There is a silver lining and some Good News in America’s march to fascism. Allow me to explain myself in this meditation and some that will follow.
There is a return of solidarity. I will never forget a statement from a prophetic and holy man, South African Dominican theologian and activist Albert Nolan, author of Jesus before Christianity. Years ago, I sat down with him in a café in Berkeley, California, to speak to him of my decision to become an Episcopal priest.
I did not know this at the time—I only learned it a few years ago—that he had fought alongside Anglican Bishop Tutu against the apartheid regime and had a sentence on his head and went into hiding regularly from the racist apartheid government goons. He had also been elected head of the Dominican Order but turned the job down—the only one in the Order’s 800-year history to do so. The Roman Catholic Church at the time was in its own fascist grip that endured for 34 years through two papacies and unleashed on us, among other things, Opus Dei with no holds barred. (I write about this in depth in my book, The Pope’s War.)
At the time Albert and I met over a cup of tea, I had been silenced by the Vatican for a year and three years later expelled from the Order on the pretext of “disobedience.” A friend in the Oakland bishop’s office told me I was too “radioactive” to be accepted by any bishop in the country. (Others told me my books were being hauled out of parish libraries and Catholic bookstores all over the country.)
I felt I had three options: 1. Hide under a rock and shut up; 2. Do what Leonardo Boff, the liberation theologian in Brazil did, and become a lay person in an official way; 3. Make the lateral move of joining the Episcopal church to work with young Anglicans from England who were bringing rave to church to revitalize liturgy. I told Albert of my decision to do the latter.
I will never forget his response—his whole face lit up, and he said, “Perfect! What the Vatican wants to do is isolate you. Finding another Christian community is the perfect solution.” (And that community was the same as his ally, Bishop Tutu’s.)
And then he added, “The reason the American Dominicans abandoned you is that North Americans don’t know a goddamn thing about solidarity.” (The Dutch Dominicans had offered in a formal document to my American provincial to adopt me as a Dutch Dominican. My provincial turned that offer down, and he held the legal power to do that. As the Dutch told me, “We have been protecting theologians for 750 years, and we know how to do it. The Americans don’t know how to do it.”)
The silver lining in today’s struggle to combat MAGA fascism is that Americans are waking up to solidarity. Maybe. The multi millions that have turned out for “NO Kings” rallies the past two years; the marches in Minneapolis in response to ICE’s murder of two innocent protestors, Renee Good and Alex Pretti; the acts of neighborly assistance in cities all over the country where ICE is rounding up victims; the resistance to setting up giant concentration camps that is occurring even in red states; the rising awareness of what the Project 2025 was all about; a new generation of younger and more critical politicians challenging the establishment of the Democratic Party when it shuts its eyes to Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, etc.
All this is a silver lining. Solidarity is happening.
To be continued.
Banner Image: Silver lining amidst dark clouds. Photo by Suganth on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you think Americans are bad at solidarity? But that, under MAGA’s advancing oligarchy and autocracy, they are waking up to solidarity and beginning to practice it? How can solidarity expand in American culture today?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved
Confessions: The Making of a Post-denominational Priest
A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality & The Transformation of Christianity
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Matthew Fox and Adam Bucko, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic Warrior for Our Time
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
8 thoughts on “The Silver Lining & Good News in America’s March to Fascism”
“Do I think Americans are bad at solidarity?”: Yes, except in catastrophic situations.
“But that, under MAGA’s advancing oligarchy and autocracy, they are waking up to solidarity and beginning to practice it?”: Definitely! Here is an example: https://youtu.be/K0XsP-zSZIg
Thank you, Rev Dr Matthew, for your lifelong and continuing living active and prophetic witness in the face of a previously backward-looking roman church, which you have overcome as a most faithful servant of God and people. Your reward will be great. I love your account of Albert Nolan. Timothy O’Donoghue, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, Ireland; todonoghue@hotmail.com
Thank you for all that you do.
I have often criticized the Church, especially our bishops, for not speaking out forcefully against the cruelty and injustices of this Nazi Fascist administration. More power to all who are protesting.
I pray that Pope Leo stands firm and continues to rebuke Trump.
On Our Unique Spiritual Journeys in Life, We need to be reminded with FAITH, that We’re All Sacred parts of Source~Co-Creator’s Living Loving Diverse Oneness in the Sacred Process of the Eternal Present Moment….
Bravo, Fr. Matt.
I think it is critical to acknowledge that we Americans do not support solidarity, because our culture is based on rugged individualism. Also consumerism pushes fractionalization, in which a couple can be turned into 2 consumers for each part of a bill, and then costs added, as you are constantly flattered with their attention to your unique and wonderful consumer self. “What kind of coffee do YOU like? We can make one all for you!” We may soon need to accomplish a general strike, in response to ICE invading polling stations. We will have to stop buying from Amazon for a week. Luckily, there are some who are already aware, and tightening their belts against consumerism and against the giant corporations. But this change in awareness is huge, and important. And it starts with saying we are not just consumers, and our neighbors matter to us, and we will stay in solidarity even if they start to persecute us.
That’s an important insight about consumerism Martina. Thanks. Michael Pollan discovered that corporations use messages and “culture” to undermine communal meals and maximize profits by compelling people to eat in isolation. More transactions for corporate that way. Families and friends who share meals are treated as communal barriers to corporate growth.
I don’t think Americans are inherently bad at solidarity. I think we have been conditioned to be conflicted about it—pulled between standing on our own and recognizing that none of us thrives alone. Your reflection got me thinking about our present crisis through an alchemical lens.
We were formed as a union of distinct states, an experiment in holding difference within a larger whole. Yet the structures meant to unite us can also become instruments of separation.
I see our political crisis as an alchemical moment. Our collective shadow is being brought into consciousness: fears, resentments, exclusions, alienation, and contradictions we have struggled to integrate. The political heat exposes what was already there.
In alchemy, separatio is not necessarily destruction. Separation can precede recombination. The danger is allowing differentiation to become fragmentation. The tension of opposites can catalyze transformation. If we place the shadow entirely in the other, we remain trapped in projection. Integration may begin with our willingness to remain in relationship with what is difficult, uncomfortable, or different.
“Solidarity,” from Latin solidus—whole, firm, undivided—later came to include mutual responsibility and shared obligation. Perhaps we are being given painful material from which a more conscious form of union might be made.
Thanks for telling us about the 34 year old fascist grip. Impossible for me to grasp what was going on without your writing and talks. You are right about solidarity.
People are under enormous pressure with the climate crisis, war, genocide, and AI. I read a book recently titled Nation of Strangers by a secular writer from Turkey named Ece Temelkuran.
She says: “Life is all about stories. You decide whether your story is going to be about protecting yourself from reality, living in fear, or acting with others and giving courage to each other. You cannot survive on your own. You can only survive together.”
Another interesting person who talks about solidarity is Emile Cuda, a theologian from Argentina.
I can see why “catholic” fascists are afraid of women and theologians. Took me a very long time to see this and it would have been impossible without your work.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pWoUbGt6On4