On "From the Sky"

We here (well, me here) at the Left Cheek care about following the radical message of equity and justice that Jesus Christ, the prophets and the apostles shared some thousands of years ago in some backwater provinces of the Empire's reach - where violence and complacency were means of keeping rebellious forces in line.

Empire has a funny way of making its citizens believe it's the right and natural thing - even as it destroys families and people. As long as we're a "good" nation with "good" intentions, we don't want to question it too much. We don't question rape culture in our own country. We rarely question how we treat immigrants or the homeless or criminals. And we don't question the concept of racism, war, safety, or collateral damage - as long as those concepts don't affect us directly. We rarely question how comfort and dominance is shaped by the suffering of others. Unless we are the others who are suffering.

So writer, filmmaker, critic and my friend Ian Ebright - who has featured our guest blogs occasionally at his site The Broken Telegraph - is putting together a fictional film about a father and son living under the reach of the American Empire as potential collateral damage. From the Kickstarter page for the movie (which is hoping to raise $18,500 in one month):

'From the Sky' takes viewers beneath the headlines by telling a fictional story of a noble father Hakeem and his troubled teenage son Abbas as they journey across a volatile region of the Middle East.
The story opens to reveal Abbas suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to a tragic past and the frequent presence of drones flying overhead. Soon, a turn of events forces Abbas to make a choice about which way he will go in life: the way modeled by his father, or a different path articulated by the charismatic character Dhiya.
The film will be among the first (if not the first) narrative works of cinema from the U.S. to show the impact of drone strikes on civilians in the Arab world. The film also explores the roots of extremism and ultimately asks a universal question: When we are harmed, will we take the wide road of retaliation or a more narrow path by responding in life-giving ways? (please read more at the site)

If, like myself, you believe that true education leads to freedom and that that education involves the arts because true education is not just cognitive but involves the senses. Learning about others - as we learn about ourselves - is sensual. This is a great learning opportunity. Let us invest in this opportunity and not allow it to go to waste.

Hammers and Nails

I sometimes wonder if bloggers deliberately mess with me. While in the middle of writing a new book on what it means to live together as Christians, I had the idea to do a blog on cussing and abusive language. However, as it wouldn't fit into the book and I'm trying to hurry up the production of the book and don't want to half-assedly release a blogpost, I was hesitant.

And then I come down with a cold yesterday and I'm just, Eff this shit!

But then Stuff Christian Culture Likes shows me this blog on cussing. Now, I'm aware of Frank Viola, the author. I'll say one thing: he's got no qualms about directly emailing through Google +, but yet he's still good at marketing his stuff. I'm admittedly jealous of that. Outside of that, I don't really know him. He doesn't show up in my Facebook or blogger radar much at all. But I wonder about his philosophizing if it at all looks like this - even if it is off-the-cuff and one-bit, as he asserts.

Words are powerful. But that's because language and communication are powerful. And communication is powerful because they help us to establish, define, redefine, venture, end, begin, categorize, and understand relationships. Words have power and are powerful - but not on their own. The words have little power in themselves: how and why and in what context we use them is what matters.

Not the words themselves.

The author asserts that cuss words are seen by the culture (which culture? Idk.) as gross and perhaps even sinful because such words were looked down upon in the schools and some other places.

Yes. This falls under the Rubric of Appropriateness. As I tell my five year old, there are places and times to play, and then there are places and times not to play. Playing isn't wrong. Heck, talking about our sex lives isn't wrong. But there are times and places where it is highly inappropriate to do such.

Evangelicals sometimes have a hard time with this, especially those of us raised in a legalistic system, which is what Evangelicalism largely is. We think that language is either good or bad. And that messes up our appreciation for and appropriate responses to language. Which is too bad. Because it also messes up our understanding of abusive language and healing language.

But first with the symptoms of legalism in potty-mouth words:

Frank laments that Christians do all the same things that the worldly do. I know this argument well. That is why many of us Evangelicals weren't allowed to dance or play face cards or play pool or listen to rock and/or roll, or go to movies - because it would "wreck your witness." "Wrecking our witness" is what we do when the "world" looks at Christians to see what makes us different and then notes on its checklist that we do all of the same things it does and therefore dismisses us with a, "Why would I want to become a Christian? They do all the same things we do. They're even gay sometimes. Yuck."

That scenario is comically outlandish and preposterous. But that didn't stop Frank Viola from using it here. And then jumping up with a list the likes of which I have not seen since Josh McDowell further complicated my already-overwhelming teen years. One point needs to be transplanted here in full:

Do your spiritual instincts tell you that profanity/vulgarity is wrong? Before you answer that, determine if your conscience is operating or if it’s seared in that area. (A person’s conscience becomes seared when they keep ignoring it when it nudges them about something that’s not in line with the Holy Spirit.) One way to determine this is to ask if it ever bothered you in the past.

Sometimes it's hard for one to devise between "spiritual instincts" and what would be socialized shame. This is one of those moments. And Viola's movement here is actually quite harmful. In short, he then replies that if your conscience isn't bothered by swear words, it may be broken.

You see, these questions aren't honest. And neither is this game.

Which is kind of upsetting. I thought Frank trusted his readers with some modicum of intelligence.

To wit, Frank relies on the Apostle Paul's oft-quoted lines on wholesome speech.

Ephesians 4:29 – “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

How he gets "cuss words" out of "corrupting communication" beats me. Do certain words corrupt? Are we this childish? Hell, children don't respond like this. What does corrupt children?

Abusive language.

Abusive language towards others, towards themselves, is language that de-humanizes a person or group of people. If someone acts in a repulsive or ignorant way and we call him or her some form of "retarded" to signify that, we are not merely mocking the person we have made that comment to, but those whom the comment originated and is associated with. We equate having cognitive disabilities with acting insociably, inhospitably, even monstrously*.

In nearly every instance, hinting that someone is dumb is far more harmful than saying "Fuck yeah!"

I don't see why Christians don't understand this. Let's close out with a third example:

In saying that marriage should not extended to same-sex couples, conservative Christians are basically telling homosexuals, "Fuck you, shitty assholes!" Yeah. It's like that.

Healing language sometimes sounds like, "Here," "Welcome," "We accept you," "We travel together," "I'm sorry," "Is there a way I can help," and, yes, "I'm sorry for the shitty words that came out of that person's mouth. They were wrong and I'm ashamed."

