Resistance or resilience
A few weeks ago, a lively debate briefly ignited on the web about the usurping by Donald Trump’s supporters of the work of the protestant resistance theologian against Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose biopic has just been released in the USA. Thousands of mainly European and North American theologians published a manifesto to defend the memory of the anti-totalitarian positions of the author of the famous letters written in prison and published in English under the title ‘letters and papers from the prison”.
It struck me as an illustration of current trends and tendencies among populist movements to exploit religious symbols. The US elections, many of the current deadlocks in the governance of Western countries reinforce the ultraconservative, isolationist, nationalist and neoliberal positions that like to play this game, including in Switzerland. These attempts and blockages have led some Internet users, Christians and non-Christians alike, to leave messages such as ‘the time for resistance has begun’ on ‘social’ networks. The polarization of opinions and radicalization are also being felt within and between churches around the world, whether it’s around the fight for a better climate, the war against Ukraine or Israel’s completely disproportionate reaction in Gaza, Lebanon and even now in Syria.
I was thinking of writing a Christmas message that would revolve around this alternative ‘resistance and/or resilience’, advocating more an ‘and’ than an ‘or’. The aim would have been to do justice both to the silent testimony of resilience shown by the populations of the countries of the South and of the Eastern Mediterranean, the main victims of these disruptions, and to the few voices in the West that dare to criticize and denounce publicly the double standards of a West that is still hegemonic. I thought I’d illustrate this with details from Auguste Rodin’s monumental sculpture ‘Hell’s gate’, which stands in front of the Kunsthaus in Zurich. This work was elaborated in parallel with the political events that shook Europe between 1880 and 1917, such as the rise of nationalism, blind faith in scientific progress, massive industrialization and its social and environmental consequences, the strengthening of colonialism and the Great War, etc. All this is highly topical today again.
What comes after hell? How can we get through it? How can we still hope?
I was at this point in my dark reflections when 7 and 8 December came and the Syrian regime collapsed. I found myself in the same state of mind as I had been on 9 November 1989 when the the Berlin Wall fall down: disbelief, amazement, worry, voiceless, tears, also of joy. At the time, I’d like to metamorphose myself into a fly capable of listening in on the conversations of my friends and acquaintances in Lebanon and Syria.
What happened to hell? How did it get turned around so easily? We who obviously believed it to be so indestructible, inevitable, irreplaceable, what didn’t we see? What did we not believe?
A few days later, I came across this poem by Hala Mohammad, a Syrian poet who has been a refugee in Paris since 2012. It was she who, like a queen magus in pursuit of the Christmas star, taught it to me again:
Impossible to resist, to go through life, these wars, this injustice, without believing in hope. It’s an inner lantern that guides words towards meaning, and meaning towards truth, and truth towards the future, and the future is in the beating heart. All in one word: love.
The situation in Syria is certainly not yet clear or stable as I write this. But I hope that we will all be touched and infected by this force of hope for Christmas in 2025.
Serge Fornerod, 18.12.2024
President of the Foundation for Aid to reformed Protestantism FAP