Racism, Past & Present

Racism permeates day-to-day life in the United States. We pass by racism’s past effects and present realities on a daily basis. The present realities – the murder of Ahmaud Arbery or the health disparities laid bare in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – take up most of our attention. But the continuing effects of the past are often in plain sight.

The central architectural feature of Denton, Texas, for instance, is the County Courthouse. To enter the Courthouse from the south, one passes through the archway formed by a monument to Confederate soldiers.

Quakertown Park sits immediately northeast of the Courthouse-on-the-Square and just south of the Texas Woman’s University campus. It’s a flat, open space featuring a large playground and a municipal water park (both of which are closed).

The State of Texas historical marker I share here is tucked into a landscaping feature at the far southern end of the park. It tells the story of the constant harassment and eventual ethnic cleansing of Quakertown’s Black residents in the 1910s and early 1920s.

As I strolled around the park today, the sign caught my eye, as almost all historical markers do. The events recounted by the sign are a testament to the violence – both vigilante and bureaucratic – of anti-Black American racism. Moreover, the content of the sign is itself an expression of racism.

The story of Quakertown brings to mind the brutal history of the Tulsa Race Massacre in my home state of Oklahoma, a crime of white racism perpetrated on the Greenwood district over May 31 and June 1, 1921. The bureaucratic violence against the residents of Quakertown reached its apex in April 1921. The “Roaring ’20s” certainly roared on the Black citizens of the United States.

As Carol Anderson argues in White Rage, Anglo-American resentment of any Black performance of equality produces deep anxiety among people who imagine themselves to be superior. The result is not just racist ideas, as explicated by Ibram X. Kendi, but violence: physical, bureaucratic, or both.

Oklahoma is struggling to educate Okies and the rest of the United States about the Tulsa Race Massacre. The subtle shift of naming the event a “massacre” rather than a “riot” is tied to the bureaucratic violence of denying insurance payouts following the spasm of white racist physical violence.

Any effort to promote awareness and policy change is an uphill battle. White folk, it seems, don’t like to be reminded.

Texas has its own histories of white racist violence against Native and Black communities with which it must come to account. This historical marker in the “Quakertown” district of Denton is just the tip of a giant iceberg of white violence.

That violence includes the historical marker itself.

While the sign tacitly admits that the burning of the “Fred Douglass School” was an arson attack, this phrasing submerges the full name and legacy of Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave, abolitionist leader, and public philosopher. Naming their school after Douglass was an act of pride and self-worth. The sign’s truncation of this witness to a strong, self-aware Black community is significant.

By 1920, we are told, the Quakertown community had gained additional attention. Its location between downtown Denton and a college was considered problematic. We are told of “the civic-minded interests of Denton’s white residents.” Given the past terroristic violence and coming municipal ethnic cleansing, this phrasing seems a bit soft. What, exactly, were these “civic-minded interests”?

The Frederick Douglass School burned in 1913 and was rebuilt in 1916. The city decided to ethnically cleanse Quakertown in 1920. Denton’s monument to Confederate soldiers was erected in 1918.

By 1923, Quakertown was no more, swallowed up in a fit of ethnic cleansing and “civic-minded” improvement. The park remains, as does the Confederate monument. It is the emptiness, the barrenness of Quakertown Park that resonates most with my experiences of the Greenwood District in Tulsa. There, residents were driven out through different means. But driven out they were.

Mark Twain is said to have once quipped that the game of golf is little more than a good walk spoiled. For me, as a white-presenting man, Denton’s most visible monuments to anti-Blackness – the Confederate monument and Quakertown Park – could be just that. But they are so much more.

They are clues to the resilience and strength of Black America as communities struggled to recover from the evils of American slavery. The profound success of Black families and communities from Greenwood in Tulsa to Quakertown in Denton proclaimed a human equality white people could not and still cannot abide.

These same racist ideas are with us, in both physical and structural violence. The good news is that Black resilience and strength remain.

Until we have the courage to revisit and forthrightly retell stories of the past, we will develop neither a vaccine nor a treatment for racism in the present, a preexisting condition intensified by our present struggle with COVID-19.

—

The Rev. Robert O. Smith, PhD, directs Briarwood Retreat Center (Argyle, Tex.).

Impact Diamonds: Societal Chaplaincy and COVID-19

Recently, I published a blog post urging religious leaders in the United States to explore the concept of “societal chaplaincy” as a tool for responding to the unprecedented depth and magnitude of the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis. The US has not had any direct, long-term experience with national trauma and loss.

Societally minded leadership among persons of faith (lay, rostered, and ordained) will be necessary for helping persons and communities name the losses they have experienced, the grief they carry, and the resources already in their possession for rebuilding life on all levels. The skillsets of “societal chaplaincy” can be of direct assistance.

The main backdrop of that blog post was my sense that Americans, alongside people from many other countries, are facing widespread trauma. Although federal, state, and some local leaders are talking about “reopening” for the sake of the “economy,” many citizens and residents are not convinced that the danger has truly passed.

Americans are experiencing widespread confusion as political leaders and manufactured street protests demand an easing of restrictions while public health analysts warn that moving too quickly could have disastrous effects. Muddled leadership enhances our collective trauma.

 

Ripples and Waves

In the time that has passed since I offered that first blog post on how the concept of societal chaplaincy could provide a constructive, healing response to collective trauma, the post has been distributed and discussed in several spaces. I have been fortunate to gain new friends and conversation partners in the process. In the meantime, the American experience of COVID-19 continues apace.

The American experience of this pandemic has been markedly different than experiences in Europe. For every country in Europe, the challenge of the pandemic has been plainly national. Compared to the geography or population of any country in Europe, the US is massive. Here, the pandemic experience is state-by-state or, at the most, region-by-region.

The US media landscape, on the other hand, is most often national. The result is that when New York City began experiencing a crest in the wave of new infections and, later, deaths, the entire country was told that we were seeing “signs of hope.” When, soon after, the White House began talk of “reopening,” governors in states where infection rates have not yet stabilized set those processes in motion. Media perceptions rather than epidemiological data seem to be driving American policies.

Americans are thus torn between two realities. One reality is that the trauma, loss, and grief of the COVID-19 pandemic is a national experience. The other is that while other geographic regions of the United States are feeling direct impacts, their cities and regions may look healthy. When the wave reaches additional areas, likely in the Fall and Winter, the national narrative of self-congratulation and reopening will have moved on.

One challenge facing leaders who would put societal chaplaincy into practice is that the ripples and waves of grief, trauma, and loss in their communities will not be immediately recognized or named within national narratives of having won the war against the “invisible enemy.”

 

Circles of Loss and Grief

Americans have been saturated with media narratives about the experience of COVID-19. We see the ever-increasing death toll and short, representative obituaries. Celebrities with the disease warrant extensive coverage. Stories of medical heroism are interspersed with reports of unprecedented employment and commodity market collapse.

