Soulforce

Sabotage Christian Supremacy

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As the single largest landowner in the world, the Catholic Church has made billions of dollars through stealing from and exploiting Indigenous people globally.  This is money that can and should be used to fund language revitalization programs and pay for infrastructure that has been denied to Indigenous communities as the result of papal bulls, including the Doctrine of Discovery, that declared us without souls and therefore not human.

But instead, in July of 2022, the Catholic Church sent Pope Francis to Quebec City to apologize for the Church’s role in the Federal Indian Boarding Schools.  

An apology from the Catholic Church was only one of the 94 calls to action from the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, and it wasn’t even done adequately.  Pope Francis’ refusal to denounce the Doctrine of Discovery further perpetuates 500 years of erasure and violence that normalizes the dispossession and dehumanization of Indigenous peoples. By upholding the Doctrine of Discovery, the Catholic Church is telling the world that Indigenous people didn’t (and still don’t) count as full human beings, and consequently perpetuates the idea that our murders and abuses weren’t really sins.  The Pope’s refusal to address this is disrespectful at best and a part of a calculated plan to uphold white Christian Supremacy at worst.

The creation of the Indian Boarding School was originally aimed at acquiring collective territories by assimilating American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian people through Christianization.  The United States government wanted to own the land but as Indigenous peoples, we belonged to the land.  It was where we hunted, where our ancestors were buried.  It was what the Creator gave to us for sacred ceremonies.  It gave us life for both our bodies and our spirits.  This was not something Christian colonizers could understand as the foundation of their religion was in wine/water and bread which could be made sacred and transported anywhere.  Our religion was in the land.  To remove us from the land was to erase who we were.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The Indian Boarding School program was implemented for the removal and reprogramming of American Indigenous children. It began with the Indian Civilization Act Fund of 1819 and was made possible by the investment and implementation of 14 denominations within the Christian Church, as listed in the Federal Investigative Report–Catholic, Presbyterian, Quaker, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Jesuit, Dutch Reformed, Evangelical, Mennonite, Protestant, Anglican, 7th Day Adventist and Unitarian.  In the US, there were a total of 497 Indian boarding school institutions, of which 408 were federally funded and/or supported.  This account from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition details what horrors were done to children at the hands of the state and the Church:

“The U.S. Native children that were voluntarily or forcibly removed from their homes, families, and communities during this time were taken to schools far away where they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture. They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government.” (US Indian Boarding School History – The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition)

Though we will never have an exact number of children that were taken, by 1900 there were an estimated 20,000 children in Indian Boarding Schools and by 1925 that number had more than tripled. Seventy-three Indian Boarding Schools still remain open today, with 15 being residential schools.

And though the Catholic Church was responsible for the largest number of schools, it is not the only Christian denomination with blood on its hands.  Thirteen other denominations played a part in this genocide: Presbyterian, Quaker, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Jesuit, Dutch Reformed, Evangelical, Mennonite, Protestant, Anglican, 7th Day Adventist, Unitarian.  This is a legacy of white Christian Supremacy, and addressing it requires solutions from all benefitting institutions – including accountability at the denominational level.

It is no coincidence that a settler colonialist government and missionizing church denominations worked hand-in-hand to commit these atrocities on the Indigenous people of the Americas. Christianity has been stolen and twisted by those in power to justify genocide, enslavement, and domination for a very long time.  In this case, Indigenous people were not seen as civilized (and therefore not fully human) because we were not a reflection of the white European Christians that were believed to be the reflection of God.  Christianization is a coercive missionizing strategy to make a population of people more human in the eyes of colonial powers by converting them to Christianity, systematically destroying Native cultures and communities.  This has been a core tactic of colonization in the Western world for centuries.

It’s also important to note that the papal bulls, which were public decrees straight from the Pope himself, also allowed for the Transatlantic slave trade to continue which the Catholic Church profited from immensely through the buying and selling of slaves who were used as labor to create the Church’s billion dollar industry.  At various moments in American history from the colonial era to the U.S. Civil War, the Catholic Church was the largest corporate slaveholder in Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri.  Indigenous and Black repression and oppression are completely intertwined.