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* This goes more so for those of us on the Left side of the political fence. Just. Please. Stop. It. It's not funny to compare Rush Limbaugh with my dear aunt. She is not malicious and purposefully ignorant - nor is she making hundreds of millions off of some purposeful ignorance.

Shout It from the Rooftops in Print!

In honor of the print edition of Shout It from the Rooftops (along with an even more handsome cover because it doesn't feature my scrawling on a tablet over a distorted image of an unshaven moi looking straight ahead), I thought I should re-print some of the promotional interview I did for the book here. I was interviewed, btw, by the very capable me. Quite captivatingly, I must add.

What was the impetus for this tome?

It originated with an ongoing series of articles I was doing on my blog, Left Cheek, on American Evangelicals, what they believe and how that affects their view of the world and how that affects those around them.

And it affects....?

Pretty negatively. I've come to believe that the bible - if we read it as God's word to us - is, to cop from Donald Miller, story. And if it is, it moves in certain order. I don't want to fit this whole Ancient Near East text written over a several hundred year span and tackling many different eras and from the perspective of many different authors and superimpose a modern and Western meta or mode of talking about narrative over it, but to me it seems to be talking about relationship, loss, and then redemption. I don't know how universal that is, though...

Is this gonna be a long answer?

Don't interrupt me.

Sorry.

As I was saying... One thing I've come to find while working and developing the blog, from reading biblical scholars and reading about early Christian history is that American Evangelical Christians tend to have an outlook on society that contradicts what Jesus, the prophets and the early Christians had. And that this contradiction is actually very harmful to the Christian witness, to the name of Jesus, and to society at large.

When you say "harmful"...

I mean actually, physically, spiritually, and violently harmful to other people also made in God's own image. Sometimes those other people live next door, sometimes they live remotely, sometimes our own family - but always our neighbors. Like stuff you don't expect the Good Samaritan to do. Stuff that's hurtful, that may or may not be intentional. I actually don't think it is intentional. But I believe that Christians need to be above the defense of, "But I meant well."
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The book is $5.50 print and roughly $2.99 for an e-book. Also, check out the author page on Amazon for other titles.

Jesus Looks Like Us

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

- John 1

via Episcopal Intercultural Network on FB

I love the culturally specific pictures of Jesus. All of them. Tea Party Jesus. David Chappel's Jesus. Kanye's Jesus. Some of them I've featured here. I think it is Mark Sandlin of the God Article* who refers to the white, blonde versions that I sometimes use on my Facebook pages (like Hipster, Know-It-All Jesus) or that color the world that Cage Fighting Jesus inhabits as "Surfer Jesus." That Jesus is a white dominant, consumer-culture, happy-shock, confident-through-conquering Jesus.

I'm fascinated with the fact that many of us prefer to think of Jesus as a little baby with cute little fat cheeks in his holy swaddling diaper, as the lead singer of Van Halen, as (and I had dreams about this) Superman, as a businessman, as a mystic, as a shaman, as an executive with business advice (ok, this one confuses me, to be honest. You really have to read into the guy who gave the Beatitudes in order to read him as a Lee Iaccoca type), as a laughing man.

Of course they don't depict how Jesus actually looked. Of course, Jesus was a real man of real blood and flesh and color, with eyes of a certain hue and nose of a particular type. And we knew he was Jewish, of Middle Eastern descent and we know he wouldn't be White - well, not Northern European White - much less blonde. He probably wouldn't have a button nose, or straight hair. It may have been nappy. But then again, his hair may not have been long anyway. At least according to some Fundamentalists (one preacher is known for saying that Jesus wore pants because there's no way he wore a freaking dress).

I'm also well aware of the fact that Jesus has been, for millenia, over-represented in the West and then in the rest of the world through White Dominant Missionarism as being Northern European and male and straight and handsome (according to the cultural specifics). Other cultures were then encouraged to worship the Jesus behind the image - not the Jesus of the Gospels which revealed the God of the Scriptures, but the Jesus OF the image: White, European, Male, Privileged. As a result, I know that having a homogeneous, Euro-normative near-monopoly of misrepresentations of a Middle Eastern man bent on inclusion is not just troublesome but contrary to the very vision of the man we are supposedly depicting**. The answer, though, isn't to censor out the various readings of Jesus, but to contemplate what they say of the various cultures - to contemplate what they say of those doing the depictions, including us.

For the Jesus of the Conquering People is a Conquering Jesus. And that is not a good thing. But it's a necessary thing to recognize it for what it is, to see the trends of murder in the name of Jesus and recognize how that reflects back on ourselves as representatives of Jesus but also Jesus, to see the signposts of the Empire - where it is coming from, where it is going, what is its name, and what does it require?

The fact that a God would come to earth, in flesh, in poverty and dirt and muck and among sickness speaks resoundingly to me. The fact that most of our depictions feature a sparkly, triumphant, other-worldly Jesus also speaks resoundingly to me. The first is what I want - a healer God for the sick, a comforting God for the afflicted, a meek God for the abused, a peacemaking and bread-making God for the oppressed and hungry.

The second vision of God is indicative of what my culture wants - or wants to believe in. Victory without turmoil. Peace through war. Prosperity amongst starvation. Comfort at the cost of others' affliction. These are what these images of Jesus depict of us.

For Jesus has always been at the intersection of humanity and divinity - and it is in him where we see our best, and our worst.

Sometimes, I like to picture Jesus as an angry badger.

What is one of your favorite depictions of Jesus?
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*Mark and the fine folks at The God Article have some fantastic ones of Things Jesus Never Said - which inspired my own Things Martin Luther King, Jr. Never Said.

**That vision can be seen clearly when we see what Jesus did and said in proper context - which includes poverty and exclusion and dirt and empires and death. Much of contemporary, and especially White, North Atlantic, Christianity has continued a legacy of removing him from the world in which he lived and placing him in strictly philosophical and other-worldly garb. To get a good idea of who Jesus is, I'd consider some New Testament scholars. Most helpful to me, however, have been NT Wright, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan. Or you can buy my book. *wink* *wink*

Happy Gun Appreciation/MLK Weekend!

We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

The Imagination of the Forgiven

 “If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector...

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!

