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Telling Our Story: Resistance Literature and the Biblical Narrative

by Rafael Vallejo Ph.D

Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.”
– Deuteronomy 26:5

In Resistance Literature (Hartlow, 1987) the author reads some of the 20th century literature of resistance movements from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. She tells the story of the contributions of literature to resistance movements. In this blog, I ask how and whether biblical literature can also be considered as resistance literature.

Scholars tell us that much of what later became known as the Hebrew Bible was written in periods of exile, displacement and diaspora. Those who wrote the early stories of christian origins that became the New Testament did so under the shadow of Empire and colonial oppression.

The literature speaks to the struggle of early communities around religious beliefs, tribal laws and cultural practices. The literature of Judaism in exile and during the Persian period used resistance as a trope for understanding the relationship between humanity and their divinities. Their oral and written narratives sought to express how they felt God present/absent in their struggle.

Resistance movements according to Hartlow seek to reclaim the narrative, given the many rival interpretations of the historical record along with attempts to erase it from cultural memory. They also assert control over the means of cultural production ( eg. poetry, theater, the arts ) from those who attempt to repress it through censorship or subjugate knowledge by minimizing its significance.

The translation of the Hebrew scriptures to Greek and the production of other scriptures in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew were also practices of resistance against hegemony. Hartlow shows how resistance literature holds out images of an ideal past and a utopian future. Do we not also feel a similar tension when we do a critical reading of biblical texts?

Anathea Portier Young talks about resistance literature that can be found in the genre known as Jewish apocalyptic literature. She concurs with Hartlow that literature exists as a site of political struggle (Hartlow 1985:2) a space where resistance is theorized, enacted and mobilized. It appears that the first extant representatives of the genre, according to Portier-Young, emerged during the Hellenistic era marked by wars, plunder, state terror and religious persecution and the reconquest of Judea by the Seleucid Empire. One finds in narratives like Daniel the characters of Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael offered as models of resistance against imperial domination. Daniel 2 and 7 appear to have been drawn from resistance traditions in the Ancient Near East.

Closer to our times is resistance literature written by people like Gassan Kanafani. He was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was assassinated by the Mossad in 1972. He started writing his short stories while working in refugee camps. It seems to me that sometimes people are moved more by stories than statistics. Kanafani and many other writers give voice and bear witness to the suffering of peoples under imperialism. Their writings show the political significance of literary texts and other art forms in the struggle. Unfortunately, many of them are not written in English and so those of us whose working language is English are unable to access them. The fact remains that those who have historically been denied their voice are the best sources regarding the impact of border regimes on refugees and the production of new meanings around Mission and Migration.

In Memories of Burmese Rohingya (Farsana, 2017) the author talks about how they use song and drawings to portray narratives of everyday refugee life and resistance. In their encampments along the river Naft that borders Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh, the music of taranas become everyday resistance expressing their sorrows and sufferings. Their memories bind them together as a people and give them courage to hope that their condition as refugees will change someday. It calls to the youth of Arakan where Rohingyas were born to continue the struggle.

The taranas are easy to understand and learn by heart. They are performed with great passion accompanied by hand movements and facial expressions. The taranas are yet another way that migrants and exiles tell their story. Perhaps they can also be seen as prayers to their divinities that speak to what is going on in their lives.

Conclusion
We started this project with three questions: What lessons can World Christianity learn from refugees’ resistance to border regimes? How might refugees be enacting the Mission of God while living in liminal spaces like camps, detention centers and border crossings? How might migrants and refugees be shaping religion and the next Christianities in post-secular societies?

My hope is that in some way the blogs have given us a way forward in regard to these living questions. Peace be with you!


Rafael Vallejo started his theological career at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and San Francisco Theological Seminary and from there continued on with a Master in Theological Studies from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Divinity at the University of Toronto. From 2011-2016, he travelled extensively and studied with indigenous communities in Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina as part of his PhD dissertation (2018) on “Faith Perspectives of Mexican Migrant Farm Workers in Canada”. He serves as affiliate faculty at the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at the University of Notre Dame.

Rafael is also part of the NEXT Church blogging cohort and his pieces focus on the experience of refugees and mission. 