At its core, the white Christian Supremacist ideologies behind the Indian Boarding School are the same that promote conversion therapy against Queer people. In both experiences, we are told that we are evil or sick because of an innate and essential part of our beings. We are told that our very nature is sinful and offensive to God. We are told that we need to be fixed or changed or healed in order to be redeemed and to earn our personhood and our basic human dignity. And if we cannot or will not change ourselves to fit into their white Christian Supremacist ideals, we are punished and abused and denied our fundamental human rights… and God and the Bible and “morality” are used to justify it.  

In contorting scripture and Christian traditions to fit their agenda, the colonizers of Turtle Island have warped Christianity into a false ideology that claims that white heterosexual cisgender Christians are the ideal “Chosen People” of God and therefore it is their responsibility to assure this demographic remains in power – by any means necessary.

In this way, what happened to Native children at these schools was the original US conversion therapy.  The original conversion therapy with the Indigenous peoples and the current conversion therapy of LGBTQI people are the results of white Christian Supremacy’s narrative of savagery. Therefore, the injustices of the Indian Boarding School project is absolutely an LGBTQI issue.

At the heart of all struggles for LGBTQI struggles for justice is bodily autonomy and personal sovereignty.  In believing that our body is our own, we have the fundamental human right to control what happens to our body, when and where it happens, and how and with whom it happens.  Conversion therapy strips these innate human rights away and must cease, in all of its forms. 

Many Indian Boarding School survivors worked tirelessly for the Catholic Church’s apology and they greatly deserve to feel some sense of relief that it finally happened.  But we can’t stop there.  So much more is needed.  The fatal flaw in “truth and reconciliation” commissions is that it often skips the first step of truth. Even beyond that, reconciliation means to reconcile which implies there were good relations to begin with, which in the case of the US government and Native American tribes there were not. There have never been, and until we address the sins of the past, we never can be.

You can’t unknow this information now.  So what can you do?

First, I strongly encourage non-Indigenous people to not center themselves in discussions around the Pope’s visit and “apology”.  Your religious beliefs should take a backseat to survivors whose voices should be amplified and supported.  There is a resource list at the end of this blog which you can use to have these tough conversations and educate members of your own communities.  More specifically, this is a time for you to have conversations about the Doctrine of Discovery, which is still being used today as the basis for conversion therapy for people in every nation.

Then, learn what land you are illegally occupying.  But please don’t stop at land acknowledgement.  Use that information to dive deeper into local resistance movements as well as calls to actually complete the 94 calls to action.  As of July 2022, only 13 of the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been completed.  These actions and progress are continuously monitored by Beyond 94.

Lastly, share the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report.  This report was released in May of 2022 with very little media attention and is the first volume of a truth initiative that intends to continue investigating the scope and impacts of the Federal Indian Boarding School policies.  This 106 page report is core to the struggle for bodily autonomy and is an important part of decoding white Christian Supremacy in this nation.

Additional Resources:

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For the poor and people of color suffering from environmental injustice, every day is Earth Day, and this painful cycle of destruction is exacerbated by white Christian Supremacy. While the visual representation of Earth Day is often dominated by images of white women wearing overpriced organic yoga pants and appropriated hairstyles, those of us who are most impacted by the degradation of the earth are over being inundated with “reduce, reuse, recycle.” white Christian Supremacy erases Indigenous people who are fighting for oil not to flow through sacred lands; it ignores the people of Flint, MI who still can only drink water through a filter. And let’s not forget the millions of water pipes tainted with lead. 

white Christian Supremacy hinges on manipulating Christian theology and scripture to elevate the power and privilege of white people above everything, including nature. European imperialism framed white people as being more righteous and therefore closer to God and fulfilling God’s purpose. As a result, one of the most important tenets of white Christian Supremacy is conquest and control, meaning that a “chosen people” possess a divine right to use people and places at their disposal. This attitude of human dominion, particularly white Christian dominion, is what has carried our civilizations through industrialization and ultimately toward ecological demise.

white Christian Supremacy has justified and reinforced this hierarchical system that places white men at the top, then white women, all people of color, animals, water and the rest of creation all on the bottom. This top-down worldview is responsible for not only the immense damage to the Earth but has also resulted in the detriment of anyone not at the head of the hierarchy.

The “dominion” in Genesis 1:26-28 has been interpreted as God’s permission to human beings to exploit the earth, control its natural resources, and exterminate the creatures in it; this translation does not make sense in the narrative. The word that is used—radah—also means “to take responsibility for something.” It is preposterous to think that after spending six days fashioning every piece of Creation, blessing it, and finding it to be “very good” that God gave the beloved Creation to humankind to greedily pillage and use up for our own material gain.

