The Spirituality of Occupy

“In the beginning of Occupy Wall Street, we decided to be a nonreligious movement,” said the middle-aged man to my left. “So, if we’re going to debate nonviolence as a tactic, fine, but not as a religious ideology.”

This statement continued to trouble me for the remaining two hours of Occupy Seattle’s General Assembly. I had been serving as a chaplain in the movement and was the subject of a media stir in December 2011 after the Seattle Police brutally beat me and threw me in jail during an Occupy action. At the time of the beating, I was clad in clergy attire and crying out for peace.

I had come to the General Assembly to listen and participate in a discussion and vote on the place of nonviolence in Occupy Seattle but found myself disoriented by my neighbor’s assertion that “religious” values had no place in the movement’s dialogue. I felt muted by the insinuation that my spirituality, which is at the core of my identity, was unwelcome.

Since that General Assembly, I have come to believe that while some veteran spiritual activists are able to ignore the presence of an underlying religiophobia (an ingrained distrust of religious people/language/symbols) often present at Occupy events, there are many less-hardened spiritual and religious folks who are hesitant to join the movement because of it. The movement’s dominant rhetoric is currently devoid of the language that most powerfully motivates us, and its tone is hostile to spiritual people.

However, we cannot blame the Occupy movement for this detrimental predicament. Rather, it is the responsibility of spiritual leaders to bridge these divides by illuminating the spiritual dimensions that we see in Occupy. We must inspire current Occupiers to rethink their assumptions about the relevance of spirituality to the movement and simultaneously inspire greater participation among our own. As one voice in what I hope will be a growing chorus of spiritual leaders, I would like to name one of the profound spiritual impulses that runs deep within the Occupy movement: imagination.

Votive candles line an altar to the death of capitalism at Occupy Oakland on November 2, 2011. Activist imagination drives the movement’s dissident spirituality.

Alana Yu-Lan Price

The spirituality of the Occupy movement is not one that references God, the Divine, or even the numinous, but instead is found in the imaginative transcendence of the consumerist, individualistic, hierarchical constructions of the self and society that we in America are spoon-fed from birth. The exercise of imagination is at the heart of my understanding of spirituality. By imagination I do not mean idle escapism, but rather the ability to envision and pursue a personal identity and social reality that is more expansive than the hedonistic materialism and more genuine than the fantastic utopias that sometimes seem to be our only options. The Occupy movement is an eruption of precisely this sort of transformative imagination. For me, a United Methodist minister, this imaginative exercise is rooted in my understanding of and encounter with God. While I remain unsure about what is fueling the imagination of Occupy (and worry that this ambiguity may be a liability), I can highlight a few instances of the emphatic creativity in which I see the spirituality of Occupy becoming manifest.

A nearly spontaneous explosion of activist imagination has brought forth the people’s mic, the 99 percent slogan, discussion forums, makeshift libraries, tent sanctuaries, and arts stations in the camps. This creativity has breathed new life into the use of working groups and the General Assembly and its attendant sign language. It is evident in the decolonization principles crafted by oppressed communities and even in the notion of “occupying” economic centers in cities across the country instead of political centers. While the Occupy movement is built on wisdom from past liberation movements and subversive prophetic voices, this past has been used as a wellspring of inspiration in the creative endeavor, rather than as an anchor of authority weighing down its potential.

My first experience with Occupy...