Daniel Ortega.
Sandinismo has given way to Ortegismo. Ortega is determined to hold on to power through authoritarian rule rather than governing in the spirit of Ernesto Cardenal and Father Miguel d’Escoto.
Despite Ortega’s defeat at the polls in 1990, he never lost his thirst for power and ran for president in each successive election until he won in 2006. He was adept at exploiting the weaknesses, greed, and corruption of his old adversaries and creating new alliances with them. First, he struck a deal with former President Arnoldo Alemán, who was serving a 20-year sentence for corruption. In exchange for Ortega’s promise to overturn his sentence, Alemán supported a package of electoral and legal reforms that allowed Ortega to win in 2006 with just 38 percent of the vote and allowed Ortega to take control of the National Assembly and eventually the Supreme Court and Supreme Electoral Council.
Ortega also struck a deal with Nicaragua’s private sector council that had bitterly opposed him in the 1980s and helped finance his electoral defeat in 1990. Ortega and the council fashioned a pact in which Ortega agreed not to intervene in the dealings of the private sector and they, in turn, would refrain from getting involved in his political agenda.
The altar at La Lomita Chapel in Mission, Texas. Photo by Sandi Villarreal/Sojourners
A SMALL WHITE CHAPEL sits just a couple hundred yards north of the Rio Grande river in Mission, Texas. While the chapel no longer hosts an active parish, its interior shows signs of frequent use. Prayer candles and silk flowers line the altar and the base of a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. An entryway table holds dozens of prayers, written on folded loose-leaf paper. Children’s composition notebooks, filled with more handwritten prayers, are stacked in piles.
“Please watch over our brothers, sisters, and all the children being held hostage at the border,” one prayer says. And another: “Please bless our health & the children being separated from their parents @ the border.”
La Lomita Chapel is now part of a municipal park and serves as a rest stop for passersby—while Border Patrol trucks sit just outside the park entrance and a helicopter circles overhead. The chapel land was originally granted to Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate priests in the mid-1800s. Given its location—midway between mission centers in Brownsville and Roma, Texas—La Lomita served as a meeting place and “housed transient visitors to the mission,” according to a historic marker on the site.
I visited the chapel, quite by accident, during a reporting trip at the border at the height of the family separation crisis. The separation of parents and children moved the hearts—and wallets—of people across the nation. But that fervor waned after a U.S. District Court judge gave a July deadline for reunification and more than 1,500 children were reunited with their parents, largely thanks to the efforts of faith groups and advocates. For many, it seemed, the story was over. The reality is that the crisis continues.
As of this writing, 497 children remain separated from their parents, 22 of whom are under the age of 5. More than 300 parents have been deported, and many who signed a waiver to be reunited say they were coerced. Children, including some babies and toddlers, haven’t seen their parents in months. It’s likely that some of those children will never see their parents again.
THE #METOO movement against sexual assault and harassment has empowered many people in the workplace to speak out. But there’s one group still fighting to be heard: interns—the semi-skilled students and recent graduates seeking supervised practical experience in a profession and who form the backbone of many government, nonprofit, and religious organizations.
In March, Vox caused an uproar when it released copies of a nondisclosure agreement required of all congressional interns. Notably missing was an “exception for incidents of harassment, discrimination, or abuse.” The Washington Post reported that interns who came forward about sexual harassment in California, Oregon, Nebraska, and Massachusetts all had their cases dismissed, “leaving them in legal limbo.”
The absence of legal workplace protection is only one reason interns are dissuaded from reporting harassment. A second is lack of power. Internships are generally temporary and unpaid. Interns fall in a hierarchical gray area that leaves them particularly susceptible to exploitation and harassment.
In a USA Today commentary headlined “Dear interns, we’re sorry. We should have warned you about sexual harassment,” Jill Geisler of Loyola University Chicago wrote: “We’ve learned that workplace sexual misconduct is about abuse of power. And those with the least power are the most vulnerable.”
