Category Archives: Limiting Corporate Power

“Banking on Our Future” as Demythologized Exorcism

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Note: This post is intended for those who aspire to following Jesus in the context of today’s interlocking network of institutional “powers and principalities” that make up the global economy. I hope that by “demythologizing” some of these terms, people of other spiritual or secular traditions will also find value.

While writing this Lenten blog series on “Creation, Cross, and The Powers,” I have also been working with others on Third Act’s Day of Action, as I write about below. It dawned on me as I was doing so that in Judeo-Christian terms, this action can be seen as a form of demythologized “exorcism.” Not spooky, but practical. Here’s how.

Third Act’s Banking on Our Future Campaign has called for a Day of Action (for the climate) to be held this coming Tuesday (3.21.23). Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people will gather in cities, towns, and small rural communities like mine for public actions focused on the top four funders of fossil fuel projects: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and Citibank. Many people plan to change banks. They have opened accounts at local banks or credit unions and are prepared to go into these banks to close their accounts on the Day of Action. Some will publicly cut up their debit/credit cards outside the bank. This weekend people are gathering to make colorful signs, banners, and giant cardboard scissors that say, “Cut it out or we’ll cut them up.” Others are preparing songs, chants, and performance arts.

As part of Third Act Faith (an interfaith working group of Third Act), I will be part of a faith contingent in the larger Day of Action demonstration here in Grass Valley, California, as an expression of our spiritual/faith commitment to protecting and preserving creation (including our human family). There will also be a contingent of young people, including members of Nevada County Sunrise.

Why gather? As record-breaking snowfall has followed long-term drought and frequent wildfires here in Northern California, we are now living under an atmospheric river with seemingly endless rain. Does that mean that things are finally balancing out? Is the drought over? I would love that. My grandchildren have lived through record-breaking weather extremes their whole lives. I would love for them to get a break, to be able to get established and build lives for themselves without chaotic weather disruptions.

But these extremes of heat and cold, drought and precipitation, are exactly what climate scientists have predicted for decades.  Heat increases evaporation and moisture in the air, which must come down somewhere—just not always when and where it has historically. With the melting of sea ice, sea level rise, changes in patterns of the polar vortex and the jet stream, our young people and future generations are bound to experience more frequent and intense weather extremes rather than less. Such is the reality that we call “climate change,” which sounds so benign. It is really a “climate emergency.”

How does all this relate to the theme of this Lenten blog series or to today’s post on “Demythologizing Exorcism.”  Just this: If followers of Jesus are called to “cast out demons” (Mark: 14-15), we do not have to think in terms of spooky Hollywood portrayals of priests unsuccessfully attempting weird rituals to drive out some evil spirit that has taken possession of an innocent person, usually a child. Instead, let’s consider how to interpret what “casting out demons” might look like in contemporary terms that are relevant to the existential challenges facing humanity today, specifically climate change.

In previous posts in this series, and in many of my writings, I refer to William Stringfellow and other theological forebears and their practical understanding of what we call, in contemporary terms, “the Powers that Be.” These are the dominant principalities and powers that we read about in the Bible, “all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Ephesians 2:21),” against which we struggle “with all the armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-17).  They are “the rulers of this age” who do not understand “the wisdom that comes from God” (1 Corinthians 2:6).

The institutional powers that dominate our world have outer and physical realities (a bank façade or the Capitol or the Pentagon), but also inner and spiritual (or psychic) realities that impact all of us who live under their authority. We tend to internalize their values. The most obvious expression today of the “rulers of this age” is the interlocking network of political, economic, ideological, and military institutions that make up the global “domination system” of today.

Part of the pain of facing the reality of our time is that we know we are complicit in climate change and other harms caused by this global system, in which we participate and from which many of us (especially white, middle-class, US-Christians) benefit. What can we do to remedy this situation? We can begin to “exorcise” the demon of complicity, and Banking on Our Future shows us a way to do just that.

By participating in this Day of Action at any level, including coming to show support, we renounce our complicity while “unmasking” the banks that promote the destruction of life and hope by funding the fossil fuel companies that continue to greenwash, promote doubt about climate change, and build new infrastructure to keep the fossil fuel party going indefinitely.  By refusing to invest in banks that do so, we free ourselves (by the power of the Spirit) from this form of (literal) “possession” by the fossil fuel economy. At the same time, we call (urge, demand, entreat) these banks to assume their rightful role in society: to provide financial security and stability for bank “customers” while investing in ways that enhance life and serve the common good—in this case, by rapidly divesting our money from fossil fuels and investing it in just and sustainable sources of energy that can carry us into a clean energy future.

 

This is the fifth post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts in the series will be linked here as they are published.

