Tag: Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

Continue to Fight Even When you are Weary

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Advisor, The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA, Director & Chief Visionary, Faith Strategies LLC, Pastor Emeritus, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ

April 1, 2025

The presidential announcements and outrage come at us so viciously fast that it is difficult to keep up with the latest assault on governance, our intellect, decency, or humanity. Much of the perceived chaos is planned and judiciously meted out to keep our heads spinning leaving little time or energy to respond to anything before something new intrudes the space. Their goal is to produce as much confusion and chaos as possible so the public will struggle to keep up and lose the ability to pay close and constant attention to the important things of democratic and constitutional order. Our national setting has become a mixture of reality TV with the sensationalism of that genre, where mean-spirited sound bites emanate from those in power who smirkingly stare into the cameras knowingly creating the next news cycle. There is a racist, hate-filled, untruthful, and vindictive blanket covering this government and suffocating the country under its weight. We have never seen anything like this before. 

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You Will Cry Out Because of Your King

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler (above), Pastor Emeritus of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ and Director and Chief Visionary of Faith Strategies, LLC

As a clergy person who has served congregations in the Black and of-color communities in Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC for over 45 years I am acutely aware of the traumas and anxieties that are encountered because of changing political administrations nationally, regionally, and locally, and how they impact families and lives. Politicians and even the media often speak in broad generalities of what a change means statistically, according to the latest poll, and its implications for government and how it may set a precedent or not. But those of us serving pastorally in local communities are called upon to allay fears, to bind the wounds, make meaning out of the meaninglessness, find silver linings amidst the dark clouds, and to identify hope in the despair and confusion. We have done this many times, but at no time has the impact been as stark, devastating, or as frightening as it is now. 

With Trump/Musk/DOGE, and their radical approach to government there are many lives traumatized by the fears and are suffering from the emotional abuse inflicted on those who have worked for the federal government and their families. There are also many contractors and vendors associated with government work experiencing the same high anxieties that comes with the uncertainty and worries associated with the political battering of uncertainty and threats inflicted on families and their sense of stability and security.

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Running in Circles on Racial Justice

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Advisor, The Fellowship of Reconciliation USA

We keep running in circles when it comes to addressing racial justice in the US. This means that with every advance we almost come back to the same place and must fight the battles all over again. It doesn’t mean that progress has not been made, but the progress retrogresses due to the immediate backlash that charges any advance to rectify past racial injustices as an affront to white people. At best there is an ebb and flow when it comes to rectifying the racial harms and damages of the past. Race history and the many initiatives to rectify past wrongs is more of a circle than a linear line. It may be an expanding circle considering advances, but for every victory won there is a vicious throw back. It is almost like the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” where morning after morning we awaken to histories repeating itself, and where victories of racial justice are swept away by the courts or a change in the body politics. The struggle continues, and in many cases, we must begin again. 

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Non-Violence is Only Effective When We are Seen

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? This is an old philosophical question that most of us have heard in one form or another. For many the question seems to be a preposterous one for the immediate response is ‘certainly, because the tree will crash in a cacophony of sounds whether anyone is around or not.’ But this is not what the question asks. The question is raising the issue of perception. Sounds are a matter of perceiving and receiving vibrations and disturbances in the atmosphere. We receive and interpret the disturbance paying attention to the movement and commotion and assigning to the sounds definition and meaning. As sounds and disturbances are perceived and received it is then inputted into the brain so that the brain can make association and assignment. This in general is how we hear. This is how we perceive occurrences in our environment. So, if there are no ears to interpret the vibrations and transmit them to the brain for interpretation and assignment, and therefore no perception, does sound actually occur? The question is raising the issue that sound is a matter of perception, reception, and the ability to interpret disturbances that occur around us. The underlying question is whether sound requires a witness. If there are no witnesses to the tree falling and sending vibrations throughout the atmosphere, does it really make a sound, or is sound only a matter of perception, reception, and interpretation.

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Beyond Religious Nationalism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

There are numerous organizations holding conferences and meeting, circulating petitions, making statements, and collecting prominent names to condemn Christian Nationalism. Coalitions and religious entities have been coalescing to resist what is being portrayed as an almost new and alarming phenomenon that is gripping the US’s cultural, political, and theological landscape with sharpened and ravenous claws. Though I fundamentally agree with those concerns I have some reservations about the timing and sense of urgency.

