"ALWAYS IDA B. WELLS"

 “ALWAYS IDA B. WELLS”

To close out Black History Month, I want to revisit one of my favorite people in American history – the fantastic Ida B. Wells.  I first met her in a book “Black Foremothers” by Dorothy Sterling, when I read it in 1985 to get ready to preach on Black History Month at Oakhurst.  I was stunned to read about her – several things struck me.  First, I thought that I knew a fair amount about Black History, but I had never heard of her, despite all her witnessing and accomplishments for justice and equity.  But, she was little known in American history. Thanks to her daughter, Alfreda Duster, and to the rest of her family, especially her great-granddaughter Michelle Duster, Ida B. is much better known now.  Her daughter Alfreda Duster collected Ida B.’s journals and writings and molded them into a manuscript called “Crusade for Justice,” and began to seek a publisher.  It would be 1970 before she convinced John Hope Franklin to include “Crusade for Justice” in a series published by the University of Chicago.

Second, I was also stunned to learn that Ida B. Wells was born in the same county in Mississippi as all my mother’s forebears – Marshall County in northwest Mississippi.  Mother was born in Byhalia in 1919, and Ida B. was born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs.  Wells and my mother were the same type of women – short, fierce, and strong.  Whereas my mother never became an official social activist like Ida B. did, she made her statements on the issues of the day.  (For more on that journey, see my book “She Made a Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World,” published in 2024).  These geographical and spiritual connections to Ida B. Wells motivated me to research Wells and dedicate myself to helping to make her more widely known.  Indeed, Dr. Catherine Meeks and I wrote a book on Wells and her influence in today’s world called “Passionate For Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time,” published in 2019.  

In studying Wells and her life and witness, I discovered one more strong connection between her and my geography.  In 2016, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) published a study of lynchings in America, especially in the South.  Right after the study came out, I got an e-mail from my long-time Helena friend David Billings (whose own memoir “Deep Denial” is powerful on these issues also).  In the e-mail, David indicated that Helena and Phillips County topped the list for localities that had killed the most Black people in lynchings.  The EJI study indicated that at least 230 Black people had been killed in a rampage of white violence in a three day massacre in early fall, 1919 in Elaine and Helena.  I had heard about the “Elaine Race Riot” as I grew up in Philips County, but I had accepted the narrative that Black folk had started it, and that the white violence in response had killed only a few Black men.  It was done to keep Black people in their place.

The reality is much different, as several studies have shown.  The “Elaine Massacre,” - as it came to be known - began when white sheriff’s deputies tried to stop a meeting of Black tenant farmers, who were seeking to organize to protect their cotton prices.  Everyone was armed, and though historians dispute over who fired first, my own sense is that the deputies fired first.  The wounding and killing of people on both sides ignited a white firestorm of violence.  For three days, armed white mobs roamed throughout Phillips County, killing whatever Black people they could find.  The US Army was called in to quell the massacre, but they ended up killing more Black people.  

    When the racist bloodlust calmed down, at least 237 Black people had been murdered, one of the worst mass killings in American history – in my home county. Investigations began, and to no one’s surprise, the Black people were blamed for the white violence.  Over 120 Black people were charged and convicted in the investigation, and twelve of them were sentenced to death.  Two modern books stand out as sources on this – “Blood in Their Eyes” by Grif Stockley and “On the Laps of Gods” by Robert Whitaker.”  I also discovered an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly "The Underlying Causes of the Elaine Riot of 1919," by Dr. J. W. Butts and Dorothy James, published in the Spring issue, 1961.  It was written by the parent of a high school classmate of mine.  It was an effort to “whitewash” the violence of the Elaine Massacre, and it also sought to discredit a study done by Ida B. Wells on the Massacre.

    Because of the horrific nature of the massacre, Wells decided to come back South from her exile (returning after almost 30 years of exile after her newspaper offices had been burned in Memphis in 1893).  She interviewed victims of the Massacre and published a foundational study entitled “The Arkansas Race Riot.”  Yet, she also did much more, and next week we’ll look at her study and her witness.  Her courage and her investigative powers provide us with a commodity that seems to be in such short supply these days:  hope.  As the Reverend Jesse Jackson put it so well: “Keep Hope Alive!”