The Bible is full of cries to protect the vulnerable. It warns against seeking power over others. Yet Anglican Bishop Peter B. Price notes that “abuse of power is one of the greatest temptations for Christian leaders”—the consequence of which is not just scandal, “but the loss of a unique corporate authority, achieved by mutual self-giving.”
WITH LABOR DAY approaching and November elections weighing down on us, it is a good time to reflect on the economic predicament of the working majority—those of us who work for a living to support our families. But if both voters and candidates do not clearly understand how the current economic situation impacts them, who benefits, and what alternatives are possible, then voting will not create much change.
Every day it becomes clearer that our current political-economic system, called neoliberal capitalism, enriches the wealthiest few while the proverbial “99 percent” struggles with four decades of stagnant wages, never-shrinking college and credit card debt, a scarcity of affordable housing and accessible public transportation, a lack of comprehensive health care, unpredictable, on-demand work schedules, failing and systematically defunded public education and infrastructure systems, and the exclusion of large sections of the population through incarceration, racism, impoverishment, illness, disability, and inadequate education.
We need serious discussions in our churches, communities, workplaces, and union halls about the U.S. economy. Is the system working for us? Does it have to be this way?
WHEN DID YOU realize your textbooks lied to you?
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and was homeschooled by my mother, the wife of a conservative Christian pastor. I didn’t think too much about my education until the 2016 election when I became increasingly alarmed by the enthusiastic support white evangelicals gave to Donald Trump. When Trump ascended into office, riding in on the phrase “Make America Great Again,” my memory was pricked. I had heard all this before.
To check it out, I obtained two history textbooks that I had used growing up. In 1999, when I was a sophomore in high school, 1.7 percent of the U.S. population was homeschooled. By 2012, the percentage had doubled. When I was homeschooled, there were three prominent curriculum producers for Christian homeschooling: Abeka Press, Bob Jones University Press, and Accelerated Christian Education. Abeka remains the most popular. Officials at Abeka, according to the Orlando Sentinel, would not say how many textbooks the company sells or release the number of schools that use their curriculum, but said that “it is safe to say that millions of students” have used the materials.
IN MAY, the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Hondurans, opening the door for the deportation of nearly 60,000 legal immigrants to the U.S. and threatening the security of their American-born children. The Department of Homeland Security is systematically stripping TPS status from more than 300,000 people, including immigrants from El Salvador (195,000), Haiti (50,000), Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan. Decisions on Yemen and Somalia are expected in July.
Temporary Protected Status enables foreign nationals to live and work in the United States while conditions exist in their home countries that prevent safe return, such as armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extreme circumstances. Hondurans were granted TPS following Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Honduras holds the second-highest rate of nationals murdered after their deportation, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
The “crucified people” from Central America are “not so much pursuing the American dream as they are fleeing the Central American nightmare,” said Jesuit priest Dean Brackley, who spent more than 20 years teaching in San Salvador, in 2011.
IN MINNESOTA, Alec Smith was unable to afford either health insurance premiums or the insulin needed to treat his Type 1 diabetes, despite working full time. He died last year from diabetic ketoacidosis, at age 26. Other young Americans with diabetes have suffered the same fate.
David Bridges of Indiana has health insurance through his job, but a high deductible means he has to pay for his multiple prescriptions out of pocket. One of those prescriptions alone costs $700 a month. He maxes out credit cards to buy what medicine he can, yet still has to skip doses.
These stories represent the status quo of U.S. health care, even with the preservation of the Affordable Care Act. In responding to such gaps, the faith community has traditionally turned to the direct provision of charity health care, a generous hallmark of our traditions for generations. But we cannot stop there.
FROM THE STREETS of Ferguson to Charlottesville and from Occupy to Standing Rock, anarchists represent a prominent part of today’s activist mix. How might Christians understand this tradition of political engagement?
In popular culture, anarchism is often trivialized as a cipher for generalized chaos, based on a caricature of hooded black bloc brawlers smashing store windows at protests. On the other hand, some anarchists settle for mere sloganeering, with little analysis or strategy. But simplistic stereotypes fail to recognize that, as social critic Cornel West put it, anarchism represents “a powerful critique of concentration of power in the nation-state.”
