social justice – Page 2 – Southwest Conference Blog

Our Trip to the Border

by Jane McNamara, Chair, Immigration Task Force, First Church UCC Phoenix

Hidden along the edge of the concrete ramp were 20 or 25 coins. I carefully picked them out of the sand and put them in the back pocket of my jeans. Nearby were torn pieces of paper money from Cuba – and strewn everywhere were shoelaces, belts, clothing items of all kinds, backpacks and shoes. Lots of shoes.

There is an explanation for what we saw at the border last week. Our guides, Fernie and Nathalie with the non-profit AZCA Humanitarian Coalition, said that Border Patrol agents require all migrants to leave their possessions behind. Agents say they don’t have the personnel to do the needed security checks. So, when they process migrants seeking asylum after they’ve crossed the border into the United States, migrants are given a clear plastic bag for their papers and perhaps a phone – and that is what they bring with them to the Welcome Center in Phoenix.

And the shoes? Since many cross water, they leave their muddy, wet shoes and wear someone else’s that have dried in the sun. An explanation, perhaps, for why so many guests at the Welcome Center are wearing shoes that fit them so poorly.

It was clear from our visit that Fernie and Nathalie would like to find ways to reuse more belongings but there isn’t the volunteer network that would be needed to undertake such a project. Instead, the AZCA Humanitarian Coalition organizes border aid trips, leaving water and fruit for asylum-seekers and, importantly, “restoring” the land. Five of us helped them one morning last week, following them along the dirt road by the border from Yuma to San Luis, making six stops and encountering migrants in many places along the way. And yes there are gaps in the wall near Yuma – and the wall will never be “finished.” Farmers demand access to water and the federal wall ends where the Cocopah Reservation begins.

We did not see Border Patrol process any asylum-seekers while we were there, but the evidence that they do indeed require everyone to throw away their personal possessions is everywhere. We filled bags and bags of “trash” and left them in the dumpsters parked along the border. In a few places, migrants picked up bags and helped us.

And afterwards, some of us brought items we found on the border to the Welcome Center. I washed hundreds of shoelaces in hopes our visitors to the Ropa (clothing) Room might be able to use them. My sister brought in the white confirmation dress she found and pinned it on a wall in the Ropa Room, thinking the mother who left it behind might visit us and see it, just waiting for her to reclaim it.

And I kept the coins I had found in my pocket.

Late last Saturday afternoon, four women who had chosen some clothing items from the Ropa Room were sitting on benches in the hallway, and one of the women was crying. I gave her a small stuffed dog and asked if she missed her family. One of the other women said she had been talking to her mother in Peru. Peru? I had never met anyone at the Welcome Center from Peru, but the coins in my pocket were Peruvian. I gave them to her and she placed them in her hand and stroked them ever so gently.

It was surely another one of the “God things” we witness so often at the Welcome Center.

We are truly blessed to be able to help welcome our newest immigrants to this country, and assist them as they pass through Phoenix on their way to sponsors throughout the country. And everyone who has donated clothing or shoes or tote bags or who has contributed to our meal fund is part of our First Church team. We are making a difference in people’s lives. Thank you.

Will the Minority Rule Again?

by Rev. Dr. Richard Einerson

There is a strong majority in this country that is pro-choice for women. Yet the minority can rule on this issue if we allow it. I have some background in medical ethics and from that background I feel compelled to make some comments. I was co-chair of the Medical Ethics Committee at Meritcare Medical Center in Fargo, ND where I was a chaplain for 18 years. In that role I attended weeklong seminars in medical ethics at the University of Washington as well as the “Managing Mortality” conference at the University of Minnesota. I heard the families of two major medical ethics cases, Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan. The first had to do with disconnecting a ventilator, the latter with discontinuing feeding tubes. Ever since the religious right has fought to have the government enforce quasi-religious values in families and personal life which continues today. (Comas: Karen Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terry Schiavo, Chapter 2). We are in the middle of that fight over women’s health and pro-choice issues now.

The battle has been going a while. I had an annual lecture in medicine and religions and invited Kristie Cruzan White, Nancy’s sister to tell their story to our physicians and community. Shortly thereafter (around 1991} I invited Dr. Daniel Maguire to lecture. His topic was going to be on grief in families who lose young children to incurable diseases as he and his wife had experienced. Maguire was a Jesuit teaching at Marquette but had become in the top ten on the hit list of his Catholic Church by an article he published in the Christian Century describing a visit he and his wife had made to a Planned Parent Center in Milwaukie. Contrary to the Republican notion that it is primarily “loose women” who get abortions, they found it was often women such as a schizophrenic whose medications would malform the fetus; other women whose pregnancies were not proceeding normally.

