How to Speak

The past week was the XII. International Bonhoeffer Congress. The theme of the conference was the relevance and reality of Bonhoeffer in globalization. It was a group of 225 academics and Bonhoeffer fans from around the world, spending four days deeply immersed in the theology and implications of a man who died in 1945 at the age of 39 for not only plotting an attempt on Hitler's life, but actively endangering his own by working as a double agent in the Nazi state, smuggling Jews out of Germany, and running an illegal seminary.

Bonhoeffer writes, "Silence in the face of evil is evil. To not speak is to speak. To not act is to act." It's a quote that deeply resonates with people. It invokes a type of populist will to speak out against evil. It's a quote, which I think sums up his theology and his life.

And over the last week, as we checked our Facebook accounts at the conference, we all learned about the appalling resurgence in violence in the United States. I use the word resurgence lightly. There is no denying that a despicable number of black men are killed by police in my country. For those that would trot out statistics that whites and blacks are killed in equal numbers, that's a lie of statistics. An equal number of a much smaller population isn't a similar proportion, it's disproportion. And for those that chime in with the higher percentage of black men involved in crime- I'd point out that we lower socio-economic classes tend to be more ridden with crime because there aren't many good options to break out of the cycle that is poverty and near-poverty. That's a class issue and because of horrific racial policies and racist economic and social factors, a disproportionate number of black men and women find themselves trapped in poverty or near poverty.

I begin with that because I'm going to write something that will make me seem callous, and I want anyone reading this to know that I find what is happening beyond appalling. We are living in a cycle of forms of violence. It's crass, but you can almost time the news cycle by what repeated atrocity is happening- unarmed black man (or woman) killed by police, rapist walks free, mass gun shooting, violent discrimination against someone because of their color, creed, race, sexual orientation, etc.

If this was a movie, we would say that it's a boring one because the plot keeps repeating.
That it is real is disgusting.
That it's real life and it keeps happening and nothing changes is abhorring.

Bonhoeffer worried that no one actively spoke out against evil. The German church fell silent when Jews started being discriminated against and then deported. For fear of breaking the social order, otherwise *good* Germans fell silent. That silence was an act of evil, that silence made them complicit. He told his fellow Germans to be in solidarity with those thrown under the wheel of oppression. This theme of solidarity kept coming up in papers.

But my worry is that, we no longer know what it is to be in solidarity- what it means to vicariously represent someone, a fancy Bonhoeffer/German phrase meant to explain that we act as Christ for one another and take on their guilt and suffering. To act responsibly and in solidarity is to become guilty. It's not only the words spoken against evil, but it's actions that derive from those words. That is what genuine, Christian solidarity is.

There exists then a strange tension in the aftermath of these horrific acts. Nothing changes, but suddenly everyone has something to say about how terrible it is on Facebook. I don't doubt that social media has its value as a quasi-space for mass catharsis. We should be outraged and mourning. But Facebook isn't a space created for social change (Twitter might be, and as I don't regularly use Twitter anymore, I won't try to critique is).
Facebook, in its essence, is designed to promote self-esteem. We post pictures of trips, good news, even sad news, even non-news and wait for the 'likes.' I believe most of us do this quite consciously and I am not suggesting that's a bad thing. Living abroad and having so many friends abroad, Facebook is the medium for keeping up with their lives. I'll end up posting this blog on Facebook because I hope someone reads it. We all like to be heard and seen and Facebook makes that easy. Especially when we are only ever reposting content other's do to seem cool and edgy and plugged-in.

But Facebook can't be our modern medium for solidarity.

It can't be because there's no real danger in speaking out against evil on it. We can delete a post if it causes too much ruckus. Or we can bury it in other posts, or change the privacy settings. It's a cheap form of solidarity that requires little and given the cycle of violence, does littler.

At it's best, it is a way to begin discussions and to try to connect to those outside of myself. At it's worst, it's a place to throw up a post about being disgusted and wanting change in order to follow the masses of those doing it already. My worry is that instead of fear of breaking the social order, as in Bonhoeffer's day, we feel comfortable challenging the social order- but only through a digital medium that has little risk associated with it. A colleague, a black American male- posted that:

'White-trauma is always TEMPORARY, and it pales in comparison to those experienced by non-Whites. Shallow Facebook quotes, and messages will remain as such without healthy, progressive, and Christian ACTION designed to minimize, and eventually stop the demonic effects of hate through racism (sexism, homophobia, gender-hatred, etc.).'

And I completely agree with him. I want Facebook to be a place where voices like his and the scant other black friends, remind me that to speak is to act and speech without action is a an evil in itself.

I know that I'm complicit in the way our society acts towards race and gender and religion and sexual orientation and the multitude of societal systems that sustain the status quo. I also know that this blog post will have little effect on the conversation and actions that should be undertaken. So why then bother posting it? Because I can't break the system that says if I don't post something, then I support the broken system. Although this is too little and too late as Facebook has now moved on to Pokemon Go.

But I'm hopeful this might provide reflection on why we immediately feel the need to post about these events if that's all we know we are going to do. Doesn't our Christian faith demand more? If we are serious about changing society, shouldn't we do more than post on Facebook and be rightly disgusted and then move on? To speak without risk isn't what Bonhoeffer meant. To speak in solidarity is to always invite risk.

Our solidarity with victims of a broken system needs to be concrete in ways that Facebook doesn't provide. I have loved the pictures a few of my friends posted at protests over this past week. That is foot on the ground action. That's risk. That's movie toward genuine solidarity.