In this passage from 2 Kings, we see Naaman, an Aramean, come to the prophet Elisha seeking healing for leprosy. When Elisha tells him to wash in the Jordan River and be healed, he is angry, saying: “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!”
How often, I wonder, is our advocacy for abolition in Christian contexts slowed by wanting to see the distinctive work of liberation of God in a way that is comfortable to us, rather than by following the lead of those already doing the work?
One of the key principles of abolitionist advocacy is to engage in solidarity, not allyship, following the lead of most-affected people. Abolitionist work is led by Black people and incarcerated people engaged in the struggle for their own liberation. Churches and faith communities come into the movement most effectively by joining existing coalitions and supporting the demands already being made.
Often, I think, our desire in the mainline church is for something “different” in our advocacy — we admit the problems with police violence but do not want to follow the lead of activists calling to defund the police. We disengage from protestors if we think their tactics are too harsh, yet, as I recently wrote, our response to disruptive protest should be to listen to the prophetic voices.
The “hermeneutical privilege of the oppressed” means that prophetic voices come from those most affected by current systems of oppression, and any analysis of how to act should start by listening to those most affected. What Naaman learns in this text is to listen to the prophetic voices even if they do not say what he wants, expects, or is comfortable with.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.
Psalm 77 traces the spiritual journey from grief to praise, through awe at the power of God’s creation. At the beginning, we wail together, we refuse to be comforted. Unconsoled, we turn to prayer. The NRSV tells us “I commune with my heart in the night.” (v. 6) Who has not tossed and turned in the middle of the night, praying (or wrestling, or raging) with just the depths of our own hearts for company? It is often in these dark nights that we kill the God that does not serve us, the God who does not accompany us into freedom.
From this sacred listening, the Psalmist turns us to the long arc of history, tracing God’s faithfulness in accompanying our spiritual ancestors. God’s creation aligns itself with the work of liberation: “The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered… Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” (v. 17-20)
The Psalmist’s journey from personal grief to collective liberation reads like a CliffNotes version of Job. Gustavo Gutierrez describes the Book of Job as a “circling movement into deeper insight” on the presence of God amidst the suffering of the innocent (On Job, 93). He traces Job’s journey from private grief to public proclamation, as Job connects his own suffering and grief to that of others who have experienced immense injustice.
Gutierrez closes his book with this encouragement to other religious leaders: “Only if we know how to be silent and involve ourselves in the suffering of the poor will we be able to speak out of their hope.” (102) This journey is a necessary one even if it is not easy. We would all like to grow in wisdom and in freedom without communing with our grief at night. But the Psalmist encourages us: Through this doorway is suffering, yes, but also great joy and liberation.
Rev. Jay Bergen is a pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, and a volunteer organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), a campaign fighting to end life sentences and heal communities across Pennsylvania.
For many years I have been disturbed by the story of the Gerasene demoniac. Certainly it’s good that Jesus was able to heal a dangerous man, I thought, but why did he have to send a herd of pigs to destruction? The pigs hadn’t done anything, and besides, didn’t they represent the livelihood of the owner and the swineherds who watched them? Why was there so much collateral damage?
Not uncommon questions, perhaps, but no less disturbing than the story. Why did I think about the man that way? Why was I not concerned that he had been bound with chains, that he was left to wander among the dead, alone and naked? Why was I not equally concerned that the response of all the villagers to seeing him whole again was fear and the request for Jesus to leave?
It is easier to put away people who are disruptive or frightening for any reason, and it is natural, maybe, to bristle at the wiping out of what seems a normal and necessary part of life. But if the story is put in its starkest terms, as my wife phrased it, it is about the Son of God destroying economic utility in favor of the restoration of someone that no one else cared about.
The economic argument, that something shouldn’t be touched because it provides jobs, is a load-bearing one for many businesses that are obviously destructive to human beings: coal mining, industrial animal farming, garment dye and production, sweatshops, and prisons. It is no accident that these operations run in rural areas, both here and in other countries, where there is more need for work and fewer people with enough money or power to complain. Jobs come with the degradation of the environment and the physical and spiritual health of the workers. It is not good to wield power-over and maintain imprisonment for other human beings, even if it’s what gets you a paycheck. And rural prisons keep frightening people far away from population centers—including their families, spouses and parents and siblings and children… that is, anyone who might care about them.
The economic benefit of prisons to rural areas was much-touted; how much they provide in the end is debatable. But Jesus’ healing of the demon-possessed man even at the cost of an entire herd of animals says that it doesn’t matter. The pigs were being raised to make money. Under ordinary circumstances, they would be sold for slaughter, for the gustatory pleasure of people rich enough to buy the meat and the enrichment of the owner of the herd. They were a piece of the economy. The story teaches that this economic activity, the jobs, the passing of money from hand to hand, is absolutely subordinate to the wellness of one human being, even one who had been removed from his community because of his condition, even one the village was not straightforwardly happy to get back. Economic benefit does not outweigh human wellness and restoration. That’s that.
Bailey Pickens is a Presbyterian pastor who lives with her wife and dog in Nashville, TN.
The reading for Trinity Sunday from the Gospel of John offers my favorite description of the Trinity: “All that the Father has is [the Son’s]…[the Spirit] will take what is [the Son’s] and declare it to you.” The fullness of the Father dwells in the Son and also dwells in the Spirit, in the form of revelation or declaration, made visible to us. The Spirit, within the Trinity, shows us God as God is also already present in the Son. The Spirit is the fullness of God the Father, fully present in the Son, made visible (“declared”) to us. This is not to lean on a functionalist modalism where the Spirit is only the “revealing mode” of God — but it is to emphasize that when we look to God, we see God-the-Spirit in the revelation and declaration of that which is the Father’s and fully present in the Son. Theologian Sarah Coakley suggests that our trinitarian theology always arises first from our experience of the Spirit: the Spirit is our entry point into the fullness of the Trinity.
