Co-Written by: Archer Moore & William Stevenson
Started in 1938 by James and Terry Willson, both alumni of Southwestern, the Willson Lectures are a pathway for students to hear speakers of all faith traditions (albeit with the most representation of Christian and Methodist tradition, as Southwestern is a Methodist university) connecting religious questions to social life and experiences.
The second lecture of 2026’s two-part series was presented by Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, current head pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.. Her accolades include being the first female pastor of Foundry, graduating from Yale Divinity School, and advocating for racial justice in the world. The lecture she gave was partially inspired by her 2018 book, “Sacred Resistance: A Practical Guide to Christian Witness and Dissent”.
She began her lecture by describing a familiar scene: an unjust event occurs, we receive notifications about it on our phones via various social media apps, and we feel a strong urge to do something about it. We want to respond, repost, organize, fight back, etc. Gaines-Cirelli validates us in our longings for justice, but also cautions us. She warns of responses that are just “reactions”: spontaneous, disorganized, impulsive acts which risk making volatile situations even worse. She argues that moments where we see unjust events occur are, for Christian believers, tests of faith, times where Christians must choose between upholding the rebellious nature of the Christian baptismal covenant, or relieve themselves of the responsibility to enact God’s kingdom on the earth. As she asked Christians in the audience, “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever form they present themselves?”
Moving on to the question of what Sacred Resistance actually is, Gaines-Cirelli defined it as a “stance, a way of being in the world…” over and against a commitment to any set of beliefs/doctrines. This stance though is not one we can cultivate by ourselves alone. She described our inward selves as turned towards Christ in his moral beauty and truth, but with the corrupting influence of evil and sin marring our ability to better imitate Christ and take on his heart of justice. Thankfully, as Gaines-Cirelli argues, God accepts, forgives, and restores our inward selves that we may better take on the praxis of sacred, Christ-like living.
For Gaines-Cirelli, this means that resistance begins “in the heart of God”. Despite human failure and sin, God eternally “resists abandoning us”. Furthermore, she argues that this makes God’s love the “model and the fuel” for sacred resistance. Like God’s love, sacred resistance is non-violent, with the goal always to restore others and never to destroy them. Building on this latter point, she says that the reduction of people to stereotypes makes it all the easier for us to agree with violence done against them, as stereotypes de-personalize our fellow human beings.
Elaborating more on what the stance of Sacred Resistance looks like, Caines-Cirelli drew from theologian Walter Brueggemann in her lecture and his concept of a “prophetic imagination”. Dispelling misunderstandings of the word “prophetic”, Brueggemann defines a prophetic consciousness as “ a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” Gaines-Cirelli elaborates on this by saying that prophetic imagination cuts against political “realism”, that is, the insistence that however bad the current political situation may be, it is the only way it can be. Gaines-Cirelli thus calls on us to break away from any conception of the world in which violence, greed, suffering, etc. are necessary for the world to function well.
She then proceeded to break down the idea of a prophetic imagination into four main verbs: Remember, Lament, Hope, and Act. She argued that prophetic communities are communities with long and available memories and are able to fit crises into larger narratives. They are no longer under the false consciousness which declares every new crisis “unprecedented”, but are able to see unjust patterns in history, educate others on them, and fight to resist them.
Moving on to Lament, she argued—drawing again from Brueggemann—that forces of empire produce a “numb consciousness”, where suffering and violence become naturalized and reduced to background noise. In contrast to this, Gaines-Cirelli and Brueggemann assert that prophetic communities are forces which disrupt everyday life and draw attention to aspects of our existence we’ve become numb to. Gaines-Cirelli says that disruption can either occur on a massive scale with large protests and strikes, but that it can also occur in smaller, individual settings, such as with a piece of art that “returns a human face to realities we’ve begun treating as abstractions.”
As for Hope, she argued that over and against our everyday conception of hope as a passive emotional state, prophetic hope is an active stance, or as she said, “the disciplined refusal to believe that the way things are is the only way things can be.” She argued that oppressive systems succeed the most when the people under them can’t imagine alternative ways of being. Hope comes in to stir up this sort of imagination in people, even if the evils of the current social order are overwhelming. She ended this section with a poignant, summative quote from the late essayist Wendel Berry: “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”
Finally, she argued that prophetic words energize us to act and speak out against current oppressive systems. Drawing from biblical language, she argued that God is “always initiating a new thing”, and that Christians do not merely “walk within” oppressive systems but strive to radically break with them in their everyday lives. She gave caveats, though, by pointing out that “not every emergency is ours to lead” and that we need discernment to know the what, the when, and how of political action. She also gave another warning against demonizing people and treating them as “enemies”. As she said, “the point isn’t to become oppositional” against people, but to work for the collective good of all.
This call to action reflects onto Southwestern’s core purpose to create students whose actions work towards the betterment of humanity. Even though, as “humans keep wandering down well-worn destructive paths”, these are not the only paths humanity can choose to take. As of now, Gaines-Cirelli encourages us all to remember, pay attention, imagine the world without despair, speak up against injustice, and act when called upon to do so. She says the better world prophets envision is not a far-off fantasy, but rather something we should build towards now, brick by brick.