2026-10-01
On Staying...
This has been an incredibly difficult time in the United States. This was especially true during the winter of 2026 in Minnesota. We were occupied by legally protected armed thugs who terrorized and murdered citizens on the streets of Minneapolis. The worst of these activities took place in the Twin Cities, but it was not by any means limited to this area. Native Americans were targeted and harassed by government thugs.
Many communities in greater Minnesota have had a majority of people who are supporters of the armed thugs that continue to occupy our state. This has made it difficult to be a minority person among many people who would rather eliminate all minorities. I may be making an overstatement, but it has certainly felt this way at times.
This also coincided with retiring from serving as a parish pastor in the United Methodist Church. Both my spouse and I served, and are now retired and living in the small community of Fosston, Minnesota. We have many friends and allies in our town and surrounding area. These friends were the most important part of our decision to stay in Northwestern Minnesota.
For a while we considered leaving the country. Since we don’t have children, we could have more easily left. It’s not hard to draw parallels with Germany in the 1930’s when Hitler came to power. Many people left, and some never returned. Whether they stayed or migrated, minority people in Germany lived in exile.
While the sense of living in exile in the United States has become exaggerated since Trump was re-elected to the presidency, it is not a new feeling. It’s been especially true for people of color since colonial times. In more recent years, the term “woke” has been widely used in the culture war which permeates conflict in the U.S. But for non-dominant culture people, woke is an odd word. It’s more like some dominant culture people becoming aware of the oppression of minorities. When a dominant culture person aligns themselves with people from a cultural minority, they often experience something of the oppression of the minority culture person. This is often quite unpleasant. Among those with the option of leaving, some do. It’s what the friends of pastor theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer encouraged him to do during the rise of Hitler. He chose to stay, and he was executed by the Nazi regime before the end of World War II.
We choose to stay. We also continue to live in a community where we are in the political minority. Why?
It is not because I have great confidence in the system of democracy. One of the assumptions of democracy is that the majority makes the best decisions for the whole. This is often not the case historically, nor do I believe there have ever been adequate safeguards in United States democracy to even protect the population on the essentials of life. Policy has always been subject to corruption from popular opinion. There are also examples in history where policy makers have resisted this corruption.
While it has come under a considerable challenge in recent years, we still exist in a political culture where not all minority voices are silenced. If democracy continues, it will do so because people in minority positions continue to persist in forming policy they believe is right. Democracy is dependent on some form of conflict. This conflict is also inherent in human beings in the past and present. Efforts to remove conflict usually come from one side of a conflict trying to eliminate the other. As much as conflict is unpleasant, it is also necessary.
I choose to stay as a citizen in a small town in Minnesota because I participate in resistance to the oppressive actions of our time. I also make this choice because I am in solidarity with others in my community who yearn and work for hope and justice. This hope is also built upon the faith journey of oppressed people from many cultures and times who chose to believe in something greater than the personal choices of individual human beings.