As a result of his unorthodox notions on abortion, I received a phone call on a Monday morning from the Chairman of the Bank which funded our lecture and who was more than nervous about our choice of lecture. I inquired who was objecting. It was the Bishop’s office and at least one of our conservative physicians. I said: “Norman, would you give me 24 hours to speak with them.” He reluctantly agreed. But in mid-afternoon I got a call from the President. After several statements I said: “Are you suggesting we pay his honorarium and have him stay home?” Of course, the answer was yes. Fortunately, we had friends in the philosophy department at Moorhead State University across the river who paid his airfare, and we had the largest turnout ever in their huge auditorium. Then Maguire did talk about abortion, quoting a Catholic Bishop in the 16^th century. With his Irish humor he said: “He didn’t lose his job, and his lectures weren’t cancelled!” Let’s be clear: This was an attempt of overruled FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

In another article, A Question of Catholic Honesty, Maguire takes on his church’s absolute stance on abortion: wrong all the time. He says: “As a Catholic theology I find this situation abhorrent and unworthy of the richness of the Roman Catholic traditions that have nourished me. I indict not only the bishops, but also the ‘petulant silence’ (Beverly Harrison’s phrase) or indifference of many Catholic Theologians who recognize the morality of certain abortions, but still will not address the subject publicly. I also indict the male dominated liberal Catholic press which does too little to dissipate the myth of a Catholic monolith on abortion.”

To me this is clearly an issue of women’s healthcare. It is an issue to be dealt with honestly in the privacy of a doctor’s office. I personally, as a man, cannot imagine the agony a woman goes through who may need an abortion. But I know that many of those who have FREEDOM as bumper stickers are all for LIMITING FREEDOM OF CHOICE FOR WOMEN. l It is amazing the me that the Supreme Court may be seriously nullifying Roe v Wade, established precedent. It says more about this court than it does about law. But if it does so, it is up to Congress. Our question as a society is: will be allow the minority to rule? Is the filibuster more important than a woman’s civil liberties? It is time for the majority to work at claiming its power. We should query and pressure our congressional representatives and senators. We should show up in the streets. The minority and their religious dogmatism should not prevail! It is time that the most strident voices be put down. I am not talking about their freedom of speech, but their trying to impose their will on the majority.

An unfortunate concomitant of the extreme right is the downright viciousness of their attacks. I mention the Nancy Cruzan case. The right consistently demonstrated where Nancy was lying in a persistent vegetative state. One of the signs on that Christmas eve read: LOOK WHAT NANCY GOT FOR CHRISTMAS: DEATH! I would hope that kind of viciousness might cease but I doubt that will ever be the case. Religion always has its zealots. They must not win this battle. We need to demonstrate that there are other Christians who are not zealots, who are champions of women’s rights, and who believe in the constitutional rights of all Americans!

Life AND Choice Are United

by Rev. Dr. Barb Doerrer-Peacock

I wasn’t sure whether this writing wanted to be a poem or an essay. So, I just wrote. This is the result: my thoughts/feelings about the current threat to women’s reproductive rights.

They would like us to think it’s about
Sanctity vs. sacrilege
Life vs. death
Federal vs state
Truth vs. lies
Constitution vs. changeable laws
Protection of one vs. another
A woman’s issue, and not a man’s
A womb and not a penis
A fetus and not a whole human life
A private decision and not
a whole human culture.

They would like us to think it’s about
when life begins and when it ends,
and whether it is a God
or a human decision.
whether it is male or female
conservative or liberal
Biblical or profane
pro-choice or pro-life.

They would like us to think…
but not really.
They would like us to react.

The tyranny of the binary
creates knee-jerk reactions,
reactions create polarizing gulfs,
gulfs create intractable division:
Us or Them
Other or Self
Win or Lose.

The authority of the binary
creates warring clans and tribes
Us vs. Them
Loyalty vs Disloyalty
Good vs Evil
Right vs. Wrong
Security vs. Fear.

The power of the binary is
dominance of definition
over ambiguity
privilege of power
over powerlessness,
control of cultural commonality
over difference and diversity.