Individual experiences of the pandemic can be overshadowed by these huge, overarching narratives. This is especially the case if our experience is only tangentially related to the direct impacts of unemployment, infection, and death. Unless we can locate ourselves in the center of the narrative, our experiences may be merely quotidian and mundane.

A colleague of mine, seeking to name the losses and grief being experienced in his household, mentioned a sixth-grade daughter who is both deeply frustrated with online learning and deeply saddened that friends couldn’t be present for a birthday party. These losses aren’t featured on primetime news; they are no less real.

Within a different sphere of concern, a friend employed in the corporate world shared that we are seeing a shift in how office collegiality is being approached in the new working-from-home normal. While the beginning of this experience saw people eager to join online ‘happy hours’ and chat rooms designed to preserve social connection, fewer and fewer people are participating.

This opting out has coincided with more pointed questions about job security and inquiries about repurposing parental leave policies to respond to the needs of children staying home from school. The novelty of the situation has worn off and deeper currents of anxiety have set in.

As we ponder the magnitude of COVID-19, these shades of anxiety, loss, and grief—indirect effects left unaddressed by broader media narratives—need to be named and worked through no less than the direct experience of unemployment or death. We are participating in a tremendous, global experience of grief and loss, not all of it immediately apparent in this phase of the journey.

As I reflected on this, I happened to view a short BBC documentary about the town of Nördlingen, Germany. Nördlingen is a quaint medieval town in Bavaria, between Nuremburg and Munich. Here it is, covered in snow:

Photo from Smithsonian Magazine

In some ways, Nördlingen is like many other German towns. Rothenburg, another medieval walled city just north of Nördlingen, comes to mind. But there is a striking difference. When seen from the air, the city center of Nördlingen is almost perfectly round. Check it out:

Photo from Amusing Planet

The short documentary I watched explained that the town, in addition to being featured in the original Willy Wonka film, was built in the impact crater of an asteroid that collided with Earth roughly 10,000 years ago. That explains why the town center is almost perfectly round.

But there are layers to the story. When the asteroid collided with the earth, immense pressures interacted with graphite already in the soil, creating a type of rock called suevite. That rock contains millions and millions of tiny diamonds. While Nördlingen’s buildings contain an estimated 72 tons of diamonds, they are also found in the landscape all around; the soil glows when hit by the sun, glinting like shards of glass. Here’s Nördlingen and its surroundings:

Photo from Bavaria.by

What does this geological trivia have to do with societal chaplaincy and the recognition of grief and loss? It occurred to me that if we or the people we are seeking to help have not been affected directly by COVID-19, the effects are still here, all around us.

Even if we have not been jammed directly into the impact crater—where people have lost their jobs, or have been infected, or have had a family member die—we are part of the COVID-19 landscape. That landscape has been irrevocably changed, with new geologic formations, new gullies and canyons. Every person has their own perspective on our collective reality of trauma and fear. These diamonds have been formed within us.

How are we called to respond to this trauma, this anxiety, this ongoing fear? We could put all of our resources toward the people in the crater. The truth, however, is that those losses can be more readily known, named and addressed. What do we do with the broader dispersal of trauma that we might call societal trauma?

The situation outside the direct impact crater is more mysterious. Getting to the truth of what is there requires some level of excavation and awareness. It requires a willingness to go on journeys of exploration.

The COVID-19 impact diamonds of loss and grief demand attention. People will begin polishing the diamonds of their own experience with the tools they have around them. Sometimes, people have excellent tools passed down through family systems or communities of faith. Others will respond to their pain with other available tools, including xenophobia, racism, and scapegoating.

To address the needs of society as a whole, we need to work through individual experiences of loss and grief so we can foster an outward turn. Healing and reconciliation need to come not for individuals alone, but for our communities, our countries, and the world. That process begins with us.

—

The Rev. Robert O. Smith, PhD, directs Briarwood Leadership Center (Argyle, Tex.)

Reopening Congregations in the Time of COVID-19

Leadership teams within every religious community in the United States (along with vast swathes of the world) are grappling with the question of reopening their gathering spaces following the initial impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis. In the United States, where governmental guidance is fragmented between national, state, and local levels, many communities will be left to their local discernment on how to engage that reopening process.

This article intends to reflect on some of the questions congregational leaders in the Northern Texas–Northern Louisiana Synod of the ELCA might be pondering and some of the values that inform our mutual discernment. I recognize that many of our leaders will be receiving input (and maybe pressure) from a variety of directions, each with their own opinion. My intention is to inform process rather than provide any definitive answers.

 

Governmental Guidelines

Most people reading this article will already be somewhat familiar with the White House guidelines for “Opening Up America Again.” These guidelines focus on public health metrics, providing a three-phase process toward normality.

Although President Trump himself is eager for a full economic return, these guidelines indicate a slow, incremental process. While continually increased testing is the backbone of the recommendations, testing (of any sort) is not yet broadly available throughout the United States. This contradiction has led to dissonance between the White House’s public health and political messaging.

Along with other localized institutions, congregations will need to rely on local policy and data for their reopening decisions. While, for instance, the national view is that the United States has at least plateaued in its number of COVID-19 infections and deaths, the exceedingly difficult situation in New York took place early within the national experience. Each state and each area will experience their own outbreak patterns.

This means that, to some extent, each congregational leader with input on reopening procedures will need to become familiar with the latest COVID-19 epidemiological assessments. In addition to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has been a reliable source of interpretive data.

Specifically, IHME has provided state-by-state projections on when it will be safe to “reopen.” The present data for Texas indicates that, after June 1, “relaxing social distancing may be possible with containment strategies that include testing, contact tracing, isolation, and limiting gathering size.”

To be clear, this June 1 date is when the IHME indicates that it will be safe for Texas to enter a set of practices similar to what the White House outlines as Phase 1 of its reopening plan. Congregational leaders paying heed to this public health perspective will need to grapple with the contrasting message from Gov. Greg Abbott, who has announced that Texas will begin easing restrictions beginning in late April. What accounts for this discrepancy?

Published by The Seattle Times, based on IHME data modeling

 

Values-Based Decision Making

Governments throughout the United States are presently under pressure to ease stay-at-home restrictions. Congregational leaders—alongside elected officials and policymakers—will be subjected to the competing priorities of public health, economic stability, ideology, and partisan politics.

At this point, much of the pressure is framed in economic terms: movements to “open the economy” are growing. At the same time, most public demonstrations have sought to promote individual rights, including rights outlined in the US Constitution. Meanwhile, many governors think it is too early to begin the reopening process.

What are Lutheran leaders to make of this present moment? How can we make definitive decisions when the situation is so murky? How can we insist on systematic, community-based discernment when members of our own communities are lobbying us to resume in-person operations immediately or not at all until 2021 at the soonest?

My suggestion is that in the policy struggle between public health, economic stability, ideology, and partisan politics, church-based conversations are weighted toward public health. While the economic effects of COVID-19 have been devastating for many people, including members of our congregations, abstracted notions of “the economy” hold little importance for the church.