"THE MAN WHO STOPPED NEO-SLAVERY"

 “THE MAN WHO STOPPED NEO-SLAVERY”

There were so many people involved in the fight to end Jim Crow, or neo-slavery, as I prefer to call it.  The phase of neo-slavery that built up and menaced us all from 1866 finally ended 100 years later in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Act.  We are now in a time when we are wrestling with the “new Jim Crow,” and as we seek to find our way in this Black History Month, I want to lift up one giant who has largely been forgotten, but whose life and witness shows us a path for our time.   Those who knew him and who remember him often call him “the man who killed Jim Crow.”

His name was Charles Hamilton Houston, and he was born in Washington, DC, in September, 1895, seven months after the death of Frederick Douglass, in the same year that Ida Wells got married, in the same month that Booker T. Washington gave his “surrender” speech in Atlanta, and eight months before the heinous SCOTUS decision “Plessy v. Ferguson” which gave legal status to neo-slavery.  Quite a run of time!  His father was a lawyer in DC, and his grandfather had escaped from slavery in Kentucky and had become a conductor on the Underground Railroad.  He was an outstanding student and went to Amherst and graduated summa cum laude in 1915.

He joined his father’s law firm, but when World War I came along, Houston joined the army to fight for democracy, or so he thought.  His experience of racism and segregation in the US army deepened his commitment to ending neo-slavery.  This is what he wrote about it: “The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in me dying for a world controlled by white people.  I made up my mind that if I got through this war, I would study law and use my life fighting for people who could not strike back.”  

He did make it through the war and kept his vow.  He entered Harvard Law School in 1920 and became the first Black student elected to the Harvard Law Review.  After graduation, he joined his father’s law firm in DC and taught part-time at Howard University Law School.  In 1929, the new president of Howard, Mordecai Johnson, recruited him to become dean of the Law School, with the intent of changing life in America.  Hamilton transformed the Law School from a part-time, non-accredited institution to a powerful, accredited law school which became the centerpiece of civil rights litigation, annually producing a strong group of lawyers rigorously trained to fight for equal justice under the law.  He had three main steps to end neo-slavery:  to develop that cadre of well-trained and dedicated Black lawyers, to build a broad base of support in Black communities for this work, and to litigate against neo-slavery and segregation in courts.  

He had many powerful students, but his most famous was Thurgood Marshall.  He trained Marshall to become the giant that he became.  Marshall had this to say about Hamilton: “He was hard crust…He used to tell us that doctors could bury their mistakes, but lawyers couldn’t.  And he’d drive home that we would be competing not only with white lawyers but really well-trained white lawyers, so there just wasn’t any point in crying in our beers about being Negroes.”  Hamilton didn’t just teach it – he lived it.  He later joined the NAACP as special counsel and recruited Marshall to be his top assistant.  They traveled the South together to get a first-hand look at the conditions that they would be litigating, with their lives in danger in every town. 

He had heart disease, and all the stress and work began to weaken his heart. His doctors told him to cut back or just go back to teaching, but he was dedicated to the cause.  He and Marshall joined forces to win important federal cases in Maryland, Missouri, and Oklahoma.  His heart continued to fail, and he had to step down from the NAACP work, with Marshall taking his place.  He died in 1950, four years before one of the powerful fruits of his labor would be litigated before the Supreme Court:  Brown v. Board of Education.  Though he was not with them, it was Charles Houston’s lawyers and Charles Houston’s strategy that brought them to victory in the Brown case.  It was one of the towering labors that led to the end of neo-slavery in 1965.  

At Houston’s funeral in 1950, William Hastie, the first Black man ever appointed as a federal appellate judge, had these words to say about Houston: “He guided us through the legal wilderness of second-class citizenship.  He was truly the Moses of that journey.  He lived to see us close to the promised land of full equality under the law, closer that even he had dared hope when he set out on that journey, and so much closer than would have been possible without his genius and his leadership.”

In this Black History Month, remember this pioneer – if you’ve never heard of him, look up more about him.  If you know about him, celebrate his work.  And, in a time of the new neo-slavery, the new Jim Crow, let us find our place in that great cloud of witnesses, working with inspiration from people like Charles Hamilton Houston and Ida B. Wells, working towards a time when the idea that all people are created equal will bear fruit for all of us.  Unfortunately, as we are now seeing in the Trumpster, Hamilton did not kill neo-slavery, but he put a mighty stop to it for 70 years.  Now, it’s our turn to pick up that mantle, as Elisha picked it up from the great prophet Elijah.

