Protest

Tennessee Democratic state representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, who faced expulsion over their participation in gun control protests, and Gloria Johnson, who retained her seat, speak to members of the media following their meeting with President Joe Biden (D) at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 24, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Justin Pearson ran against Jeff Johnston, and Justin Jones ran against Laura Nelson. According to The Tennesseean, Jones won nearly 80 percent of the vote in Nashville, and Pearson won more than 90 percent in Memphis. 

Korla Masters 7-10-2023
 An illustration of a protest for Michael Brown at a concert hall. Banners hang from the balcony on the left side over the audience as a conductor leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on stage on the right side.

Illustration by Jocelyn Reiter

IN FALL 2014, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performed Brahms’ Requiem on a Saturday evening two months after the murder of Michael Brown Jr., at a concert hall about 10 miles from Canfield Green, where Brown was killed and his adolescent body left out in the Missouri August sun for four and a half hours.

That summer and fall, people in the city and county of St. Louis lived in the tension of waiting — we were waiting for a grand jury to make a decision. Not a verdict about the officer’s guilt: The grand jury was tasked with deciding whether this murder was even a murder at all — whether anything happened on Aug. 9 that could even be considered maybe a crime. Maybe worth investigating. Or whether it was just a regular day’s work.

As intermission was ending and folks were back in their seats, just as the orchestra was regathered and the conductor was raising his baton, a small group of ticketholders in the audience stood up and sang. In singing, they asked the audience, made up largely of people who could choose whether or not they were impacted by the grand jury’s decision that loomed over the city like the shadow of death, to make a decision of their own. They stood up, one by one, and joined their voices in an old labor song: “Which side are you on, friend, which side are you on?” they sang. “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all. Which side are you on, friend, which side are you on?” They hung banners made of bedsheets over the balcony; one that echoed the piece being performed that evening was painted: “Requiem for Mike Brown, 1996-2014.”

These protesters brought this question — this disruption — into a space that could’ve kept it to business as usual. They sang the two refrains in repetition, almost like a Taizé chant, for several minutes, then they left the hall together, chanting a chant that at the time was still brand-new to most Americans: Black Lives Matter.

The disrupters left to a mix of silence and applause from the audience and the musicians. The concert continued, but the question hung in the air. It’s the same question that hangs in the air of many of Jesus’ disciple-calling stories, and it’s certainly the question that pervades Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ good news.

Mitchell Atencio 11-16-2022
A red football helmet against a white background has parts of its outer shell disintegrating and floating off.

Gearstd / iStock

EARLY IN THE 2022 NFL season, I watched as the Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a second head injury in the span of five days. Although the NFL would not admit the first of those was a concussion, it was painfully clear that Tagovailoa suffered serious brain trauma.

In that moment, I felt the culmination of years’ worth of fretting over the sport I loved and its relationship to head injuries. I determined then and there on a Thursday night that I would quit the NFL. Why? The NFL is violent — and Christians are called to peace.

The league is unrepentant and unaccountable in its abuse of the brains and bodies of its players, and no amount of reform can change that. I am convicted that if I am to love my neighbors — if I am to love God — then I must resist the NFL.

Mitchell Atencio 7-21-2022

Students participate in the May 17, 2022 ‘Day Against Homophobia’ protest at Seattle Pacific University. Giao Nguyen/Courtesy 
The Associated Students of Seattle Pacific.

Over the last year, the majority of Seattle Pacific University’s community has been unwavering in its affirmation of LGBTQ equality on campus ... Nevertheless, on July 1, the evangelical university’s board of trustees affirmed — for a third time in about a year — that the school would not change its employee policy.

Hannah Bowman 5-26-2022

People march through a Supreme Court Justice's suburban neighborhood to protest the Court's leaked opinion on Roe v. Wade. Image credit: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect.

Christians are often unhelpfully wary of aggressive protest tactics. They promote a particular understanding of “unity” or “love” prioritizing “civility” over difficult conversations that lead to justice. Some Christians are even uncomfortable being present during debates or protests where activists utilize more aggressive tactics. But Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and Paul’s letters to the church help Christians analyze power and privilege so that they can engage in healthy disruption and confrontation.

George Gavriel poses for a portrait after an interview with Reuters in his home studio in Kokkinotrimithia, Cyprus, September 22, 2021. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou

Cypriot artist George Gavriel almost lost his job as a high school headmaster after his works depicting Jesus in unconventional settings and also taking a swipe at politicians drew the wrath of religious and government leaders.

Gavriel, 62, uses his art as a protest medium to take aim at what he considers the ills of society.

