Should Progressive Organizers Lean More on the Church?

0:06Hey, Jay. Hey, how's it going? I'm good. How are you? Good. So you've written a couple pieces lately about the state of political protest and dissent. And I'm curious what, in your opinion, is the most recent example of a successful, effective, or sustaining political protest in the United States. Yeah, I guess I could think of two examples, one on the left and one on the right. The first on the right would be the anti-abortion movement, right, which started small and almost like obscure in terms of small Catholic organizers, mostly who mostly laughed at and thought of as very marginal and then grew and, you know, sort of won a, they won a large Supreme Court decision that they would always wanted recently.

0:51The second is the gay marriage movement, right, which became sort of took a synthesis of a lot of the gay rights movements that had been existing before and then put it under one political goal, right, and then normalized everything through activism, advocacy, influencing politicians. And then obviously now we have gay marriage, you know, every state in the country. Why those two examples? I mean, is it because it's a clear example of, you know, there's something that starts on the ground and then there is a policy change that happens through, you know, legal and political machinery? Like, is that kind of how we're defining effective here?

1:30Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that if you look at something like Black Lives Matter, which started, I guess if you trace it all the way back, it starts with, you know, before Mike Brown and then goes all the way to 2020 with George Floyd. But if you look at what happened after 2020, which was just a lot of, I guess, chaotic organizing and big, big marches and a lot of people in the streets. Like, I think that what we can say about a lot of modern protests right now is that we have the ability to use social media and the internet to get a lot of people out, a lot of people interested to raise like awareness, as people say.

2:09But what we don't know always what all that awareness does. And I think that one of the things that has happened since the internet has become the main vehicle of social change, that if you look around the world, you look at something like Arab Spring, or you look at certain revolts in Brazil around the world, maybe even in Hong Kong, that you see that things are very short-lived, they flare up very, very intensely, and then they kind of go away. And I guess that problem, which is something that But even at the beginning, I was somewhat resistant to really declare that because it seems almost like too dismissive and also a bit short-sighted, right?

2:49Like we don't really know what the effects of all this stuff are until years out. So it's hard to judge a movement like that. But in terms of actually getting some sort of substantive change in the country, like, you know, like what were the big wins from 2020 and George Floyd, right? other than having a lot of banks sort of make statements on Instagram or having some hiring practices changed. And I think that that problem is something that I've just been thinking about a lot recently. That's Jay Caspian King, a staff writer at The New Yorker, whose new column series explores the role of the church in politics and dissent.

3:26In response to the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent on January 9th, Anti-ice protests and organizing have broken out across the country, with the highest concentration in Minneapolis, the site of the fatal shooting, as protesters demand that ICE agents leave the city. Over the weekend, a group of anti-ice protesters interrupted a church service in the city of St. Paul, demanding accountability from one of the pastors, who allegedly also serves as an ICE field director. This conflict raises questions about the relationship between the church and progressive social causes, and about what realistic and effective demands or collaboration can actually look like.

4:04I wanted to talk with Jay about what's happening in Minneapolis, what this latest wave of protests reveals about the possibilities and limits of political dissent today, what history can tell us about the role of religious institutions in protest movements, and whether successful church-driven movements for social change, like the civil rights movement, are still possible in our current political and societal landscape. This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

4:38First, I want to talk about, you know, the very modern protests that's happening on the ground right now in Minneapolis, which are these anti-ICE protests. So what can you tell us about this protest? Like, what exactly is happening in Minneapolis, and what have you been seeing? I know that you're not in Minneapolis, but you've been following this story really closely. So I guess what have you been kind of paying attention to there? It's interesting because the shape that it's taken is a little bit different than in 2020, right? There's a, I think there's a tendency or at least an understandable desire to compare the two because they both happen in the same place, basically.

5:14I mean, Renee Good and George Floyd are killed less than a mile away from each other. And so you just think, well, these are sort of the same people there. It's the same mayor, Jacob Frey, right? And so a lot of it looks the same. But so far, it seems like a lot of the resistance to ICE and a lot of the protests, or it's not even really protests that's been happening, has been happening much more on a localized level. It's neighborhood-based. It's organized through messaging apps like Signal, right? It's not somebody tweeting out or putting on Instagram, here's a big march and everybody should come, right?

5:47It's more like people in a neighborhood putting together some group of people who are going to show up and blow whistles and alert people and to try and get in the way of ICE as much as possible or to at least show up and what they believe would be standing up for their neighbors, that type of rhetoric. I think that's what is the organizing principle right now. Whereas in 2020, it was mostly like, let's be unified and let's all show up against police violence, right? Or let's show up against white supremacy. I think that's very different. I think the localized nature of it both makes it smaller in scale, but I think it might also make it more durable because it's not just a whole bunch of people showing up, right?