Rather, God entrusted this cherished Creation to human beings. As the creatures formed in the Imago Dei, we have the most power of all the creatures to create and destroy. And as those who are made in the reflection of the Creator, we should also have the most respect for God’s Creation and our duty to continue the sacred work of tending and caring for the earth and the treasured beings in it.

However, even for those who interpret Genesis 1 of the Bible as a responsibility for stewardship and not dominion over creation, there is still a hierarchical view of humans on top and the rest of creation below. Contrary to this viewpoint were the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi which called humans to live with plants and animals, thee sun, the wind, the rain, etc. not as masters or adversaries but as sisters and brothers created by God. Following this Franciscan ethic of fraternal love and reconciliation will go a long way in remedying our climate crisis.

It is also most imperative that we recognize that racism, spiritual violence and the climate crisis are completely intertwined. To fight racism and spiritual violence, we must fight the climate crisis. And to fight the climate crisis, we must dismantle white Christian supremacy and its arrogance towards humanity and nature. If we want to survive, we must start prioritizing being in good relations with the Earth all 365 days of the year.

This blog post is part of a series called How white Christian Supremacy Stole…Everything, where we’ll unpack some of the sticky feelings so many of us have around some of the US’s major holidays. The series aims to give a voice to us buzzkills who devote our lives to social justice and have a hard time not feeling like a grinch during every. Single. Holiday. You’re not alone in your grinchiness! Understanding what is harmful about a cultural phenomenon, or what doesn’t sit right with us, can help us identify how we want to reclaim our agency and observe those holidays (or not) in alignment with our ethics and beliefs. In that way, we hope this blog post feels like spiritual accompaniment.

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Blog post written by guest blogger Abdul Hakeem.

As workers living under the clutches of capitalist society, the feeling of alienation and hopelessness exists in nearly every aspect of our lives. We work long hours, often separated from our loved ones, with little to no reward for our labor. As we struggle to feed our families, living paycheck to paycheck, our bosses bask in the wealth that we created. For many of us we’ve been told that we must suffer righteously amidst these sorts of living conditions, and that to labor tirelessly on Earth will be rewarded in the afterlife.

The influence of capitalism on the modern church has had dire implications for the whole of human society. When we look at the question of labor and the theological perspectives on the labor movement, it’s clear to see that for white Christian Supremacy organized labor is something to fear. But why is this? For white Christian Supremacy, organized labor is a direct challenge to their existing power structures. In the modern world, the logic of capitalism pervades every social institution, including the Church. In order to deconstruct the weaponization of these extractive theologies, we must tackle the question of labor and allow dispossessed workers to know that labor is a sacred vocation. 

Capitalism is built on the foundations of class domination.  This is to say that capitalism and the endless pursuit of profit requires exploitation and extraction to achieve its goals.  In not paying workers fair and just wages and extracting labor and resources from colonized countries, capitalism is able to accumulate vast amounts of wealth that will never be in the possession of those who labored for it.  I believe capitalism would not be able to maintain its hegemonic cultural control in this country without the Church distorting theology to justify this level of widespread exploitation.  In the United States, the Church has been the main moralizing force that justified all capitalist efforts to colonize the land, condone enslavement that built this country’s infrastructure, and export values to other countries for economic benefit under imperialism. It’s here that we see how theology is weaponized to pacify movements of organized labor for the sake of the exploiter classes’ benefit.

Capitalist theology teaches us to believe that we must be submissive to the institutions that deprive us of just wages and tells us that mobilizing against economic injustice is contrary to the will of God. In Ephesians 6:5 we read how slaves are to obey their earthly masters with respect. In order to follow this theological narrative, capitalist theology ignores away the concept of humans being created in the divine image and instead prioritizes the idea that some humans are mere commodities to be used and discarded. This is hypocrisy: you can’t claim to be life affirming while simultaneously reinforcing the narrative that workers are required to work themselves to death. 

When we examine where these sorts of theologies are developed and taught, it’s unsurprising that they are primarily exported from imperialist countries. When we turn to theologies of exploited and colonized peoples, we are introduced to an entirely different way of viewing scripture. The advent of liberatory theologies are rooted in the socio-economic struggles of Latin America, and from those material conditions came the necessity of affirming social justice through developing revolutionary theological narratives. 

