To shout or not to shout?

Community member Naomi writes on noisy protest and what could be gained from a more disruptive Christian witness.

DSEI Arms Fair Protest (9th September 2025), Credit: MaktoobMedia

If we have ever met at a protest, you will know that I love making a bit of a ruckus. If someone jumps on the megaphone or starts singing a Billy Bragg song, I will be there singing it at the top of my lungs. While protest can take many forms, an essential part of protest for me is to be disruptive, to be in a physical space and claim ownership of it. But this is not without its limitations; we (and I include myself in this) can be guilty of making noise for noise’s sake. Speaking from personal experience, sometimes the most disruptive protest can be entirely silent.

I have been thinking a lot about how we occupy this physical space, particularly as Christians. In particular, what is the role of Christians in those spaces? Are we there to bring peace, to simply be there as a sign of solidarity with the cause, making the other protesters know that we are “not like other Christians”? Is it enough for us to just be there, or do we also need to be willing to be disruptive? 

Since joining the Catholic Worker, there have been three protests that have made me ponder the efficacy of noisy protest. The first was at the DSEI Arms Fair in September, a staple in the life of the London Catholic Worker. Every two years at the opening of one of the largest arms fairs in the world, people of all faiths and none descend on the Excel Centre as a visible witness to the horrors of the arms trade. We began our time there with a Quaker meeting for worship (perhaps the most obvious example of silent witness). I have often found meetings for worship moving, particularly when they are held in public. There was a moment when we became surrounded by police officers threatening to move us on. As an act of non-violent witness, a friend stood up and welcomed the police officers to the meeting. You could argue that this wasn’t particularly effective – we weren’t part of the group of protesters who were blocking the entrance to the arms fair, for example – but the stillness in that space felt similar to the moment of stillness Elijah experienced on Mount Horeb. In that moment, I experienced God not in the violence of the arms fair, but in a “moment of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12). 

Buoyed up by this moment of stillness, I felt empowered to join a group of protesters outside the exit of the Excel Centre for a very different type of disruption. There we were as the attendees were leaving the fair, shouting “shame! shame on you!” At the time, I felt some discomfort doing this. I could see that some of the other people of faith remained silent, not engaging with the chanting. And who was I, a fellow sinner, to bring shame on people just doing their jobs? But in doing this, we engaged far more with the attendees than with the meeting for worship. The disgruntled attendees stopped and asked why we were shaming them, pushing back against us. Would we have had the same response if we had stood there in silence? After all, didn’t Jesus speak uncomfortable truths to the authorities of his time (Matthew 23)? Didn’t he also make a ruckus in the Temple (John 2:3–16) and, like the persistent widow in Luke 18, teach us to make our presence felt? 

Another example comes, once again, from the Quakers, during the October Defend our Juries action in Trafalgar Square. The Quakers decided to hold meetings for worship every hour on the hour for the duration of the demonstration. This was in response to a call for a silent demonstration, certain that the disruptive nature came from the words on the placards the sitters were holding. About halfway through the day, a group of socialist organisers set up camp next to us and got thoroughly disgruntled with what we were doing. One of them got on a megaphone, shouting at us: “why are you silent? This is not the time for silence! Now is the time for action! Your silence makes you complicit!” It seems that silent contemplation can really annoy some comrades...

A few weeks after this, I attended an anti-fascist demo in Whitechapel. The local community had successfully stopped UKIP from marching through a predominantly South Asian area of London. Despite the fact UKIP had moved their march to Hyde Park, the anti-fascist organisers decided to stay in Whitechapel and keep a presence there. There were so many anti-fascist demonstrators that we filled Whitechapel High Street, occupying the road for a few hours at least. Despite the police trying to contain it, they couldn’t stop us shouting, marching, dancing and, yes, even singing Billy Bragg songs. Walking away from the demo I experienced an unexpected moment of stillness; because the High Street had been blocked, all I could hear on my walk back to the tube was the sound of birdsong and the market-sellers. I found myself thinking about Psalm 62:

“Wait on God alone in stillness, O my soul; for in him is my hope.” 

(v. 7)

In that moment, all I wanted to do was give thanks for the beauty of this moment but also the holy actions of the demonstrators that made this peace possible. 

