The Silence of the Lambs

I’m not talking about the silence of lambs being led to slaughter. I’m talking about all the quiet lambs looking on from the safety of open pastures.

German Christians watched in silence for many years as the machinery of state terror was constructed, fueled and then set in motion. Of course, there will be some who remind us that, “Yes, but don’t forget the Confessing Church in Germany who actively opposed the Nazis and their racial violence.” But sadly, even the Confessing Church was silent at the state sanctioned destruction of Jewish synagogues and businesses in 1938 on Kristallnacht. “…at the core of [the Confessing Churches] silence was the traditional antipathy towards Judaism derived from centuries of Lutheran teaching that the Jew was a godless outcast who would always be a danger to a Christian nation unless he converted to Christianity.”[i]

There may have been German Christians who were active proponents of racial violence. And there’s probably another group who accepted the wrongs of state-sponsored racism with the thought, “well, at least the Nazi party opposes the communists, and if we have to pick our evils, we’ll choose Nazi racism over Bolshevik communism.” And by the 1940s there were, no doubt, German Christians who were appalled at what was happening in their country but feared speaking out lest the state bring its hammer down upon their own heads.

But the truth is that a good many German Christians were silent for as the Nazi’s spread hatred because anti-Semitism was baked into their upbringing, or suspicion of Jewish people was imbedded in Martin Luther’s writings, and some embraced the patriotic spirit resident in their churches. Speaking up felt like a betrayal of their parents, their theologians and the good folk in their churches or serving in the military.

In the years leading up to the Rwandan genocide many Christians were so invested in national politics that their Christian identity and ethnic identity fused with their political identity. They lived in an environment where power was a question of being part of the “right” ethnicity and the “right” party. “Christians could kill without obvious qualms of conscience, even in the church, because Christianity as they had always known it had been a religion defined by struggles of power, and ethnicity had always been at the base of that struggle.”[ii]

I’ve had Christian friends tell me that was only the “unregenerate” Christians who participated in the Rwandan genocide (i.e. probably backslidden Catholics). I told this to a Pentecostal Rwandan pastor who ministers to fellow pastors in prison for their part in the genocide. He just laughed at that notion. He assured me that there were pastors who “knew Jesus as their personal Lord and savior,” who had been baptized, and who displayed the fruit of the Spirit participating in genocide.

It’s not that Christians were part of masterminding the genocide, though there may have been a few. It’s that they were silent as their friends, congregants and neighbors spewed hateful diatribes against the other (whether Hutu or Tutsi). More than that, some scholars and observers believe that Rwandan Christians were “guilty of making violence understandable and acceptable to the population.”[iii]

In many countries throughout the past several centuries Christians have been witness to state-sanctioned violence against indigenous persons or to their forcible removal from ancestral lands. They’ve witnessed in silence American lynchings, South Africa Apartheid, or the rise of concentration camps for Uighur people in northwest China today. Not from afar, but from right there underneath the lynching tree. Some have spoken up, but many more faithful followers of Jesus in close proximity to these atrocities have been more committed to the lordship of Caesar than the lordship of Jesus. Christians who place greater confidence in the justice of Babylon than in the justice of God’s kingdom which we are called to “seek first” (Matt. 6:33).

In yesterday’s police shooting of Jacob Blake while his 3, 5, and 8-year-old looked on, there will be silent lambs who will not speak up because they don’t believe this shooting suggests that we have a race problem. Some won’t speak out because they’re afraid people will think by doing so they endorse riots and looting. Some fear friends will make assumptions about their political leanings. There will always be a reason to keep silent when injustice is afoot. I’m not talking about writing blogs our joining protests, though these things are justified. I’m simply talking about taking a stand with your actions as well as your words.

Kristallnacht erupted after a Jewish man killed a German. The genocide in Rwanda was justified because Tutsi’s had abused their political power. Indigenous peoples at times attacked settlers. Riots or destruction (whether in Hong Kong, Belarus, Iran or the US) usually accompany protests over injustice. Speaking out will always be messy. We will always be able to rationalize silence.

But silence as you rationalize why those “other” lambs are being slaughtered, and silence as you recount all the reasons that your speaking out might be misconstrued, will be looked at in befuddlement by the future followers of Christ who read stories of these days looking in vain for the mass uprising of Christians and churches crying out for justice.

[i] Hockenos, Matthew D. (2007) “The Church Struggle and the Confessing Church: An Introduction to Bonhoeffer’s Context” p. 17

[ii] Longman, T. (2001). Church Politics and the Genocide in Rwanda. Journal of Religion in Africa, p. 164

[iii] Ibid, p. 166