The following article by Mark Pattison for the Catholic Labor Network shows how some workers used the traditions they are familiar with in their fight for social justice. Such struggles have so much to say to us: workers have real material needs, they can be creative and united in fights to win justice and equity, God has a preference and a special relationship with the poor and the oppressed, and thisis salvific work that gives us a taste of God's Kingdom.
Thousands of workers at two dozen hotels in the Los Angeles area won contracts by the end of 2023 as UNITE HERE Local 11 has waged a campaign since April to win improved pay and benefits for union members – but thousands more are still waiting for an agreement.
Eréndira Salcedo, a housekeeper at the Hilton Pasadena and a UNITE HERE shop steward, is one of those workers. She’s one of 15,000 hotel workers represented by the local.
“The salary has been a main issue because we are not paid enough to live,” Salcedo, a native of Michoacan state in Mexico, said through an interpreter. “What we’ve also been fighting for is health insurance, a pension fund when we retire, and opportunities for growth.”
To prepare for a strike, UNITE HERE members at the Hilton Pasadena walked out four different times, for shorter durations. They also brought attention to their situation to the larger community by giving a new twist to “las posadas,” a nine-day devotion popular for centuries among Latin Americans that re-enacts Joseph and Mary’s quest to find an inn where the Christ Child could be born.
The hotel workers didn’t need nine evenings to make their point. Instead of selecting houses to play the role of inns, “we made different stations. The Hilton Pasadena was the first place, the Hyatt Place Pasadena and then at City Hall,” Salcedo said. She served as a reader at the Hilton.
“We were working on Colorado Avenue. It’s the main thoroughfare in Pasadena where we were doing the procession,” she added.
“It was an experience like no other. We thought it was relevant. We were looking for peace in our homes, and it was an experience that brought us and our coworkers together.”
Community support is tangible. “People come out, sometimes they bring us water, they bring us burritos. We appreciate people from outside the union who have shown their support,” Salcedo said.
While UNITE HERE urges would-be hotel guests to cancel their reservations if they find that their hotel has been struck – some hotels are using an app to recruit scabs – hotel chains are actually operating fewer of the hotels that bear their name, and make their money licensing their brand name. The Hilton Pasadena, for instance, is operated by a company called Aimbridge Hospitality.
Salcedo believes the workers’ actions will ultimately convince Aimbridge to come to terms. “Yes, of course. Claro que si. I have total faith that they’re getting close,” she said. “I hope this will push the company to finally sign a contract.
Workers at the Hilton Pasadena went on strike for the fifth time on New Year’s Eve, just in time to throw the hotel into chaos on the eve of the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, one of college football’s premier events. Like the previous four walkouts, it’s a short-term strike, but nobody was saying how long they intended to stay out.
“A lot of the guests, once they go back in,” Salcedo said, “have been very supportive. I believe that we’re fighting for our rights, and that we’re entitled to those rights.”
The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was founded in Columbus, Ohio on January 25, 1890. The union was founded by people who came from different coalfields and from different traditions of mine worker unionism. Many attempts had ben made to form local, regional, and national unions of mine workers, and there had been notable successes and failures in organizing the coal miners. The methods of mining coal and the structures of the anthracite and bituminous coal industries were changing as coal was helping to drive the expansion of modern capitalist industry. Competition between mining districts and between the coal operators and changes in the methods of extracting coal tended to drive wages down and makes mining ever more dangerous.
The UMWA sought to achieve industrial stability in coal mining from the union's earliest days. In the best light, this meant restricting competition between the operators and winning legislation that restricted or outlawed child labor, defined what a legal ton of coal was, required safe mining practices and workplace safety, insured mine workers' safety and health, and provided for mine workers after they were too old or infirmed to work. In the early days the union and the coal operators sought to reach agreement on coal prices together and to use their relative power to control coal markets together. But the operators were never good partners to the union, and competition from non-union and low-cost mining districts and industrial monopolization worked against union-operator cooperation. Industrial chaos was always just a half-step away. Under these conditions, then, the union and the operators came to represent different and opposing interests.
