Change is a slow, slow burn
Left: Official medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society. Right: Thomas Clarkson, a leading figure fighting against slavery in the British Empire. Designed with Canva.
The world feels like more of a mess than usual right now, doesn’t it?
Israel and Palestine. Russia and Ukraine. A looming presidential election in the United States, one that may end up being more dreadful than 2020. The worst crisis in the world right now is unfolding in Sudan and few people have noticed. Many of those who have seem not to care, a grim reality I’m all too familiar with as someone who works for a Sudan-focused nonprofit. A Sudanese friend succinctly summed up the problem to me when he recently asked “Why do our lives always matter less than everyone else?”
I’ve never known how to answer that question. To be frank, I’ve come to understand that the more time spent trying to find an answer the more unhelpful you become. The question requiring an answer is what’s our first concrete step to helping?
It’s a question that makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it’s a question about personal sacrifice, or how much of our time, resources, and energy —even our very beings— we’re going to put into the big crisis in front of us. At the risk of being brutally direct, it’s very easy to share truly heartbreaking images online with outrage that is as genuine as it is deserved. It’s depressingly easier to fire of a hot take and bask in your tribe’s warm praise for being one of us. Discourse and our actions online and offline inform and shape each other.
What’s infinitely harder is giving of yourself in ways that cut deep into your time and bank account and not stopping, even when you’re flirting with exhaustion and hope is seemingly in short supply.
It’s best to be honest about this challenge. The prevailing cultural wind of America today is a toxic mix of hyper-individualism and tribal approval, whether you are a Christian or not or wherever you fall on the political and cultural spectrum. And while there are certainly true heroes and genuine victims among us, most people reading this have the privilege on any given day of choosing whether we know enough or not and whether we are a hero or victim, with the latter decision usually arriving at a weird smash-up of both.
We are who we are. I’m not here to criticize people who operate in our cultural system; in fact, I sincerely believe all of us are forced into participating in ways we don’t even realize, simply by virtue of living in America. Becoming increasingly aware of it though means we can take tangible steps to do and be better.
I mostly try to keep my professional life and my personal musings here separate from one another. It doesn’t matter how much or what way I explain this, but some people have a really hard time understanding that my personal views and beliefs don’t necessarily represent my employer’s, and sometimes aren’t the same thing at all. I’m going to break that barrier now though for two reasons. First, I know a lot of people are frustrated by the state of the world and increasingly anxious about the high conflict pushing into their lives. Second, pursuing large-scale change is part of my professional wheelhouse and some of my experiences may be helpful for others to hear.
I want to put forward three mostly unrelated questions I often get asked at work that have refined my posture over the years. It’s important to know these questions come from people living mostly normal American lives and that my answers are for them only. None of the following is meant for people who are living through the biggest crises in our world today.
Photo from Canva Pro
“This is such a disaster, what are we going to do!?”
This question is usually more of a statement than an inquiry: we need to do something, anything, to stop the violence and fix things. Desperation, anxiety, helplessness, urgency…visceral feelings are the driving force here. That’s not a bad thing. It’s deeply human and shows our empathy.
When we remain at that starting place though is when we run the risk of making an already dangerous situation more dangerous. What I mean is that we often fail to take the next step: listening to people who are directly impacted by violence and taking the perpetrators seriously when they explain why they are doing what they are doing. We jump straight into what appears to be the easiest action instead.
The most extreme form of this is white saviorism, which does more harm than good by centering the “helper,” as well as their sense of self-importance and anxiety that even they cannot bear. But the much more common response ends up being something closer to slactivism. We do things from the comforts of our own environments that genuinely make us feel like we are helping; but that, in reality, brings little to no positive benefit to people who are hurting. Much of American church culture, at least here in the American South, is as guilty of that as other segments of American life are.
Let me give you an example that I had a front row seat to a few years ago. In June 2019, the military regime oppressing Sudan went on a killing spree in the capital. The massacre of unarmed, peaceful citizens was recorded live online and rightfully shocked the world’s conscience. The nonprofit I work for —again, Sudan is our focus— saw a huge surge of website traffic. We received countless messages from individuals, churches, and student groups asking how to help. Some of our social media posts went semi-viral, new followers poured in…it was an incredibly busy few weeks.
Then, what often happens in these situations happened. Very few people actually donated or fundraised, which is what our Sudanese partners said they needed most. Churches convinced themselves all they needed to do was pray, which became an excuse for doing nothing else. Most people who pledged to help stopped responding to follow up. “I’m going to get the word out instead” was the dominant attitude. Within a few weeks that stopped, too.
