UK Postal workers facing attacks on two fronts

By Pete Firmin

NOVEMBER 23, 2024

HubMP201

On  13th November the Post Office announced its intention to close 115 post offices, which would mean 1,000 redundancies. This is the latest in a long programme of closures, though a much bigger tranche than previously.

The announcement came as a result of a review by Nigel Railton, Chair of the Post Office, conducted since May. It was leaked to the London Evening Standard before the official announcement, meaning not just the public, but also those who work in those post offices heard the news first from the media. Worse, a management briefing for staff held the day of the announcement didn’t even mention the closure programme.

The union representing post office staff, the Communications Workers Union (CWU), was not invited to participate in the review, nor has it been permitted to date to see the accounts to check the Post Office’s claim that it is losing £60 million a year.

The Post Office had the cheek to say that the closures were for the benefit of staff: “The Post Office has a 360-year history of public service and today we want to secure that service for the future by learning from past mistakes and moving forward for the benefit of all postmasters.

“We can, and will, restore pride in working for a business with a legacy of service, rather than one of scandal.

“The value postmasters deliver in their communities must be reflected in their pockets, and this Transformation Plan provides a route to adding more than £250million annually to total postmaster remuneration by 2030, subject to government funding.”

The scandal referred to is, of course, the Horizon scandal where Post Office management bullied, harassed and prosecuted post office workers over claims they had stolen money which had in fact disappeared into the faulty computer system. To claim that the closures is somehow to the benefit of postmasters takes an enormous amount of chutzpah.

At the same time, there is a government review of the future of the Post Office. Clearly the announcement by Railton is meant to pre-empt this.

The closures of post offices that have taken place in the part have either meant complete closure, or a post office counter in the corner of a shop. Many former post offices have been left empty, blighting high streets for years. Even when a private company takes over the running of post office business, there is no compulsion for them to continue indefinitely, 

The CWU has called on the government to stop the closures and look at innovative ways to develop the network of post offices. The Post Office, unlike Royal Mail, is still publicly owned. For the government to allow these closures to go ahead would be yet another sign that it is continuing with austerity and privatisation.

Most of those listed for closure are busy ones in town centres that would be a real loss to the community. Petitions against closure have already started in some places, and a campaign could take off in the same way that the one about the threat to close ticket offices at stations did. The CWU has previously campaigned against such closures with mixed success, but the size of this programme should make it easier to have a national, not just a localised, campaign, linking trade union, users and local Councillors.

A few days after the announcement of post office closures, the owners of Royal Mail, International Distribution Services, announced they were considering further job cuts and an increase in the  – already exorbitant – price of stamps, despite having achieved an operating profit this year.

While there are no concrete plans yet for redundancies – though Royal Mail has been losing large numbers of staff in recent years through resignations – the CWU needs to draw up plans for resistance rather than go with the usual ‘no compulsory redundancies’ approach. Postal services around the country are already collapsing due to lack of staff; further cuts would only make things worse.

This only makes more obvious the mistake the CWU leadership is making in dropping the call for the government to bring Royal Mail back into public ownership, instead hoping that any new owner will treat the workforce nicely. Apparently this is because Keir Starmer has turned his back on renationalisation, but the answer to that ought to be building a campaign with public support, rather than self-censorship.

One of the problems this dual attack highlights is how much of a mistake it is to have Royal Mail and the Post office as separate entities. Apparently, Britain is the only country which has done that. Renationalisation could be accompanied by bringing them back together as one public service.

Pete Firmin is a retired postal worker and CWU member.

Image: Uplands Post office, Stroud … on the closure list! (2008). Author: BazzaDaRambler https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uplands_Post_office,_Stroud_…_on_the_closure_list!_%282315011976%29.jpg, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

LGBTQ+ community feels increasingly unsafe in Britain, analysis shows

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Yesterday
LEFT FOOT FORWARD

“Transgender issues have been heavily discussed by politicians, the media and on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in these offences, or more awareness in the police in the identification and recording of these crimes.”

LGBTQ+ individuals are feeling increasingly unsafe in Britain, according to recent research. A survey conducted by the trans-inclusive underwear brand Zoah showed that 72% of transgender and non-binary respondents do not feel safe in the UK due to their gender identity.

The survey, which included 400 transgender men, transgender women, and non-binary people, found that young people and students were particularly vulnerable, with less than half feeling secure in school or college compared to their cisgender peers.

Almost half (49%) of those surveyed reported negative experiences in various aspects of their lives, including employment and access to healthcare.

These findings come amid rising hate crimes against transgender individuals. The Home Office’s 2023 hate crime report noted a significant increase, with 4,732 hate crimes against transgender people recorded in the year ending March 2023, an 11% rise from the previous year. The report suggested that inflammatory comments from politicians and the media may have contributed to this increase. It read:

“Transgender issues have been heavily discussed by politicians, the media and on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in these offences, or more awareness in the police in the identification and recording of these crimes.”

The LGBTQ+ advocacy group Stonewall has criticised political leaders for their inadequate response to hate crimes, arguing that many have perpetuated harmful language that dehumanises LGBTQ+ individuals.

In April, the Cass Review, a report on gender services for children and young people, was published. It highlighted a lack of research on the use of puberty blockers and hormones, noting that children have been let down by inadequate evidence. Led by Dr Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the review was commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement in 2020 to assess NHS services for gender-questioning youth. But numerous nonprofits and activists have raised concerns that the review’s recommendations may further restrict access to trans healthcare.

An open letter signed by hundreds of experts in October expressed a “deep lack of confidence” in the Cass Review, criticising it for failing to include the perspectives of trans individuals. The letter stated that a trustworthy government review should involve members of the affected community and those with extensive experience in the field, rather than dismissing their insights as bias.

An open letter signed by hundreds of experts in October expressed a “deep lack of confidence” in the review, which it said had failed to consider trans people.

Concerns have been heightened by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, whose track record on trans rights includes controversial statements, such as his belief that trans women are not women. He has been accused of catering to anti-trans groups and has repeatedly extended a ban on puberty blockers in England and Wales, with intentions to make this ban permanent.