In the worst light, local and district unions competed with one another and the union's leadership played union locals and districts against one another. The leadership sometimes sought to partner with certain operators and politicians in ways that were at least unethical and that did not always serve the worker's long-term interests. Corrupt union officials have done much damage to the union's cause and reputation. The union was sometimes fighting for industrial stability on its own. Mine workers often looked first at their mine, then at their company or region, and then, perhaps, at the national picture when it came to union affairs and deciding union policies and voting on union contracts. Changes in mining technology worked against the mine workers maintaining employment and solidarity and keeping control of their work, and resentments have grown from this. The noble attempts by the union to win industry-wide contracts and to create a working pension system and to provide for healthcare have depended on extending union organizing, stable employment, payments made by union-represented coal operators, industrial stability, fair courts, and cooperation and support from state and federal officials. Only at rare moment in our history have most of these factors been in place at the same moment.
It is a miracle and a blessing that the UMWA still exists. The coal operators and their allies have sought to divide the mine workers and have used their economic and political power to isolate the workers and break the union. They have brought extraordinary pressure to bear against the union and have used violence when that suited their needs. They have influenced the public schools and other public institutions in many areas to be "pro-coal," which has come to mean pro-company, and the true history of mine workers' struggles has to be constantly rescued from their hands.
The union remains the only reasonable and available institution to represent mine workers' interests. There are about 67,000 coal mine workers in the United States and Canada, and the UMWA may represent something just over 20 percent of those workers. According to the union's website, the UMWA now represents "coal miners, manufacturing workers, clean coal technicians, health care workers, corrections officers and public employees throughout the United States and Canada." Not too many years ago the union had the slogan that "God, guns and guts built the UMWA" and I believe that that has been true. The UMWA has set a high bar for other unions and has used its power to support other unions. The idea that strikers have to "last one day longer" and our modern concepts of industrial unionism come from the UMWA to a great extent. Today the union depends more on God and guts and its ability to make its case to workers and its power to win good contracts.
We need a new era of union organizing to boost the union's numbers and influence and power so that mine workers do better and so that their communities survive. Good living wages and retirement benefits, guaranteed by a union contract, circulate through mining communities quickly and raise everyone's standards of living. A progressive wage floor, strong health and safety provisions with active enforcement, and protected pension plans in coal mining benefit all workers and our communities no matter what jobs we have or where we live.
The pictures and music below come from a variety of sources and are posted here to show readers something of mine workers and mining communities. I am including some of my own narratives and commentary by others. Not all of the workers and mines here are union-represented. My point is to create a context for understanding where the UMWA comes from and why the union is needed now.
Built in 1921 for the African American community of Tams, West Virginia. The New Salem Baptist Church is one of the last remaining structures in Tams. At one time the church boasted a congregation of around 350, but those numbers have dwindled to about a dozen since the mine closed in 1955. The last residents of the town of Tams vacated in the 1980s and the remaining structures were destroyed or moved. Photograph and text by David Dunlap, courtesy of Broken Doors Photography and Art Collective
A snapshot of War, West Virginia.
Incorporated in 1920, War was previously known as Miner's City. At its height War had almost 4,000 residents, a far cry from the approximately 690 as of the 2020 census. Photo and text by David Dunlap, courtesy of Broken Doors Photography and Art Collective
Blue Diamond Mines--The Johnson Mountain Boys
1973
An anthracite miner and his wife
A coal mining community and family in Utah
Women gathering coal in the Pennsylvania anthracite region.
Photograph by Kristen Kennedy of Virginia Lee Photography. She is one
of my favorite modern photographers and her work has appeared on this blog many times.
The Monongah Mine Disaster of December 6, 1907 took the lives of at least 362 mine
workers, many of them immigrants. It was the worst disaster in coal mining history in
the United States.
"The coal you mine is not Slavic coal. It's not Irish coal. It's not Polish coal. It's not
Italian coal. It's coal."---John Mitchell, President of the UMWA 1898-1908
Around the time that Arnold Miller was becoming nationally known I decided that I would
go to work in the mines as some of my great uncles and others in my extended family had done. I was close to dropping out of school, and working in the mines was all that I could see myself doing. My father, who knew the miner's life, and I had quite an argument about it. The argument ended with me saying arrogantly "I'm going to work in the mines!" and my father saying, "Just stay where you are. I'm going to go find a heavy object and kill you and save the company the trouble." I waited until after my father passed on to get my mining papers.
