Solidarity Ethics by Peters Rebecca Todd

Solidarity Ethics by Peters Rebecca Todd

Author:Peters, Rebecca Todd [Rebecca Todd Peters]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4514-6987-5
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00


Accountability

Beverly Harrison argued that solidarity required genuine accountability, describing it as concrete answerability to oppressed people.[30] Understood in Harrison’s terms, solidarity has to be more than a sympathetic gesture in support of a cause or the pain and suffering of others. True solidarity must move beyond the wearing of a wristband or buying a T-shirt. If solidarity is to genuinely reflect accountability, it must move beyond expressions of support and into a genuine partnership with others. Solidarity implies a relationship that goes beyond a mere meeting of the minds or agreement about philosophical or even theological ideas. It represents a bond between people that calls for loyalty, compassion, and companionship, a bond rooted in the agapē love of the Christian tradition. Learning how to live in solidarity with one’s neighbors is an expression of the Christian call to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31).

Certainly, it is much easier to practice this teaching if you know your neighbor, like your neighbor, or even feel kin to your neighbor in some way. This kind of provincial attitude about who counts as one’s neighbor engenders a social ethic in which people can continue to care for their local community, church, and family while remaining oblivious to the ways in which their lives impact the larger world. To the extent that the United States continues to act in unilateral ways that further its own interests without regard to the perspectives, counsel, and wisdom of leaders of other nations, US Americans continue to think and act in provincial ways that distort their capacity to see people outside of the United States as their “neighbors.” To the extent that Christian churches function primarily as social clubs, support groups, and havens for personal spiritual growth, people who participate in them risk further isolating themselves from the material reality of the lives of their “neighbors” who are sick, hurting, and hungry in the United States and abroad. To the extent that white Christians isolate themselves in fictive communities that reflect their own race and class positions, they live in an alienated and narcissistic world insulated, protected, and hidden from the global realities of poverty and environmental degradation that mark contemporary existence. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus teaches in the parable of the Good Samaritan that he expects people to see their neighbor even in those people whom they do not know and might not even like. In an era of globalization, people may not even meet the neighbors they are called to love as themselves; nevertheless, they remain our sisters and brothers, loved and cherished by God and deserving of dignity and respect.

To live out an ethic of solidarity, first-world people must get involved in some concrete engagement with oppressed or marginalized communities—locally or globally. This is important because the idea of solidarity is based on a relationship between one group that is suffering from some situation of oppression and another group that is not suffering from the oppression but acts in partnership with them or on their behalf.



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