"HOW DO WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING?"

 “HOW DO WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING?”

In the despicable post where the Trumpster emphasized the “apeness” of Black people, he likely had no idea that it was a Black person who gave all of us our sense of direction.  As he jet-sets between Mar-a-Lago and DC, he did not know that a Black woman made it possible.  Dr. Gladys West died on January 17 in Fredericksburg, VA, at the age of 95.  She was one of the central persons who made the current GPS system possible.  Every time one of us goes on our cellphones or car phones to get directions, we use a system that Dr. West developed.  Because I am classified as “white,” and because we who are so classified do not give credit or acknowledge the work of those classified as “Black,” I had never heard of Dr. West until her death last month.  The New York Times had a ¾ page spread on her for her obituary, and her accomplishments are stunning.

Gladys Mae Brown was born in Sutherland, Virginia in 1930 on a farm owned by her parents – the fact of Black ownership of land was unusual enough.  She walked three miles a day to and from a segregated school, and in the evenings and weekends, she helped to grow and harvest tobacco on her parents’ farm.  In school, she excelled in mathematics, especially in geometry.  In her autobiography “It Began with a Dream,” Dr. West wrote about those days: “I was starting to realize early that this newly found love for geometry was something that could help me find that road that I had dreamed about, the road that would take me far away from that farm.”

She was valedictorian of her high school class, meaning that she automatically got a full scholarship to Virginia State College (now University), and she attended there and received a bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mathematics.  She was teaching high school in Martinsville, VA, when she applied for a job at the Navy’s weapons facility in Dahlgren, VA.  After reviewing her record and her references, they asked her to come for an interview, but she declined because she thought that they would reject her when they saw that she was Black.  A few weeks later, however, she received a letter saying that she had been hired anyway – her record was too stunning to overlook.

She was one of four Black employees at the site, and because of her mathematical abilities, she advanced quickly.  Her first job was to verify the accuracy of bombing coordinates, using a hand calculator (if you’re thinking “Hidden Figures,” yes, she was in that kind of category).  In the early 1960’s, she was part of a team that programmed a computer to track the movement of Pluto in relation to Neptune.  She then made her big step, using a new, powerful IBM computer to calculate the precise shape of Earth, accounting for many variables like gravity, tidal forces, and the curvature of the oceans.  This work led directly to the development of the current GPS system.  

She retired in 1998 but went back to college at Virginia Tech to get her doctorate degree in public administration.  She did not promote herself – indeed, few people knew her story, and it surfaced almost by accident.  In 2018 she attended an event for her college sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha and put on her bio form that she had helped to develop the GPS system.  Her friend from college, Gwen James, was astonished and offered to help her get her story told.  When Ms. James called Dr. West’s daughter to get more details on the story, the daughter replied: “What story?” But, now the story came out – she was inducted into the Air Force Hall of Fame, and one of her presenters put it this way:   "She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy, and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data. As Gladys West started her career in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come."

So, here she is – a powerful Hidden Figure, obscured by white male pride and her own humility.  Dr. Gladys West has shown us where to go and how to get there.  And, oh yes, to the Trumpster, put that in your own simian pipe and smoke it.

"IS THIS OUR KRISTALLNACHT MOMENT?"

 “IS THIS OUR KRISTALLNACHT MOMENT?

I hate to intrude on Black History Month with stuff about the Trumpster moves, but the events of the past week make me wonder if this is our Kristallnacht moment.  I do not want to minimize the deep suffering of Jewish people in Germany during the Kristallnacht by comparing it to our time, but it seems to me that we may have crossed a line this past week with Trump’s seeking to move into the kind of intimidation and fear that Hitler and his goons promoted with the thuggery of Kristallnacht.

    First, a short synopsis of Kristallnacht – if you are unfamiliar with it, please look it up on your own.  On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide anti-Jewish riot. The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. In reality, this was state sponsored vandalism, arson, and terror. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).  Part of the terror of those days was the beginning of the deportation of Jewish men.  Sounding familiar yet?  Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the solidification of the Nazi’s persecution of its enemies and any who dissented.

