Dear Westwood Family,
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once was an amazing film whose title accurately describes how I feel, given all the upheaval that is taking place in Los Angeles and beyond. I have been especially distraught about the collective punishmenttaking place in Gaza, which has created a famine in the region. My anger and frustration are shared by my friend, Rev. Dr. Timothy Murphy, who spoke in The Loft last year about his recently published children’s book.
In response to the horrific conditions in Gaza, on June 1st, Timothy began an indefinite hunger strike with one goal: “the full resumption of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, administered through a neutral and independent party such as the United Nations or the World Food Programme.” You can watch the press conference where Timothy announced his fast on his church’s Facebook page. Timothy’s fast expresses his solidarity with the innocent civilians in Gaza who are currently suffering from famine. In May, a UN-backed assessment reported that Gaza’s population of approximately 2.1 million people is at “critical risk” of famine and faces “extreme levels of food insecurity.” According to the report, around 244,000 people in Gaza are experiencing “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity. For reference, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) defines famine as “an extreme deprivation of food. Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident.” A famine is declared when 20% of households face an extreme lack of food, 30% of children are suffering from acute malnutrition, and the deaths of two people or four children for every 10,000 each day are due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease.
Rev. Dr. Murphy is urging all people of goodwill and faith to support him in his fast by contacting the White House daily to inform them about his hunger strike and encourage the President to demand that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu permit the full resumption of food aid into Gaza. Timothy emphasizes that we need to see 500 trucks entering Gaza each day to meet the essential needs of the population and prevent imminent famine. He also requests that we reach out to our US Senators and ask them to contact the President to urge Netanyahu to allow humanitarian aid to flow once more. You can call the Congress Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senator by name. My prayer is that you will join me in supporting Timothy and the innocent civilians in Gaza during this time.
I know that there are some within our church community who are uncomfortable with the degree of politics present in my sermons and pastoral notes, and I will spend the remainder of this note addressing that concern. As Christians within the Wesleyan tradition, who are taught to strive “towards Christian perfection” (i.e., Christian maturity), we should understand that the Bible is both personal and political. While some of you may have been taught that our faith and our politics should be separate, or at least unspoken, both the biblical record and our Christian tradition tell a much different story.
The twofold affirmation that the Bible is both personal and political is clear. The Bible is personal because it concerns our relationship with God as persons. This relationship is the path to personal transformation—the way of return from exile, sight for the blind, liberation from bondage. Jesus’ spiritual path of radical compassion leads toward a new beginning, a new life centered in God. The Bible is also political because it reflects God’s desire for a different kind of world—a world of abundance rather than scarcity, where people have enough not due to charity but through justice. A world where nations no longer wage war against one another. God longs, pulls, and invites us to envision a world where marginalization and exploitation do not feel nearly normal. This is the theme of the Bible, and anyone who approaches it with honesty will reach this conclusion.
To be sure, this does not mean that Jesus would be a Democrat or a Republican if he were a voting citizen of the United States. Rather, I believe Jesus would engage in non-violent direct action as he did against the more conservative leaders of the Temple when he overturned the tables of the money-changers, and as he did against the more progressive Zealots when they wanted him to liberate Israel by force. At the same time, we should not be so naive as to create a false equivalency between the two dominant political parties in our country. It is a mere statement of fact that one party’s political policies result in the direct harm of nearly everyone in our country, with the exception of those among us who are in the top 8% of earners. Even those of us in the top 8% will be impacted by this administration’s climate policies, and eventually, our children and grandchildren will pay the price for our failure to innovate and help create the world that God is trying to pull us towards.
In conclusion, I pray that you join me in supporting my friend in his act of civil resistance. I pray that you are inspired to find a way to use your own unique giftedness to resist injustice and support the most vulnerable. I pray that you internalize the truth that our faith and our God cannot be separated from our political choices.
In Love and Solidarity,
Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter
