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| Ironically, those carrying the Trump banner...have it all backwards. |
One year ago today.
Authoritarian supporters of Donald Trump sought to exclude anyone from American
society whose necks do not match their hats. Their goal and their tactic have
been employed repeatedly throughout history. The conflict between supporters of
a governing minority and the governed majority (though only a small segment of
that majority spoke up for the excluded) was perhaps most starkly contrasted
during the rise of Nazism in Germany.
I had recently been asked
about Dietrich Bonhoeffer's three levels of response to governments attempting
to impose similar restrictions. About that same time, another friend had
posted a meme stating that “you can pray all you want but eventually David had
to pick up a stone and act against Goliath.” When I commented, “Try
Bonhoeffer's first two steps before we resort to the third. But when it becomes
necessary, aim well.” In response, she asked, "Who was Bonhoeffer?" When
I saw that question today, I wrote the following.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer;
Christian Pastor, Theologian, and Pacifist - murdered by the Nazis in 1945,
just before the liberation of the camp in which he was imprisoned.
In his 1933 essay,
"The Church and the Jewish Question," written just after the
Nazis had invoked into their rule over Germany "The Aryan Paragraph,"
effectively excluding Jewish people from the right to participate in society, Bonhoeffer
wrote a recommendation for three levels of response to such actions by the
state:
"There are thus three possibilities for action
that the church can take vis-à-vis the state: first (as we have said),
questioning the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions, that
is, making the state responsible for what it does. Second is service to the
victims of the state's actions. The church has an unconditional obligation
toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the
Christian community. "Let us work for the good of all." These are
both ways in which the church, in its freedom, conducts itself in the interest
of a free state. In times when the laws are changing, the church may under no
circumstances neglect either of these duties. The third possibility is not just
to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel but to seize the wheel
itself."
The more traditional
English translation for decades was "to drive a spoke through the wheel
itself," but the concept is still the same. In a Constitutional Republic,
we have had recourse through various means of holding the state accountable for
its actions. Many of us engage regularly in various means of mitigating the
damages done to those Bonhoeffer would call "victims of the state's actions."
But to take the stone to Goliath's head? That requires careful aim, and careful
consideration of whether or not the prior efforts have been attempted and
exhausted.
One year ago today, our
Constitutional Republic teetered on the brink of Authoritarianism. We have not
stepped back very far from that precipice. And while many of us believe in
answered prayer (as my friend's post of the Goliath's head meme suggests), most
of us also believe that God answers prayer through motivating our actions toward the
good...even when that means violent action against the oppression, domination,
and exploitation championed by Authoritarianism.