In times of tension between concern for economic indicators such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the wellbeing of communities and persons, communities of faith are called to stand with the people. As this pandemic has reminded Christians, the church is not a building; the church IS the people.

Congregational concern for public health has direct bearing on decisions to resume in-person worship and gatherings. Our collective experience of COVID-19 has made us aware that certain populations are more vulnerable to its effects: people over 65 and persons who are disabled or immunocompromised. We have also seen that communities of color are facing more severe coronavirus effects, due largely to historically constructed and systemic socio-economic inequities.

Staying home and apart is one way we have been caring for more vulnerable neighbors and the health care systems designed to preserve our collective wellbeing. Although children are not considered high-risk for serious illness, they can carry the virus into multi-generational settings. In each of these communities, our churches risk being factories of continued pandemic spread, even with social distancing practices in place.

This article is primarily about decisions to reopen. In some ways, that is just one of the necessary decisions. One Christian educator has produced a helpful list of additional questions congregational leaders will need to consider before the doors are opened. When we do gather together in person, what conditions will we be facing and what practices will make our gathering as safe as possible, for ourselves and for society as a whole?

These are monumental conversations. As you move forward with your leadership team, acknowledge with one another the magnitude of the crisis we are seeking to navigate together. Preserving the health and safety of our congregations and their surrounding communities cannot be taken lightly. The situation is made all the more difficult since there are no absolutely correct answers.

I will continue to hold you in prayer as you discern what is best for your congregation and community. As individuals and as communities, we are all experiencing anxiety, loss, and grief. We will get through this, together.

—

The Rev. Robert O. Smith, PhD, directs Briarwood Leadership Center (Argyle, Tex.)

Seeking Truth on Good Friday

On this Good Friday, I am remembering the many times I have paused at the entrance doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (what Orthodox Christians call the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem). The marble columns framing the doorway are covered in carved crosses and messages in myriad traditions and languages: Latin Catholic, Armenian, Greek Orthodox crosses, and messages in Arabic, Armenian, and Greek, each marking a pilgrim’s arrival at their destination.

These columns and carvings are centuries, some perhaps a millennium, old. In these markings, we connect physically with the universal Communion of Saints, verifying the Christian community’s identification of this place as the location of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. For Christians, this modest and highly contested space is the Axis Mundi, the center of the world, the holiest site in creation. Today, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, these doors are closed.

One of my joys of living, serving and teaching in Jerusalem was introducing people to this space for the first time. Invariably, first-time visitors were skeptical of this and other holy sites. Is this really the place where these things occurred millennia ago?

My response, developed over some time, went something like this: IF there was a first-century Palestinian Jew named Jesus (one of the most popular names of the time) whose small group of friends thought he was the Messiah and who got himself crucified by Roman authorities because he threatened imperial interests, archaeological evidence points to this being the likely place. I see your skepticism and raise you a couple of levels.

But then I would encourage them to pause at the door and notice the carved crosses. What we can know for sure, I tell them, is that the global, ecumenical Christian community has for centuries identified this as the spot. First-time visitors to holy sites, even those confident in the truth of their faith, always ask the question of veracity: is this really the place? The many carvings and signs throughout the ramshackle, poorly lit church tell us again and again that it is.

A nun prays in front of the closed front door of the Holy Sepulchre. (Ammar Awad/Reuters) Notice the crosses carved into the columns.

 

What is Truth?

Questions of faith are related directly to questions of truth. Indeed, the question of truth stands at the center of today’s appointing reading for Good Friday (John 18:1—19:42). When Pontius Pilate interrogates Jesus about his supposed “kingdom” and Jesus claims that “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,” Pilate’s response is as telling as it is vague: “What is truth?”

It is an oddly philosophical question in the midst of injustice and suffering. An entire field of philosophy—epistemology—is dedicated to Pilate’s question. How do we know what we claim to know? The truth of Good Friday, as I wrote at the beginning of this Holy Week, is the cross itself. There is no deeper meaning than the reality of an unjust execution, an abused and broken body, a political leader who encounters the truth but then passes the buck, washing his hands of the matter, taking the easy way out.

Just as it did for Jesus, today’s struggles with the nature of truth have life and death consequences. The COVID-19 coronavirus crisis has made those consequences clear.

For several years now, we have heard warnings about the deterioration of truth. In 2018, the RAND Corporation announced its intention to track and study what it called “Truth Decay” in American society. Back in 2005, Stephen Colbert introduced America to his concept of “truthiness,” when truth is asserted without reference to logic or fact.

The deterioration of truth is no joke, even if comedians are our most effective public philosophers. While postmodern philosophy and theology have long recognized that “objective truth” is beyond human grasp, truth decay results from intentional manipulations of that human limitation by those holding or seeking power. These manipulations harm the cohesion and order of Civil Society and undermine the common good.

We are living in the midst of maximum “truth decay.” Whether it is the Market Economy’s warping of truth to protect tobacco and fossil fuel industries or the Political State’s promotion of “alternative facts” and spurious accusations of “fake news,” the result has been a fragmentation of common life. This intellectual colonization of Civil Society by the Market and Political Spheres has left us with little common comprehension of our world.

 

That’s All Well and Good, Until …

This entire system of compromised truth and a fragmented information landscape was well known and largely ignored by most Americans. Daily life was relatively untouched. Everything was okay … until the COVID-19 crisis hit.

Holy Week is an opportunity to tell the truth about God and about ourselves. In a week of repentance, betrayal, suffering and death—culminating in but not rushing toward Easter—the cold, hard truth of direct experience dismisses narratives like dust. While some drag us toward optimism, we know what we are seeing and hearing and feeling.

Although we never surrender hope, cannot minimize the present pain. This week, for the United States, and for Italy and Spain, has been one long, multi-day Good Friday. It is suffering, and it is filled with inequity and injustice.

There are many parallels between the present crisis and the 1918–1919 global influenza pandemic. Although that strain of influenza likely emerged in Kansas, why is it often called the “Spanish Flu”? Emergency physician and author Jeremy Brown, being interviewed on the NPR podcast “Throughline” provided some historical background. “It was widely reported in newspapers in Spain and that is where the first stories broke of this disease.” Why? “There was a tacit agreement between the governments of the western powers and the newspaper editors not to report bad news.” Spain was a neutral country and wasn’t part of this pact to share good news alone. Manipulated optimism is deadly when unvarnished information saves lives.

Some have referenced this phrase from the HBO miniseries Chernobyl, documenting the Russian response to the 1986 nuclear disaster: “When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember that it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” The quote continues: “The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left than to abandon the hope of truth and content ourselves with stories?”

COVID-19 will change our society. I hope that it will make us less accepting of political narratives designed to manufacture acceptance of inequity and injustice, to make us less contented with stories. Perhaps we will be motivated to more fully live into Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an informed populace exercising its authority and power: “Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

Holy Week, including Easter morning, is about telling the truth about suffering and death. When the women went to the tomb, they did NOT expect to experience what they found. As far as they knew, Jesus was still dead.

