An environmentalist martyr? Some Christian reflections

Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, has been assassinated in her home. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras, which Global Witness says has become the deadliest country in the world for environmentalists.

- Democracy Now, 3rd March 2016.

This crime is part of a broader pattern of indigenous leaders being assassinated and repressed in Honduras since the coup in 2009.

It is also part of a broader pattern (especially in Central and South America) of environmental activists being murdered. Hundreds are killed each year.

What is different here is that Berta Cáceres had more global prominence than most indigenous leaders and global south environmentalists, partially due to having received the Goldman Prize.

Persecution of environmentalists and indigenous people in (some) western nations, generally takes more subtle forms: designation as terrorists, surveillance, restrictions of legal rights, demonisation in the corporate press for environmentalists and dispossession, marginalisation, racism (overt and systemic), elevated incarceration, and demonisation in the corporate press for indigenous peoples.

Christians who follow the crucified and risen Messiah are discipled into a narrative that often places us in conflict with empire (even if some Christians haven't realised that yet or suppress it). If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar's claims to universal jurisdiction are idolatrous and false. Failure to recognise and submit to imperial claims can be bad for your health. This is why so many Christians have been killed through the ages (and today!) for following Christ.

Today, empire takes various forms: aggressive militarism, economic exploitation, corporate hegemony, individualist consumerism, neo-colonialism and what Karl Barth called the "almost completely demonic" force of capitalism (CD III/4, 531).

But empires are empires because they become adept at wielding the sword (in its various guises) against all opponents, not just Christians. That environmentalists and indigenous leaders (and in this case, both) are being persecuted and killed for standing against corporate profits and corrupt governments ought to lead followers of a crucified man into a measure of solidarity with them.

Christians bear witness to the truth of Christ's victory through words and lives that conform to a different logic of grace and peace. This will lead us into a variety of responses to the contexts in which we find ourselves; there is no one-size-fits-all Christian response to empire. However, the Nazarene will not let us make any lasting peace with empire. If we don't at times find ourselves in (at times) dangerous contradiction to the powers of this age, then perhaps we've grown a little too used to seeing through the eyes of our dominant culture and may need to be awakened once again to the call of the one who bid his first disciples leave their nets, their tax booths, their swords and take up their cross.

Berta Cáceres was very likely killed for her work bearing witness to certain truths. Are there any truths that you believe are important enough to risk doing the same?
Image from online search. Photographer unknown.

Killed for crossing a corporation?

Environmental activists in the developed world risk being added to no-fly lists or infiltrated by undercover police who break rules prohibiting sexual relations with those they are monitoring, illegally act as agents provocateurs and even lie under oath.

Environmental activists in the developing world risk assassination. According to a recent report from Global Witness, over the last decade there have been 711 recorded cases of activists being murdered, and that is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, given the poor level of reporting for most of the world. In Brazil alone, where stronger monitoring institutions exist, 365 deaths were recorded, yet less than 10% of case were brought to trial and barely 1% resulted in a conviction.

Journalists who report on such matters become targets of harassment and violence.

Anyone who has studied Christian history or the experience of the global church just in the last 100 years knows that being killed for standing up for justice and the truth is hardly unusual.

Keeping people in the dark is profitable.

Dying and killing for blasphemy

Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.

- John 16.2b.

Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistani government minister for minorities, was assassinated this week for speaking up as a Christian against Pakistan's blasphemy laws. He was the only Christian minister in the Pakistani government and his murderers left behind a tract claiming responsibility in the name of "Taliban al-Qaida".

Only days before, he had given an interview in which he addressed threats against his life (see above): "The forces of violence, militant [?] organisations, the Taliban and [?] al-Qaida, they want to impose their radical philosophy in Pakistan. And whoever stands against their radical philosophy, they threaten them. When I am leading this campaign against the Sharia law for the abolishment of blasphemy law and speaking for the oppressed and marginalised Christian and other persecuted minorities, these Taliban threaten. But I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] cross. And I am following of the cross. And I am ready to die for a cause. I am living for my community and suffering people and I will die to defend their rights. So these threats and these warnings can not change my opinion and principles. I would prefer to die for my principle and for the justice rather [than] compromise on these threats."