Pilgrimage is in the Resistance

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Rev. Greg Klimovitz is curating a series featuring those who made their pilgrimage to the Holy Land with NEXT Churchfrom May 19-27, 2019. So much of the biblical story, especially the narratives that surround the work and witness of Jesus, occurred en route somewhere and in a context of political occupation, social, ethnic, and economic divisions, and conflict with religious and political powers that be. This month, contributors will contemplate “pilgrimage is…” as they ponder: where did you sense “God with us?” Where was “God with Us” more difficult to claim? How did you imagine leaning into “God with Us” as you returned home? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebookand Twitter, even as you make your own pilgrimages this summer and beyond. After all, life is pilgrimage. 

by Julia Watkins

(Julia Watkins)

With the sun already beating down, we pilgrims stepped out of the climatized comfort of our tour bus and onto the sacred hundred-acre ground where the Nassar family has cultivated fruit trees for the past century. Known as the Tent of Nations, the land overlooks the walled-off city of Bethlehem, where Jesus was once born into occupied rule. The entryway is surrounded by stones painted in the languages of many nations, which proclaim a central message: “WE REFUSE TO BE ENEMIES.” There, Daoud Nassar welcomed and shepherded us into the shady shelter of one of the property’s many caves.

The caves are among the Nassars’ many creative responses to 28 years of state-issued threats to confiscate the land they have long called home. Perched on the only immediate hilltop yet unoccupied by Israeli settlers, Tent of Nations is prime real estate. If not for the family’s property deed and constant land cultivation, the Israeli state would have claimed their acreage for settlement expansion long ago. As it were, the state has resorted to repeated disruption and intimidation tactics. Government officials have eliminated access to water and electricity, issued demolition orders for structures existing above ground, razed orchards, and obstructed the main access road, all in an attempt to drive the Nassars from their land.

In response, the Nassars might have chosen to take revenge. They might have chosen to surrender to despair. They might have chosen to hate. Most recently, government officials went so far as to offer the Nassars a blank check for their property. They might very easily have chosen to leave.

The Nassar family might have chosen to become victims, but that it not what they did. Instead, they chose a path of creative, nonviolent resistance. They chose to navigate the court system, even at great personal expense. They chose to install solar panels, to collect rainwater, to make room in caves, and to partner with people across differences to fill their demolished fields with trees that will only bear fruit with patience and care.

If survival were the goal, the Nassars’ chosen responses would make little sense. With settlement boundaries creeping ever nearer to their property, it is hard to imagine the family will be able to remain there forever. Eventually, they — like so many of their neighbors — will be displaced.

Inside one of the caves on Tent of Nations property, multiple languages convey some of the core values: “justice, peace, and the conservation of creation.” (Julia Watkins)

But, the Nassars are not moving in the direction of survival. They are taking one step at a time toward bringing the entryway stones’ central message to life. They are refusing to be enemies, instead, choosing a path that dignifies their persecutors as well as their supporters around the world. The Nassars are moving in the direction of life to the full, even if it costs them everything they have.

As pilgrims on our journey toward wholeness, it is tempting to measure our progress by how far we think we have come. We might look to facts and figures to assure us we are on the right path, and to a certain extent, those numbers matter. When we look to the future of the church, it matters that there are people in the pews. It matters that we meet our stewardship goals. Even more, it matters that everyone has equal access to housing, food, healthcare, education, and beauty. Still, if we place our hope in outcomes alone, we will be bound for bitterness and despair. At the end of the day, there will always be more work to do. On the path to justice, we will not find our hope in the outcomes but in the resistance. When together we resist a narrative that ends in death, we — like the Nassar family — join our Risen Lord in life beyond measure.


Originally from Atlanta, Julia Watkins is delighted to have recently returned to the South, where she currently serves as Pastoral Resident for Mission & Outreach at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Church Matters — When It Mobilizes

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Rev. Ken D. Fuquay is curating a series featuring an eclectic group of voices responding to the question, “Does church matter? And if it matters, how, and if it does not, why?” Some of the voices speak from the center of the PC(USA); others stand on the periphery. One or two of the voices come from other denominations while some speak to us from the wilderness and barren places. “To every age, Christ dies anew and is resurrected within the imagination of humans.” These voices are stirring up that imagination in their own way. May your imagination be stirred as you consider their insight. We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Rev. Stephen Roach Knight

Does church even matter anymore? That was one of the questions posed to me when I was invited to write for this blog, and the one that most resonated with me. Of course, my answer to that question is “Yes,” but perhaps not for the reason you might expect (or, if you know me, then, well, you probably would).

I believe church matters, perhaps more than ever, as a center for organizing in local communities. A few years ago, we invited Liz Butler from the Movement Strategy Center and Friends of the Earth to come and speak at the Transform Network national conference in Washington, D.C., and as an activist, she said it better than I had heard anyone say it before (which is why we posted it on the Transform Network website for posterity): “Community is the first step of collective action. Faith communities play a vital role.”

There is an incredible amount of movement work that needs to be done in order to effect positive change in our communities, in our country, and in our world — and it won’t be accomplished without the vital participation of churches as centers for personal and societal transformation.

In the Moral Movement work that I’m a part of through Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, the participation of clergy and moral leaders at the center has been intentional and necessary. Many faith leaders are awakening to the responsibility to no longer be chaplains to empire but to be “prophets of the resistance” (as Michael-Ray Matthews says) or “moral prophets to the nation” (as Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II puts it).