The label derives from the Greek anarchos, meaning “without rulers” (not, as some libertarians wrongly assume, without rules). Anarchists work for voluntary, nonhierarchical forms of self-organization and against state coercion and oppression.
As a social movement and ideological orientation, political anarchism began coalescing in the wake of the failed social revolutions of 1848 around Europe. Early anarchists critiqued the state as the root of all human oppression, and as the “left of the left” challenged Marxist assumptions that revolutions could only be accomplished by changing state structures from the top down. Some proposed communal self-rule and “mutual aid” as an alternative to social Darwinism.
The majority of the tradition was (and remains) decidedly atheist—“no gods, no masters.” But Pierre-Joseph Proudhon allowed that early Christianity was essentially anarchist until the church sold out to Constantine, while Peter Kropotkin argued the same about popular radical religious movements of the late Middle Ages.
CERTAIN STRAINS of consumerism are easy to spot. Think Beverly Hills and walls stacked with brightly colored shoes and purses, like heaps of fresh produce. Closer to home, perhaps, is the caricature of suburban consumption—gas-guzzling SUVs, expensive outerwear.
And then there’s minimalism, an ideology defined by its emphasis on intentional efforts to spend less. At its best, minimalism provides a healthy alternative for people of faith seeking simplicity and thoughtful economic practices. At its worst, the minimalist aesthetic looks an awful lot like the system it was designed to critique—oblivious, privileged, and disconnected from reality.
IN MARCH, I visited Cuba on a 10-day tour with alumni from Eastern Mennonite University. I’ve studied the socialist structure of the early Jerusalem church (as recounted in Acts 2-6), and I wanted to experience Cuban socialism directly and see how it compares. How, for example, have Christian churches fared under a one-party socialist government?
On our visit, we heard about Cuba’s successes in the areas of health care and education. We heard a lecture on the massive effort to bring Cuba’s average level of education from third grade in 1959 to the current 11th grade. We learned about Cuba’s universal free health care, and that local clinics throughout the island provide basic care accessible to every citizen. As a result, infant mortality is lower than in the U.S. and overall life expectancy is about the same, according to The Atlantic—even though the U.S. spends more than 10 times as much per person per year on health care.
Such basic needs have been met not by Christian churches but by a government that initially robbed the wealthy and shared it with the poor. What were Christians in Cuba—Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses—to make of this enormous shift toward economic equality? After the revolution, most missionaries returned to their home countries, and thousands of Cubans, Christians and otherwise, fled to the United States. Christians who remained had to rethink their mission in a society where the poor were educated and healed through structural change rather than individual charity.
THE ARREST OF SEVEN Catholic activists from the Plowshares movement who entered a nuclear submarine base in April again highlights the enduring threats posed by nuclear weapons. The Kings Bay Plowshares carried religious banners promoting peace onto the naval base in Georgia that houses Trident submarines armed with missiles with nuclear warheads. “This weapons system is a cocked gun being held to the head of the planet,” the activists said in a statement as they were arrested.
At a time when President Trump reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. would win a nuclear arms race between the two countries, nuclear disarmament efforts feel tenuous. Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who helped broker the Iran nuclear agreement, has warned that the chance of a nuclear launch is “higher than it’s been since the Cuban missile crisis.”
Against this backdrop, the clock is ticking on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 2010 by President Obama and Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev that limits strategic warheads and delivery systems in the two countries. Unless action is taken to extend that agreement, it will expire in 2021. If that happens, for the first time in more than 40 years the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would operate free of an arms control agreement.
The Pentagon released a nuclear arms policy in February that requests two new types of nuclear weapons, essentially ending the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis described the changes as a need to “look reality in the eye” and to “see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
MOST PEOPLE RESPOND to incentives. A lower price. A deadline. Chocolate pudding after you eat your vegetables.
Big companies respond to incentives, too, such as tax breaks or lower costs of inputs.
Remarkably, Danone Corp. has created its own incentives to step up its positive-impact game by getting lenders to agree to lower the price of money Danone borrows if it meets a range of socially beneficial goals. And, even more remarkably, in February, 12 global banks agreed.