They would like us to think that
this is what it’s all about.
It is not.
It is only yet another mask of
Either/Or
the binary.

A continuing incarnation of something
rather small and insidious,
like a worm that burrows unnoticed
into an orifice and lays its eggs
waiting, growing in the dark
to ultimately take over its host
with fear and madness.

But Life AND Choice are united.
The two entwining, eternal lovers of
God’s Good Creation.
Holiest Gifts
out of which everything is born.

Without Choice – there is no Life.
All is dead.
Without Life – Choice ceases to exist,
All is inanimate.

I refuse the binary trap.
Instead, I CHOOSE LIFE
Together, both, whole.

I choose to believe
life has no beginning
or end – all is in the presence of God
who was, and is,
and forever will be.

I choose to believe
sanctity can be manifest
In all soul-wrestling,
anguished decisions:
to end a pregnancy, AND
to continue a pregnancy
despite all odds, AND
a myriad of other
LIFE CHOOSE-INGS.
All are in the presence of God.

Sanctity evaporates
and the presence of God dims
when
our capacity to
CHOOSE LIFE
Is stolen.

So today,
I CHOOSE LIFE.
And I denounce
those who would be its
thieves.

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice put together this stunning video of Barb’s poem.

Ron and Stacey

by Rev. Dr. Kristina “Tina” Campbell

My friend, Ron, registers people to vote in Arizona. He approaches this patriotic task with humility and a sense of determination. The ravages of COVID did not deter him from making sure that people were equipped to exercise their fundamental American right to have a voice. Ron registers people to vote.

Ron’s efforts won both my respect and admiration, and prompted me to recall that when I was a child my family would make a ritual of the act of casting one’s vote. My parents, my brother, and I would dress up and walk to the polling place with the same reverence one might approach an altar for holy communion. My brother and I would stand outside of the booth as my parents pulled the curtain to cast their votes.

Politics were part of my family history. My grandfather and most of my paternal uncles were in the state legislature, and at the time of my birth, my father served as Secretary of State of Iowa. Voting was considered part of living, part of being part of a community, part of being a citizen.

However, not everyone in our country has always been afforded the opportunity to vote, and some have been prevented from voting by unfair laws and unjust interference. Some people need an advocate like Ron to assist them in casting their vote.

Last night I went to see Stacey Abrams at the Mesa Arts Center. Stacey is big on voting. Stacey is also a woman after my own heart. She has lived life on a broad canvas, dipping her toe into everything from acting to writing romance novels to running for public office. She has won elections, and she has lost elections, but she keeps going with justice as her north star.

Instead of adopting a defeatist attitude in our current social and political climate, Stacey challenges us to imagine we can do something, to try to fix things, to do the work. She challenges us to focus on what we can do, and to write it down. Stacey learned early on in her career that she was going to lose at times, and this keeps her centered in a forward momentum.

Stacey would applaud the efforts of my friend, Ron, and says that voting is a continuum of people knowing their rights, being registered and educated, and then becoming part of a coalition where they are repeatedly reminded of the process. People need to hear the message “You matter and we want to hear your voice.” At times Stacey becomes theological, and suggests we need to build relationships by doing for others what we would want them to do for us.

Stacey warns us that the biggest myth is that the political system is magic, and with a poof can fix our societal woes. She suggests that politics is more like medicine. We have social diseases, and voting is our medicine. The medicine does not always cure, but can stave off the symptoms, and provide containment. Stacey advises us to temper our expectations, and realize that we are not always going to get a neurosurgeon. Progress is never permanent, and people who disagree with us will always win elections. Stacey keeps her own equilibrium by voracious reading and watching lots of tv. She feels no guilt about her pleasures!

I am grateful to my friend Ron who quietly performs what I consider to be a profound ministry. As he registers people to vote, I surround him with light and utter many prayers on his behalf. He equips people to exclaim “I get to have a say in who we become.” Many thanks to Ron and Stacey for encouraging us to claim our voice.

To Tell the Truth

It’s More Than Just a Game Show

by Rev. Dave Klingensmith, Church of the Palms UCC

I have always enjoyed the game show “To Tell the Truth.” I’ve seen it through several different versions, even was at a taping in NYC once. It has always been fun for me to try to decide, along with the panelists, who is really the one contestant sworn to tell the truth.