Opinion

Christians mobilize to pray for all the persecuted

(RNS) — Those facing persecution need Christians to speak up, working across faith and theological lines for those living in danger everywhere.

(Image by Tep Ro/Pixabay/Creative Commons)
Knox Thames
November 22, 2024

(RNS) — This November, many Christian congregations have been pausing to pray for those who share their faith and are persecuted for it around the world. These prayers are needed, as it is undoubtedly dangerous to be a Christian in many countries, especially where Christianity is a minority faith. Open Door’s World Watch List tracks the worst places to follow Christ, most recently naming Somalia, Eritrea and Nigeria among the top 10, along with Iran, Pakistan and India.

But Christians are not alone. Many different faith traditions are also subject to violent oppression somewhere in the world in what might be called a pandemic of persecution.

The Pew Research Center reports that religious restrictions affect almost two-thirds of people on the planet. China commits genocide against Uyghur Muslims while destroying Tibetan Buddhism and crushing independent churches. Iran goes after Baha’is with a vengeance while arresting evangelical Christian leaders. Boko Haram in Nigeria murders Christians, but also fellow Muslims who dare disagree with Boko Haram’s violent theology. The list could go on.

RELATED: State Department criticizes religious persecution: But will it act?

In response, a new movement is working to inspire Christians to pray and advocate for anyone persecuted for their beliefs.

In late October, Christians gathered at Dallas Baptist University to discuss their responsibility to intercede for others, praying for persecuted Christians and their oppressed non-Christian neighbors. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, told in the Gospel of Luke, provided the framework for discussion: A traveler attacked and left for dead by bandits on a lonely road is spotted by first one, then another member of the religious establishment, but both “passed by on the other side.” The hero is a Samaritan, a foreigner and a heretic to Jesus’ listeners, who stopped at a risk to his own security, took him to safety and paid two days’ wages to put him up in an inn.

Elevating a Samaritan to the role of hero was a huge twist for first-century Palestine, where religious and ethnic differences were considered an excuse not to help someone in need. Asking no questions about the victim’s beliefs, party affiliation or favorite sports team, the Samaritan took action. Jesus concluded the parable by saying, “Go and do likewise.”

To explore this call and what it means, the conference at Dallas Baptist brought together Christians committed to leading the charge in helping everyone. Cosponsored by Christians Against All Persecution Network and the university’s Institute for Global Engagement, the conference heard from formerly imprisoned Christians Mariam Ibraheem and Andrew Brunson, among other speakers. Open Doors was represented, as were other evangelical organizations involved in advocating for their faith communities, including Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Stefanus Alliance, 21Wilberforce, the Religious Freedom Institute and the Baptist World Alliance.

But importantly, the conference organizers invited non-Christians to talk about the plight of their community. Activists and survivors from Uyghur Muslim, Yazidi and Baha’i groups spoke about their co-religionists’ suffering in China, Iraq and Iran. After hearing from these speakers, the conference paused to pray that those in danger would receive protection and rescue. Theological debates were set aside out of a concern for human suffering.

RELATED: For Iranian converts claiming religious persecution, European courts require proof of faith

The conference in Dallas was the start of a new beginning to inspire Christ followers to become vocal advocates for our own and the rights of everyone everywhere. It was an important first step, and hopefully more of this kind of consciousness-raising will follow. Those facing persecution need Christians to speak up, working across faith and theological lines for those living in danger everywhere. These modern-day “least of these,” locked in forgotten prisons or attacked for their beliefs, need prayer and advocacy as much as followers of Jesus Christ.


(Knox Thames is a former diplomat who served in the Obama and Trump administrations as a special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Asia and the author of “Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

On women deacons, the Catholic Church has to remember its own history

(RNS) — The church depends on donations from nations whose better off have been educated on the baptismal equality of all persons.

Advocates for women’s ordination hold banners during a protest in Rome just in front of the Vatican, where Pope Francis is holding the Synod of Bishops, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Phyllis Zagano
November 22, 2024


(RNS) — Winston Churchill famously said, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” If the Catholic Church forgets history, it is simply doomed.

Pope Francis recently issued a letter “On the renewal of the study of the history of the Church.” No matter: Francis himself seems to have forgotten the history of women ordained as deacons.

When he spoke with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell in an interview last spring, she asked if young girls would be able to become deacons someday. He answered, “No. If it is deacons with holy orders, no. But women have always had, I would say the function of deaconesses without being deacons, right?”

Wrong.

For more than 1,000 years, women served as deacons (or deaconesses), depending on the language. The only person in Scripture called a deacon is St. Phoebe, who traveled to Rome as an emissary of Saint Paul, carrying his Letter to the Romans.
RELATED: Advocates for women deacons ‘in it for the long run,’ despite Vatican pushback

As the church matured, women deacons were ordained during Masses, just as men deacons were. The ordination liturgies bishops used over the centuries to ordain women to the diaconate meet the standards for sacramental ordination decreed by the 16th-century Council of Trent. These women are named in literary documents and their names are inscribed on tombstones across the lands of early Christianity.

What happened? The church eventually stopped ordaining anyone to the diaconate as a permanent vocation, because the diaconate of men had become a stumbling block to ambitious priests. By the early Middle Ages, deacons and archdeacons managed church funds and charity, and with their administrative expertise often succeeded their bishops. More than 30 popes in the early church were never ordained a priest!

The solution was a requirement that any man ordained a deacon had to be on the path to priesthood. Because women were never priests, women were ineligible for the diaconate.

Participants attend a session of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Many delegates to the recently ended Synod on Synodality, the Vatican summit on the church’s future, made it clear that they believed the diaconate should be opened to women. The best they were offered was a promise that the subject was open for further study. Yet there is a pontifical brick wall ahead. As Francis told O’Donnell, “Women are of great service as women, not as ministers. As ministers in this regard. Within the Holy Orders.”

He seems to have slammed shut the door to recovering the church’s tradition on deacons, simultaneously enabling the international walkout of women and men from Catholicism.
RELATED: If women cannot be deacons, we should stop ordaining men deacons

Yes, the Catholic population is growing in developing countries, but church government and charity are supported by donations from nations where people of wealth and even moderate means have been educated to the baptismal equality of all persons. They are leaving the Church.