They were going toward the experience of the cross, as difficult and painful and unpleasant as it is. They were going toward the abject, the rejected and discarded refuse of society. They were going to their friend and their Lord, one whose promises evidently could not be kept. There is no Easter morning without the despairing experience of the cross. This year, that is not difficult to imagine.

The truth is also that we—together as a collective—will get through this. The truth is that these experiences will change each of us as they will change the world. We will never forget this pandemic—the fear it has caused and the systems that have failed, but also the tremendous good we have seen from neighbors, local governmental officials, selfless health professionals, and all manner of workers we now realize are essential.

We thus pause at the door of the Church of the Resurrection, remembering all who were here before, who lingered at the entrance of the Tomb. Thus, we consciously join that Communion of Saints who have seen all manner of trauma, pain, and grief while pointing us toward glimpses of the beloved community. Thus, we take heart in the faithful acts of those who fearlessly approach what we know will be an empty tomb.

—

The Rev. Robert O. Smith, PhD, directs Briarwood Leadership Center (Argyle, Tex.).

 

 

 

The Hard Truths of Holy Week

In Holy Week, the days leading toward the Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, it is fitting that Christians attempt, in some sense, to be theologians of the cross. The task is sharpened by one of the most difficult, comprehensive global crises of the last century—a combination of a public health emergency and an economic crash.

The cross is a site of suffering. In this year of COVID-19, it might be easier for some Christians to imagine the human conditions of fear and suffering than it was just a year ago. Many other Christians, of course, including those in Palestine today, did not need a pandemic imposition to more sharply comprehend unjust suffering.

In Martin Luther’s theses for the Heidelberg Disputation (from 1518, the year after he posted the 95 Theses on Indulgences), he offered this point for argument: “The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.”

For Christians who call themselves Lutheran, these powerful sentences aren’t the worst way to begin Holy Week reflection. I won’t try to fully elucidate all that Luther intends to argue here. Entire books have been written on the subject. Instead, I’ll boil it down to three points: 1) tell the truth; 2) tell the truth about God; and 3) tell the truth about yourself. I’ll say a word about these three points and how they relate to our current moment.

 

Tell the Truth

Evidently, telling the truth is difficult for a lot of people to do these days. Even in the midst of a global pandemic producing horrific results in some countries (Italy and Spain) and more controlled results in others (South Korea and Japan), providing a wealth of practical scientific information, some of our leaders can’t bring themselves to call this thing what it is.

Luther’s central demand for anyone who seeks to respond to the cross of Christ is that they tell the truth. Call a thing what it is and let the chips fall where they may. Humans, though, tend to prefer to not tell the entire truth, which can be terrifying.

But what if we are in a time when the truth is not clear, a time when some people seem invested in obscuring the truth? This Friday, we will hear again John’s story of Pontius Pilate questioning Jesus. When Pilate asks Jesus if he is, in fact, claiming to be a king, Jesus says “I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate, unable to comprehend these words, asks “What is truth?”

Sometimes, it seems that our leaders would rather shape the truth or debate the nature of truth than endeavor to tell the truth to the best of their abilities. Not that truth is a simple thing—far from it! The human inability to fully comprehend truth in all facets does not, however, excuse active efforts to manipulate truth for economic or political gain. In the midst of crisis—whether it is the climate crisis or the present global health crisis—the willful manipulation of truth is a sin against God and humanity.

 

God and Ourselves

Telling the truth in light of the cross of Christ means telling the truth about God … and ourselves. Luther acknowledges forthrightly that this truth is terrifying: no more false illusions, no more secrets, no more putting lipstick on a pig.

Christians believe that the truth about God is revealed nowhere else but the cross. All of the ways we imagine God—high and mighty, ruling from heaven—are crushed beneath the broken, bodily, earthly realities of unjust suffering. As much as Christians have made this image a commonplace, it is, in fact, scandalous and incomprehensible.

We Christian humans make the cross an easy thing is by jumping ahead a couple days to the resurrection. But that is precisely what Luther warns against. Don’t try to peek behind the cross, he says, trying to find an explanation for it all. Don’t jump ahead to comfort. Tell the truth about God … on the cross.

Instead of telling the truth about God and about ourselves, we humans invest energy in cosmic conspiracy theories that the present plague is somehow an expression of God’s wrath we’ve brought on ourselves. Or better yet, we invest energy in imagining that our present sufferings are the fault of some other group, whether that is transgender folks, Fox News viewers, or the descendants of Chinese immigrants. In our quest for cold comfort, we sacrifice the truth.

It’s difficult for us to tell the truth about God, but it’s even more difficult to tell the truth about ourselves. We are imperfect beings. We know that … but that truth isn’t easy to say. A global pandemic is the perfect time to remind ourselves that we are NOT in perfect control … of ourselves or of our world. That’s not ideal. But it is reality.

 

Staring Death in the Face

The Triduum brings us face to face with death and our faltering efforts to avoid death. On Maundy Thursday, we see the disciples failing to comprehend the gravity of the situation. And we see Judas seeking to push the timeline toward redemption, seeking God’s glory in worldly terms. Good Friday brings us to the cross. Saturday brings the silence of the grave.

The Gospels tells us that these events occur in the context of Pesach, the Jewish remembrance of the Exodus and, specifically, when God struck down all Egyptian first-borns but did not “allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down” (Exodus 12.23). Throughout the world, a silent destroyer is entering houses. We are, as a planet, facing a novel form of death.

Christians have a word to speak in a moment like this, a word of hope and truth. We neither avoid death nor seek to explain it away. Instead, like Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant,” we stand firm, staring death in the face: “The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame” (Isaiah 50.7).

We stand firm not in spite of the cross, but because of the cross. In the cross, we have the assurance of God’s solidarity, the reality of God’s choice to be in the world rather than floating above the world, eternally detached from the world. In the cross, as in the manger, we have the promise of Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1.23).

Beyond abstract principles, Christianity proclaims another message: that the Incarnation is not just a cosmic reality, but that it is “for you”—for each and every one of God’s beloved creatures. In the freely given gift of Christ’s body and blood—received in the sacrament of Holy Communion—each of us receives the gift of God’s presence for the forgiveness of sins. The truth about ourselves—that we fall short and need forgiveness and reconciliation—is on full display.

But wait, there’s more! In Baptism, Christians are “united with Jesus in a death like his” and therefore “will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6.5). All who have been baptized (as Game of Thrones fans will recognize) have no fear of death. They are, instead, freed to offer their lives for the sake of others.

The Christian message of truth about God and about ourselves (a message not everyone will accept) is the message of the cross. This world is difficult and hard, full of suffering and death. We meet forgiveness with suspicion. We suspect that no gift is truly free, that there is always a catch. And so, we prepare a cross for the One who would be our savior. God’s truth for us is not in the resurrection, but in the broken body lynched on the cross. This is the Word that frees us not for a world to come, but for action in the here and now.

