Month: September 2023

“Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Exodus 17:6 (NRSV)

I have to admit, I’ve always been rather sympathetic to the Israelites in this story. They’ve endured slavery in Egypt, escaped by the skin of their teeth in an effort that required literal miracles, and now they’re in the middle of the desert — not a place well-known for survivability without an abundance of preparation. Moses can be forgiven for his frustration, too, but it’s hard for me to see his rejoinder seriously: “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” (v. 2) 

Moses doesn’t seem to be taking the Israelites’ trauma and their current situation seriously. Water seems a more than reasonable request on their part. 

The demands for abolition should be as simple and reasonable as asking for water in the desert. When Black Americans are incarcerated at 5 times the rates of White Americans, it’s a reasonable thing to question the legitimacy and existence of the system. When the prison population has increased from 500,000 to 2,200,000 from 1980 to 2015 (far outpacing population growth and crime), it’s reasonable to question the system that’s locking people up. When we’re increasing the spending on prisons and jails at triple the rate as K-12 public education, it’s more than reasonable to object.  

It’s important for pastors to normalize asking these questions of our society and government from the pulpit. Consider this story from the Israelites’ perspective this week. Ask questions that seem provocative but are actually just as reasonable as asking for water in the desert. We’ve become accustomed to the evil all around us, and it sometimes falls to you to ask the questions no one else in your faith community is raising. 

Don’t be afraid to ask for water. 

Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.

Jonah 3:10–4:11

Today’s (late and abbreviated) Abolition Lectionary points us to the prophet Jonah. This excellent post by Rabbi Dr. Liz Shayne points out the possibilities of reading Jonah as neurodivergent, and in particular how that sheds light on his particularly dogged devotion to justice.

I love the idea of Jonah’s anger with God, at the end of the book, being a form of his insistence upon justice. Shayne concludes that God’s commitment to justice and God’s duty of care for the citizens of Nineveh are in tension at the end of the text; that God does not bring consequences upon Nineveh (as Jonah, according to Shayne, rightly calls justice) because of God’s commitment to care.

I wonder if we can see in that tension God’s gently changing Jonah’s notion of what justice is, as well. With abolitionist eyes, we can insist on the necessity of disentangling accountability from punishment, and of looking for forms of accountability which begin from a place of care and healing. I might go further than Rabbi Shayne’s conclusion to suggest that God is presenting to Jonah a different form of justice to be as fiercely committed to: a justice that relies on “reciprocal care” rather than punishment or consequences; a justice that provokes change in ways that do not necessarily satisfy our punitive impulses. In any case, Jonah’s commitment to justice helps reflect God’s own such commitment.

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.

Matthew 18:21–35

(Editor’s note: Apologies that last week’s post was skipped!)

This passage from Matthew marks the end of an entire chapter on accountability, restorative justice, and forgiveness (as Ched Myers and Elaine Ends note in their book Ambassadors of Reconciliation, vol. 1). The parable here provides a stark contrast between a culture of debt-holding and retribution and a culture of forgiveness and restoration.

As Luise Schottroff reminds us in her book on parables, it is important to resist the tendency to read parables like this one and place God in the role of the king, supporting a view of divine retribution — even when, as in this case, the final verse seems to imply it. Surely, in what Schottroff calls an “eschatological” reading of the parable, which is to say reading it from the perspective of a community waiting for divine vindication, the point is not that God will punish you if you are not forgiving enough! Instead, the stark language of the parable is expressing the utter gulf between a community dedicated to restoration and mercy and a community contributed to retribution. 

I am always hesitant to insist upon forgiveness as an ethical Christian imperative because of the ways that forgiveness language is weaponized against survivors of harm. But there are a number of actions and ways of being that fall under the term “forgiveness”: reconciliation, or restoration of relationship with someone; forgiveness in your own mind, that is, letting go of your own anger for your own sake regardless of how that affects how you relate to the other party; transactional forgiveness, that is, the willingness to accept restitution made to you without any further desire for relationship; and more. Each of these is different; none are required. But I wonder if underlying all of these is a commitment to what I might call mercy: a commitment to a kind of non-punitiveness or compassion, to what is often referred to in transformative justice/community accountability work as the recognition of the humanity of everyone involved (e.g. in this toolkit from CARA). It’s this way of being that I think this parable is calling the Christian community to — communally. 

The point of this parable is that a community structured around non-punitiveness and a community structured around debt payment and retribution are entirely unalike, and God calls Christians to experience and practice a commitment to mercy. The way that works out in any particular situation of harm depends on the harm, the needs of the survivors, and the willingness of those responsible to take accountability and make amends. (For a fantastic and complementary Jewish perspective on this topic, see Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book On Repentance and Repair.) A commitment to mercy, though, opens new possibilities for creative and life-giving forms of non-punitive accountability in line with compassion and dignity for all people.

Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.