catapult magazine

a discussion i’m interested in is:

to what extent are we implicated in our culture’s structural sins? to what extent should we go to change these things (such as the systems of capitalism as we practise it and economics as we worship it and government as we are governed by it—which by their structures tend to take advantage of people, harm the earth, and promote sinful desires and consumption). what is the place of activism in the christian’s life—and what forms can activism and civil disobedience legitimately take?

lb

What do you mean by activism? Do you mean yelling at people across picket lines, sending pamphlets, bombing mailboxes? Or setting up institutions and church organizations that provide alternatives? Or not paying certain taxes, boycotting electric companies? Since we know that we are to be engaged in culture, not just separated from it, it seems like we have to make these kinds of decisions on a situation by situation basis, don’t you think? I think we’d have to talk about some specific situations that pose these kinds of dilemmas.

i intended to leave it open-ended so that anybody could write anything that came to mind when they heard the word activism. so i guess i meant all those things. i agree about the situational approach, but are there ever limits to what a christian should or can do, for example, in protesting? Is violence ever acceptable? Destruction of property? Disobeying the law?

The last little while I’ve been thinking about the G-8 meetings coming up next month in Kananaskis, because I’ve heard reports (or rumours) of various groups which plan to stage protests and some which seem to imply that there will be some violence and clashes. (Last time they met in Italy, a protestor was killed). What is the Christian’s role here (assuming that she believes that in these meetings, business is being put before human lives, and / or the environment, and policy being formed that is detrimental to both)?

or in general, what about our economic system in which we are complicet in what our corporations are doing, the way our economics are measured (and which, in turn, often affects how the people and the creation are treated), and which (because it is so removed from us—it seems to be some vast system that just inexorably keeps on rolling) makes it easy to shrug and say “that’s how the world works,” and forget that it is a system made and measured by humans, which we are a part of whether we know or like it or not. and is it appropriate to overturn some money-changer’s tables, or is that taking that story out of context?

maybe instead of asking “what are our limits?” i should ask “where should we start?” these are just a few examples that are on the top of my head—feel free to use any example you like.

i don’t really have a specific issue in mind other than, i suppose a general discussion on principles used in deciding how to be actively involved in promoting positive efforts and battling negative ones.

lb.

I was reading Yancey’s account of Ghandi in “Soul Survivor” the other day and was somewhat disappointed in Ghandi’s simplistic approach to changing society. Of course there’s no challenging the fact that his tactics made a difference in India, but I’m not sure that justifies his basic assumptions.

It seems like Ghandi’s techniques have become mere weapons of symbolism in our day and age without much substance (I don’t mean to sound like Rush Limbaugh, but there it is), whether those symbolic acts are violent or not. When a protestor throws a brick through a McDonald’s window, such an act communicates that a small group of people (relative to the whole) defies globalization. People who protest peacefully show that they are not destructive, but all they’re really doing is showing the world again that there is a group out there who believes this or that way about something.

Though protests may spark movement and change, the real reform occurs in the institutional changes set by legislature, government, the community as a whole. I don’t think protesting is the only option, the first option or the best option for true change.

Many of the protests that get so much attention in the Civil Rights Movement gave way to thoughtless policies that sometimes hurt African-Americans more than helped. When we’re protesting only for the symbolism of it (first Black in a white school, first Black in baseball, Blacks getting preferable treatment at colleges and in work places), I don’t think we’re really thinking about how best to care for people’s needs, how best to reform the world.

We can work to reshape those “structural sins” referred to above:

Here’s 2 few brief examples from the past, where both persons successfully worked against structural sin…

An upper class well-to-do young woman, expected to make a brilliant marriage, decides (against all the wishes of family & friends) to train for a job considered degrading and menial and even disreputable. She gradually wins consent of her reluctant family to go abroad for training & later starts her job. She not only totally redefines this disreputable task into an honored career for women (at a time when women had about 2 other career choices available if they didn’t marry), she also uses her great business and mathematical mind to reorganize larger public institutions where

her now-respectable career can be practiced to help countless persons extend their lives. (hospitals)
She is notably good at “managing upwards”, using her societal contacts & friends to move the government & its sometimes clueless officials.

Even now, as we possibly prepare for war, her “descendants”

(the women & men who have gone into the now highly respected job she designed) will aid many to live longer & better.
(military nurses)
She got her country’s ruler soundly behind her efforts to provide good health care to her country’s military. (a new concept then!!!)

She was able to work within the system & the laws to effect a great change on medical care, to change public nursing in Britain from a disreputable task (performed by low lifes; sometimes even prostitutes), to a well-run profession. She also reorganized hospitals into vastly more efficient and sanitary conditions.

