The Role of Faith in Social Movements: A Conversation with Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas

We live in a moment marked by immigration rates, deep political division, and what some

describe as a growing sense of fear.

In recent months, we've seen faith leaders gathering outside detention centers, clergy

marching in freezing temperatures, and congregations asking what it means to stand with those who

feel targeted or unseen.

In moments like this, faith can either retreat into private comfort or step into public life.

For Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, faith isn't an abstract set of beliefs.

It's something that shapes how you see the world and how you respond to it.

It shows up in the faces of children, in the fears of parents, in the questions we ask

about who belongs and whose dignity counts.

I'm Jonathan Beasley, and this is the Harvard Religion Beat.

Today I'm speaking with Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, who's an Episcopal priest, author,

and professor at Harvard Divinity School.

We'll be talking about moral imagination, sacred dignity, and why she believes hope isn't

something we feel.

It's something we do.

Reverend Douglas, your life bridges pastoral ministry, academic theology, and public justice

work.

Your early experiences in church or community shaped how you see faith as something public

and not just personal.

Yeah, that's a good question, and thank you for that question.

When I think about where I am now and how I've gotten to where I am now, it always goes

back to a pivotal story really from my childhood.

I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and Dayton, Ohio was and continues to be a very segregated city.

And so growing up in Dayton, African-Americans lived on the west side of town, and I'll

never forget, I was maybe seven or eight years old, no more than that.

And it was a rainy, cold evening, and I was going downtown with my parents, and I was

sitting in the back seat of the car.

And I remember as we got to the so-called inner city, looking out the window, we stopped

at a stoplight.

I looked out the window, and I saw what in my mind's eye were a brother and sister about

my same age.

They weren't dressed for the weather, and it bought tears to my eyes.

And I vowed to myself in that moment as a seven or eight-year-old that I would one day

come back and get those children.

Now in my mind's eye, that meant that I would get older, they would stay young, and I could

literally come back and get those children, right?

But one thing that I know, for sure, as I got older, and obviously recognized that that

wasn't going to happen, and I began to think of various ways to get back to those children,

even at that age, and I thought, okay, as a teacher, a lawyer, et cetera, as I got older

and realized that, obviously, they get older, I help continue to hold as I do today, myself

accountable to those children.

So, that started me on my quest, and it ended up, of course, being a theological quest.

I stayed in the church, I always loved the church, and so eventually women were able to

be ordained in the church, and I was ordained and always have understood that ordained ministry

as a ministry of accountability to those who were born into major realities, because that's

the center of the faith.

Well, that's how I got.

That's how you started your quest.

We're an amazing story, thank you for sharing that.

You've spoken about moral imagination as central to how faith shapes public life.

What does moral imagination mean for you, and why does it matter for movements for justice

today?

Yeah, our moral imagination is that, I think, which pushes us beyond what is.

You know, I always think when we think of religion, we think that we have asked and answered

a question, and that question being, is there more to life than this?

The religious person says, yes, we ask it in a variety of ways, and we answer it in a

variety of ways, and we ask it always, not just once, we ask it over and over again,

and we particular issues, particular concerns, particular situations, bring that question

to mind each and every time.

And so in this instance, in response to your question about the moral imaginary, I'm always

asking the question, is there more to justice than this?

Is there more to who we can be than this?

Are we better than this?

Our moral imagination always points us beyond the more.

It always points us, as I believe, to the justice that is God's.

And so we have to open up our moral imagination so that we can see beyond the limited, biased,

but a sigh sometimes, belief systems of justice and realities and understandings of

justice and of our very humanity.

That's what our moral imaginary does.

It pushes us to the more, and then as it does that, we hold ourselves accountable to that,

and I always believe that we have to live into the more, make it real, right?

And our very present somehow, we've got to step into the breach between our unjust

present and what I like to imagine is God's just future.

And our moral imagination is that which pushes us there.

Live into the more.

I love that.

