Reading: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, by Wendell Berry
What I didn’t tell you, is that she shared this with me because she was surprised, and sad, that she didn’t also get a call from us. Not because she thought we’d have a particular position, but because she thought we would be there for them in their grief and fear.
Your community always has a moral compass, she said, sadly.
I did eventually email her – it’s how we ended up sitting down, but it took long enough that it left questions, and feeling alone in loss.
There are a lot of reasons why we as an institution didn’t reach out sooner, some we shared in our public letter – like, we were unsure how to respond, and also we failed to fully understand the impact of an attack on Israel on American Jews.
But for me, personally. There is another reason I didn’t reach out sooner. Which is, that I was really busy.
I was caught up in my own world, my own troubles – we had to close our building that week due to construction, and we were hosting a training with people from across the country; and at home, my partner was out of town, and it was my daughter’s 18th birthday, and my son broke his finger, and then my father-in-law broke his rib…I was really, really busy.
I did not say any of this to Rabbi Finestone that day – or, include it in our public letter. Because really, it doesn’t matter. The failure to call was still a failure to call, and there’s no excuse that makes that feel better.
But I’m sharing it here – not to spread my regret around, but because it is such a perfect example of life today. Whatever our intent, or our values, we are too often too busy, too consumed by our own lives. The urgency of our daily lives means we don’t call. Let alone march, or organize action for meaningful change. I mean, who even has time to fight fascism?
After all, we are taught that the good life means focusing on our own good lives, leaving little margin for things beyond our immediate sphere. We learn to strive for our children to be happy, for our grandchildren to have a better life than we had – to have more financial security, more personal satisfaction. And to call that good – enough. We learn to be good consumers, clear about our personal preferences, and experts at acquiring the stuff that satisfies these preferences.
The values of the market, reinforced by the American Dream and the (often, but not always) invisible forces of white supremacy, patriarchy, and compulsory heterosexuality conspire to keep us caught in a value-system centered on competition, extraction, and wealth accumulation. Depending on our race, our mental and physical health, our sexual orientation, our gender and a host of other factors we may be more or less constrained in this system….but we are all caught.
Even if we actively despise all of these values, we still need to worry about our own retirement, and the market, and the value of our homes, even if we find the whole system abhorrent – we have to think about our own security. Or at least, if we’re lucky, we get to think about our own security – our retirement, and our homes.
We are caught in a systemic selfishness, a structural self-interest that often inhibits even the most developed moral compass from meaningful action.
Unitarian ethicist James Luther Adams specifically identified the ways that people of a liberal faith can get caught in this reality. You may remember JLA as the one who traveled to Germany and returned with a fervor for articulating a liberalism that would stop fascism if it came to the United States.
To begin, he described the historical vulnerabilities of liberalism, specifically what he calls its idolatry of individualism.
Ironically, the liberal value of the individual arose in response to the threat of authoritarianism, and the fear of limits on personal freedom and autonomy. The old idea of live, and let live; of respecting people’s choices, even if they are not ones you would make yourself – these are positive, and important values of our liberal faith.
It is only when individualism is taken as the ultimate good – or as JLA describes, “when a social movement adopts as the center for loyalty … an inflated, misplaced abstraction made into an absolute” that it fosters the fascism it was originally intended to prevent.
This perverted understanding of liberal faith fails to pair individualism with community, where protecting the vulnerable is our ultimate shared end.
Without community, liberalism, JLA says, confuses good theology with an individual’s “good life,” and offers a kind of self-satisfied moralism of ethical precepts that relies on “’progress’ ideology.” This form of liberal faith “misses the depth dimension, and becomes impotent in dealing with the ultimate issues of life.” (All of these quotes are from JLA’s essay, “Guiding Principles for a Free Faith,” which is published in On Being Human Religiously.)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian most known for his resistance to the Nazis, identified those who idolize individualism as one of the two types of groups who passively ensured the success of the Nazis.
