News with Nuance: Sept. 23, 2022

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Welcome to News with Nuance. My plan for this post is, every Friday, I will break down some of the week’s top news stories and put them into context, with special attention to the impact of these stories where I live: Middle America; and also an analysis of these stories with historical, political, and spiritual context. This is the kind of work that breaking news journalists often simply don’t have time to do — and I’m hoping it supplies the needed nuance and context that’s often missing from our news cycle, humanizing the people and places behind the headlines.

The Headline: Iranian woman killed in custody of ‘morality police’ and protests erupt

The Context: Something happens inside my body when I see scenes of marginalized and oppressed peoples streaming into the streets and shouting together in protest.

I don’t know if I’ve always been this way, but the first time I’ve been conscious of it happening was during the Arab Spring protests for democracy in 2010. I remember sitting on a torn maroon leather recliner in my shabby apartment in Roseville, Minn., wrapped up in a blanket during the coldest days of the Midwest winter.

I was in seminary then, rapidly blowing through the remaining funds I’d saved from working as a sportswriter, lost in theology and Greek and Hebrew textbooks. It could have been a time when I was entering into the church and stepping away from the world of media and journalism that had been mine for years before.

Instead, I found myself paralyzed and mesmerized in that recliner, my old laptop teetering on my knees.

“ASH-SHAB YURID ISQAT AN-NIZAM!”

“ASH-SHAB YURID ISQAT AN-NIZAM!”

I was just 25 years old, and the protesters were mostly around my age, and they were filled with so much hope. Every day they’d gather at Tahrir Square in Cairo, and on Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis; in Bahrain, and Libya, and Syria, and Sudan.

The protesters did not all share the same religious, political, or social beliefs. They dressed differently, spoke differently, ate differently, worshipped differently. They had alternative visions of how best to govern their countries and how individual families should function within a society.

None of this mattered.

“PEOPLE DEMAND REMOVAL OF THE REGIME”

“PEOPLE DEMAND REMOVAL OF THE REGIME”

That’s what the above chant means, translated into English. And in the face of tyranny, jail, tear gas, torture, and even death; the young people of these countries streamed into the streets anyway, after years of abusive and unresponsive governments, out of a mixed sense of desperation and latent hope.

“We are human beings,” they seemed to say. “We will no longer accept peace in the absence of justice and human rights. We will no longer be told what we can wear, love, say, and believe. We will no longer allow you to use God to keep us down; to use our labor and our intellect to line your coffers and outfit your armies. We are here. We are alive. We demand that you hear us.”

For years they faithfully gathered, desperate for the aid of Western governments and politicians, who too often offered only empty platitudes but little real assistance, content to continue lucrative partnerships with Arab autocrats rather than the painstaking and slow work it would take to empower young democracy activists.

We know now how it ends, how it always seems to end. The one with the most money and the most guns wins. Some of the most charismatic democratic activists would be alternatively gunned down or imprisoned or bribed. A generation’s hope would be crushed again. Wars spread again across the Middle East. Mohammed bin Salmen approves the execution of Jamal Khashoggi and receives the adulation and welcome of western leaders, who need his country’s money. Even Arab princesses are taken prisoner by their despotic male relatives. Putin invades Ukraine. George Floyd is murdered on a Minneapolis street.

It’s easy to forget how hope feels, when you’re lost in despair, cynicism, and nihilism. Another court case, another tale of political corruption, another stalled piece of legislation. Your rent goes up; your paycheck goes down.

And then hope reawakens again. For me, it is so often in scenes of protest.

This week in Kerman in southeast Iran, a young woman sits perched above a crowd of shouting protesters, shaking their fists.

She has removed her hijab and she holds a pair of scissors aloft in the air.

She is cutting her hair.

They shout and jump and cheer around her. They should be afraid, because just a week ago in Tehran, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was detained by the so-called Morality Police, caught up in a wave of arrests and harassment of women in the country, supposedly for infractions against the strict Islamic dress code: for things like wearing a headscarf slightly askew, or a coat with sleeves just a little too short. Authorities have claimed that Amini died of a heart attack, but her family says she had no health conditions, and activists say she was beaten to death by police. Amini’s father has called for justice for his daughter, and says he has been asking for answers from the authorities but has received no explanation or evidence.

The only salve for those who would desecrate the value of life itself is the outpouring of humanity who rush into the streets, raising their voices to claw back their right to life and human dignity itself.

In these moments, while I watch the bravery of the Iranian women cutting their hair, and I’m transported back to South Minneapolis in June 2020, listening to thousands of voices across the country shouting: BLACK LIVES MATTER, I feel myself connected to a thread of freedom and justice that is never guaranteed, but must always be protested and defended by those desperate, brave, and hopeful enough to step out into the streets.

Today, I am not among them. I am inside my comfortable Midwestern home, wearing clothes I have chosen, my hair falling loose and unadorned around my face, free to worship and speak and write mostly as I please.

