Call and Response

On Saturday 31st January I went to Whitechapel to join a coalition of leftist and faith groups opposed to UKIP’s proposed ‘Walk with Jesus’. There is a long history of anti-fascist organising in east London; this year is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street when the east end Jewish population were joined by Irish Dockers and the Communist Party in standing against Oswald Mosely’s blackshirts. Since then there have been numerous attempts by the far right to intimidate local people by massing on the streets. The demographic of east London has changed, but the tactics of the right remain the same, and so I, along with a group of friends, felt called to show our solidarity with local people.

The rally was like many others, a group of tired but cheerful activists assembled behind long banners, handing out fliers or starting chants with the assembled crowd. Not for the first time I felt the similarity between protest chanting and the call and response of liturgy.

The people united
will never be defeated!

The peace of the Lord be with you
and also with you

We stood at the edge of the long anti-fascist banner. Someone sang an English version of ‘Bella Ciao’. Calls for freedom in Palestine, in Venezuela. Van drivers sounded their horns as they drove past. My friend’s sign said, Pax et bonum/ Christians for migration. The banner I’d spent many evenings patching together said CHRISTIANS AGAINST FASCISM. Scraps and shoddy applique. Felt tip on cardboard. One of the union organisers handed out care packages, little pink and white paper bags like you might get at a children’s birthday party. They contained fliers, advice on arrest bustcards and biscuits. I thought about UKIP’s co-option of holy communion in their symbology. I wondered what they had handed out to their followers that day.

We have a problem; many people feel anxious about bringing up politics at church, while few political organisers will say that they are motivated by faith. Everyone seems to be worried about encountering dogma. Certainly I’ve felt discomfort or surprise from leftist friends when I explain that the same feeling that calls me to church calls me to political action. The Socialist Worker coverage of the demonstration in Whitechapel makes no mention of faith groups present that day; their photograph of the rally, whether intentionally or not, crops out our Christian collective group and the Quakers who stood next to us. The Middle East Monitor tells quite a different story, publishing an open letter from over 150 members of faith communities, organisations and academics denouncing the UKIP march.

I also feel some hesitation from religious friends regarding demonstrations, and I wondered if there was something keeping faith groups away from protests like this. It might be that rally talk is fighting talk; we will not tolerate, we reject, we denounce, shame on X. It is a call to action that compels through moral clarity. Rather like a sermon, in fact, it expands from the immediate to superstructure, pointing out the broader lesson. The speakers in Whitechapel reminded us that the problem was not just the far right, but the police and the British state, all structures of violence underwritten by Western imperialism. I listened to my fellow protesters talking about what they believed in (what I believe in too, for what it’s worth) what they would or would not do, and I know where it came from. I know how I feel when I talk like that. Sometimes it’s a righteous fury that keeps you up at night, forcing your actions into congruence with your beliefs. Sometimes it’s a pose of strength when you feel powerless.

Don’t get me wrong; I think moral clarity is important, but I began to wonder if triumphalist modes have reached their limits. The biggest estimate for the UKIP presence in Marble Arch that weekend was fifty, while the people marching in solidarity for Palestine numbered over 100, 000. This is not, in my opinion, a story of triumph, but of grief. Anyone lost to this bleak, nihilistic ideology is a tragedy; we grieve them, we pray for them, but most importantly, they are our responsibility.

The day after the rally in Whitechapel, Rita Nakashima came to speak at St James’ about moral injury and her experiences in community organising during the ICE raids in Minneapolis. Rita talked about the far right’s adoption of atonement theology with its emphasis on Christ’s suffering, but not his resurrection. I can understand the dark glamour of such a vision; I can understand being so injured that all that would reach me was further invocation of injury. However you are called, so you respond. Rita said that fascism relied on a perversion of a messianic vision; rather than invoking a figure as a flashpoint for societal disruption, the messiah becomes a totalising figure of absolute power. We might forget, then, that we are all one body because we share the same bread. We may forget our duty to one another.

At the rally I was asked to say a few words from a Christian perspective on love and solidarity. I started with Jacques Lacan’s quip that surely there was something ironic in Christ’s injunction to love thy neighbour as thyself – because actually, of course, people hate themselves. I said that if you have been slighted and abused, all you know is to slight and abuse others. You might believe, for instance, in a religion of binaries, of winners and losers, of submission, surrender and defeat. You may be moved only by talk of moral pollution, ‘no-go zones’, and threat. You might only understand a language of might, choose as your symbols the lance and the cross pattée, symbols of crusading violence and domination.

The fascist triumph of might over weakness isn’t in the Gospels, or the Old Testament. Where, after all, is this talk of domination and suspicion in the story of the Good Samaritan, or in Exodus 22:21 – ‘Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt,’ or when Jesus sought out Mary Magdalene and Zacchaeus the tax collector, or the numerous other instances in the Old Testament and in the Gospels, where the word of God disrupts the established order? In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ mother Mary praises a God who ‘has scattered the proud; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.’

The UKIP ‘walk with Jesus’ wasn’t just perverse, but a narrowing of spiritual vision that is deeply tragic because God is not in the business of caveats and addendums. God’s love is not something you qualify for or earn. Love is whole, unequivocal, generous and disruptive. He loves us, we must love and protect one another. In Isaiah, 43:1 God calls us by name to tell us we are redeemed and we belong to him. When you belong to God, what are you called to do?