6:34That don't know each other. It's people who can draw upon this idea that this is their neighborhood, this is their place, and they don't want federal agents in there. So you think the community aspect of it and the fact that it's kind of this more narrow, localized thing might actually give it more longevity, even though it's something that, I mean, I guess you could see a version of it happening in communities around the country since obviously ICE is going into a lot of neighborhoods in different states. Yeah, and it allows everybody to participate, right? It doesn't mean that you have to be a certain race or a certain identity to participate.

7:07You just have to live in the neighborhood and you have to say that you care about your neighbors and then you're invested in it. And I also just think the fact that almost everybody is being touched by this right now, right? Even if you are not the person who is being dragged out of their house, you're somebody who, if you live in that neighborhood, you've seen it, or you have a neighbor who saw it, right? Or you see the trucks going around, you see the cars going out with agents in them. And that puts a real fear in people and they feel very invested in it as a result, right? It's not, a lot of it is just out of a sense of self-preservation.

7:39It's not all just altruistic. It's scary to see federal agents come in wearing masks and running around. And I think that that has made people on a local level much more invested than they might have been even in 2020 when there is like, well, every weekend, this is what we're going to do. We're going to show up to the next march in this, you know, in the same type of plaza and we're going to, you know, get tear gassed or we're going to show down with the police. But we're not quite sure why. Here, the objective is very clear. It's like we don't want our neighbors taken away. so we're going to do what we can to prevent that from happening, that's just much more of a clear way of thinking about things, or at least a clear goal, regardless of what you think about that goal or not, right?

8:21Like, it's just clear and people can identify with it easier. Well, I do want to ask about, like, one form of protest that we did see over the weekend, which is there were these anti-ICE protesters who interrupted a church service in St. Paul where an ICE field director is apparently a pastor. and they were yelling ICE out, which is, you know, kind of the call that a lot of protesters, not just in Minneapolis, but in, you know, other cities have been calling out. And they were also yelling Renee Good's name. And they had a confrontation with the pastor there who was not the pastor who was allegedly the ICE director.

8:56This is a different pastor before they eventually vacated the church. So the DOJ is now investigating this protest as a potential violation of the FACE Act of 1994, which made it a crime to intimidate or interfere with any person seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. I want to talk more about, like, the intersection of the church and progressive social movements, or perhaps the lack thereof, in a bit. But first, I'm curious about your reaction to this news, what you think of this demonstration that happened at this church, and how it kind of overlaps with what you've been writing and thinking about lately.

9:32It's far more in the vein of 2020. right, where you had a lot of disruptions. Like, you know, I remember Black Brunch was one that got a lot of attention where people would walk into like a brunch place that served mimosas or something that was stereotypically like white suburban and would start yelling about police violence and white supremacy. That type of disruption tactic is much more from the 2020 era. And I don't think it's particularly effective anymore. And I think that it probably, like, I don't think that any of these people should be brought up on federal charges, right, for storming into a church.

10:08And yet at the same time, I guess just, you know, if you want my opinion on it, I just think it's very counterproductive to go to provide that image of you disrupting a church service. And I guess overall, I've been thinking a lot about the way in which progressive movement or left movements or even Democrat sort of center left movements interact with the church in general. And I guess that if you look back at the history of activism in America, there is always a strong tie in with the church for some of these successful movements, that it's almost impossible to do it without some religious aspect.

10:43And that's not because God is smiling down on your cause. It's because activist movements need infrastructure. And what my friend Wayne Sheng, who is an animal rights activist, called scaffolding, It needs structure to exist, and the church can provide that structure. Now, an example of this is that in 2016 or 2017, when Philando Castile was shot in Minneapolis, I went there and I talked to some of the organizers there. I followed them around, the activists, and all their meetings, all their planning meetings were held in churches. The church actually provided the physical building for these activists to organize and to meet and to get food and everything like that.

11:24And so I'm not sure if it's possible for these types of political movements, these political activist movements, these dissent movements, whatever you want to call them, to have much sustainability without some buy-in from the church. Now, do I think that the fact that these guys went in and they disrupted this one church in Minneapolis means that the church will revolt and not want to work with this cause? No, I don't think that.

11:53Let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, I want to talk more about protest movements and what kind of role the church should play in them. This is The Political Scene from The New Yorker.

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12:48So let's take a step back and talk about the U.S.'s broader relationship to protesting and movements for social and political change, specifically as it relates to your latest piece, Can American Churches Lead a Protest Movement Under Trump? Which I believe is part of a series that you were working on about the place of the church in modern politics, right? Right. So you opened this latest piece by focusing on the sanctuary movement, which began in the early 80s. Can you tell us a little bit more about that movement for people who aren't familiar with the history? And I guess I'm wondering how it served as the foundation for your new column, like what made you interested in returning to it?

