Where Were You When They Crucified My Lord?

Where Were You When They Crucified My Lord?

Chris Hedges gave an abbreviated version of this talk Saturday morning in Liberty Square in New York City as part of an appeal to Trinity Church to turn over to the Occupy Wall Street movement an empty lot, known as Duarte Square, that the church owns at Canal Street and 6th Avenue.

Occupy Wall Street protesters, following the call, began a hunger
strike at the gates of the church-owned property. Three of the
demonstrators were arrested Sunday on charges of trespassing,
and three others took their places.

By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com
December 07, 2011

The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance.

The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young.

Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling
a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven
largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo
the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall
be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.

Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It was the church in Latin America, especially in Central America
and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, which provided the physical space,
moral support and direction for the opposition to dictatorship.

It was the church in East Germany that organized the peaceful opposition marches in Leipzig that would bring down the communist regime in that country.

It was the church in Czechoslovakia, and its 90-year-old cardinal,
that blessed and defended the Velvet Revolution.

It was the church, and especially the African-American church,
that made possible the civil rights movements.

And it is the church, especially Trinity Church in New York City
with its open park space at Canal and 6th, which can make manifest
its commitment to the Gospel and nonviolent social change by
permitting the Occupy movement to use this empty space, just
as churches in other cities that hold unused physical space have
a moral imperative to turn them over to Occupy movements.

If this nonviolent movement fails, it will eventually be replaced
by one that will employ violence.

And if it fails it will fail in part because good men and women, especially those in the church, did nothing.

Where is the church now? Where are the clergy?

Why do so many church doors remain shut?

Why do so many churches refuse to carry out the central mandate
of the Christian Gospel and lift up the cross?

Some day they are going to have to answer the question:

“Where were you when they crucified my Lord?”

Let me tell you on this first Sunday in Advent, when we celebrate hope, when we remember in the church how Mary and Joseph left Nazareth for Bethlehem, why I am in Liberty Square.

I am here because I have tried, however imperfectly, to live
by the radical message of the Gospel.

I am here because I know that it is not what we say or profess
but what we do.

I am here because I have seen in my many years overseas as a foreign correspondent that great men and women of moral probity arise in all cultures and all religions to fight the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed.

I am here because I have seen that it is possible to be a Jew, a
Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or an atheist and carry
the cross.

The words are different but the self-sacrifice and thirst for justice are the same.

And these men and women, who may not profess what I profess or believe what I believe, are my brothers and sisters.

And I stand with them honoring and respecting our differences and finding hope and strength and love in our common commitment.

At times like these I hear the voices of the saints who went before us.

The suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who announced that resistance
to tyranny is obedience to God, and the suffragist Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, who said, “The moment we begin to fear the opinions of
others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives
of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light
and life no longer flow into our souls.”

Or Henry David Thoreau, who told us we should be men and women first and subjects afterward, that we should cultivate a respect not for the law but for what is right.

And Frederick Douglass, who warned us:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

And the great 19th century populist Mary Elizabeth Lease, who thundered:

“Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of
the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of
Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common
people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.”

And Gen. Smedley Butler, who said that after 33 years and four
months in the Marine Corps he had come to understand that he had
been nothing more than a gangster for capitalism, making Mexico
safe for American oil interests, making Haiti and Cuba safe for
banks and pacifying the Dominican Republic for sugar companies.

War, he said, is a racket in which newly dominated countries are exploited by the financial elites and Wall Street while the citizens foot the bill and sacrifice their young men and women on the battlefield for corporate greed.

Or Eugene V. Debs, the socialist presidential candidate, who in 1912
pulled almost a million votes, or 6 percent, and who was sent to
prison by Woodrow Wilson for opposing the First World War, and
who told the world:

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

And Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who when he was criticized for walking with Martin Luther King on the Sabbath in Selma answered: “I pray with my feet” and who quoted Samuel Johnson, who said: “The opposite of good is not evil. The opposite of good is indifference.”

And Rosa Parks, who defied the segregated bus system and said
“the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

And Philip Berrigan, who said: “If enough Christians follow the Gospel, they can bring any state to its knees.”

And the poet Langston Hughes, who wrote:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent
in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has
worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio,
The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/where_were_you_when_
they_crucified_my_movement_20111205/