Ephesians 4:25–5:2
The reading appointed for this week from Ephesians offers suggestions for what it looks like to live in a community established by the abolitionist values of mutual aid, accountability, and compassion, as opposed to a community governed by carceral ideals of surveillance and punishment. Looking at these instructions line by line reflects multiple facts of abolitionist praxis in our communal life:
“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”
Central to an understanding of building what Connie Burk of NW Network calls “accountable communities” is truth-telling and honesty: both with ourselves and with each others. Accountability is a practice of radical honesty with ourselves, including the honest recognition of when we have done harm to others. It also requires vulnerability, as we listen to the truths of others. Building spaces for compassionate, vulnerable listening and exploration of difficult truths with transparency requires that we remember the holiness of our relationships with each other. As we hold space for one another to take accountability and be vulnerable because we have built a foundation of trust, we prove that we are “members of one another.” I have explored the role of honesty/truth-telling and of the concept of the body of Christs in our practice of accountability further, in our Accountability Toolkit.
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
What is the difference between being angry and making room for the devil? I wonder if one answer to this difficult question is to interrogate our desire for vengeance and retribution. To be angry at harm is natural, just, and good. But to turn that legitimate anger into structures of punishment and retribution is, I think, answering harm with further harm. Such structures become the demonic institutions of policing and prisons that we see acting as forces of death in our society. Characteristic of abolitionist community is to be angry, but not turn to retribution. Or, as Mariame Kaba and Rachel Herzing write, provocatively, “Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses. Or, as we initially wanted to title this piece, abolition is not about your fucking feelings.”
“Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.”
In the response to thieves, we see the most concrete example in this passage of a restorative-justice response. There is no thought of punishment or incarceration for thieves — instead, the importance is living a new, accountable life in Christ. Repentance means that theft must stop, but there is no response of punishment. Instead, penitent thieves give back to the community, caring for the poor. Such care for the needy from their own labor is not only an actualization of mutual aid in the community, but also a form of reparations for theft.
Particularly given the ways the early church fathers wrote about wealth as theft, this injunction to thieves also reminds us that redistribution of wealth, mutual aid, and concrete care for those in need are an essential part of abolitionist politics. Those who have wealth should turn to labor for the sake of the needy. Instead of shame or punishment, the response to theft is reparations and care for one another so everyone will have enough.
“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
Compassion is a hallmark of communities of abolition and accountability. The language of “tenderheartedness” or forgiveness here is not, I am convinced, intended to preclude legitimate anger. Nor can forgiveness be commanded of those who are survivors of harm, nor can reconciliation be insisted upon when there hasn’t been accountability for harm done. At the same time, a process of accountability begins with an openness to recognizing the humanity in those who have done harm to us — what Miroslav Volf calls the “will to embrace,” or what we might think of as compassion for the common humanity of all. It is because of this compassion that our demands for accountability and justice must not rely on degradation, retribution, or exclusion for those who have done harm. Perhaps forgiveness — although it cannot be commanded — can find a beginning in this compassion, a baseline desire to seek transformation of harm done rather than retribution for it.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Ultimately, we are reminded, the mutual, everlasting love of the persons of the Trinity is at the basis of our Christian communities of accountability and abolition. To follow the example of God and to participate in the triune compassionate being of God insists that our way of living — communally, materially, and practically — is characterized by love. To structure our communities by such love means to structure them around honesty and accountability to one another in our relationships, the rejection of retribution, reparations and amends for harm done and mutual aid and care for one another, and compassion for everyone’s inherent humanity.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.