To play Captain Obvious, it's hard trying to find a job in this economy. Add to that fact that companies have increasingly shown disloyalty to their employees - a trend that noticeably come to the fore in the 90's. And when work places tank (as they have for a friend of mine repeatedly and tend to do in urban communities with high turnover rates), it gets harder and harder to find more work, to stay afloat, to continue pushing. For finding work is basically a matter of proving one's self, one's mettle, one's faithfulness, attentiveness, ethic, proclivity, , time and again.

Within three years of their release, about a third of US prisoners end up back in prison.

About two-thirds of ex-cons are arrested again within three years of their release.

In recognizing these brutal numbers (how many of us have been arrested within the last three years?), we must confront ourselves with some facts that should lead us down a revelatory pathway.

Convicted criminals tend to come from poor communities with high-crime rates. For a moment, let's forget that the real crime is the fact of poverty - the reality that we live in a world where most live in poverty and where poverty is becoming more and more what it was in pre-industrial times - a death trap. Let us also forget for a moment that the poor are held accountable and blamed for trying to survive or to live for moments like the wealthy ("What are they doing eating steak?" "Why do they get to ride around in cars?"), particularly in areas with high wealth disparity.

Let us look at the unmistakable and regrettable fact of post-convict life: For the poor, there is hardly such a thing as a post-convict life. Parolees return to the very communities in which they made their crimes (or wherein the crimes were committed which they allegedly took part of) and almost inevitably run into (if not directly in) the same circles, the same places, and the same predicaments that lured them into the criminal background in the first place. They, with their criminal records, are rarely trusted with the resources needed in order to survive. Jobs, already scarce in their communities, are denied to them on the basis of their past - a past which society has already punished them for beyond most of our imaginations.

A past, they are told, that justice needs to cleanse them of through incarceration, through denying them sunshine and community and family and freedom of movement. A past that they should be ashamed of, but which the punishment is to shame every step of their existence, to break every will and hope they have (sometimes, it seems, this "justice" works). The imprisoned must then find alternative methods of being, of doing, of communing, and then of getting by in the world.

We can say what we want to about "career criminals" and all that, and the Department of Corrections can talk about programs they use to reduce recidivism, but the pragmatics are that such programs are woefully underfunded and really could never be adequately funded or implemented. Not when the current prison population in the US makes up nearly one percent of the entire US population, and prisons are at 110% capacity (p 2. via).

What does it mean to be released? Not just released in the sense of how we release convicts in the US: out into the streets with the reputation of an untouchable, the baggage of several lifetimes worth of nightmares, and damage that they rarely are able to recover from. But to release them in earnest as a society that is earnest about freedom as we say we are would: expunged, free, capable, trained, prepared, fresh.

Released.

Diego Blanco

I mentioned the rate or re-arrest earlier to demonstrate something fundamentally important in this conversation of liberation, freedom, stigma: Those who have "done time" (as the kids call it) - and particularly those of color - tend to be viewed as "fitting the description" (as the cops call it). What would it mean to not be viewed at as a suspect every time something came up missing? What would it mean to not only have a free conscience and to feel good about yourself, but to know that the community isn't watching your every step, certain that you will fail and hedging their bets against you?

What does it mean to be forgiven of all debts? What does it mean to be able to earn trust in a level - and safe - playing field*? What does it mean to walk as a person without burden, without baggage, without shackles? To be unfettered, to walk in the sun? To live free?


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*As last time, I want to stress that this is meant within reason. A pederast cannot be trusted to work or be alone with children, but that should not preclude him from being welcome in communities, with necessary safeguards (and what those safeguards look like, I don't necessarily know outside what is listed above there). A thief, likewise, shouldn't be in charge of finances. Etc, etc.

Blessed Christian Patriarchy and Blessed Pennies on the Dollar

A lot of the arguments used in Hobby Lobby’s defense can be brokered down to an overwhelming sense that Hobby Lobby is actually a good, caring employer and takes care of its employees. The government – and especially the OBAMA government – is just forcing them to buy baby-killing pills against their good, Christian conscience.

None of which is actually true, of course. These are statements – on abortion, on religious rights, on employment – that belie a fundamental concern of Conservative Christianity – one that undermines Jesus’ own commandments: patriarchy.

In other words, the conservative Christian defense is one supporting Christian Patriarchy. Christian Patriarchy being an oxymoron. In Aristotle, Greeks were above non-Greeks, males above females, free-borns above slaves. There is order and dominance; dominating and ordering. “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor freeborn.” “You are not to lord over others,” Jesus demands of his followers. We Christians are to serve. Not force. Not rape. Not act as the parents of our employees. Not force them to go along with our religious convictions. Not gloat about paying certain ones a near-living wage while forcing others – in another country who look different from most of Hobby Lobby’s state-side employees and customers - to make pennies on the dollar for their work.

The pennies on the dollar phrase comes from a glowing Forbes profile on David Green, Hobby Lobby's founder, CEO, and patriarch. Here, Green is valued as a pious hero of capitalism who claims that it’s religious devotion and God’s favor that has raised his capital worth to well over $3 billion. Forbes, being the capitalist cheerleaders they are, could smell Green’s veiled business plan a few thousand miles away. In China, for instance.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes with the founder, walking through a local Hobby Lobby store, to see the reason he has been able to expand his company into a well-oiled, moneymaking machine without bringing in any outside investors.
Stopping at a display marked 30% off, Green explains how a kitschy rooster ornament is produced overseas for pennies on the dollar, then sold as part of an in-house brand of home accents.

Father David Green / had many employees /
Many employees had Father David Green...

Hobby Lobby doesn’t usually like to divulge such reasons, so Forbes had quite the scoop here. Usually, David Green answers questions about Hobby Lobby's success with religious pablum along the lines of “God has been faithful,” or, “I was full of pride and God heard me when I humbled myself.” Neither of which I buy – not that they are not true. But lots of good Christians are faithful and humble and decent and don’t exploit overseas workers for pennies on the dollar. And they end up with miscarriages and early deaths and sick kids and behind bars. Most of them – contrary to what conservative, mostly white, mostly suburban churches imply – are living in sub-poverty and hand-to-mouth conditions. Many, many lack clean, running, potable water. Most lack adequate food. Very few are comfortably middle class. And only, out of over a billion, probably fewer than I have fingers for, are billionaires.

This intensely unique blessing, of course, entitles Hobby Lobby to be relatively generous to its full-time employees. They pay a starting minimum wage of $13 for FT workers (closer to state minimum wages for most part-timers, though) and even offer them health care insurance. Where, we have been told, they cover contraceptives. But just not the Morning After Pill. Because that would be killing babies.