In the face of death we act, sacrificing ourselves and our wellbeing for the sake of our neighbor. For most of us in our COVID-19 context, that means staying home, flattening the pandemic curve and reducing the possibility that health resources will be overwhelmed. For others—including law enforcement, first responders of all sorts, and medical personnel—that means living fully into their vocations of serving their neighbors, knowing that they will be exposed to the virus, that they will likely be infected, and that many of them will suffering serious illness and death.

In our COVID-19 context, “calling a thing what it is” means refusing to sugar-coat news of fear, anxiety, suffering or death. Instead, we set our faces like flint, staring down its terror in compassionate love for our suffering neighbors. While this virus might sicken and destroy our bodies, this is not our fear. Our fear is that suffering would be unjust, that access to lifesaving resources would be inequitable, that our leaders might choose to provide false hope by refusing to tell the truth.

—

The Rev. Robert O. Smith, PhD, directs Briarwood Leadership Center (Argyle, Tex.).

 

 

For the Love of God (and Neighbor), Don’t Gather for Worship

I’m an ordained pastor. That means I encourage people of faith to gather in worship. Whether you’re Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or Hindu, gathering with fellow believers is most often a life-giving experience. In the Christian scriptures, the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together” (Heb 10.24–25).

In times of crisis, people want to gather. Communal worship binds us together. Except, that is, when the very act of gathering together could kill the person in the next pew … or, just as importantly, people not with you in worship when you encounter them at the grocery store five days later.

As this pandemic crisis intensifies throughout the United States, governors and local officials have taken the lead as national leadership has faltered and failed. We are just now getting state-wide “stay at home” directives from states like Texas, and Florida.

Not all states have issued stay at home orders. But several that have share a curious consistency: identifying houses of worship as “essential” services exempted from orders to close.

Governors carving out this exception avoid clashing with tendentious interpretations of the First Amendment of the US Constitution and its prohibition against any “law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But just as the same Amendment’s prohibition of any law “abridging the freedom of speech” does not allow one to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, public safety and health provide a clear rationale for curtailing freedoms.

The Constitution notwithstanding, politicians, policymakers and pastors might be motivated to champion this exemption by a far baser concern: money. Community representatives—let’s be honest here, Jews, Hindus and Muslims aren’t leading this charge—urging elected officials to put houses of worship on the exemption list are likely hoping for full coffers on Easter Sunday.

Ministers will wrap their intentions in the most pious rhetoric: people are frightened and need to gather; Baptism and Holy Communion can only be celebrated in person. Alongside such reasons, religious leaders have another anxiety: if people don’t show up, neither do their offerings. The economic downturn accompanying COVID-19 is real. All nonprofits are suffering from reduced revenues and contributions.

My own organization is living with financial fear. But that is no reason to put anyone’s life at risk.

We have already seen churches become sites of coronavirus transmission. Before the COVID-19 threat was fully comprehended, choir practice went on as normal in early March at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Mount Vernon, Washington. Three weeks later, several choir members were infected, with three hospitalized and two dead. Now, in early April, when we know that the pandemic spread is intensifying, why would a pastor gather their people together and risk a similar fate?

Louisiana, with its growing concentration of COVID-19 cases in Jefferson Parish and neighboring Orleans Parish, is the second most intense hotspot in the United States. The outbreak was seeded during Mardi Gras. That celebration is held immediately before the Christian season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. This year, Ash Wednesday was February 26. Now, just over a month later, Louisiana is facing a public health catastrophe.

Now, in time for Easter, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has decided to allow a religious exemption from his statewide “stay at home” order. In a sense, the responsibility for this decision lies with influential constituents rather than the governor himself. Spokespersons for large evangelical communities (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Christian communities are largely adhering to public safety guidelines) represent core constituencies.

Although politicians provide space for irresponsible choices, it is ultimately the responsibility of every pastor to not lead their flocks into temptation (Matt 6.13). If, in this time of exponential pandemic spread, a minister gathers their people for worship, they are leading them toward death, not life (Deut 30.15).

Pastors driven by the collection plate who gather their sheep in the midst of a viral pandemic prove themselves to be poor shepherds (Ezekiel 34). Rather than sites of healing, their churches will become vectors of disease. Rather than proclaiming resurrection, their Easter gatherings will bring their people to the grave, sullying a message of hope. Their words will be wind “and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8.7).

If, in these weeks, religious leaders physically gather their people for worship, they will endanger not just their congregations, but the broader community. This, just as the pandemic is intensifying. Local leaders throughout the United States should consider following Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins in closing this loophole in the interest of public safety.

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The Rev. Robert O. Smith, PhD, directs Briarwood Leadership Center (Argyle, Tex.).

Americans: Prepared for the COVID-19 Crisis?

Today, the US death toll attributed to the COVID-19 coronavirus passed 3000, including the over 500 patients who died today alone. To put these numbers into the perspective of relatively recent American experience, 2977 Americans, mostly civilians died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Just yesterday, the Trump Administration’s Coronavirus Task Force announced that it was extending social distancing recommendations until the end of April. Justifying that policy decision, President Trump indicated with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s assessment that the US will likely see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths within the next two months.

But that is the best case scenario, according to Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, “if we do things almost perfectly.” This low-end number is contained within a model that projects a COVID-19 death toll of 1.6 million and 2.2 million Americans. The problem, of course, is that the US response to this crisis hasn’t gone “almost perfectly” at almost any turn. To compare that with another American tragedy, the US Civil War killed an estimated 750,000.

I share these eye-popping numbers not to provoke despondency or despair, but to indicate the struggle that lies ahead for the United States. It is a challenge unlike the United States has ever faced. That may be why our national response to this crisis has been exceptionally inadequate, especially in comparison to most other western democracies.

President Trump has indicate that this crisis allows him to act like a wartime president. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has agreed: this situation is like a war. The projected number of deaths indicates that analogs to war are not out of the question.

The President’s policy inconsistencies and trepidation to transgress his recently adopted Republican party’s federalist proclivities (as erratic as those feelings might be) have muddled his messages to the American people. The clarity of Sunday’s press conference was different. I think that clarity helps us better understand why Americans aren’t quite grasping the monumental nature of the challenges that lie ahead.

President Trump ended the press conference with an addendum, something he wanted everyone listening to hear. “I grew up in Queens, NY,” close to Elmhurst Hospital, a facility that had been overrun in the days just prior to the press conference. “I’ve been watching that for the last week on television.” The President described freezer trucks being brought in because the hospital morgue was full. And he was taking it personally. “I’ve seen things I’ve never seen before. I mean, I’ve seen them, but I’ve seen them on television in faraway lands.”

The tents used to test for COVID-19 at Elmhurst Hospital Center are seen next to the Trauma Center entrance, Sunday, March 29, 2020, in the Queens borough of New York. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

This addendum is an insight not only into President Trump but into the American character of 2020. It indicates precisely why this country is uniquely unprepared to face this crisis, first by accepting the truth of its magnitude and then marshaling resources to preserve human life.