The Sudanese people were abandoned. The military generals took that lesson to the bank and still do today: violence against ordinary men, women, and children in Sudan is worse than it’s ever been. The generals are all but sure no one is serious about trying to help the people they are harming, or even make it marginally harder for them to get away with the crimes they are committing.
I’ve seen how this story plays out. When the dust finally settles in Israel, Palestine, Ukraine…wherever; when it is time to begin the hard work of rebuilding, most people who can help will move on to the next “new” crisis. Heck, a lot of people have already moved on and the guns aren’t even silenced yet.
The question I want to pose is this: what if we chose not to move on? How much more resilient would people and places look 20, 30, even 100 years from now if we chose to stick it out, even if we can only give of ourselves in small ways? How different would we look?
Here’s my point: dark times rarely call for desperate or easy responses. What they call for is better organization, burden-sharing, and commitment over a long haul within the context of community. We should be training ourselves toward true solidarity, not charity alone. Solidarity can get very messy, but it is what’s really needed.
Explosions of violence don’t happen in vacuums; they are committed for reasons that are as complex as they are deeply-rooted. The same with antisemitism, Islamophobia, and just not caring at all, as is the case with Sudan. Dealing with underlying problems lurking behind the immediate crisis is hard work and requires a lot of time. And that brings us to my favorite question I get asked.
“What’s your favorite book?”
Admittedly, this seems like an odd place to go next. I love this question though because the answer is one that presents a theory of change that actually works. I’ve read this book over a half dozen times and the story changed how I live my life.
The book is Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. Seriously, just go buy it right now. Here’s the summary from the cover:
In early 1787, twelve men--a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery--came together in a London printing shop and began the world's first grassroots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due at last.
Historian and journalist Adam Hochschild has a way of bringing history to life and making the lessons we should learn from the past glaringly obvious. Here are the main points I’ve taken away from this story over the years:
1. It’s more helpful to commit to one “big crisis” and make it part of your core purpose and community…forever. I don’t mean quit your job and abandon your family to move halfway around the world. The vast majority of the folks in the British antislavery movement had jobs, families, and responsibilities and never left the British Isles. They made time for the cause anyway and —here’s the big thing— they kept making time. They changed their personal habits in ways big and small. They forged community along the way that outlived the movement they were a part of. It was a community that proved vital to the struggle: no matter how dark things got, no matter the odds they faced, the community kept the cause going when it could have just as easily sputtered out.
Neither am I suggesting you can’t help out elsewhere, just that you keep the main thing the main thing. We should always be eager and willing to meet needs around us, but we know effectively organizing, burden-sharing, and committing to change in community with others over the long run works. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
A print of Thomas Clarkson, circa 1840
2. Don’t exclude the people you are trying to help. The central figure in Bury The Chains is Thomas Clarkson, a man who dedicated his life to the antislavery cause. He researched and interviewed people who had personal experience with the slave trade and slavery. He traveled and collected hard evidence, including documenting the brutal equipment used on slave ships. He helped former slavers speak out against what they had been a part of. And he lifted up the voices of former slaves like Olaudah Equiano and helped ensure their voices guided the movement.
Clarkson traveled tens of thousands of miles to document the abuses of slavery and to visit local antislavery groups across the country. At one point, he was nearly murdered by mercenaries hired by slave traders. That’s how effective this guy was.
I doubt there’s a way to get hard data on this, but I’d wager most of the folks today who feel the we just need to do something impulse aren’t including in their communities the people they are trying to help, or even talking to them at all. Again, I have a lot of personal experience seeing this dynamic at play.
I’ll never forget my first trip to Sudan and meeting with ordinary people who were living through hell. The primary needs they expressed were very different than what a lot of the super-certain activist types outside of Sudan said. Some of the needs expressed were even different than what folks in the Sudanese diaspora had told me were the priorities on the ground. Those conversations will always haunt me. The organization I work for made a promise then and there to always have local Sudanese voices guiding our work. A lot of good has come from that simple decision that wouldn’t have otherwise, even if it’s meant quite a few people will never get involved.
In Clarkson’s time —a time when there was no internet, smart phones, or cars and planes— listening to the people he was trying to help was logistically a very difficult thing to do. Over the course of his life he found a way to do it anyways. We have no excuse today, especially considering there are people, organizations, and communities already out there meeting people where they are. A lot of the hard work of building bridges to certain peoples and places in crisis is already being done. Clarkson couldn’t have imagined the sheer number of easy bridges we can cross today, and I imagine he’d be alarmed to see so few people moving back and forth on them in a consistent way.
