Page 10 - Presbyterian Connection – Spring 2021

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PRESBYTERIAN
SPRING 2021
presbyterian.ca
Connection
JUSTICE
Flags Present at the Assault on the U.S. Capitol
your neighbours.”
So, although hundreds of years
of history have tried to argue oth- erwise, it has never been—and still isn’t now—a question of whether Jesus would condone this move- ment, these actions. It’s a question of whether we will.
What happened on January 6 brought to a boil forces that have simmered both within and outside Christianity for many years. Those forces are not confined to the United States; they are here in Canada too, and all over the world. It was prevent- able, but it was not prevented—and there were public rallies in cities here in Canada in support of Trump, and all that his supporters stood—and stormed—for.
When we preach, when we wor- ship, when we gather as community, what are we saying and doing, and what are we not saying and not do- ing? How do we encourage each other and build one another up? How do we stir one another to love and to do good works? If we can’t answer these questions, we have serious soul searching to do.
The way to prevent violence like this is not to wait until it has come to a head, but to address it all along, each week, each day, speaking love, living love. It is through building each other up, which for some of us means letting our own privileges go. It is through listening and through re- pentance when we have committed wrongs, and through learning how to be community, how to be neighbours, that we begin to close the divide. That is what it takes in the long haul, and we need those measures, as so many people have been saying louder and better than me for so many years. But, given what happened, we also now need to ask ourselves: When a mob comes claiming the right to political power and violence in God’s name, under the Christian banner, how will the wider church respond?
By Allyson Carr, Associate Secretary, Justice Ministries
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, one of several documents I had been preparing to work on was a reflec- tive essay on the dangers of pop- ulism and nationalism. The reflection was structured on some aspects of the Declaration of Faith Concerning Church and Nation, a subordinate standard of The Presbyterian Church in Canada that was drafted during and right after WWII. It is concerned with Christians’ duties in the face of authoritarianism, tyranny and totali- tarianism. Church and Nation was, after all, written by theologians who had witnessed the majority of the Christian church in Nazi Germany stand aside or even join the Nazis in genocide and total war.
The writers of Church and Nation wanted to guard against the church participating in, or standing aside for, such state-sanctioned violence should it happen in Canada. They wanted doctrinal statements to hold themselves and future generations to, so people would understand Christians cannot and must not align themselves with a totalizing power headed by any human or political party, no matter how charismatic, no matter the circumstances. The way
the writers drafted Church and Na- tion was, of course, framed by the larger context in which they wrote. But they had spotted a clear and seri- ous danger to the faith, and wanted the ability to unambiguously say, “No. We can’t, as Christians, support tyrannical power.”
As someone who is both a citizen of Canada and the United States, all this was on my mind while I was working that morning. Though it was pressing, it also seemed distant; an abstract threat, not one metaphori- cally trying to break down my front door. But by afternoon, the abstrac- tion and metaphor had both van- ished. Watching nationalist, populist and racist insurrectionists storm the US Capitol building—meeting sig- nificantly smaller police, FBI and Na- tional Guard presence than the ear- lier and peaceful Black Lives Matters protestors had met—was something I had feared for months and now it was suddenly happening. I was not surprised, but I was in shock.
As I watched it unfold live on newsfeed, things I already knew deep in my heart were on visceral visual display. A particular—and vocal and powerful—segment of the Christian church placed their Christian identity behind this push for populist, nation- alist and racist power. In addition to
The Christian flag flies beneath the flag of the United States of America.
the large Confederate flag a man who had forced his way into the building was carrying and the nooses hang- ing outside—violent racist threats that refer to a history of white mobs lynching Black people—I saw peo- ple carrying flags that displayed the cross, and one with the word “Jesus,” storming the capitol build- ing. I spotted another with “Jesus is My Savior, Trump is My President” try to breach the building. And within the Senate chamber itself, once the insurrectionists had forced the evac- uation of the Senate—while it was in active session to confirm the results of the election—I saw the very same ecumenical Christian flag that stood in the corner of my classroom every day of my school life, from kinder- garten through grade eight, waving in the hands of a man among those who forced their way in to seize and keep power. Four people died in the violence and a fifth, a police officer, died shortly after. At least two explo- sives had been found and dismantled in this attempt to overthrow the re- sults of a free democratic election.
It cannot be ignored or minimized that, in addition to all the racist im-
ages and paraphernalia the mob was carrying, there were multiple (and large and prominent) flags with Chris- tian imagery on them—one of them literally the ecumenical Christian flag that is supposed to stand for Christi- anity itself. This is not just a problem for the United States, or even just a problem for Canada insofar as we share a border and other ties with the United States. This is a violent cancer within Christianity that has aligned it- self with white supremacy and with staying in power at all costs. This is exactly the kind of situation the writ- ers of Church and Nation were wor- ried about, and Christians cannot be silent about this.
It should go without saying that Jesus would not condone these ac- tions. He would not align himself with a power that pursued policies that the Trump administration pursued. He would never align himself with rac- ism and lynching nooses. That’s not even a question; one cannot read the gospel accounts and come to any other conclusions. The Great Com- mandment is not “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and hate
Talking about Climate Change
By Allyson Carr, Associate Secretary, Justice Ministries
Though much has changed in the world because of the pandemic there is one thing at least that has not—the need to protect the Ear th and halt, insofar as we can, the ef- fects of climate change. If anything, that need has become even more clear this past year, in part from the environmental improvements we see as a result of the reduction in commuting and travel. Much more
progress is needed, though, and knowing where to begin can be dif- ficult, especially while balancing all the other pressing needs the pan- demic has raised.
The impacts of climate change not only on ourselves but on future gen- erations are profound. “Canada’s Changing Climate” repor t, which was published by the federal gov- ernment through Environment and Climate Change Canada in 2019, speaks about how Canada—and particularly Northern Canada—is
warming even faster than much of the rest of the world, which is al- ready seeing significant climbs in overall temperature. The same re- por t notes changes in freshwater availability, temperature extremes, and the likelihood of drought, floods and forest fires. Both an executive summary and the full report can be found online.
While it is very good to have that kind of data and summary at our fin- gertips, knowing the information is only the first step of what is needed
to head off irreversible damage. The next steps are figuring out how to act on it, and a vital part of those decisions is dialogue. But how does one have productive conversations about climate change, and what to do to mitigate it, when not everyone agrees on what is needed, and peo- ple have different levels of familiarity with the data that’s available—as well as limited information about the options for action that are being proposed?
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