What to do?

Francis’ own words must be applied here: “A proper sense of history can help each of us to develop a better sense of proportion and perspective in coming to understand reality as it is and not as we imagine it or would prefer reality to be.

Abuse survivors urge the Vatican to globalize the zero-tolerance policy it approved in the US

ROME (AP) — The U.S. norms, adopted at the height of the abuse scandal there, say a priest will be permanently removed from church ministry based on even a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established under church law.

FILE - Dave West, left, and his brother Larry West, both of Fort Worth, Texas, demonstrate outside the hotel where the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are meeting in Dallas on June 14. 2002. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Nicole Winfield
November 20, 2024

ROME (AP) — Survivors of clergy sexual abuse urged the Vatican on Monday to expand its zero-tolerance policy that it approved for the U.S. Catholic Church in 2002 to the rest of the world, arguing that children everywhere should be protected from predator priests.

The U.S. norms, adopted at the height of the abuse scandal there, say a priest will be permanently removed from church ministry based on even a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established under church law.

That “one strike and you’re out” policy in the U.S. has long stood out as the toughest in the church. It is held up by some as the gold standard, by others as excessive and by still others as imperfect but better than most. It was adopted by U.S. bishops as they scrambled to try to regain credibility following the revelations of abuse and cover-up in Boston documented by the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series.

Since then, the church abuse scandal has erupted globally, and survivors from around the world said Monday there’s no reason why the U.S. norms couldn’t and shouldn’t be applied universally. They called for changes in the church’s in-house canon law and reasoned they could be approved since the Holy See already approved the norms for the U.S. church.

“Despite Pope Francis’ repeated calls for zero tolerance on abuse, his words have yet to lead to any real action,” said Gemma Hickey, a transgender survivor of abuse and the president of the global survivor network Ending Clergy Abuse.

The proposal launched at a press conference was hammered out during an unusual meeting in June in Rome between survivors and some of the Catholic hierarchy’s top priestly experts on preventing abuse. It was described by participants at the time as a “historic collaboration” between two groups that often talk past one another, given victims’ deep distrust of the Catholic hierarchy.

The priestly participants in that meeting included the Rev. Hans Zollner, who heads the church’s main academic think tank on safeguarding; the No. 2 at the Vatican’s child protection advisory board, Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera; and the Gregorian University’s canon law dean, the Rev. Ulrich Rhode as well as diplomats from the U.S., Australian and other embassies.

However, there was apparently no one from the Vatican legal office, secretariat of state or the discipline section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which processes all abuse cases worldwide and largely sets policy on applying the church’s canon law — albeit in secret since its cases are never published.

As a result, it was unclear what would become of the proposed policy changes, given the U.S. norms only came about because U.S. bishops pushed the Vatican to approve them, driven by their outraged flocks and insurance companies.

Nicholas Cafardi, a U.S. canon lawyer who was an original member of the U.S. National Review Board that provided input to the 2002 U.S. norms, said globalizing that policy into universal church law “would be one of the logical next steps” for Francis to take to continue the fight against abuse.

But Cafardi, author of “Before Dallas,” about the lead-up to the 2002 Dallas bishops’ meeting that approved the norms, said that some bishops today bristle at how the policy limits their authority and freedom. And in a telephone interview, he noted that even in the U.S., the norms are only still in place because the U.S. bishops keep formally asking to keep them, which he acknowledged was a “weakness” in the system.

“It seems to me that a good protection would be ‘Let’s just make it universal law,’” said Cafardi. “Once you have that law, you don’t have to worry about the bishops asking for it in country after country. It’s just the law.”

However, the proposal faces an uphill battle since the Vatican in recent years has repeatedly insisted on “proportionality” in its sentences for abuse, refusing to apply a one-size-fits-all approach and taking into account cultural differences in countries where abuse isn’t as openly discussed as it is in the West.

That has resulted in seemingly light punishments for even confirmed cases of abuse which, in the U.S., would have resulted in a priest being permanently removed from ministry.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

For the sake of disabled students, don't destroy the US Department of Education

(RNS) — Making America great must include defending vulnerable families with special needs.

(Photo by RDNE Stock Project/Pexels/Creative Commons)

Charles C. Camosy
November 20, 2024

This month’s column was co-authored with Sherif Moussa, who writes with expertise as a civil rights attorney and a professor of law and lecturer in philosophy at City University of New York Baruch College.

(RNS) — Legitimate, wide-ranging and foundational concerns regarding the U.S. Department of Education have been around for a long time. Calls to abolish it go back to 1980, when it was barely a year old and members of the incoming Ronald Reagan administration and the GOP quite seriously considered eliminating it. This year, President-elect Donald Trump and many in his MAGA circles have made eliminating the DOE a central plank of their campaign.

Trump and his backers obviously believe they now have a mandate to make these kinds of dramatic moves. We argue that cooler heads should prevail, especially for Catholics concerned about vulnerable disabled children who bear the face of Christ. Eliminating the DOE would have a deep and wide-ranging impact on this population. All Catholics, we believe, should push for reform of the DOE, not its destruction.

Pope Francis has emphasized the importance of “every Christian community [being] open to the presence of our brothers and sisters with disabilities.” The roots of this idea go back nearly a millennium, as the disability advocate Pamela Christensen has observed. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher and doctor of the church, “believed that a person’s disability … did not affect the imago Dei in that person nor arrest the work of God in them.”

Today, the U.S. bishops insist that the same cry Christ heard from the disabled people in ancient Judea and Samaria calls Catholics to “embrace our responsibility to our own disabled brothers and sisters in the United States.”

American Catholics and other Christians have helped to make sure our duty to the disabled is reflected in our public education system, primarily through educational law and the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The latter requires public schools to provide disabled children with a free appropriate public education. Previously known as the Education for Handicapped Children Act, the IDEA seeks to protect the rights of disabled children, who had long been “warehoused” or segregated from mainstream schools in a dark reflection of the abhorrent “separate but equal” doctrine overruled in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

Since Jimmy Carter separated the department from its former home in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1979, the DOE has played an important role in enforcing and safeguarding the civil rights of disabled students such as those guaranteed under the IDEA. While it doesn’t appear that the incoming Trump administration intends to repeal the IDEA, the successful abolition of the DOE may render the IDEA toothless.