May he rest in peace awaiting a glorious resurrection.

Shahbaz Bhatti is far from the only Christian this week who has died for his faith, but his high profile and eloquent and timely witness are likely to see this issue receive a little media attention. His death is a reminder that Christians fight for the truth by being willing to die, rather than being willing to kill. Killing to prevent or punish blasphemy is itself blasphemous against the one who gave his life as the true and living way. He was himself killed for blasphemy (Mark 14.64).

Of course Christians would never consider killing Muslims to be a good thing or condone state sanctioned violence with this goal, would we? We would never seek a spurious theological rationale for our fears in order to justify murder or oppression, would we?

It doesn't have to be this way

"This foundational theological belief in the sovereign rule of God in the risen Jesus Christ can be the basis for an attitude of confidence without lapsing into an ugly triumphalism or a defensive paranoia. The sovereignty of God is the basis not for a martyr complex, but for true martyrdom – which is witnessing to Jesus Christ come what may. A persecution complex is essentially self-interested and even narcissistic. A life lived for Jesus Christ, on the other hand, risks itself entirely for the good of the other without regard for self – knowing that it entrusts itself to the God who raised Jesus from the dead."

- Michael Jensen.

Michael is talking about why a particular denomination or church doesn't need to fear its own demise, though his key theological claim here (which lies at the centre of his PhD thesis on martyrdom) is not far from the centre of my own thesis.

The good news of the risen Christ means that Christians don't need to fear squaring up to whatever social, political or ecological challenges that may already exist or may soon arise. We are free to pour ourselves out in loving service of neighbour for the glory of God, entrusting ourselves to the God who raised Jesus from the dead. We can do the hard work of thinking through how best to love our neighbours in a rapidly changing world, where a complex variety of interconnected goods clamour for our attention in patterns both persistent and novel.

Why does the good news banish our fears? Or rather, why does it enable us to face them squarely and yet be undaunted, requiring no distraction, no promise of a silver bullet, no paralysing despair, no frantic scramble to save ourselves? In faith, hope and love, Jesus walked willingly into the valley of the shadow of death. We can follow him without being alone, without needing to vindicate ourselves, without needing any guarantees that the path will not be bumpy or difficult. Where he has gone, we follow.

I have finished a number of my recent posts suggesting that "It doesn't have to be this way". The possibility of another way is discovered as we walk in the footsteps of the one who carried his cross to Golgotha. And it begins with surprise, wonder and joy at the birth of a baby amongst beasts. Advent is a season in which Christians are to wait, to pray, to hope: it doesn't have to be this way.

Are you already dead?

"I say to you this morning that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it then you aren’t fit to live. You may be thirty eight years old, as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you’re afraid you will lose your job; or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity; or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, shoot at you, or bomb your house and so you refuse to take a stand. Well you may go on and live until you’re ninety, but you’re just as dead at thirty eight as you would be at ninety. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice."

- Martin Luther King, from a 1967 speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,
titled “But if Not“.

Check your pulse. Are you already dead? Are you largely occupied with expanding and protecting your goods, preserving your health and massaging your reputation?

There are things worse than death. And so there are things worth dying for. Would you know one if you saw it?
H/T Milan.

A drop in the ocean

How many fish in the sea? A fraction of how many there were a few decades ago.

Where has the oil gone? Has the BP disaster been overhyped? Or simply pushed underwater? And where are all the dead animals? And where is the dispersant?

Is it too late to save Miami? An interview with a paleoclimatologist on rising sea levels.

But really, what's climate change got to do with the price of bread? Quite a lot, actually. And the stability of food prices is related to political stability.

The current Russian heat wave is unprecedented for at least 1,000 years and likely to become the deadliest heat wave in history.

What makes a Methodist Sunday School teacher mad?

Are games a waste of time when the world is burning? Or might they be just what is needed?

Is martyrdom a repudiation of the goodness of life? Not at all, says Michael Jensen (summarising his PhD in a page).

And in a mere three part series, Ben tackles the perennially vexatious issue of gelato ethics.