This week marks the point where this project began. In 2020, we started on Advent I and now in 2023, we arrive at the same date. I wrote in the first entry for the Abolition Lectionary about Isaiah 64, one of the lections this week. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” Isaiah wrote, begging for God’s involvement in their world. The whole passage, along with the reading from Mark this week, is a fantastical and apocalyptic vision of God’s intervention in the world. We would be so lucky for someone to describe abolition as apocalyptic, for then it would at least hold some legitimacy in communities focused on Christian Scripture. Instead, it is usually regarded as fantastical, and not in the fun Dungeons and Dragons sort of fantasy.
Some of the words that that first entry still rings true today: Most people think abolition is a fantastical idea—they always have. Abolitionists who wanted to end slavery in the United States heard again and again about how disruptive it would be. Those who sought to abolish Jim Crow, lynching, and discrimination at the ballot box heard again and again about how unsettling it would be. Today, calls for the abolition of police and prisons hear the same thing—it’s too troublesome, unruly, and even destructive! Abolition is an impossible consideration because it would upend everything.
I recently spent time in Northern Ireland learning about peacemaking with folks who lived through the Troubles there. Many were actively engaged in the peacemaking process that (contrary to popular belief) was always going on, struggling to break through. I was struck by two things relevant to today: (1) peacemaking was a long, often-ignored process that didn’t make the headlines until the end and (2) criminal justice reform was integral to making peace and establishing the power-sharing arrangement that exists to this day in Northern Ireland.
Both the Isaiah text and the Mark text for this week provoke anxiety in their dramatic language. Our world, too, is full of anxiety about the future and the seemingly ever-deteriorating present. What do we do when we look upon this fragile, messed up world we live in? I think those two northern Irish truths have something to tell us.
Isaiah and Mark both speak to work that requires disruption and endurance. That kind of work typically does not make the headlines. The slow work of abolitionists in establishing non-retributive paths to justice, ministry to those harmed by our criminal justice system, and the push for alternatives to our system of policing don’t make the headlines unless they’re being used to scare people. Abolition only makes the headlines when it’s useful to those in power to stir up fear and get people to circle their wagons around them.
Nevertheless, this disruptive work is at the core of movement toward a more just, merciful, and peaceful society. We will not change the political temperature and the escalating political violence of the United States in particular unless we disarm the criminal justice system that perpetuates both of these threats. Like in Northern Ireland, changing the way the State treats everyday people is integral to establishing a more peaceful society. How can the individual look at how the State treats people (either through policing, incarceration, or even the death penalty) and believe they shouldn’t behave likewise?
It’s resistance to the State’s story of redemptive violence and justice through violence that is central to the slow work of abolition. Isaiah and Mark push us in that direction and many of the stories of Jesus are prime examples of how to tell a different story than this one. It’s difficult work, but it’s worth it. Keep at it, or as Mark says, “Keep awake.”
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.