We don’t realize how she purged a big chunk of “structural sin” out unless we read up on how wretched public hospitals and nursing care used to be.
The silly porno flicks around today about nurses pay witless homage to how public nursing in Britain was once practiced…and how utterly desreputable it was in some public sick houses.
Florence Nightingale.

This other person (below) had to defy the law from day one, because she was breaking a big law Congress had just passed. She was on the lowest rung of society & only later acquired powerful friends; mostly after she accomplished her great feats of rescue, etc.

She was a brilliant woman who led hundreds of slaves from the legally slave holding South to the anti-slave holding North.
All these slaves were led to freedom without losing one slave. (Wonder if the military has ever studied her tactics!!!)

The price on her very smart head was once $40,000 (think what that mid 19th century amount would be today!!!)
She did her part to fight the structural sin of her day, tho she was unable to work within the legal system of the day, since what was legal was NOT moral (regarding slavery)..

However, we all would consider slavery so evil & noxious (as did many activists of her time) that we would understand why she worked outside the legally perverted system of her day.

One woman was able to fight structual sin within the system; one had to defy the system of her day to obey the higher moral law that all; should have the chance to live free & work for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Harriet Tubman.

Here’s a description of an interesting activist campaign. I often waffle between feeling like activism is hopeless and not doing much, and feeling like even if it doesn’t help, I should try. I’ll be interested to see where this goes:

The Boulder Mennonite Church has started a grassroots campaign to protest war in Iraq in a
simple, but potentially powerful way.

Place 1/2 cup uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-size bag
or sandwich bag work fine). Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag.
Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written, “If your enemies are
hungry, feed them. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack
them.”

Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or
padded mailing envelope—both are the same cost to mail) and address
them to: President George Bush White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

Attach $1.06 in postage. (Three 37-cent stamps equal $1.11.) Drop this in the mail. It is important to act NOW so that President Bush gets the letters ASAP.

In order for this protest to be effective, there must be hundreds of
thousands of such rice deliveries to the White House. We can do this
if you each forward this message to your friends and family.

There is a positive history of this protest! In the 1950s, Fellowship of
Reconciliation began a similar protest, which is credited with influencing
President Eisenhower against attacking China.
Read on: "In the mid-1950s, the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation,
learning of famine in the Chinese mainland, launched a ‘Feed Thine Enemy’
campaign. Members and friends mailed thousands of little bags of rice to the
White House with a tag quoting the Bible, “If thine enemy hunger, feed
him.” As far as anyone knew for more than ten years, the campaign was an abject
failure. The President did not acknowledge receipt of the bags publicly; certainly,
no rice was ever sent to China.

“What nonviolent activists only learned a decade later was that the campaign
played a significant, perhaps even determining role in preventing nuclear
war. Twice while the campaign was on, President Eisenhower met with
the Joint Chiefs of Staff to consider U.S. options in the conflict with China
over two islands, Quemoy and Matsu.

The generals twice recommended the use of nuclear weapons. President
Eisenhower each time turned to his aide and asked how many little bags of
rice had come in. When told they numbered in the tens of thousands,
Eisenhower told the generals that as long as so many Americans were
expressing active interest in having the U.S. feed the Chinese, he certainly
wasn’t going to consider using nuclear weapons against them."

Yeah, these are all great examples of structural change that started with single people. Perhaps the reason boycotts, symbolic attacks against people and buildings, peace protests and the like are not preferable from a Christian standpoint is because we have structural systems set up in the U.S. and all over the world for the exchange of ideas. The media is a powerful force in our culture. A Christian way of getting a good message heard might be to find ways to work within the communicating structures that are already set up in our country. But maybe protests are a way of using big media. Perhaps big media is so powerful that there is no chance for reform there and so we need to find alternative ways of communicating our messages of dissent.

I must have posted my last message simultaneously with bridget’s. I have heard about this campaign. It sounds like a good idea to send food to the Iraquis. Rice might be much better received than some of the crazy stuff I’ve heard the military has been sending Afghanistan.

I’ll gladly send rice to the Iraqui people, but only if the U.S. military promises me they won’t give any to Saddam Hussein or Hussein’s supporters. And if Hussein hides just one grain of that rice from his people, so help me I’ll…

Another topic important in deciding how to effect positive change in society is…
How do I determine what is a just cause—-worthy of my time & attention?

Lots of causes out there. I remember a recent protest held in Chicago. I’m going on memory here, but I think it was in protest to some large international business meeting going on.

However, a number in the media had fun interviewing some of the marchers. I personally heard not one who could clearly state why he/she was there & what he/she was protesting (and what specific changes he/she wished to bring about).

Lots of Chicago $$$ spent to guard this small, mainly unfocused group of persons. (I wonder—-were they consistent in their dislike of big businesses or did some shop later at Mag Mile’s large dept. stores???)

So—-a well-articulated cause is good unless one has the leisure time to just protest because one (apparently from what I gather) just didn’t like big businesses.