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism

For other blog posts by Sharon on the story of Jesus in the Wilderness, see Jesus, Temptation, and Worldly Power and Resisting Cultural Possession.

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

 

 

 

 

Preparing for the 32123 Banking on Our Future Day of Action

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Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and friends at an Interfaith Action at Bank of America, calling on the bank to stop funding fossil fuels.  Photo Credit: Robert A. Jonas

As the United Methodist liaison to Third Act Faith’s Faithful Banking Subcommittee, I am trying to get the word out to United Methodists around the country about Third Act Faith and the Banking on Our Future Campaign.  My article, “Climate Change and Faithful Banking,” was published on January 4 by United Methodist Insight, a national newsletter. It interprets the Campaign from a Methodist perspective.

I live near Nevada City, a small town in the foothills of Northern California. I am pulling together a Third Act Faith group for a March 21 Banking on Our Future local action by reaching out to members of my denomination, speaking to pastors and some of the people I know in the three nearby United Methodist churches, and by reaching out through our local nonprofit, Earth Justice Ministries, which works with people from varied faith traditions.

Asking someone to pledge to change their bank is a big ask, especially in this time of direct deposits and automatic payments, so it’s important for me to know and acknowledge what it involves. But as the climate stakes become ever-higher, it is a way to take moral responsibility not just for what we fund with our income, but also with our assets. I’ll be talking up this campaign until the March 21st day of action, hoping to inspire a few people to join us here in my community or elsewhere.

I recently found out that there are members of Elders Climate Action in our community who are planning to coordinate with Third Act’s Banking on Our Future Campaign, so our interfaith Third Act Faith group will participate as a contingent in the larger coalition action. We will identify ourselves by wearing or carrying identifying symbols of our faiths; clergy may choose to wear vestments. We will carry a colorful banner that says “Third Act Faith.”

Our group will work with whatever other groups participate and help to create an inclusive action that is respectful and effective. We will notify the local bank (or banks) and set up a meeting with the bank manager and let them know in advance that we will be there on 32123. At the meeting, we will tell the manager why and when we will come and exactly what nonviolent, respectful action we will take: a peaceful demonstration outside, songs, banners, flyers, with some members of our group coming in to close their accounts. We may accompany some of them to one of the local banks or credit unions that do not fund fossil fuels (so far, we have identified two).

Members of our group will notify the press and write letters to the editor or opinion pieces for our local papers in advance. We’ll get lots of pictures, try to get publicity in advance and on the day of the event, and help the movement gain momentum so that people will become aware of the problem of banks funding fossil fuels. I have done similar actions in the past, and I expect it to go well. The managers may close the banks if they know we are coming, or the actions may proceed as we have planned. However it goes, we will have done our part.

Climate Change and Faithful Banking

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By Sharon Delgado

This year the World Council of Churches put forth the initiative, “Climate-Responsible Finance: A Moral Imperative towards Children,” which links the deadly impacts of climate change on the world’s children with the strategy of engagement with banks that are invested in fossil fuels. At the launch of this initiative in May 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “It is now time for financial service providers to accelerate the shift to renewables. They have the power – and the responsibility. The scientific and moral imperative is clear: there must be no new investment in fossil fuel expansion, including production, infrastructure, and exploration.” 

Clearly, the climate impacts of our investments are linked to ethical decisions about our money. Here in the United States, an organization called Third Act, which is geared toward elders, is taking this connection to heart. Formed by seasoned climate organizer (and United Methodist) Bill McKibben, Third Act promotes both democracy and effective climate action.  Right now the organization is promoting their Banking on Our Future Campaign, which focuses on the four top  banks that fund fossil fuel projects: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Citibank. This “money pipeline” from banks enables fossil fuel companies to build new extraction, transportation, processing, sales, and export infrastructure that lock us into increasing fossil fuel use and accelerating global heating for decades–decades that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we don’t have. Without the money pipeline, fossil fuel producers would have to stop funding new infrastructure, stop engaging in climate change denial, and make good on their promises to transition to renewable forms of energy.

In addition to my role as coordinator of the California-Nevada Annual Conference Climate Justice Ministries Task Force,  I am the United Methodist liaison on the board of Third Act Faith,  a working group of Third Act. One of my jobs is to interpret the good work of Third Act to the United Methodist Church and its members, to explain how participating in their Banking on Our Future Campaign is an act of faith, to share practical ways that United Methodists can be involved at every level of church life, and to encourage participation. A tall order! But when I break it down, I realize that all I have to do is interpret, explain, share, and encourage action. Perhaps some of you who read this will carry this work further, and God, “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3), will take it from there.

