Lessons From Unsettling Advent
A classic tale this time of year — with multiple movie versions — is Dr. Seuss’s heartwarming The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. A less inspiring version occurred in a British elementary school last week: The Priest Who Ruined Christmas.
A school in Lee-on-the-Solent invited Rev. Paul Chamberlain, a local Anglican minister, to come talk to the children about the biblical Christmas story. They soon learned they shouldn’t have touched him with a 39-and-a-half foot pole. As cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel, the priest decided to spoil everybody with his bad attitude.
Warning: Don’t keep reading unless you already know the truth about Santa Claus.
“He said, ‘You’re all Year 6, now let’s be real, Santa isn’t real,” a 10-year-old pupil recounted the priest saying. “Then he also was saying what Santa likes. Someone said he likes cookies. Then he said that, ‘Do your parents like cookies?’ And a lot of them said, ‘Yeah’. And then he said how the parents were the ones that were eating it. I heard a lot of gasps because they were shocked about it, so I don’t think everyone knew.”
Children reportedly started crying in class and again when they got home to tell their parents. Then, parents came knockin’ to complain about this bad banana.
“I don’t know how it can be undone, but I think it’s absolutely disgusting,” the mother of a seven-year-old said after her daughter announced the vicar had ruined Christmas. “I don’t want him anywhere near my daughter. I hope he never comes into the school again. I think he should stop doing what he’s doing.”
The school and priest quickly tried to turn the frowns back into smiles. Teachers told students that “all stories and legends around Christmas are also legitimate.” And a spokesman for the mean one said he “has accepted that this was an error of judgment and he should not have done so.”
While we won’t opine about the legitimacy of Santa stories (except the Billy Bob Thornton one that is just bad), we wonder what the priest said about the biblical story. He probably gave a nice Sunday School version of it for the children, which was completely missed because of his Santa comments. But we see the need to unsettle the domesticated telling of Jesus’s birth to find insights that help us live out our faith in these unsettling times.
That’s why we’ve been offering our fourth annual set of Unsettling Advent devotionals. Each year, 20+ writers help us reflect on how the news of the year helped us better understand the biblical stories. In 2021, we considered Advent in a time of death/COVID, racial injustices, and insurrection. In 2022, we explored Advent in a time of war (in Ukraine), refugees, and (gun) violence. Last year, we reflected on Advent in a time of state executions, political anxieties, and bloodshed in Israel.
This year, we decided to once again unsettle Advent in light of the news of the year. And we have been amazed by the devotionals. They have helped us think in fresh ways about the old, old story we thought we knew so well. Writers have been reflecting on Advent in a time of rulers clinging to power, dangerous pregnancies, and violence in Lebanon.
We know that many of you have joined us on this journey. But in this issue of A Public Witness, we want to share some of what we’ve learned from Unsettling Advent this year. We hope these insights will be meaningful in these last few days before we celebrate the real Christmas story that transforms people’s hearts.
Advent in a Time of Rulers Clinging to Power
King Herod’s role in the Christmas story is one of an authoritarian ruler paranoid of losing control. In his quest to hold the throne, he demonstrated that there were no moral lines he would not cross. Herod famously ordered the slaughter of infants and toddlers in Bethlehem and even killed one of his wives and three of his sons who he thought might be plotting against him. And he did all this while modeling dangerous religious nationalism.
Unfortunately, we continue to see similar power-hungry approaches from rulers today. Like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. And in the U.S., the presidential election centered around the aftermath of a politician who attempted to silence calls for him to retire and another who inspired a failed insurrection.
One person who has keen insights into how power operates is sociologist Andrew Whitehead. He wrote for his devotional: “While power can be used and applied toward a common good (think about the Civil Rights movement and expanding access to the vote), many Christians are intent on gaining and defending access to power that only serves ‘us,’ the in-group of ‘right’ Christians.” Whitehead believes that earthly, self-interested power is precisely what Jesus rejected.
“The Christian religion began far from the seats of earthly power. This perspective saturates the writings of the New Testament and the witness of the early church,” he continued. “Just like Jesus, we must reject the promise of earthly power focused on only serving ‘us’ at the expense of others. The Kingdom of God operates according to a different principle where we leverage what we have for the benefit of others.”