Even though that's not what it is.

Of course, lots of companies and organizations offer selective coverage. And I suppose they are entitled to that. Of course, if we truly had universal health care, this would not be an issue. And that is an underlying issue here - no mistake about it. But then it was the Evangelical culture of which Green is a part of that fought universal health care tooth and nail - under, again, the misguided notion that their opposition was saving babies' lives, rather than killing more lives. Truthfully, the "pro-life" movement is responsible for more abortions by not supporting universal health care and for risking the lives of women everywhere by both not supporting universal health care and trying to forcibly block abortions, rather than try to persuade people that they're serious about life*. But I repeat myself again...

Another point here is the fact that Hobby Lobby is not providing health care for all eligible workers - which is why it is supposed to comply with the Affordable Care Act in the first place.

Yet, his position as Blessed Employer/Billionaire entitles Green to know what God wants. And Green's version of God doesn't want him to participate in a health care plan that would give working class women options over their own bodies or health and which Green finds religiously offensive - despite the fact that the science isn't there to support his claims to the contrary and his employees don't have to share his religious obligations over their own bodies. The Morning After Pill is abortion, Christian Patriarchy logic says, because every spermed egg is sacred. (Not sacred enough to keep the human body from flushing from 1/2 to three-fourths of them, but sacred enough that the idea of a pill that negates it is boogey-monstering them up all hours of the night).

Keep on swimming, swimming... Must not fail daddy...

More to the point, his position as Blessed Employer/Billionaire endows Green with the green light to tell his employees how to live.

There is a notice to vendors on the wall at Hobby Lobby headquarters prohibiting "gifts of any value" to employees, who must "pay their share of lunches" and shouldn't be expected to accept dinner invitations no matter who's paying, "as they will be with their families during the evening." 

It's business ethics to have employees turn down gifts from vendors, of course. It's unethical, to say the least, to tell either vendors or employees what employees will or should do in the privacy of their homes.

That includes, I argue, cases of rape, health, domestic violence or whatever other reason that a woman may need to take a Morning After pill. Even against what Father David Green argues.

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The rate of abortion doesn't go down when abortion becomes legally restrictive. It comes down when there is less of a need for it due to poverty and domestic violence. There are other reasons, but those are two of the biggest - and ones I think the pro-life movement, if it really wants to be considered Pro-Life imho, should concentrate on limiting.

Hobbled Lobbyists

This is what my train ride looks like. A cartoon.

Right now, on the train on the way to work, in the middle of flu season, a woman is hacking. Those near here have moved away for fear of contracting a sickness – on their way to work. I want to tell her she should just stay home. If it gets any worse, she should go to her doctor’s. But the truth is, she’s probably like me. She may not have sick days. She may not be able to afford to take a day off. And she probably doesn’t have an affordable way to contact her doctor.

Now, you would think that Christians would be the first to rise up and say, “That’s unjust. That is a travesty. That is not right. Someone allow this woman to go home and take care of herself. And, if not possible, for a highly-trained capable doctor to treat her without her losing her home.” But then you probably wouldn’t be the “fine Christians” responsible for writing or endorsing this piece by Liberty University’s Karen Fellow Swallows and published by Christianity Today, the flagship American Evangelical publication.

I don’t have enough energy or creativity to express my outrage at Christianity Today for publishing this blog post by Liberty U faculty on how the billionaire “good Christian” owners of Hobby Lobby are JUST LIKE St Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Or about how having them pay into and help provide insurance for their employees is JUST LIKE forcing Quakers to buy assault rifles from a gun dealer, or forcing an anti-porn professor to buy Hustler for her students. Of about how taking contraceptives is JUST LIKE getting an abortion.

No one should be forced to answer such stupid, anti-science, greedy-defending, ignorant bullshit. Jesus had nothing nice to say about the wealthy, about those who shore up their grains while their neighbors are starving, or those who refuse to pay their workers justly and abundantly*.

Rather, I’ll let you read a couple responses from Fred Clark, aka, Slacktivist – first on the martyr complex, and then on the company town that Hobby Lobby and its defenders are defending. And then there’s the abortion nonsense, which I think was perfectly covered by Love, Joy, Feminism a few months ago.

And there’s this wonderful succinct analogy, far more sensical (because it compares apples to apples, rather than to space craft, as Evangelical logic on this topic is wont to), by Rebecca Trotter that I found in the comments in the first Slacktivist blog:

[V]egans often hold very strong ideals regarding the immorality of using animals for food, products, research and the like. So does the vegan business owner have the right to decree that their employees not use their paychecks to purchase animal products? Can they offer health insurance which doesn't cover any medical treatment involving the use of animal products or animal research? I think any rational person would say no. The vegan can make their own choices and try to win others to their views. But they don't have the right to dictate that others conform to their practices by reason of their employment.

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*For a regular dose of what Jesus and the prophets had to say about wealth, see Commie Pinkos Wrote My Bible 

LSR: A Theology of Liberation

Peruvian professor, author and theologian Gustavo Gutierrez wrote a primer on Latin American Liberation Theology, A Theology of Liberation five years after the first conference of Catholic bishops met in Medellin, Colombia to talk about this emerging theology from and of the poor and indigenous of the regions south of the United States. Some years after the groundbreaking work had begun to be cataloged by Gutierrez, the movement thoroughly expanded to other continents, and to other repressed people - including those within Latin America. And Gutierrez recognized this and added a chapter-long introduction called "Expanding the View." It is from this introduction that we present our Lazy Sunday Reading.

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. Poverty is a situation that destroys peoples, families, and individuals; [the Liberation Theology conferences of] Medellin and Puebla called it "institutionalized violence" (to which must be added the equally unacceptable violence of terrorism and repression). 

At the same time, it is important to realize that being poor is a way of living, thinking, loving, praying, believing, and hoping, spending leisure time, and struggling for a livelihood. Being poor today is also increasingly coming to mean being involved in the struggle for justice and peace, defending one's life and freedom, seeking a more democratic participation in the decisions made by society, organizing "to live their faith in an integral way" (Puebla), and being committed to the liberation of every human being. 