Most of us learned from a young age that it was important to tell the truth. Those who raised us drilled it into us. “Don’t lie, tell the truth.” We may have learned it in Sunday School. The Ninth Commandment specifically forbids lying in terms of bearing false witness or what is called perjury today. And though we may have been told that a “little white lie” is sometimes OK, almost all cultures and religions discourage lying of any sort.

But while we are often quick to tell someone else to “tell the truth,” we often don’t like to hear the truth, or face the truth, about ourselves or someone else. Some time ago I discovered in doing some genealogy research that my paternal great-grandfather had committed suicide in the early 1900’s when some investments went bad. It was shocking and surprising. Often families don’t want to face the truth when this happens. People often don’t want to face the truth that a family member is LGBT, or that someone has a mental illness. These days using Ancestry.com or other websites, sometimes people may discover that they have siblings they never knew they had, or even that they may not be the race or nationality they thought they were. Doing other historical research might lead us to discover that our families owned slaves or took land from indigenous people.

It can be hard to face up to this. We may want to brush it under the rug, to tell ourselves “That was a long time ago.” But by doing so we deny ourselves a significant, if challenging, part of our history. To acknowledge it may result in significant growth and even healing for us, and for the descendants of those who were wronged.

Likewise, the information we learned in school about our nation’s history may not always have been totally truthful. I learned about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but didn’t learn until much later how we put Japanese-American U.S. citizens in internment camps. We learned about the Civil War and slavery, but textbooks downplayed the cruelty inflicted on slaves, and how our entire society capitalized on the backs of people who were bought and sold. We have often glossed over how even Christian missionaries treated Native Americans as “savages.”

Telling the truth about our nation’s history, especially in regard to racial issues, is important. The term “Critical Race Theory” is an explosive one right now. I would argue for a different term – Critical Race History – or even just Telling the Truth About Our History. When we do not acknowledge painful or troubling events or try to say they have no relevance today, we are denying the humanity of someone’s great-great grandparent who was a slave. We may have to tell the truth, that someone we may have admired was really a brutal plantation owner or a ship owner who transported slaves from Africa.

When school districts, or states, maybe even religious groups, try to deny painful parts of our history, we all lose. We lose the opportunity to acknowledge the truth, to admit our complicity in that history, and to see how we can do something today to atone for the past.

We can tell the truth about our history so that injustices don’t happen again. If we don’t tell the truth and acknowledge injustices, we can expect to repeat them.

Humbled to be an American

by Rev. Dr. Barb Doerrer-Peacock

The phrase…the song, “Proud to be an American” has always caused me to bristle. It was no different during this year’s Independence Day celebration. It has the strange, paradoxical effect of evoking both revulsion and tears of compassion. How is that possible? It pulls in me both the worst of American arrogance and exceptionalism, but also the swelling of gratitude for ultimate sacrifice and high values.

On July 4^th, my husband Rich also was bristling at the song. He asked, “What’s the opposite of ‘proud’?” He was trying to figure out what exactly he felt about our nation these days. I had the same impulse. What do I feel, after 16 months of pandemic, after watching our country go through years of elected leadership that brought democracy to the brink of destruction, betrayed the trust of allies around the world, manifest the worst of the “ugly American” stereotype, and even now continues to threaten those lofty values by polarization of fears, distrust and demonizing others – both other Americans and non-Americans. We’ve experienced 16 months of ugly truths and hidden histories revealed, heard the cries of the oppressed, seen protests in the streets, and what feels like chaos reigning in our capitol, and people dying, dying, still dying – so many refusing the very serum that could save their lives, often because of the insidious erosion of trust.

I replied to him, “humble.” Humble is the opposite of proud. That caused us both to stop in our tracks and look at each other. Humble. I am humbled to be an American. That is indeed the right word.

I am a person of great privilege which I did nothing to deserve or earn. It was the system I was born into, and my skin is the right color. Yes, those who served in the United States military fought and sometimes died for our freedoms, our way of life, our privileges…and I am a grateful American. But I’m also keenly aware that so did many thousands, maybe millions of Indigenous people who died as a result of colonization from White Europeans. So did kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants who constructed much of the American economy and infrastructure yet reaped little benefit, or even fair share, and instead inherited an inequitable system within which they have always been kept at a disadvantage. So did Asian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic and Latino, Middle Eastern immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, indentured workers, all who found their way either by will or by force, either seeking a better life for their families, or to escape horrors in their homelands. I could go on reciting what now is a litany coming to light.