Today, though, I watch them. And I know my freedom is tied up in theirs.

Screenshot taken from this article, documenting protests and videos across Iran

Compiled by Joyce Sohyun Lee, Stefanie Le, Atthar Mirza, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Kareem Fahim, Washington Post

The Quote: In the news coverage of Amini’s death and resulting protests in recent days, I was struck by the courage of her father, Amjad Amini. Many fathers and husbands choose to remain silent when their daughters or female family members are mistreated by repressive governments and religious or cultural beliefs that subjugate women. Mahsa’s father likely knows that Iran’s regime could choose to punish and strike him down at any moment in order to silence him. And still he chose to speak out on behalf of his daughter, refusing to accept the official story that she died of a supposed heart attack. His courage and refusal to accept the story has allowed the world to hear his daughter’s story, and her unjust death has ignited the heart of a nation - and maybe the world.

“They're lying. They're telling lies. Everything is a lie ... no matter how much I begged, they wouldn't let me see my daughter," Amjad Amini told BBC Persia on Wednesday. - CNN

The Headline: Putin orders a partial mobilization of troops in Russia; ordinary Russians respond with frustration, protest, and sorrow

The Context: As the world watched Russian troops descend into Ukraine, followed by documented humanitarian atrocities, and indiscriminate killing of civilians - we all wondered how long Putin would be able to maintain the quietude of the Russian people. Long-suffering, impoverished and depressed after generational trauma wrought by the Soviet era of Stalin’s gulags and the massive loss of life during World War II, followed by massive social inequality in the aftermath of the opening of the Russian economy, could the Russian people mount a resistance to this campaign of aggression and violence in Ukraine? Did they believe Putin’s propaganda about Ukrainian Nazis and liberation of the Donbas?

At first, some protested in cities across Russia. But for months now, the prevailing wisdom has been that most ordinary Russian people have accepted the status quo in Ukraine.

Until now, perhaps.

The war has come closer to the front doorsteps in homes all over Russia, as Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservist troops to the frontlines, in the midst of bad news of large Russian casualty numbers (which have gone officially unreported). New legislation was also introduced raising penalties for those who would avoid military service once called up. Outgoing flights from Moscow were canceled or unattainable.

In the wake of this news, Russian families began again to raise their voices. Even after years of governmental oppression and misery and fear and propaganda, ordinary Russians did not want to sacrifice their children at the altar of Putin’s war.

The tiny, plaintive cry of the value of each and every individual human life again demanded to be heard in Mother Russia.

The Quote: The Vesna opposition movement called for nationwide protests, saying: “Thousands of Russian men — our fathers, brothers and husbands — will be thrown into the meat grinder of the war. What will they be dying for? What will mothers and children be crying for?” - Los Angeles Times

This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism

While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will include a brief update from that week, as it’s both a continuing focus of my work and also, I think, a critical threat to both American democracy and the faithful witness of Jesus’ Gospel, which exists independently of the United States!

In one sentence: Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.

This Week:

Today I got a really special treat. Theologian, author, historian, witness (and fellow Substack writer) Diana Butler Bass was here in Minneapolis for an event with LeaderWise on Spirituality in the Present Day.

Last week, Diana released an excellent three-part discussion curriculum on Christian Nationalism, for use in congregations, schools, small groups - or even just personal understanding.

While she has been working as a religion writer and Christian thinker for decades, Diana has recently embraced a new urgency around both calling out the threat of White Christian Nationalism and also providing space for a defense of democracy and defense of the faith. She does so using her gifts as a historian, a storyteller, and, ultimately, a unifier in a world that’s pulling apart at its seams.

After listening to Diana speak today in Minneapolis, I couldn’t resist pulling her aside for a quick interview about her work, about what’s missing in the national conversation around Christian Nationalism, what she’s most worried about, what she thought while watching Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, and what gives her hope as she undertakes this often lonely and grueling work. What follows are edited excerpts of our conversation:

AD: You recently wrote a guide to Understanding Christian Nationalism. Why now?

DBB: A lot of people are interested in this topic and it’s in the news. Every time you turn around someone is talking about White Christian Nationalism. It was really important to put out a resource that’s usable, with three short articles, a good sense of the definition and the motivating theology.

AD: What’s missing in the national media conversation about White Christian Nationalism?

DBB: In one word: SUBTLETY. That’s what’s missing. I have a great fear that White Christian Nationalism is a way of slamming all white Christians. Not every white Christian is a white Christian Nationalist. When people talk about white Christian Nationalism, there are different versions. (Butler Bass went on to explain that White Christian Nationalism has become a shorthand for the merging of three distinct groups, including hyper-calvinistic Protestants, Pentecostal dominionists, and Roman Catholic theocrats; who really didn’t have a lot in common before being united by this movement).

AD: Are you more concerned for the Gospel or for democracy?