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Advent Calls for Renewal

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This Advent Calls for Renewal

Joan F. Neal
December 8, 2023

Advent 2023, Week Two Reflection: Disavow and Dismantle White Supremacy

Readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 10.

IS 40:1-5, 9-11
PS 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14
2 PT 3:8-14
MK 1:1-8

The readings on the Second Sunday of Advent remind us that the purpose of Advent is to show us that we can start again, that new beginnings are possible. The Gospel and the first reading this Sunday feature the words of Isaiah, fulfilled in John the Baptist, a voice in the wilderness proclaiming Jesus’ entry into human history. Here, God is doing something entirely new. Human history is starting over again, and we get a second chance to hear the Word of God and follow it.

Read NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections here!

In the U.S., we could use this restart to our history. White supremacy and Christian nationalism were built into our systems and structures by people with a vision of America as a place for only a certain kind of privileged, white Christian. This white supremacy has endured for centuries and is contrary to the Gospel. Jesus showed up to transform the structures and habits that cut us off from God — to bring liberty to captive people and let the oppressed go free. Sadly, these structures still show up in how we treat one another: economic inequality, lack of access to affordable healthcare, and violence and oppression against Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, etc.

In recent years, NETWORK has sought to tell this story and spread it far and wide. In doing so, we have centered two justice-seekers — Fr. Bryan Massingale and Dr. Robert P. Jones — whose voices cry out in the desert of white supremacy as it manifests itself in U.S. Christianity. In October, we hosted the third of our White Supremacy and American Christianity dialogues with them, this time focusing on how “a consistent ethic of hate threatens our democracy.”

Read NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections here!

We know and recognize the truth and that truth can set us all free. It requires facing our history, repenting and repairing the wrongs. NETWORK’s conversations with Fr. Massingale and Dr. Jones offer a sobering perspective into the founding sins of the U.S. But where we start doesn’t always have to be where we end. This week’s second reading reminds us that as we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, we must conduct ourselves in holiness because, “God does not delay his promise,” and “is patient …, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

This Advent, let us all heed the call of the prophetic voices of our day and set about educating, organizing, and lobbying to disavow and dismantle white supremacy and Christian nationalism–in our communities and our churches.

Call to Action:

To assist with the ongoing work of dismantling white supremacy, NETWORK created a Reflection and Discussion Guide that you can download. It is a companion to the latest White Supremacy and American Christianity online conversation. We hope that it equips you, advocates and supporters, in personal reflection and your own conversations. We encourage you to consider hosting screenings and discussion groups to help educate your community about white Christian nationalism — an ongoing threat to a multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy where all people can thrive.

Where in your community does the path still need to be made ready for the way of the Lord? 

Advent 2023 Week 3 Calls Us to Bring Rejoicing

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This Advent Calls us to Bring Rejoicing

Jarrett Smith
December 12, 2023

Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent, December 17.

Is 61:1-2A, 10-11
Lk 1:46-48, 19-50, 53-54
1 Thes 5:16-24
Jn 1:6-8, 19-28

The readings on the Third Sunday of Advent are meant to be a time of rejoicing and gladness amidst solemn anticipation. This spirit could readily apply to expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The prophet Isaiah speaks of God bringing glad tidings to people in poverty, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty, and giving freedom to imprisoned people. A “year of favor” is one way to describe the year that Congress passed the expanded CTC and lifted a record number of children out of poverty. Across the U.S. millions of families were able to flourish where they had previously been held back or held down by lack of basic resources. This was a resounding victory for justice-seekers who envision a world in which all people have what they need.

Read NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections here!

When Congress allowed the expanded CTC to expire at the end of 2021, child poverty rose from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022. This hit Black, Brown, and Indigenous families especially hard, and this staggering setback was about one thing: the choices of Congress.

It is reckless policy, and morally repugnant, to extend tax breaks to corporations without also enacting robust expansion of the CTC. Congress must pass a Child Tax Credit that allows the 19 million who do not qualify for the entire credit to get the entire credit phased in faster. And it must apply to all children in the household.

In recent years, NETWORK has sought to tell this story and spread it far and wide. In doing so, we have centered two justice-seekers — Fr. Bryan Massingale and Dr. Robert P. Jones — whose voices cry out in the desert of white supremacy as it manifests itself in U.S. Christianity. In October, we hosted the third of our White Supremacy and American Christianity dialogues with them, this time focusing on how “a consistent ethic of hate threatens our democracy.”

Read NETWORK’s Advent 2023 reflections here!

For people of faith, especially Christians, it should be especially clear that a policy that helps so many children out of poverty should receive enthusiastic support and not be allowed to expire. In the Gospel this Sunday, John the Baptist refers to Jesus as “one among you who you do not recognize.” Similar to the judgment account in Matthew 25, we so often fail in our policy choices to recognize Jesus in those who are marginalized and harmed.

As we look to the Third Sunday of Advent, the church also celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. This feast celebrates the love that Our Lady has for all of her children. What better way to translate that love into concrete action in the world than for Congress to pass a CTC that supports the most vulnerable?

