Blessed are those who weep.
Luke 6:21
Darien, Simon, Ariana, and I attended St. Andrews’ today where none other than James Talarico delivered the Easter sermon. Jim’s on medical leave, and Talarico’s a local celebrity.[1]
When we’re lucky enough to all attend together, we discuss the service through the following afternoon. This time, Darien and I had plenty to discuss on the drive from church, and then on reconvening, Simon opened conversation with the exact points we’d just discussed.
I’m increasingly frightened by our culture’s idolization of nonviolence. Talarico’s sermon regularly touched on Jesus as the nonviolent radical, and the early church’s[2] resistance against Rome. From “Palm Sunday was not a parade. It was a protest” to “God didn’t invent the Cross — the Romans did.”
Another Talarico quote helps to segue: “We want to ride a warhorse, but Jesus rides a donkey.” In blindly revering Jesus’ nonviolence, we fail to recognize a broader picture in which nonviolence was one of many tools within a decentralized independence movement.[3]
Talarico contrasted his idea of Christianity with Trump’s obsessing with winning, and arrived at his tongue-in-cheek sermon title. “Christian nationalists reject what they call ‘loser theology’… [they][4] said that ‘we cannot afford to be divine losers. We need to win. I want to reward my friends, and crush my enemies’.”
To this crowd of of tired progressives, “divine losers” holds rhetorical appeal similar to “when they go low, we go high.” Look how much good that did us, nine years later.
Nonviolence is a tool by which to draw attention to oppressive violence, but is so often used both to gatekeep forms of protest and to establish an act’s acceptability. We want our acts of protest to be nonviolent, so we plan demonstrations in which we are only violence’s recipients.
Where our oppressors act shamelessly, disregarding the world watching, they employ violence with abandon regardless of our pacifism. Proudly holding to nonviolence while a boot’s on our neck only gets us crushed.
Talarico’s sermon had a number of nice points, but I walked realizing that white[5] progressives can comfort themselves knowing that “Jesus lost, too.” We all need the space to console ourselves and regroup, but as we distraughtly ask “what can we do now?” we can’t afford to focus on the unimpactful. The moral high ground doesn’t save lives.
I joked that maybe white people just shouldn’t talk about nonviolence. However, when advocated for by the oppressed and dispossessed, we should listen.
That said, there was validation in his message that I needed to hear. “If your heart is breaking right now, it means you still have a heart.”
For good reason. Local progressive democrats are in high demand. ↩︎
“church,” not “Church” given these aren’t yet Catholics. ↩︎
Joel Webbon, self-identified Christian nationalist from my lovely hometown. ↩︎
St. Andrews is significantly more diverse than when I attended as a child, but still has a predominately — at least visually — elderly, white, land-owning membership. ↩︎