For Americans, wars and massive human tragedies are events that occur “over there” in, as Trump put it, “in faraway lands.” Indeed, “Over There” was a wildly popular song to encourage enlistment in the US Armed Forces destined for Europe in both World Wars I & II. For centuries, America prided itself on having not been attacked by a foreign enemy on its mainland territory—Pearl Harbor and 9/11 have been dismissed as cheap shots. For the most part, the United States has imagined the Atlantic and Pacific as buffers insulating it from a conflicted world. As a result, the United States has faced no major conflict in its own territory.

American life, especially since the close of World War II, has been one of profound comfort and adventure in faraway lands, an imperial privilege won through successful outcomes in other adventures abroad. With the end of the Cold War, this imperial advantage was supplemented (not replaced) with global neoliberal policies designed to entrench economic alongside military interests. The “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower warned Americans about in his Farewell Address persisted as America’s chief global export.

Americans became accustomed to seeing conflict and war on their televisions, either assenting to or lamenting what was happening “over there” in “faraway lands.” We’ve never seen anything like this in the US mainland. We are not accustomed to seeing a field hospital set up in New York City’s Central Park—a field hospital design most often set up by xenophobic televangelist Franklin Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, in faraway countries. As the national grief and trauma following 9/11 attested, Americans are not accustomed to considering thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of fellow Americans killed. We have not experienced famine or war.

As a result, I have the distinct sense that most of my fellow Americans continue to be unaware of the scope, scale, and magnitude of what realities lie ahead and therefore unprepared to weather the coming storm. Most Americans are unaware of the shocking numbers with which I opened this article. They are seeking the safety and comfort of their families, not looking to broader societal implications. That is understandable but leaves us without a collective response.

I am a pastor who works, in part, with other pastors. My recommendation to my fellow ministers has been to consider that the developing circumstance places demands on their vocation, calling them into society-wide chaplaincy. My sense is that we must prepare for crisis chaplaincy, for mass palliative care as hospital resources are rationed, and for mass grief and trauma work as the first phase of this crisis begins to abate within the next eight weeks.

The COVID-19 coronavirus has exposed America’s soft underbelly of late capitalist, military-industrial comfort. We are not well prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. But we have tremendous resources—both in our national character (we have seen tremendous innovation in recent weeks!) and in our diverse spiritual resources. This could be a time of tremendous remaking. But we will need to rely on the local institutions of civil society to realize those possibilities since our national systems are led by a person who needs to see this disaster’s effects on his childhood neighborhood hospital to be spurred into definitive action.

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The Rev. Robert O. Smith directs Briarwood Leadership Center (Argyle, Tex.)

Let Them Die: COVID-19, Civil Society and the Market Economy

Recently, President Trump again changed his central message to Americans regarding the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. After first downplaying the severity of the pandemic, comparing it to the common flu, Trump transitioned to a more somber tone, suggesting that American lives would not resemble “normal” until months from now. Today, the same day Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned that “this week, it’s going to get bad,” the President said that “America will again and soon be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting.”

From a science-based public health point of view, this rhetoric is deeply irresponsible. Science, however, is not the main determinant of the President’s political strategy. As he said in the March 23 press conference, “If it were up to the doctors, they’d say let’s shut down the entire world.”

This flippant rhetoric indicates an even deeper defect in present American culture: the economic sphere’s colonization of both governance and people’s lives. This colonization, although long in the making, promises to produce disastrous results if President Trump’s current thinking is allowed to shape public health policy.

Although I analyze this situation from a theological and ethical viewpoint, I am influenced by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas’s work on social and political theory, especially his understanding of “Civil Society” as the sphere of democratic possibility. Civil society is the collection of organizations and institutions developed by people to organize and represent the traditions, values, and interests that shape their lifeworld.

The ideal relationship between Civil Society, on one hand, and the Political State and Market Economy, at least from the perspective of regular, everyday people, looks something like this:

In this figure, one’s lifeworld feeds into Civil Society, which then informs the State and the Market Economy, with their mediums of governmental systems and money. While that chart may show the actual contours of American lives, it in no way reflects the messages and priorities received through American media consumption. What we are told we should care about (national party politics and the economy, represented by little more than the Dow Jones Industrial Average) looks a lot more like this:

In this figure, we see the Lifeworld and Civil Society squashed under the impinging weight of the Political State and the Market Economy. Rather than those systems serving the needs of the people, the people are perceived within those systems as serving their interests.

The present COVID-19 crisis provides example after example of how this colonization informs policymakers’ decisions. Is this a public health crisis or an economic crisis? In truth, of course, it is both. But it is an economic crisis within the Lifeworld of regular people—a crisis within the real economy—rather than primarily a crisis of the stock market. That fact has been confusing for policymakers concerned primarily with corporate liquidity; they are used to letting corporations make their own decisions regarding the wellbeing of workers.

The Market Economy has colonized the Political State as well as Civil Society to the extent that the President of the United States has been pulled back from recognizing the seriousness of this health crisis for people’s lives and has placed the wellbeing of the Market Economy in direct competition with the wellbeing of American citizens. Saying “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down” ignores the fact that human bodies (American or not, documented or not) were not built to withstand coronaviruses against which they have no immunity.

The present American reality in which Civil Society and the Political State are utterly colonized by the Market Economy is not a partisan issue. These values are promoted by neoliberal Democrats no less than Log Cabin Republicans. In the midst of American struggle with this pandemic, this ideology of acquiescence to the market moves beyond “Let them eat cake” to “Let them die.” At present, there is no starker example of contemporary American domestic necropolitics and no greater illustration of why this crisis could be leveraged to produce a renewal of American political culture.

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Figures taken from Gary M. Simpson, Critical Society Theory: Prophetic Reason, Civil Society, and Christian Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002).

 

 

 

Palestinians in Indian Country

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My home state of Oklahoma is more than fundamentalist Christianity and red-state politics. Oklahoma is Indian Country, now home to 39 federally-recognized tribes and nations, among many others. Most of these American Indians, including my own Chickasaw Nation, were coerced by the US government into leaving their traditional territories. Moreover, Oklahoma was eyed by many former slaves in the Reconstruction era as a possible ‘Black state’—a dream of Black stability and prosperity crushed in the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when envious white neighbors burned “Black Wall Street” to the ground and prevented its rebuilding. If one has eyes to see beyond the anxiety-ridden swagger of settler-colonialism and white racism, Oklahoma speaks in multiple voices.

Recently, another voice was added when the first Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) conference held outside of Bethlehem brought nearly twenty Palestinian Christians to Oklahoma City (known to every Okie as “the city”). The evangelical Palestinian Christians who organize CATC, many of whom are dear friends, have sought to promote dialogue with western evangelical siblings. Since it very well be the prong on the buckle of the Bible Belt, Oklahoma City was a bold choice.

