Sheryl and I were finally in line to check our baggage for our trip to Santa Fe. We were going to visit friends and hopefully find our “forever” home where we could retire.
New Mexico is a land of many peoples, cultures, and histories and is politically aligned with our values. We had become tired of being surrounded by only other White people, many of whom, while claiming to be Christian, voted for the man who would be king–and not a benevolent one.
I passed through security first and couldn’t understand why Sheryl took so long. She was easy to spot because, after the election, she always wore her clerical collar and a subversive t-shirt in public.
The most recent shirt displayed an American flag with the words “We ARE the enemies within” written on it. I wondered if that had triggered a more rigorous search.
When Sheryl finally arrived, she told me she had forgotten that she had a box cutter in her boarding baggage. This is obviously a big “no-no,” even when wearing a clerical collar.
Our ministry is installing hearing loops in buildings so that those with hearing loss can hear more clearly.Thus, we are inundated with cardboard boxes that need to be cut open for the equipment we need for our work.
Caught off guard, Sheryl, with her clerical collar on, blurted out, “I need it for my work.” When she told me that, I couldn’t stop laughing. When I told friends the story, one said we should call her “Reverend H. Slasher,” with the “H” standing in for “Hannibal Lecter.”
After reviewing the history of Christianity, I knew its violent history. Those who were called “heretics” were imprisoned and often tortured to death. In the fifteenth century, Joan of Arc was burned to death. One of her “crimes” was wearing what authorities called “men’s garments” after leading her army to victory.
The namesake of my chosen legal name, “Mary Dyer,” became a Quaker in England after she and her husband encountered William Penn and his firmly held pacifist beliefs. They were also drawn to his belief that inner light came to each person directly, not mediated by any other person or authority.
Dyer preached this belief to Native Americans and runaway enslaved people when they moved to the colony of Rhode Island when her husband became attorney general. She often went to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to spread this message.
In 1659, Dyer and two other Quakers were sentenced to death in Boston Commons. Two young men were hanged in front of her, but her husband and children begged for her life.
She received a reprieve on the condition she never return to Boston. God had other plans, and when she returned the following year, they finally executed her.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran clergyman, opposed Hitler’s Third Reich in 1933. Bonhoeffer founded an underground seminary where he taught passive ways of protest. The regime funded the Lutheran Church of Germany, so any pastor who wanted to keep his job dared not preach against the Reich, even as its atrocities escalated.
Death tolls from concentration camps kept rising and, by the end of the world, was around 13,000,000. In addition to Jews, victims also included Romany, Poles, and gay and disabled people, just to name a few.
When Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnsnyi, approached him about assisting in the assassination of Hitler to stop the violence, he ultimately agreed. Bonhoeffer termed this “redemptive violence,” a phrase I had never heard before.
On April 6, 1945, just weeks before the Allies defeated Germany, Bonhoeffer was hanged.
All this begs the question for followers of Jesus: As the current regime, whose strategy contains glimpses of Hilter’s, continues to remove freedoms, attack the poor, disabled and the LGBTQ community, as it guts Social Security, Medicare and non-profit agencies, how do we resist? However we answer that question, communally or personally, one thing is clear: There is no place for silence, apathy, or inaction. The life of our democracy is at stake.
Oh, and we did buy a new box cutter, but Sheryl promised to always remember to put it in checked luggage!
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advocate and educator for those experiencing hearing loss.
