Happy Authoritarianism Day!

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.