        I don’t know if this is our American Kristallnacht or not, but it sure feels like it after the events of last week, from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to official lying about those killings, to the seizing of the voting records of the 2020 election from Fulton County here in Georgia, to the arrests of Black journalists, to the nomination of a Trumpster to chair the Federal Reserve, to the terror of the ICE thugs – Trump seems to be making his move to establish himself as the Supreme Leader who cannot and will not be denied.  Let me hasten to add here that Black and Brown and Native peoples in America have already experienced Kristallnacht many times over – the events of last week are designed to terrorize white people now.  

        It is as if Trump is trying to seize the moment for dictatorship and make it his.  Killing protestors, invalidating elections, arresting journalists, deporting “aliens”- all these point to what Trump hopes that we will take as truth:  he is in control and will not be denied.  Resisters are rising up in the streets, and even some Republican politicians are trying to draw a line.  We give thanks that the people of Minnesota are showing us the way in their resistance to the Trump regime.  Perhaps the Supreme Court will deny Trump’s attempt at this coup, but so far they have given no indication of such backbone.  It is a scary moment for us all, as Trump moves to deny or invalidate the storm that is coming in the 2026 elections.  

        Only time will tell if Trump’s Kristallnacht will prove to be a turning point which consolidates his power, or if this will be a Gettysburg moment, when Trump’s power begins to ebb.    I would love to hope that Trump’s Kristallnacht will instead prove to be a turning point when his power began to wane, but so far I don’t see many signs of that.  There are hopeful signs, sort of like eagle or crow calls in the distance – resisters everywhere, Democrats finding both vision and backbone, growing discontent with Trump and his thuggish methods across the land.  One thing that gives me pause is that no Republican state leader in Georgia has yet spoken up against Trump’s seizure of the Fulton County ballots.  Democrats are speaking out strongly, but the Republicans have been strangely quiet.  In 2020, they stood up to Trump, but now in 2026, they are acquiescing.  

    So, whatever you think about Trump, please recognize that these next few weeks and months will prove crucial to our democracy – Kristallnacht or Gettysburg?  Which way it goes will largely be up to us.  Trump is making a blatant attempt to steal democracy from us – what will be our response?

"DAVID STROUPE!!!"

 “DAVID STROUPE!”

Our son David Stroupe was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on a snowy evening 46 years ago on January 31, 1980.  It snowed six inches in Norfolk on the night that he was born, and he says that he has been trying to get warm ever since. As I write this blog in Decatur, we have just made it through an ice storm, so I am especially remembering the snowy, cold night when he was born.   He has been a great gift to us and to so many others in this crazy world.  He currently teaches science education at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, after a long stint at Michigan State.

David has always had a kind and compassionate heart, and we sometimes ended up with various creatures in our house that he had found or brought home from his class at school.  He also has always had a strong moral sense, growing up at Oakhurst Presbyterian where we emphasized that love and justice had to be woven together.  We also taught that God was at the center of life.  When we took him to the Atlantans baseball games in the summer, we would stand for the national anthem, but we would not put our hands over our hearts, as most other fans did.  When David asked why we did not put our hands over our hearts, we would reply that our hearts belonged to God, not to our country or anything else.

     In his final year of elementary school, he was named as captain of the safety patrol, and he brought home a dilemma.  As captain of the safety patrol, he was required to lead the school in the pledge of allegiance to the flag.  And, in so doing, he would be expected to put his hand over his heart.  He wanted to be true to our heritage, but he also wanted to meet the expectations of the school and the safety patrol.  I suggested that he think about passing that duty along to the next officer of the safety patrol, but he indicated that leading the pledge was part of his duties, and he wanted to fulfill his duties.  He came up with a compromise – he would only put his hand near his heart – he would not put his hand over his heart.  In that way, he would try to fulfill both his heritage and his duties.  We appreciated his struggle over this, so we indicated that this approach would work for us.  He ended up winning the DAR Good Citizenship Award, and on the day that he received it, he wore a statement T-shirt in 1992 saying “How could Columbus have discovered America when people were already living here?”

        He has always been a well-coordinated person, and he played soccer and was a founder of the ultimate frisbee team at Decatur High School.  I also remember playing basketball with him over at the Winnona School playground.  Especially memorable was the era when he got taller than me, and as he grew taller, he delighted in blocking as many of my basketball shots as he could.  He took great joy in being able to do that!

