The Steady Work of Moral Resistance

Authoritarians want a show down, but moral movements win the long game

Millions of Americans were heartened on June 14^th - No Kings Day - to meet our neighbors on the street in an historic demonstration of resistance to the authoritarian abuses of the Trump regime. The illegal firings of federal workers, the cancelation of federal grants, the shakedowns of corporations and universities, the violations of due process, and the usurpation of Congressional authority had advanced at breakneck speed since Trump returned to the Oval Office. A “flood the zone” strategy was designed to overwhelm resistance while the carefully laid plans of Project 2025 were put into place.

Americans could feel the assault happening all around us, but we didn’t know what we could do to stop it. The extremism seemed like it was everywhere, all at once. A day of collective action didn’t stop the madness, but it reminded us who we are. We don’t bow to tyrants, and we are not alone. We are not wrong to think that what we see happening every day right out in the open is not normal.

Nearly three months have passed, and summer has come to its many official ends. Vacations are over, Labor Day has passed, the kids have gone back to school, and the charge toward authoritarianism continues.

American cities are occupied by US forces.

Masked men terrorize communities while DHS quotes Scripture to recruit new agents to join them.

Trump ordered the execution of unidentified civilians in international waters, and the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense have said he will do it again.

On social media over the weekend, Trump declared war on a city governed by his political opponents - and another Black mayor. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” he wrote.

Last month, when we talked with authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, she compared the speed of change in the US over the past seven months to other authoritarian regimes around the world. No one expected things to change this fast, she told us, because no other modern democracy has descended into authoritarianism this quickly.

“When are we going to have another mass protest or a general strike?,” people keep asking. They are asking because they remember what June 14 felt like, and all of us want to remember that this is not who we are.

But the strategy of authoritarianism is to insist that the lie the ruler repeats is true everywhere, all the time. It aims to deregulate our shared moral sensibilities and normalize the lies. Even if everyone knows he is lying, Trump needs to get away with repeating the lie.

Which means that a moral resistance has to be a steady drumbeat of insistence upon the truth, wherever we are.

This is how humans have overcome authoritarian regimes in every era.

In ancient Scripture, when Moses was under Pharaoh’s rule, the midwives Shiphra and Puah defied the genocidal order of the regime and saved the babies in their care, taking direct action to hide them away - which is how Moses survived to lead the nonviolent revolution at the Red Sea.

In the first century, when Jesus was growing up in the Roman-occupied Galilee, he started a poor people’s movement to challenge the existing political order with the “kingdom of God” by giving everyday people ways they could nonviolently resist the regime that claimed to own their lives – by turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, giving to whoever asked, and overcoming evil with good.

Moral resistance wasn’t a single-day uprising against authoritarianism. It was a steady beat of direct action, mutual aid, and collective remembrance of who we really are.

Consider a distinctly American story of authoritarianism: during hundreds of years of slavery in the American South, moral resistance meant running away to freedom, foot-dragging in the fields, and gathering in the brush arbors to remember that no matter what the enslavers said, everyone was a child of God. Moral resistance in that moment was also every action by Black and white Americans to build an Underground Railroad, every essay to argue for abolition, every freeman’s convention for self-determination, and every lawsuit aimed at ending the practice of owning other human beings.

Looking back, we celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth, and the ratification of the 13^thamendment as watershed events that “ended slavery.” But the authoritarianism of the plantation system didn’t end on any one day. It was defeated by a steady stream of moral resistance that kept pushing toward a more perfect union, even in the face of massive resistance and violent backlash.

It was ended by generations of people who found ways to engage in steady and repeated acts of moral resistance - regular practices that helped people remember who they were.

The abolition movement was built by people who understood human bondage as a moral issue and committed to regularly resist it wherever it touched their daily lives. They refused to buy products produced with enslaved labor. They refused to keep fellowship with co-religionists who claimed to own other people. They took direct action to help people escape to freedom and they backed politicians who refused to allow the continued spread of slavery.

A moral resistance to the madness we face must be a steady refusal to concede to the lies or accept the extremism at the place where it touches our lives and our communities.

As pastors and public theologians, we went to Washington, DC this year to appeal to the moral responsibility of the elected leaders who had the power to check Trump’s extremism by voting against a bill that would slash healthcare and nutrition services to fund tax breaks for billionaires and ICE’s masked men. We made the simple request that they pause to pray with the people from their districts who would be harmed before they cast a vote, but they refused. Rather than pray with us, they had us arrested for praying.

But that did not stop our prayer. Others who’ve made promises to care for souls and proclaim good news to the poor came to DC and joined our prayer. They refused to believe the lie that people who are elected to public office do not have to hear the cries of the people who will be harmed by their votes or face the reality of the violence they are advancing by capitulating to the lies.

The prayers of our Moral Mondays did not stop the Big, Ugly, Deadly and Destructive Bill. But they did remind us who we are, and they helped spread the word that the agenda of this regime is a danger to our nation’s communities and its people.

Over the August recess, while members of Congress were at home in their districts, we held Moral Mondays across the South, delivering caskets to their offices to show the people back home how they had voted for cuts to healthcare that a joint study from Yale and University of Pennsylvania said will kill 51,000 Americans next year.

We didn’t see a single member of Congress repent. They’ve gone back to Washington repeating the same lies they told to justify their votes for the bill.

But people are increasingly weary of their lies. The White House had to dispatch J.D. Vance to Georgia last week to try to “re-brand” the bill because it is deeply unpopular, even among people who voted for Republicans to represent them.

A steady beat of moral resistance doesn’t change everything all at once. But it can remind people that lies kill and politicians who do the bidding of billionaires aren’t serving most of us and, most importantly, we do not have to accept the policy violence that is being enacted by people who claim to represent us.

We can refuse to obey unlawful orders.

We can stand in nonviolent solidarity with neighbors who are targeted by this regime.

We can tell the truth about policies that hurt our communities and the people who vote for them.

We can take nonviolent direct action to protect people who are in harm’s way today, and we can build movements to change who has power in municipal elections this fall and in the midterms next year and in every election for the rest of our lives.

Because authoritarians fear their weakness, they want showdowns that allow them to crackdown on the public. This is how weak leaders try to look strong. Trump’s moves to occupy LA and DC and whichever city he chooses next are provocations. He’s itching for a violent uprising that he can use military might to squash so he can claim the authority to militarize the whole country to “keep the peace.”

But Los Angeles didn’t take the bait. Instead, thousands of local leaders have demonstrated for months now what a moral resistance looks like. Clergy have led nonviolent vigils against the occupation while lawyers have challenged the regime’s illegal actions in court. Day laborers have built solidarity networks with soccer moms, refusing to accept masked-men in Home Depots as normal. Volunteers have mobilized to sell food for street vendors who are afraid of being rounded up in raids.

A steady beat of moral resistance hasn’t yet ended the occupation, but it has thwarted the Trump regime’s plan. And it has shown all of us how we can prepare for a steady beat of moral resistance when this regime’s occupation comes to us.

We did not get here overnight, and the madness we are enduring is not the creation of a single personality. Still, every act of moral resistance is an opportunity to exercise the muscles we need to reconstruct democracy. Any personal trainer will tell you that a steady, consistent approach to building muscle is what works best. This is what our moral moment demands of the body politic: identify where the regime’s lies touch you and your community; work with others to plan a steady beat of moral resistance; do what you can for as many reps as you can, then rest and prepare to do it again.

What we face will not be defeated in a day. But it will be defeated by a moral movement of people who remember who we are, take nonviolent direct action to defend the most vulnerable, and build power to reconstruct a democracy that works for all of us.