Some Trump aides have stated their desire to hand some of the responsibilities of the department itself back to the states, where, if the dark past of education for children with disabilities is any guide, they would disappear, or at least put basic civil rights for disabled children at serious risk.

One might think that progressive cities such as New York would continue to lead on this front, but there is reason to think that wouldn’t be the case even there. In late 2021, New York transferred the adjudication of impartial hearings to OATH, the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, making the city effectively both the judge and the defendant at impartial hearings in which parents of disabled children seek funding for tuition and services. Before resigning last month, the city’s top official chancellor expressed interest in cutting funding for private schools for students with disabilities.

The system under the federal DOE is not perfect. Many families of disabled children are not served well by the current arrangement, which sometimes brings families to the breaking point before they can recover reimbursement. The Trump administration would be right to focus on significant reform, as long as its reform keeps the welfare of children — and especially marginalized disabled children — front and center.

With two months to go before it becomes a reality, the Trump administration may well fail to follow through on its threat to scrap the DOE, but its survival depends on how aggressive the just-named co-commissioner of the new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, who seems to be agitating for it, is allowed to be.

But there are others in the incoming administration — such as Vice President-elect JD Vance, who has worked to help families with disabled children — who may see that making America great must include defending vulnerable families with special needs. Here’s hoping that they prevail.

Q&A: 'Wicked' author Gregory Maguire on souls, saints and religion in Oz

(RNS) — In the 1995 novel that inspired the musical and film, the Wicked Witch of the West is a green-skinned child of a minister exploited for his missionary endeavors.

“Wicked” and author Gregory Maguire. (Courtesy images)
Kathryn Post
November 19, 2024


(RNS) — Before “Wicked” was a blockbuster film and a hit Broadway musical, it was a 1995 novel rife with dark twists and a whole lot of religion.

Gregory Maguire’s origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West introduces readers to Elphaba, the green-skinned child of a minister who exploits her for his missionary endeavors. Set in the land of Oz, introduced in L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic children’s series and brought to life in MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz,” Maguire’s over-500-page-long book fleshes out the religious, political and personal clashes that shape the familiar characters and set the stage for Dorothy’s arrival.

Named after a saint, Elphaba is an atheist who believes she has no soul, yet spends several years living in a convent and longing for forgiveness. Though the musical removes the novel’s more explicit religious references, the questions at the heart of the story — What differentiates good from evil? Where does wickedness come from? — are central in all its adaptations.

Ahead of the film’s debut in theaters on Nov. 22, RNS spoke to “Wicked” author Gregory Maguire about his religious upbringing, Elphaba’s search for a soul and why nuns, saints and witches might not be all that different. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Were you raised in a religious context, and did that shape your approach to religion in “Wicked”?

I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition in an Irish Catholic neighborhood, and I continue to define myself as a practicing Roman Catholic, though I have to practice pretty hard at it. But religion was very important to me as a young person. I came close to considering going into seminary in my early 20s, and I took the fact of religion in people’s lives, or its absence, as a very serious part of how individuals and cultures identify themselves. When I wrote about Oz, I wanted it to be more like our world, which meant I had to import religion there. Religion is one of the few things that is absent in any portrait of Oz at all, with the exception of the very general founding myth of the fairy queen Lurline.
What are the faith systems you’ve imported into Oz?

Lurlinism is a kind of paganism, a kind of foundational myth. It is ancient, sentimental, and in the world of my story, it is the peasants who adhere most strongly to it. Unionism is that more established faith found more in cities. It has a kind of allegiance with Christianity in that it has churches, basilicas and bishops, but there is no savior. The God is unnamed, influential and mysterious. In this way, it takes some tropes from faith traditions that favor a more amorphous spirit head. That is both a kind of Protestant attitude — the crashing of statues and smashing of windows, etc. — but it also has a bit in common with Islam, which disallows the depiction of Allah, except through the writing of Allah’s name. So Unionism is an odd amalgam of that instinct in certain religions to try to keep the image of God open and therefore more accessible. Interestingly enough, of course, it is also less accessible if you can’t hang an image on it.

Pleasure Faithism is, in my mind, a kind of Carnival picture of God. It puts a higher premium on spectacle. It involves the Greek idea of theater, coming together for a kind of epiphany and catharsis. And finally, there’s Tiktokism, which comes closest to a certain way that we live now in the West. A Tiktokist is the kind of person who won’t go into a church and turn off their phone. Their allegiance is to the stimulation, to the connection and to the appliance. While we don’t have cellphones in my Oz, there is a kind of reverence for that aspect of that moment in the Industrial Revolution which Oz seems to be going through. Tiktokism is a more dangerous shifting of the devotional impulse away from the question of creation and toward the questions of utility.
How might Elphaba’s early exposure to Unionism have shaped her worldview?


“Elphie” by Gregory Maguire. (Courtesy image)

I go into this with a little more depth in my novel coming out in about four months, “Elphie.” I go back to those years in Elphaba’s life that run between the age of about 2 and about 16. In this book, Elphaba is seen being courted by her father to round up possible communicants in his missionary work, to be the lure. And one of the ways she does that is by singing. Her ability to sing was a crucial part of my humanizing her. A person with a voice has beauty, and her father exploited it. She allowed herself to be exploited because she wanted his love. But religion, if it doesn’t make her into a deeply moral person, at least brings her into contact with people who are not like her, and that is what community is for. It’s to make us empathize with people who are not us.

How and why does Elphaba grapple with the idea of a soul?

To become an atheist, I think, you have to think about God. It’s not a default position. Raised in a religious environment, Elphaba has to grapple with what she believes, and if the way that she’s made is evidence of her having been rejected by a creator, or embraced by a creator. I think all young people do that, especially as they come to understand their own frailties, and the fact that they can never be as good as their religious training teaches they should be. In that juxtaposition of the ideal and the actual, we find the first exposure to possible apostasy, and have to grapple with it. And that’s what she does. She has not been treated with many instances of love in her childhood, and so it’s hard for her to project a universal love as a Godhead might be said to have for her. Nonetheless, she is smart enough that she can think, well, maybe the soul exists, even if I haven’t experienced it in my own life and times.

