A Bleeding Heart & the Truth is My Only Salvation this Lenten Season
To be called a "bleeding heart" today is akin to being labeled an idealistic pushover, someone guided by the virtue of naivete, not grounded in reality. But it was Jesus who was the original inspiration for the term. Per the Christian faith in this season of Lent, we remember how his blood was spilled for the salvation of all mankind. Symbolic of God's eternal love and compassion for creation. In that sense, to be referred to as a bleeding heart aligned you with the Spirit of God and salvific love. It wasn't until a political pundit named Westbrook Pegler rebranded the term as a slight against liberals that it took on a more disparaging meaning. What was the topic for which liberals were needlessly compassionate, according to Pegler? Lynching. The Senate anti-lynching bill of 1937 was undergoing a month-long filibuster by the Southern states in February 1938. It was during the stalemate in the Senate that Westbrook first used the term in his column in the Scripps Howard Syndicate to castigate liberals who introduced the bill,
"I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year."
His argument essentially was that the number of deaths by lynching had reduced significantly and, therefore, was not something worthy of the Senate's attention. The bill did not pass, and lynching would not become a federal crime until the new millennium, in March 2022. The White House signed it into law after over 200 failed attempts. You can read more about the loathsome right-wing, anti-semitic, anti-labor union Pulitzer prize-winning columnist with a simple Google search, but let us move on.
As I write this, we are 133 days into the assault on Gaza. Where once we believed the history too complex for our understanding and the issues nuanced beyond our comprehension, we now know a truth that is distilled and as clear as the midday sun. We know more about the Palestinian struggle for liberation than we ever did before, and for descendants of the colonized, this struggle feels personal. We sit separated by land and ocean from a terror we are tethered to by our tax dollars. We are inundated with images of dead children, mutilated bodies, decimated towns, and IOF soldiers documenting their moral depravity on TikTok. We bear witness to colonization and ethnic cleansing in real-time, shown to us by the very people enduring it. We watch with the knowledge that we are implicated in this hellscape by our government, whether we consent to it or not. It is indeed a harrowing time for the bleeding heart.
Yet, we also find ourselves in a moment when the people we look to for wisdom and moral clarity seem to be quietly waiting out a genocide or have taken the path of comfort and complicity. We are experiencing the limitations of their ethics, ethos, and moral backbone. Instead of the prophetic truth we need at this moment, many who have chosen to speak do so in carefully worded social media posts and public statements. A repackaging of spiritual bypassing that manipulates the language of liberation to firmly straddle the middle. It is a painful realization that they cannot help us meet this moment. It is natural to feel a sense of disappointment and abandonment. It is also an invitation to become more rooted in your own ethics and beliefs. Your pursuit of liberation does not have to hinge on their co-sign. It does not matter how many degrees you do or do not have, whether or not you have a large platform or any platform at all. Neither your profession nor your social location precludes you. Your conscience and commitment to the truth qualifies you. Because you know when you are being gaslit and lied to. Even when your favorite speaker/ writer/ pastor/leader lacks the moral fortitude to call it by name, you can. So do it. And when the Palestinian struggle opens your eyes to what is happening in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Tigray, Kashmir, and beyond, don't let the construct of borders or your past inaction inform what you do today. Because that comfy chair on the sidelines is not where you belong. May your bleeding heart continue to connect and guide you. Until liberation.