All this, I repeat, goes to make up the complex world of the poor. The fact that misery and oppression lead to a cruel, inhuman death, and are therefore contrary to the will of the God of Christian revelation who wants us to live, should not keep us from seeing the other aspects of poverty that I have mentioned. They reveal a human depth and a toughness that are a promise of life. This perception represents one of the most profound changes in our way of seeing the reality of poverty and consequently in the overall judgment we pass on it.
... 

Various experiences of being a part of the world of the poor have brought me to a less theoretical knowledge of that world and to a greater awareness of simple but profoundly human aspects of it, apart from which there is no truly liberating commitment. The struggles of those who reject racism and machismo (two attitudes so deeply rooted in the culture and custom of peoples and individuals), as well as of those who oppose the marginalization of the elderly, children, and other "unimportant" persons in our society, have made me see, for example, the importance of gestures and ways of "being with" that some may regard as having little political effectiveness. 

In addition, the experience of these years has shown me that generous solidarity with the poor is not exempted from the temptation of imposing on them categories foreign to them and from the risk of dealing with them in an impersonal way. Sensitivity to these and other dangers is part of a human and Christian praxis whose truly liberating effects extend to those also who are trying to carry on such a praxis for the benefit of the poor and exploited. If there is no friendship with them and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals. Any talk of liberation necessarily refers to a comprehensive process, one that embraces everyone.

Forgiveness Us Our Debts

Fresh starts. That's what New Years is about, right? Last year was a mess, so I'm going to clean up myself starting this year. But what if it's not solely about ourselves? What if I constantly fail at my resolution because they depend upon me and me alone to get my ish together, but under the same weight I labored under and got nowhere with to this point?

And this brings us to the fresh starts and to forgiveness. And what that means... As a Christian, I look back to the example of Jesus.

 Matthew 6:14-15 “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins."

That "But" is key.

image courtesy: Iran Press Watch

When Jesus talks about forgiveness - and he does a lot - much like in the rest of the gospels, he's talking about what it means to live in the Kingdom, or kingdom-ly (or what we called a couple months ago, the un-Kingdom). Take that for what it's worth. It may or not be advice, but it points to an subversive understanding, a more better way, and an alternative to the corrupt powers of the other kingdoms (the world) - a completely different path than lay in the realm of the "powerful" of Rome, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the United States. What Jesus says should not be applied as law, but as the preferred method of those who follow him and his Way.

But notice this in your readings of forgiveness: in nearly every instance, Jesus speaks about both financial forgiveness and personal forgiveness simultaneously - as if he cannot separate the two. They are necessarily side by side.

In Luke 7, Jesus is at the home of some religious leaders and in barges the town prostitute.  And the hosts are offended that Jesus would let her near without condemning her, let alone touch him. She's sobbing with regret. Most likely hurt. I doubt she wants to be sexually exploited and turned into a commodity day and night again. Its likely that it is due to the social structures and rules these very hosts employ and implement and justify that she finds herself in this predicament selling her body in the first place.

So Jesus finds it necessary to share a riddle:

Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?

- Luke 7 (the Message)

Such stories in the Gospels are common - and disruptive. Disruptive to the norm, to the regulatory forces*, to the status quo and its comfort with itself and its self-righteous. There's the Lord's Prayer hinted at above, of course. There's the parable of the rich debtor, but there's also Jesus' very own inaugural sermon, when he declared the following to be about his ministry:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
    that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
     and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.

- Luke 4 (NLT)

These lines themselves were adapted from latter Isaiah (Chapter 61 with some modification from chapter 58), which themselves were an expansion on the concept of Jubilee. Jubilee is a concept that the Mosaic Law introduced into Hebraic customs several hundred years prior. The idea is that every fifty years, families can reclaim their ancestral homes, debts are forgiven, prisoners are released. For a peasant class always under financial duress, the Year of Jubilee would be the Year of the Lord's Favor.

So forgiveness is necessary for financial justice.

But it's also necessary for spiritual justice.

Some Christian-led groups have been calling for Jubilee-like debt forgiveness for the poorest and most debt-ridden nations for years, most famously with the Jubilee 2000 campaign (and its offshoots) led to coincide with the Catholic Church's celebration of the Great Jubilee. This campaign had the intent of wiping out several billions of dollars of debt incurred to** Third World nations in Africa and Latin America. More recently and closer to home, an offshoot project of the Occupy movement (which has some tenuous connections with Christian and interfaith theology and practices) named the Rolling Jubilee is looking to subvert the bankers and collection agencies and those who profit from debt incursions by buying back debts and forgiving debtors (at pennies on the dollar). As of press, they have raised over $500,000 to absolve nearly 10.5 million dollars.

Say what you may about the situation - about how and why people and nations get into debt at astronomical rates - but to be released from that obligation and being able to focus on the day-to-day, on the familial and financial and community-based obligations that are also pressing and immediate, is an immense blessing, for lack of a better word.

But even still, taking care of the material, monetary debt is necessary, but we must not forget the spiritual, mental and emotional debt that needs forgiveness. After all, none can live on bread alone.

Now, when people in the Christian church talk about forgiveness, there seems to be a fundamental power imbalance. As my friend Sarah Moon so graciously points out, oftentimes victims of abuse in a church setting are commanded to forgive their abusers. Often, we are told that Jesus forgave the child molester. Ergo, everything is all good and that person should be allowed to work in the nursery (true story. Too often). Or spouses are commanded by the pastors to go back to their abusive partners (waaaay too often). Or the pastor, well, he's been pardoned by God for his "inappropriate" behavior. And so you are to pardon him too. Now!

But that's not forgiveness. That's forced, compelled, coerced, controlling, lying, false, insincere, dangerous, unhealthy, and ugly manipulation. Whatever it is, it is not forgiveness.

Forgiveness cannot work without boundaries. It cannot be forced. It needs to be nurtured and nourished. It needs to operate in safety. It cannot allow for injustice. Forgiveness does not allow for the pedophile to work with children - it recognizes that some behaviors will not change over night (if ever) and so makes a zone of safety for all those affected: children, spouses, parishioners, family, neighbors, constituents, you, me. That zone may require papers to be signed, people to be notified, offenders to be jailed. It will probably require time and distance.

But within that safe zone, miracles can happen. Miracles that both release the debtor and the indebted. Miracles that free the soul from the oppressive dictatorship of guilt and bitterness.

I find the act of forgiveness - of the spiritual and financial varieties - (though not necessarily forgetting or allowing back) to be fundamentally freeing. But if I'm honest, anything that is completely liberating is also as scary as hell.