I am humbled to be an American. Some of my forbears were the White European colonizers, some of them escaping tyranny in their homeland…some of them – maybe all of them – bringing that unhealed trauma with them. I am growing in understanding of my own ancestral history that bore the ugly stains of flawed humanity. Yet, I am here and I’m humbled to be an American. For all its flaws…there are ideals that somehow, in some way survived the dysfunctions, the abuses, the greed, the lies told. It is those that make my heart swell with gratitude. Yes…freedom, justice for all, equality and equity, and the embracing of all who seek refuge and a better life. We may not yet have achieved those ideas, but many of us still hold them, live for them, die for them.

I am humbled to be an American because I share the paradoxical heritage of this country, the push and pull, the fears and joys, the confusion and clarity, the power and vulnerability, the flaws and the ideals, the One out of Many, the harmonies of culture woven from the many threads of tradition. I am humbled because I can be both privileged yet repentant. I am humbled because I am so deeply enriched by those whose ancestral journeys have been so impoverished yet also triumphant and heroic. I am humbled because I know myself and my country would be incomplete and so much poorer if it were not for the rainbow of earth’s human diversities that are represented here. I would not know God in the same way, I would not know our government in the same way, our natural environment, our sense of justice, the songs we sing and play, the art we make if it were not for each other, no matter if I call you friend or enemy.

I am humbled to be an American. My July 4^th prayer is that God will keep my heart open, broken – yet healing, repentant and also repairing, humbled…yet also swelling with grateful joy.

Racism’s Impact on People of Color—RBTS

by Kay F. Klinkenborg

The effect of racism on mental health has a name: Race-based Traumatic Stress (RBTS).

I write this to honor the Juneteenth “Day of Freedom.” It is important and a crucial time for the church to be informed of the importance of freedom and ending racism; for the mental and physical well being of people of color.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (most commonly referred to as PTSD) became a familiar term following post- Vietnam war era replacing ‘shell shock syndrome’ from WWI and WWII.

Today there is specific identifying language regarding the trauma of racism on mental health. Most commonly used is Race-based Traumatic Stress (RBTS)¹. RBTS has not been used as a medical condition but is recognized as a response to a consistent/life-long exposure to racism, discrimination, structural racism and all its implications. It is the world in which people of color live that white people don’t experience.

In 2002, B.F. Butts²documented the correlation between racial/ethnic discrimination and PTSD. From 2005 to now I found ample empirical evidence that attests to the nature and impact of racial trauma on victims. Should we be surprised? No! Are we alert and connected to the reality of those who live under racism daily? “There is a cumulative traumatizing impact of racism on racialized individuals, which can include individual acts of racism combined with systemic racism, and typically includes historical, cultural, and community trauma as well.”¹American citizens and physicians (in general) are behind the eight ball in applying known medically detrimental stressors and their impact on the mental and physical well-being of POC.

Studies show that White supremacist ideology, the belief in White biological or cultural superiority that serves to maintain the status quo of racial inequality, is deeply integrated in dominant culture values (Liu et al., 2019).⁴ This consistent racist milieu is destroying lives and our democracy.

“Racism…Corrosive Impact on the Health of Black Americans” was aired on 60 minutes on April 18, 2021. Dr. David R. Williams, a Harvard Researcher was interviewed by Bill Whitaker. Williams gave a poignant example of the impact of racism on Blacks in America: “Imagine if you will, a plane with 220 Black people crashes today and they all die. Every day in America 220 Black people die prematurely.”⁵

For decades, the medical community has known that stressors impact physical health and can shorten life expectancy. What is vital for us to understand is that RBTS is a day-in and day-out lived experience. And that trauma shortens lives significantly and creates mental stress beyond the norm of one significant time, or short duration of traumatic stress in one’s life. The severity of being in ‘war’ has alerted us to PTSD. BUT we are now learning that a life-time of exposure to racism is detrimental and dangerous to POC and there are life-time impacts of Race- based Traumatic Stress.