In the characters of Elphaba, Glinda and Nessarose, we see the interplay between sainthood and witchcraft. How might the novel’s approach to religion complicate otherwise rigid definitions of good and evil?

If you isolate the characteristics many cultures identify with the witch and the wise woman, often they were characteristics that are identical. Wisdom about the application of herbs, to the pre-rationalist mind, could be magic or medicine. I’m taking my lead from L. Frank Baum, who created four witches in Oz, two that were good and two who were bad. His mother-in-law, the feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage, wrote scathingly about how women were opposed by Christianity, and how they were not given the proper valuation. Now, L. Frank Baum didn’t talk about Christianity in any of his books, but the fact the power of women could be both feared and appreciated in the same book, I think, expressed a growing sentiment that brought us into the 20th century, toward the suffragette movement.

I was taught up until the end of 12th grade by Catholic nuns. I was pre-Vatican II, and my first teachers for the first four years, you might as well call them witches. We were tiny. They were tall, and had long black skirts that went to the floor, black shoes and black veils and white wimples and white bibs. They were simultaneously good and all-powerful, and were self-imposed paupers living in community. They exerted on children the highest moral authority. I was raised by strong women, by nuns and librarians and my stepmother. I have great respect for those women.

Can you talk about some of the more subtle ways your original novel’s spiritual themes are integrated into the musical?

I don’t think they are, with a single exception. Religion teaches us to be collaborative and communal (by churchgoing and respecting others who may not be like us), but also to be independent, and in possession of our own moral guidance system. We’re meant to own the behavior of our own souls, and we’re meant to belong to a community and make it better. In “Wicked” the musical, that same crisis between the impulse to be a citizen and care about society, and the impulse to be an individual and not anesthetize yourself away from your own individuality because it offends society, does exist. I wouldn’t say that is only a religious impulse, but it’s one of the things that religion does.

One of the things about “Wicked” you see in my book, that you don’t see in L. Frank Baum, in MGM, or in the wonderful musical and movie, is that the culture is really made up of very different populations. In my books, there are several languages spoken in Oz, a number of cultures. In that setting, a character who has no place in the world, Elphaba, might recognize we all feel somewhat illegitimate in the breadth of human experience, and we all must get on with it anyway. That’s not exactly a religious instinct, and Elphaba is no Jesus figure, but I do think she is like all of us who ask ourselves, how can I be a Samaritan? How can I lean toward the humanity of somebody who looks nothing like me, doesn’t speak like me, doesn’t behave like me, doesn’t pray like me, and maybe wishes even my demise and destruction? What does my belief system require me to do? And where can I find the courage to do it?

'Sanctuary People' follows faith-based organizing in the first Trump term

In 'Sanctuary People,' Pérez takes a hopeful look at how the sanctuary movement has broadened to include not only offering shelter to migrants, but help for victims of hurricanes and police violence.

“Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities" and author Gina Pérez. (Courtesy images)

Aleja Hertzler-McCain
November 22, 2024

(RNS) — Days before the recent U.S. election, Gina Pérez, author of the new book, “Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities,” said many people in the sanctuary movement, which shelters migrants and refugees, “can’t even bring themselves to think about” the implications of now-President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises of mass deportations.

But Pérez, a cultural anthropologist and professor of comparative American studies at Oberlin College, said the community showed resilience in the first Trump term — four years she had spent participating in and observing faith-based communities in Ohio, which had some of the highest numbers of immigrants seeking sanctuary in churches to avoid deportation.

“From its inception, sanctuary’s appeals to divine power and the authority of God have been a powerful way to challenge the secular and punitive power of the state,” Pérez, a Roman Catholic, writes. In conversations before the election, Pérez made clear that many migrants faced grim prospects with Kamala Harris.

In “Sanctuary People,” Pérez takes a hopeful look at a broader understanding of the sanctuary movement that provides not only shelter to those at risk of deportation, but hospitality to Puerto Ricans in the wake of Hurricane Maria and solidarity with those impacted by police violence.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

How do you define sanctuary?

In the 1980s, faith-based organizing really focused on Central American — namely Salvadoran and Guatemalan — migrants and people seeking refuge in the United States or Canada. They were leaving the U.S.-fueled violence in Central America and coming through U.S. faith communities. That was my first introduction to sanctuary, when I was a student at the University of Notre Dame, thinking about churches as sacred spaces offering sanctuary.

The New Sanctuary Movement begins around 2007, under the Obama administration, when people who had lived undocumented for a very long time were evading and trying to challenge deportation to remain with their families. There was a famous case in Chicago of a woman, Elvira Arellano, who took sanctuary in a church for more than a year.

Following Trump’s (first) election, I became interested in how, suddenly, people were talking about sanctuary in a variety of ways. Trump immediately wanted to target sanctuary cities, but a bunch of faith communities declared themselves sanctuary churches. At Oberlin, as at more than 200 colleges and universities, students, faculty, staff and administrators organized to get their campuses designated as sanctuary campuses. I became interested in people who were using the term sanctuary more broadly.

This idea of accompaniment, of a preferential option for the poor, of walking with people through struggles and through the ways that they have to face different kinds of injustice, was something that very much informed both my faith, but also the kind of politics that I was trying to be involved with. I see accompaniment as being one sanctuary practice.

RELATED: She spent three years in church sanctuary. A new documentary tells her story.

You write about the community’s devastation in 2018 after Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 114 workers at an Ohio garden center and compare this to the response to Puerto Rican arrivals after Hurricane Maria. How are those two responses intertwined?

After the raid, people in Ohio were starting to take sanctuary in houses of worship, and there was debate within the Diocese of Cleveland about whether its churches would (offer) sanctuary, as Presbyterians and Mennonites and Lutherans (were). One of the things that came out of those discussions was a recognition that sanctuary had become this politicized word.