Interpreting the work of Third Act to the United Methodist Church, especially to retired clergy and laity, has been made easy by Bill McKibben and others who have explained it clearly. To understand Banking on Our Future’s rationale read Your Money Is Your Carbon and Want to Address Climate Change?  Change Your Bank. Why focus on elders?  People over sixty own seventy percent of the wealth in this country. There are 70 million of us, most of us vote, many of us have grandchildren or other children whom we love, and we hope to leave them a  planet  with abundant life that we have enjoyed. (See the PBS News Hour’s special with McKibben’s “brief but spectacular take” on Third Act and fighting for the climate and our democracy).

Likewise, explaining to United Methodists how participating in Third Act’s Banking on Our Future Campaign is an act of faith involves highlighting points that the World Council of Churches and others have made about the morality of our money in this time of climate emergency, and framing such points in Wesleyan terms:  social holiness, the value of God’s creation, the world as our parish, and so on. Remember, John Wesley was a social reformer who saw the connections between personal finance and injustice. A staunch abolitionist, he wrote, “Better no trade than trade procured by villainy…Better is honest poverty than all the tears, and sweat, and blood, of our fellow creatures.” (Thoughts Upon Slavery, 45-46).  Bringing it back to the climate emergency in our time, others have expressed a similar sentiment in simple terms: “It’s wrong to profit by wrecking the planet.”

In practical terms, this campaign offers suggestions, action opportunities, and resources at varied levels of commitment, including writing letters to the big banks, pledging to divest if your bank continues funding fossil fuels, engaging with bank managers, or participating in public demonstrations. By participating, we join with many other groups offering resources and taking similar actions, including Stop the Money Pipeline and Customers for Climate Justice. On March 21, 2023, there will be a big day of action, with people publicly divesting: 32123! Big Banks are Driving the Climate Crisis So We’re Pushing Back.

Finally, I encourage you to rise to the challenge that the climate emergency presents to us in our time, as United Methodists and as people of faith and conscience. Taking steps toward “faithful banking” is one way to take action. Join the Third Act email list. Join a Working Group– the Faith working group and/or a local working group.  Find out how  you can  Take Action Today.

For questions, contact me at climatejustice@cnumc.org.

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. Read other blog posts related to climate change here. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a presentation or to order discounted bulk copies of her books.  Discussion guides and video introductions of her books are also available.

 

Local Grandmothers Highlight Intergenerational Pipeline Struggle

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In late May, I travelled to Minnesota by train with three other local grandmothers, Janie Kesselman, Shirley Osgood, and Joyce Banzhaf, to join a 31-member delegation of 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations. Our purpose was to highlight the intergenerational nature of the struggle to stop construction of the Enbridge Line 3 dirty tar sands oil pipeline. Together, we visited and helped out at the Water Protectors Camp which serves as a welcome center for visiting Line 3 activists, we hosted young Indigenous activists from a frontline camp for a memorial ceremony on the 1st anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and we held two public demonstrations, including one at the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion in St. Paul See video of that action here  and See pictures of the trip here.

The delegation included Lakota grandmothers from South Dakota, including Madonna Thunder Hawk and Mabel Ann Eagle Hunter, who have been activists struggling for Indigenous rights and the rights of Mother Earth for over 60 years; Alcatraz was in 1968, and was not their first big action! They were engaged in an ongoing way with the American Indian Movement (AIM).  Their daughters and niece, now also grandmothers, had also been involved with AIM as children and teens and were also part of this delegation. All of us were motivated by concerns for today’s children, for the natural world and our other-than-human relatives, and for future generations.

Our grandmothers’ trip was a precursor to the Treaty People Gathering that is taking place early in June in support of the Anishinaabe people, whose treaty rights are threatened by this pipeline. (See #TreatyPeopleGathering). Massive demonstrations are taking place along the route of pipeline construction. Thousands are participating, including Indigenous leaders, celebrities, climate justice activists, and others who understand what is at stake if the construction of oil and gas pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure continues to extend the fossil-fuel era. People are engaging in major public actions, including nonviolent civil disobedience at pipeline construction sites.

The Nevada County contingent stayed an extra day and participated in an action led by Indigenous youth where two young people were arrested for trespassing and stopping workers from continuing construction by climbing onto the newly-laid pipeline. The four of us did not risk arrest and made it to the train for our return trip that night. We returned home grateful for being welcomed and included, sobered by all that we had learned and have yet to learn about the issues related to Line 3 and about respecting Indigenous leadership.

The Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline would run from Canada through the Mississippi headwaters and Minnesota’s lake country, threatening its pristine waters. It also runs through sacred ancient wild rice beds, traditionally harvested by the Anishinaabe people. This land is under treaty with the Anishinaabe, who have the rights to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice, all threatened by this pipeline. Treaty rights are the law of the land, with priority over federal or state laws.