A variety of symptoms/behaviors are observed (but not limited to): hypervigilance, depression, low levels of ethnic identity, low self-efficacy, low self-esteem, anger, recurring disruptive thoughts of racist encounters/events, chest pains, insomnia, mental distancing from traumatic events, a variety of medical long-term negative impacts, etc.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}

“It is important to note that unlike PTSD, RBTS is not considered a mental health disorder. RBTS is a mental injury that can occur as the result of living within a racist system or experiencing events of racism.” ²

Unequivocally, racism experienced by all people of color is shortening their lifespans, decreasing their quality of life and creating a constant state of anxiety and fear. What should be White Christian’s response to these chronic living conditions? More crucial, why are we allowing this to continue? If we are all created in the image of God, all people are equal. Apostle Paul write in Galatians 3:28: : “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (NIV) Dare we not add: ‘neither White or people of color’?

Jesus demonstrated for us numerous examples of contact/concern/compassion for persons who are: marginalized, oppressed, economically disadvantaged, those living in disparaging social conditions and lack of physical and mental health resources.

White supremacy does not believe these two quotes: 1) “Every person has equal value”. The Gates Foundation mission statement. 2) “You have never locked eyes with a person who is not worth of freedom, liberty, connection and belonging.” Stated by: Kori Carew, Black female lawyer, feminist, and activist.

And as recent as the events that DID NOT happen in Tulsa over Memorial Day Weekend, 2021 to recognize the 100 year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre (Greenwood Black community demolished and over 300 dead, and thousands displaced, John Legend stated: “The road to restorative justice is crooked and rough—and there is space for reasonable people to disagree about the best way to heal the collective trauma of white supremacy. But one thing that is not up for debate—one fact we must hold with conviction—is that the path to reconciliation runs through truth and accountability.”¹³

I believe we have a moral and ethic responsibility to work toward ending racism. That begins with me! The Hebrew Scripture prophet Micah understood this urgent need 1000’s of years ago: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (NIV, Micah 6:8).

REFERENCES

¹Mental Health America website, 2021. www. https://www.mhanational.org/ “Our Commitment to

Anti-racism.”

²Butts, H. F. (2002). The black mask of humanity: Racial/ethnic discrimination and post-traumatic stress disorder. The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30(3), 336–339

²Mental Health America website, 2021. www. https://www.mhanational.org/ “Our Commitment to

Anti-racism.”

³Carter, R.T., et al. (2017) Race-based traumatic stress, racial identity statuses, and psychological functioning: An explanatory investigation. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 48(1), 30-37.

^-3-

⁴ Liu, W. M., et al. (2019). Racial trauma, microaggressions, and becoming racially innocuous: The role of acculturation and White supremacist ideology. American Psychologist, 74(1), 143–155.

⁵Willliams, D. R., Whitaker,B (interviewer). (May 2021).”Racism…Corrosive Impact on the Heath of Black Americans.” 60 Minutes weekly TV news report. Complete interview: https://cbsn.ws/2OYeu70.

⁶Helms, J. E., Nicolas, G., & Green, C. E. (2010). Racism and ethno-violence as trauma: Enhancing professional training. Traumatology, 16(4), 53-62.

⁷Carter, R. T., Mazzula, S., Victoria, R., Vazquez, R., Hall, S., Smith, S., . . . Williams, B. (2013). Initial development of the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale: Assessing the emotional impact of racism. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 5(1), 1-9.

⁸ Cheng, H. -L., & Mallinckrodt, B. (2015). Racial/ethnic discrimination, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and alcohol problems in a longitudinal study of Hispanic/Latino college students. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 62(1), 38–49.

⁹Flores, E., et al. (2010). Perceived racial/ethnic discrimination, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and health risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(3), 264–273.

¹⁰Holmes, S. C., Facemire, V. C., & DaFonseca, A. M. (2016). Expanding Criterion A for posttraumatic stress disorder: Considering the deleterious impact of oppression. Traumatology, 22(4), 314–321.

¹¹Gone, J. P., et al. (2019). The impact of historical trauma on health outcomes for Indigenous populations in the USA and Canada: A systematic review. American Psychologist, 74(1), 20–35.

¹²Carter, R. T., et al. (2013). Initial development of the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale: Assessing the emotional impact of racism. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 5(1), 1-9.

¹³Legend, J. (June 1, 2021). Hundreds remember riot at historical Tulsa church. Arizona Republic.

To read extensive research on medical treatment of Black patients see: ¹³Pearl, Robert, MD. (May, 2021) How Racial Bias and Healthcare Inequality Are Killing Black Patients. Excerpted from his book: Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients.

