Winning Hearts and Minds: The Struggle to Thrive and Not Just Barely Survive in Trump's America

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Winning Hearts and Minds
The Struggle to Thrive and Not Just Barely Survive in Trump's America

By Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back


(TomDispatch) Most days, in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt, the old sanctuary at Christ Lutheran Church sits empty. Decades ago, it was home to a congregation of 3,000 people. By the late 1990s, that number had dwindled to seven. At the turn of the millennium, Jody Silliker, a young minister fresh out of seminary, was sent to shutter the downtown church, a mile from the state legislature in Harrisburg.

Instead, she immersed herself in the deindustrialized community, meeting unhoused families, the unemployed, migrant workers, sex workers, and other low-wage laborers. Just a few years after welfare reform eviscerated the social safety net and proclaimed the era of “personal responsibility,” Silliker retrofitted the church annex and opened a free medical clinic.

Earlier this spring, we visited Christ Lutheran. We’ve been on the road since April, meeting with leaders from poor and dispossessed communities in this country and sharing notes from our new book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty. As the Trump administration abducts our neighbors off the streets and eviscerates everything from Medicaid to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, we want to better understand what it will take to ignite a democratic awakening in this country. How, in the words of theologian Howard Thurman, the “masses of people, with their backs constantly up against the wall” in Donald Trump’s America, can push back together.

A Battle for the Bible in the Battleground State of Pennsylvania

In small towns, as well as cities like Harrisburg, there is an underreported but epic struggle being waged for the hearts and minds of everyday people, with ripple effects for the entire nation. And the church — its pulpit, pews, and survival programs — is a critical staging ground for that struggle. There are Christians who are preaching and practicing the ministry of Jesus, the son of God, who himself was unhoused and undocumented and sided with the poor, the sick, the indebted, the incarcerated, and the immigrant, while decrying the idolatry of tyrants.

And then there are Christian nationalists, whose religion of empire is more akin to the worship of Caesar than the Jesus of the scriptures. ..................(more)

https://tomdispatch.com/winning-hearts-and-minds/