Jesus Would Have Been Born in the Camp

Occupy Wall Street. Occupy London. Occupy Harvard. Occupy your school. Occupy your office. Occupy everything.

Occupy Christmas? Yes, Jesus would have been born in the camp.

On October 27, the Rev. Giles Fraser, canon chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, spoke about his resignation because of his objection to the use of force to evict the protesters of Occupy London Stock Exchange, who have camped outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.

He said, “What the camp does is challenge the church with the problem of the incarnation – that you have God who is grand and almighty, who gets born in a stable. St Paul was a tent maker. If you tried to recreate where Jesus would have been born, for me I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp.”

Even if Jesus was not born in the camp, he would certainly join the Occupy movement, for he was part of Occupy the Temple of his day.

Really? 



Jesus and the Disciples in an Occupy Drum Circle by Sudeep Johnson

When I saw this picture with the article on The Huffington Post, I began to laugh. Yes, Jesus and the moneychangers. How could we have forgotten?

Don’t the conservatives always ask, “What would Jesus do?” Tell them, Jesus overturned the moneychangers’ tables and drove them from sacred ground. As Richard Eskow said, “It’s hard to describe Jesus’ action against the moneychangers in today’s terms without calling it ‘Occupy the Temple.’”

Now the police and officials have raided the tent-cities in the U.S. The once vibrant encampment at Dewey Square in Boston is no more. When you pass through it today, the ground has been resodded and you would have not guessed that some 100 tents were there just over two weeks ago.

So this is it? Not quite.

I went to the general assembly at the Boston Common the night after the campsite was raided at 5 a.m. on December 10 to support the Occupiers. The Dewey Square camp was the longest continuous campsite in the U.S.—for 72 days. It was a peaceful demonstration and yet the authorities would not allow it to continue. 

But the Occupy movement was never about seizing public lands and establishing tent-cities. In this new Occupy 2.0, the movement depends on community and grassroots support. In Boston, St. Paul’s Cathedral was the first to open their sanctuary for the Occupiers to meet on December 13. Dean Jep Streit said that the church is not taking sides, but wants to provide a space for the important conversations for economic justice to continue.

In England, Occupy London Stock Exchange continues to camp outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. They will remain there until January 11, 2012, when the High Court makes its decision on eviction. The camp now has about 150 tents.

Asked in Radio Times what Jesus would do in response to the Occupy group, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said he would be there “sharing the risks, asking the long and hard questions.”

At the Christ Church Cathedral at St. Louis, Missouri, the Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, USA, also made connection between Jesus and the Occupy movement. She said in her sermon “I am profoundly struck, however, by the parallels between the Occupy movement and Jesus’ band of homeless wanderers. . . The Occupiers have shared food, cared for each other, and challenged the rest of us about justice in the size of paychecks.  Now those who have been evicted are struggling with how to continue their global demonstration.”

Churches in the U.S. have long been involved in social movements: anti-slavery, temperance, women’s liberation, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender liberation. On this Christmas day, I hope churches will provide hospitality for this movement to continue.

Occupy Boston and the Minjung

Yesterday I went to visit Occupy Boston in Dewy Square by South Station in downtown Boston. Occupy Boston began on September 30, inspired by the much larger Occupy Wall Street movement in New York.

Occupy Boston is a tent city with 40-50 tents. It has its reception area, kitchen, portable toilets, and an elevated area used as the stage. Dewey Square is filled to capacity. The attempt to expand to a second camp met with strong resistance from the police. Nearly 150 were arrested on October 11.

One of my students has camped out at Dewey Park since the very beginning. He is an anarchist and has longed for participating in a movement to bring down capitalism for more than 10 years. He cannot believe that there are thousands of people like him who want to challenge corporate greed and the neo-liberal economy.

What is most exciting for him is the leaderless, horizontal organization that is developing. During the general assemblies when they gather for discussion and for decision-making, hand gestures are used to indicate “like,” “dislike,” “yes,” “no” and so forth. This is taking a page from the anarchist’s playbook.

The media at first did not pay much attention to the Occupy movement, describing it as a movement of privileged students. But the people at Occupy Boston are much more diverse: homeless people, older people, and members of the unions. Clergy have shown up and church members have visited the site. It is a coalition of many sectors of the community. Time magazine says it represents “the return of the silent majority.”

The movement declares, “We are the 99 percent.” In the U.S., the top 1 percent gets over 20 percent of the total income.

It was amazing to see that people in more than 950 cities worldwide have organized protests on the International Day of Solidarity with the Occupy Movement on October 15, 2011. In Hong Kong, around 500 protesters gathered outside the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Most of the participants were young and they also used the “We are the 99 percent” slogan.

Several years ago, I have read Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book Multitude. Instead of class, they used the term multitude to denote the heterogeneous mass of people who will rise up against Empire. The multitude is linked by the Internet, the social media, and mobile devices. Since Empire is transnational, the multitude must also be a global force and represents a new form of politics.

I thought at the time the idea of the multitude is too abstract: who will organize them? And where do they come from? But we have seen the force of the multitude several times in the last decade: during the global demonstrations against the Iraq War and now the Occupy Movement.

Will the multitude have the sustaining power to effect structural changes? It might be too early to tell about the Occupy movement. But one thing I am certain: conversations have begun in the kitchens, classrooms, and living rooms. Our school had a teach-in session facilitated by our President and another professor, who are veterans of social movements.

The Bible has a word for the crowd of people following Jesus. They are called the ochlos (e.g Matt. 4:25; 8:1). In South Korea in the 1970s, minjung theologians used this term to describe the mass of people who are oppressed by society. Minjung comes from two Chinese characters 民众, which mean mass of people. Similar to Hardt and Negri, minjung theologians do not limit minjung to the working or lower class. Women are the minjung when they are oppressed by the patriarchal society. The colonized are minjung when they are dominated by the colonizers.

Minjung theologians say that for too long, the church only pays attention to the laos (laity), and leave out from its purview the ochlos.

Minjung theology was developed during the dictatorial regime of Park Chung-hee. Today South Korea has become much more democratic with significant economic growth. I am not sure that minjung theology is as popular as it once was. Furthermore, the tactics used by minjung theologians, focusing on national political struggle, may not be adequate to fight against Empire.

We will need a more globalized minjung theology, which can speak to the issues of our time. This minjung theology must be transnational, heterogeneous, fluid, and responsive to local needs and issues. This cannot be written by the elites alone, but must be a participatory theological movement from the bottom-up.

I wonder why did Jesus attract great crowds following him? What did they see in the promise of Jesus? Why do the churches not attracting the multitude today?