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Smart people saying smart things (1.29.26)

Smart people saying smart things (1.29.26)

Last updated on: January 29, 2026 at 3:00 pm by Fred Clark

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Smart people saying smart things (1.29.26) 2026-01-29T15:00:26-05:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Adam Serwer, “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wromg”

If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

… No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.

Rebecca Solnit, “This Cold Winter, Love Is a Superpower”

You could argue that racism is a border patrol that says your care, your empathy, your relationships must not cross this line across racial difference, that it must be limited and contained. It’s an instruction to shrink your heart, to limit your humanity by dehumanizing most of the rest of humanity and numbing your capacity to care for them. This seems to be bolstered by an inability to understand people who have not done so. …

This is one of our strategic advantages: they routinely fail to comprehend motives that are not selfish, so the idealism, the altruism, the commitment to ideals and principles, that motivates the resistance is seen as a cover-up for the real motives, which helps them cast progressives as criminal or delusional. Empathy is itself an act of imagination, that begins with attention and care: what is it like to be this other being, what are they feeling, what do they need. It arises from and reinforces a sense of non-separation, a sense that we’re all in this together, that everyone is your neighbor and no one is a stranger. There is a strong religious admonition to be this way, to see each other this way, in “love thy neighbor” from the Gospel of Mark (which has been inscribed on at least one Minneapolis sign I’ve seen) or Leviticus’s ” the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself,” in Buddhism’s compassion for all beings, in the Islamic commitment to alms for the poor.

Kat Armas, “Disruption at a church is not the scandal. Injustice is.”

This reaction reveals something deeply unsettling about our moral priorities. It reveals a people more invested in preserving the appearance of reverence rather than defending the lives reverence is meant to honor. Yet, Christian tradition offers no vision of holiness divorced from justice — the sanctuary was never meant to shield us from the cries of the oppressed, but to train us to hear them. Scripture does not bless quiet compliance with violent systems. It blesses midwives who refuse orders, prophets who disturb the peace, apostles who choose arrest over silence and a savior whose disruption of religious and political order leads to execution.

If the church is scandalized by protest, it should ask why. If worship feels threatened by resistance, it may be because worship has grown too comfortable with the powers it was meant to challenge. The question before us is not whether protest belongs in church, but whether the church still belongs to the Gospel it proclaims.

Angela Denker, “Woe to you, Pam Bondi”

I have plenty of pastoral colleagues who didn’t like Armstrong’s actions. Many of them, echoing the words of King’s white moderate in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, claimed they agreed with her aims but not her tactics or her timing.

But outweighing those voices of decorum in the face of the violent rage, lies, and fear flooding the streets of Minnesota during this onslaught of ICE, were the much-more common reactions of people I know who aren’t necessarily very connected to faith communities. For these folks, all of them under 50, most of them political independents who aren’t active in partisan politics, they saw the hypocrisy and truth laid bare in the video of Cities Church. Here was a prophet speaking truth in the face of a hypocritical religious leader. Here was a congregation on the side of those who would arrest and torture their poor and vulnerable neighbors, rather than treat their wounds, invite them to dinner, and give them a place to sleep

Heather L. Hart, “Loving One Another in a World of ICE”

Stretched thin by the abusive tactics of the current administration, her family faced the reality that even with US citizenship, there was a genuine threat of detainment and deportation for their daughter. This Christian family was at the brink of being torn from one another or choosing to uproot themselves completely and leave the country. They had already encountered unmarked immigration enforcement in our small southern town and now immigration attorneys advised them to have multiple contingency plans.

I have seen credible news reports of US citizens being detained and legal immigrants being deported. I know her fears are not far fetched. What can be done?

Ask me if I would park my car in the middle of the road to prevent her daughter’s kidnapping: I would. I know many of us would.

Mark Jacob, “Your government kills people and tries to cover it up”

A week after Mayor Rahm Emanuel won re-election, the city disclosed a $5 million settlement with McDonald’s family, triggering new media interest. For months, the Emanuel administration resisted the release of dashcam video of the killing, until an independent journalist won a court order to pry it loose. The belated disclosure led to the second-degree murder conviction of the officer, who served three years in prison. It never would have happened without the video.

Journalists at the Tribune and other Chicago media realized we had messed up by trusting the official account. We learned a painful lesson. Everyone covering the actions of Homeland Security – the real domestic terrorists – must learn that lesson too.

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