Prior to this moment, new allies have preached a gospel of Jesus devoid of justice. They failed to make the theological connection that Jesus and justice are, in fact, mutually inclusive. To invoke Jesus and then to invoke justice is redundant. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we commit ourselves to the ministry of justice. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we declare the psalmist’s decree that justice and righteousness are the foundations of God’s throne. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we summon the messianic prophecy that the spirit of the lord was upon Jesus, to preach the good news to the poor, to set the prisoners free from the Roman industrial complex, and to proclaim liberty to those who were oppressed. Every time we invoke the name of Jesus, we remember that Jesus was convicted of a crime he did not commit, received an unfair trial, and was sentenced to a state-sanctioned lynching on a tree. The ministry of justice is the ministry of Jesus. We cannot divorce our theology from the ministry of justice. To do so is to divorce ourselves from Jesus himself.

Samuel Son 6-03-2020

Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash

When the spirit came down and lit a fire in the remnant of Jesus followers on Pentecost, those followers immediately went out to the streets and protested.

Jamar A. Boyd II 12-02-2019

Image via REUTERS/Laurel Chor

The similarities here are not only due to the presence of death and violence, but high tensions between government and people. Here we’ve witnessed images of police exercising excessive force on protestors, extensive arrests of nonviolent demonstrators, and vile displays of militarization in neighborhood streets, much like in Baltimore, Compton, and other cities in the U.S.

Candace Sanders 9-20-2019

On Sept. 20, youth activists led a climate strike march in Washington, D.C. in solidarity with millions of other young people striking around the world today. Thousands of youth organizations, activists, and protesters gathered at John Marshall Park and marched to the Capitol to mobilize action for the current climate crisis. Today's global climate strikes kick off an upcoming week of international climate action that will address the necessary steps towards change. These are photos from the event. 

Anti-extradition bill protesters use trolleys to stop passengers from entering the security gates during a mass demonstration after a woman was shot in the eye, at the Hong Kong international airport. August 13, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Police and protesters clashed at Hong Kong's international airport on Tuesday after flights were disrupted for a second day as the political crisis in the former British colony deepened.

Tian An Wong 7-22-2019

Members of the theatre group Papel Machete perform during a protest calling for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rossello in front of La Fortaleza in San Juan, Puerto Rico. July 21, 2019. REUTERS/Gabriella N. Baez

The water that gives life mixes
With the blood and the tears
From the gas, the bullets

Anna Sutterer 7-19-2019

Sr. Carol Zinn, executive director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, summoned the image of the Good Samaritan. She said nations will not be judged by their GDP or success on Wall Street, but how they treat the most vulnerable and marginalized.

Tian An Wong 6-27-2019

Protesters chant slogans outside the Department of Justice in Hong Kong, China. June 27, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

On June 16, the song Sing Hallelujah to the Lord became a popular anthem of the Hong Kong protests against the extradition to China bill. The bill, it is widely believed, would provide the Chinese mainland unchecked power in detaining political dissidents in Hong Kong. This represents yet another flexing of China’s authoritarian rule over the people within its reach, and what some see as a breakdown in the “one-country, two systems” method of governance that has placed Hong Kong at an arms length of Beijing since it was handed over by the British in 1997. The annual July 1 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong are expected to see a massive turnout.

Sean Hawkey 4-22-2019

Christians are stepping up to show their leadership on climate action in London this week during the Extinction Rebellion protests that have occupied four key positions in central London over the past week. The Extinction Rebellion has three stated demands of the United Kingdom government: declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2015, and "create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.” In the collective nonviolent efforts to achieve these goals, over 950 have been arrested.

Melody Zhang 3-27-2019

Image via Melody Zhang 

8-year-old activist Havana Chapman-Edwards, also known as the Tiny Diplomat, closed that day with a powerful statement on climate justice intersectionality. “I am here today because climate justice issues are not separate from other justice issues. It’s not right that wildfires, droughts and other climate disasters are being ignored. Black, indigenous, and people of color are doing the least damage to the planet but we are the ones who are paying the price first.”

the Web Editors 12-07-2018

The group, called Shut Tornillo Down Coalition, says that the center adds to the abuse of vulnerable children by imprisoning them and separating them from their families and causes them deep harm by compounding on already existent trauma. 

Sarita Santoshini 10-11-2018

Image via REUTERS/Sivaram V

Sister Anupama, who led the protests in Kochi, said that the survivor approached the superior general in early 2017 with concerns about harassment — she was facing disciplinary action because of her resistance to “lie down with” the Bishop. Her concerns were ignored. In June 2017, before reaching out to church officials in northern India and the Vatican, she first revealed to a parish priest and bishop in Kerala that she had been abused by Mulakkal. The complaint then reached the Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, the head of the Syro-Malabar church, but no action was taken.

Samantha Field 9-28-2018

I slowly came to understand that if I was going to remain a Christian, I needed to find a path that had room for the rage and grief I carried with me as a rape survivor. Rage is the only human and rational reaction to the trauma I’d experienced, and I could not smother my humanity in order to remain a Christian. It was around this time that I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This past Tuesday, after we read Martin & Malcolm & America by James Cone, my seminary professor asked “what elements of Malcolm’s theology could contribute to Christian theology?” and my answer was immediate: holding space for rage.