Alexei Navalny | Nex Benedict | Aaron Bushnell
There is grief and pain in what I intend to write here. There is mourning and loss and despair. There is also meaning and protest and hope.
Because I will be writing about three beloved children of God who have died, I hope that how I write will serve as an honoring prayer. Because all died in severe situations,
[TW: I invite readers to take their time deciding whether they wish to continue reading.]
I also believe it is incumbent upon all of us to prayerfully consider the meaning of death, and how we die, and how we make sense of death, and what death can and can’t do. Especially in a season like Lent, Christians are already engaged in meditation on the crucifixion of Christ. Paul went so far as to say in his letter to the Corinthians that he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
What follows will be a meditation on how we can know Christ crucified in and through the deaths of Alexei Navalny, Nex Benedict, and Aaron Bushnell.
—
Last summer our family traveled through Central Europe, revisiting many places we’d lived in the late 1990s.
One of our last stops in Prague was at at the gravesite of Jan Palach, a Czech student at Charles University whose self-immolation in 1969 was a protest against the "demoralization" of Czechoslovak citizens caused by the Soviet occupation.
When you stand at Palach’s grave, knowledge of how he died inevitably forces a meditation on whether there are good reasons to end our own lives. In the case of Palach, we know his death has meant something to many. Although the Soviet Union attempted to suppress the memory of self-immolation, eventually his death became such an inspiration to the Czech people that they established on the 20th anniversary of his death Palach Week.
Palach Week is considered one of the catalyst demonstrations which preceded the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia 10 months late.
I will try to say briefly why I can empathize with those who self-immolate while I myself would not do it. In brief, there are some things in the world so terrible, it seems the only thing that might change them would be radical, extreme action.
However, and this is the point I believe needs to be made, as difficult as it is to make it: in Christian tradition, although we honor martyrs, we do not encourage self-harm.
One can be made a martyr, but one cannot make oneself a martyr.
I recognize each person will need to make their own moral choices out of their own frameworks, but for me, as a Christian, I cannot encourage or valorize self-immolation, even if I think I understand at least a little bit the desperation present in it.
I certainly can’t go along with Cornel West, who recently tweeted, “Let us never forget the extraordinary courage and commitment of brother Aaron Bushnell who died for truth and justice!”
I simply think there’s too much tragedy in a self-immolation to attempt to make valorizing meaning out of it in the way West does.
I am sorry Aaron Bushnell is gone. I wish we might continue to hear his voice of opposition to the genocide in Gaza. His death is a tragic loss for us all.
And at a very baseline, I want those currently experiencing suicidal ideation to find the best resources and friends they can, because we want you to live.
—
We have all been reading stories the past few weeks about the death of another person of opposition. Alexei Navalny died last week after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence.
Navalny survived a poisoning in 2020, but then intentionally went back to Russia, knowing what he would face as a dissident and opposition-leader.1
A 2021 trial transcript is Navalny’s most concise testimony of how his faith influenced his commitment to opposition, “in which Navalny explains, in strikingly biblical terms, what it means to suffer for one’s beliefs.”
Specifically, Navalny said, he was motivated by the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6, NASB).
“I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity,” Navalny said. “And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing.”
“On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction,” he said. “Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions and did not betray the commandment.” (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/february-web-only/alexei-navalny-russell-moore-putin-russia-moral-courage.html)
This is in short the Christian perspective on martyrdom, that one does not seek death, but one does the right thing, in the right moment, which may, given the brutality of the systems many of us live under, result in death.
In the meantime, resistance is resistance. By many reports, Navalny found remarkable ways to resist even the brutality of the prison he was in through farcical messages and humor, including Navalny joking in letters (to Natan Sharansky, whose Jewish faith inspired his own resistance to oppression under the Soviets) about “where else to spend Holy Week” than in the prison complex the older man called his “alma mater.”2
—
Both Aaron Bushnell and Alexei Navalny, in their very different manners, had the opportunity to offer interpretation of their own deaths. Bushnell did so quite explicity through his last will and testament and his recorded statements before and during the self-immolation. But Navalny did also, continually publishing as much as he could knowing full well he could at any time die. And as Sharansky writes in their correspondence, “But his [Navalny’s] true concern is the fate of his people—and he is telling them: ‘I am not afraid and you should not be afraid either.’ ”
Nex Benedict, on the other hand, was not given such an opportunity, and it would not even be fair to say they sought it. Some deaths are simply, tragically, horribly inflicted. Then, by necessity, communities make sense of their deaths and they become martyrological stories.
Nex, a non-binary student in Oklahoma, died after an altercation in their school’s bathroom. There has been, since, a national outpouring of grief and support. The outpouring is happening in large part because non-binary and trans students across the country are oppressed by the rise of anti-trans policies (like the ones in Oklahoma) that inspire more confrontations like the one with Nex.
With the tragic loss of Nex Benedict, we see communities making sense of a senseless death. Like Matthew Shepherd and so many others lost to us through bullying and anti-queer violence, the death is an opportunity to lament and cry out, and it is also a path for messaging and organization.
One such movement, a letter to the Oklahoma legislature:
The undersigned organizations call on the Oklahoma Legislature to immediately remove Ryan Walters from his position as Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction and to begin an investigation into the Oklahoma Department of Education to determine what actions and policies have led to a culture where rampant harassment of 2SLGBTQI+ students has been allowed to go unchecked.
In order for trans and non-binary people to not feel desperation, we need even more pathways for everyone to engage in constructive solidarity against anti-trans legislation and in support of queer thriving.
—
Why do I weave these stories together? It’s important, even in the midst of tragedy, to consider how past examples and the guiding principles of our faith can instruct us on how we might also act in solidarity with those who have died.
In the case of Aaron Bushnell, I respond with deep empathy and grief, even if I choose not to valorize his action or take it as a model to emulate.
In the case of Alexei Navalny, I am inspired by his courage to “not be afraid.” I also find his farcical humor in the face of fascism instructive.
In the case of Nex Benedict, I grieve with their family and wish we still had Nex with us so they could be their own voice in community with others combatting a culture of harrasment and hate.
But we can and must make the right meaning from all their deaths, and inasmuch as is possible (given our own grief and struggles) honor and cherish those who have died, praying that their memory would be a blessing.
A comparison to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s intentional to return to Germany from New York City is instructive.
Do yourself the favor, click through to The Free Press link and read the letters.