In your book, Stand Your Ground, you examine how religious ideas can sometimes be used to

justify violence or to challenge it.

Did you see in U.S. culture at the time that made that theological intervention feel

necessary?

Yeah, well, at the time of the writing of Stand Your Ground, what pushed me into that

book was all that was happening surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin.

And I was old enough, I had made a son that was at that time, was about Trayvon Martin's

age.

What I really couldn't reconcile was the silence of far too many faith communities.

And so I had to figure out what was happening.

And I had to figure it out, not simply as a question of faith, but I also had to figure

it out as a question for who I was as a mother, as a parent, and how in the world I was going

to continue to keep my son safe.

And that was the pressing question for me.

Why was my son a trigger of violence for other people?

And so it sent me on a quest to figure that out and to figure out if, again, this is

the way I said this question, your faith is always seeking understanding, to figure out

again if my faith really had something to say about it.

In your book Resurrection Hope, you write and even wrestle with how people keep going

in the face of suffering, how does that kind of hope, that resurrection hope, help movements

endure and to speak honestly about injustice?

Faith.

In the Jesus who was crucified on a cross, tells us that the Ark of the Universe bends toward

justice.

That's what compels people to fight hope, isn't just as I often say, it's not a rhetorical

palliative to make you feel better.

Hope is not a noun, it's a verb.

You see hope in the movement toward justice.

That's what gives me hope.

And there's always been this thread of hope, especially a thread of hope through a black

faith tradition that I claim, right?

The faith tradition that has brought me here, the faith tradition of my ancestors, of those

people who I've talked about in even Resurrection Hope, who fought for freedom, when they knew

that they would never experience freedom.

But they fought for freedom that they knew would occur that would happen because they believed

in the freedom that was the justice of God until they fought.

They're my hope.

They are the sign that there is a God.

They're the sign that there is an Ark that bends toward justice.

So if that's the case, then we have to get on the Ark because it doesn't bend by itself.

That's right.

And it doesn't matter.

It can bend toward justice up here somewhere, but it doesn't matter to our earthly present

if we don't get on the Ark and be that sign that bends toward justice.

I think that's what brings together faith and justice movements and hope is an abstract.

It's this strong belief and how do we know that because we have signs of it in our past

as well as in our present.

And people can say, well, but here we are again, but this I do know to be true.

That I am only with three generations or so away from slavery and look at where we are.

That's because of a hope of a people.

Going back to what you were saying about getting on the Ark and speaking of getting on

the Ark and speaking of present day here, we're seeing faith leaders stand with migrant

communities from Minneapolis to Maine, clergy mobilizing amid ice raids, protests, sanctuary

efforts, and even just general support from faith and religious communities.

What do you think this moment around immigration in particular here reveals about faith's public

role?

Yeah.

Well, it calls us to live into that which we believe.

Right.

And so it seems to me, particularly I can talk from my vantage point as a Christian, right?

That we have Christian faith tradition as far as I know is the only faith tradition with

a crucifixion at its center.

In that ought to mean something.

And Jesus landed on that cross, not because he was afraid to speak.

He landed on that cross, not because he prayed too much, prayer helped him, but that's

not what got him there.

Jesus landed on that cross because he made an uncompromising witness to the future that

is God's just future, and he witnessed against anything that stood in opposition to that

future that is the justice of God.

And he understood, and this is what the cross makes so clear, that if we really want to

understand the radicality, if you will, of that justice, then we have to understand that

from the perspective of the people who are on the underside of what we call justice

in a world.

And so who are those people today?

Those people are immigrants who we would dare to act like are something other than sacred

children of God, and everybody that has breath is a sacred child of God, and their dignity

deserves to be respected, period.

And so if we are in any way, shape, or form, to live in, to who we claim to be as faith

leaders, then we absolutely have no choice.

But to stand with those people who sacred dignity, and in this day, it's immigrants,

as well as trans persons and other persons.

And so we are compelled to stand with those people, and to protect and fight for and witness

to their dignity and witness to our faith.

