Rejecting Despair and Complacency

Heschel and King's words guide us on how we should deal with Assad's fall and Trump's rise.

This week, I’ve been absorbed by the writings of Martin Luther King and Abraham Joshua Heschel with regard to three interrelated matters:

1. The sudden, earthshaking fall of Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad

2. A stunning but not surprising new survey from the Hartford Institute about congregations and politics.

3. And the expected but scandalous practice of “obeying in advance” the whims of a self-declared dictator.

I think these events come together in teaching us that, as King said in his final Sunday sermon, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” But it will bend only if we are there to help bend it - and have the faith and perseverance to see it through.

Let’s take them one at a time.

1) Assad’s Stunning Fall

In Dr King’s Exodus-based sermon, "The Death of Evil Upon the Seashore," delivered in 1956. MLK wrote this:

The death of the Egyptians upon the seashore is a glaring symbol of the ultimate doom of evil in its struggle with good. There is something in the very nature of the universe which is on the side of Israel in its struggle with every Egypt. There is something in the very nature of the universe which ultimately comes to the aid of goodness in its perennial struggle with evil.

While in interpreting this passage King leans more on God's assistance and Heschel on the need for a divine-human partnership, they are essentially saying the same thing: progress is incremental but certain; God will help us, but only if we join hands with good people everywhere and reject despair and complacency.

Parenthetically, Heschel and King could easily have completed each other's sentences. See this clip from a documentary on the two towering figures, "Praying with My Legs," and see what Heschel's noted daughter Susannah wrote about the theological affinities of Heschel and King.

But the question this week is whether Assad’s fall is a sign that the arc of history is at long last bending, if not toward justice, then at least away from Iran and its suddenly shattered “Axis of Resistance.”

The Israeli front page from this past weekend shows the dominoes that have fallen only recently, from Hamas, Hizbollah and Syria, with Iran in the crosshairs. And the headline states, “A New Middle East.”

Is it? Can we begin at least to be more optimistic - while at the same time acknowledging the incredible suffering that has led to this moment, on the part of Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese?

Just think of how many have died or been displaced since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, long before October 7? Over 230,000 civilians have been killed in Syria since March of 2011. There are 16.7 million Syrian refugees, internally and externally displaced, in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.

Let that sink in.

But is this - dare we imagine - the shocking, twisting coda to the Arab Spring that we all had written off as a complete disaster? And now, all those dominoes, with all that blood on their hands, Assad worst of all, they are all gone, within just a few weeks. These murderers of their own people, they’re gone.

Are we too jaded - or just too reluctant to watch the news - to see the significance of what happened this week?

The disaster that is the Middle East long predates Assad’s butchering, maiming, exiling and gassing of his own people (with Russian help). But this brutal chapter is closing. We have no idea what comes next, but we can only say a blessing that these dominoes have fallen.

Could Iran possibly be next? Could Putin? Could Hamas?

Can we allow ourselves to be hopeful?

All I know is that what was beyond catastrophic a few months ago is still a catastrophe - and hostages are still captive and violence continues - but on this biblical seashore, good seems to be gaining an upper hand.

2) Cowardly Congregations

While Assad has fallen, Trump is rising. What do we do about that? I’ll tell you what we can’t do.

Check out the study released on Election Day by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, showing that most congregations are politically inactive, with nearly half actively avoiding discussing politics at their gatherings.

The Hartford report, “Politics in the Pews? Analyzing Congregational Political Engagement,” focused on how congregations as a whole deal with politics, not religious individuals or their clergy alone. “Congregations often get left out of conversations about religion and politics but are inferred to be influential,” reads the report.

Even if members are politically active and many leaders are often outspoken about issues and candidates they support, most congregations make great efforts to keep politics out of the church, the report states.

“When they come together as a spiritual community, they don’t want politics directly involved. There’s a lot of pushback from the people in the pews,” said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, who co-wrote the report with Charissa Mikoski, an assistant research professor.

It relies on surveys of 15,278 congregations conducted in early 2020. Responses were given by congregation leaders on behalf of their assemblies. According to the report, 23% of congregation leaders identified their congregation as politically active, but only 40% engaged in what the report calls “overtly political activities” over 12 months, mostly infrequently.

