Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt

Rosemary Bray McNatt牧師による「The Dangers Without, The Dangers Within」の日本語版です。2023年の米国社会を背景に、和解がいつ必要で、いつまだ時期尚早なのかを問いかけます。アフリカ系米国人女性でありユニタリアン・ユニヴァーサリストの牧師としての経験から、自由主義宗教が守るべき自由は思想や信仰だけでなく、黒人、女性、LGBTQの人びとなどの身体的・政治的自由を含むべきだと論じます。黒人キリスト教に根付く赦しの伝統と「No justice, no peace」という訴えを対比し、被害が続いている段階で被害者に和解や赦しを求めることの危険を指摘します。

講演では、当時の米国民主主義への脅威として、白人キリスト教ナショナリズム、Heritage FoundationのProject 2025／Mandate for Leadership、投票権、女性の身体的自己決定、LGBTQの権利、人種的不平等、気候危機などを取り上げます。McNattは、基本的権利への攻撃が続く状況では、まず抵抗、歴史の真実を語ること、そして記憶と希望の共同体を築くことが必要だと主張します。宗教共同体には、人びとが不正を認識し、互いを支え、将来の真の和解に向けて行動する場となる可能性があると結論づけます。

Speaking in 2023, Unitarian Universalist minister and seminary president Rosemary Bray McNatt asks when calls for reconciliation become premature in the face of continuing injustice. Beginning with her identities as an African American woman, former Roman Catholic and Unitarian Universalist, she argues that liberal religion’s historic commitment to freedom must include bodily and political freedom for people marginalized by racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. She contrasts traditions of forgiveness in Black Christianity with the cry “no justice, no peace,” asking whether reconciliation can become a demand that victims forgive before harm has ended.

McNatt then examines threats she perceived to US democracy in 2023, focusing on white Christian nationalism and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 / Mandate for Leadership, alongside voter suppression, attacks on reproductive and LGBTQ rights, racial inequality and climate crisis. Her conclusion is that resistance, truth-telling and communities of memory must precede reconciliation where basic rights remain under attack. She presents religious communities as places where people can recognize injustice, sustain one another through grief, and organize for democratic, racial, gender and environmental justice - laying the groundwork for a future reconciliation that does not require surrendering fundamental dignity.