#OWS and the importance of the work of worship

Like many words in any language, the word “occupation” has multiple meanings. The English word “occupation” like the word “occupy” derives from the Latin work occupare which means employ, seize and take. When we think about occupation, we think about one’s vocation, the way one earns a living. In a more negative sense of the word, we think about invasion, conquest and control of territory by a foreign force. And when we think of occupation as holding or possessing a place, we understand that the place we occupy also occupies us.

So, to occupy a place requires time and effort. It is a vocation. It is a job. If the Occupy Movement is to go forward and achieve its objectives, it will require vision, organization, commitment love and endurance for the long run. It will require spiritual strength and space to continue when cold winds blow, when icy rain and freezing snow falls. Winter cares nothing about our political economy, and winter is coming. Thus, to sustain the movement, faith communities ought to extend hospitality and commensality to people who are working for social and economic justice both in the United States and in the world. For the movement to make a measurable difference in the lives of people, it must necessarily become political.

At the beginning of the 20^th century Mohandas K. Gandhi started the Satyagraha Movement in South Africa. Indians faced a number of laws that violated their human dignity. One proposed ordinance known as “The Black Act” required Indians in the Transvaal to register and to carry a certificate. If they did not, they could be imprisoned or deported. Under the leadership of Gandhi and others, the Indian community decided to disobey the law. They understood that non-cooperation was a responsibility. It was a duty, a pledge, a matter of honor and of person dignity.

Gandhi named this passive resistance Satyagraha – truth force or soul force. It was the beginning of a long life dedicated to the use of Satyagraha to bring about the end of apartheid injustice in South Africa and of colonial domination in India. Gandhi understood the necessity for personal spiritual purification through fasting. He knew that his commitment would require time in jail. He knew he would have to set an example for the people who looked to him for leadership. Work for social justice became his vocation, his occupation, his life.

Fast forward to the middle of the 20^th century when a young, gifted and black preacher in Montgomery, Alabama, minding his own business, writing his PhD dissertation is drafted into service to become the spokes person for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a year-long effort to end racial segregation of public transportation. This young preacher – Martin Luther King, Jr. – was deeply influenced by the pacifistic strain of the Baptist tradition, and he was deeply influenced by the truth force, the soul force of Gandhi.

In Montgomery, people walked through winter, spring, summer and fall. They also participated in mass meetings that were in essence worship services that nourished their spirit and strengthened their commitment to endure what would be necessary to endure to win the victory. There was also intense work of strategy going on behind the scenes. The end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott was only the beginning of a movement that would last another ten years, disseminate its spirit to other marginalized groups in the society, including women and LGBTQIA* community. It would lock arms with the anit-war movement.

Both Gandhi and King understood the importance of passive resistance, nonviolent demonstrations, marches and boycotts to engage in a kind of public discourse in the streets. These techniques are a way to expose injustice. Human beings willing to put their bodies on the line, to go to jail if need be and to suffer physical abuse become a lens that helps an indifferent world see how injustice crushes human dignity, eats away human decency and leaves all of humankind trapped in confusion and deception.

Both Gandhi and King embraced the idea of redemptive suffering, that their own suffering would somehow prick the conscience of the oppressors and cause them to rethink their actions. As a womanist scholar, I reject the idea of redemptive suffering. Suffering is immoral. Morality requires that we act to end suffering. My compassion for humanity, nature and creation is a passion that suffers with the sufferer. I therefore work to end their suffering out of a virtue of selfishness that wants to end my own discomfort. Further, like the realism and radical humanism of Malcolm X, I do not expect that everyone shares this same sensitivity. I do not expect people who profit from the status quo to suddenly be moved to change by the sight of anyone’s suffering. Power is only moved by power.

History is too full of examples where those in power create a moral universe that justifies their own privilege and causes those who are outside of that privilege to either blame themselves for their disadvantaged reality or to think that a life of joyless drudgery is the meaning of life and a measure of their own personal righteousness. Religion is often complicit in this when it preaches a theology that says that life on earth is suffering and we will only find peace and rest when we die and go to heaven. This is spiritual abuse and moral malpractice.

Rather, faith communities ought to work toward the end of suffering on this earth not through our own suffering with the Other but rather through an ethics of hospitality and of commensality. Hospitality is the fearless welcome of the Other. We open our doors and share sheltering space with the stranger. Commensality happens when we share a meal. We sit at a common table and share the sustenance and the joy of life. When winter comes, faith communities could open their doors to the Occupiers and allow their general assemblies and teach-ins to take place in sacred space. Churches, Muslim Community Centers, Synagogues, and other places of worship can not only provide space for spiritual nourishment, but also a meal for the body. The common table could be a place where Occupiers could speak with people who may or may not agree with their analysis of what is wrong in our national and global society. It could be common ground where those in the 99 per cent could reason together with those in the 1 per cent.

Beyond the work of occupation, hospitality and commensality, there ought to be a political dimension to #OWS. Some commentators have praised #OWS for its organic character, for its strategy of no identifiable leaders, for its unwillingness to issue a top-down list of demands, and for its decision-making through consensus building. The still nascent movement has been praised for calling attention to the problem of income inequality in the United States. It has spread around the globe because income inequality is a global problem although it is worse in the United States than in most industrialized nations in the West. The Occupy Movement has shifted the public discourse from federal budget deficits to income inequality. However, this is not enough. The Occupy Movement ought to use its power to elect progressive legislatures–local, state and national– that will pass laws that address their concerns.

Wisconsin and Ohio are models of this. After an occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol in the winter of 2011 over the issue of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions, voters forced recall elections for several state senators. They fell one vote short of changing the political majority in the state senate from Republicans who supported the measure to Democrats who did not. In Ohio, people forced a ballot initiative to undo a similar law. Without the exercise of political power by the 99 per cent of the nation, public policy will continue to work to advantage of the 1 per cent.

The Occupy Movement ought to learn from its progenitor movements – civil rights and anti-war. Without the ability to demonstrate power at the ballot box, nothing much will change for the majority of the people. The civil rights and anti-war movements of the late sixties did not elect a president. Richard Nixon garnered the votes of the so called “silent majority’ to win election in both 1968 and in 1972. In 2002, a world-wide peace movement staged the largest single-day protest against a war before the war started in the history of humankind. George W. Bush with the authorization of the United States Congress started the war in Iraq in the face of this opposition. He was re-elected in 2004, and the only elected official that I know about to pay a price for the vote to authorize the war was Hillary Clinton.

In contrast, The TEA Party exercised political discipline and elected members to the House of Representatives who represented their interests to, in my opinion, the detriment of the country as a whole.

The Occupy Movement has the potential to change the American political landscape to the benefit of the 99 per cent rather than for only the 1 percent. But, such will require more than a willingness to sleep in the cold and the snow. It will require the vocation, the job, the occupation of solid political work and an occupation of worship space to have the spiritual wherewithal to continue the struggle for the long time that it will take the make the changes the Occupiers want to see.**

*LGBTQIA is short for Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Intersexual, Asexual and Allies.

**I am grateful to Rev. Kurt Walker, pastor of Faith United Church of Christ in Indianapolis, IN for the sign that inspired this essay.