Last week saw the dissolution and reformation of an important coalition in Oakland that had arisen out of the financial crisis and the spotlight on economic inequities brought by the Occupy Movement. The Oakland Coalition for Social and Economic Justice (OCSEJ) has reformed with a different collection of organizations and players. The causes for the dissolution are a microcosm of the causes of the schisms that divide groups, communities, and individuals of good intent everywhere in the US. The causes were a complicated mixture of misunderstanding, pre-judging, chauvinism, condemnation-by-association, institutional pride, racial prejudices, ageism, and the inability or reluctance of some to articulate or to engage in a discussion about the imposition of a religious dogma on a diverse coalition. Like so many grassroots efforts that do not have a history of working together nor the attractive or coercive power to entice or force followership, this effort dissolved and a huge potential force for change may be lost.

There is no question that the coalescing energy for this now defunct coalition was derived from the hosting of the effort by one of the most influential black churches in Oakland. Accept for the sporadic participation of a rare few pastors and spirit-led lay persons, black churches as individual organizations have played only a very minor role in recent struggles for economic justice. Many participants in the OCSEJ struggled with their elation at the engagement of what they perceived as a powerful black institution and their discomfort with the nature of the leadership style offered for a culturally diverse coalition. Because of the shallowness of all of our understandings of the civil rights movement and the organizing work of Martin Luther King Jr., there is a false perception of the role of black churches in general in that struggle. Many seem to have forgotten how black Christian leadership – particularly the national leadership – resisted King and his tactics. Because King was a black pastor, we give inordinate credit to black churches as institutions fueling social change.

Occupy in general has been excoriated from the left and the right for not having a specific agenda or a clearly identified leadership. I think that the Occupy agenda is the rectification of economic inequities and that the lack of a clearly identified leadership is a strength. I also know that the accommodation or tolerance for leaderless organizational structures and dynamics is culture bound. Many organizing and institutional traditionalists are not comfortable in such structures. These traditionalists are much more comfortable with the kinds of authoritarian, top-down, militaristic leadership-followership structures that dominate US society and that have been part of so much that has oppressed the 99% over many years. IMHO that discomfort level of traditionalists does not make (of itself) the Occupy movement’s style bad or wrong or stupid. The civil rights movement - which had just pivoted to deal with questions of economic justice - ended because of the assignation of its one leader, King. There is no way anyone could end the Occupy Movement by co-opting, corrupting, or killing any set of individual leaders. We are all leaders and that is a strength. That criticism of the Occupy Movement arises out of movement strategy ignorance and a lack of creativity.

In Coalition meetings the principal representative of this Oakland black church, by intent or unconsciously, put-down through innuendo and directly the representatives and formations of the Oakland Occupy movement. This was tolerated for a time out of elation at the Church’s involvement. Criticism of his leadership style was backed-down by his charges of disrespect of African American leadership. The representative justified his dominance by referring to an unexamined view of what the nature of African American leadership style is and by subtly leveraging the use of the meeting space of the Church and the Church’s potential influence with City and private forces.

My examination of his African American leadership style claim leaves me questioning his understanding. There is no question that African American institutions have been infected with what theologian Elaine Pagels writes about as the dominance hierarchy; Christianity as a movement was infected with this hierarchy thousands of years ago when Roman Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as a state religion. These dominance structures were then passed to African American Christians during slavery and afterward. Present day evidence and anthropological studies have shown that most traditional Continental African leadership styles were more along the line of servant-leaders. Leaders did not demand obedience because of their positions, their possession of crowns, titles, or staffs. Both before leadership investiture and afterward, traditional African leaders continuously displayed leadership skills and judgments that were beneficial to everyone in the village. Traditional African Chiefs earned their followers allegiance by what they did for their followers. Generally they did not lean on positional power or hereditary power. Using resources, including social capital, to entice or coerce obedience is no different than what the 1% and their agents do to cower the rest of us. If authoritarianism is the traditional African American leadership style, we ought to drop it like we dropped chitterlings as a defining African American food tradition.

The Oakland Coalition has found another space in which to meet. Followers do have a choice as to whether to submit to dominance practices or not. We all can find creative ways that are accessible to folks from diverse cultures by which to organize and be effective.

Another major cause of the dissolution of the Coalition was due to a misunderstanding of the nature of the Oakland Occupy Movement in regards to how it functions. This ignorance of the Occupy coalition partners contributed to a simplistic damming-by-association that is also done by right wing demagogues and the corporate media. The problematic association for the Church was related to the question of the use of violence – against property. Despite the efforts of many of us and despite the efforts of almost all of the Occupy formations that were in the meeting rooms at the Church, Oakland’s Occupy General Assembly currently has a “diversity of tactics” philosophy in regards to violence. I think this is a mistake and that a growing number of Occupy activists are working hard and will eventually change this philosophy to a commitment to nonviolent action – which does not mean ending challenges to public and private institutions.

