The people united will never be divided!

The Pentecostal power of unity in diversity, from LA to the Madleen

Dear Soulful Revolutionaries — I know I’ve been pretty quiet on here besides the occasional podcast post, and I appreciate you staying with me. I’m working on a big writing project that I’m looking forward to sharing with you very soon! As always, I appreciate you enormously — thank you for reading, for listening, and for supporting my work.

---

Yesterday was Pentecost. This Christian Feast Day, commonly known as the Church’s birthday, is celebrated as a day when the Spirit of God — unconfined by borders and unbound by distinctions of language, citizenship, or class — powerfully bursts onto the scene through ordinary people connecting with one another across difference to make a difference in the world.

There were potent echos of Pentecost heard around the world this weekend, from the people of Los Angeles as they rise up against ICE raids and the imposition of martial law, to the courageous international crew of the ship Madleen, captured by Israel as they attempted to create a maritime humanitarian corridor to the starving people of Gaza.

In the spirit of resisting the toxic theologies of white Christian nationalism and Christian Zionism, which love to claim dominion over Christianity, I thought I’d make explicit some parallels that I clearly see between that first Pentecost and what the Spirit-fueled liberation movements unfurling in our world.

First, a word about Pentecost.

The feast originates in events in 1st century CE Palestine, as described in the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles. Jews from around the known world were gathered in Jerusalem for the harvest festival of Shavout, which takes place 50 days after Passover. In the case of the followers of Jesus, this was also 50 days after his resurrection, which is where the feast day gets its name — from the Greek word meaning “fifty”.

The disciples are all in a room together, when suddenly, the Spirit of God comes howling through the house like wind, showing up in the form of tongues of fire over the heads of the apostles, who begin speaking in languages previously unbeknownst to them.

Pentecost and the Holy Spirit by Jen Norton. 2021. Acrylic on wood.

As throngs gather around them in wonder, some presume the disciples to be drunk. They can’t make heads or tails of these locals speaking languages from distant places and people groups.

But others hailing from these far-flung regions — immigrants and pilgrims and refugees alike — hear words spoken in their own tongues, and they are amazed. They say:

“Look, aren’t all the people who are speaking Galileans, every one of them? How then can each of us hear them speaking in our native language? Parthians, Medes, and Elamites; as well as residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the regions of Libya bordering Cyrene; and visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans and Arabs — we hear them declaring the mighty works of God in our own languages!”

This sudden burst of multilingualism is a shock to the social system.¹ To have a group of colonized, largely formally uneducated people, most of whom had never traveled far from their hometowns, suddenly speaking in a myriad of languages, is an act of disruption.

Under Roman rule, Latin and Greek were the languages of governance and commerce, and Caesar, who claimed to be the Son of God, was the divine mouthpiece. But in the Pentecost narrative, divine power is on full display, not through Caesar nor via imperial linguistic channels, but through ordinary Judaeans from the backwaters of Galilee speaking in languages previously unbeknownst to them, and, vitally, being understood and appreciated by native speakers.

Empire is set reeling by people who radically transcend divisions of language, race, nationality, religion, class, ability, sexual orientation, gender and all the other categories manufactured and maintained in order to keep us apart.

This is what is happening in Los Angeles right now.

Massive ICE raids have been happening across the city over the last few days, in blatant (and intentional) violation of the city’s sanctuary status. Parents have been taken from their children’s graduation ceremonies. 14 people have been taken who belong to churches of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles (the diocese that raised me up for ordination, and where I have many beloved friends). SEIU leader David Huerta was arrested. One protestor was mowed over by a federal vehicle. As of Monday afternoon, the president has ordered the National Guard and 700 Marines into the city, in a move to impose martial law.

But the people of Los Angeles have united in common cause to put a stop to these horrific attacks on human rights and dignity. In all its gorgeous diversity, LA is a city that knows how to celebrate differences as strength and to come together to keep one another safe.

My comadre Rosa Cándida Ramírez was part of a protest Sunday afternoon at a Pasadena hotel where ICE agents were known to be staying. Rosa — who is a pastor of a local intercultural, bilingual church, led the crowd in chanting:

The People united

will never be divided!

¡El pueblo unido

jamas será vencido!

revlaurengthomas

A post shared by @revlaurengthomas

Rosa later shared with me her theological take on the classic chant, which inspired her subsequent prayer at the protest:

“El Pueblo unido by the eternal immigrant, the Holy Spirit.”

These lines come from Immigrants’ Creed, which states:

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the eternal immigrant from God’s kingdom among us,
who speaks all languages, lives in all countries,
and reunites all races.

