This commentary is by Rev. Devon Thomas, who serves the churches in Jeffersonville, Hyde Park and Bakersfield.
As I watched the footage of Russian troops invading Ukraine in the past week, I was immediately overcome with a feeling of helplessness. Watching from the sidelines, I find myself wishing I could do more than just hope for the best, and I wish our country could do more than just levy sanctions against Russia.
This attack is not just an attack against a democratic nation; it feels as if the validity of democracy itself is under attack.
I know that there is nothing I can do to stop the Russian tanks; they are a world away from us here in Vermont. As a minister of the Gospel, I pray for the people of Ukraine in their fight for the freedom of their nation, but if this war is a fight for the validity of democracy in the world, then I also know there is plenty that we should be doing to secure that democracy here at home.
The power of Putin lies in his ability to stoke hate and fears in democratic hearts. He sows doubt and waits for his enemies to tear themselves apart. Ukraine had already been at war with two separatist states since 2014, during which its government has continued to struggle against Russian cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns.
If this sounds familiar to what we have been experiencing here in the United States, then what is happening in Ukraine is a powerful warning about what happens when we forget to honor the bonds of community, support and love needed to hold a democratic nation together.
The enemies of democracy use our own greed, hatred and fears against us. Therefore, the only and best way I can think of to combat this destructive force is to strengthen the ties that bind us together, and to rely more on the unity of love than the divisions of hate.
This is something we can do here at home. We can fight authoritarianism by strengthening the democratic values needed to make our country function. The two things of which I feel we are in critically short supply these days are respect and love for our neighbor.
When we try to deny our past by refusing to teach historical truths like our nation’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the legacy it leaves us within the present; or when we choose to limit the ability of others to vote in fair elections; when we allow our neighbors to struggle with increasing costs of living and make it harder for those who are struggling with homelessness, addiction or disability to get help in pulling their lives together; when we are more interested in building prisons than in building schools and hospitals, roads and bridges; when we limit the ability of our neighbors to achieve life, liberty and happiness in their own lives — then we ruin the chance of all of us to have a functioning and fair democracy within our nation.
As a minister of three churches here in Vermont, I do not write this letter to evangelize, but to encourage all people who felt the same sense of helplessness when those Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine to engage in moral conversations, be that in a church, synagogue, mosque, temple or a town hall.
I feel that over the past decades we Americans have slowly started to lose track of what it means to love our neighbors. There is a lot of damage we have done to one another over these years, but I take heart in seeing the power of Ukrainian unity as they defend themselves from this Russian aggression.
I am not just praying for their success; I am praying for us all in our fight to overcome the forces of hatred and division in this world.