The development of Liberation Theology among colonized peoples has been a direct result of the economic oppression exerted on those communities by imperial powers. For places such as Latin America, questions of labor and calls for social justice were a matter of life or death. The implications of organized labor weren’t theoretical, rather they were practical questions that the church would have to answer to protect the sanctity of human life. It’s here that labor becomes inherently revolutionary and undeniably sacred as a necessary vocation. On this Labor Day we should celebrate not only the victories of the international labor movement, but also the sacredness of labor and the call on our lives to affirm the sanctity of life through revolutionary labor struggle. 

So what does labor as a revolutionary vocation look like? Labor as a revolutionary vocation is the commitment to standing beside all workers in their struggle for spiritual and economic justice. To do this requires us to recognize not only the socio-economic dimensions of their labor, but also the spiritual ones. Labor is the way in which humanity exerts our creative potential and provides for our families. Laborers are the creators of seemingly impossible things: from skyscrapers to new innovative technologies, society wouldn’t function without us.

The idea that work is inherently undesirable is a narrative that exists as a result of capitalist economics. Labor becomes undesirable only when it’s reduced to an oppressive means of acquiring wealth for the wealthy few. When we deny workers the ability to reap the benefits of their labor, we deny them the ability to live a fulfilled life as the divine intended. When we recognize labor as a vocation we are recognizing workers as co creators in the continued expansion of creation. Labor resistance means reclaiming labor as something inherently meaningful. Without organized labor, without the continued struggles of workers throughout the course of modern history there would be no Labor Day. 

So on this Labor Day we reflect on the countless workers who’ve struggled tirelessly for economic justice. In reflecting on this struggle we think back to the words of Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of Liberation Theology who said, “In the final analysis, poverty means death: lack of food and housing, the inability to attend properly to health and education needs, the exploitation of workers, permanent unemployment, the lack of respect for one’s human dignity, and unjust limitations placed on personal freedom in the areas of self-expression, politics, and religion.”. The economic oppression of capitalist-induced poverty has intersections with all social struggles within society. To advocate for workers, to struggle against exploitative relationships that exist within class society remains a sacred duty. In advocating for workers, in celebrating their victories and sharing in their sufferings, we are able to affirm their dignity and proclaim that the means to a fulfilled life should be available to all. 

This blog post is part of a series called How white Christian Supremacy Stole…Everything, where we’ll unpack some of the sticky feelings so many of us have around some of the US’s major holidays. The series aims to give a voice to us buzzkills who devote our lives to social justice and have a hard time not feeling like a grinch during every. Single. Holiday. You’re not alone in your grinchiness! Understanding what is harmful about a cultural phenomenon, or what doesn’t sit right with us, can help us identify how we want to reclaim our agency and observe those holidays (or not) in alignment with our ethics and beliefs. In that way, we hope this blog post feels like spiritual accompaniment.

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We have now entered the month of June, the month of marketing strategies capitalizing on Queer people in efforts to make us forget we started with a brick through a window and not rainbow popsockets — ooops, I meant LGBTQI Pride Month. As our queer movements continue to grow in strength, countless corporations seek to profit by using messages citing revolution, self-knowing, equality, and boundless love: values that we Queers fight tooth-and-nail to defend every day. This kind of cooptation easily dilutes the purpose of celebrating June, the month that houses the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in our queer liturgical calender, into a palatable rainbow party.

Pride is at risk of being reduced to a false guise of diversity, acceptance, and inclusion that masks complicity in white Christian Supremacy.

The goal of marketing strategies today is to have maximum outputs with the least amount of input.  The focus is on efficiency and consistently finding ways to increase profit at the cost of absolutely anything – salary cuts, compromising on the quality, whatever – the list is unfortunately endless. Once corporations determine there is a marginalized community they can create the illusion they support while ultimately just taking their money, that is precisely what they do. As soon as the selling season is over, the rainbows and the solidarity are tossed out the window just in time to prepare for their next exploitation.

No better current example of this corporate trend comes from Walmart, who released tacky “celebration” ice cream flavors to commemorate Pride and Juneteenth. Our communities said HECK NO to Walmart’s capitalizing off Black culture and the legacy of Juneteenth, which is now being pulled from shelves. Walmart’s terrible track record in labor, racist hiring practices, and numerous lawsuits pending for both employee and customer discrimination don’t scream “revolutionary”.