One of the organizations working with churches made this explicit connection — that everyone who was here for Puerto Rican migrants when they arrived in 2017 after Maria were going to be here in the same way. The same networks of support would help these families devastated by this ICE raid. They were using that language of sanctuary to talk about Puerto Rican migrants needing a place to feel safe and welcome and using that same language to talk about people being split apart from their families.

People were (also) organizing and using the language of safety and sanctuary to talk about providing support for families, for women of color and Black women who lose their children to police violence.

Celestino Rivera, the late police chief of the city of Lorain, Ohio, is a key figure in the book. How did he reconcile the tension between his official role and his support for sanctuary?

Celestino was called to a meeting by a local priest, Father Bill Thaden. Some of Lorain’s immigrant rights association wanted to meet with him. Celestino asked, “What can I do, Father? How do I prepare?” Thaden said, “No, they want you to listen.” They brought him in to hear what the policing practices actually looked like on the ground. It opened his eyes to the ways that moving car violations, for example, were setting in motion immigrant detention of people and separating of families.

He was able to develop policies that wouldn’t necessarily be formally considered sanctuary policies, but that emphasized the job was to enforce city laws, not necessarily federal immigration laws.

RELATED: Faith groups resolve to protect migrants, refugees after Trump win

Did organizers ever talk about rising religious disaffiliation and what that means for the future of sanctuary?

There is some concern, both in academic circles as well as some of the organizing circles, about the secularization of sanctuary. I don’t necessarily think that means that that’s cause for concern. There are plenty of people who still see progressive, social justice faith-based action as important. People are willing to work with faith communities, even if they don’t share those religious theological epistemological premises.

I work at a secular institution with students who weren’t raised in any faith tradition or have a kind of skepticism around them or have bad feelings because of bad experiences. And the public discourse around religion has been so consumed by the religious right and white Christian nationalism that sometimes the history of these progressive faith-based organizing and social movements gets lost.

But one of my jobs as a professor is to expose students to (faith traditions’ social justice) histories, (and) that makes it possible for people to reorient themselves to faith communities.

What’s your source of hope?

There’s a lot of sources of hope for me. Part of it is working with young people who want to make the world a better place, who see a lot of injustice around them, who don’t want to embrace the status quo, who really believe we can create a different world and create a different order.

I was inspired by recognizing that people have been doing this work for decades, and that through community and through relationship with each other and with God, that has sustained them, and that’s what grounds the work that they do even in bleak times.

How are faith-based communities preparing now for Trump’s second term?

What seems to be emerging is a renewed focus and attention to the power of churches, sacred spaces and sanctuary specifically as a way to support immigrants as they face renewed threats of deportation.

This includes attention to ecumenical organizing across differences of class, education, language, citizenship and race or ethnicity. Lessons learned from 2016 to 2020 are informing strategies among faith-based groups, including meeting with immigrant communities to share information about legal resources, hear concerns, affirming sanctuary city ordinances and policies, conversations with local elected leaders and law enforcement.

So while the days following this election definitely felt different than before, a couple of weeks in it is clear that people are centering faith-based organizing in ways that show continuities from the past. Part of what my book documents is that sanctuary people continually draw on histories of resistance and faith to face and respond to the present.

Young, observant Jews find a place to protest Israel in the Halachic Left

(RNS) — The group, with five chapters across the U.S., believes observant Jews have a particular obligation to oppose what they see as an unjust war — and are uniquely positioned to do so.

People organized by Halachic Left demonstrate against the Israel-Hamas war outside the 96th Street subway station on Tisha B’av, Aug. 13, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Yona Roberts Golding)
Yona Roberts Golding
November 20, 2024

(RNS) — In the first months of the Israel-Hamas war, some of the loudest critics and the largest pro-Palestinian rallies originated with progressive Jewish-led groups such as IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace. Both welcome non-Jews, and their Jewish members span from the highly observant to those who define their Judaism apart from religious practice.

IfNotNow has not made a declaration on Zionism, but JVP is explicitly anti-Zionist. Three weeks after Hamas murdered nearly 1,200 civilians and soldiers in its attack on southern Israel and took some 200 hostages, a protest organized by JVP bottled up commuters at Grand Central Station in New York as thousands chanted, “Let Gaza Live!”

Eliana Padwa, a 25-year-old history teacher from the Bronx, didn’t participate in any of JVP’s early protests. Having grown up an adherent of modern Orthodoxy, a sect of no more than half a million believers, or about 5% of American Jews, Padwa was stricken by Hamas’ attack. She vividly remembers the grief that hung in the air in her synagogue on Simchat Torah, the usually joyful holiday that fell on Oct. 7 last year, as she sat with her parents and information trickled in about the scale of the destruction.

In the weeks and months that followed, Padwa became increasingly disturbed by the rising death toll in Gaza, certain the war was making the prospect of peace and security in the region more remote. Even before the war, Padwa questioned Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, a perspective she says is rare among modern Orthodox Jews.

Eliana Padwa demonstrates with other Halachic Left members in New York City

(Image via Instagram/jfrejnyc)

Still, she said, “it’s been a big radicalizing moment for me.”

Over the past year, Padwa said, she noticed more young, observant Jews expressing discomfort with the broader Jewish community’s support for war. In January, Padwa set out to create a place where Jews like her can express their feelings and protest the war, calling her movement the Halachic Left.

The organization now has chapters in five U.S. cities. Many of its members have spent time in Israel or have friends and family who live there. Some have served in the Israel Defense Forces. While demanding an end to the current wars in Lebanon and Gaza, the group does not think of itself as a breakaway religious community of anti-Zionists, said Padwa. “We’re putting forth a way forward that’s not endless destruction and violence. We want that message to be heard within the religious community.”

The Halachic Left held one of its first public actions on Tisha B’av, a Jewish fast day mourning the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem and other calamities throughout Jewish history. This year it fell on a sunny Tuesday in August. Padwa and more than a dozen other Halachic Left demonstrators sat on the sidewalk outside New York’s bustling 96th Street subway station in quiet contemplation.