What do these technicalities of the Trinity have to do with abolition? Kathryn Tanner, in her discussion of the sacrament of confirmation, associates “manifestation” with confirmation and the gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit manifests to us “all that the Father has [which] is [the Son’s].” The Holy Spirit isn’t identical with this manifestation, but the Spirit’s presence in the Trinity reminds us that the manifestation of God in the world is an essential element of God’s being.
What does the manifestation of God look like? It looks like liberation, reconciliation, and healing: setting the captives free and declaring good news to the poor. Abolition — the work of building healing, loving structures and tearing down powers of death and captivity — is the manifestation of God’s liberating presence. Abolition is a project of the Spirit. John 20:22–23 shows Jesus giving the Spirit to the disciple in order to “forgive and retain” sins: put another way, the Spirit empowers the disciples to engage in the hard work of community accountability. The Spirit “declares” to us all the things that are of God; the Spirit enables us to make the fullness of God’s liberating being present in our material realities. Abolition is the manifestation of God.
But the presence of the Triune God goes deeper. Jesus declares his very presence — the presence of the Son — with those who are hungry, naked, unsheltered, sick, and in prison (Matthew 25:31–45). The Father, fully present in the Son, is fully present in those who are oppressed and incarcerated. The Father and Son, fully present in the Spirit, are fully present to us in the manifestation of liberation that is resistance to that which oppresses.
This reality in the world expresses a perspective on the Trinity rooted in the cross-event. Jürgen Moltmann writes of the Trinity arising from the cross-event, in The Crucified God: “In the cross, Father and Son are most deeply separated in forsakenness and at the same time are most inwardly one in their surrender. What proceeds from this event between Father and Son is the Spirit which justifies the godless, fills the forsaken with love and even brings the dead alive, since even the fact that they are dead cannot exclude them from this event of the cross; the death in God also includes them.” The mystery of the Trinity is this: God the Father is fully present in God the Son, yet God the Son is fully present in those who are forsaken, what Ignacio Ellacuría called “the crucified peoples of the world.” The Spirit arises from the Son’s forsakenness — the Son’s solidarity with those who are oppressed, incarcerated, forsaken by societal structures — making God fully present in the resistance found in places under the power of death. The Triune God is present in all the death-dealing systems of incarceration in a manifestation of resistance to them. Abolition makes manifest the Crucified Son in solidarity with those subjected to death-dealing systems and the Spirit of accountability and reconciliation in the real, material resistance to such systems. All that the Father has is in the Son who is one with those who are incarcerated, and the Spirit declares this liberating, life-giving, death-and-punishment-abolishing fullness of the Father to us.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for Abolition.
When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs– in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ “
Romans 8:14-17
All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ– if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Both Acts 2 and Romans 8 allude to the practice of slavery in the ancient world. A lot of modern translations skirt around this issue by replacing “slaves” with “servants” (see Acts 2:18 NIV, CEB, NABRE, etc.), but that interpretive choice leads readers to miss some of the key biblical and contemporary context. Even though neither text directly calls for the abolition of slavery in the 1st Century, each of them problematize slavery in the Christian’s eyes. Both these passages make clear that the lines between enslaver and enslaved are not drawn by God. They are drawn by people, drawn by our sinful desire to separate, punish, and demonize others. Preachers should consider that incarceration in the USA is little more than a legal form of slavery. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution makes this explicit by abolishing “slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.”
With that context in mind, the Apostle Peter and the Prophet Joel remind us that God pours out the Holy Spirit “even upon my slaves, both men and women” (Acts 2:18 NRSV) The status of enslavement does not exclude people from the blessing of God’s presence. It does not erase the Image of God stamped on every human body and soul. If we recognize God’s Image in every human being, enslavement is morally and theologically incoherent (theo-illogical, if you will). There is no basis for one person dominating another if both are made in the Image of God. There is no basis for imprisoning anyone if the Holy Spirit chooses to fall on the imprisoner and the imprisoned alike.
Similarly, the Apostle Paul says that God’s Spirit is opposed to any “spirit of slavery,” which is driven by “fear” (Rom 8:15). Fear is what leads us to enslave and/or imprison people we believe to be dangerous to society. Fear leads us to establish institutions that isolate, torture, and kill people. The American Prison-Industrial Complex is a demented institution; its fruit is the abuse and dehumanization of the individuals in its grasp. It harms the imprisoned, of course, but it also harms the people who work for prisons as guards, wardens, and the like. Incarceration — in all its forms — spreads a spirit of fear and a spirit of slavery.
But God calls people of faith into “a spirit of adoption” (Rom 8:15). Christ has acted triumphantly in the world by rising from the dead and sending the Holy Spirit to people of all ethnicities, nationalities, races, and classes. Through the Holy Spirit, we are adopted as children of God, siblings with one another. The human family is bound together and interdependent, whether or not we acknowledge it or like it. Passages like these should motivate Christians to work for the liberation of enslaved and imprisoned people. God has already made the incarcerated beloved children; God has already declared them free. It’s up to us to make our earthly, human, imperfect societies a bit closer to that heavenly reality.
The Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda isthe rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Savannah, GA, and the Missioner for Racial Justice, Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.