When I recite the Lord's Prayer with my daughter and I get to the line about forgiving transgressions, I always pause. And I often bite hard.

And then I continue. A little bit lighter.

And in this practice, I tug away at the roots and branches and leaves of bitterness or frustration or angst laying deep beneath, or flourishing just above the surface, or suckling out the sunlight like anti-plants. They steal our joy. They steal our peace of mind. They take root and they rob us of sunshine and air and water and all the good elements - they lurk in the back of our minds and convince us that life is for the dead, these anti-plants.

The anti-plants need to eventually be uprooted. Only then can our gardens grow. Only then can we be set free from the prisons of our minds and hearts and from the prisons of indebtedness to others that we could never repay. This opens up boundless opportunities - not just for the self, but for those that we are near. And herein, a new cycle appears. For we are not just free as scattered individuals, but as members and parts of networks, families, communities. The effects of liberation on our communities are innumerable.

Nelson Mendela, after 27 years of imprisonment

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*Jesus takes note that the Pharisees did not really welcome him, did not wash his feet - but this lowly prostitute just walking off the street cleans them with her tears and hairs
**Let us refuse to say "by" as if the countries asked for or deserved to be in debt for the crime of being plundered of economic, labor and natural resources

Moving Abe

An occasional one-off with a semi-celeb on Twitter is what passes for a brush with celebrity for me. So, Chicago-based rapper and political activist (as well as would-be alderman) Rhymefest has tended to have a contentious interaction with the Occupy Movement. Unlike another Chicago-based rapper who's worked with Kanye, Lupe Fiasco, he sees the Occupiers as wasting time and space better used for direct political action.

RHYMEFESTVerified ‏@RHYMEFEST

People got beat up by police for what? To not run a candidate and fund them to be the change they wanted? Boooo occupy! I'm done

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jasdye‏@jasdye

@RHYMEFEST Abolitionists didn't change things by running their candidates, but by changing natl convo and moving country towards freedom

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2:40 PM - 7 Nov 12 · 

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12hRHYMEFESTVerified ‏@RHYMEFEST

@jasdye the times have changed

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4hjasdye ‏@jasdye

@RHYMEFEST mr things change, mr they stay the same. While the GOP is off-the-cliff right (and anti-everybody), the DNC ain't repping the ppl

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Rhymefest disregards the overriding lessons of the Emancipators and the Civil Rights Era as being out of time. Fine. But then tell me that Occupy hasn't helped to shape the discourse of American politics - tell me that the Tea Party movement also hasn't done so. Tell me that right now this whole Fiscal Cliff nonsense isn't largely directed by the rhetoric of one sort of radical, non-pragmatic paradigm or another.

He's a hostage!

Well, actually...

Tell me that the post-Sandy Hook imagination of the American populace isn't directed by one form of radicalism (the No-Restrictions-Ever-on-Guns NRA and their stand-ins) and the rest of us aren't trying to feebly talk about sensible gun control measures.

Imagine if a large, national peace movement were actually put in place some twelve years ago - rather than a late-to-the-game anti-GOP posturing. How would the conversation about war and violence be engaged now?

Politicians, as historian Howard Zinn points out in his must-read work - including the Zinn Reader - do not lead - they follow. As much as Abraham Lincoln wanted to end slavery, he had to garner popular opinion in order to get to the office of president in the first place. And before that happened, the popular perception of slavery as being a largely harmless and beneficial financial institution had to be challenged.

So, the slave narratives. So, Douglass, and Garrison, and Sojourner Truth, and Beecher Stowe. These figures and their heroic, bristling words waged a war for the hearts and souls and minds of men and women.

The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common sense... He neither expects nor is overanxious for immediate success. The politician dwells in an everlasting now... His office is not to instruct public opinion but to represent it.
- Wendell Phillips

The institution of slavery was peculiar to the South. It was an issue that, as a force of evil, was only understood to a small minority of the white population. Yet all were responsible for its continuation even as it was cloaked through being race-based and therefore imperceptible to the White mind as - as a deliberate matter of dividing and conquering - it was out of the sight and experience of the Whites of the North, and out of the personal physical and psychic reality of the majority of White Southerner. The South and the North needed the issue of slavery to be pushed in the open and come to a volatile head - otherwise it would have stayed hidden. Not that slavery itself wasn't a constant threat to the very Southern "way of life" that Southern elites were trying to maintain at all, unbelievable costs. But slavery may never have ended if its death knolls weren't forced through abolitionism (which, again, isn't the same as saying that abolitionists "caused" the secession. But, regardless, they had a hand in forcing the Southern elites to take a form of action, and they opened the way for Lincoln to sign both the Emancipation Proclamation and then the 13th Amendment)

That possibility would not have been the case were it not for the rebellious acts of the slaves themselves opening up the remote possibility of a way out - opening up the imagination of White Americans in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries to the radical reality that Black slaves were not property but people. I contend that slavery would have been much more profitable and therefore more desirable to the entire US if the slaves hadn't acted out in various ways against the bitter institution of slavery

All true Reformers are incendiaries. But it is the hearts, brains and souls of their fellow-men which they set on fire, and in so doing they perform the function appropriated to them in the wise order of Providence.
- James Russel Lowell

It wasn't Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves. It was the actions of the slaves which energized the abolitionists who powered the imagination and moral compass of the United States which brought the conflict to a crucible. This crucible was important, for it meant that the slave-holding elite of the South believed that reparations with an abolitionist-leaning North were now impossible, ergo, they had to go on and make their own country and go so far as to start a war with their free neighbors to the North (Southern Apology Myths withstanding).

In all ages, it has been first the radical, and only later the moderate, who has held out a hand to [those] knocked to the ground by the social order.
The moderate, whose sensitive ears are offended by the wild language of the radical, needs to consider the necessary division of labor in a world full of evil, a division in which agitators for reform play an indispensable role.
- Howard Zinn

To use biblical imagery, when the reformer is the voice of the prophet, we have Moses confronting Pharaoh  "Let my people go." Or we have a newly liberated people, who are slightly more liberated, but then codified back into serfdom through Solomon. In the meantime, we have  Moses, Joshua, Saul, and David - each of whom represents the law, each tightening the screws on their people. Each inching just a bit closer, in their kingly duties, to the role of Pharaoh over Hebrew slaves - though this time, the Hebrew ruler was enslaving his own as well as neighbors - despite the warnings against doing such in the Mosaic law.