The Use of Violence

by Hailey Lyons

I am not the only one who watched the storming of the Capitol in utter horror. And I am certainly not the only one who watched it without surprise. We knew this was coming, we knew for decades that this was going to happen.

What was unexpected to the neoliberals was what I and other marginalized peoples have been warning about for decades. As we departed from Evangelicalism and conservative ideologies, as we grew up in open opposition to the powers that oppress us, and as we ran to mainline and progressive havens, we warned about the dangers to come. But we were not heard. Instead, we could neither truly escape the past nor shrug off the painful present, leaving us in rage and silence.

The terrorists that stormed the Capitol did so with signs like ‘Jesus Saves’ and American flags, Confederate flags, and ‘Proud American Christian’ flags. Their jubilance was palpable as they attacked the press and stood on the Capitol for steps an hours-long photo-op. They invaded offices of members of Congress, planted bombs, and posed in the chambers themselves. Their purpose was clear: to defy the will of the people and vaunt the power of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

And yet, all I see from the media and from ecumenical responses are denouncements of violence. The media and our political institutions use symbolic language to talk about America’s status as a place of peace and hope. Church leaders talk about Jesus’ nonviolence as if it were enshrouded in sacred history and understood as truth by all. They shame their institutions and denominations.

To say that Jesus was nonviolent is to ignore the Scriptures. The man who spoke out in synagogues and on mountainsides in the face of Roman colonial and Pharisaical rule did so with the knowledge that his teachings and practices were a violent rejection of them. The man who braided a whip and struck people and livestock, overturning tables in the temple of the Lord was not nonviolent. The man who preached that we were to turn our cheek once slapped to allow only a dishonorable strike be the next one was not nonviolent. The man who announced that his was the way of truth and life; the man whose death spawned an entire religion that would for centuries violently oppose powers and principalities was not nonviolent. Even in its appropriation as state religion, Christianity has ever been a religion of violence. To say otherwise cherry picks church history in the same manner we malign Evangelicals for.

America is not a place of peace and nonviolence. Our arms and munitions fund wars all around the world and have done so for an exceedingly long time. Our laws and governments privilege violence against the marginalized to keep us marginalized. Our culture is rooted in violent destruction of those who oppose us. We are not a shining beacon of democracy; we are an imperial power inherited from colonial Europe.

No broad civil rights movement has ever been achieved in America without violence. From the Civil War to recognize black bodies as human; to women’s suffrage and the street carnage; to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s that saw still more black and brown bodies murdered and brutalized; to the Stonewall Riots that demanded LGBT bodies be seen and not murdered or brutalized; to the Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA marches in recent years. Martin Luther King Jr. knowingly incited violence during his marches, and toward the end of his life he was on the crux of announcing far bolder and violent measures to take racial equality by force. As police moved in to arrest and brutalize and murder LGBT people at Stonewall, they stood up and fought back directly. Had they not, I wouldn’t have the right to be where I am today.

In my coming out and coming to understand my peoples’ history and culture, I am horrified at the violent methods by which transgender bodies have been systematically oppressed, brutalized, and murdered. I live with the terror of knowing that not passing in public subjects me to the possibility of verbal abuse, a beating, or being killed. Simply by choosing to be myself I am an act of violence, of violent rejection of the multifold violence done to me.

Religious and political institutions ignore the fact that violence is not and has never been solely an expression of physical force. Violence takes many forms, and most often it is epistemic and psychological. While we distract from the real issue at hand and titillate on the use of violence, we must understand that the epistemic and psychological forms of violence are the most common tools of those in power. For us on the margins, it is not just physical violence that we face when we march in the streets, but the epistemic and psychological violence by institutions seeking to rip legitimacy away from us. Marching in and of itself is an act of violence, violently rejecting the oppressive powers that would see us isolated and alone in order to be more quietly brutalized and murdered.

When we read Scripture, we find Christ is most often present where power and violence clash with the marginalized. Christ is a force of violence, but where the state privileges power, Christ privileges people. Two ideologies – power and people – clashing against each other necessitate violence, or otherwise there would be no opposition. When American neoliberal culture and Evangelicalism perpetuate the idea that violence is evil, they take away the opportunity for opposition to them, and instead rule unchecked. This is nothing less than hypocrisy and perpetuates still more violence and oppression. Neoliberals and Evangelicals alike are horrified by it and yet don’t hesitate to use it when it benefits them. We should condemn why the terrorists were at the Capitol rather than critiquing the methodology when we were just cheering Black Lives Matter on and acknowledging the only language that gets the attention of those in power is violence. It is nothing short of hypocrisy and grandstanding.

