“To try and stop war by placing before men’s eyes the terrible suffering involved will never succeed, because men are willing (in their thoughts and imaginations at least) to face any kind of suffering when motivated by noble aims like the vague and tremendous concept of freedom…” (Dorothy Day)

How do you get people to change their perspectives on social issues? According to Day, concern for the suffering of others won't do it because ideology is a stronger force than empathy. People are willing to excuse—or at least justify—a great many things in the pursuit of their so-called greater good. So what can actually bring about change?

For Day, a religious conversion is the only way. That's of course not to say that all religious people are concerned with the suffering of others, especially since so much of her time was spent trying to push the Catholic Church on these issues. But, I think Day is hitting on something important that I want to look at from two angles.

First, one way to change someone's ideology is an even stronger ideology. This is why religion can be such a powerful tool for appeal. A higher power can override our own ideals. It can work, but it doesn't always end well. Arguments around how to interpret the 'wishes' of the higher power can just create the same sort of entrenched viewpoints—and even further justify human suffering for divine good. This sort of religious appeal can also remain purely intellectual, in "thoughts and imaginations" as Day put it. This isn't always a a bad thing. I do think you can 'fake it till you make it' so-to-speak when it comes to selfless behaviour. Do good works and (hopefully) you will be changed internally as well.

But let's shift to the second angle, which is where I think Day would ultimately land in all of this. That is that real change, the sort that can be stronger than ideology, can only come from genuine encounter. For Day this means an encounter with the crucified Christ. Importantly, this is not an encounter in an intellectual sense or in some immaterial transcendent way, rather it is an encounter that only comes from seeing Christ in the suffering of others.

“Christ is being martyred today in Vietnam, in Santo Domingo, and in all places where men are taking to the sword in this world crisis. He will be crucified to the end of time. He is with us in His humanity until the end of time.”

Day lived and worked on the margins. She spent her days amongst the poor and sick. She frequently travelled and met with others struggling for justice—migrant workers, racialized communities, people whose daily lives were threatened by war and conquest. This is where she encountered Christ. And it's where she would say the Church belongs lest its ideologies remain purely in "thoughts and imaginations."

Last week, a family member shared a sermon with me that they thought I would like. It was all about reclaiming the Christian practice of hospitality as a response to the increased loneliness in society and how the church should be a space that welcomes lost and broken people in. While I agree with this as a starting place, I can't help but feel it didn't go far enough.

I wrote about hospitality in my essay exploring how the church can better relate to the labour rights movement (working together for a mutual flourishing). Key to this is that the church is not meant to be solely the givers of hospitality, but the recipients of it as well.

As we have been discussing thus far, a truly common good requires the mutual flourishing of a diverse relational network of people within a shared context. Yet the complexities of those relationships are often what stand in the way of making this possible. As stated earlier, these relationships are made up of a conflicting web of families, friendships, neighbours, strangers, and enemies. For the church to step into this web in hopes of advocating for an alternative vision for society, it needs a posture that can build partnerships across these differences without diminishing them. For Luke Bretherton, the answer is found in the traditional Christian practice of hospitality; the intentional act of welcoming strangers. He writes that true hospitality “involves listening to and learning from strangers, as this entails forming a relationship with those not like us that we disagree with or find scandalous.” Thus, there is always a risk to hospitality as it requires a willingness to let go of our preconceptions and assumptions of how things ought to go. When we listen to and learn from those who are unlike ourselves we are necessarily changed. Importantly, hospitality is also something that the church can both give and receive. This is a theme that Cavanough picks up in an essay on mobility and how the church might consider how it ‘moves’ through the world. He offers two metaphors, those of pilgrim and monk, as a way for the church to see itself both as those who travel in solidarity with others, receiving hospitality along the way; and as those who remain in place, offering hospitality to others. That second one, the role of monk, invites the church to work with others to “build strong local communities and cooperative social arrangements deeply rooted in their places.” In this sense, hospitality itself becomes a form of common good that works across our differences to build more welcoming communities. It also helps us resist the assumption that we encounter each other as equals, teaching us to pay greater awareness to the relational imbalances that exist.

This isn't meant to be a criticism towards the sermon, more to say that I think for the church to have a healthy relationship to the surrounding society it needs to not see itself only as having something to offer—but also a humility to learn and be equally changed as it builds relationships for the mutual flourishing of our world.

"Care for the needy requires the expenditure of wealth: when all share alike, disbursing their possessions among themselves, they each receive a small portion for their individual needs. Thus, those who love their neighbour as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbour...

For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love."

— St Basil, reflecting on Mat 19

“Many modern Christians have unfortunately understood injustice in simply materialistic terms and have not recognized the need to ‘convert’ people from the spirituality that binds them to a particular material expression of power. It is not enough merely to change social structures. People are not simply determined by the material forces that impinge on them. They are also the victims of the very spirituality that the material means of production and socialization have fostered, even as these material means are themselves the spin-off of a particular spirituality.” (Wink, Naming the Powers)

I remember a mentor of mine who had spent a good part of his life working among people afflicted by poverty telling me that the poor are inherently spiritual. This was, according him, a failure in understanding by many of the attempts of philanthropy from 'secular' organizations who saw poverty as only a material problem—solved easily with money.

Wink's point here is that the Christian tradition has a vocabulary to help. A way of talking about evil in both structural and spiritual ways. It's not about explaining things, it's about that awareness that power has both an inner and an outer reality and we need a way to confront both.

Dorothee Sölle wrote about how the Church can learn to recognize the powers. It begins with listening and seeing and feeling. We look at a given context and ask ourselves a couple questions. First, who is being victimized? And then, to understand the cause, we ask who profits? It is in learning to see this dynamic at work that the Church can learn to see where their work is needed.

Continuing with a bit of an Advent theme, I'm currently (re)reading Walter Wink's trilogy on the Powers. My interest is to keep expanding on the idea that Christianity is primarily a socio-economic project. A few years back I was going to write a thesis as the final part of my masters exploring spiritual warfare through a similar lens. This was mainly going to be using the work of William Stringfellow but then my professor told me Wink would be essential for this. Ultimately this thesis project was scrapped due to some timing complications; but instead I concluded with two shorter research projects that I think do a good job of working through what I was thinking about at the time (here and here).

Anyway, as a part of this Advent and Christmas season, I have decided to go back to some of that and draw out some reflections on what it means for the Kingdom to be breaking in as it relates to the idea of power in our world. Wink's core argument is that modern readers have failed to understand the mythic descriptions of the Powers on their own terms.

“The goal is not ‘demythologizing’ if by that is meant removal of the mythic dimension, but rather juxtaposing the ancient myth with the emerging postmodern (mythic) worldview and asking how they might mutually illuminate each other.”

So expect a few notes here for the next couple weeks on this topic as I work out a bit of what is on my mind this season.