Then there's the Samuels and the Nathans. The prophets who spoke to and against, who checked, who lacked fear in the face of the terrifying, who dared speak against the thieving, murderous ways of the kings against common sense.

We need more Samuels and fewer would-be Solomons. We don't need our Garrisons to turn into Lincolns. We need Occupiers to continue to Occupy the American imagination, not pragmatically bow to the whims of a fickle populace.

The Holy Days of Grief

When tragedies strike, we are alternately and simultaneously awe-struck, grief-stricken, stupid.

Here I'm thinking of not just national, CNN-feeder tragedies like Hurricane Sandy or massacres in crowded elementary schools or theaters or malls, but also the everyday tragedies of poverty, of war, of death, of prison, of murder (all predominant among people of color who are disproportionately targeted for institutional poverty and its residual effects). But also, what of divorce, lost friendships, depression, mental disease, domestic violence and abuse, deteriorating physical conditions, ends of eras? How do we react when such sorrow is uncomfortably placed on our laps like sobbing children?

We can hardly be blamed for being stupid in the face of the incomprehensible. After all, we are taught to not cry over spilled milk - so what happens when we find our friend literally crying over milk that's gone to waste when she is already unsure of how she'll feed herself and her kids through the end of the month?

My own religious tradition is recklessly infamous for such insipidity. I'm convinced that has to do with Western Christianity's creeping (and now substantial) gnosticism - this fascination with this idea that we must know the answer to everything under the sea. And if we don't - well it doesn't matter because Jesus does and when we die we can ask him. This trend is made much worse when we consider such high profile would-be Jesus mouth-speakers as Bryan Fischer, John Piper, or Pat Robertson - who, for instance, blame lack of prayer in schools, God teaching us a theological lesson, and the gay agenda for such tragedies.

These responses aren't just untimely or wrong or inappropriate or even just plain inhumane and gross. They are assholy: An attempt to act sacred, profound, spiritual, and godly while being a tremendous asshole.

But this isn't about them*. I spend too much time and mental energy worrying about others - and during moments of grief, they should not be allowed the space or the privilege of our collective heads. This is about what a holy response perhaps could look like.

What would be an appropriate Christian response?

And I think of the holy days and how they can each speak to us in our sorrow. Specifically, the three biggest days on the Christmas calendar (at least those recognized by the majority of the Western Church - those of liturgical and non-liturgical backgrounds) and the two most recognized seasons:

• The deep anguish and violence of Good Friday
• The realized hope of Easter
• The mournful repentance of Lent
• The longing and expectation of Advent (our current season)
• The incarnation of Christmas

Often, I find that I respond in one way or another to bad news. I think many of us do. Some of the worst advice is found in, for example, acting as if Easter were right around the corner - particularly among ministers. For myself, leaning heavily towards a social justice view of Christianity, I tend to focus on calls to societal repentance. But today I'm meditating on the idea of conscientiously practicing all five. I'm considering particularly what it means to place a central crux on the incarnation. The incarnation in Christian tradition is the idea of God coming to weak, fragile humanity as a weak, fragile human. It is the ultimate of humbling; the idea that God the Creator just does not understand human suffering and life and so must enter into the atmosphere, into our sphere, into our fragility and brokenness, must be broken and spilled.

Good Friday is the ultimate of violence - taking the good and murdering it out of spite, out of greed, out of a need to control and dominate. But that is not all - it is also a consideration and a mourning as John and the women witnessed this death. And it's a running away from the realities of such violence as Peter and the disciples did - a selfish but understandable fear. It is murder, it is death, it is theft, it is rape - it is the barrel of evil.

The promise of rebirth and renewal associated with Easter is often the first and predominant response of the American Christian to such violence. It's therapeutic for the teller to tell the grieving that everything is going to be all right. That Tim lives forever in a better place now. And whether or not we can say that with any sense of truth into the life of the hearer, it's a horrible first step; it delegitimizes the sorrow, the hurt, the grieving process of the ones who have lost. What if there really is no money at the end of the month? How about we never see Tim or Nana again on this side of earth? Do we need to wait sixty years to see them again? Isn't it appropriate to say goodbye here and now? Is there closure? Is there finality? Is there really hope - because if there is, then there is dignity and room to grieve the good emotions God gave us, no?

Hope is necessary, of course, but it cannot be unmoored from the desperate realities of humanity and suffering. Hope gets us through, but false hope is a dream deferred. It stinks and leaves us more desperate than when we began. I speak from years of ministerial experience.

Sometimes, after such a tragedy, my first instinct is to cry foul. To call for a soul-search as we do during Lent. To say that we need to look deep within and repent of our selfishness, our greed, our racism, our institutional monstrosity. That is a primary way of how I grieve. And often I - and other like-minded friends - are silenced. Told to wait for a more appropriate moment. That our anger at the system that has caused such tragedies as the needless deaths in Sandy Hook or Haiti is out of place. I remain that it is not only beneficial but necessary as a people, as a nation, to have such prophets of Lenten lamentations. But again, such calls should never stand alone. I want what I say, however, to always arise out of hope and anguish and shared experiences. The prophetic lamentations should never be divorced from the other holy respects.

Which includes the expectation associated with Advent - the expectation as I see it is a star set in the west. This star is a witness, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, "Look. The arch of history is long but it bends toward justice." It stands at a precipice - this land between the reality that is and the place that we may have and balances the two, ever moving toward the land of milk and honey while steadfastly aware of the time and location in the desert of discontent. It is an energizing vision for justice among violations and a vista for beauty among the unsightly. It is our long-expectant hope that continues to hold out when we are weary from doing good.

The incarnation seen in Christmas continues - and that is key. Not that the Christian God looks down upon humanity and approves or disapproves of our behavior or allows or does not allow horrible, monstrous, devastating events to occur. But that that God walks with us, suffers and loses with us, struggles and starves with us.

That, to me, is key. God with us.

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*I believe very much that the Christian God speaks primarily with and through and alongside the Body of believers - the Ecclesia, the Church. And so what we say and do during these moments of crises is reflective of and on Jesus - for better and worse. When we neglect to enter into these moments of grief and loss as Jesus and his thoughtful followers have demonstrated, we neglect to answer as Jesus. If the American Church (and specifically here I'm thinking of the Evangelical wing of it) desires to be called followers of Jesus, it needs to discard these "leaders" forthwith.

