A few weeks ago, I attended a protest called “March for Dignity: Protect our Immigrant Siblings” attended by faith communities committed to the protection of immigrants. As I walked amongst the people of faith, their love and fervor for justice and mercy left an impression on me.
As a Christian, even if you disagree with the protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the call to love one another through solidarity remains. Whatever cause you care about or injustice you see, we are called to care for the least of these.
“Biola is disturbingly silent about issues that are affecting our nation and communities,” Brad Christerson, a sociology professor who actively champions social justice causes, shared in an interview. I agree with him.
One of my qualms with Biola’s students is not their bias or outlandish opinions, but their complete silence on major issues. Instead of taking a stance, students seem comfortable taking the passive approach. In contrast, many other colleges are marked by dissent, by students determined to change the brokenness they see in the world.
Taking part in a protest — that upholds any moral cause in the spirit of nonviolence — is an expression of one’s care. It means standing with brothers and sisters to accomplish a change larger than oneself. As Alex, an 80-year-old woman at a protest I attended, declared, “Long live the people who care.”
THE CHRISTIAN AND COMMUNAL ACT OF PROTESTING
Protesting is not the only way you can show that you care, but it is one method of expressing your commitment to pursuing a more just world. In recent history, protesting has become the language of the people to peacefully and powerfully combat injustices.
Christerson backed the importance of protesting. “Protesting is one of many tools to try to shape policy or influence policy,” he said. “It is important to gather people publicly, speak truth to power and visibly show your disagreement with a policy.”
Dissent means disagreement. By showing up to a protest, you are choosing to build your character into one that stands up against injustice, one who disagrees with powers of oppression. Instead of watching injustice unfold before you, you get off your couch, out of your dorm room, beyond the sanitized walls of the classroom, and speak. Christerson emphasized the Christian aspect of protesting.
“If you are a follower of Jesus and there are policies that are harming people, we need to be engaged in those in order to love our neighbors,” Christerson said. Taking part in social justice forms your character into a person who neither allows themselves to be sucked into apathy nor into an intellectual who simply postulates about the moral implications of such and such an action, but into a woman or man who marches for their beliefs.
Furthermore, the act of protest generally demands joining with a community. A few weeks before I attended the March for Dignity, I spoke with Thomas Crisp, a professor of philosophy committed to nonviolence, about protesting.
“It is often, and always has been, a deeply beautiful experience of being in solidarity with others in service of the shalom of the oppressed,” Crisp said.
The beauty of a protest is in the community that has come together to speak truth to power.
“In our culture,” said Christerson, speaking along the same lines of unity and love, “we are so individualistic and isolated, so sometimes when we are troubled and disturbed by things that are happening, we feel alone. Seeing a mass of people that are passionate about the same things is incredibly encouraging.”
How wonderful it is to stand with a group of strangers and to know that, together, we seek a greater cause than ourselves. Is this not a tangible display of the Christian conviction to love your neighbor? Are we not called to seek the good of those beyond our own circumstances? Protesting connects our own interests with those of our neighbors by selflessly uplifting those in the margins.
POSSIBLE DRAWBACKS OF PROTESTING
This is not to undercut the possible drawbacks of protesting. After all, protesting can be dangerous, either from government enforcement, possible internal hooliganism, or the necessity of participating in civil disobedience. In recent weeks, the dangers of partaking in protests increased after the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident of the United States who has been detained by ICE and is under threat of deportation. Peaceful protesters could also be targeted by officials who dislike their message.
I asked Christerson whether students should attend protests that could be dangerous.
“Loving our neighbors sometimes requires sacrifice and putting yourself in danger,” said Christerson. “That’s why Jesus was killed: because he was trying to make a world where everyone is valued and loved and that included criticizing how the authorities were treating people. In this world, you are going to run into authorities that don’t like it when you challenge them.”
Christerson also affirmed that sometimes people need to make an individual choice based on their own risks. I have told international and undocumented students on F1 visas to avoid attending protests; for them, the individual risk might not be worth it. That being said, risk or danger does not erase the goods of protesting.
“Getting arrested, in itself, is not a reason not to participate in the protests,” said Christerson.
Protesting is not risk-free, but the possible danger does not undermine its efficacy or its goals.
Another issue raised by those skeptical of protests is the age-old question: does this actually accomplish anything? Even while I stood amongst the protesters, this question bothered me. Christerson emphasized that “protesting is one tool of many, but that it is insufficient on its own.” He used the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests as an example. Although the general public does not necessarily hear of it, after the BLM protests, plenty of policies changed.
“Protest movements come in waves, but what people don’t see is the things that come out of those movements under the radar,” Christerson said.
Protesting, while it might be one small step, does positively affect the world we live in. Whether or not public policies directly affect Biola students, we have a duty to love our neighbors — especially our neighbors on the margins. Protesting is one way that we can publicly engage in the act of loving our neighbors, and it is a noble and communal act that is an honor to take part in.
When a Christian committed to mercy and compassion and love attends a protest, it is vital to not allow hatred or bitterness to motivate your actions. Rather, protest in the spirit of our great American leader, Martin Luther King Jr., who so eloquently preached in “The Power of Nonviolence” — “The nonviolent resistor does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding … The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.”
