The Women’s March: A Spiritual Act of Resistance

Today I’ll join thousands of engaged citizens for the Women’s March on Washington. As a pastor and mother, my participation is not rooted in partisanship or politics but in spiritual resistance.

Our president-elect identifies as a Christian, even as he uses fear and exclusion to divide. For me, and many other people of faith attending the march, we’re choosing the way of Jesus, who taught us about loving our neighbor as ourself and dismantling fear with love. This teaching is at the heart of the world’s great religions.

The Women’s March is a spiritual next step building on a stand I took with 2,000 women clergy in condemning candidate Trump for his refusal to repent for his abusive sexual abuse comments captured in the Access Hollywood tapes. Our statement also condemned the words of hypocritical Christian leaders who dismissed Trump’s rape comments as mere locker room talk. We called on religious leaders to preach, teach and help their communities heal from the twin sins of sexual violence and misogyny. The hypocrisy of Christian right leaders shows how women must march to reclaim our faith from those who use religion to abuse and control others.

We march to reclaim the soul of our nation, which must include reclaiming my faith from those who use it to endorse misogyny and bigotry.

We march in the footsteps of biblical heroes like Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives who rescued the Jews from a genocidal Pharaoh, choosing to heed a higher moral law rather than obey their king. Scripture calls us to obey the laws of God first and foremost, and to call our elected leaders to pass laws that measure up to moral law.

We march in the footsteps of Hagar, Abraham’s second wife, who fled into the wilderness to escape Sarah’s jealousy. As this refugee watched her child dying in the desert, God miraculously intervened. Hagar renamed God, “the one who sees me.” Scripture calls us to challenge even the failure of God’s chosen leaders just as Hagar challenged Abraham and Sarah, and to name the God who hears the voice of refugee women in the wilderness.

We march in the footsteps of Esther, the Jewish exile that unwittingly found herself the bride of the King. Although by nature obedient, passive and privileged, passing despite her ethnicity, Esther eventually risked her life to stop a genocidal plot against her people. Heeding the exhortation from her uncle, “Perhaps you were born for such a time as this,” she rose to the occasion, showing strategic diplomacy in the court of the king. As we march, those of us with privilege ask if we are doing enough to challenge misogyny and racism.

We march in the footsteps of women throughout history who had to fight both civic and religious authorities to reclaim what is right and true, to rename God when people dared steal God’s name. Women too numerous to name, from Sojourner Truth, former slave, abolitionist, women’s rights activist and preacher, to Catholic Worker movement leader Dorothy Day, to civil rights leader Rosa Parks.

And so like Hagar, women of faith will reclaim God’s name from the false prophets who condoned sexual abuse to be close to a seat of power. We will march to name the God as the God who sees the refugee Hagar dying with her child in the desert; to follow God who motivates the powerful yet timid Esther to defend her people; to hear God who inspires the clever midwives to fool Pharaoh. We march because a light has shown in the darkness, and we will not let darkness overcome it.