13:23Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, in the early 80s, because of what was happening in both El Salvador and Guatemala, which is a U.S.-sponsored war, and that the U.S. did not recognize refugee status from those two countries. and that what you had was you had a lot of displaced people who were coming over and being tracked by INS or attempted to be deported. And that there was a man down in the Southwest who was working with a church. His name was Jim Corbett. He was like this very eccentric guy, philosopher, goat herd type of guy. And he began trying to conceive with some churches in Berkeley, California and the church, his local church, of a way in which their churches could be used as a way to house some of these people.

14:14And, you know, there are different variations of it. Like, some of them were like, okay, the church is going to be a new underground railroad, and we're going to take some of these people who are displaced, and we're going to help them get to Canada, right? And then some of the churches say, well, we're just going to actually physically house these people here, right? And there was this broad idea of sanctuary, which is that if somebody is in great peril, that the church has a moral responsibility to help them. And because of the way in which the clergy was organized at the time, and that there was a lot of progressive churches, this spread very quickly.

14:45It had different iterations. It evolved into what became the Sanctuary City Movement, which is obviously huge in the news. I mean, that is why Minneapolis in some ways is being targeted and other cities in California, because of this idea of the Sanctuary city. And I found it really interesting because I felt like the last time that there was a big push on immigration, that the vanguard of that movement was the church, right? It was these pastors. It was people holding press conferences in front of churches and saying, we are going to take these people and the government can, you know, you can like it or not like it, but we're still going to do it because it's our moral responsibility.

15:26And I guess I found that to be both interesting from a strategy standpoint of somebody who thinks a lot about dissent, but also, you know, I think that it is a powerful moral message that was delivered. And I think that the reason why it was powerful was because it was delivered through the church. That makes sense. So there's a really interesting argument in your piece, which is, I'm just going to quote you. You say, I do not believe that there can be any abiding movement for social change in this country without leadership and support from the church. And this is a pretty bold statement, although it's also very much rooted in like historical examples.

16:02So I guess I'm wondering if you can just elaborate on this a little bit. Like in your view, what does an abiding social or political movement need that a church can uniquely provide? Well, it needs, first it needs a moral vision. It needs something like Jesus said, love thy neighbor, a type of message that people grew up understanding or at least hearing. One that people feel a great emotional outpouring about, whether positive or negative, you know, but some sort of moral message like that, that is ingrained in their upbringing, their childhood, and which is, they believe is part of the nation that they belong to.

16:41Right now, there's all sorts of problematic things about that that we don't have to get into. Right. Which is, you know, I'll just say I hear all of you, you know, right now. You know, I guess my immediate thought is just like, is there not a way for, you know, people who grew up in secular households to kind of have that same, a lot of those same like moral tenets kind of ingrained in them? Of course, yes, I think so. But I don't think that it will be as resonant with other people in a mostly Christian country or mostly, you know, a country where people are still, despite like declining numbers in church attendance, still feel some way about religion or idea that there is some sort of greater truth or a way to act that is important.

17:24And so I think that that's the number one, just sort of ideological reason. But the other reasons are just that churches provide a lot of infrastructure for protest movements and have in the past, right? For dissent, for any type of political movement, and that they have a certain hierarchy within them and they have people who are respected, pastors, priests, right? Bishops, whoever, that those people come with a certain moral authority, whether they should or not, who cares, right? they do. And that unless you activate that part of the country, or at least the main institution that people associate with adjudicating moral questions, which is religion, I think that any type of protest movement that would happen outside of that will feel like it is not quite as serious as one that involves the clergy, and it won't be as sustaining as a result of that.

18:18I mean, it's interesting. We began this conversation by talking about two examples of effective protest movements. And one of them was the anti-abortion movement, which obviously involved the church, you know, to a pretty extreme extent. And then the other one that you mentioned was the pro-gay marriage movement. And how much was the church involved with that? It was pretty involved, yeah. I mean, part of the buy-in for gay marriage was that you had to have ministers who were willing to do it, right? And so there was great outreach to the church. And there were clergy members who were very involved in that, right?

18:54Like, I think that is probably around the time when this habit of people wearing like clergy robes and stuff like that with rainbow flags and stuff on that, where pride became a way in which a lot of churches identified themselves. A lot of that came out of that organizing. I mean, the church was pretty involved in that. I don't think they would have succeeded if they didn't have clergy members who came out and said, we're willing to do this, right? And so, yeah, the church was pretty involved. I mean, going off of that example, I guess I wonder if you would argue that the church is even more crucial for progressive social movements just because there's a certain amount of, you know, this person who has grown up reading scripture that might imply the opposite of whatever that progressive social movement is arguing for kind of coming out on the other side.

