Soulforce

Sabotage Christian Supremacy

Grinch Series

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Asking me as an American to make Thanksgiving about family and food is like asking me as a Christian to make Christmas about Santa and presents.

The truth is that it sucks not celebrating Thanksgiving. I loved this holiday. I love the whole day of cooking, the food rituals. I love that almost everyone has the day off or a shorter shift that allowed us all to eat dinner together. It was the single time of year where the whole family gathered at our house, where everyone was welcome. More than Christmas, more than Easter or fourth of July, this was the time where we got to be together and where the matriarch, my great grandmother got to offer wild and generous hospitality to all who crossed our threshold that day. 

When I got my own place I continued that tradition and loved more than anything the always interesting and beautiful gathering of friends and family and acquaintances who showed up to our open invitation. It was especially meaningful that there were always queer folks around the table in our fullness, sharing a meal together often because we couldn’t go home or were unwilling to cram ourselves back into closets or boxes that no longer fit. When an LGBTQ community center opened in our town, we hosted the first queer Thanksgiving potluck where were we learned about the real Thanksgiving and have gratitude that we had all made it another year of life. We found home and family in the company of each other even if we were strangers before that day. 

Now that I have my own kid, I lament not celebrating the day full of food traditions and centering generosity for our wider community. I would love to make their great-great-grandmother’s recipe for sweet potato casserole and discuss at length how to keep the dressing from getting dry or what in the world a tofurky is. 

Lots of people have recommended picking literally any other day of the year to do a harvest and thankfulness meal, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It just isn’t the same as when the whole country pauses to be with friends and family on this one day. There’s a synergy that is missing on other days that feels like being out of step.

Other people insist that in fact, Thanksgiving *is* about family and food. Whatever it’s history, now it’s just about being grateful for what you have and spending time with those you love. I wish that were true for me. That I could just put away the true history of invasion, genocide, and white washing of the horrors of white European colonization of this land, but as an American citizen, I cannot set it aside on this day. It’s like asking me as a Christian to make Christmas about Santa and presents and Christmas tree lights. It’s unthinkable. Christmas is about joy and children and generosity and spending time with our families, but the origin story of it as a Christian holiday is indivisible from our holiday celebrations today. We retell the story, we create holiday traditions that we pass down through the generations. All of this reminds us who we are, what our values are, and where we come from as a people…. Much the same as Thanksgiving in fact.

It’s because of this part -the reminding ourselves who we are as a people- that I choose not to celebrate and not to pass on this holiday to my children. We, as a family, cannot celebrate Thanksgiving and ignore its origins. In this way sometimes it feels like we ruin everything… All the simple joys of our idealized childhood get tarnished with the truth and nothing is quite the same anymore. What’s actually true is that white Christian Supremacy ruins everything, and living a faithful principled life in this particular nation at this particular moment is just difficult sometimes. Solidarity with oppressed peoples still implies moving countercurrent, no matter how many of us claim to be woke.

Our indigenous sisters and brothers ask us not to ignore our past. They ask us to remember the truth, to not perpetuate lies of happy little indians and generous white pilgrims, not to dress up our children in feather headdresses and black Pilgrim hats, to stop the white washing of our nation’s origin story, and to take responsibility for our past in order to move together into a future where we might all live and thrive. They ask us to remember the names of the Wampanoag, Massasoit, Wamsutta Frank James, their stories of the past, and their struggles of the present. They ask us to mourn with them as our ancestors and theirs are inseparably tied together in the painful history of this place we all now call home.

It’s important to name the loss and grief that comes from choosing to live a more conscientious life; this life isn’t always the funnest choice. It often means abandoning thoughts and habits that were once really enjoyable or meaningful. It means recognizing our privilege, even if we also come from oppressed peoples. It sometimes means leaving things behind that were once really special and really important to us. It almost always entails learning truths that you can’t unknow, feeling the pain in others that you can’t unfeel. It often means seeing the ugly reality behind the beautiful idealized facade, even when we were more happy with our fairytale. Sometimes, it means saying goodbye to traditions we love and feeling distanced from those who chose to stay in the fairytale. 