3. Be a learner rooted in solidarity. The men and women of the British antislavery movement weren’t perfect. Some of the setbacks they faced were of their own doing. But they learned to do better. They kept taking on the empire of their time and, after a lot of hard work and refining their efforts, they won.
People and social movements today embrace the tactics pioneered by the British antislavery movement usually without even knowing it; but, the ethos is often very different and it shows in the results. Many activist types of all stripes —rigid secular progressive, white evangelical, and even “centrists,” the latter of whom can be the worst about this— dictate and impose instead of persuade. They act as if they have nothing left to learn. Honest ignorance is treated as evil and people who genuinely want to learn, help, and do better are talked down to. In its most dangerous forms, such a posture can even provide cover for victims to become perpetrators. Mostly though, it stunts the cause and can even change it all together.
Without the desire and posture of a learner, the true cause becomes tribal purification via virtue signaling. People who sincerely want to help are scared away because they see what’s really going on. Seriously, just look at all the dying white evangelical churches and causes today and you’ll see this is a core dynamic at play in the destruction, as well as their excluding the very voices they are trying to “help.” Or look at the mistrust, intentional misrepresentation of other’s motives, and harassment on some college campuses and other parts of American society right now.
People don’t know what they don’t know. If they are hearing for the first time of the pain and suffering at hand it is going to take time to help them start understanding. Leaders must take their own learning needs seriously for this reason, just as Clarkson did. The more historical context we understand, the more humility we get and the more we see tangible issues that we can begin helping to address.
The more we learn, the more we also settle into the rhythms of the long struggle ahead. It took roughly 50 years for the antislavery movement to secure the Slavery Abolition Act, which paved the way for slaves to be emancipated across the British empire. It was a huge step forward, even if it didn’t abolish slavery everywhere. And that is why six years later, some of the movement’s leaders formed the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to carry the struggle around the globe. That effort continues today as Anti-Slavery International, the world's oldest human rights organization.
Talk about a theory of change that left a legacy.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
“Why do you still have hope?”
I’ve been in my line of work for over 12 years. From the outside looking in, there appear to be fewer reasons to be hopeful today than ever. If Sudan is not a failed state already, it soon will be. After seven months of brutal war and what appears to be a full-blown genocide, weapons are still pouring into the country, millions of people are on the run, and the most liberal estimates of the number of people killed and wounded represent a fraction of reality.
Many of those faces will remain nameless to the outside world. Men, women, and children whose full potential was always denied and whose lives are being cut short by the racism, extremism, and some of the stupidest levels of narcissism of a few men the world has ever seen. Most disheartening though is that no one seems to care.
So, why hope? Why stay in it? Why not walk away?
Because of everything I wrote above. The community is keeping things going right now, even though our Sudanese partners and I are running on fumes. That, and history suggests real, lasting change takes enormous sacrifices of time and resources. From the British antislavery movement to the Protestant Reformation to the fall of Nazi Germany, sacrifice in community over the long haul has made institutions better and even brought evil empires crashing down.
I simply don’t know what else to do besides keep going, be a calm presence, and try to convince others to join in the good work still being done as the gates of hell close in. It’s the only theory of change I’ve seen that works. But some days it’s hard, it’s really hard. Change is a slow, slow burn. I wish it wasn’t. It’s not fair that it is, but that shouldn’t be surprising for us Christians.
Closing Thoughts
The Kingdom of God is a kingdom that demands and heralds change. It’s breaking into this world is a slow, slow burn, too. Jesus had his twelve disciples with him for years and, even after his resurrection, they still seemed incapable of understanding what he was all about. So much so that Jesus had to personally intervene in Saul’s life, one of the greatest persecutors of the first Christians, and send him to the disciples and then out to the world from there as an example.
Jesus was often relentless in his push for change, but even he struggled to change the people and places around him. Why should we expect it’d be easier for us? The Kingdom of God was breaking into this world before he arrived. It still is 2,000 years later and will continue to years after we’re gone. We should embrace the true hope that grows from the resurrection, but we would do well to kick to the curb the triumphalist prosperity streak that runs through much of American Christianity, as well as the fetishization of hate and vengeance that continues to infect mainstream evangelical institutions. We have all the reasons in the world to trust in the hope found in the resurrection, but little to none in embracing the latter.
The Kingdom of God is a slow, slow burn. Welcoming this historical truth into the very fiber of our beings is as life-giving as it is anxiety-reducing. It gives us deep purpose and a home in the bigger picture. None of it is safe or easy, but we can be certain about one thing: change will come.
It’s just a slow, slow burn to see the Kingdom breaking into reality.
I explore faith and American church culture from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my newsletter and subscribing to the podcast. You can also become a member or leave a tip to help keep this site free and open to all.