It's not about political partisanship, it's about being partisan for the values of God.

In your February, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the

Divine, you spoke about how despair becomes normalized in public life, and how dangerous

that is for democracy, and also just for the human spirit.

How do you see faith helping people refuse despair without denying the real suffering

and fear that so many communities are living in right now?

And you're right, I think, just to say a bit more about despair, despair, like or even

more than fear, is a tool, is a weapon.

They cultivate despair.

They cultivate a culture of helplessness so that we all think there's nothing we can

do.

So that we think that any protest is futile, that any response is futile, and so despair and

fear in this regard go together because if they can weaponize fear, if they can make

you afraid, if they can intimidate you, well there you are deep in despair, there's

nothing I can do.

Our faith tells us differently.

Our faith is that which helps us to stand up against despair because we know that there

is always well more, and we know that we are never, never alone when we stand on the

side of the values of God.

When you step back and look at this moment as a theologian, as a pastor, what feels

most important for people of faith to hold on to right now?

The humanity of those people whose dignity is being attacked, and even in these moments,

you know, every major religion we are led to believe has some form of the golden rule.

Do one to others as you would have them do unto you.

I think there's an even more poignant aspect of that golden rule, and that is to not withhold

from another, that which you would not want withheld from yourself.

If you would not withhold or want withheld dignity and respect from yourself, don't withhold

it from another.

And so, in this time, I think the most important thing to hold on to is that and the dignity and

respect for all human beings, and to see that in the faces of the lambs, the little five-year-old

boy, see that in the faces of the gentleman who's dragged out of his house and is underwear.

See that in the faces of Keith Porter, Alex Prety, Renee Good, seeing them, their sacred

humanity.

And if we see that, then we know who we have to be in a time such as this.

As we wrap up here, I want to ask you about your teaching here at Harvard Divinity School.

After everything we've talked about, dignity, moral imagination, hope, what do you most

hope your students carry with them when they leave your classroom?

Yeah, you know what?

I always say this is, it's not about the right answers, never.

I hope that my students leave asking a different set of questions.

That's my hope.

Is that something that you kind of identify at the beginning of a semester or something

like that, or you kind of talk about that, or is that something that they hopefully just

kind of pick up on during the course of the class?

Yeah, well, I hope that sort of my way I teach really relays that.

That it's not about right answers.

It's about asking different questions from different vantage points and different perspectives.

And I certainly make clear to them that I don't have all the answers.

They all know we're near it, and that I'm not there to create cyclones and people who

think the way I think.

And in the course of the class, they will come to see that I continue, because of them,

I continue to raise different sets of questions.

And so what I do say to them in the beginning is that we're on a learning journey together.

Quest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly right.

And that I, each, each class that I have, had the privilege of teaching here, has made

me better, and has further opened my moral imagination.

And their questions have pushed me, and in fact, most recently, I quoted a student from

the class in an article, as well as an AAR lecture.

And so they always give me different things differently, and so it's about, I hope, them

leaving with a different set of questions.

Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas, thank you so much for sharing this.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

For Reverend Douglas, hope isn't abstract.

It begins with a child at a stoplight, with that young girl who saw children in the cold,

and decided she would be accountable to them for the rest of her life.

It carries through the grief of a mother, asking why her son could be seen as a threat.

Through a theologian tracing how faith has been used to justify violence, and how it

can also confront it.

When it shows up now, in clergy standing in sub-zero temperatures, in congregations opening

their doors, in communities refusing to let fear or despair have the final word.

In a moment when headlines are filled with division and uncertainty, Reverend Douglas returns

to a simple conviction.

Dignity is not optional, sacred worth is not up for debate.

Hope, she says, is not a noun, it's a verb.

The Harvard Religion Beat is presented by the Office of Communications at Harvard Community

School.

It is produced and hosted by me, Jonathan Beasley, and it's edited by Tyler Sprouse.

Thank you for listening.

Until next time.