The two pathways for coping with the rage of being oppressed: Increasing bitterness and violence or peacemaking and reconciliation.

1. From Rage to Reconciliation
Confronting injustice; Voicing truth; Defusing anarchy; Building
bridges
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to
anger. For human anger does not work the righteousness of God!!
(James 1:19-20).
The scriptures speak of peace-making not fostering bitterness
Two Ways of Dealing with Anger: Jesus vs Alinsky
(in process) Prof Viv Grigg, 2021

2. A Life Expressing Godly Rage
• For a lifetime, I have expressed a deep anger against injustices. That anger
stems from a deep experience of the Spirit since childhood
• He rises up with us. For me I recall at 10 years old when I saw the school
bully beating a little kid and went and threw him over my shoulder (thus
establishing my reputation as a great fighter, and never having to fight again)
• I was in the slums. One of our young converts came in screaming. “They
took my job, they took my job”. I was next in line to be promoted but this
rich girl bought her way in”.
• After being in the US, one of my children came in one day and sat on the
couch, lips trembling, deeply disturbed, unable to talk for a couple of hours.
“Its all racist here. They only see my color. When I am in a group, the white
girls only talk to white guys. The whole society is racist.” We came from a
multicultural society, where he had dignity.
• My daughter, waiting for her green card for 7 years and faced with a
bureaucracy that no longer functioned under Donald Trump, became so
angry she became a political activist, recruiting hundreds of thousands to
vote Democrat in order to overthrow a racist President.

3. The Anger of Unresolved Grief
• Each of these cameos expresses grief.
Something had been lost. Something
taken. Some dignity diminished
(Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David
Kessler)
• They say there are five stages of grief
(though they often occur randomly)
0004

4. David Kessler’s Advice for Anger caused by Loss
• Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even
though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate
and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will
get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing.
• The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors,
your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where
is God in this?
• Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we
live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving
temporary structure to the nothingness of loss.
• At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at
someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t
around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you
have a structure – – your anger toward them.
• The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is
something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better
than nothing. We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is
just another indication of the intensity of your love.

5. Urban Poor Reality: Anger Caused by Mental Dissonance
Freire, the educationalist, explored the mental mazeways of the
oppressed:
• In many contexts there is an inherent opposition between rich and
poor, oppressed and oppressor. Hence, “The poor fight for freedom.
Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift.” Is this true? So are we
in a fight???
• Jesus: Blessed are you, the economic class of the godly poor, Woe to
you who are rich…
• The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and
adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. The fear diminishes
self-identity.

6. Conscientização – Identifying the Causes of
Mental Dissonance
• Freedom requires the oppressed to reject this damaged image and
replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freire’s Catholicism was
Biblical in its respect for the image of God within humanness.
• Understanding dehumanizing contexts requires social analysis
• Freire found this through education and conscientization (awareness
of the oppressions)
• In the process of the fight for dignity, this social analysis leads to
processes of social change. It begins in the mazeways of the mind that
redefine the terms of identity.

7. Conscientização – Social Analysis at the Levels of the
Physical, the Mind, Emotions, Soul and Spirit
• But the Pain is not purely mental. It touches the depth of communal or cultural
soul, it wounds the human spirit. The intensity of communal pain can explode.
• Options:
• In the MATUL, the Christian alternative is in bring healing at a deeper level than the cultural
soul, at the level of the God-human spirit.
• At individual levels, the worship of slum churches, touched by the Spirit of God, brings much
of this healing.
• Creation of leadership roles in the churches brings an increasing sense of God-given identity.
• Collective engagement with changing the physical in community development, increases a
sense of control of the poverty itself
• Seeking reconciliation across divisions, are processes bringing dignity with honor and peace
between the oppressed and oppressor.
• E.g. Wesley is credited with saving England from the violence of the French Revolution.
• There are times when one or the other approach may be more fitting. But in general, as
Christians we begin by peacemaking and reconciliation.
• E.g. Trade Unions seek to bargain, but if bargaining breaks down have options in terms of going slow. If
that fails, strikes are threatened. If the threat fails, a strike affecting the pocket-book of employers is
needed.
• E.g. Wise Governments set up options for bargaining processes that enable healthy bargaining and
reduce the oppositional processes for employers and employees.

8. Action Based on Conscientização
• Options:
• Freire found this in education and conscientization (awareness of the oppressions)
• Alinsky and Fannon (representing the anarchist left) choose to expand this pain into
an angry increase of bitterness leading to violent confrontation, using it to increase
the power of the masses against he power of the oppressors, as a way of expanding
collective dignity and liberation from the pain and reality of oppression (view Les
Miserables).
• Marx expands it into violent revolution overthrowing classes and destroying the
elites.
• The Christian alternative is in seeking reconciliation across divisions, a process
bringing dignity with honor and peace between the oppressed and oppressor.
• There are times when one or the other approach may be more fitting. But in general,
as Christians begin by peacemaking and reconciliation.

9. The Rich who Gift Freedom
• I don’t agree: there are those from among the elite, “the oppressors”
who choose to identify with the oppressed, who hear the rage and
voice the rage, and break open the barriers.
• Such was Wilberforce
• Such was the NZ Governmental leadership that established processes of
reconciliation over land rights
• Such was Ghandi
• The list of good or godly men and women is endless.
• Freire himself, musing on his later life, identified that while learning
from the anger of the far left, he had not followed the way of
violence, but the more Franciscan way of reconciliation.