On April 20, 1914 Colorado National Guard troops opened fire on the Ludlow tent colony in Ludlow, Colorado. Striking mine workers and their families were living in the tent colony during one of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching strikes in U.S. history. At least 19 people, including 12 children and 2 women who were associated with the strikers and the union, died that day at Ludlow. This is a photograph of the Ludlow Massacre memorial.
Nimrod Workman - Forty-Two Years (1976)
Afterword
The "Blue Diamond Mines" song may seem like an odd choice to open this post with, but I believe that it captures a feeling of a place and time and allows me to say something about mine workers' cultures. There are plenty of complaints made by mine workers about the union, but in my experience these are complaints about policies or personalities more than anything else, and they're often made from a place of love and hope. Dissent was baked into the union when it was founded in 1890.
I believe that I owe the UMWA for almost everything that I have today, and I feel good about paying my associate dues every year. How and why I'm paying associate dues instead of retired dues is a long story, but life has its twists and turns. I feel especially good when I can support the Black Lung Movement. I'm thankful every day that I have known so many mine workers, had them as friends and family, joined those picket lines, shared time and food and memories with them and their families. They blessed me with their wisdom and humor, blessings that I have not deserved. Regardless of what you think about coal and energy sources and climate change, I'm sure that you believe that mine workers should receive decent pay and benefits and have secure healthcare and retirement systems. I'm sure that you believe in workplace safety and health. I'm certain that you believe that coal communities and former coal communities should not be abandoned and left to fend for themselves.
Please support those Warrior Met strikers. Please support the miner's rights to a fair standard of working and living, to dignity in retirement and to healthcare. Please support the coal mining and former coal mining communities.
Several important court and legal cases have been on mind for the last week or so. You may or may not have the heard of them, and you may or not agree with me that these cases are potentially related to one another.
I have been thinking much about the $83 million opioid settlement reached between the State of West Virginia and Walgreens. You can read about it here. As the article says, "The settlement resolves a lawsuit that alleged many pharmacy chains failed to maintain effective controls as a distributor and dispenser that contributed to oversupply of opioids in the state." West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey office claims to have won over more than $950 million in opioid litigation. Next on the chopping block is The Kroger Company and its pharmacies as they likely did not monitor their sales of opioids and sound any alarms so long as they were making profits from misery and substance abuse.
If you ask me, Kroger is making a big mistake by not trying to avoid the courts. Walmart, CVS and Rite Aid have reached settlements with the state totaling about $175 million since last August. CVS, Walgreens and Walmart have agreed to pay $10 billion in order settle similar lawsuits with state and local governments and Native American tribes elsewhere in the United States. Kroger looks like a vulnerable bad neighbor right now.
It's hard to keep the settlements and the court cases straight. The settlement that has gotten the most coverage was the one that included the OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. The family has to pay something like $6 billion and. Their company is supposed to be taken over by another company that will put its profits into combating the opioid crises. None of this would have happened had there not been activists on the ground forcing action against the Sacklers. There are also the lesser-known settlements involving Johnson & Johnson, Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson and twelve states that put $26 billion in corporate money into state hands and obligate these companies to put some safeguards in place regarding opioid distribution. Some counties in Ohio won $650 million from Walgreens, CVS and Walmart over additional opioid-related claims.
These billions of dollars are spare change when you balance it out over the companies that have to pay and consider the damage done and the callous attitudes and the corruption that brought all this to pass in the first place. This all sounds like lots of money, but remember that West Virginia led the nation in overdose deaths per 100,000 people, with 81.4 per 100,000 people just three years ago. Kentucky ran a distant second, with a death rate of 49.2 per 100,000 people. Heck, more than 564,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2020.