It is easy to build up anger and resentment for those who chose the easier, happier fairytale route. Some years I feel jealous of them and the beautiful pictures of food and family I see on social media. My pride gets the best of me, and my integrity becomes a bitter pill to swallow.

Weas people who have had the privilege and innocence not to know the truth of this holiday, not to carry its burden all these years have a responsibility to be honest with each other, and work on it together. I think it’s important that we don’t just pretend that the high road is easy or our feelings resolved. It’s meaningful to share where we struggle, where a principled life gets hard, where it feels lonely, where the right decision feels tough, and the loss we feel from losing a lie that felt so good for so long–even while we acknowledge that others have lost so much more.

It is not my place to judge what others choose to do or not do for Thanksgiving. I can totally understand why folks choose to rename it or reframe it and keep the rest the same. I choose not to for my own reasons, and I let the grief I feel for myself in losing this holiday flow as a stream of empathy into the ocean of pain that our indigenous siblings and ancestors have felt for centuries. 

When I’m at my best, I let it renew my hunger for justice and peace and wellbeing for this planet and her creatures. And I give thanks for the life and strength to contribute to this struggle, and for the love that fuels it, generation after generation.

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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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.

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.

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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.

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. 

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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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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.

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.

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Today we introduce a blog series called How the Grinch, I mean “How White Christian Supremacy Stole Everything.”

In the original design for this blog series, we had the Grinch representing white Christian Supremacy, but after seeing him (designed by the brilliant artist Bryony Dick​), we realized that he is actually one of us​. We are ​those who​ have​ ​learned some of our histories, who now ​remember out loud, ​the ​Pagan and Indigenous ​origin stories of the holidays that we ​love to​ celebrate as American ​and/​or Christian​ holidays (aka “holy days”)​. ​W​e​ are those​ who ​understand how holiday ​narratives are beautifully spun to get us to buy more and more ​​​stuff to ​once again ​prove our love to those we care about​.​ ​W​e ​are those ​who are unwilling to forget the atrocities committed in the name of seemingly good ​ideals,​ like love, gratitude, freedom, God…

We, like the Grinch​,​ are told that we are​ just​ no fun to have at the holiday part​y​ because we ​ruin the mood​. We are told​ that o​u​r hearts are small and diseased, that we take things too seriously​​, take things ​​too far…​ But those things that we take too seriously and too far, we call those things our ethics, values, solidarity, honor, justice, morality… *LOVE*, if you will.

We hear over and over​ things like​, can’t we just enjoy the meal…it’s just candy… it’s just a day for family… it ​doesn’t have to mean what you think it means​…​ or what it used to mean… can’t you just let it go… for the sake of the family/the church/the nation/fill-in-the-blank-here… Think of the children, they say, as if *we* are the ones ruining the Christmas feast and gift exchange, as if we too didn’t love the ideas and traditions we were given ​before ​we​ kn​e​w ​the truth (I mean some of us didn’t love them, but many of us did)…

But​ there are certain things that we can’t unknow. Histories that none of us should be naive about, especially because we can do better now.

​W​e *are* thinking of the children, including the younger versions of ourselves who were given false narratives about our histories and religions and our identities. ​We do lose some of our innocence as we learn about the sometimes disturbing​,​ oftentimes violent histories of ​holidays and ideals we celebrate​ as a culture, or a nation, or as Christians. It is okay to grieve that loss, and the Grinch is one of the ways we can look at ourselves and feel empathy for that loss… even as we double down on our political and ethical commitments to know better and do better, as our beloved ancestor Maya Angelou taught us.

Most of the time it’s no fun being Grinch (well, for most of us), but we hope to bring a little bit of levity to the reality that we may often find ourselves as the voice crying for justice and integrity in the wilderness (or at the family supper table). We need to be clear about our commitments, well-informed about our histories, and honest in our intentions. And, a​t the very least​,​ we hope that​ Grinch will go with you, as a reminder that we are not alone in this struggle.​

​There are ​so ​many acts of capitalism that​ not only represent ​but have become a stand-in for ​things like ​”​love​”​ or ​”​gratitude​,”​ so in this series we ​now ​see ourselves as the Grinch​, who,​​ because of his ​awareness of the reality of the world of capitalism​,​ heteropatriarchy​,​ colonization​, systems of power, and white supremacy​,​ can no longer celebrate holidays like Valentine’s​ Day with uninterrogated buy-in. We cannot innocent​ly add our few dollars to the billions​ and billions​ of dollars that are spent each year proving acts of love​. Romantic ​[heterosexual, monogamous, life-long marriage] ​love​ did not begin with God and Adam & Eve in a garden, but rather​, it is a concept​ ​has ​been politically cultivated in ​recent centuries​ and ​continues to be used​ as a weapon ​of “morality” ​to ​prioritize certain kinds of relationships and ​withhold rights f​rom others​​.