I don’t write this to have a definitive answer on whether we should be noisy at protests or not; perhaps it depends on what the situation demands. Even so, I offer this as a provocation to those of us who might want to avoid the discomfort of disruptive protest. So often I have found us Christians are reticent to be disruptive, resorting to candlelit vigils and silent prayer. I often wonder what the church would look like if we preached a gospel of noisy disruption. Imagine if our preachers told us to pick up a placard, grab your megaphone and take to the streets, the place where Christ is so often found. The Book of Proverbs reminds us to “speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute” (Proverbs 31:8). Perhaps a bunch of noisy Christians would do the world a whole lot of good. 

Dorothy Day, Pacifism, Venezuela, and Catholic Theology of Gospel Nonviolence

Sr Katrina Alton, National Chaplain to Pax Christi England and Wales, reflects on the theology of Gospel Nonviolence in the wake of the US attack on Venezuela.

Dorothy Day at City Hall. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dorothy Day’s essay “We Are Un-American; We Are Catholic” is not merely an antiwar polemic but a sustained articulation of Catholic pacifism rooted in the Gospel. Written in 1948, her opposition to Universal Military Training and to war itself, arises from a theological conviction: violence, in all its forms, is incompatible with fidelity to Jesus. This conviction places her in direct continuity with what is now articulated as Catholic Gospel Nonviolence.

For Day, pacifism is not a strategy but rather an essential element of discipleship. She rejects the idea that preparation for war can ever be morally neutral or morally necessary, describing it as “sin.” Crucially, she

refuses to limit this judgment to armed conflict alone. Any system that trains people—psychologically, economically, or politically—to accept the suffering or killing of others as expedient participates in the same moral corruption. In this sense, Day anticipates contemporary Catholic critiques of structural and economic violence.

Day’s theology challenges the way Just War reasoning functions in practice. While she does not engage it systematically, she exposes how theological distinctions collapse under the lived reality of violence. War

and coercion require the cultivation of hatred, the simplification of the moral imagination, and the suppression of compassion. This insight closely parallels contemporary Catholic teaching, especially Pope Francis’s call to move beyond a reliance on Just War theory toward nonviolence as “a style of politics for peace.”

Applied to U.S. actions toward Venezuela, Day’s pacifism offers a clear moral lens. Economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and threats of arrest operate as coercive tools meant to force political outcomes through

civilian suffering. Though non-military in appearance, these measures rely on the same logic Day condemns - that harm may be inflicted if the ideological goal is sufficiently urgent. From the standpoint of Gospel nonviolence, such policies constitute forms of violence displaced into economic and legal, or ‘illegal’, structures.

Across the globe we are witnessing the rise of ‘Christian Nationalism’, an oxymoron that Day was only too familiar with in 1948. Fidelity to Christ, she argues, requires refusal, refusal to cooperate with systems that

demand violence for their stability. Just as she called for conscientious objection and withdrawal from the war economy, contemporary Gospel nonviolence challenges Catholics to resist participation in political and

economic regimes that weaponize deprivation and fear. When faced with the choice between two Herod’s, like Day we are un-American, un-British, un-Venezuelan. We are followers of the One crucified by Empire, the One

who calls us to ‘put down your sword.'

Finally, Day’s pacifism is inseparable from her Christology. She grounds her witness in Christ’s refusal of armed defence and his acceptance of vulnerability rather than domination. The Church, she insists, has no need to be defended by force, sanctions, or imperial authority. Her task is not survival but fidelity. In this sense, Dorothy Day’s vision continues to confront Catholics with a radical question: whether peace is merely an aspiration or a command that governs even our foreign policy.

The essay that Sr Katrina references can be found here.

If You Share What Is Everlasting

LCW Volunteer Harry Wills writes on the Magi and the Meaning of the Other.

"After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’ When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the Law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. ‘In Bethlehem in Judea,’ they replied, ‘for this is what the prophet has written: ‘“But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.”’

(Matthew 2:1–6)

Dream of the Magi, Kelly Latimore (2025)

One of my university teachers told us about the time he spent living in rural Africa. He was the only white Christian in a Muslim community. At first, he felt like a distrusted other’. Yet, they shared their space and resources with him and, by the end, no one could doubt the possibility of co-existence. According to the fear and hatred of ‘otherness’ that has become widespread in Europe, this village ought to have met the visitor with hostility and never have shared their material means with him. Given the history of colonialism in Africa, they certainly had more reason to distrust him than if the situation was reversed.