One of my questions is how closely are the concerns of these groups designed to coincide with the upcoming presidential elections? Is the timing of the objections, and the sense of urgency surrounding Christian Nationalism more allied with the Democratic Party instead of with the theological and ideological ethics and implications of Christian Nationalist in and of itself.

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A Response to Rev. Barber on Palestinian Resistance

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, re-posted from Mondoweiss, a source of news and opinion on Palestine, Israel and the US

The Bishop William Barber, II, of the Poor People’s Campaign wrote an Op-Ed that appeared in The Guardian on October 13, 2023, entitled, “We must say an emphatic ‘no’ to Hamas a thousand times“. I feel compelled to respond to that Op-Ed. I am hesitant to challenge a friend and a colleague, but on this issue, I must.

I understand Rev. Barber’s need to thread the needle, but in a time like this, we need truth-telling and not outrage when it is politically expedient to do so. As Bishop Barber decries and mourns the killings and atrocities carried out by Hamas, he makes the same error that he has made in the past, by diminishing — and at times ignoring the horrendous history of settler colonialism endured by Palestinians. I am not suggesting equivocation, where a massacre by Hamas in Israel is justified by the long history of Palestinian dispossession and oppression. But I am advocating for the consistent and equal acknowledgment of the long pain and suffering of the Palestinian people. Rev. Barber has not done that historically or even in the structure of his Op-Ed, where he mentions Palestinian suffering in a secondary position to the recent attacks upon Israel.

Rev. Barber seems to want to excuse 75 years of oppression and harm perpetuated by the Israeli regime and aided by a general silence from the world. Through the years, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews have worked to draw attention to the gross violence and injustices of Israeli occupation. Yet, it seemed that the world was not interested in war crimes, or the genocidal pogroms carried out against the Palestinians. In most cases, the death of a Palestinian child, or the eviction of a Palestinian family did not even amount to a footnote in the concerns of the U.S. government or many religious leaders, including Rev. Barber. Click here to read the rest on Mondoweiss.

Incomplete Without the Other

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

Humanity is naturally separated by language, geography, culture, race, existential narratives, and many other cultural accents that make us uniquely different. We are divided ideologically, politically, racially, by class, belief, faith, and theology. Each group and sub-group has its own ways of expressions and customs, but unfortunately, in one way or another, each group and sub-group claims that its ways and thoughts are uniquely more significant than everything and everyone else in creation. This is human nature where the familiar becomes the norm, and our norms becomes the vehicle by which we evaluate everything and everyone else. For example, in Christianity, Jesus is the way and there is no other way. In Islam, there is no god but God, and Muhammad (Peace be upon him) is the Messenger of God. Historically, Judaism believes that there is only one God who has established a covenant, or special agreement with those of the faith (or traditions). Buddhism believes that life is one of suffering, and that meditation, spiritual and physical labor, and good behavior are the ways to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana and to overcome. In general, Hinduism believes that there are four goals in human life – kama, the pursuit of pleasure; artha, the pursuit of material success; dharma, leading a just and good life; and moksha, enlightenment, which frees a person from suffering and unites the individual soul with Brahman. There are many other cultural- religious understandings in the course of human thinking and they all grapple with the meaning of life, how to effectively live life, and how to live righteously in the human community. Each cultural-religious perspective emerges out of geography and context that frames language, perspective, and understandings.

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Christian Nationalism: An Existential Agreement with God

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

Newt Gingrich broke onto the national political scene with his “Contract with America.” It was the offering of an agreement, that if the public allowed the Gingrich coalition to lead, that coalition would then deliver on a number of points in the contract. Whether you agreed with the framing of this contract or not it conjured the image of the covenant between God and the people in the wilderness established through Moses on Mt. Sinai. There is an “If” and “then” equation to a covenant. One act is related to the other. One thing is related to the next. One thing is required in order to get to the other thing. A covenant is where at least two parties enter into an agreement.