This sentiment was echoed by social worker and sociology doctoral student Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood. She reflected on the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a charismatic Christian theology of dominion that has gone from fringe to mainstream in recent years.
“Historically, we know that the pursuit of power is often accompanied by significant collateral damage — harm imposed on the most vulnerable communities among us, like immigrants or those who identify or love differently than we do,” she wrote. “May we never mistake exclusion for compassion, and may we always comfort and protect the most vulnerable among us.”
And John Marc Sianghio, a scholar who focuses on the intersection of religion, war, and human rights, wrote about how we can translate the biblical vision for leadership — often centered around dynastic monarchies — to our modern democracies. He believes the key to this is following Isaiah’s lead and focusing on the condition of the people.
“The person upon whose shoulders the government shall rest is described as bringing light to those ‘walking in darkness,’ relief to those ‘bearing the yoke of their burden,’ a breaking of those bars that weigh down the ‘shoulders of the oppressed.’ The measure of a ruler’s worth is in their ability to bring justice, peace, and healing to a hurting people. The titles that come later are acclamations given for the things the ruler has done,” Sianghio wrote.
Concluding the week of devotionals on rulers clinging to power, Interfaith Alliance’s Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons turned his focus to popular culture. He explored the themes of a recent movie musical that many people are thinking about this season: Wicked.
“Holding space for the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ makes me consider the way in which authoritarianism functions as a type of gravity: an invisible force that drags the body down toward the ground. Authoritarianism rests on a deprivation of belief that society can change. It limits our imagination and aspirations,” Graves-Fitzsimmons wrote. “But we each deserve the chance to fly. We each deserve freedom. We each deserve the God-given dignity that authoritarians would deny us.”
Advent in a Time of Dangerous Pregnancies
Pregnancy is how we perpetuate life — but it can also be a hazardous endeavor. This was especially true for people in the ancient world like Mary and Elizabeth. However, despite the advancements of modern medicine, being pregnant is still much more dangerous than it should be today.
The U.S. has the highest maternal death rate among wealthy countries, and Black Americans experience this at more than double the national average. This was the case even before Roe v. Wade was overturned and some states began to pass laws making pregnancy even more dangerous in an attempt to restrict abortion access.
“Too often in our retelling of the Christmas story, we focus solely on the baby in the manger and forget the teenage girl giving birth in less than optimal circumstances,” wrote Susan Shaw, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality. “As we observe Advent, we should give thought to dangerous pregnancies, past and present. John and Jesus’s births did not come without cost to the women who carried and bore them.”
Continuing to reflect on the lives of Mary and Elizabeth, Rev. Traci Blackmon wrote that “both women carried babies only made possible by the orchestration of God. Not solely their wombs, but their entire beings were needed to bring these miracles to pass, and God trusted these women with their bodies and these sacred births.” She added, “The unspoken miracle of this story is that everyone survived. Neither the fruit of their wombs nor the agency of their bodies were discarded.”
Tragically, we have recent examples of women who were not as fortunate. Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, two Black mothers from Georgia, died from preventable pregnancy-related complications. Womanist biblical scholar Angela Parker reflected on this new reality.
Lutheran pastor and writer Angela Denker built upon these ideas as she reflected on her own pregnancies and “the immediate shift that comes when your body is no longer yours alone, and yet you have so little control over the wellbeing of the life inside of you, as well as your own life.” She added, “Pregnancy is both incredibly vulnerable and incredibly powerful. You are sick and weak but strong and courageous.”
Kristel Clayville, a religion scholar and former hospital chaplain, described a situation where medical staff had experienced chaplains in Labor and Delivery making patients feel worse.
“Some chaplains had shown up and filled the gap between expectation and reality with moralizing statements and platitudes about the value of suffering,” she wrote. “In the space of creating new life, Christianity had become a problem to be managed instead of a source of care and support.”
But in the face of increasing dangers for mothers and babies alike, Clayville calls on us “not to moralize or evangelize suffering, but to care for those brave enough to create new life.”
Closing out the devotional entries on Advent in a time of dangerous pregnancies, Episcopal priest and theology and education doctoral student Sarah Miller shifted our focus to motherhood amidst ongoing conflict.
