Subversive Liturgies
Disrupting Empire Through Ritual, Grand and Small
I’m drawing inspiration for this issue from an unusual source: a lecture series by the Rev. Dr. Mack Dennis on “The Art of Not Being Governed: Revelation for the Rest of Us” at the First Baptist Church of Asheville’s Center for Faith and Life. The series presents the Bible’s Book of Revelation as a source of inspiration for faithful dissent and transformation in the face of empire. The empire of Revelation was Roman, but the book’s symbolic language makes it relevant far beyond that time and place.
Dennis’ second lecture focused on liturgy. We usually think of liturgy as a set of rituals enacted in religious worship, but at root it refers simply to a public ritual or service, typically to honor or exalt those with power and authority. The overarching theme of the lecture was that “acts of worship in Revelation perform liturgies that disrupt and subvert the liturgies of empire.”
A modern example of this kind of nonviolent liturgical power move took place in Chile during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. By incorporating the names of those tortured, killed, and disappeared by the Pinochet regime into the celebration of the Eucharist, the Catholic Church confronted and radically reframed the state’s assault on people’s bodies by associating it with Jesus’ own torture at the hands of the Roman Empire.
Liturgy and ritual need not be religious. At one point, Dennis displayed an image of the Blue Angels flying over a stadium during the singing of the National Anthem at a Super Bowl game, a deafening, boneshaking fusion of social, patriotic, and commercial ritual, a liturgy of empire if ever there was one. “How,” Dennis asked, “could you possibly disrupt something like this?” The answer came with the next image: Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality in the U.S., a respectful alternative liturgy that rippled through this country like an earthquake.
Public ritual as resistance is all around us right now: the rallies and marches on No Kings Day, the protests in Portland and Chicago, the general strike and marches in Minneapolis, the gatherings in the aftermath of the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. It is happening as well in less publicly visible places, from worship services to union and neighborhood meetings.
Liturgy and ritual, religious and nonreligious alike, do more than resist and disrupt. They also model and point to alternative visions of how things can be. Religious worship models allegiance to a higher sovereign than the petty gods of this world, human and other, while rallies and mutual aid throughout the country have lifted up a renewed idea of active citizenship and solidarity against tyranny.
Consciousness is key. Empire and its systems of injustice thrive when we don’t pay attention, when we do things by rote, when we forget that every action we take contributes to creating the context in which we live. And while our present context calls for powerful mass action, ritual on a grand scale, it calls as well for the little rituals, communal and private, that perhaps matter more in the long term.
I’m wrestling with what I mean by that. The closest I’ve come is the idea that we can elevate the meaning of our habits and daily routines by bringing consciousness and intention and voice to them.
Certainly the way we participate in the world of commerce is a candidate. Beyond simply boycotting particular businesses, I have found that paying attention to where I buy and how and why has gradually transformed how I participate in the economy and how, in turn, the economic world is able to influence my life.
Or take meetings, the preeminent rituals in my life today. I believe governance in the small — how we interact with one another and make decisions in the ordinary contexts of work and community — influences how we build higher levels of governance, from neighborhood on up to nation. That’s still a growing edge for me, but one I spend a fair amount of time thinking about, particularly in contexts where I play a leadership role.
Finally, of course, I continue to explore what it means for me personally to participate in communal rituals, whether in a community of faith or in the practices of democracy.
And in all of them I look for opportunities to talk about it and learn from others here and in ordinary conversations.
This is related to my last few articles on ways organizations can both address people’s immediate needs and transform the systems that keep them vulnerable. Every act we undertake can be sacred in a civic sense and has the potential to disrupt the injustice of empire and contribute to building a just system. The key in both cases is to become and remain conscious of the ways that our day-to-day actions and orientation interact with larger systems.
Related articles:
Afterthoughts
Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline. “Absent organized resistance by institutions, civil society, and the public, the United States is likely to continue along a path of accelerating democratic erosion, risking further consolidation of executive dominance and a loss of credibility as a model of democracy abroad.” This analysis of democratic conditions in the United States by former U.S. Intelligence Community officers is worth reading in full. Thanks to Rory Truex’s latest newsletter for sharing this.
The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls. “The wall looks permanent until the day it comes down. So it goes with all institutions. They are not immutable fixtures but human creations, designed to solve the problems of one era and replaceable when they fail the next.” This is a clear-eyed look at where we are as a country that is ultimately hopeful about the possibilities of this moment.
Who Can Rescue Democracy: Local Funders Have the Edge. Good article on the unique advantages of community foundations for funding democratic renewal: “In a time when large-scale efforts to repair democracy from the top down have faltered, these place-based institutions hold the promise of bottom-up civic renewal, helping to cultivate the habits of association, the culture of citizenship, and the social trust on which democracy in America depends”
If you have thoughts you wish to share on anything I’ve said here, or would like to have a conversation about how it might apply in your community or organization, please reply to the newsletter email or contact me here. And if you would like to support the work I do and can afford it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
This article comes at the perfect time, what if AI helped us craft new subversive rituals?