10. Anti-Rage and St Francis
• Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall see God – Jesus of
Nazareth
• Peacemaking that defuses rage between societies is central to healthy
social change.
• e.g.The Story of St Francis in Asissi bringing reconciliation between the
maiores and the minores (rich and labourers).
• Societies that create spaces for such expressions of conflict into
processes of healing at multiple micro- and macro- levels, expand
capacity for harmony.
• Democracy enables such environments. Autocracy decreases these,
ultimately bringing an expansion of anger.

11. Discerning Rage from Rage
The nature of Christian discernment processes:
• Differentiate Rage that comes from unhealed pain and is destructive,
vs. Godly Rage against injustice that comes from a place of
healedness, yet concern for those oppressed.
• Channel the pain into productive rage-action.

12. The Rage of the Left
Discuss Fannon (1961) and other roots to CRT
• Critical Race Theory is not inherently Marxist as was failed Liberation
Theology which some I have walked alongside imbibed. But it is
derived from leftist anarchist rhetoric that labels a class struggle
between two opposing classes(Marx) or colors of people (strangely
called “races” in the USA) (CRT), satanizing the one against the other.
• It follows the approach of Alinsky of increasing the bitterness
between these “opposed polarities”.
• The wisdom that comes form above seeks middle ground, listens.

13. Rage, the Holy Spirit and Civility
• The Holy Spirit, when he falls on us, brings a deep intensity of
overwhelming love, of new identity and destiny. Those who call
themselves Christians but have not experienced the touch of revival
have only morality but not the power of such love.
• When that love is expressed in the public square it seeks peace, it is
open to reason, it listens to the other(James 1: 19,20; 3:14-16).
• It cares for both rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed
• It creates a place of civility in public dialogue (Grigg, 2009).
• For the anger of man does not do the work of God (James 1:19).

14. Generational Transition from African-American Pastoral History
• Such gentleness, civility, grace has marked the rhetoric and cadences of the
African American pastorate, their peacemaking presence a powerful
proclamation of an alternative Kingdom, in the midst of oppression.
-
• Their children in their rap music have chosen the same medium, its
cadences and rhetoric, but broken the boundaries in their expression of
rage through obscenity, authorized by their heavy rock cousins across the
divide.
• Charles, an honored brother, in seeking to be a voice of rage, sought to
model this to CCDA one year, through the style of rappist friends he had
studied. His anger expressed sinfully in cursing was not accepted by those
of us who have pursued a holy life with neither cursing, nor abuse, a life of
peace creating.
• Having pursued holiness and wisdom in my speech, having only sworn
twice in my public life, it made no sense, it denied the godly grace of my
father, my mother. It violated my conscience. It violated all I knew of the
nature of Spirit-rage, godly rage. It lead back to a nativist approach to
finding liberty, not on to new mazeways (A.F. C. Wallace . )

15. Progressions from Anger to Moral Good or to
Revenge?
• We have to appreciate how anger works. Ordinary anger can deepen,
under the right circumstances, into moral indignation—a more
combustible form of the emotion, though one that can still be a
powerful force for good. If moral indignation persists, however—and
if the indignant lose faith that their anger is being heard—it can
produce a third type of anger: a desire for revenge against our
enemies that privileges inflicting punishment overreaching accord.
(Duhigg, Charles. (2019). The Real Roots of American Rage. The
Atlantic. January/February 2019. (Redacted from Why is America So
Angry?)).

16. Ungodly Anger as it turns to Revenge against
Injust Systems
• Researchers call the phenomenon in which anger, rather than making
things better, becomes a cycle of recrimination, rumination, and ever-
expanding fury the revenge impulse.
• Though anger and the desire for revenge can feel intertwined, they
are two distinct emotions. Simply becoming angry doesn’t prompt a
revenge impulse. Thomas Tripp, a professor at Washington State
University who has studied how revenge can affect the workplace,
told me that revenge is much more common if there is “a sense that
the fairness of institutions, what we call procedural justice, has
broken down.” (Duhigg)

17. Activist Rage from a Place of the Healing Spirit
• While in Nouwen’s words we are always “Wounded Healers”, healers
we must be.
• Reasonable healedness precedes the capacity to bring healing
• Reasonable healedness involves a brokenness at the cross, and a resurrection
in the Spirit
• It can never curse, for the Holy Spirit would be deeply grieved.
• Cursing is unhealedness showing through, speaking from a place of no
authority, no brokenness, no healing
• However, like Jesus we may speak with God’s authority, in the power
of the purifying Spirit, in healedness, yet declaring his curse in his
“Woe to you who are rich”.
• Such speaks without the intermediacy of crassness, our
unhealedness, but with the truthfulness of God’s completeness, his
civility, yet judgement.

18. Was Jesus “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild”?
• Among the poor, his gospel invites them to “Come to me all who
labor, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28).
• To the rich, his message is one of judgement, “Woe to you who are
rich…. Woe to you, who are well fed now…. (Luke 6:24-26).

19. References
• Duhigg, Charles. (2019). The Real Roots of American Rage. The
Atlantic. January/February 2019. (Redacted from Why is America So
Angry?).
• Fannon, Frantz. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth.
• Grigg, Viv. (2009). The Spirit of Christ and the Postmodern City.
Auckland: Urban Leadership Foundation.
• Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth and David Kessler. (2014) On Grief and
Grieving. Scribner.
• Wallace, A.F.C. (2003) Revitalizations and Mazeways: Essays on
Culture Change, Volume 1. University of Nebraska Press.