White Rapists, Native Women, and Diplomatic Immunity

I'm encouraged - and I want to talk more in depth about this - that rape culture in the US among males and females is in sharp decline the last few decades. It's truly magnificent. It's like racial oppression's decline in government and society since the 60's. Which, as I'm sure long-time readers of the Left Cheek will know, doesn't mean that we can claim victory. Anybody who's been paying attention to politics and national events will know that the US still remains a very racist and misogynist county. Not just among the Republicans, either.

But, damn, they sure know how to illustrate and blow up trends. Take these two coming in at a perfect storm under nationalist Eric Cantor:

[The Violence Against Woman Act], which has been reauthorized consistently for 18 years with little fanfare, was, for the first time, left to expire in Sept. 2011. The sticking point has been new protections for three particularly vulnerable groups: undocumented immigrants, members of the LGBT community and Native Americans. The additions are supported by Democrats and opposed by House Republicans, who are calling them politically driven.

(All boldings, italicizing and underlinings are mine. I'd add arrows if I could.)

Only in retrograde ConservativeLand can you decry protections for vulnerable groups as being "politically driven."

Finally, after stalling on these amendments and letting the bill expire in September of this year, House Majority Leader Cantor is meeting with Joe Biden to push through a bill (House Republicans pushed through a version of the bill without the amendments earlier). And yet, Cantor is stalling on one of the issues.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy... explained the provision, probably the least understood of the three additions in the Senate bill: It gives tribal courts limited jurisdiction to oversee domestic violence offenses committed against Native American women by non-Native American men on tribal lands. Currently, federal and state law enforcement have jurisdiction over domestic violence on tribal lands, but in many cases, they are hours away and lack the resources to respond to those cases. Tribal courts, meanwhile, are on site and familiar with tribal laws, but lack the jurisdiction to address domestic violence on tribal lands when it is carried out by a non-Native American individual.

Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, if a crime is committed by a tourist in another land and to a native of that land, you expect the place where the crime is committed to have jurisdiction, right? Especially since the place is, y'know, local and therefore, can access the scene of the crime and the victim and any available witnesses and parties at a reasonable time and with adequate knowledge of the local lay of the land. It's very reasonable, considering that other jurisdictions are usually busy enough trying to take care of their own areas. I mean, you would assume it was reasonable.

Well, unless the perp happens to be male and American and the alleged victim happens to be female and indigenous (We've already talked about how indigenous people are immensely mistreated by colonial and dominant [read: White] cultures). I mean, how dare anyone suggest that another country would or could possibly try a good ol' boy USA si-ti-zin.

That means non-Native American men who abuse Native American women on tribal lands are essentially "immune from the law, and they know it," Leahy said.

They can get away with rape - because they have...

Diplomatic Immunity!
image courtesy of

As a result of this immunity, 86% (yes. Eighty-six PERCENT) of rapes of tribal women on tribal lands are done by non-tribal men, according to a report by Amnesty International.

Now, this report is important to read. Because in it, you don't just get a story of an angry white male leftist angry with the angry white male Republicans and so forth. This isn't just a story of injustice in Washington, DC or the injustice of voting for the wrong guy. No, that's an obvious component of injustice. But the real injustice is how Native women are treated for the fact that they are Natives and they are women - and then that they are sexual abuse survivors.

Because we can talk all day about who is obstructing whose what in the less-than-sacred halls of Wallhalla, District of Columbia. But what of a support worker near Fairbanks who had been shamed into anonymity by the sheer factor that she is Indigenous, female, and had been sexually assaulted?

In July 2006 an Alaska Native woman in Fairbanks reported to the police that she had been raped by a non-Native man. She gave a description of the alleged perpetrator and city police officers told her that they were going to look for him. She waited for the police to return and when they failed to do so, she went to the emergency room for treatment. A support worker told Amnesty International that the woman had bruises all over her body and was so traumatized that she was talking very quickly. She said that, although the woman was not drunk, the Sexual Assault Response Team nevertheless “treated her like a drunk Native woman first and a rape victim second”. The support worker described how the woman was given some painkillers and some money to go to a non-Native shelter, which turned her away because they also assumed that she was drunk: “This is why Native women don’t report. It’s creating a breeding ground for sexual predators.

This view of Disposable Lives is prevalent in most cultures. But why, Oh why, in such a "Christian"-predominant one as the US. As Alaska? Why treat others as less-thans when we are all human and, according to Christian theology, all made in the image of God and all bearing the love of the Christ? Why are these lives treated as if they are invisible? Why are there stories trivialized that - even in the protection of - they are treated as political fodder?

Over the past decade, federal government studies have consistently shown that American Indian and Alaska Native women experience much higher levels of sexual violence than other women in the USA. Data gathered by the US Department of Justice indicates that Native American and Alaska Native women are more than 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the USA in general.
A US Department of Justice study on violence against women concluded that 34.1 per cent of American Indian and Alaska Native women – or more than one in three – will be raped during their lifetime; the comparable figure for the USA as a whole is less than one in five.
Shocking though these statistics are, it is widely believed that they do not accurately portray the extent of sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women.
“Most women who are beaten or raped don’t report to the police. They just shower and go to the clinic [for treatment].”
Native American survivor of sexual violence (identity withheld), February 2006
Amnesty International’s interviews with survivors, activists and support workers across the USA suggest that available statistics greatly underestimate the severity of the problem. In the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, for example, many of the women who agreed to be interviewed could not think of any Native women within their community who had not been subjected to sexual violence.

These stories are ignored, these women abused disproportionately, these survivors out of reach of justice and appropriate medical attention. This continues to happen not just because Eric Cantor is a big meanie. But because in the big scheme of things, what does it matter if Native women and their communities are adequately prepared and taken care of?

The tremendous - as in Visible-From-Space - racism and sexism  in the GOP isn't helping. After all, just because you don't care about certain groups or they're invisible from your point of sight doesn't mean they don't need protections. But not only that, there is the hubris that only those who come up through and are within a White Man's system of "justice" are capable of administering justice to White Men.

The two sources say, to Cantor's credit, his staff has said they're willing to try to come up with other solutions to responding to violence against women on tribal lands, as long as the solution doesn't give tribes jurisdiction over the matter.

That, as you may have noticed, is NOT to Cantor's credit.