A couple of weeks ago I began to write about my spiritual crisis. Its been difficult to pinpoint exactly what the root of the crisis was, and what to do about it. The path since then has taken me to concepts like radical faithfulness, and to the conflict between immediacy and gradualism.
Those concepts helped me understand many struggles I’ve had throughout my life. I learned about radical faithfulness when I was trying to figure out what I was being led to do when I was confronted by the requirement to register with the Selective Service System (the draft) when I turned eighteen years of age. Quakers in my community had a history of noncooperation with conscription, refusing to join, or even register, with the military systems. Many were imprisoned for their refusal. That was radical faithfulness, to remain true to spiritual leadings regardless of the consequences. I don’t think I could have decided to resist the draft if not for the example of those Quakers.
I was discouraged that so few other Quakers felt led to resist the draft. This was mainly because the Selective Service System had provided a way for those with religious objections to serve two years of civilian service instead of military service. That was an effective way to reduce objections to the draft, while still getting those who took that route to register with the draft.
While a student at Scattergood Friends School, I attended the Friends National Conference on the Draft and Conscription, held in Richmond, Indiana, from October 11–13, 1968.
This conference was a pivotal moment for American Quakers during the Vietnam War era. It resulted in the 1968 Richmond Declaration on the Draft, a radical statement that urged Friends to move beyond traditional “Conscientious Objection” (CO) and toward active non-cooperation with the Selective Service System.
“We Friends opposing war should refuse any kind of military service; Friends opposing conscription should refuse to cooperate with the Selective Service System.”
“…Holding CO status “blinded us to the evil of the draft itself.”
1968 Richmond Declaration on the Draft.
That was an example of immediacy, which requires us to immediately remove ourselves from any injustice we find ourselves confronted with. As opposed to gradualism, which is about moving slowly, often done by forming committees to work on the issue and attempts to maintain unity by compromise.
These concepts of radical faithfulness and immediacy would come up again and again throughout my life. Another example was when I was led to live without a car when I saw the pollution and its consequences. That came from a spiritual leading, in which I saw my beloved Rocky Mountains obscured by smog.
It has taken several years to understand my current spiritual crisis, which is a combination of things. My retirement from research in the Infant Pulmonary Function Lab at Riley Hospital for Children launched a new phase of my life.
Returning to Iowa, I began to look for new people and groups to get involved with. One reason it was difficult to leave Indianapolis was because of the many connections I had built with several different groups working for justice.
I was able to attend my Quaker meeting, which is located in Iowa.
I gradually built a number of connections. It is sadly true that the same small group of people end up doing most of the justice work in a community, finding themselves together in multiple organizations and communities.
But the world as we know it seems to spinning out of control on so many levels. My Indigenous friends have been slowly educating me. From them I now see our current circumstances are the consequences of three interrelated systems of injustice, Christian, colonial, capitalist violence (CCV). And that the antidote is three systems to counter CCV, which are Mutual Aid, LANDBACK, and Abolition.
These two sets of systems are completely incompatible. As we’ve seen, it is impossible to reform the interlocking systems of Christian, colonial, capitalist violence as long as that work is done within the context of CCV.
You cannot achieve justice by working within the systems of injustice. You have to work for the just alternatives, instead. You have to actually live by the principles of decolonial justice, i.e. Mutual Aid, LANDBACK and Abolition. The section, Burn It Down, below is an example of this.
NewCO (new conscientious objector)
All of this led me to the idea of conscientious objection to Christian, colonial, capitalist violence.
All of this is the background to help me explain my current spiritual condition. I’ll be continuing this discussion in the next post or two.
Burn It Down
As former students and a professor in, but not of, a U.S. liberal arts college, we ask whether our current institutions of higher education are compatible with a project of decolonization. Grounded in our own testimonios and drawing on a genealogy of Western knowledge, we argue that U.S. higher education authorizes and perpetrates settler colonial violence. As such, we find that higher education is not only incompatible, but irredeemably incommensurable with decolonization. Furthermore, based on our experiences surviving this violence, we conclude that the university adapts to inhibit and neutralize institutional reform that might challenge its coloniality. Based on this conclusion, we ask ourselves whether we should attempt to transform higher education or burn it down and start anew. We argue that we do need to burn it down, and we look to how individuals within the institution already work towards the development of a new social structure, one that will outlast and supplant higher education. We identify three constructive and transformative techniques currently used for this purpose: survival, empowerment, and (theft by) conversion. These techniques are a combination of stances towards, relationships to, and practices within, the institution that build collective futurities no longer dependent upon higher education.
Burn it Down: The Incommensurability of the University and Decolonization by Edwin Mayorga, Swarthmore College Lekey Leidecker, Daniel Orr de Gutiérrez, University of San Francisco, Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis, 2019, Vol 8, No 1, 87-106
