by Deacon Peggy Hahn (she/her), Executive Director of LEAD
Did you know a palm branch is a sign of protest? When the crowds honored Jesus, laying their cloaks on the ground for him to ride on and waving palm branches in the air, they were, with Jesus’s full participation, protesting the powers of their day.
People protest because those with the ability to make a difference are locked into their perspective and are using their authority without full consideration for others. When normal channels of communication breakdown, the crowds rise up.
We need to hear the voices of college students across the country who are trying to tell us something. So, why are we sending in police, suspending students from school, and treating this generation like criminals when we have not taken the time to listen to them?
Have you ever cared so much about something that you protested? In some countries you are not a faith-leader unless you have served time in jail due to a protest. Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer… and countless others you know and respect have protested.
Full disclosure: I have protested my entire adult life, in more than one country. Protesting is deeply personal and extremely public as we put ourselves out there.
I believe our fear of conflict allows even the most level-headed person to react by calling the police rather than protecting the protestor. We prefer avoiding problems to engaging in the uncomfortable conversations that can lead to learning from people who think differently than we do. As a result, there are times when we must protest to have our voices heard. By arresting people we don’t agree with, we let this fear take over our good judgment. Sometimes it is the pushback of law enforcement that turns a crowd into a mob.
In the words of Candice Clark, seminary student and LEAD staff member, “Gen Z is showing you right now why they are not coming to church.” They want to see faith lived out. We believe this is a time in the history of our country for congregations to talk out loud about the issues of our day: Reproductive rights. Racism. Gender and sexual biases. Immigration reform. And the list goes on.
Don’t ignore these conversations in your congregation. Please listen to what our young people are saying with an open heart.
Here are two resources that may help you in your faith community:
Allied Against Hate: A Toolkit for Faith Communities
Resources for the Crisis in the Holy Land – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (elca.org)
I believe your advocating for protest should have been tempered with the word peaceful. Dr King advocated for.peaceful demonstrations.
Secondly your reference to Palm Sunday being a government protest is not what I have been taught for 75 years of attending Lutheran church’s.
Politics should remain politics.
Church should remain church.
Protesting for the very people who murdered innocent babies, children, and women is not acceptable. Occupying buildings, destroying property and beating those who are in support of the other side is not acceptable either. I agree with Angelo.
Sounds like you had 75 years of ineffective pastors, Angelo. The world of Jesus’ time was a world in which the church and politics were deeply enmeshed. Many believed that the Messiah would be a political leader who would crush the occupying Roman powers and reestablish a sovereign nation of Israel. Even when Jesus was trying to show his followers a different way, he didn’t shy away from calling injustice what it was, and he was as critical of his own people as he was of Rome, often far more so. The responsibility for peace lies with each individual, including both those who protest destructively and those who put down protests with violence. Dr. King also said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” He never condoned violence, but he understood its causes as well as anyone.
Thank you for speaking bravely on a difficult subject. Jesus’ protests were peaceful until the police were sent in. I remember Kent State all too well. Blessings on your courage.
We make choices about our power and how we will use it. To protest is to own our power.
There come those times when we feel our voice does not matter, our compassion for others is taken lightly, our presence is invisible and we need a way to be heard. We protest.
Sometimes we don’t know all the issues involved but what we do know is that innocent people are suffer and dying. We protest on their behalf.
I want to listen to those who protest.
Peggy, thank you for sharing your words and for your lifetime of protesting when necessary. At heart, in action, and faith, you are a Protestant…😊
The content of the protest matters a great deal, and I agree with Angelo that nonviolence is essential to successful protest. Violence blurs the injustice a protest is attempting to identify clearly. When I was in college, they changed the tennis team from being a scholarship sport to a non-scholarship sport, and I was with the students who picketed outside the administration office for a couple of days. We were correctly ignored.
But yes, the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem was political protest of the finest order. The names used for Jesus as Messiah were similar to those used for Caesar and Herod. The vision of the Kingdom of God was very different than the vision of the Kingdom of Rome. Peace through justice versus peace through might. Entering Jerusalem for Passover itself was symbolic as Passover represented the overthrow of the Egyptian government; of course, the authorities would be more sensitive to political symbolism during Passover.
Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and give unto God what is God’s sounds like a statement to get along with whatever the political authority is at a given moment. But it begs the question as to what ultimately belongs to Caesar and what to God; the answer to that is not something that Caesar likes.
I appreciate all of the comments. The problem I see is that the core justification for the protests is severely unbalanced. Who can argue with the plight of the Palestinians and what is being done to them? What about Hamas? What about anti-Jewish sentiment? Many, if not most Jews in Israel are upset with what their government is doing to the Palestinians. The protests of the sixties (I was there) were much simpler to understand, whichever “side” you were on. The nuance required here is complex and not well-understood by so many, especially the younger generations.
Your comments are so valued – this conversation continues in my blog post on Thursday. There is just too much going on – I think Eric named many of the complexities.
Remember, a protest is most often an outlet for people who have no other way to share their pain.
–Peggy
I have waited for someone in the last week to stand up for those that are probably the most impacted by our American college protests. The Lead staff is usually concerned about minority groups, except here in this instance. I can only imagine how I would feel as a non-protesting student, especially a Jewish student, traversing across campus, trying to study for and take finals after spending thousands of dollars in tuition and housing costs. Senior students were wondering about their graduation events also. Protesting is fine and is an option for all of us in much of the Western world, but when protesters create intimidation and threatening situations to other students and faculty while they are just trying to learn, complete research, and teach, they should be stopped or moved. Peggy,
the protests you participated in at UH were not violent and you got your points across to the public. As far as listening to the protesters, why not take the ability
you have at LEAD to reach out to them, create a panel of students from many universities, and have a 2-3 hour discussion on possible solutions. I would really
like to hear this and even pay to see it. Then you might make a difference for all of us and actually LEAD.