“This is a holiday about having your entire society crumble before your eyes,” Padwa said at the time. “For me, there’s no way to mourn this year outside of the context of what’s currently happening in Gaza.”


They chose the subway stop, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, for the surrounding neighborhood’s high density of modern Orthodox Jews, sometimes called centrist Orthodox Jews, who have been some of the most outspoken supporters of Israel in the United States.

Modern Orthodoxy, which traces its roots to 19th-century Germany, when Jewish communities were grappling with how to engage with values popularized by the Enlightenment, seeks to integrate parts of secular culture with strict religious observance, particularly in the realm of education, combining contemporary mathematics, science and literature with study of Torah.

One of the movement’s early defining features was its relationship with the Zionist movement. Unlike other types of Jewish Orthodoxy, which were largely hostile to secular statehood, the movement’s embrace of modernism made room for a new position that saw the return of Jews to their ancient homeland as a fulfillment of God’s biblical promise to Abraham.

While most early Zionists were not religious, modern Orthodoxy’s framework has since gained political momentum in Israel. Today it fuels a segment of Israeli society known as the Religious Zionism, which at its most extreme advocates full annexation of the occupied West Bank.

People organized by Halachic Left demonstrate against the Israel-Hamas war outside the 96th Street subway station on Tisha B’av, Aug. 13, 2024, in New York City.

 (Photo by Gili Getz)

The idea of a religious connection to the land also underpins the education that many members of the Halachic Left received early in their lives. “One of the strongest messages of my education was that you’re supposed to love Israel, and anyone who tells you something bad about it is lying and trying to manipulate you,” Padwa said.

After spending a post-collegiate year in Israel, she returned home in 2022 and rejoined her modern Orthodox synagogue. “Judaism is the air I breathe, the water in which I swim,” Padwa said, but politically she felt at odds with what she heard.

Then, the violence of Oct. 7 and the international backlash against Israel’s ensuing war caused many in Padwa’s community to redouble their support for Israel, even as the civilian death toll climbed in Gaza. Programming at her synagogue promoted Israel’s cause, and sermons took on a distinctly nationalist tone.

But Padwa also began hearing “clandestine conversations” among her peers, she said, “like, ‘We’re not sure about this. We’re questioning this.'” She organized an event in a basement cafe on the Upper West Side where fellow religious Jews could speak openly about what it meant to oppose the war.

“I expected to get 10 or 15 people,” Padwa said. “Instead, 50 people signed up.” She scheduled a follow-up conversation over Zoom so people outside New York could participate.

Since the initial demonstration in August, the Halachic Left has kept up a steady schedule of events, from a bake sale to raise funds for families in Gaza to learning sessions such as a panel discussion held in Chicago in October about moving from grief to repair within the Jewish tradition. The Halachic Left often collaborates with other groups, including IfNotNow, believing that the more people who know about the organization, the greater influence it can have.

Noam Weinreich, a 30-year-old modern Orthodox Jew in Chicago, attended Padwa’s initial virtual event after hearing about it through what he called a “whisper network” of religious Jews with anti-occupation views. At that meeting, he said, he felt profound relief.

“Finally, I’m talking to other people who share the same lingo, had the same upbringing, but also share these very taboo views — the desire to even talk about Palestinians,” Weinreich said. He helped write a guide on how to broach difficult conversations about Israel and Palestine at synagogue that was published on the group’s website in late August.

Weinrich believes that for many American Jews born after 1993, when the failed peace agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel known as the Oslo Accords was originally signed, “the story where Israel is the one who seeks peace and the Palestinians are the ones who are refusing has become a lot less compelling.”

He asked, “In the years since, what steps has Israel taken towards giving Palestinians the basic rights that every human is entitled to?”

Many of those who have joined the Halachic Left believe observant Jews have a particular obligation to oppose what they see as an unjust war — and are uniquely positioned to do so. After all, Jewish observance, from prayer in a minyan to finding kosher food, can only be done as part of a broader community. Halachic Left is trying to broaden its own reach by appealing to that sense of commonality.

“Our goal is to actively change the conversation and ultimately to put pressure on those in our community who hold power to stop funding Israel’s actions,” Padwa said. “If our communities can start holding Israel accountable, I think we will see material change.”

For avid readers of Yiddish news, print is still king

(RNS) — Technological advances as well as changing social attitudes have sparked a cultural renaissance among Hasidic Jewish communities, for whom Yiddish is the native tongue.

(Photo by Jen Theodore/Unsplash/Creative Commons)
David I. Klein
November 22, 2024

(RNS) — As many local media outlets around the world are struggling, the Yiddish press is experiencing a rebirth, surprising many who not long ago pronounced the Jewish language as doomed after millions of its core speakers died in the Holocaust.

“Since 2000, over 30 Yiddish print media have been founded, almost exclusively in the Orthodox Jewish milieu of New York and the surrounding area,” said Bjorn Akstinat, a German media researcher who recently compiled a directory of Yiddish media outlets.

Sparked by technological advances as well as changing social attitudes, the boom has led to a parallel cultural renaissance among Haredi and Hasidic Jewish communities (sometimes called ultra-Orthodox), for whom Yiddish is the native tongue

An outgrowth of old High German, heavily influenced by Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic languages, and traditionally written in the Hebrew alphabet, Yiddish was the primary language of Ashkenazi Jews living in central and Eastern Europe for nearly 1,000 years. At the turn of the 20th century, more than 10 million people spoke Yiddish, encouraged by hundreds of newspapers on at least three continents, with a wide range of religious and political bents.

America’s once largest Yiddish-language newspaper, “Forverts” (The Forward), was founded in 1897 to bring immigrant Eastern European Jews the news of the world — and their new world — in their native tongue. By the eve of World War I, it had been joined by more than 150 other periodicals in New York alone, at least 20 of them dailies, rivaling the output in Warsaw, Krakow, Vilnius, Minsk and other cities with large Jewish populations.

One might write for a religious audience, one from the perspective of the local Communist Party, one for far-left Zionists and yet another for far-right Zionists, and so on.

