The voice of faith has echoed through the ages in many tongues and creeds. It is a voice that rings through fear and oppression, crying, “Rise up! Freedom! Justice! Peace!”
Moses was born a poor Hebrew child who by chance fell into the care of the Egyptian pharaoh and was raised in palace privilege — until he saw a Hebrew slave being beaten by a guard and, indignant, killed the guard and fled into the land of Midian. There he led a safe and quiet life as a shepherd — until one day a voice called him from a burning bush to go back to Egypt and plead to Pharaoh for the freedom of his people. Thus began a long and dangerous journey seeking freedom, unity and homeland.
Jesus might have lived a quiet life in Palestine as a carpenter if not for a voice that called in the wilderness and got him into “good trouble” with the occupying Roman Empire and the orthodox Jewish priesthood. His call to throw off the chains of religious and political oppression declared a new law written more in the heart than in the letter of scripture. His voice of faith continues to point toward a new life lived in freedom, justice, love and peace. Like Moses’s crossing back to Egypt, Jesus’s crossing into Jerusalem was an act of defiance of empire as well as idolatry, empowered by a loving God who cares for those who are poor and oppressed.
In the Seventh Century, the Arabian prophet, Muhammad, likewise made a crossing known as the Hajj, from Medina to Mecca. Arriving at what would become Islam’s holy temple, the Kaaba, Muhammad led a band of followers who, like Moses and Jesus, believed in one God for all people. As Moses had destroyed the golden calf and as Jesus had driven the money changers from the Jerusalem temple, Muhammad destroyed the idols in Mecca and proclaimed a new faith in one God, Allah, whom Muslims understand to be the same as the Hebrew God of Abraham, Yahweh. Muhammad’s uncertain journey of faith is commemorated in the annual pilgrimage to Mecca by Muslims from all nations and races.
My Irish Catholic ancestors kept alive the voice of their faith through eight centuries of British Protestant occupation. Denied the use of their language, the public practice of their religion, their schools and their land, they endured through failed rebellion, evictions and famine imposed by the British export of food grown in Ireland. The voice of faith and freedom cried through their music, their stories, their underground religious life.
My Protestant English ancestors likewise had struggled as dissenting Puritans to express their faith in the face of Anglican domination. Fleeing persecution in England, they came as pilgrims to America only to institute laws leading to witch burning, shunning and forced deportation. They identified “the enemy within” as native Americans, Catholics, women mystics and others. These “chosen” laid the foundation for nativism against immigrants, the white supremacy of slavery, Indian genocide and segregation and, later, the McCarthy crusade against “communists” and liberals.
In 1983, I made a pilgrimage to Northern Ireland to visit communities of peace and reconciliation who were seeking to end the bloody Troubles between Protestants and Catholics aggravated by the armed British occupation. In Belfast I stayed with both Protestant and Catholic families amid the specter of bombed out buildings, barbed wire, and troops with machine guns and armored vehicles. One day, I walked out of the city and climbed a hill where I could look down upon Belfast. A high wall separated the Protestant ghetto from the Catholic ghetto. But from my perch on the hill both sides looked the same. On both sides there was poverty, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction and hopelessness. From my perch, I beheld one people suffering at the hands of hateful, divisive forces.
As we read and watch the news today, we see similar scenes of division and occupation in our cities. We are not just divided between red and blue but moreso, between rich and poor. We see violent military raids, dehumanization of migrants, arrests and deportations without due process, the robbing of poor people of food, housing and medical support while our government continues to supply weapons industries with billions of tax dollars. We see the idolatrous worship of violence, greed and excess at the highest levels of our government while poor and hungry people are working at starvation wages, denied food supplements, the homeless rounded up and sent to detention camps.
In the prophetic tradition of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, it is past time that people of faith speak up against these idolatrous agents of oppression. If we believe in one Creator of all people, as not only expressed in scripture but in our democratic manifestos, then we also affirm the humanity of all people — and oppose the forces that would render, by nationality or race or class, certain groups or individuals as less than human and subject to intentional cruelty.
A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Ben Tousley is a retired interfaith hospice chaplain who worked for more than 20 years in that capacity and as adjunct professor at Springfield College. He has traveled widely as a folksinger and storyteller and has recorded seven albums of original songs. Ben lives in Greenfield and attends Mt. Toby Friends Meeting.