But it doesn't stop there. The Sackler family will not acknowledge that what they did was wrong, and they have no legal obligation to do so. Walgreens gets to pay their $83 million over an eight-year period, staggering their costs. The company contributed to an “oversupply” of prescription opioids in West Virginia and across Central Appalachia. At some point, either by accident or lack of oversight or callous disregard for human life, the drugs were being diverted for street and holler use. State medical, treatment, adjudication and imprisonment and costs hit hard. Communities were divided, families suffered, and people died. We are living with synthetic opioids like fentanyl poisoning our communities. I heard in church yesterday that dozens of houseless people in my community have died from overdoses since the beginning of the year. I often wonder why the companies involved and the Sackler family and the investors and salesmen and the bought-off "researchers" and doctors who front for these companies are not being prosecuted for running multi-state criminal rings and conspiracies. Once their payments are made the companies will try to walk away from the great damage they have done. In the meantime, they are positioning themselves as caring community partners who want what is best for us and are cutting jobs and raising prices.
The other legal case that is weighing heavily on my spirit is the City National Bank-Los Angeles County redlining case. Here the Department of Justice found that the bank engaged in discriminatory practices by refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominately Latino and Black communities between 2017 and 2020. These practices discouraged or prohibited home ownership and undermined community stability. A sort of "banking desert" was created in the Latino and Black communities as well. These communities were underserved, disregarded, ripped-off, and destabilized. City National will have to pay over $31 million dollars. The bank will create a $29.5 million fund to subsidize loans to Black and Latino borrowers. City National will also spend $1.75 million on advertising, community outreach and financial education programs in Black and Brown communities. The bank is not admitting fault or guilt but is giving in nonetheless. The settlement only covers what the Department of Justice could prove took place between 2017 and 2020. Mr. Mark Alston did an excellent interview with National Public Radio on the issues involved in the settlement.
Redlining and housing discrimination are not news in Los Angeles. City National Bank is just one institution of many that have engaged in these outrageous practices and profited from them, and this way of doing business goes back many generations. Richard Rothstein can give you an eight-minute lesson on how discrimination in lending has been linked not only to residential segregation and the deterioration of communities but to environmental disasters as well. A report by Ailsa Chang, Christopher Intagliata, and Jonaki Mehta will explain this to you in the most engaging ways possible. But whatever the history and tricks involved, systemic oppression and discrimination draw much of their power from the ability of elites to discourage, disappoint, divide, frustrate, and rip people off over time. Patterns arise and poverty and trauma are passed on from one generation to the next unless a healing and activist social movement arises and can counteract some of the damage done. The Department of Justice settlement is huge by their standards, but it cannot, by itself, reverse the traumas associated with discrimination and oppression.
And that brings me back to my point that these cases, the ones from Central Appalachia and the most recent housing discrimination case from Los Angeles, are potentially related to one another. How so? Notice the patterns of corporate greed and the assumption that corporations will rip us off, even to the point of causing deaths, and they will continue to do so until they are caught. They arrived to where they are with an Us vs. Them way of thinking. They will fight having to pay for the damage done or will lowball the costs of that damage and will fight having to accept legal responsibility for their actions if they are caught. Racism figures mightily into their thinking, but they also see great opportunities for profits where large companies and industries have shut down and where people are desperate and where part of the population can convinced to support get-tough-law-and-order barbaric policies and take employment in law enforcement and the prison industrial complex. The Us vs. Them becomes Them vs. Them.
Something else ties what happens in Los Angeles to what happens in Central Appalachia and the so-called "Rust Belt." Mark Alston, mentioned above, has much that is helpful to say about housing discrimination in Los Angeles. He makes a good point that the money is too little and comes too late for many and that whatever advancements are made from this point depends much on who is designing and administering the next steps, but that the settlement may do some good. The Biden administration has done the right thing by prioritizing stopping and punishing redlining. But at the local and grassroots levels the settlements mentioned above will hit particular walls besides what Mr. Alston and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey talk about.
Houselessness in Los Angeles and the conditions that are creating it and enabling it are swamping the region. Attorney General Morrisey has said that the money won in the West Virginia settlements will “provide help to those affected the most by this crisis in West Virginia,” but syringe laws and the state laws covering how naloxone is administered and paraphernalia laws and licensure requirements for harm reduction programs---all of them based on a fear-driven law-and-order worldview and the rejection of the idea that substance abuse is a disease or disorder---really limits the reach and the effectiveness of anti-drug and lifesaving efforts. In both L.A. and Central Appalachia, the money is there for companies or non-profits or state or local governments to administer programs, but the money is not there to empower people and give them the means of determining their own needs and destinies.