David and Erin moved to Salt Lake City two years ago, where they are now teaching at the University of Utah. He is a Professor of STEM Education, Teacher Education, the Interim Associate Dean of Research in the College of Education, and the Director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education. His third book (published by Harvard Education Press in 2023) “Growing and Sustaining Student-Centered Science Classrooms,” won the 2024 Gloria J. Ladson-Billings Outstanding Book Award from the American Association of College Teachers of Education. He also began a multiyear stint as a co-editor of the journal Science Education this year, and they receive about 1,000 articles a year, seeking publication.  He also was inducted as a Fellow in the American Association for Advancement of Science.

We give thanks for David and all the gifts that he has shared with us and with so many others.  YAY FOR DAVID!!!!

"MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR."

 “MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.”

Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the establishment of the MLK national holiday.  I was reminded that God has a sense of humor because President Ronald Reagan was forced to sign it in to law in 1983.  Many white people, including myself, had harsh feelings toward King, and it has taken a long time for this holiday to become established, though some people classified as “white” still harbor hard feelings about King and his witness and ministry.  I’ve written about my journey with Dr. King in an online article for The Atlantic – you can check it out at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/doubting-mlk-during-a-strike-in-memphis/550118/

In these terrible days, however, it is clear that Dr. King offers us a vision of life that is sorely needed.  You can put together your own list, but from my point of view, his life and witness offer us at least five guidelines for living our lives in terrible times such as these.

King lived in a time of the violent repression of Black people and white sympathizers, so he had no delusions about what time it was in America.  But, he also believed in the power of the idea of equality, an idea that often had him using this refrain: “How long?  Not long!  How long? Not long!  How long?  Not long?” So, I think that the first thing that King would tell us in this oppressive age is that we must be driven by hope rather than despair.  In these Trumpster days, we live in a time of fear and despair, and King would seek to fire us up to be driven by a vision of hope and equality.  No unrealistic hope here – King lived in an age of white supremacist violence and oppression.  He would tell us that George Wallace and Orval Faubus and Ross Barnett or Donald Trump do not have total control over us or over our imaginations – the idea of equality is a powerful one that will not be denied, no matter that white supremacy is now making its comeback.

Second, King would urge us to stick with the idea of non-violence in our resistance to the forces of oppression and tyranny.  Confronted by the military and police might of the Trumpster, some of us might be tempted to lean into violence not only as a strategy but as a necessity.  King would strongly wrestle with us to stick with the idea of non-violence, not only because it forces us to see the other as “human,” but also because of what violence does to our own psyches and understandings of ourselves and of others.  King used the Jesus approach:  be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves.  Jesus said these words to his followers not because he was in power but because he was not in power – he was subject to arrest and violence at the hands of the Roman Empire at any time.  King wanted his followers to remain true to themselves and true to the humanity of others.

Third, King would urge us to be resisters to the current political rulers.  As the Civil Rights Movement reminded us, there is no neutral ground here.  King’s approach to non-violence did not mean passivity.  It meant a strong dedication to seeing others as human, but at the same time resisting the evil ways that they perpetuated and maintained.  Those who are resisting the ICE raids are showing us the way – resistance is a must in these days.  King was arrested over 30 times for civil disobedience, and one of his great letters was written from a jail cell in Birmingham.  King reminds us that we must resist the unjust powers who are currently prevailing, and his life and his death demonstrated the cost of such resistance.  As he noted in his “Drum Major Speech” in 1968, we must use all our might and imagination to resist the triple threats of racism, materialism, and militarism.

Fourth, King would urge us to refuse to accept the definitions of others about our own humanity and the humanity of others.  He insisted that we see ourselves as children not of racial classification, nor of money, nor of violence, nor of religion, nor of culture.  Rather we should see ourselves as children of God, by whatever name we call God.  King brought a radicalism to this approach to our own humanity and to the humanity of others. Only by knowing our own worth can we withstand the headwinds of the triple threats in our lives. 

