Nonviolent strategies for the 21st century

Gandhi’s book, Nonviolent Resistance, which I read in the office of a pastor who gave me shelter while completing a cross-country bicycle trip in my early 20s, was my introduction to the use of courageous refusal to corroborate with oppression or humiliation. From there, I read more Gandhi, and then, in seminary, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book Stride Toward Freedom. King’s book illuminated for me the ways that the life of Jesus enacted and encouraged others to enact nonviolent resistance to the occupation of Rome and the corroboration of the religious authorities in that occupation.

Until only recently, over 10 years after a 6 year tenure as a pastor, my interest in nonviolent resistance has been as an intellectual curiosity. I was interested in its utility for the oppressed, and rooted for the use of nonviolent tactics in class-based struggles. My current position, as a professor at an HBCU (historically black college/university), has exposed me to stories of struggle and humiliation that my students and their families have shared with me. These stories remind me of the struggles our family had, growing up on welfare in Section 8 housing. I have gone back to the Bible, after years of neglect, to revisit this Jesus who gave up everything in order to insist that he had the right to tell the truth, and to proclaim that the kingdom of God was everywhere, waiting for us to act accordingly.

This has been rewarding study, but I have felt a familiar frustration. Books about nonviolent resistance make broad claims about its effectiveness, but rarely give ideas for specific actions. Books about “empire” discuss our culture’s reliance on what MLK called “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism,” but offer little in the way of fighting these “powers and principalities.” I yearn for someone to write about how regular people, inspired by Jesus, Gandhi and King, can commit symbolic actions and acts of nonviolent resistance, in order to challenge the U.S. empire’s weak hold on its power.

In the absence of such a source of concrete action which is specifically informed by the potentially radical Bible, I wish to take on this task myself, beginning with this article. The purpose of this article is to start a conversation: In what ways can the Bible provide us with ideas for confronting the American empire’s injustices? Let me explain my thinking.

My reading about Jesus has led me to believe that Jesus intentionally travelled to Jerusalem because it was where the empire’s evil was most powerfully felt. His entrance was intentionally planned (In Mark 11: 2, he tells his disciples, “Go to the village facing you, and as you enter, you will at once find a tethered colt that no one has yet ridden.”) as a mocking imitation of Rome’s annual triumphal entry into Jerusalem during the week preceding Passover. His turning of the tables in the Temple, and attempts to keep anyone from entering, was an intentional act of symbolic fury against the religious authority’s corroboration with its own servitude. His confrontations with the scribes and Pharisees were intentionally provocative. In short, Jesus went to Jerusalem and caused trouble with the explicit purpose of exposing the injustices that were pervasively present, knowing full well that it was highly likely he would be killed for insurrection.

As I came to realize the extent to which Jesus intentionally planned out symbolic actions to make the implicit explicit, I wondered what these actions would look like in our day. Surely, the church is a hypocritical institution, which values its power and wealth to such an extent that it keeps silent about injustices that are endemic to American society. Surely, if Jesus were here now, he would wish to expose injustice, even if it meant that it was highly likely he would be killed. But what, exactly, would he do?

Those of us who are followers of this Jesus I am presenting here, need to get real and plan out symbolic actions which expose the injustices which pain our hearts. We write about them; we read about them. Let’s discuss them, and embolden ourselves to action. So, here’s an assignment: Read your Bible. Specifically, read the prophets and the synoptic Gospels, and ask yourself the following questions:

1) What is the societal problem the protagonist is railing against?
2) What is the analogous problem in the United States today?
3) What is the tactic the protagonist uses to expose the problem?
4) What would this tactic look like in the United States today? Where would we commit our symbolic action? What would we do? Are there any props that are necessary to make it work? What would we say?

Inspired by this desire to collect concrete ideas from the readers of my work, I have spent the past month re-reading all of the prophets and the synoptic gospels myself, and taken notes whenever I encountered an action or proclamation that was nonviolent, symbolic, and intended to expose societal evil.

Here is an example: In Haggai 1:6, Yahweh says that in Israel, “The wage-earner gets his wages only to put them in a bag with a hole in it.” Since the Bible is full of people who went into public places to proclaim hard truths, prophetic action today can include statements that judge American empire or American church by the standard of the radical Jesus. However, the Biblical example seems particularly powerful when proclamations are complimented with visual symbolism. Isn’t this image of wages being put into a bag with a hole in it especially relevant today? Couldn’t we go out in front of our local city hall and proclaim these same words? How memorable this would be if we also had a bag with a hole in it, and we pored our money into the bag, only to see it fall into a bucket below, labeled “Corporate welfare?” (Feel free to replace the label with your idea of choice.)

On another note, if we were courageous enough to look foolish, we could draw attention to any message our God desired us to proclaim if we imitated Ezekiel’s action in Ezekiel 4:4-8, and lie down in front of a building representing power or corroboration with power. Or, in Ezekiel 4:9-17, we could warn our country of the violence of poverty by cooking food for ourselves in a public square, using cow dung. There are so many ideas from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Daniel, not to mention in the synoptic Gospels, that could be used to construct symbolic actions in public squares around the country. Many of Jesus’ actions were referential of the Old Testament prophets; we can do the same.

I intend to write numerous articles about my findings, and draw analogies of my own. However, I can use your help. The church has spun the prophetic stories in the Bible as one-time events, unplanned actions that responded in real time to the voice of God, who directed the actions from heaven. Jesus showed us that nonviolent resistance is intentional and planned out. So, let’s plan! Please comment below with your ideas. I think we’ll be surprised how powerful we can be if we just imagine how much attention bold, unusual action gets, and then preach this message that Jesus has commissioned us to preach in the presence of the powers.