So-called Christian Nationalism addresses the concept of a covenant, or a contract. In this view, America is the promise of God, and blessings will unfold, fulfillment will be realized, and the country will be the “City on the Hill” as long as its people uphold their part of the bargain. If the nation fails in upholding its agreement the blessings will be squandered, the country will be in decay, and the hopes found will become lost. Hence, we hear the assertions that America was founded on Christian values and principles, and its laws should reflect that. Christian norms should be upheld lest the country fall into decadence and decay. All of the assumptions, of course, are built on concepts of a conquering god, patriarchy and white supremacy. The cultural wars are attempts to uphold these sense of values, and keep the country from falling into perceived decay and obsolesce. Therefore, other religions, other peoples, like immigrants of darker hue, defy the dominant idea of “American”. Blended sexual and family structures, bended genders, and expanding expressions of sexuality suggest a crisis and the need to assert and re-assert the perceived so-called Christian American agreement into the covenant or the blessings and the nation will eventually be lost. This is where the tension emerges. 

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God’s Competition with Race, Gender and Nationalism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

“O say can you see,” stood in the place where God should be, and it didn’t wave but passively stood, planted, and seemingly unmovable across from the Christian flag, that is also red, white and blue. This is the scene in so many Christian houses of worship across the country. It serves as a reminder to the congregants that they are not only in America, but quietly and effectively offers the assertion that America is a Christian country, founded on Christian principles, and in order to be a good American necessitates being a Christian. Or, in the synagogue, on the Bimah, often stands two flags, an American one and the Star of David, that confirms not only American loyalty, but loyalty to another country, and to another political ideology. These symbols are not too subtle, and the implied message is God and country, and country or countries on the same level as God.

According to the theologies of the Judeo-Christian traditions there is no god greater than God, and there is this timeless struggle against idol worship in all its manifestations. We caution against worshipping money and riches, against pride and arrogance, we call for humility and the extension of love to our neighbors down the street and across the globe. We pray to keep God before us and above us, and seek to be accountable to that God. We strive to create a synthesis between our daily living and our worship, and seek to allow nothing to supplant the prominence of God in our lives. Yet, on these altars, these places that are set high and represents the loftiness and sacredness of God, stands symbols of nationalistic pride. They are placed in the place where the spirit and concept of God should reside, and we are therefore declaring that God must share sacred space with nationalistic symbols of pride, arrogance and militarism. Some would suggest that this is simply patriotism, but patriotism placed on the altar alongside the conceptional sacredness of God is the height of idolatry, and in Christian text we are taught,

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Freeing God to be God

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, Pastor Emeritus, Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ

The Spirit of God brings peace, consolation, and perspective in times of personal and collective trauma and tragedies. Having served as a public and parish Christian pastor for over four decades, I have counseled, listened to, cried with people, and have come to know the power of God for uplift, hope, and comfort. I have also known and experienced how God can be used for hurt, ridicule, diminishment, oppression, and exclusion. I have witnessed the goodness of God, and the hurt inflicted on people by human pronouncements of God. I have seen God used for both good and bad, and for liberation and oppression. It is all in the interpretation of God and claims of “truth.”

People seek “truth” in life, after-life, and for living right, and deeply desire to live on the right-side of the “truth”. People come to faith experiences seeking encouragement, strength, and “truth” for living. This is the reason the “Golden Rule” manifests itself in so many forms, ‘Do to others as you would have them to do to you’, and is core to so many faith traditions. However, unfortunately, there are political and economic structures, such as monarchs, empires, forms of governments, and individuals that have deliberately manipulated the concept of God towards material and political ends. They have seized on the desire for “truth” among the masses, by reshaping and remolding the concept of God into materialistic and nationalistic loyalties. Divinity is often exploited and manipulated to maintain systems of power, protect the status-quo by offering equations of absolutism forcing almost slavish obedience upon masses of people who only seek to live in “truth”, and on the correct side of God. Political leaders and governments create a central narrative of God that becomes a form of political orthodoxy, just like faith traditions create orthodoxies. Those who question this authority and its absolutism are criticized, ostracized, ridiculed, villainized, and often killed for endangering the existent order of things. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was lionized for civil rights, but villianized for his critique of the war in Vietnam. He had violated the political orthodoxy.  

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