Rise of the Spiritual Activist

Introduction
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.         ~ Lao Tzu

The decade of the 1990’s was a very challenging decade for humanitarian workers around the world. It was a decade marked by genocides in two continents, global atrocities and blatant injustices. In April 1994, the country of Rwanda was torn apart by an ethnic competition between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes. This led to the mass murders of over 800,000 people in a four-month period. The war in Rwanda was by far the most brutal effort to cleanse an entire ethnic group since the Holocaust of World War II. While the Hutus were terrorizing the Tutsi, the Bosnian Serbs were systematically eliminating the Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims. From 1992 to 1995, the Serbian army led a campaign of ethnic cleansing that included rape, murder, unlawful confinement and deportation. In both wars, the international community had to intervene. These crimes against humanity raise many questions about the promotion of wrongful and violent ideas in organized social systems. Knowing that such violence does not erupt overnight, how was the stage set so that rational people could justify the killing of men, women, children and elderly? How many community leaders gave speeches and sermons that planted seeds of hate and discrimination, eventually growing into violent acts of hate? Can this rhetoric be identified to prevent the emergence of wrongful leaders with wrongful intentions that might lead an entire country into a genocidal war? Where else could this happen? Are there people and organizations in the United Sates promoting similar discrimination?

Developed and modern nations learned how discrimination can lead to blatant injustice, murder and even genocide. Yet if we listen with discerning ears, we can recognize discrimination today in the speeches of community leaders that might lead to violent and regrettable actions. In March 2012, at a rally for presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, in a room with hundreds of people and before a countless audience watching on television, the Rev. Dennis Terry called for a Christian nation and the removal of non-Christians from America. This is language that fertilizes the ground for discriminatory legislation and justifies persecution as God’s will. Consider that Rev. Terry’s audience included people lacking the mental strength to discern which ideas should never be acted upon. Such mentally unstable people are living and walking among us all the time. Every community has them, including Rev. Terry’s audience. Consider a plausible chain of events that take a member of Rev. Terry’s audience from listener to actor, from passive citizen to promoter of xenophobia, from living in harmony with a diverse community to actively making people who are different feel unwelcomed. From peaceful to violent.

There can be no doubt that violent people are among us, waiting for the wrong public speaker to push them into regrettable action. We only need to remember April 19, 1995 and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. More recently, on January 8, 2011, there was the shooting by Jared Lee Loughner of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Gifford and six other innocent victims, including a 9-year-old child. These deaths are to be differentiated from the more common street side shooting or crime of passion in that they targeted a government official, forcing us to re-examine the genesis of such actions. Where does it all begin?  It all begins with the word; specifically, the wrongful word. Unfortunately, violent people are among us and every public speaker has to consider that they may part of his audience. Consequently, public speakers must know the power of words.