Watching the students at Columbia University protesting this week in solidarity with Palestine, undeterred by suspensions and arrests, has been a moving experience. It is deeply hopeful to see students breaking through the layers of institutionally imposed silence, risking their current standing as students and their future careers on the belief that standing up for justice is more important.
I was especially moved as I saw video footage from Friday night of Jewish students in the Gaza solidarity encampment leading Shabbat prayers, which was followed by Muslim students leading Friday prayer. The practice of these religious rituals in such a time and place of dedicated solidarity got me thinking about the spirituality of protest and how we might think of protest as a spiritual discipline or as a form of spiritual expression.
Luke 18:1-8 recounts a parable of Jesus that explicitly links prayer with protest. Seemingly unsure that we will be able to discern the meaning of the parable on our own, Luke begins with a TL;DR, telling us that the parable is about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart” (18:1). The parable is a simple story: A widow suffered injustice and went to a judge for the matter to be rectified. As a widow, she was in an especially vulnerable position, reliant on the judge to enact justice on her behalf. Yet the judge “neither feared God nor had respect for people” (18:2) and “refused” to give her justice (18:4). Jesus tells us that the woman was undeterred; she “kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice’” (18:3). Finally, out of sheer annoyance, the judge relented: “’Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out’” (18:5).
When the story is over, Jesus assures his disciples that God is not like this terrible judge. While the unjust judge grants justice slowly, under duress, God grants justice “quickly” (18:8). But, although this is true, the parable has to be telling us something more than just what God is not like. Jesus closes off his story by asking, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (18:8). The implication is that his parable tells us something about what faith looks like.
I think it’s an easy interpretive move at this point to assume that the widow’s persistence in asking for justice is an example to us of what persistent prayer looks like. We should knock on the door of heaven just as persistently as the widow knocked on the door of the unjust judge. But we already know that God isn’t like the unjust judge and doesn’t need to be hounded. So, what if this parable is less about knocking on the door of heaven and more about what faith looks like on earth? Instead of telling us to pray harder, longer, more persistently until we get the justice we are looking for, perhaps Jesus is telling us that working for justice is a deeply spiritual act that we will need to undertake if we want to have faith. That wearing down those who have refused their responsibility to enact justice is at least part of what it means to “pray always and not to lose heart” (18:1).
In a recent Twitter thread, Keith Ford (@LarrySnodgrass1) draws from James 2:15-17 to critique the way that prayer is often used as an excuse for inaction when justice is needed. The James passage reads, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (2:15-16). Ford points to the similarities between this kind of hollow well-wishing and the “spiritual bypassing” that occurs when people tell survivors of abuse, “We’re praying for you,” rather than choosing to “stand up and advocate for justice.” Such offers of prayer become “empty language, sentimental slop designed to make them look good, to ease their nervous consciences.”[1] James would call this kind of faith “dead” (James 2:17). Yet how often do we offer prayer in place of tangible action? And can such prayers be heard?
We don’t need to wear God down with our prayers—God is always ready to “grant justice” (18:7)! But we do need faithful persistence, unflagging protest, and a whole lot of bothering to disarm and dismantle tenacious evil.
The students and faculty at Columbia University who are protesting their university’s complicity with genocide have counted the cost and chosen to pursue faithful solidarity with the oppressed. Where and how can we engage in the spiritual exercise of protest? When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
Image: 2024 Columbia pro-Palestine protest, by SWinxy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
[1] Keith Ford @LarrySnodgrass1, Twitter thread, April 19, 2024, https://twitter.com/LarrySnodgrass1/status/1781452003832631360.
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