On nonviolent resistance to authoritarianism
On 13 November 2024, having had a full week to reflect on the US presidential election, I wrote the following on Facebook:
I will not be complicit, compliant, nor complacent with respect to the incoming Trump
Administration. Today, I began cutting down 22” by 27” USGS topographic maps of
places I’ve lived (and loved) in Montana and Arizona. I will be resizing them to write letters on the back side. But first, on the face side, where those lovely topographic lines and blue, green, and brown shadings are, I will be writing this message: “I am prepared to grieve my loss of access to natural lands and wild places, if — by this time next year — I am jailed by the Trump Administration for my religiously motivated, nonviolent acts of conscience and resistance.”
Those of you who subscribe to the Center for Action and Contemplation’s daily emails will have seen the reflection they offered on April 1, drawing on Diana Butler Bass’s Substack post of January 25, 2025.[1] Bass was reflecting on Luke 4:18-30, in which Jesus’s prophetic preaching in Nazareth enrages his hometown community. They sought to throw him off a cliff. “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (Luke 4:30). Frodo’s magic ring, as in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, usually comes to mind for me here; somehow Jesus can make himself invisible to move through the angry mob. But Bass suggests that there are those in the crowd who don’t go along with the mob’s murderous frenzy and, instead, quietly make way for Jesus, giving him a safe way to pass through to safety. At least until another day.
For Diana Butler Bass, the miracle that day in Nazareth was not merely that Jesus got away. For Bass, the miracle was this: “The bystanders find the courage to do something.” Yes, I think, that’s it. In the face of a violent frenzy, those committed to nonviolence would find some quiet, under-the-radar way of defusing the situation and protecting the innocent.
And yet that response, so perfect in the moment, leaves me feeling just a little bereft. Glad that Jesus was not murdered at my complicit, compliant, or complacent hand, but also feeling a little empty and deflated when all is said and done. Because here I still stand amid the bewildered crowd, confused about what just happened, while Jesus has gone off somewhere else.
As Christians, we follow Christ. As Franciscans, we follow Christ in the footsteps of Francis and Clare. So, I put Francis and Clare into this scene and imagine what they’d do. Francis? That one’s easy. I see him sneaking off, right behind Jesus, to the outskirts of Nazareth and beyond, willing to go anywhere, leaving everything behind. And Clare? I think she’s still among that community of people who found one another within that crowd, creating and shaping and strengthening an ongoing alternative community who will give embodied expression to nonviolent resistance.
What then is mine to do? The wisdom of the Franciscan tradition is that we follow both Francis and Clare. At times, as followers of Christ, we are called to speak prophetically. At times, with Clare as an inspiration, we conspire with an alternative community. At times, foolishly throwing all caution to the wind like Francis, we chase after Jesus into the whatever-comes-next.
Thanks be to God and to the Spirit who guides and sustains us.
[1] https://cac.org/daily-meditations/not-joining-the-crowd/