“Last month, the United Nations estimated that 50,000 pregnant and postpartum women in Gaza lack consistent access to maternal and infant healthcare, with 130 women giving birth each day,” she wrote. “Those who survive the dangers of pregnancy in these conditions must navigate life with a newborn amid a genocide that aid organizations say is ‘overwhelmingly victimizing newborns and pregnant women.’”
“We may find hope growing in us alongside doubt and despair, hope that enables us to work and pray for peace — not because we are certain of the future, but because every life announces God’s faithfulness and mercy,” Miller concluded.
Advent in a Time of Violence in Lebanon
For the third year in a row, Unsettling Advent has devoted a week to considering Advent in a time of war. In 2022, we turned our attention to Ukraine, with pastors there joining us in offering reflections during the first Advent after the full-scale Russian invasion that is unfortunately ongoing. Last year, Palestinian pastors and leaders wrote some of the devotionals for a week considering the attacks in Gaza. Not only does that devastation continue today, but the conflict bled into Lebanon. So this year we turned our attention to more unholy violence in the holy land.
“Christmas is around the corner. It comes at a time when, from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria, people are wrestling with tremendous change, loss, mass displacement, and pain,” wrote Nabil Costa, chief executive officer at Thimar (a Lebanese Christian nonprofit with education, relief and development, publication, and other ministries). “Stress, anxiety, and uncertainty have become the norm in our region. Along with a deeper sense of hopelessness and despair.”
This idea of wrestling with Advent hope in the midst of violence and despair was also something Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, noted in her devotional. Recognizing this is a season about waiting, she added that’s especially true “for those in the Middle East today who face displacement, bombings, hunger, unjust detainment, and the relentless presence of war and terror.”
“In this context, Advent becomes a period of yearning for a future defined by peace rather than war. For Christians in the Middle East, Advent embodies waiting in hope,” she added. “This active waiting must also embrace activism and advocacy as a means to challenge the status quo and advocate for solutions beyond weapons and warfare in the Middle East.”
For Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist in Jordan, the violence in Lebanon and across the region adds to the call of Christians to advocate for the peace that angels announced to shepherds.
“We also need to empathize with children and families on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border having to leave their homes in a hurry and become refugees, much like Mary and Joseph had to huddle baby Jesus away from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape Herod’s massacre of children,” he wrote. “Peace with justice might seem to be a far-fetched idea in Lebanon, the Middle East, and the world. Nevertheless, as believers we are ordered to pay attention to what Isaiah (1:17) said: ‘Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.’”
Similarly, Lebanese professor and Baptist leader Lina Sawan Raad used her devotional to draw attention to the parallels between the response of King Herod to the Magi and what we see today in her nation and region.
“[Herod’s] heart was blinded by the love of power,” she explained. “This story is very similar to what happens now in the Middle East — and especially in Lebanon and Palestine. These areas are considered the playground of international fighting for the purpose of building power and authority. For years in Palestine, and for more than a year in Lebanon, mothers are crying for the loss of their children and hundreds of families are destroyed.”
Yet, even amid the violence — and the fragile ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel — Sawan and the others offered hope as they wait for a different kind of king.
Moving Beyond Children’s Tales
We know our devotionals aren’t the happiest ones you can read. And they would probably ruin Christmas for elementary children. But while everything isn’t jolly and bright in the reflections, that doesn’t leave us without hope. It’s only by being honest about the challenges facing our world that we can become clear-eyed about our need for God to be with us anew.
Unsettling Advent is about disturbing our comfortable assumptions and routines so that we might become more faithful followers of the Savior we herald as the true Prince of Peace. Rather than accept a tamed version of the gospel, we sought to find prophetic voices who could remind us about the radical implications of that first Christmas.
We pray these various voices will prepare your hearts not for the sentimental world of Hallmark movies but for the very real world in need of the peace proclaimed by the angelic host.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor & Jeremy Fuzy
Thank you for always seeking the truth, examining issues and situations without bias toward one political party or Mr the other and for helping us remember, in the midst of our comfortable lives, that so many of God’s beloved are suffering in ways we can hardly even imagine.