In Europe, that world was shattered by the Holocaust, and for its survivors, many residents of the U.S., Israel and elsewhere, assimilation meant speaking English or another local tongue. In Israel, Hebraicizion encouraged Jewish immigrants to leave their native languages on the boats they came on and adopt modern Hebrew. For most, Yiddish quickly became a thing of memory.

According to Rukhl Schaechter, Yiddish editor of The Forward, by the 1990s, the last Yiddish outlets were mostly publishing feel-good articles for elderly Eastern European immigrants. As the new millennium dawned, they seemed to be on borrowed time.

Except they weren’t.

Today, in New York’s Boro Park and Williamsburg neighborhoods, or in upstate New York towns such as New Square and Palm Tree, newsstands are filled with Yiddish media of every shape and format.

While Yiddish has indeed declined among the world’s Ashkenazi Jews, the Haredi Jews arrived after the Holocaust as refugees, not as immigrants wanting to become Americans. Fighting assimilation, they have clung to Yiddish as their everyday language. “People came here from Eastern Europe and they resettled together with other people who were like minded, and they kept speaking their language,” said Meyer Labin, a Hasidic journalist.

The birth rate among Haredi couples, at six to seven children, according to a 2023 study, far outpaces the rate of other Jewish groups or just about any other demographic in the United States, boosting a community of a few thousand in the 1950s to hundreds of thousands today.

Clinging to Yiddish certainly preserves a culture but it also insulates a population from outside influences, something that has its costs alongside its benefits. In 2022, a New York Times report argued that Haredi yeshivas in metro New York were failing to educate their students in English, leaving them unprepared for life outside their enclaves.


A variety of past Moment Magazine weekly issues. (Images courtesy Moment Magazine)

Even if Yiddish has bounced back as a vital language, that’s no guarantee of a thriving media scene. (If so, the world’s adoption of English might have stopped the evaporation of newspapers by the thousands since 2000.) Since that year, the circulation of English-language print media has been cut in half, according to a Pew study.

But other facets of Haredi life — including its self-induced cultural isolation — have made print a necessity. “With Orthodox communities, we don’t do digital, up to a certain extent,” said Yoel Krausz, a Satmar Hasid who in 2014 co-founded Moment Magazine, the largest Yiddish weekly magazine in the U.S. “Especially with our youth, our youth don’t have any web and of course no television.”

A little more than a decade ago, Haredi leaders drew as many as 40,000 members of various traditions to New York’s Citi Field to rally against the encroachment of the internet. Opposition has softened since, especially among businessmen, but many Hasidim still don’t use the internet at home and largely forbid it for their children.


“Our youth is growing up only with print publications for their learning and for their education and for entertainment,” said Krausz, and advertisers can only dependably reach the 700,000 or so American Hasidic Jews in print. Even those who do use the internet are invariably offline on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, when Orthodox Jews refrain from using electricity.

“S’iz farbunden alle tzuzamen” — it’s all tied together, said Krausz in Yiddish. “It’s a domino effect. Because our readers are only reading in print, they will buy the magazine, they will pay for the magazine, pay for subscription for a print magazine, and then the advertisers will appreciate it as a place to advertise.”

Krausz’s Moment, with a circulation of 25,000, estimates it reaches 150,000 readers weekly, given the size of Haredi households, the overwhelming majority of which are in and around New York. It also finds its way to other Hasidic enclaves around the world, such as in London, Antwerp and parts of Israel. Moment prides itself on its independence, Krausz said, and is not affiliated with any one Hasidic sect.

“Journalism in the Haredi world started, actually, as something somewhat revolutionary in its inception,” said Labin. It sounded like a contradiction, “that the Haredi world would produce newspapers on its own, because newspapers were seen as something foreign, and something that is too worldly,” said Labin.

Past Der Yid newspaper issues. (Image courtesy Der Yid)

Der Yid, founded in 1953, delivered Yiddish speakers the news they might need for business but with little cultural or community coverage. “One of the main aspects of Haredi ideology is that the only culture we have is our religion, Judaism,” Labin explained.

“In Orthodox Judaism, you know, we listen to our rebbes,” Krausz said, referring to the grand rabbis who lead many Hasidic sects. “They have the last (word) on what to do, how to do it and how to go about things.”

Media might distract from direct Torah and Talmudic study, the ideal pursuit for Hasidic men.

“But you know many people need their reading. I can tell you from personal experience it recharges me and allows me to focus on my work,” Krausz said, lamenting that when he was a child there were far fewer options in his own language to satisfy him.

Slowly however, the rebbes’ views began to change. They feared that if they did not provide their own options, their youth would find their media elsewhere. Now, in Hasidic areas, one can find magazines affiliated with different Hasidic sects, editions targeted at children and on special topics such as mental health or parenting.

“We started seeing a proliferation of specialized niche content,” Labin said. “It’s a very vibrant landscape of media.”

Technology has changed things as well; while designing the layout for a magazine was once a laborious process requiring special equipment, nowadays it can be done quickly by anyone with a laptop.

Krausz noted that while much of Moment’s content is journalistic, covering the goings-on of Hasidic communities, it doesn’t report on crime and generally eschews topics that cast a negative light on the community. All of their content is approved by a rabbinic board.

A parallel landscape of grassroots media by and for Haredi women has also seen an explosion in recent years, countering Haredi media that has been blasted for its practice of removing photos of women or doctoring photos to remove the women.

The explosion of Yiddish media interest has also impacted the last remnants of Yiddish publications outside of it. The Forward long since shifted the vast majority of its content to English but still dedicates part of its website to publishing in Yiddish, and even for a time published a special section targeting Haredi readers.

Though the Forward has retired the special section due to changes to the website, said Schaechter, its Yiddish-language editor, “I’m very happy to see how prolific the Haredi and Hasidic world has become.

Similar to the advances in publishing tech, advances in videography and recording technology — as well as a new-found forum to share content in — has resulted in a boom in the Hasidic music scene, with it sometimes seeming like artists are dropping new Yiddish albums or singles weekly.

“You know, Yiddish used to be something that was just a way of communicating. But (in the Hasidic world) it had never become this kind of thing like now, where there is this need to create in Yiddish,” she said.

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