How can activism thoughtfully integrate spirituality or faith practices to build solidarity?

read somewhere that protests are prayers, prayers we whisper together when we're drained by shouting alone. What I mean is, I've begun to imagine activism as something deeper than policy or strategy, something closer to faith. Micah White talks about moving beyond signs and slogans, about stepping across an unseen divide—into something he calls theurgy, which feels like calling out into the night and waiting for the sky to answer back.

I keep thinking of a phrase I found in "FiheMaFih": "If you find fault in your brother or sister, the fault you see in them is within yourself." At first this sounds simple enough, a clean lesson. But sit with it awhile, and it's pricklier. It demands self-inquiry so fierce that it stings your eyes. In activism, each confrontation, each encounter, each unbearable flaw I see abroad might be my own shadow, echoing back at me. James Baldwin knew this too—warned that if you internalized all the ugly stories others made about you, you'd become trapped there, unable to move forward. So fighting injustice isn't just facing outward; it's inward too, a kind of exorcism.

I've started to feel we're waking from something. Traditional activism sometimes seems stranded, locked into endless loops. We hold events, wave banners, feel briefly uplifted or briefly hopeless, then cycle back around. What was once revolutionary now feels insufficient. White speaks about supernatural aid—I resist at first, suspicious of the word. But perhaps this is a way to say we're seeking something larger than ourselves, a collective breath that all our separate lungs can somehow reach for together. People gathering in meditation circles—scientists clocking lowered crime rates for reasons no one fully explains—offer glimpses of this hidden connectivity, networks beneath the visible surface, knots of invisible thread connecting us all.

It is startlingly clear: we can't untangle the collective without unraveling ourselves too. Baldwin taught me this when he warned against absorbing the symbols others try to impose on us. How the fight against oppression must more often begin inside, with locating our own submerged freedom and bringing it to light. True solidarity might mean we recognize ourselves in each stranger, each stumbling comrade, and yes, perhaps even each oppressor. A terrible thought and yet: doesn't it demand of activists not just banners and marches, but spiritual bravery, too? A sort of relentless, gentle confrontation within ourselves first.

If protest could become prayer—maybe that's what White means when he talks about "limitless possibility, eternal love, and fearlessness"—wouldn't we respond differently? Perhaps invocation, meditation, and collective prayer might be our new banners, our quieter chants. These rituals might fulfill something deeper, feed a hunger for connection beyond mere political necessity. They could become symbolic actions that break through calcified old habits, bringing fresh spiritual air into our collective lungs. Maybe it's not naïve—maybe it's essential—for activists to practice meditation or ritual together, explicitly turning ordinary protest into a form of invocation, calling forth unseen currents of help.

And yet, how would I do it concretely? I'd gather them first, these activists carrying backpacks full of pamphlets or signs, and instead of another planning session, we'd settle quietly into emptiness. We'd practice a collective meditation designed explicitly to shift something larger, something we can't yet see clearly ourselves. We’d ground our strategy in ethical teachings borrowed from somewhere timeless—something sharper-edged than soft platitudes, but gentler than slogans. We'd try to carry courage and wonder like they are contagious—which of course they are. Perhaps more provocatively, we'd name our work as theurgy itself, a hopeful, humble summoning of divine help as part of strategic civil resistance. Slowly, protest itself might come to feel like pilgrimage, might lift activists' feet off the ground spiritually—not escaping reality, but ascending into it, finding hidden doorways inside the ordinary.

In this way, activism could finally transcend mere tactics and rise into collective transformation, held together by threads of unseen meaning. It could become spiritual not out of vanity or idealization, but out of necessity—and in doing so would allow us to access something we've long suppressed: our collective creativity, our boundless imagination about what is possible when the internal transformation meets the external world. What if the activism we build today sprouted from this deep ground, rooted in the soul as much as the street? Wouldn't that mean something revolutionary, something startlingly, wondrously new?

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A compelling historical case study in the integration of spirituality into activism can be seen in the Latin American liberation theology movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Rooted in a radical reinterpretation of Christianity, adherents of liberation theology combined biblical wisdom and sociological insight to agitate effectively against deeply entrenched poverty and systemic oppression. Particularly notable is the creation of "base ecclesiastical communities"(CBEs)—small grassroots Christian communities focusing specifically on prayer, communal sharing, and reflection on scriptures, shaped and interpreted explicitly through their daily experience of poverty and injustice. This theological approach asserted that true Christian practice must actively side with the poor, embodying what became known as a "preferential option for the poor." Crucially, it positioned the poor not as passive objects of charity, but as active agents responsible for their own liberation through the collective reinterpretation of their lived realities through scripture. Liberation theology's blending of the sacred and the political catalyzed numerous influential, predominantly nonviolent struggles for social change across Latin America, notably impacting countries such as El Salvador, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. For instance, the Argentinian mothers of La Plaza de Mayo exemplified this spiritual activism when, in 1977, they began peaceful, ritualistic marches in response to the enforced disappearance of their loved ones by the military regime. They persisted despite violent repression, regrouping within churches to pray and strategize in safety, demonstrating how the spiritual dimension profoundly underscored their resilience, unity, and ultimately successful mobilization of international attention against human rights abuses.