A Word From David
We have house guests this week. Two little boys and their parents. The ‘rents are about 40. Like me and Cheryl, they are straight, white, cis-gender, US citizens by birth. Last night they mentioned that they are actively seeking jobs outside of the country.
Cheryl and I have mused a few times in recent months that if we were the age of our current guests we might be thinking of leaving the country, too. While we had a raucous good time last night with lots of laughter and a wee dram of Buffalo Trace bourbon, the conversation leaves me sad.
What have we come to when our best and brightest young families are actively looking for ways to leave the country?
Yesterday’s news included the story of another kidnapping by ICE. Masked agents of the state snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University doctoral student and Fulbright scholar, off the street yesterday. Her only distinguishing characteristic was having published an op-ed essay in the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to Israeli attacks on Gaza.
At this point, these seizures of activists have targeted non-citizens in the U.S. on student visas, green cards, or other legal status. But, as Robert Reich posted this week, “The Trump regime will round you up off the street and arrest you because you spoke your mind.”
I invited Westerners and Pilgrims to join me in reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together during Lent this year because he wrote those reflections about his own response to living in Germany when the regime was rounding people up off the street because they spoke their minds. Bonhoeffer had ample opportunity and several invitations to leave Germany or stay abroad during the 30s, as friends in England and the U.S. worried for his safety. He returned, knowing the dangers, because, he said often, he was a German and he wanted to be part of rebuilding his nation after the fall of the fascists.
I do not have Bonhoeffer’s courage, but I am not in my 30s, either. So I’m staying, come what may, and I hope to live long enough to help rebuild my country after the fascists fall.
I wish I believed that would be soon. I wish I could confidently offer you words of reassurance that this won’t last much long, and that, surely, we must be at our low point. I wish I could, but I do not believe it to be so.
Earlier this week, right-wing Christian nationalist “pastor” Joel Webbon called on the government to seize “apostate churches,” arrest their pastors, and “reeducate” their members. While Webbon and his Right Response Ministries seem like fringe characters, they have more than 120,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel, and tens of thousands of other social media followers. Vice President J.D. Vance is among those whom Webbon and his fellow Theo-bros have influenced, according to Mother Jones.
I have received my share of hate mail over the years, and I have been called a false prophet leading an apostate church. Does that mean I should be worried?
I have no few delusions of grandeur. I am one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of progressive protestant pastors who tries to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of love and justice, of radical hospitality, of grace, of mercy. I may be slightly more willing than many to speak out publicly on issues like Gaza, and rock a few boats to break down barriers around gender, sexuality, and empowerment in the church, but I am certainly a man of no particular significance.
In other words, I’m a lot like Alireza Douroudi, the University of Alabama grad student taken by ICE at 5:30 this morning in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. That is to say, where our house guests live. For now.