Furthermore, Walmart has donated over $400,000 this year to the GOP, whose platform for their 2022 state elections focuses on eradicating safe spaces for LGBTQI youth in school and sports, and banning education about racial justice at K-12 programs.

It’s giving “ally”, right? Nope. It’s giving white Christian Supremacy in sheep’s clothing. Why is it that Walmart can “say gay” in their stores, but steal the right to “say gay” from teachers in their own classrooms? (Check out this 2021 article from the Guardian on companies that have been celebrating Pride while donating major money to white Christian Supremacist causes.)

These companies want to turn our pride into a gag: rainbow clothes, flags, accessories – everything that essentially reduces our resistance movements to rainbows and not much else.

Rainbow capitalism promotes a false narrative that because we can see LGBTQI people represented in some stores and commercials, that we have reached an important marker of normalization and acceptance. While parts of that might be true, we must also be aware that the choices of these corporations are motivated by profit. Pride merchandising allows them to operate under the guise of being “woke” without actually using their power to create much needed change for our community.  It allows them to use the month of June to further this false narrative that LGBTQI people have reached this plateau of mainstream acceptance when we are still not welcomed with “open arms” in most places and still not even existing safely in many places, which should be the bare minimum.

If we are not careful, we will fall down the slippery slope of doing white Christian Supremacy’s work. In becoming complacent with seeing ourselves on billboards, we might stop doing the important work that is the foundation of our Pride. We have not truly arrived at a plateau of equality. We have to push back on the notion that the commercial buying power of our allies is what will change our unjust structures. We need to be building political and social power as the Christian Right ramps up their mobilization against us.

The blood of resistance does continue to flow strongly in our community so there are many who are not idly allowing this to continue.  There are groups, such as No Justice No Pride, that have halted Pride parades in major cities in protest of white Christian Supremacy’s exploitation of our people.  So what can you do, Soulforcers, to at least reduce the impact of corporatization? If you do choose to buy Pride-related merchandise, do a little research on the company. Check their track record – have donated to LGBTQI organizations directly working with the community? Do their employee policies actually reflect their equality proclamation? If you can’t find any conclusive answers to these questions (which includes actual supported evidence), then spend your money elsewhere, or donate it to Queer causes, and educate others to do the same. Knowledge is our power. 

Most importantly, as you prance in parades and twirl your rainbow flags, please do remember that you are completely worthy of a fulfilled life where you can express immense pride in exactly who you are. But also please remember that Pride was brought to you by drag queens and trans women of color throwing bricks. It was brought to you by lesbians and queer women taking care of gay men dying of AIDS due to intentional US government neglect. It was not brought to you by T-Mobile.

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The Influences

There was a vote on traditional marriage in the NJ legislature when I was around 11 years old. It is now almost twenty years later, and I am only beginning to comprehend the lasting impacts. 

We were a church-going family living in suburban white America, with my father (the cop) and his brother (the pastor) in the patriarchal leadership positions. This indoctrination into white Christian Supremacist culture as a young girl was absorbed into my spirit and the misguided teachings still weigh on me today. Before I understood and could articulate my authentic truth, I saw myself, and other LGBTQ+ peoples, as sick and in need of healing/saving. 

At the time, in 2012, I had no idea that the yard sign my father placed in front of our family home would be imprinted on my memory. It was a simple sign, with a simple equation that my young mind believed that I understood: “Marriage = One man + One woman”. Looking back, I now know that I did not have a true understanding of the social and political implications within the statement my father was making. What I did immediately interpret was that any love or connection shared between people of the same sex was unacceptable in his, or God’s, household. 

During those influential younger years, I was told time and time again that God knew me and had my life’s journey planned from the very beginning. Before I began to question some of these early teachings, this belief provided me with a form of confidence and clarity regarding my everyday choices. In later years, this popular belief led to moments/days/years of extreme dissonance and distrust of myself as I attempted to balance God’s (heteronormative) plan with my true feelings and emotions towards others.