However, damming-by-association is not only pre-judgment it is also – IMHO – unchristian. Damming-by-association is one aspect of the System’s racist response to African Americans in general. Every African American male must carry the burden of every other African American male that has done something the status quo public and private institutions do not like. Each white person generally is treated more as an individual – for what they do as individuals; but, as in the case of Trayvon Martin, a black person could not walk down the street without the lethal assumption being made that he is likely a suspicious criminal. We ought not do that to each other. I am a part of the Occupy movement but I do not agree with the “diversity of tactics” philosophy because it is an excuse to use violence by some and violence is almost never helpful in bringing about radical change.

But, let me say something about the ineffectiveness of a dogmatic “fundamentalist” approach to those who more than reserve the option to use violence. From my reading of the Gospels – and in the Protestant tradition lay people are encouraged to read the Bible themselves and develop a personal understanding and interpretation – Jesus frequently met with and engaged those who he might disagree with, including those whose practices would be abhorrent to him. His practice was not one of coercion, enticement, or dominance but one of persuasion. He worked among the Jewish people who had a common cultural set of values and found the common ground there that he worked with to inspire personal and societal change. By His example, the Christian way of working in the Coalition would have been to have found that common ground in the member’s desire for economic justice and to have moved from there to fashion a working structure that was open to a diversity of leadership practices, strategies, tactics, and actions meant to make radical change happen; and to do that all through persuasion not through enticements or coercions.

A dogmatic view on nonviolence was used as a justification for exclusion not inclusion; this is not a way to unify a nonviolent movement. Neither Gandhi nor King was absolute on the question of violence. In fact, in John 2 (13-18) we learn that Jesus Himself was violent against the property of the money lenders and dove sellers in the temple; He forcefully whipped their cattle, turned over their tables and scattered their coins. Both Gandhi and King “embraced nonviolence as a moral example, and believed that the paradox (of “loving your enemy”) changes the world more than politics or violence ever can or will.” Absolutism is not called far.

Andrew Sullivan recently wrote about Thomas Jefferson’s Bible where at the age of 77 he cut out holes from the pages to construct his own understanding of Jesus’ true voice from the voices in the Bible of those who bent to the dominance paradigm rather than a “love your enemy” paradigm. Jefferson characterized this as separating the “diamonds” from the “dunghill.” Jefferson is the architect of the separation of Church and State principle in the Constitution. Sullivan says that “the ability to be faithful in a religious space and reasonable in a political one has atrophied before our eyes.” I think that Andrew Sullivan is not cognizant of a missing dynamic that was present at Jefferson’s time and some time afterward that is gone today. The Protestant Revolution had sparked an open public theological debate; unfortunately dominance paradigms sometimes spun these debates into oppression and wars. However that theological dynamism was the context that allowed the intersecting of the social psychological space of faith with the social psychological space of reasoning in every active participant in the body politic. Sullivan implies that those spaces can or could be separated. I do not think that that was Jefferson’s understanding. Jefferson and others during his time were also actively engaged in theological discussion both internal to their denominations and across denominations while also engaging in political discussion. If we had more of the former today, there might be more understanding that we are all searchers for the truth and believers deserving respect rather than assuming we are Godless heathens or people whose motivations are suspect because we do not profess a specific belief or the dominant society’s beliefs.

I agree with Sullivan when he says that Jefferson’s type of politically active Christian was “…the kind of Christian (who) seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all.” For Jefferson, “No man can conform his faith to the dictates of another. The life and essence of religion consists in the internal persuasion or belief of the mind.” Jefferson feared that the alternative to a Christianity founded on “internal persuasion” was a revival of the brutal, bloody wars of religion that America was founded to escape. Public theological/Weltanschauung discussion allows for a deepening of spiritual engagement and the discovery of common human understandings that would enrich our secular discussions in a democratic society. Without this public discussion, we sit in our on “world views” and ‘throw stones’ and assumptions at each other.

Separation rather than war has been the current result of one Church’s efforts to impose its understanding of the proper way to organize to end injustice as part of a diverse Coalition.

[Note that the author objects to the term “Occupy” and favors the use of the term “Decolonize” instead but for the sake of general reference to the movement has used the “Occupy” label.  Also, note that the author believes that Sullivan has unforgivably left out the reasons other than religious freedom that are the founding bases for the US: theft of land, slavery, and the acceptance of a dominance paradigm camouflaged as manifest destiny.]

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Wilson Riles, is a former Oakland, CA City Council Member. Click here to contact Mr. Riles.