I was reminded of that story when looking at the Nativity according to Matthew. We are told of ‘Magi from the east’. Men from a different country, religion, and language, and who were widely suspected of sorcery. And yet there was something more important than their differences that brought them to the hospitality of a poor Hebrew family in Bethlehem.

Who were they? While there is some doubt, the term refers to Zoroastrian priests. Their religion, Zoroastrianism, was founded by the prophet Zarathustra who, much like Jesus, inspired a radical shift in the mainstream thought of his day, critical of the established order and traditional religious authorities, and promising a future world where evil is  overcome by good. The appearance of the Magi in the narrative raises two big questions: What was the significance of Jesus’ birth to them? And what do we learn from it?

First, I would like to mention something about the historic relationship between the two religions. There were, of course, significant cosmological and theological disagreements between them but one of the earliest Christian understandings of Zarathustra was that he “had been an Iranian counterpart of the (idealised) Hebrew prophets and had been sent, like them, to prepare the way for Christ” (Mary Boyce). Later, referring to the increasing influence of Christianity and other religions, the Zoroastrian king, Hormizd IV, is reported as saying “A throne has four legs, and the two inner legs cannot support it without the two outer ones. The religion of the Magi likewise cannot stand without opposition.” His proposed solution – mirroring Matthew 5:16 and 1 Peter 2:12; 3:15–16 – was for Zoroastrians to perform good works in order to draw others to the ‘Good Religion’.

Imagine a world where differences were always settled in this way!

To understand why these Magi might have been interested in Jesus, we can look at their scripture. Yasht 19, for instance:

"...in order that the dead shall rise up, that the Living One, the Indestructible, shall come, the world be made wonderful at his wish…" (Cf. Matt 16:16; Luke 20:38)

"We worship mighty Khvarenah (Divinely-Given Glory)…, which will accompany the victorious World-Saviour and also his other comrades, so that he may make the world wonderful…" (Cf. Matt 19:28; John 3:17, 15:26–27; Acts 10:38)

"He will gaze with eyes of sacrifice on the whole material world, and heedfully will he make the whole world undying…" (Cf. John 6:51)

"Bad Purpose will be overcome, Good Purpose overcomes him. Overcome will be the lie, the truth overcomes it… Perfection and immortality will overcome both hunger and thirst…" (Cf. Matt 5:6; John 6:35, 8:32, 16:33; Rom 12:21)

Consider also this passage from the Greater Bundahishna (34:6) which resembles the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt 25:31–33):

"the Saviour will raise up all the dead. And all mankind will arise, whether just or wicked… In that assembly, everyone will behold his own good or bad deeds, and the just will stand out among the wicked like white sheep among black…"

Zarathustra prophesied about a Last Day, Final Judgment, and resurrection of the dead (Greater Bundahishna). Texts concerning the Saviour also predict a virgin birth (Yasna 43:3). The World Saviour is a pastor for the poor’

(Ahunvar, cf. ‘Good Shepherd’) and is ordained by God (Yasna 53:2). There are also instructions on charity and warnings against wealth. Given His comparison of the rich with camels trying to pass through a needle’s eye (Luke 18:25), you could say Jesus is also a bit of a zarathustra (lit. ‘he who can handle camels’).

There are good reasons, it seems to me, why Magi were included in the story, with prophecies so reminiscent of our own ‘world saviour’. On one hand, the text mentions their ‘foreignness’ but, on the other, we are drawn to see the common ground. The coming together of different people to share in a future hope.

There are other passages in the New Testament that deal with gentiles, Samaritans, the ‘others’ of various kinds and, in each case, the Teaching draws us closer together. It breaks down perceived differences and reveals what is important, that we are neighbours, a theme summarised by Paul: You are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:28) If two people can come together in a shared hope, how different can they really be at heart? As the Christian Didache (1st century) says: ‘If you share what is everlasting, you should be that much more willing to share things which do not last’. Today, however, the fear of the ‘other’ means an unwillingness to share land or wealth with those they see as ‘foreign’. But how foreign can they be? I am willing to bet that, wherever we come from, we share a great deal of what is eternal: A humanity and the hope for a future.

As we can see from the Nativity, one of Jesus’ first acts was to bring the ‘other’ to Him. As He says: I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. (John 10:16)

To Him be the glory and the power, forever. Amen.