Yes, the local church is to be a house of prayer and worship, but it must also be a place of action and mobilization. The era of the country club church, the membership club for insiders, is over (if it was ever sanctified at all to begin with).

Churches with buildings in neighborhoods and city centers can and must open their doors not just so that people can come in on Sunday mornings but so that people can go out the six other days of the week to be salt and light and wounded healers. And clergy are being called to not just preach truth, love, and justice from the pulpit on Sunday mornings but to proclaim truth, love, and justice in the public square — at press conferences and vigils and rallies to address and confront injustice.

Church work and social justice work are both extremely difficult and life-long commitments. Both require strength that comes from a deep inner well of faith and spirituality. That is why, at Transform Network, we have chosen to put such a strong emphasis on what my wife Holly Roach Knight calls “contemplative resistance.” The idea being that we must develop practices of contemplative spirituality that will feed us and guide us daily as we seek to be about God’s work of love and justice in the world. Without those practices, we will flame out and burn those around us with our toxic Christianity or, in my case, masculinity. Centering prayer and other practices are daily opportunities to pull out the poison of white supremacy and patriarchy.

There’s really no excuse today. The question you might’ve asked in years past, “But how do we do it? How do we get engaged?” is no longer a difficult question to answer. There are so many tools and resources available today that speak to faith and social justice, and campaigns (like the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival) to get involved with in order to engage. But if you are still uncertain and need help discerning where you and your church might best be engaged in the good fight of God’s justice in your community, I hope you’ll reach out to us at Transform Network. We’re available to spend 30 minutes on the phone with you for a free justice church coaching call to get to know you and offer whatever support we can to help you take the next steps to faithful presence and authentic engagement where you are, with the people you are walking with. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

You’re not in this alone. In order to change everything, it will take everyone — and every church. Because church still matters!


Rev. Steve Roach Knight currently serves as Director of Communications for Repairers of the Breach, the nonprofit social justice organization founded and led by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. Steve has previously served as National Faith Organizer, mobilizing people of faith to the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, among other projects he has worked on for Bishop Barber. Steve is a commissioned minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and has formerly served as full-time consultant to the denomination’s church planting and church revitalization arm, Hope Partnership for Missional Transformation. Steve is a co-founder and current board member of Transform Network.

Resist Right Now

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Lee Hinson-Hasty is curating a series identifying books that Presbyterian leaders are reading now that inform their ministry and work. Why are these texts relevant today? How might they bring us into God’s future? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Kathy Wolf Reed

Earlier this year I was fortunate to read Walter Brueggemann’s Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. Like many of Brueggemann’s works, the book is both brief and powerful, making it (somewhat ironically) an ideal choice for those in professional ministry.

Striking to me was Brueggemann’s description of ancient Egypt: defined by anxiety, overly concerned with productivity, and overcome with an idolatrous worship of commodity. This exhausting mode of existence is not only an apt description of modern day society but modern day mainline Protestantism as well. I suppose that’s why I have not been able to get this book out of my mind.

Amidst threats that somehow our hard-earned commodities might not be safe or our ability to be productive could become compromised, human fear propels us into overdrive. We believe that if we could just do or have more, we might attain the peace our hearts long for – peace that in truth comes only from relationship with God. In the church, the tendency toward commoditization manifests itself as measuring ministry in numbers: membership, budgets, baptisms. We look across the street at what others are doing and think, “Maybe we should start a new program for singles/coffee ministry/contemporary worship service.”

Brueggemann names the flaw in our logic, describing the “endless pursuit of greater security and greater happiness, a pursuit that is always unsatisfied, because we have never gotten or done enough… yet” (page 13). He reminds us how in the Sabbath commandment, our God “nullifies that entire system of anxious production” (page 27). God gives us not just an option but a direct order to place boundaries on our inclinations to perpetuate anxiety.

“Such a faithful practice of work stoppage is an act of resistance.” Brueggemann writes. “It declares in bodily ways that we will not participate in the anxiety system that pervades our social environment” (page 31). He goes on to remind us how Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28)

I cannot think of a more relevant book for today’s world and church. I am grateful for the gift of a biblical framework through which to understand my own anxieties and the restlessness of the society and systems in which I serve. I recommend this book to all church leaders as we continue to navigate anxious times.


Kathy Wolf Reed has served as co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Auburn, AL since 2014. The Mayberry-esque setting of Auburn provides a context in which Kathy and her family (co-pastor husband Nick and their three small children) can enjoy all the perks of small town life while the presence of a major university offers them constant opportunities to attend interesting programs and cheer on the Tigers from football games to equestrian meets.