Now, imagine if a national peoples' movement came together and took on Big Pharma, the real estate industry, the banks, and all of the destructive and oppressive forces that destroy our communities and divide us. Imagine if people in Central Appalachia and L.A. and elsewhere were working from the same playbook and could see themselves and one another as leaders and if we operated from a point of solidarity with one another. If the small harm reduction efforts in West Virginia, the volunteer activists who pushed the Sacklers to the walls, and the leading poor and working-class Brown and Black activists in L.A. could win the kind of ground that they have then even stronger regional and national movements can win more, and they can win even more by being in solidarity with one another.
Sometimes people hear about protests and wonder how they happen or why, and they don't understand why "religious people" would go to certain protests and even get arrested at these events. For the people of faith who go to the demonstrations this is all about providing a living witness of and for their faith and making a statement of some kind. It often feels to me that the two groups don't talk to one another, and maybe even avoid doing so. The folks scratching their heads and wondering what's going on and the activists do have much to talk about, though.
For many Western Christian traditions, today is Epiphany -- the day the magi arrived at Jesus's manger.
More than 2,000 years ago, these wise men experienced the epiphany that this child was the Christ: the Prince of Peace, the Son of God, and the expected Messiah. The magi then stood up to political violence by thwarting the oppressive King Herod's attempt to kill the infant Jesus.
Just two years ago, religion met with political violence once more on January 6, 2021, when thousands of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol in the hijacked name of Jesus, convinced that their efforts to destroy democracy were divinely authorized.
That's why early this morning, I joined with dozens of diverse Christian leaders outside the U.S. Capitol to pray, and to offer a Christian witness for peace and democracy. At the "Sunrise Prayer Vigil for Democracy" -- co-organized by Faithful America and our friends at the Christians Against Christian Nationalism initiative -- we denounced Christian nationalism and white supremacy; prayed for healing for every person on Capitol Hill who relived trauma today; and spoke out for the values of love, democracy, and freedom for all.
As the sun rose over the Capitol and darkness turned to light, we felt not only the dawn of a new day but also the hope of the resurrection -- and the promise that together, we will build a better future.
A video and some photographs were provided so that readers could see what took place on January 6. Rev. Empsall's e-mail went on to say:
Today, I prayed that God would grant a new epiphany to those who follow Christian nationalism, and show them that where Christian nationalism spreads violence, hatred, and misinformation, Jesus teaches us peace, love, and truth.
Others who spoke included the Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould, who prayed, "We come this morning, God, because the blood of our siblings continues to cry out from the ground not just from two years ago today, but from the very founding of this country… We come this morning to say that time is up for white Christian nationalism."
We also heard from evangelical author Shane Claiborne, who said, "Christian nationalism is a perversion of the Gospel of Christ… We call out the principalities and powers of racism, xenophobia, fear, and white Christian nationalism, and we declare that your love triumphs over them."
We appealed to God to give us strength for the work ahead, and also showed journalists and lawmakers that where Christian nationalism seeks to strip away the rights of everyone but conservative Christians, Jesus calls us to build shared power and freedom for everyone, regardless of race, religion, zip code, physical abilities, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Today's vigil featured friends and allies from local Baptist congregations, the National Council of Churches, Red Letter Christians, Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, Faiths United for Democracy, NETWORK Catholic Lobby, Catholic Vote Common Good, Faith in Action, the Interfaith Alliance, authors like Jim Wallis and Jemar Tisby, and so many more. We at Faithful America are so grateful to everyone who turned out to pray -- and who takes concrete action grounded in that prayer.
Wishing you a peaceful and blessed Epiphany season,
- The Rev. Nathan Empsall Executive Director, Faithful America
If you read up on the issues mentioned here and think about where the United States is at right now you will probably agree that this is pretty important. I want to encourage you to check out Faithful America and some of the organizations mentioned above.
