Violent Faith?
A Student Activist Asks Herself if Violence Can be Part of Justice
By Red Hollingshead // Art by Thuy Ngo

When I started back at De Anza College this fall after taking a year off, I had no idea that I would end up embarking on a journey that could very well last a lifetime.   I was taking a few classes, two of which were Critical Consciousness and Social Action (a Philosophy class) and Sociology of Religion.   The former had various readings by different authors, including Frantz Fanon, Martin Luther King, Gramsci, Gandhi, Paulo Freire, and many others.   It was through reading King, Fanon, and Gandhi, all within the same week, that started me on this journey.

As many people might know, Fanon was famous for his views on the colonized using violence as a way to free themselves from the oppressor.   Being a student activist, I was well aware of this reality that many people face around the world, and had often sided with their cause. But it was when I started reading Martin Luther King, and his views on violence, that I began to wonder how my political views met with my own personal faith.

Like King, I am a Christian, though not necessarily of the same brand, if you will.   (i.e. I tend to be more liberal in some of my views than a lot of evangelical Christians).   Many people are more than familiar with King's work around non-violent resistance, and so I questioned how my views as a political activist coincided with my views as a Christian.   Should I too be only in favor of non-violence, even in the most dire of situations?   Or should I be able to take into account the social complexities in which violence may be called for?   Which shows the mark of my faith more clearly?

I sat on my bed with my philosophy reader on my lap, staring at the walls, as if hoping some answer would be magically written on them.   I soon realized that no answer could be arrived at that night, or any time soon.   Still, I figured it would make a good research paper for my sociology class, and I decided to pursue it, both academically and spiritually.

I had no idea what kind of a daunting task was ahead of me.   My weekends were spent getting lost in the library's theology section, and getting even more lost in the pile of books that I would check out.   I read books on Dietrich Bonhoffer (a German Christian who is now known as one of the people who made an attempt on Hitler's life), the Central American movements, liberation theology, and so on.   I read theologians such as King, Reinhold Niebuhr, Thomas Merton, and Gustavo Gutierrez, always reading their texts hoping that I would find an answer written in between the lines.   There were times when one of the theologians seemed to justify acts of violence within social movements, but as my professor pointed out later, they merely described the circumstances, not justified them.  

Periodically, I would stop in my research and ponder what it was that I was actually looking for.   Was I really looking for answers, was I just looking for an excuse to follow my “primal rage” at the world?   What did it mean to seek justice?   Was violence included in justice?   I know that the greater world around me would, in its seemingly subliminal way, say yes.   Our country executes those who have done wrong (and some who haven't).   Our state puts more money into prisons than it does into schools.   Our police shoot innocent people because they're taught to racially profile their victims.   Our government can send our young men and women off to war without a reasonable explanation, only to say later that we are defending a nation from an evil dictator, or bringing “the evil doers” to “justice.”   In our culture, it seems that the institutional definition of justice is violence.   So where does that leave me?   Someone who is working hard outside of the system, yet contemplating the justification of the same tactics?

There are many more books to read, many more experiences to be had.   And there is still the issue of my personal faith (i.e. that lifelong conversation between me and God).   The only way that I take comfort in this uncertainty is that I know that I am on the right path.   I know that the life I lead will take me into encounters that will show me the next step in finding the answer.   In short, this isn't an end, but a beginning.