Based in France, Danone makes and sells Dannon yogurt and other dairy products, infant and medical nutrition, and bottled water—a $2-billion-dollar industry. Any seller of bottled water and infant formula has and deserves critics, and although the company has far to go in serving the social good, it has come a long way. Danone focuses on environmentally sound sourcing, packaging development, and recycling, as well as employee well-being. Several of its subsidiaries are B Corporations, meaning they annually pass an independent, in-depth evaluation of how well they serve all stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, and watersheds—not just shareholders, the only constituency that drives most businesses.
According to the lending deal, as reported in Forbes, Danone’s cost of capital will rise or fall with the percentage of its sales from B- Corp subsidiaries. Doing more business with all stakeholders in mind will result in cheaper loans to meet operating expenses and to invest in new business. In addition, Danone’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance will be evaluated by other third-party monitors. A greenwashed annual report will not suffice.
SOUTH SUDAN is the world’s youngest and most fragile state. The outbreak of civil war in 2013 pushed millions out of the country and into refugee camps. Oil revenues fuel President Salva Kiir’s regime, notorious for kidnapping and torturing those who criticize him.
Kiir’s suppression hasn’t stopped courageous Christian women from taking their prayers for peace to the streets. On the first Saturday of every month, hundreds of women gather to demand an end to war.
“All 64 tribes are represented in the women’s division of the South Sudan Council of Churches,” said Maria Bol (not her real name), a member of the ecumenical body responsible for organizing the marches. “The challenge in South Sudan is that the government has no tear gas. They just use live bullets against peaceful protesters. But our actions often go on uninterrupted, since they know we are peaceful and prayerful.”
Although the international media portrays South Sudan’s women and youth as passive victims of their tragic circumstances, it is exactly these demographics that are pushing back against this brutal regime. In November, youth members of more than 40 women’s organizations convened the largest anti-war demonstration since the war began. Thousands turned up, wielding messages of peace while Kiir’s national security forces—responsible for intimidating and abusing his critics—attempted to single out leaders.
These leaders continue to suffer—some even being intimidated in the neighboring countries to which they fled—and threats continue against their family members back home.
Tatjana Splichal / Shutterstock.com
FOR THE PAST three years, Pope Francis has convened leaders of grassroots movements from around the world to extend the church’s solidarity with the poor and vulnerable on three critical themes: land, work, and housing.
This winter, a regional gathering of the World Meeting of Popular Movements met in the United States for the first time. Seven hundred grassroots leaders, accompanied by 25 U.S. Catholic bishops, several international representatives, and a delegation from the Vatican, led by Cardinal Peter Turkson, met in Modesto, Calif., with the cardinal bearing a letter of support, invitation, and challenge from Pope Francis.
To the regular themes, U.S. leaders added racism and migration. Participants addressed the pain of exclusion from the perspective of undocumented domestic workers, residents of Flint whose water was contaminated, Standing Rock water protectors, and the unhoused, while also raising the hope of united, faith-rooted, nonviolent resistance.
Racial justice, in the U.S. and abroad, was a central theme. “Why is blackness a threat in America?” asked Rev. Traci Blackmon. “And how are we, as people of color, ever to be perceived as unarmed, and therefore nonthreatening, if our blackness is the weapon that you fear?” Blackmon said that oppression, dehumanization, and racism are rooted in the original sin of desiring to be God and seeking to create God in our own image. John A. Powell, director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, added, “When you ‘other’ someone in an extreme way, then you treat them as a non-human.”
ON JUNE 15, 2016, Mohammed el-Halabi, manager of World Vision’s Gaza programs, was arrested by Israeli authorities, accused of funneling millions of donor dollars to Hamas, the Islamist political party that rules inside Gaza.
The case made international headlines—and had a dangerous chilling effect on Christian aid organizations working in the Middle East.
Well before el-Halabi had the opportunity to be tried—let alone convicted—of any crime, the Israeli foreign ministry prepared talking points, background materials, infographics, and videos, ordering the country’s diplomats to hype el-Halabi’s alleged confession to media and senior government officials around the world.
