The crisis of irredeemability

In June of 2018, I traveled to Germany and Poland as a Seminary Fellow of the Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE). FASPE seeks to examine the Holocaust and World War II (WWII) from the perspective of the “perpetrators” and asks how members of certain disciplines (institutional religion, medicine, business, law, and journalism) acted as perpetrators in the context of WWII.

The program began in Berlin, where we studied and walked the pre- and post-War histories of the German nation, attempting to discover truths about the origins of the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II, as well as the struggle for redemption of communities who (knowingly or otherwise) contributed to the atrocities of the War. On the second day of our trip, we visited the Topography of Terror, a museum about the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Gestapo. At the end of the main exhibit, which detail the rise of the SS and Gestapo and shared stories about individuals who joined the groups during the War, I learned that after the War ended most members of the SS, Gestapo, and German army were able to return to their communities of origin.7 They were not punished.

I remember being viscerally enraged, livid at the thought that those who had directly contributed to the murder of over 6,000,000 Jews and 275,000 people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, “asocials,” and other innocent members of European society were able to escape any kind of retribution.8 As I steamed over this outside of the museum, a member of my FASPE cohort asked, “What would you have had happen?”

My immediate, gut-level response was a clear desire for those who carried out the atrocities of the War and Holocaust to have been totally removed from society, forgotten, left alone to waste away. I shared that with my friend, and we sat together in silence contemplating our desires for retribution.

Then, quietly, unbidden (unwanted), I heard the Spirit speak into the depths of my heart: “But what about Jesus’ redemption-for-all?” I wept. I was totally thrown to discover that I’d seemingly forgotten the redemptive love of Christ.

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In September of 2018, Christine Blasey Ford appeared before the Senate Judicial Committee to testify about sexual assault allegations she had made toward Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The Yale campus was abuzz during the testimonies and following; Ford’s courageous witness sparked fervor of support for victims of sexual assault which appeared to be embraced by the student community of the University writ large. Following the testimonies and as the nation awaited a decision from the Judicial Committee, members of Yale College student groups including Women’s Table and High Street decorated public bulletin boards to read “We believe Christine Blasey Ford, Anita Hill… [and] all survivors [of sexual assault].”9

The following day, the Yale Daily News reported that two of the signs declaring support for the survivors of sexual assault had been torn down by a Yale Divinity School (YDS) student.

The YDS community reacted swiftly and sharply. Throughout the days following, I was privy to a number of conversations demanding a variety of responses: that this student be expelled from the school, or that the student be forced into some sort of public confrontation, or that the actions taken by this student be clearly condemned by both the Student Government and the YDS administration. While these responses did not surprise me, I was shocked by the visceral undercurrent of hatred which permeated the demands. In private circles, my colleagues employed rhetoric such as “let’s go after” the student, expressing that they “want[ed] his head” and that they were “grabbing [their] pitchforks” to “bring him down” because he “doesn’t belong here.”10 Immediately and effectively, the general student body of the Divinity School cast out their fellow student. To be clear, I include myself in this action because, while I was shocked to see the rhetoric of exclusion permeating the situation, I did nothing publicly to stop the exclusionary attitude from becoming a real feature of our community life. This casting-out manifested in social media denunciation, avoidance in the hallways of YDS, and ongoing reluctance to even say “hi” in the laundry room of the common apartment building. In these ways and more, we immediately turned away from this student and continued through the following months.

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These stories, among others like them, profoundly shaped my personal theology, vocational trajectory, and understanding of what it means to be human during my time in seminary. In that moment outside the Topography of Terror, standing next to remnants of the Berlin Wall on the rubble of the former SS and Gestapo headquarters, I was converted, and the conversion was solidified as I walked with my community in the days following the situation described above. As a follower of Christ—and more basically as a living, breathing, hopeful human being—I am terrified by the state of things in these days: by the culture of irredeemability holding the whole of things in its sway. I stand in wonder at the discovery of the attitude of irredeemability inside of me. Where I might have excused my own response to the horror of the Holocaust, recognizing its immediacy toward my classmate revealed the insidious nature of this stance.

I find this culture of irredeemability jarring because it is theologically opposed to the Good News of Jesus Christ. As Christians we know that Jesus gave himself on the cross in order to ameliorate our sins and to rescue us from the evil of this present age. Moreover, we know that Jesus’ death and resurrection on the cross marks the salvation and redemption of all humankind from the fallen nature of creaturely sinfulness: Jesus “is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.”11 Thus, if I am truly a Christian, the question of Jesus’ redemption-for-all is not a question at all— it is the unshakeable foundation for how I view the whole world, the society in which I live, and my neighbors. It is the heart with which I must greet those who hurt me, those who stand opposed to me, those toward whom it would be exponentially easier to harden my heart.

How, then, have I come to discover within myself and my communities’ hearts hardened against those who perpetrate harm in our society? This is, of course, what I discovered in Germany and at YDS in the stories I shared above. When I wished that those whom history understands as the perpetrators of the Second World War would have died in the same amount of pain that they’d caused, I responded from a retributive assumption that redemption and forgiveness are only for the “good guys.” When my fellow student was cast out of my community because the politics displayed through his actions did not align to those of the community as a collective, we as a family of Christians acted out of a place of hatred and othering rather than out of the truth that even this student receives the gifts of Jesus’ redemption. Of course, some of this action is based in a desire to stand in solidarity with those who suffer among us. This stand necessitates a stand against the perpetrating Other, a moral imperative if are to lead one another to a more just way of being community. And yet too often we stop in our stance against the Other, ending the process of progress in its tracks.

The truth of Jesus’ redemption of all through his death on the cross, and what this redemption means for the redeem-ability of humanity, is the lifeblood of what it means to be Christian. As I survey the socio-cultural landscape around me (and frankly, as I try just to be a moderately ok person in the world!), I worry that we’ve forgotten this lifeblood, that we’ve let it drain out of our bodies and dry on the ground. We’ve become accustomed to polarized communities, allowing ourselves to cast out from our lives those with whom we disagree.12 Moreover, the popularization of the perpetrator-victim dichotomy allows us to Other and cast out especially those who commit harm against us.

In the face of these questions and realities, what might it look like for the Church to stand as a counter-cultural beacon of hope, reminding the world around us of the miracle of our redemption? How might we think about this miracle theologically, pastorally, and ritually? In particular, how might we enact these beliefs on a really concrete, at-home, vulnerable level? When we are hurt by someone in our immediate community, how might we welcome them home instead of casting them out?

These questions are giant, and they continue to give me pause at every turn of this project. I cannot address adequately in this paper whether we ought to welcome Nazis home (if I am ever the person to address that idea). I wonder, though, what the story of my colleague at Yale and our community’s reaction to the tearing-down of posters might reveal for these giant questions and tensions. How can we live together on a global scale in a world where humans constantly deal death to one another, if we are not able to live together over the comparatively innocuous act of tearing down a sign? To be clear: the answers I offer in this project to this question and the picture I present of a reconciling community are not one-size-fits-all. They do not apply to every instance of harm, and perhaps do not even apply to most. I speak from a particular and privileged social location, and so my answers to these questions will have blind spots and will fail to adequately respond to the experiences of those differently affected by systemic injustice and bigotry than I.

And yet: I believe there is something universal in our common call to community and our common bond of Christ’s love. Polarization, Othering, casting-out: these behaviors harm us all and exacerbate every other form of injustice and oppression. And so I hope that you will stick with me through this project, even when I fall short, and that this will beget a mutual kind of imagining and learning about how to combat the crisis of irredeemability.