The Impacts

I am not going to tell you that my family’s harmful rejection of the LGBTQ+ community is the direct cause for my ongoing mental health struggles and my challenges with substance misuse. There are many things still unknown by the scientific community regarding the origins of mental health symptoms and conditions. I am a person that recognizes the influences of genetics, family dynamic, individual experiences, and society all as playing a part in the makeup of an individual’s mental health wellness.

What I will say is that the influences of my family–their promotion of homophobic and transphobic views–are highly correlated with my personal internal struggles. This strict adherence to conservative religious teachings that call for the exclusion of LGBTQ+ peoples continue to challenge my individual relationships with family members as I have grown more outspoken and willing to show up in family spaces as my full, authentic self. Furthermore, this exclusion from the church has led me on a difficult path as I continue to seek the Divine in myself and the world around me.

Unfortunately, these types of harmful experiences are not unique to my story nor family. The reach of white Christian Supremacy, their promotion of heteronormativity, and their rejection of science and societal evolution is vast. For anyone not personally affected, the following statistics can help to depict how deep and far the effects of living in cultures that reject queer love extend:

  • Lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals are twice as likely to experience a mental health challenge, when compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Transgender and/or non-binary individuals are nearly 4 times more likely to experience mental health challenges when compared to their cisgender counterparts (National Alliance for Mental Illness- NAMI).
  • Substances are generally used by people for two main reasons: to increase joy or to decrease pain. In comparison to the heterosexual population, which experiences a 9% rate, the LGBTQ+ community experiences an estimated 20-30% rate of substance abuse and/or misuse (Addiction Center). 
  • LGBTQ+ youth are frequently kicked out of their family homes when they reveal their authentic selves. Overall, members of the queer community have a 120% higher risk of experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives (National Alliance for Mental Illness- NAMI).

The Resilience

The day I came home to see that yard sign was the day that my inner self built barricades around the parts of me that were outside of the white, heteronormative, status quo. Those barricades protected me while I lived in the home of my parents. Then, in my early 20s, I started the tough work of unlearning and dismantling the borders I had built around my inner self in order to reconcile my experiences and to search for my own truths.

The unlearning and relearning process is an ongoing one. It is not an easy journey, but it is one that I am grateful to have walked, and continue to walk. If I had never broken down those barricades of self defense, I may not have made it to my 30th birthday. There is a term in mental health recovery spaces: Firewalkers. To be a firewalker is akin to having the strength of steel: You can be tossed into the fire, survive, and come out stronger and changed for the better. 

For any fellow Firewalkers, queers, weirdos, outcasts, and misfits that may resonate with my story, I want to share some of the core elements of my wellness/recovery plan, in hopes that you may one day be inspired to seek recovery and healing for yourself.

  • “The opposite of addiction is connection.” Johann Hari, 2015 TedTalk. Find your coven! Find people who share similar experiences with yours. Through shared experiences, the burden of needing to explain the situation is reduced and/or eliminated–while still being fully seen! I have found my people in mental health recovery spaces, within the Soulforce family, and in the forests.
  • Question everything! Seek information and guidance regarding the historical and cultural context of the beliefs/expectations placed on you. One of the core offerings of Soulforce are our political and theological resources, all of which help individuals to recognize the strategies used by the Religious Right to perpetuate the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people. Through the broadening of my perspective and understanding, I now recognize that the problems lie with the institutions and systems of power that refuse to acknowledge the worthiness of queer people.
  • Seek professional support in ways that feel good to you. Talk therapy can offer the participant a space to come to where they are fully accepted and can unload some of the weight of life’s burdens and stressors. With that said, finding a therapist that feels good and affirming may take a few trials and errors. PsychologyToday.com is the tool I used to help find my current therapist, who I have been working with for 6 years.
  • There are no wrong or right ways to heal! Every person is unique and every recovery journey will look different. Abstinence from substances can be the best choice for some individuals. For other individuals, various methods of harm reduction are the best choice. Just like I am sharing my story and perspective with you today, I imagine that there have been some aspects that resonate with you and others that have not. The complexities and nuances of life are what fuel innovation and reimagining–don’t be afraid to acknowledge them.

My Survival

I am a transgender, non-binary, person that battles chronic symptoms of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. I am privileged to be alive and writing this blog post at the age of 30. I am someone who beat the odds and who stubbornly refuses to be silenced by those who believe that they hold power over me. I find comfort and power in the knowledge that I am always everything that I am meant to be, that I am ever evolving and changing, and that my Divine values the authenticity that I have worked to unwrap. I am fueled by the hope and knowledge that I am evidence to younger queers that they too can survive.