19:40Like if there's something inherent to that dynamic that makes the voices of the church even more powerful than, say, you know, like the anti-abortion movement where it's like you would kind of assume that most people who grew up in an evangelical household are anti-abortion. Yeah, I mean, I guess there is a little bit of a counterintuitive power that comes in from that, right? Which is if the church, for example, like the Catholic Church and the new pope coming out in favor of treating immigrants humanely, for example, right? It's quite powerful because it goes against this narrative that we've developed over the past 25 to 50 years, which is that the church is always going to be associated with right wing causes.

20:19But I just think that the problem is that progressives and the left don't use the church in the same way that the right does, right? The right always uses the church. They ground every political movement that they have in the church, whether, you know, cynically or not. But it's always grounded in some sort of church. There's always some pastor saying something, right? And that they actually use their churches as the centers of organizing in the way that the left does not. So, yeah, when you say that you want to see the left use churches more, I guess, what does that mean? Like, you mentioned in your column, like, you know, that there's leadership and support from the church is like the phrase that you use.

20:54Are they the ones leading the charge or kind of like a supplementary aspect? Like, what is the, what's the vision? So I spoke to a pastor at one of the churches who was involved in the original sanctuary movement here in Berkeley, California. That's where I live. And she's a very thoughtful and, I thought, intelligent person. But one thing she said struck me, which was that she doesn't think that the church should lead in this stuff, that young people should lead, right? She's sort of echoing some of the sentiment from 2020, which is that young activists should lead in this church should be in a support role.

21:27It shouldn't always be just the Christian church speaking up and dominating all the voices, right? And drowning out all the other faith organizations or drowning out what young people wanted. I don't think that that's right. You know, I think that the church should speak up and I don't think it should worry about whether it becomes a dominant voice or not. I think that there are many churches in America, although the number is dwindling, that are interested in social movements, right, that do have a moral idea about what is happening, especially when it comes to something like immigrants, which has a real valence amongst especially Catholics.

22:02And I think that clergy members who feel that way or who believe that is part of their calling to have a certain political opinion and express it should express those opinions more loudly and that people on the left, whether organizers or media or whatever, should pay attention to that, right? That there is still a religious aspect to progressive movements and that it shouldn't just be ignored as being something that's of the past or just some like weird blip in a country that is all right-wing when it comes to religion, because I don't think that that's true. Yeah, I mean, what are the recent examples you've seen of the church kind of inserting itself in that way?

22:41I feel like I've been seeing some, like, just before this conversation, I was on Instagram, and I saw a post from Democracy Now! about the Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire, who appears in your column, who recently urged fellow clergy to finalize their wills and prepare for a new era of martyrdom. He said, now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable, which is a pretty powerful statement. Yes, absolutely. You know, I mean, think about the, I mean, I don't know if everyone here who is listening has seen that video of the bishop saying that, but, you know, it's incredibly powerful.

23:18I think it's moving to people. You know, the idea of being brave, the idea of sacrifice, the idea of personal sacrifice, right? Now, martyrdom, like, I don't know, like, you know, sometimes it's like, well. Yeah, like martyrdom. Yeah. Just like, it's intense, right? It's an intense thing to say. Yeah, the comments were all like, didn't know they went this hard. Like, you know. Right, right. And so I think that when you have that level of conviction and you can say that it comes out of a relationship of faith, right, a relationship that you have with God, then people respect it more. You know, I think that it's better than in terms of converting the public or convincing the public than somebody just saying, well, I believe this because of these moral ideas that I have, you know, that are born out of something that I can't tell you about, right?

24:05This is just how I feel. I feel like X, Y, and Z. I think that if you can connect it to a tradition and that you can present yourself as a person who has sacrificed in your own personal life to be a member of the clergy, that it has a lot of power to it. And I think that's why everyone was talking about that, what that bishop was saying, right? Or why that went so viral, I guess, is because he was a member of the clergy, right? If you or I said that, no one would, you know, people would just be like, calm down, right? But the fact that he said it, I think is quite different. And that's what I think if the left wants to harness that type of power or that type of moral clarity, that they should look towards the church and to people like that, right?

24:51Because they do exist. You know, as we have this conversation, it seems like sometimes it sounds as though you are suggesting that like you really only have that kind of moral clarity if you are a person of faith. And then sometimes it sounds like the argument is that it is easier for the other people around you, people who could be persuaded to believe that you have moral clarity and to kind of listen to what you're saying if you are a person of faith who is then proved that they have that moral clarity. I mean, would you think that both are true or is it more about like, you know, convincing the other side, which can, you know, be done most easily by being a religious person?