Holy Resistance Isn’t Just For History’s Winners

In early November, Democrats won several key elections up and down the ballot in states like Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and, perhaps most notably, in New York, where Zohran Mamdani became the first Muslim, South Asian, Democratic Socialist mayor-elect in New York City’s history. For voters concerned about the Republican Party’s authoritarian lurch, it was a reminder that political wins on the left are still possible.

Especially during times of crisis, it is tempting for Christians to only take inspiration from the winners. Biblical figures like Moses and David are commonly lifted up as exemplars of leadership and courage because their resistance ultimately thwarted the forces of injustice. Moses forcibly stopped an Egyptian overseer from beating an enslaved Hebrew, while the heroic actions of the young shepherd resulted in military victories for the Israelites. But what of the biblical figures who resisted but did not win? What can be learned from them? Take, for example, the story of the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1.

The Vacation Bible School summary of the story goes like this: For a time, the Hebrew people are allowed to dwell in Egypt, but when the new pharaoh comes to power and realizes that the Hebrews are outnumbering the Egyptians, he devises a plan. Pharaoh instructs the Hebrew midwives to kill every newborn male Hebrew baby. Shiphrah and Puah, who are both identified as God-fearing, refuse to obey Pharaoh’s commands and are reprimanded for their disobedience. The text says the two of them are blessed with families, but it also notes that Pharaoh eventually continues his genocidal campaign without the help of the midwives (Exodus 1:15-22).

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The story of the midwives is easily overlooked in the larger narrative of God’s people, not only because women in the Bible often get sidelined but because their actions do not change the trajectory of the larger story. In Shiphrah and Puah’s story, there are no miracles, no major victories, only the quiet refusal of two God-fearing women.

Even though their resistance did not ultimately thwart Pharaoh’s genocidal plan, they risked their lives to save as many Hebrew children as they could. Drawing from a deep faith in the God of life, they committed to resisting the forces of death regardless of the outcome. There are parallels between the midwives’ time and our own.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, he has repeated several conspiracy theories, namely that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from U.S. citizens, that immigrants are launching an invasion of the U.S., and that undocumented immigrants are voting in general elections. Trump has backed up his rhetoric with violent policy, sending masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the National Guard into cities to harass, forcibly arrest, and detain undocumented migrants and those who stand in solidarity with them. These violent crackdowns in cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago, Memphis, and Charlotte can make resistance seem impossible and futile. Preventing federal agents and local officials from carrying out these crackdowns is tactically difficult and dangerous. Even the brave bystanders who film these interactions are rarely able to prevent the violence.

So like Shiphrah and Puah, who were also living in a time under an unjust ruler and with limited recourse, we must ask ourselves: How should we resist both individually and socially?

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In theologian and ethicist Emilie M. Townes’ seminal text Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil, she explains that, for her, “life and wholeness (the dismantling of evil/the search for and celebration of freedom) is found in our individual interactions with our communities and the social worlds, peoples, and life beyond our immediate terrains.” In other words, the Hebrew midwives dismantle evil by making the individual choice to refuse an unjust order. By focusing on the mundane, “everydayness” of moral actions, Townes provides us with a framework to consider why Shiphrah and Puah are named in the first place, even if they did not immediately see the fruits of their labor or deter Pharaoh from his destructive course.

In the concluding chapter titled “Everydayness: Beginning Notes on Dismantling the Cultural Production of Evil,” Townes writes that “Our world needs a new (or perhaps ancient) vision molded by justice and peace rather than winning and losing if we are to unhinge the cultural production of evil.” Like Townes, the Hebrew midwives pull our focus outside the oppressor’s endgame of winning and losing. Shiphrah and Puah act out of a deep spiritual commitment that places them in principled solidarity with the oppressed and against the wicked forces of injustice. This ancient story provides us with a new way to consider what it means to resist.

As protests against the genocide in Gaza erupted across U.S. campuses last year, this ancient wisdom of everyday resistance was on full display. Our peers mirrored the faithfulness of Shiphrah and Puah by deploying their resources, skills, talents, and time in service of the goals of collective liberation. Guided by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, students pressured their universities to disclose their investments and divest from Israel’s death-dealing enterprise. They offered a powerful witness to their universities, politicians, and the entire world. But despite this witness, many universities caved to pressure to violently repress the protests, and U.S. politicians largely ignored students’ concerns that the U.S. was actively funding a genocide.

While these public acts of resistance—protests, walkouts, rallies, occupying buildings—gained national attention, what many did not see were the silent acts of refusal central to the movement. Students protected and provided for each other through small acts of care; they made and distributed meals, offered free acupuncture, and even prayed with and for one another.

In the end, many of the encampments were torn down, universities refused to divest—some even recommitted to partnerships with Israel—and many students were punished, as Israel’s genocide raged on. “The students lost,” observers may conclude. And they are not entirely wrong. However, to frame things in terms of wins and losses fails to capture the slow, important practice of world-building central to any social justice movement. 

In his conversation with journalist Ezra Klein, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates explained that even when people fight for change and do not immediately achieve their goals, their actions are still significant because they lay the groundwork for future struggles. In other words, their work gets us closer to liberation than we would have been without it. It’s an incremental game. Coates explains that many of the everyday people who fought for an end to chattel slavery died before ever seeing its abolition. “It is not written in stone that we will ultimately lose,” Coates told Klein in September. “But you understand that losing is a possibility.”

Still, even with this possibility, like Shiphrah and Puah or the enslaved Africans who never lived to see the Emancipation Proclamation, we must look for opportunities to defy injustice even in times when our goals seem unattainable.

This posture of defiance often looks like cultivating hope in times of despair. To hope, individually and collectively, is both a reminder and an affirmation of a potential future that will be just and free. This hopeful posture is also fueled by an unwavering commitment to the beloved community. This hope warns the immigrant family down the street of a potential ICE raid and shows up to defend them. This hope insists on bearing costly witness to the suffering of transgender youth targeted by this administration and insists that they belong in our churches without reservation. This hope reminds us that all of God’s children are “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Townes concludes in Womanist Ethics and theCultural Production of Evil with a powerful charge that resonates with us in our current time: “Ultimately, somewhere deep inside each of us we know that perhaps the simplest, yet the most difficult, answer to the challenge of what will we do with the fullness and incompleteness of who we are as we stare down the interior life of the cultural production of evil is live your faith deeply.” We are inspired by the Hebrew midwives because they are examples of women who lived their faith deeply. In a choreography of liberation movements that privileges broad, bold gestures, it was the quiet, yet courageous, refusal of Shiphrah and Puah that paved the way toward freedom.