Much of the Western history of marriage has not had anything to do with romantic love. It began as a way to​ limit inheritance rights and marriage benefits to the wealthiest and most powerful men in Christendom.

So many of us are choosing a different path. We are going the way our ancestors knew, how our abuelas taught us, the way our grannies showed us, that it truly takes a village… and that our families are *never* just centered on two people in a romantic relationship. We strive to live in networks of support, communities of care that extend way beyond whoever we are having sex with at any particular moment. Who we are having sex with (or want to have sex with) or not is mostly a private choice, and should be mostly irrelevant to webs of love we build over our lifetimes. Our value is not diminished, and our love should not be diminished in any way when we are single or when we choose not to have children.

Self love also fits here, because as the Bible teaches us, we cannot love others well if we do not first love ourselves. As our beloved ancestor Audre Lorde and many others have taught us, loving ourselves in a world that is hostile to our very existence and caring for ourselves under systems of power that seek our demise are deeply political and revolutionary acts (in addition to teaching others how to love us well).

Maybe it’s rebellious, maybe it’s revolutionary, maybe it stems naturally from who we are. Most of all, it is the way we can live most into our beliefs and ethics and live as people with integrity. We no longer choose to prioritize certain forms of love, specifically romantic love, Disney princess love, love as solely valid between one man and one woman that ends in procreation and marriage (I’m sorry, it should be marriage and *then* procreation).

So on this Valentine’s holiday, let the Grinch remind us that candy and chocolate and roses and pretty words do not equal love (that’s mostly just capitalism).

Let us also be reminded that our queer families are chosen; that our beloved community is made up of our circle of friends and loved ones, and they are actually the ones who keep us alive (not capitalism); that our families are valid no matter their formation, and that our lives are precious.

Let us be the ones to remember the history of how Christianity has been stolen by imperialism;

…how the Church has maintained power with false narratives of love;

…how marriage has almost always been about power–political and social allegiances and not love or choice;

…how love and marriage have been and often continue to be a burden forced on women’s bodies with unequal expectations of care and service;

how laws based in Christian Supremacy, enforced by the State and upheld and socially enforced by the Church, have been used over millennia to keep inheritance and wealth in the hands of the elite;

…how secret loves have been scorned to keep lovers with same-sex desires apart;

…how marriage has been used to divide classes, how it has been used to withhold marriage rights from lovers who embody different races, and how love in Christianity often becomes synonymous with violence–physical, emotional, and spiritual;

…and worse, how love is used, even in the Bible, to justify harm and violence because it is supposedly punishment or for substitutionary atonement of sin or worst of all, as a necessary violence in exchange for eternal salvation… And even when it is (supposedly) executed by God, the violence goes unquestioned… under a banner of *love*.

So call us killjoys, call us the Grinch, but we will no longer accept heart-shaped chocolate boxes and call it love. We will no longer swallow the poison messages of white Christian Supremacy… even if they are floating in beautiful bubbles of champagne flutes. We will judge *love* like we judge theology. That which causes harm, pain, suffering, is violent, withholds basic human dignity and rights from anyone is bad love, just like it’s bad theology. Relationships centered on consent, respect, mutuality, care, and desire (sexual or non-romantic) that help us live full and abundant lives, we will call those LOVE. We will call those people our family, our loves, and we will celebrate all of the ways they choose and we choose to live life together or apart, in whatever configuration, for whatever time that love lasts.

Can we celebrate Valentine’s Day with roses and candlelit dinners and love letters? Sure, but we will not do it naively. We will not love unquestionably or give all of ourselves unconditionally. For some, that will make us the Grinch, but for many of us it makes true love all the sweeter.