“Contacts, journalists, and relevant opinion makers should be briefed,” ordered senior foreign ministry officials, with particular focus on targeting “liberal and religious groups,” reported an Israeli newspaper.
But cracks in the Israeli government’s case appeared almost immediately. The most gaping: “World Vision’s cumulative operating budget in Gaza for the past 10 years was approximately $22.5 million, which makes the alleged amount of up to $50 million being diverted hard to reconcile,” said Kevin Jenkins, president and CEO of World Vision International.
According to World Vision, its programs in Gaza are subject to internal and independent audits and external evaluations to ensure that funds benefit those intended, precisely the nearly half of Gaza’s population living in poverty under a crippling blockade enforced by Israel. El-Halabi was accused of embezzling $50 million, yet World Vision’s accountability process caps signing authority at $15,000.
Undeterred by the facts, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson told Australian media: “It’s like when you catch a serial killer; the question of whether he killed 50 people or 25 people is not really relevant, is it?”
IN MAY, a ransomware virus attacked computer systems in 150 countries and impacted more than 200,000 people. Experts say it was one of the largest cyberattacks ever. Is cyberwar the new frontier? And what do we make of the claim by Microsoft president Brad Smith that this virus piggybacked off a digital weapon developed by the United States? And then there’s Russia’s alleged interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If there was an interception of the American people’s right to the democratic process in order to advance Russia’s own political agenda, what is a proper response?
John B. Sheldon, a professor of cybersecurity at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in Alabama, defined cyberwar as “war conducted in and from computers and the networks connecting them, waged by states or their proxies against other states.” Cyberwar is not to be confused, according to Sheldon, with online espionage, digital terrorism, or other forms of cybercrime. Not every cyberattack is part of a cyberwar, nor should it be treated as such. Online weapons are cheap to make and easy to deploy; they are also primarily anonymous. And the most effective way to bring cybercriminals to justice and restore security might well be civilian-controlled internet policing, not state-led responses.
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS after Martin Luther’s charge semper reformanda (“always reforming”), we stand on the precipice of climate disaster.
In Marrakesh, Morocco, people of faith met at the 2016 U.N. Climate Change conference (COP22) to face an impending climate disaster—a disaster that now seems likely to be exacerbated by U.S. political leadership rather than mitigated by it.
The World Council of Churches held an event in Marrakesh to emphasize how transitional justice- and rights-based approaches, alongside faith-based moral perspectives, can address challenges as complex as natural-resource management and ecological, humanitarian, and spiritual crises exacerbated by climate change. WCC organizer Henrik Grape hoped that “COP22 will take steps forward to fulfill the expectations from Paris and that nations will raise their ambitions to keep the temperature [rise] well under 2 degrees Celsius.”
A wide variety of church bodies were represented at the gathering. The Lutheran World Federation brought youth delegates from Africa to Marrakesh to promote intergenerational collaboration and solidarity with people most affected by climate change. “One of our thematic approaches to the commemoration of 500 years of Lutheran Reformation is the theme ‘Creation: Not For Sale,’” said Caroline Bader, youth secretary for the federation. The Act Alliance, a coalition of 143 churches and parachurch organizations, established a gender-climate change working group to address sustainability among poor and marginalized people through a gender lens.
Catholic theologian Guillermo Kerber believes that Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment is a turning point for the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, by including ecology in the social concerns of Catholics. “The celebration of the 500 years of the Reformation should be an opportunity to express an ecological conversion of all Christian denominations,” said Kerber.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Shutterstock.com
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago called for a “consistent ethic of life”—a broad, underlying attitude of respect for human life and dignity that would apply to issues as diverse as abortion, peace, and the death penalty.
In a 1983 lecture that landed him—and the consistent ethic—on the front page of The New York Times, Bernardin drew connections between nuclear arms and abortion: “The principle which structures both cases, war and abortion, needs to be upheld in both places. It cannot be successfully sustained on one count and simultaneously eroded in a similar situation,” he said.
If only we had listened.