Halfway through the conference, a Palestinian-American friend told me he had an extra day in Oklahoma and asked what he should check out during his free time. My brain went into overdrive. My first thought was our biggest local collection, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, formerly known as the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Even with good reviews on TripAdvisor, I couldn’t recommend it. The centerpiece sculpture of the museum, “End of the Trail,” depicts a Native (of unknown tribe or nation) slumped over his horse, his spear hanging limply at his side. This is the visual representation of the dominant American conception of American Indians—defeated, vanquished, vanished. Not the side of Oklahoma I want to emphasize for Palestinian friends.

I shared an alternative idea, but one that would take a bit more effort. What if we drove from Oklahoma City to Sulphur, where we could visit the Chickasaw Cultural Center? What if instead of seeing the swaggering cowboy’s depiction of the Native we see how one tribe has chosen to present itself to the world? My Palestinian-American friend immediately agreed; I suggested he find a couple of others who could fit in my car. It was a plan.

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It is relatively commonplace to hear comparisons of American Indian and Palestinian experience. There is broad recognition that, in general terms, Natives and Palestinians have each faced invading European communities seeking to take their land. But these comparisons, while evincing some truth, are often problematic. Take, for instance, the imbalance of comparing Palestinians, as one (relatively) homogeneous subsection of Arabs, to the profound diversity contained within the concept of “American Indian,” comprising at least the 538 federally-recognized tribes in what is now the United States. Moreover, why should present US boundaries determine the limits of analysis? First Nations in Canada and Indigenous peoples throughout the world can offer similar points of comparison. On top of that, the comparison often seems hopeless; how can similarities with defeated and disappeared Indians encourage the ongoing the struggle for Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty?

I was raised in Oklahoma. From the beginning, I was aware of my Chickasaw heritage. Although I attended some stomp dances and drumming circles, being Chickasaw was more a matter of holding the right documentation. This was complicated by my family’s own ambivalent relationship to Indianness … whether it was my grandfather’s discomfort with the “full-bloods” at the senior center or my father’s references to “dog-eatin’ Indians” (I asked him one time if that included me too). I present as nothing other than white, and whiteness shaped all aspects of my life.

Given all of this ambivalence—resulting from what I now understand to be white anxiety vis-à-vis the claims of indigeneity—it rarely occurred to me to speak from a Native or specifically Chickasaw perspective. It almost goes without saying that my academic interests—history, theology, and political theory—can be pursued from the perspective of whiteness alone. It was through my encounters with Palestinian Christians seeking to unlearn white western Christian theologies while unmaking the destructive consequences of those theologies on their lives, that I was invited into a new understanding of my own indigeneity. The result has been a self-conscious mixed-blood perspective in which I take responsibility for applying the privileges of my whiteness toward the liberation of peoples living on the underside of western colonial history and its theological presuppositions.

My first attempts to compare American Indian and Palestinian experience were general, along the lines of so many popular analogies. I have learned, however, that more precise comparisons yield vital fruits. Drawing from my own heritage and experience, I have focused on the specific experiences of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”—the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muskogee/Creek, and Seminole—and their removal out of the southeastern United States. In this case, the comparison isn’t about first contact like in Jamestown or the early Native strategies for accommodating European colonizers. Nor is it a comparison with the military onslaught which consolidated the western frontier.

Comparison of Palestinian experience with those of the Chickasaw and other southeastern Native nations helps us better understand Indigenous strategies for resistance and survivance in the face of white settler colonialism. On the European side of the ledger, comparison highlights how European settler intransigence squandered the possibility of coexistence. It is a comparison of how European commitments to religious and nationalist mythologies were consolidated into government policy, including bureaucratic techniques and legal fictions designed to clear Indigenous communities from lands mapped for European settler possession. It is a comparison of how those who imagine themselves to be ‘civilized’ construct the idea of a savage whose mere existence can be tolerated to a certain point but who can ultimately never be allowed to participate in civilized society without renouncing all claims of distinct identity, including land. The comparison of Chickasaw and Palestinian experience highlights a shared struggle of arguing cases before the highest levels of European colonial courts and participating in coerced negotiations for homelands in the face of overwhelming military power. Both communities know what means to face the choice of either losing land or losing communal existence.

The shared experience of existential threat gives rise to shared participation in Indigenous resistance to European settler colonialism, the refusal to be eradicated and replaced. That spirit of resistance and persistence—what Gerald Vizenor has named ‘survivance’—is about cultural preservation and renewal. It is about dance and language and stories and food. It is about thriving where there should be desolation and waste; as the motto of Dar al-Kalima College in Bethlehem put it during the Second Intifada, “Destruction may be; creativity shall be.” It is about existence as itself an act of defiance. Self-identification as Chickasaw or any other Native nation within the boundaries of the United States is the same as proudly identifying as Palestinian: an act of defiance against those forces who want to see our name blotted out from the memory of the earth. And it is about land. Not land for the sake of land alone, but so the people may thrive. It is about exercising sovereignty in the land, demanding every right of self-determination, leaving no possibility unexplored.

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All of this was on my mind and heart as we drove down I-35 toward the Cultural Center. Jonathan had recruited another Palestinian friend, Bshara Nassar, who is founding the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, DC. We were also joined by Bshara’s colleague, AnaMichele. We passed the turnoff for Pauls Valley, where my mother was raised and where, in the past few years, she purchased a section of land that was her great-great-grandmother’s original allotment following the creation of the Dawes Rolls. I told them about Wynnewood, where many people on that side of my family worked at the oil refinery and the high school mascot is the Savages.

The rain lifted as we reached Sulphur. My companions were impressed with the beauty of the land and the site’s impressive architecture. We were hungry, so we stopped at the restaurant first. They enjoyed their first Indian Tacos—bison, beef, and vegetarian.

As we were waiting for the food, I recognized Felix, one of the dancers at the Center. He was standing with a friend, Jesse. I left the others and asked Felix if he’d be willing to greet some friends from Palestine, even though we had missed the stomp dance and musical presentations. He listed the international visitors he had encountered in the prior two days and said that he is happy to share Chickasaw cultural heritage with so many different kinds of people.

Felix and Jesse came to the table, greeting the group as any other international guests. But something deeper happened. These were not just internationals. They were from Bethlehem, Christians connected to the land of Jesus. The Palestinians shared their understanding of connection to American Indian experience, the shared struggle to maintain identity and culture—both in the land and around the world. Workers around us listened in on the conversation. It became clear that these weren’t just international visitors. These were fellow travelers. I brought the food to the table, but the conversation went on.

The gracious welcome continued when we moved over to the museum. My mother’s intentions of paying the entry fee for non-Chickasaw visitors were thwarted when the receptionist counted all of us as citizens. Word had spread that Palestinians were visiting.

In the initial reception room, we observed a mosaic depicting Chickasaw cosmology (drawn from deeper Mississippian traditions) and a map of Chickasaw territories of the present, in south-central Oklahoma, and the past, centered in the northern part of what is now Mississippi. Palestinians carrying memories of their grandparents’ villages and towns recognize when another people remembers its past territories.