This is the image I actually hope to leave you with: Myself and my beautiful, loving, incredible wife on our wedding day jubilantly exiting our ceremony site. Her, dressed as the queen she is, and me feeling fresh AF in my first fade. One of the best moments of my life and favorite walks! 

It may have taken me nearly 20 years to overcome the image of that old yard sign, but I am damn grateful to have walked the path I have. This person, the one who has struggled, is who my wife fell in love with. This is the person my future children will know. This person is resilient enough to survive the seemingly impossible to build anew.
My unending gratitude is to all the advocates, social justice warriors, and countless consumer-survivors who have come before me. Specifically, I lift up my grandmothers who were both survivors of the US mental health institution, whose blood flows through me, and whose spirits call out for me to continue my own survival. (Learn more about the history of the Consumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient Movement here or here).

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On May 1st, millions of workers will celebrate International Workers Day, also known as May Day. May Day is a time of celebration, it’s a day when we reflect on the arduous struggle of countless labor rights activists who paved the way for the eight hour work day, paid sick leave, vacation time and other employment benefits once denied to workers internationally. Though the labor movement has secured many important victories since its inception in 1886, there still exist many systemic injustices that plague workers around the world. For this May Day, it’s important that we take into consideration the ways in which white Christian Supremacy has sought to destroy the labor rights movement.

So what is the exact relationship between white Christian Supremacy and labor? white Christian Supremacy is the structure through which oppression is moralized through the distortion of theological doctrines. When we look at the way this plays out today, it’s clear to see that conservative evangelicals utilize Biblical literalism to sow seeds of division amongst workers.

Biblical literalists tend to have a disdain for worldly struggle, especially the struggles of oppressed communities that seek to fight for liberation. Hypocrisy is at the core of white Christian Supremacy and the utilization of Biblical literalism for the benefit of capitalism. This hypocrisy is best demonstrated when we recognize that subscribers to this worldview are very selective about the parts of the Bible they take literally. 

The labor movement is only effective insofar as the workers of that movement are unified. In order to curtail this unity, white Christian Supremacy uses scripture such as 2 Corinthians 6:14 — “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” — to discourage the collaboration of believers and non believers within labor movements.

It’s through this white Christian supremacist narrative that we workers are led to believe that we must submit to servitude, as we are all serfs and servants to God. We are called to find holiness and piety through suffering righteously to our economic conditions referenced in scriptures like these:

Ephesians 6:5-8:  “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh.”

Colossians 3:22-25:  “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh.”

It’s in bearing the suffering of economic injustice that oppressed workers are told they’re able to share in the bearing of the cross of Christ. This sort of scriptural manipulation is the foundation of white Christian Supremacy’s role in maintaining capitalism’s influence over the world. What’s interesting about this narrative is that it purposefully disregards scripture that speaks out against oppression, the scriptural call for justice, and the safeguarding of human dignity! 

What should be abundantly apparent at this point is that theology isn’t politically or economically neutral. It’s no coincidence that theologies that demand worker submission and obedience to oppressive economic systems are mainly pervasive within countries that benefit from those types of economic injustices. How is it that Biblical literalists don’t take scripture literally that condemns oppression? How does the Biblical literalist respond to Psalm 72:4 which reads “defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor!” or Jeremiah 22:13 that reads “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages”?

After all, within Christianity there exist various political and economic theologies that determine the nature of a social group’s worldview. One need only look to the liberation theologies of Latin America and other countries ravaged by the extractive economics of the West to see that theology is often determined by the material social and economic pressures that exist within those societies. 

Though it should be understood that certain passages within scripture have specific contexts for which they were written, this does not change the fact that scripture does not speak or act of its own accord. When it comes to the material conditions of society, the economic realities that we’re all subjected to, and the continued oppression of workers worldwide, the narrative that oppression is scripturally justified must be deconstructed. On this May Day we reflect on the continued violence committed against oppressed workers across the world. It’s in recognition of this suffering that we both celebrate our victories and prepare for the many struggles to come. Despite the divisiveness sowed by white Christian Supremacy, we continue to foster a radical spirit of solidarity and continually renew our commitment to the liberation of the oppressed and the advancement of organized labor.