I don't know how many people migrated out from Appalachia to the north or moved east and west from their homes in search of work after the Second World War and into the 1970s. I don't if anyone knows, or if it's even possible to count, but I bet that it was at least in the hundreds of thousands. Their numbers included my father, who left the coal regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, and many of the kids who I went to school with who came from Western North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia or who had parents who did.
If you are not from some part of Appalachia, or if you never encountered these people, then you probably have no image of them or ever thought much about them. And since we don't know the numbers of people involved, and because Appalachia is so large and is so diverse, any stereotypes that we have fail. I do remember from my childhood and teen years that the kids who came from Southern and Central Appalachia seemed tough and ready to fight, racist, and fatalistic. They chose hard drugs and hard drinking pretty early on. On the other hand, the kids from the Northeastern Pennsylvania coal regions in these years seems depressed and bored and not so much given to rebellion. They were often sadly resigned to finding low-paying and union-represented factory jobs or, possibly, making it into community college or a trade or using family connections to move away with the hope of doing better. I only began to come to terms with this and how I fit in and didn't fit in the late 1970s.
I did get to know a little about the hillbilly community in Baltimore and thought that I would move there when I was in my late teens. Working at the Sparrows Point steel mill or the Wilmington GM plant didn't seem like bad ideas at the time. Only the postwar recession killed those plans. I was also aware of the movements for social change that were developing in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood among uprooted Appalachians and Southerners (yes, the two groups are different) and I still credit the Young Patriots and Rising Up Angry groups with helping my political development as a teenager. You can read about this in Hy Thurman's hands-on autobiography Revolutionary Hillbilly and follow him on Facebook for a full account and a look into where that movement is at today. The movement in Uptown seemed to challenge almost everything when I encountered it.
The white and Southern Young Patriots allied with the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Organization, a revolutionary Puerto Rican organization, and the three groups founded what is today thought of as the first Rainbow Coalition. The film American Revolution II captures some of the excitement and the methods of organizing used in those years. It remains instructive. The film and Thurman's book both center Black Panther Party organizer Bobby Lee. Whether you agree with the politics involved or not, the movement in Uptown in part of modern Appalachian history. There are many entries about this on this blog. For me the bottom line is that people of color are not demanding anything that white working-class people don't absolutely need.
No movement for social justice every loses on every count. Those movements may not win, but it's a good bet that when people struggle against oppression they always gain ground, even if their gains are in developing new ways of relating to one another or deeper self-confidence or new ideas. The first Rainbow Coalition and the groups within it did not fail.
The White Panther and the Black Panther Story By The Black Panther Man, Bobby Lee
Every day in Africa, the Zebra and the Gazelle wake up. They know they must run faster than the White Panther that hunts in the day and the Black Panther that hunts in the night or they will be killed. Every morning, the White Panther wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest Zebra or Gazelle or it will starve to death. Every night the “Black Panther” rises up. It too knows that it must outrun the slowest Zebra or Gazelle or his family will starve also.
It does not matter whether you are a White Panther or a Black Panther or a Zebra or a Gazelle: When the sun rises and when the sun sets, you better be strong and running.
“[My songs] aren’t so pretty, but they’re songs that I learned or I wrote while I was doing stoop labor up and down the highways and byways of California, travelin’ with my people in their broken-down old cars and with their kids with bellies swollen from hunger, their mouths full of the dust of Oklahoma.”
This is a a special post for my white friends in Appalachia who may not be aware of Beau of the Fifth Column. You can catch him on Youtube, and I hope that you will. I think that this video will give you a good introduction to him, and I think that you will be able to see or hear yourself or someone you know in him within a few minutes.
I was not a fan until recently. I have my disagreements with him, but I recently heard that he is giving strong support to the mine workers' strike in Alabama that has been going on for eighteen months now and that made me rethink my position. I like it that he's honest and I like that he's trying to move people without hitting people over the head. I deeply appreciate how he talks about race, guns, LGBTQIA+ people, and violence against women. I like that he's careful with his words and that we don't hear profanity and conspiracy theories when we listen in.
This is a good introduction, but please go to Youtube and dig in.