“Such people,” he wrote, “neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But in voluntarily renouncing public life, these people know exactly how to observe the permitted boundaries that shield them from conflict. They must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them.” (from Ethics, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer; also, see this blog post on Bonhoeffer)
Besides these privileged individualists, Bonhoeffer identifies centrists as the other key passive collaborators in the Nazi’s rise. “With the best intentions,” he writes, “they believe that, with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joints. They want to be fair to both sides, and so they are crushed between the colliding forces. Bitterly disappointed that the world is so unreasonable, they [too] withdraw” just like the first group, and become focused on their own individual goodness. (also from Ethics)
Especially for those of us who do spend a good deal of time caring for others, caring about systemic injustice, and trying to be for a goodness beyond our own individual lives – it can be pretty uncomfortable to name the ways we are caught in a structure that inhibits our resistance.
It can be uncomfortable, but I hope it can also be helpful. In naming this as a systemic issue, we can hopefully avoid the guilt that can paralyze us when we think we are the problem, or when we believe we are personally failing. We can instead remember that we are all caught in this structure that is built to make opposition – let alone the creation of sustainable alternatives – fail.
The structure is what’s failing. We are all just doing the best we can.
Starting from this assumption – that we are all doing the best we can in a broken system encourages in us a cooperative generosity, from which we can imagine not just resisting, but actively practicing an alternative vision for life, together.
Something, like the vision Wendell Berry offers in his Manifesto.
Wendell Berry wrote this poem – and his other Mad Farmer poems – 50 years ago, even though it feels so current. Except for maybe his binary wonderings about men and women and power. The line “when they want you to buy something, they will call you” seems like a direct reference to what author Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism.
Berry – now age 89 – has spent his life critiquing both liberal and conservative versions of individualism, and the base assumption that “if you want it, you should have it.” More than just critique, Berry’s life reminds us that we can, with a sustained commitment to the collective good, reclaim our capacity to resist, and rebuild; we can resist the forces that keep us caught, and become effective actors in the fight against fascism.
In that spirit, I once again will end my sermon with a list of practices – this week oriented not towards church – although your church can and should help you with these – but more ways for your own life to be a protest. Ordered in what I think will be increasingly uncomfortable challenges.
1. Re-define what you mean by “success.” A few weeks ago, Sean preached a sermon praising failure, saying, “We should fail at perfection if it means we strive for radical acceptance; we should fail at independence if it means we strive for interdependence; we should fail at efficiency if it means we strive for sustainability; and we should fail at individual material wealth if it means we strive for collective prosperity.” Which is all another way of saying, we need to re-define success itself.
To re-imagine our lives based in a success that is collective, sustainable, connected, and caring requires a re-imagining of what achievements we prize, what judgments from others we can endure, and when we tell ourselves we are doing a good job. Because it’s the internal messages that can really get to us, so we’ve got to re-program ourselves, tell ourselves new stories about what matters, and the vision we are working towards – and ps, you probably can’t find it on Pinterest.
2. Embrace a Long View of Time. As Americans, we tend to have a very short memory, and a very limited concept of time, especially given today’s media cycle.
But it is helpful to recognize the longer arc at work in today’s reality. The seemingly abrupt emergence of fascist tactics and ideologies in recent years is actually the outcome of decades-long reactions to the civil rights movement, and second wave feminism. As Paul Mason writes, “fascism results when the fear of freedom is triggered by a glimpse of freedom.” (Here’s a summary of Mason’s book, How to Stop Fasicsm but also check out the book itself!)
A long view of time reminds us of the resistance movements that have been, and still are a part of human reality – that we need not invent resistance ourselves.
A long view of time also requires the discipline to break free from the cycle of crisis response, and instead invest in systems that could prevent the emergencies in the first place. For example, while we had an incredible response to last winter’s sudden arrival of immigrants seeking shelter in Fort Collins, since then it has been difficult to prioritize the resources to create the systems to support the ongoing arrival of immigrants to our community. Urgent calls and emergencies capture our attention, but it’s the ongoing, non-emergency systems-building work that would create a more durable solution, regardless of what happens in the next election cycle.
