For Some, Occupy Movement is a Test of Faith

Protesters outside 26 Federal Plaza

Protesters outside 26 Federal Plaza, where religious activists stage a weekly prayer demonstration against immigration policies. (Photo: Adi Talwar/City Limits)

By Arturo Conde for City Limits.

Financial District — Thirty-two days after they had been evicted from their Zuccotti Park encampment in Lower Manhattan, approximately 1,000 Occupy Wall Street activists rallied together to take over another public space for their movement. They hoped to occupy Juan Pablo Duarte Square and the adjoining lot at the juncture of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue, which is owned by Trinity Episcopal Church. Protesters were soon detained by police after trespassing onto the fenced-in section next to the park. Trinity clergy quickly labeled the movement’s action excessive. “In a country where all people can vote, and Trinity’s door to dialogue is open, it is not necessary to forcibly break into property,” the church said in a statement.

The would-be occupiers disagreed.

“If you have a church, and you build a moat around it so that the community cannot penetrate it,” Juan Carlos Ruiz explained later, “it becomes a medieval castle that looks at the outside world as the enemy. Many church leaders build their walls high enough to isolate their congregation from the outside world.”

Ruiz knows a few things about churches. He is a non-active Catholic priest who now assists a Lutheran parish as a spiritual leader in Sunset Park. And he is part of a growing group of religious activists within the larger Occupy movement.

If the popular image of an Occupy Wall Street believer is of a secular, native-born, white activist, Ruiz challenges the stereotype. But he and other religious leaders who’ve embraced OWS face their own challenge: getting their flocks to see the connection between faith and action.

A conversion on the road

While the Occupy movement is an important influence for interfaith activists, much of Ruiz’s political action is inspired by Liberation theology, which views Jesus as a model for social justice, and uses his teachings to protest unjust economic, political, and social conditions.

“It is the responsibility of religious people to make sure that the spirit of Jesus lives as a social movement within the church,” said Ruiz. “There is an assumption that disconnects religious figures from political activism that is based on the idea that Jesus was not a political person. But in fact, if you examine why he was killed, every reason was political.”

Growing up in Mexico, Ruiz’s parents were progressive activists in a Catholic movement, and encouraged him to commit to social justice through the Church. Ruiz entered a seminar at the age of 13, where he studied the life and work of progressive priests like Fr. Miguel Hidalgo—who led a peasant revolt in 1810 against Spanish colonialists under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe—and the Spanish Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos, who was one of the first Catholic leaders to publicly denounce the injustices of Spanish colonialism. “Tell me, by what right or by what interpretation of justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude?” Montesinos asked a packed congregation of Spanish elite on the island of Hispaniola (modern day Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1511. “By what authority have you waged such detestable wars against people who were once living so quietly and peacefully in their own land?”

Ruiz became disillusioned by the dichotomy between faith and action that he encountered in many classmates at his seminary in Chicago, and then later with colleagues in the priesthood. This led him to embrace other churches, like the Lutheran parish he assists in, where he has found more flexibility to reconnect with God through his social activism.

Read the rest of the article at City Limits.

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