Last month, I
was arrested along with several of my colleagues as we sought to
speak with
Jamie
Dimon before he testified to the Senate Banking Committee. We
accompanied
Deborah
Harris, a DC homeowner who was unjustly foreclosed on by
JP
Morgan Chase, where Mr. Dimon serves as CEO and Chairman of the
Board. We stood with her as she asked this powerful man a simple
question:
Why don't you face the people that you foreclosed on?
Jamie Dimon's answer was
clear: Because you don't matter.
Mr. Dimon never acknowledged Deborah's presence, and we were arrested
and locked in jail for most of the day. We received a forceful
response from those wealthy few who control our government and our
economy: You will speak only when spoken to. You will learn
who is in charge here.
This
message continued to be delivered as we were arraigned at the
Superior
Court of the District of Columbia on Tuesday morning. I was
surprised by how much the court looked like TV courtrooms - think
Judge Judy or The
People's Court. The dominant
image was a very large seal of the court, with flags - of the United
States and the District of Columbia - on either side. These symbols
of authority rested immediately behind the judge's seat, which sat
far back, behind two long desks where about half a dozen clerks stood
or sat, processing the perhaps fifty people being arraigned that
morning.
The
whole scene was purposefully crafted to elicit a feeling of reverence
towards the authority of the court. The lawyers and those being
arraigned sat in the forward part of the courtroom, on long, wooden
benches that were very similar to pews in a church building. I leaned
over to Deborah at one point and whispered, "I feel like we're
in church." But I learned not to talk too much, as bailiffs
regularly came by and sternly warned us not to speak or use our cell
phones. Let all the earth keep silent
before the authority of this court!
This
sense of religiosity was no accident. When the judge entered the
courtroom, one of the clerks pronounced a long string of official
words, including, "God save the United States and this honorable
court." This invocation of God's name - however shallow and
formal - further emphasized to me the weight of the civil religion
that permeated the court. Everything was mediated through ritual; all
the details of the court's furnishings, layout, decorum and
vocabulary evoked an atmosphere of solemn reverence. But who, or
what, were we venerating?
I
was not sure whether it was Law, or the State, or the Court, or some
vague spirit of Authority that we were being not-so-subtly pressured
to worship, but one thing was very clear to me: It was not God. One
of the most disturbing things about our arraignment yesterday was
this blasphemous liturgy of the State, whose message was clear and
powerful: Submit. Fear. Forget who you are and become what
we say you are.
It
was essentially the same feeling that I got at the jailhouse last
month. The point of the system is to instill order, always defined in
the system's terms, regardless of the cost to human dignity. As we
sat in our benches and were rebuked by the bailiffs for "talking
too much," we got the message: While we were in that courtroom,
we were to be in utter dread of Authority, totally attentive to its
whims. Just like in the jailhouse, the physical and psychological
space was purposefully engineered to break down individual identity
and self-will, transferring all agency and power to the officialdom
and bureaucracy of the court.
It
is one thing to write about this environment, but it is another thing
entirely to experience it first hand. I would not have imagined it to
be so irresistible, so psychologically overwhelming; yet I found it
extremely difficult to stay grounded in God and in my true identity
as a child of the light. Having this personal experience of the
terrifying power of the court system - with all its blasphemous
ritual and pomp - I am beginning to understand how truly bold George
Fox was when he dared to stand before a judge and admonish him to
"quake before the power of the Lord." Fox knew better than
anyone that the function of courts and judges and civil religion is
not to tremble before the Lord, but to make others shake before human
authority.
I
was reminded of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where Paul
writes that there are indeed "many gods and many lords, yet
for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for
whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things and through whom we exist." There are powers and rulers
and authorities in this world, and we must decide which authority we
are to place ourselves under. Will it be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ? Or will it be some other authority?
The
image of Christ as judge, holding court and delivering the ultimate
verdict at the end of time, takes on new relevance for me now that I
have experienced the dread of the human court system. For though
human courts can be unjust, Christ rules with equity and
impartiality; while human courts direct veneration and awe back to
themselves, Jesus directs our attention, awe and worship back to the
Father, our sovereign Creator.
I
do not mean to suggest that human courts are essentially evil and
should be done away with. Paul writes in
his epistle to the Romans that all authorities that exist have
been instituted by God. The courts of the United States can only
exist because God has created Authority itself; human institutions
are intended to reflect this authority, which
God created as a servant for good. Unfortunately, this God-given
authority that was created to preserve life in human community has
been twisted and corrupted by human sin - both individual and
collective.
There
is no doubt in my mind that our court system is deeply affected by
the distorting effects of sin. Worst of all, our human institutions
of authority often play a role in sustaining the fruit of sin:
violence, injustice, dehumanization and fear. Probably the clearest
example of this is the way our legal system perpetuates systematic
racial discrimination. Except for most of our group, who had been arrested
for a political offense, all of the other people being arraigned
yesterday were African-American. We got to hear quite a few of their
arraignment proceedings before our turn came around, and the great
majority of them were charged with drug possession. Observing this
process, I was more convinced than ever that the Drug War is being used as a tool
of oppression, and racial and class discrimination.
Even
for a case like ours, which has nothing to do with drugs, all of us
were required to submit to a drug test. This did not sound so bad,
until I learned that the test involved urinating into a cup in a room
full of mirrors while a man stood by, watching me. This was really
unnerving, and I had to try a second time before I could bring myself
to do it.
Even
after all of this, our case is still pretty much up in the air. We
have been ordered to stay away from the Dirksen
Senate Office Building, and we were assigned a status
hearing for Monday, August 13th.
We will not know anything more until then. In the meantime, I would
ask for your continued prayers. I find the uncertainty
that comes with being caught up in this legal machine very stressful,
and I need all the support I can get to stay grounded.
I
am so grateful for everyone who has reached out and shown support
since the arrest. This whole process has really taught me the meaning
of the word solidarity. Imprisonment
and court proceedings are a special kind of distress, and having my
community behind me is so important. Thank you for all the love and
support that you have shown me. This would all be much harder if I
did not have you to lean on.
Dear Friends and
brethren,
The Lord is with you
all everywhere, who suffer for his name and truth's sake,
in all your bonds and
afflictions be of good comfort, for the Lord is with you;
neither be dismayed at
your sufferings, for if you suffer, Christ suffers;
and if you are
persecuted, it is Christ who is persecuted;
and if you are not
visited, it is Christ who is not visited;
and if you are
oppressed, it is he who is oppressed.
And he will lay no more
upon you than you are able to bear. [...]
[Christ] has a fellow
feeling with you all, in all your bonds and afflictions;
and Christ who suffers,
will overcome all his enemies.
He reigns,
and they must be his
footstool to stand upon.
And so, be of good
faith, and be valiant for the truth upon the earth.
George Fox
I have been deeply impacted by the
ministry of Jon Watts and
Maggie Harrison,
who are traveling among Friends, preaching a message of spiritual
rebirth. They speak to us of God's call to spiritual nakedness,
recapturing the unabashed intimacy that Adam and Eve experienced in
the Garden, before the Fall. They urge us to stand in the
light of Christ, allowing his presence to strip away all the layers
of falsehood that we have accumlated over the course of our lives.
Yet, as we yield to Christ's action
within us, we come to experience moments of real nakedness before
God. We stand before our Creator in awe and gratitude, knowing in
some small measure the reality of Jesus'
prayer that we might be one with him, just as he and the Father are
one. We are left defenseless, together in the presence of the
Spirit, and all false distinctions melt away. We find a hidden unity
that runs deeper than all the masks we hide behind.