It’s not just our burden, but our requirement as Christians to check this oppressive power with the people. Whether marching in the streets, teaching a different curriculum, or favoring the marginalized over those in power, these are all acts of violence. They are also immense acts of love and compassion and empathy, binding us together in solidarity against power and violence. If we do not acknowledge those facts and cower in the shadows when the word violence is used like a slur, then we will never achieve equality and we will never be truly heard on the margins.

Let us remember where the true war is being fought. Let us adjust course and fight the fight as Jesus and the Prophets did, knowing that things can be better. Knowing that one day our children and grandchildren will know a world in which violence is no longer necessary because there is nothing but the people. Until then, we fight.

What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Justice’?

by Hailey Lyons

The greatest joy I have found in helping lead our UCC@ASU ministry is the moment an individual recognizes that we’re there to jump in alongside them, lift them up, and fight for justice. For far too long, Evangelical institutions have dominated the scene at ASU, creating a narrative that demands conformity to strict theology and causes lasting harm. When I was still a member of an Evangelical institution and doing campus ministry, a word that rang in our ears and filled our mouths with distaste was ‘justice’.

This seven-letter word has caused Evangelicalism and white, heteronormative communities around America, to reflexively cringe. This is because seeking justice inherently challenges their positions of power. This is because seeking justice inherently rebukes whiteness, heteronormativity, and strict gender roles. Even in the UCC, a denomination founded on seeking justice, we still find bastions of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and transphobia. We still have much to learn about actually doing the work of justice.

The UCC has largely become inoculated to the word ‘justice’. Sure, it goes on our slogans and marketing campaigns, but from there it fizzles out like soda going flat. It retains some of its taste as sugary juice, and one might still recognize it, but the carbonation is completely gone. The fire, the passion, the zeal to be transformative is gone. Instead, it is flat. Inert. The UCC has a long and storied history of seeking justice on the front lines of national debates, but this obscures the fact that too often local UCC churches distill the message of justice into only putting up a slogan in the building or on the website and separate from the transformation that justice requires. It’s not enough to just do a food drive in your church. It’s not enough to go to the border and help struggling migrants avoid dehydration and starvation. It’s not enough to label your church as Open and Affirming. These things are wonderful, but they are not enough.

The heart of the problem is churches choosing complacency rather than the true, transformative work of Christ. Instead of changing our polity, liturgy, and curriculums we uphold whiteness, heteronormativity, and transphobia. We inject ourselves into public discourse on a few areas to make ourselves feel better when we’re as colonizing as every other invasive non-profit that exists for its own gratification.

Our ministerial call in the UCC is to embrace transformative justice as a catalyst for change. “God is still speaking,” isn’t just a cute denominational phrase, it’s a rallying cry to the spark of change found in the margins. If we yield to the discomfort and withdraw from change because we can’t deal with our own complicity, we reject the idea that God is still speaking. We reject the embrace of justice and trade it for institutional security.

Justice is our call, our urgent need. Transformative justice that embodies the Christ in both the personal and the systemic, both the local church and the universal one. Jesus died, but the Christ lives on in the church. Radical rejection of oppressive systems and powers and total love tempered by communal striving toward mutual servanthood aren’t just attributes of the Christ, but the call of the church. Jesus’ ministry wasn’t a campaign as a synagogue leader or a pharisee to bring more Samaritans and Romans into the fold, but to evolve spiritual praxis into something totally different, radically new.

Justice is an analogous term to the Christ, one that the law cannot aspire to because the law is too often trapped by the oppressive systems and powers to truly strive communally toward mutual servanthood with total love. Too often the church is wrapped up in the opposite side, bogging itself down in what it means to love and communally strive toward mutual servanthood so that its rejection of oppressive systems and powers is watered down to the personal or too weak to make systemic change.

The UCC has an amazing opportunity to embody the Christ through seeking justice, but that means doing the work. We have the chance to do something totally different and radically new, but rather than getting caught up in visions of a restored UCC population: do the work. When we say justice let us truly mean the burning, urgent passion to embody the Christ in all its transformative power.