The Liturgy of Dissent

Abstract

Dissent is a social act that comes freighted with a cultural and historical logic. It has its own iconography, mythology, and liturgy. The icons of dissent serve as paradigms for those whom they inspire. The myths of dissent offer the faithful reassuring stories of struggle and eventual triumph. The liturgy of dissent, in contrast, provides ritualized texts of remembrance, solace, and defiance. Commitment and community, empathy and identity, solidarity and sacrifice are its central themes. Though the liturgy of dissent bears a strong affinity to what Robert Cover identifies as the “texts of resistance,” the two are not the same. Texts of resistance expound the law by which a dissenting community defines the legitimacy and justice of its struggle. The liturgy of dissent, in contrast, proposes community rather than law. More importantly, the liturgy of dissent is the social mechanism by which a community transmutes suffering and sacrifice into normative triumph and, even, joy. This commentary examines this liturgy from the Book of Jonah through Socrates, Debs, Mandela, and the civil rights movement. Dissent, these paragons teach us, always comes with a heavy price. But their greatest lesson is that true dissenters prove their bona fides in accepting those costs with uncommon grace.