Take a look at how politically flaccid congregations have become:

As the 2020 election approached, just 15% organized voter registration - during an election year. 16% discussed politics. Well, if you’re not going to converse about life and death matters in your church, where can you? Only 7% invited candidates to address the congregation.

This is malpractice. Forget partisanship. All congregations need to do is take a stand on the importance of taking a stand! And, according to this survey, most are not even doing that. They are avoiding politics altogether.

I understand completely the predicament congregations and clergy face. I have written about it frequently. But voting is a form of prayer. It is the essence of what makes us religious.

I wrote just before Election Day:

The ballot box is our Kotel, a note inserted into its crevice, a dispatch from the front, an epistle from the heart, containing my deepest response to the Cry of our times, a Cry that demands action - action that we can all take, that all Americans must take. The fate of the nation will be determined in parking garages and school gyms and libraries, by long lines of voters waiting 3,5,8 hours or more to do something so simple, yet so earthshaking. It's all worthy of a blessing. At times like these, it's important, for Jews and others, to remember that voting is a prime religious value, expressing our deep belief in the power that we possess to change the world.

My problem is that if religious communities are not going to fight for justice in our society, if we are not going to pressure leaders to act truthfully, if we are not going to help bend that arc, who will?

Here's a quote from Heschel's "Religion and Race" speech from 1963, where he refers to those who felt MLK overstepped his pastoral role by delving into real-world issues:

In condemning the clergymen who joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in protesting against local statutes and practices which denied constitutional liberties to groups of citizens on account of race, a white preacher declared: “The job of the minister is to lead the souls of men to God, not to bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems.”

In contrast to this definition, the prophets passionately proclaim that God himself is concerned with “the transitory social problems,” with the blights of society, with the affairs of the market place.

God is concerned about all these things, but congregations should satisfy themselves with Bingo and cocktail parties?

One wonders whether a more active and courageous religious community might have prevented America from falling into the moral abyss that we are now in. I often ask that question of evangelicals when they endorse candidates whose moral standards are the polar opposite of the God they worship. But progressive congregations are equally culpable, prizing membership over morals, fundraising over freedom, and consensus over commitment. Just don’t make waves.

And that passivity, that refusal to fight for what’s right, only leads to my third concern this week:

3) Obeying in Advance:

Martin Luther King and his followers were particularly inspired by Heschel's seminal work, "The Prophets," in which he describes the prophetic mindset - an approach later reflected in the personas of MLK and Heschel themselves, as they fought injustice in American and unjust wars abroad.

Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people. The Mesopotamian, for example, felt convinced that authorities were always right: "The command of the palace, like the command of Anu, cannot be altered. The king's word is right; his utterance, like that of a god, cannot be changed!" The prophets repudiated the work as well as the power of man as an object of supreme adoration. They denounced "arrogant boasting" and "haughty pride" (Isa. 10:12), the kings who ruled the nations in anger, the oppressors (Isa. 14:4-6), the destroyers of nations, who went forth to inflict waste, ruin, and death (Jer. 4:7), the "guilty men, whose own might is their god" (Habakuk. 1: 11). (Italics mine)

Heschel could well have been talking about the owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, who refused to endorse a candidate before the recent election. Fearing repercussions from Trump, they obeyed in advance.

Watch Timothy Snyder’s brief discussion of “Obeying in Advance” from his book, On Tyranny.

Snyder’s first principle of fighting tyranny:

Snyder suggests that when we bend to tyranny, we alter the sense of what is normal. But in refusing to give in to the “new normal,” we help to preserve red lines of moral clarity.

When we go along with one thing, when we normalize what had been heretofore unthinkable, we become accomplices to the crossing of other moral lines that will invariably be traversed. We give permission not only to the despot, but to despotism itself. By shrugging off Trump’s racism, misogyny, homophobia and hate, we help normalize everyone’s. In accepting his lies and harshness of language, we are normalizing all lies, swears and slander. And when truth is gone, so are the foundations of democracy.

We’ve seen from this recent election that a large portion of the population came to believe blatant untruths, about the economy, the candidates, the prior election, even the treatment of dogs and cats in Springfield.

And so, the arc of the moral universe may have inched in a positive direction this week in a godforsaken region of the world, but for that bit of progress to matter, we’ve got some work to do here at home.

As Heschel and King declared, God will help us, but only if we join hands with good people everywhere and reject despair and complacency wherever it is found.