Just as importantly, a longer view of time reminds us that this work will last our whole lives. Which means we can and must be sustainable in our practice, taking regular time for rest, renewal, and reflection. As the Oakland-based justice group the Movement Generation reminds us, if it’s not soulful, it’s not strategic, emphasizing the need for the work of resistance itself to be so irresistible, it can hold us through the best, and the hardest times.
- 3. Blame the billionaires. Despite what social media and journalists keep telling us, the source of fascism is not the crowd gathering at Trump rallies, and it’s not even the brother-in-law you’ll be sitting down to dinner with on Thursday – or not, because last year got too heated. To find the real problem, follow the money.
The individuals and multinational corporations that disproportionately hold the wealth in our country and who could on their own address many of the collective problems we face, and could, if they wanted, stop the rise of fascism. But they don’t want. Fascism brings with it an underfunded IRS, insufficiently progressive tax policies, and a lack of environmental or safety regulations.
As Wendell Berry observes, both liberals and conservatives have been so preoccupied by our respective focus on securing individual freedoms, we have “refused to look straight at the dangers and the failures of government-by-corporations.” We must re-focus our attention on these hoarders of wealth, and resist the outrage machine of social media that only feeds the profits of tech giants and media conglomerates.
4. Expand the Idea of Family. The nuclear family unit is often lifted up as the source of social stability, which is what makes it such a critical site for resistance and re-envisioning. Specifically, we need to go back to Hillary Clinton’s “Village” idea, but take it more literally than she probably meant it. Raising kids today is not a job for just two adults, not anymore, maybe not ever. We need more hands on deck. We need trusted adults who have the margin in their lives to build real and invested relationships with children who are not their own, and with their parents – to the point of calling each other family. (I really like this article talking about this idea.)
We also need to be more open to and publicly supportive of alternative family structures that are more common in the queer community, and in Gen Z: multi-adult and mulit-generational households, long term co-housing, and poly relationships to name a few – recognizing that any effort that sanctifies a wider circle of concern is a good thing.
Finally, let’s elevate friendships to the same social status as our marriages. We have so many social rituals and celebrations of marriage, yet so few affirmations of our friends, even though our friends are vital to our survival. Imagine if it was normal for friends to throw themselves anniversary parties, or wear jewelry symbolizing their mutual commitment.
5. Let go of your money (on purpose!). To give away our money, especially in ways that reach a good beyond our own lives or lifetimes is a powerful act in resisting capitalism, which tells us once the money is yours – it’s always yours, or your children’s, regardless of whose sacrifices helped make that money possible.
To give away your money is to recognize instead our interdependence, and the systems we are all a part of that made that money possible.
At the micro level, especially within communities of color, younger generations are already practicing this through crowd funding after a lay off, or for medical crises, or for a first home purchase. It’s a beautiful, countercultural practice, and it is insufficient for the change we need.
For that, we must reconsider generational giving, and challenge the assumption that our descendents are automatically the primary recipients of our estate. Intead we can think about using our wealth as a key tool of inter-generational justice, including addressing the longstanding question of reparations (or this one if you can’t read the Atlantic).
Where to give your money if you don’t give it to your children is a big question – and a whole other sermon – but the book and the website Decolonizing Wealth is one place to start if you are curious about this powerful form of resistance.
You may have realized the 5 together give us the useful acronym REBEL –
- Re-define success
- Embrace a long view of time,
- Blame the billionaires
- Expand your idea of family, and
- Let go of your money on purpose
Certainly this is not an exhaustive list – I hope you’ll come up with your own things for our shared manifesto, our vision for a radical resistance and re-imaging. And then I also hope you’ll consider which of these you will experiment with – and what you are willing to sacrifice.
In his final analysis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer realized the Nazis could not be stopped, because people weren’t willing to sacrifice – not enough. They wanted first some reassurance of their own continued safety, and the safety of their children before they would act. They didn’t want to look like “radicals” – they wanted to be reasonable.
To practice resurrection – as Wendell Berry says – is to recognize that the structures of our lives must be undone, and let go. That life has become too small, too individualized, too caught. And, it is to instead be a part of an expansive new way of life, a movement fighting for the birth of Beloved Community, abundant life, for all.
Another Possibility 