We started through the museum displays, beginning with the Chickasaw origin narrative—closely bound with our Choctaw siblings—and an explanation of why artifacts are not displayed, out of respect for traditional Chickasaw burial practices. This explanation is punctuated by a letter from Chickasaw Governor Overton James to government officials in Mississippi asking for assistance in preventing grave robbery in the Chickasaw homelands. No response is noted.

Our group then viewed the museum’s introductory film—really an introduction to the Chickasaw people past and present. This is where the question of self-presentation comes to the fore, where the Nation points to its traditional values and highlights its contributions to society—from education and health services to law enforcement and US military service. The film emphasizes that the Chickasaw people have endured through many seasons and intend to endure through many more. Organized by the four seasons, the film identifies contact with European settlers and removal to Oklahoma as part of a Chickasaw Autumn; Winter comes with Oklahoma statehood and continued political oppression by the US Federal Government. Spring has come again with the negotiated reassertion of sovereignty in the 1960s.

As soon as the film ended, we were surprised by Felix at the back door of the theater, beckoning us back to the room with maps and mosaics. He and Jesse had gone back to Felix’s office and brought gifts for each of us—beaded earrings and a flower whittled out of wood, sweetgrass and sage for smudge ceremony, and a stomp dance belt. This was an expression beyond hospitality—it was kinship. It was the kinship of mutual recognition, in shared histories, in shared resistance to colonial efforts to destroy Indigenous peoples.

Throughout the rest of the museum and grounds of the Chickasaw Cultural Center, people received us warmly and graciously. Our Palestinian guests became more forthright in their self-identification; Chickasaw museum workers seemed to welcome them as part of the family. One weaver criticized my newly received stomp belt—“I like to weave mine a whole lot tighter than that”—but also agreed that a belt received as a gift is always better than one you barter for or buy.

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The drive home was filled with conversation. Our Palestinian guests were shocked by the hospitality they experienced. What other museum waves the entrance fee and then presents you with gifts? But they also recognized that something else—something deeper—had occurred.

More importantly, my Palestinian companions’ perception of American Indians, broadly considered, was shifted through specific encounter with the self-presentation of the Chickasaw Nation. “I most often feel very sad in those spaces. A strong sense that this is our fate, that this is what has been happening to us and what will continue to happen,” Jonathan said. “But the Cultural Center had a very different feel. There is a strong sense of hope and continuation.” That sense of positive connection was echoed in Bshara’s observation that “The similarities in the resilience of both the Palestinian and Chickasaw nations are striking. Both our people and the Chickasaw people have never given up despite incredible oppression and obstacles to survival.”

Since our visit to the Chickasaw Cultural Center, I heard a radio discussion on dynamics in the Middle East. This sentence stuck out: “To the extent that it’s a live issue, the US also thinks that Saudi Arabia could be helpful in any elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.” To the extent that it’s a live issue. Perhaps the same qualifying phrase could be placed before any concern for American Indian sovereignty. Our time together at the Cultural Center proved that both Palestinian and American Indian liberation are still very much “live issues.” Against what one scholar has identified as confederated systems of settler-colonial dispossession, we are engaged in a confederated struggle calling for resilience, what Palestinians and other oppressed Arabs call sumud. May this shared resilience and resistance add fuel to the emerging movement of global trans-Indigenous solidarity.

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Robert O. Smith (Citizen, Chickasaw Nation) researches the intersections of indigeneity, religion and politics, especially as they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

American Students and Israel’s Ethnic Exclusion

The threat of deportation facing American student Lara Alqasem at the hands of Israeli authorities strikes a chord with me. Many university students in the Palestinian diaspora use study abroad opportunities in Israel and Palestine as opportunities to explore the geographic center of their Palestinian heritage. During my years as an academic leader in Jerusalem, I hosted several of these students.

Inevitably, these students experienced harassment and delays by Israeli authorities. They were stopped upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport; they were detained for intelligence questioning at Border Crossings; they were singled out for interrogation at Israeli checkpoints inside occupied Palestinian territory. Their very presence was understood by every level of the Israeli security apparatus to be a threat to the State of Israel.

These experiences were often mystifying to their classmates, most of whom were white Americans. The white Americans were often frustrated and angry at having to sit for hours, waiting for their classmate. Why was he being held? The answer: his grandparents are Palestinian; HE is Palestinian. The white students often responded with stunned anger. The Palestinians responded with steadfast endurance: sumud.

But how could a college student already granted a visa be considered a threat to the security of the State of Israel? In Ms. Alqasem’s case, the threat is two-fold. First, like several recent high-profile American Jews, she has been accused of involvement in pro-Palestinian political activity. Israel has convinced itself that the movement supporting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions is a strategic threat. The state has done the only thing a state knows how to do: it has declared war.

But it isn’t just Palestinians featured on government-funded smear websites who get this treatment. What strategic threat is posed even by Palestinians with no political or nationalist involvement? The clue is in what Ms. Alqasem’s lawyer said was the official cause of her detention and potential deportation: “prevention of illegal immigration.”

The State of Israel perceives ANY Palestinian who is not already a citizen or a documented non-citizen resident of territory controlled by Israel (East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza) as a strategic threat. BDS is a recent threat; war was declared on Palestinians long ago.

One of the central founding goals of the State of Israel was to expel as many Palestinians as possible in order to ensure the ethnic demographic dominance of Jews alone. Any “return” of Palestinians — whether the refugees from 1948 the Trump Administration is attempting to define out of existence or any of the other millions of people in the Palestinian diaspora — is a threat, understood as “infiltration” or “illegal immigration.”

That is why Israeli intelligence asks for the names of your father and grandfather when you cross any checkpoint. That is why even if you are Puerto Rican and merely look like you might be Arab, you are asked about your ethnic origins and what languages you speak. It has long been an Israeli strategic priority to build a comprehensive map of Palestinians living outside the territories it controls for the sole purpose of ensuring that they remain there: outside.

This state policy of ethnic exclusion is endemic to the concept of the nation-state itself. Israel should not be singled out as the sole proprietor of state racism. Nevertheless, Israel’s comprehensive assault on Palestinians is remarkable, indicating profound anxiety concerning the legitimacy of Palestinian claims to land and heritage.

All of this makes Ms. Alqasem and my Palestinian-background students strategic threats, no matter their actual level of political activity. This should be profoundly embarrassing for Israeli academic institutions (Hebrew University has lodged a letter of complaint) and completely unacceptable for both international governments and academic institutions outside of Israel. Non-Israeli institutions should reconsider their relationships until this policy of ethnic exclusion is resolved: either you accept each of our students, or you forfeit the benefit of their presence.

In the meantime, US citizens should participate in advocacy to prevent Ms. Alqasem’s deportation. In this case, she is not Palestinian; she is an American. President Trump recently declared at the United Nations that “America will never apologize for protecting its citizens” and that “we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.” Detaining and deporting our citizens solely on the basis of their free speech and ethnic heritage surely demonstrates that the State of Israel’s respect for the United States is in doubt.

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Robert O. Smith (Citizen, Chickasaw Nation) researches the intersections of indigeneity, religion and politics, especially as they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.