Call to Action:

Send a message to your Members of Congress. Tell them to pass a fully refundable, monthly Child Tax Credit so all of us have what we need to take care of ourselves, and our families.

People cast their votes for federal democracy reform as part of NETWORK’s “Team Democracy” events across the country in 2021. Voting rights, which have come under threat at the state level since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, are a key component of NETWORK’s efforts to defend democracy.

The Faith-Filled Push To Save Democracy

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The Faith-Filled Push To Save Democracy

A Stark Choice of Futures Faces Voters in 2022
Melissa Cedillo
October 7, 2022
People cast their votes for federal democracy reform as part of NETWORK’s “Team Democracy” events across the country in 2021. Voting rights, which have come under threat at the state level since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, are a key component of NETWORK’s efforts to defend democracy.

People cast their votes for federal democracy reform as part of NETWORK’s “Team Democracy” events across the country in 2021. Voting rights, which have come under threat at the state level since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, are a key component of NETWORK’s efforts to defend democracy.

Upholding a democracy is a daunting task this year. According to the elections data website FiveThirtyEight, 195 out of 529 GOP nominees on the ballot this year “fully denied” the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Dozens of others “raised questions” or accepted the results “with reservations.” Only 71 respondents say they accept the results fully.

As statistics like these surface the vulnerability and fragility of the system, faith groups in Washington and around the country are attuned to the moral urgency that this moment requires.

As the 2022 midterm elections grow closer, the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice is just one entity among this patchwork of organizations, interfaith coalitions, and campaigns are coming together to respond to election deniers, Christian nationalism, and all the forces that currently threaten democracy in the U.S.

A Particular Threat

Anthea Butler, chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania

Anthea Butler

Anthea Butler, chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a historian of African-American and U.S. religion, notes that one of the long lasting threats to democracy continues to be Christian nationalism. Butler has written and studied the intersection of race, religion, history, and politics extensively. In her book “White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America,” she outlines the long history of Christian Nationalism and racism in the U.S.

“The first thing to understand about a lot of Christian nationalists is that they don’t want democracy,” Butler says. “Because at [Christian nationalism’s] core, it really wants to set up God’s law, rather than the Constitution, as an operating document for what this country is supposed to be.”

Butler says this form of nationalism poses a threat not only to people who immigrated to the country to flee religious persecution, but also to Christians who do not follow the same political beliefs. Denying the separation of church and state, ignoring the fact that many people who are not Christian live in the U.S., or simply not taking the outcome of the 2020 election seriously are some of the ways Christian nationalism erodes the foundation of a country that celebrates religious freedom.

One group responding to the threat of Christian nationalism is the Center for Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation.

Sabrina Dent of the Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation

Sabrina Dent

“The ideology that is being promoted by a small group of people that identify as Christians that causes great harm and moral injuries to the community as a whole,” explains Sabrina E. Dent, president of the center.

The center is a community of scholars, faith leaders, organizers, and citizens working to expand the idea of religious freedom in the U.S. The center also works to put on educational programming. The center has worked on immigration issues, LGTBQ+ issues, reproductive health issues, voting rights, environmental issues, criminal justice issues, church and state issues, and voting rights. Whenever the center feels that there is a justice issue, especially when looking at racial and religious minorities, they are willing to speak up and support these groups.

“A lot of our work is done in collaboration with other groups as well because, like I say all the time, this is not work that we could do by ourselves, “ Dent explains.

The Range of Issues

Others, including NETWORK, also see the work of protecting democracy as extending to other freedoms, especially voting rights. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, himself a Baptist minister, has explained the political as a way to embrace the dignity of all of humanity in his case for expanding voting rights.

“There is no question that voting rights is a moral issue. I have often said that democracy in a real sense is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. This notion that each of us is a child of God, and therefore we ought to have a vote and a voice in the direction of our country and our destiny within it,” Warnock told NPR at the beginning of the year.

“If we don’t have democracy in this country, all human rights in this country are going to be denigrated. We need to fight for democracy,” says Barbara Hazelett, a member of NETWORK’s Virginia Advocates team.

Her group attends public town halls to make comments about justice issues like paid family leave or eliminating practices like solitary confinement. She has attended the local events to hand out leaflets on different topics and talk about state legislation with Virginians. She has also traveled to Washington to advocate for bills.

The comprehensive nature of this work, focusing across a range of issues, exposes a friction that is especially prevalent in Catholic circles, the issue of single-issue voting. Pope Francis, in his 2018 letter Gaudete Et Exsultate, spoke against this approach when he spoke of poverty and human life issues as being “equally sacred” to one another.

He revisited this rhetoric in a June 2020 general audience, in which he noted that “we cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”

Min. Christian S. Watkins, government relations advocate at NETWORK, is quick to tie the work of defending democracy to the hyper-racialized rhetoric happening in the U.S. The risk that poses to a healthy democracy is that it continues to feed racist policies that only benefit a few and which intentionally suppress others, especially Black and Brown people. In other words, the system has to live up to its own ideals to protect it in the future.

For the structure of democracy in the U.S. to be authentic, says Watkins, it must include the people that have historically been — and continue to be — left out of democracy: “We have to realize our common bonds, our mutual experiences, our interconnectedness.”