Enbridge, a Canadian corporation, has a terrible safety record, with over 1068 pipeline spills before 2013, leaking 7.4 million gallons of oil. Disastrous spills continue. Enbridge calls the new Line 3 a “replacement pipeline” although it is constructing 300 miles of pipeline along a new route, abandoning the old pipeline to deteriorate in place, and doubling the quantity of dirty tar sands oil.

Climate activists make the case that long-lasting fossil fuel infrastructure such as pipelines locks us into increasing greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures for decades. This project alone would have the climate impact of 50 coal mines, counteracting Minnesota’s plans to reduce climate change by investing in renewable energy, green jobs, energy-efficient buildings, and electric cars.

Since 2011, the United States has been a net exporter of fossil fuels. Under the Paris Climate Accords, our exports of fossil fuel are not counted. So even if we reduce emissions nationally, by continuing to increase our exports of fossil fuels we cancel out our stated intentions to reduce global climate change. Stopping construction of new oil and gas pipelines is a necessary step to addressing climate change.

Finally, solidarity with Indigenous peoples in their struggles for a livable world is a way to affirm indigenous wisdom and perspectives that move us from a worldview that promotes organizing society around the market to a worldview that promotes organizing around concern for the whole community of life. This lays a foundation for actions that impact the future in ways that further the good and heal the past.

For anyone who is convinced that the struggle against Line 3 is an important effort, there are many actions that we can take. Indigenous leaders are requesting that supporters call on President Biden to cancel this pipeline.  Find a petition here:  https://www.stopline3.org/take-action. Go to https://www.stopline3.org/biden for more information on how to contact Biden and make it clear to him that there is a large and diverse intergenerational movement to #StopLine3.

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https://www.oilandwaterdontmix.org/enbridge_safety_record

The Wood is Dry

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Progressive Christian Social Action

The Wood is Dry

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children…  For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Luke 23:31

This morning the tears finally came. Friends, the wood is dry.  People are getting sick and dying from the pandemic, which is just getting started. In some places, like New York, the hospitals are beginning to get overrun.  Healthcare workers are overwhelmed and risking exposure every day, often without enough supplies, respirators, or protective equipment. Schools and businesses are closing, and people are being laid off faster than during the Great Depression. We are beginning to see shortages of food. Racial violence and domestic violence are increasing. Economic insecurity, anxiety, fear, and tensions are on the rise.

Yesterday, a two-trillion-dollar stimulus bill was signed into law. It will take some of the economic pressure off at least some of the people but will provide many times more money to bail out the industries that keep the current economic system going. This system is called a free-market economy, but everyone knows that the government always (so far) can find enough money to wage war or to bail out the banks or to subsidize favorite industries that “pay to play” in order to elect and lobby the very leaders who make the decisions about policies that end up siphoning even more of society’s wealth up to the top. This is an example of the Shock Doctrine at its worst—taking advantage of a crisis to install policies that transfer wealth to the already wealthy. While the bill offers money for medical necessities in for dealing with Covid 19, loans to small businesses, and grants and expanded unemployment insurance to people are suffering, it also offers much more in bailouts for big corporations. The Trump Administration’s Treasury Department will be able to leverage the $500 billion dollars many times over, to the tune of $4.5 trillion or more, far more than the amount given to the people in this hour of extreme need. It has even been called a “corporate coup.” (See article below)

I not only grieve for what our people are facing now. I am also furious that our lawmakers don’t take this opportunity to create a system that is not based on the God of money, a system with the purpose of caring for people and protecting our earth.

This grief and fury must have been what Jesus felt at times, when he challenged the religious and political leaders who supported from and benefited from the unjust Roman system of domination and occupation at the expense of the people.  They targeted him as a subversive and put him to death because the popular movement he led pointed to a new way of living, demonstrated an inclusive and egalitarian community based on compassion, and challenged the status quo. Jesus could see that if the Domination System targeted him at that time, when the Spirit of God was so active and apparent among him and his followers, it would continue to do so long after he was gone.

In Luke 23:26-31, we read that as Jesus made his way toward his crucifixion a great multitude of people “bewailed and lamented him.”  But he turned and addressed them saying: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’  For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

The wood is dry.  But I’m encouraged because I see green shoots all around: in the people who reach out to each other in this time of pandemic, in health care workers and others who risk themselves and give their all for the common good, in those who care for the children, deliver food to elders, facilitate online connection, and try to raise people’s spirits, and in those who continue to strive for social, economic, and environmental justice and systemic change.

The seeds of resurrection are already planted.  With prayer, dedication to each other, and courage, we rise.

See the March 31, 2020 article by Jake Johnson on Common Dreams, “No More Spending’: After Securing $4.5 Trillion Corporate Bailout, Trump White House and GOP Cast Doubt on New Stimulus: ‘Trillions for big business. Bare minimum for you.’”

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