I don’t think that King was a Calvinist, though I have my suspicions.  His final word to us would be a caution to keep hold on the understanding of our deep captivity to the triple threats of racism, materialism, and militarism.  They are always with us, sometimes flowing into an underground stream, but at other times roaring at us as they are doing now, seeking to make us bow down and worship them, accepting the definition of ourselves and of others as something to be feared and thus to be oppressed and crushed.  We live in dangerous times, but so did King.  And his witness in those times reminds us that we must be true to ourselves, and we must be organizing and resisting in community, so that love, justice, and equity can prevail.   We need to build and to be a part of the Beloved Community so that we can resist oppression and build a life on love, justice, and equity.

"MURDER IN HIS HEART'

 “MURDER IN HIS HEART”

Some of my friends are not fans of the Christmas season because they see it as over-commercialized and too sentimental, with its emphasis on “sweet, little Jesus boy.”  No argument from me on the commercialization issue – Christmas items started appearing in stores in the Atlanta area in late September, and many businesses count on the Christmas season to make their profits for the year.  And, though there are many opportunities to make Christmas only a sappy holiday, the Biblical witness does not bear that out.  In the Biblical Christmas stories, we get down and dirty, with feet on the ground, in all the riskiness and heartaches of human life – a teen-ager pregnant before marriage by someone other than her fiancé (subject to the death penalty), a baby born on the streets, with the first visitors being foreigners.  Not much sap here – just scandalous and difficult stuff.

The final argument for the human realism in the Christmas story is found at the end of Matthew’s account of the narrative in the closing part of chapter two.   As we saw last week, the magi come to visit the baby Jesus, and they engage King Herod on the way to Bethlehem.  Herod indicates that he wants to worship the baby, too, but we know that he has murder in his heart.  The wise magi visit Jesus, then they decide to go home by another way, rather than going back to Herod to tell where the baby is. They aren’t known as “wise men” for nothing.

Herod is infuriated that he has been beaten at his own game, and he returns to the murder in his heart as his endgame position.  Not knowing who this baby his, he orders his soldiers to kill all the baby boys of Jerusalem who are two years old and younger.  Joseph has had another vision from God, telling him to take his family and flee to Egypt, for the murderous Herod is coming for them.  Joseph takes Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt, where they enter the country as immigrants.  Fortunately for us all at this time, Egypt does not have Donald Trump as its leader, and the Holy Family is welcomed and embraced as immigrants.  The baby boys of Bethlehem do not fare so well – they are slaughtered by the man with murder in his heart.  The scene is horrific – Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah to describe it: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children.”  

Matthew’s account of the Christmas story does not end in sweet sentiment – it ends in fear and flight and murder and lamentation, a story close to our time.  The birth of Jesus came not when everything was quiet and still and tranquil, but rather in the midst of the muck and murder and blood of human life.  As we look into the new year and wonder how to use this Christmas story, let us recall that God came into our midst not as an escapee from the terror and violence of the world, but right into the midst of our fear and flight and murderous hearts.  Matthew doesn’t waste any time in proclaiming that God has come into our midst in the places where we live and struggle and hurt one another.

And, in our time, we live in the midst of another leader with murder in his heart.  Like Herod, the Trumpster believes that power and might and violence and death make the world go round, as his adviser Stephen Miller told us last week.  Or, as the Trumpster himself put it, there is no limit on his presidency except his own morality – and there seems to be a severe shortage of such morality.  From killing people in Venezuela in order to snatch its president and its first lady, to celebrating the murder of a mother in Minneapolis by his personal ICE agents (very similar to the soldiers of Herod), Trump seems to be the backhand of Herod in Jesus’ day.

“Murder in his heart” – so it was said about Herod, and now it is said about Trump, both of them being tyrants who believe that there is no check on their power.  If you haven’t known it already, the past two weeks have taught us that we are led by a tyrant, who currently seems to have very few checks on his power.  We are called to be witnesses to another way, the way seen in the Christmas stories, which knew just as much blood as we know.  In those stories, there were courageous visionaries who heard a different voice and who chose a different way.  They proclaimed in word and deed that love and justice and mercy make the world go round, and they made this proclamation not in a sweet and tranquil time, but in a time of blood flowing in the streets, blood shed by leaders with murder in their hearts.  

    We may not be Mary or Joseph or the magi or the shepherds, but we are called to seek visions from God, visions that will enable us to proclaim a different way in word and in deed.  Just as Joseph felt an urgency to move to Egypt when he heard the vision from God, so too must we feel that urgency.  It is time to act up and act out, to be witnesses in resistance to those with murder in their hearts.