The Spirit of God can’t be confined by borders, suppressed by National Guardsmen or detained by ICE agents. And when people are moved by the Spirit to cross lines of difference and connect with one another for Love’s sake, the empire is caught on its back foot.

My friend the Rev.

Jonathan Timothy Stoner

, who took the video of Pastor Rosa, shared with me the hopeful outcome of this particular protest:

“We stood outside singing, dancing, praying, and peacefully demanding they leave our city. Eventually, the agents checked out, and their SUVs came flying out of the hotel parking structure with lights flashing. It was intense—and honestly, pretty joyful to be part of.”

Such collective action — and delight! — finds resonance in the Acts narrative.

Divine generosity begets collective care

Those who were moved by hearing their languages spoken stuck around for the Apostle Peter’s teaching on the life of Jesus, and some of these decided to dedicate themselves to a collectivist way of living:

“The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.” — Acts 2:42-47, CEB

These people of faith recognized that the perception of divine blessing having limits is precisely that, a human construct. It is humans who hoard, not God. Poverty is not inevitable. They had heard the message preached — “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people” — and took it seriously as a call to action.

They created new social and economic structures to support their embodied, communal theology of God’s boundless love. This was of course received as a threat by those in power. Of these faithful folks, it would soon be said, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also.” (Acts 17:6, NRSV)

When we understand our interconnectedness, when we perceive the boundlessness of God, what will we be inspired to be, do and change? Some people will read this text and think, “That’s idealistic — aspirational at best.” But others hear stories like this and it alights their imagination. They choose to do something in their own context that pushes the boundaries of what most people imagine is possible.

The dream of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition

Take the 12-person, international crew of the sailboat Madleen. The ship spent several days en route to bring desperately needed aid to Gaza, with hopes of opening up a humanitarian corridor to the besieged territory. Its supplies included “baby formula, flour, diapers, emergency medical kits, and prosthetics for children maimed in Israel’s bombardments.”

Part of the Madleen crew (Getty Images)

The ship was named for Gaza’s only fisherwoman, Madleen Kulab, a pregnant mother of four whose livelihood has been denied her by Israel’s seige (even before the genocide, fisherfolk were regularly shot at by Israeli vessels). Madleen was flying a British flag and its crew has representatives of seven countries, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament. On the ship’s departure day, Hassan said, “I am aboard Madleen because silence is not neutrality – it is complicity.”

In the wee hours of Monday morning, the entire crew of Madleen was kidnapped by the Israeli military.

The Zionist state seems to think that targeting these humanitarians will discourage others from similar, courageous, nonviolent tactics, and consequently characterized the crew as “celebrities” pulling a “publicity stunt” on a “selfie yacht.” All of this Zionist rhetoric is propaganda intended to set “us” (the billions of people who were not on Madleen) against the 12-person “them.”

But they forget that there have been always been people who truly believe in interdependence, as evidenced by the believers in Acts. There have always been people generously and sacrificially committed to “demonstrat(ing) God’s goodness to everyone.” There have always been people willing to put themselves on the line for the sake of humanity’s flourishing and the state of our collective soul.

Imperial imagination v. liberation imagination

Divide and conquer has been a commonly employed imperial strategy since the Roman empire. Siphoning people off into smaller groups and convincing them that they do not have common interest with one another makes them far easier to conquer. Today’s empires count on our behaving with the self-interest they themselves prioritize. They know that there isn’t enough manpower in the world to put down a broad-based, Rainbow Coalition-type of nonviolent resistance where we all understand that:

1. our individual liberation is collectively bound up with everyone else’s, especially those who are most vulnerable;

2. our unique gifts are needed and ought to be shared generously;

3. power does not flow from an individual ruler, but to each of us in equal measure from the same divine Source.

When we are empowered to bring our respective gifts into the work of liberation, with respect for the gifts and presence of others, we find the courage to take brave and beautiful action like the Pasadena protestors and the Madleen crew.

The witness of Pentecost directly contradicts imperial theologies like those of white Christian nationalism and Christian Zionism, which seek to circumscribe salvation and distort and hoard Good News for a select few. Pentecost powerfully subverts empire’s claims of hegemony by wielding the generative, community-building power of unity in diversity.

Pentecost insists: the Spirit of God is generously poured out on all people, no exceptions.

1. It is also reliably a shock to the unpracticed lector tasked with reading aloud in church all those unfamiliar place names, which never fails to elicit sympathetic chuckles from the congregation!