"As our society grows more frightened and more repressive, the church is faced with an urgent call for truth telling—concerning both the exposure of our predatory economic system, which produces and sustains poverty through cheap labor, and the articulation of an alternative way that will yield neighborly abundance. But as long as the church is in unthinking collusion with dominant economic assumptions, this hard and transformative truth is unlikely to be spoken aloud."
Walter Brueggemann (born 1933) is an American Protestant Old Testament scholar and theologian who is widely considered one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last several decades. He is an important figure in modern progressive Christianity whose work often focuses on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argues that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism. Brueggemann is known throughout the world for his method of combining literary and sociological modes when reading the Bible.
Some Christian friends have connected with me to express their opposition to the LGBTQIA+ people using the rainbow symbol. These friends tell me that the rainbow was a sign given by God to demonstrate love and reconciliation and that LGBTQIA+ people have misappropriated the rainbow as a symbol.
This is painful for me to hear, but let's examine this. Large numbers of people---people of faith and others---who are waving Pride rainbow flags or wearing those buttons or stickers probably do agree with the opposition that the rainbow does signify love and reconciliation. That's their point exactly. Most everyone wants love and reconciliation of some kind, and every person needs love and reconciliation.
The crowd suggesting that LGBTQIA+ people are sinners and that their misappropriation of the rainbow invites God's harsh judgement are accepting very limited interpretations and translations of a few texts that occur in both the Hebrew and Christian bibles. It takes some work to sort that out, and most folks don't have time or patience with that, but I think that the biblical weight is on the side of justice for LGBTQIA+ people.
Let's take another path, though, since arguing over interpreting Scripture won't get us very far most of the time. Let's ask---is God still speaking or not? If He isn't, then we're back to arguing over interpreting Scripture. If He is, then we have to talk about discernment. And lots of people will tell you that they discern God's hand in movements for human rights, including the LGBTQIA+ movement.
The question of whether or not God "changes" is open to discussion. There are many places in our sacred texts where God's mind seems to change or unexpected mercies or condemnations appear. There are notable conflicts throughout and between our texts. But it cannot be argued that human beings are the same in 2022 as we were in ancient times and that different peoples will either receive different messages or will interpret what they hear differently. There is a good ayah (verse) in Surah Al-Hujurat of the Quran: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allāh is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allāh is Knowing and Aware."
Do not lose opportunities to know one another.
Have our friends who oppose Pride not considered that God is too big and too great to fit into one religion? Have they forgotten that even the Christian Bible says that not everything that Jesus did or said can be contained in it because those teachings were so many and so marvelous? Have they found some other definition for "righteousness" than "justice" and "acting justly"?
That can become a political discussion pretty quickly. There is nothing wrong with mixing politics and religion---I think that God requires us to use wisdom in discerning political events and wants us to takes sides---but maybe that conversation doesn't get us very far, either, because we're coming into this on opposing sides. Please hear what I'm saying: ideas and politics matter, but when we speak of religion and politics we should be speaking of justice. So let's try studying this from another direction.
Isn't anything that detracts from love or says that God is something less than an infinite love for everyone at odds with what the peoples of the Abrahamic faiths read in our sacred texts? Yes, God has different Names and means of functioning, but is God not our Loving Parent and Creator? Do we not all of us bear the images of God and of the first human beings that God created out of clay and God's very breath? The answer has to be "yes" for people of faith. And that being the case, we are obligated to reconciliation because we share God's image and breath, our common origins, and our humanity as well.
It is an insufficient fable we spin that says "love the sinner but hate the sin." Examine your heart carefully. There is judgment buried in that trite cliché that gives you power in this world or system but that puts you at great risk before others and before God. Why? Because this is something more than an opinion or just a stand-alone cliché. It is judgement, privilege, and hypocrisy talking. Isn't it a form of exclusion, of publicly shaming someone, because of who they love and how they love?
From First United Methodist Church of Salem, OR.
Where do you start with loving another as God has told us to do? You start with letting others be themselves. This imitates God's love for us.
So when churches and other faith communities put up barriers between themselves and LGBTQIA+ people what's really happening?
Closing with some words of wisdom---practical theology---from two gay people:
