Two hundred and twenty years ago, the Haitian Revolution ended. For 13 years, enslaved peoples revolted against the colonial rule of France and became the first free, Black republic.

This revolution informs how I think about faith and community work; how I believe abolition is deeply tied to our spiritual and material salvation; and how I am reflecting on the readings for the first Sunday of Lent.

In today’s readings, God establishes a covenant with Noah, promising, “Never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed.” A promise to never destroy. After the flood, after the deaths of humans, the destruction of land, God promises to never destroy.

This feels powerful, our God, deeply moved and full of remorse over the flood’s destruction. The creator of creation, the universe, us, deeply moved and committed to never destroying again. God’s promise is rooted in care and love for not just us, but for the lands that feed us. The reading reminds us that we are called to connect and relate to every living creature, connect ourselves with the earth. This connection is resisting and evolving, reminding us that we exist outside the imagination/realities/boundaries created under the white settler colonialist imagination – resistance histories and stories are evidence of this.

The Haitian Revolution is part of a long history of indigenous and African anti-colonizer resistance in the Caribbean.

For the last few years, thanks to several friends, I am reading Haiti: The Breached Citadel by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith to better understand Haitian and Dominican spirituality and faith; how our practices evolved under French, Spanish, and U.S. empire and how these traditions are deeply shaped by chattel slavery and anti-slavery resistance and land struggles against ecological terror; and how the treatment we are currently seeing against Haitian refugees worldwide is part of a centuries-long colonizer project.

The Western, Christian world remains deeply committed to destabilization in Haiti, and this connects to the very first foreign responses to independence in 1804. France demanded reparations from the new Haitian republic for losses incurred during the anticolonial independence struggle while the U.S. spent decades refusing to acknowledge the new nation.

The revolution is the first time enslaved Black people fought against European enslavers. They fought for their freedom, inextricable from the dignity they held for the land. Pre-Columbus, indigenous Taínos stewarded the lands of Ayiti/Quiskeya. They cared for creation, and from the first year of Columbus’s arrival, fought against a constant and violent European effort to disenfranchise, dispossess, colonize. In just under 60 years after Europeans’ arrival, the Taíno population died from colonizer violence, including forced labor and diseases. Enslaved Africans replaced Taíno labor.

The French and Spanish built global chattel slavery economies. They profited off and destroyed lands that were cared for by indigenous and African communities. The Catholic Church has always been an integral part of this white supremacist, settler colonizer project. Scripture was used to enslave, to justify the violence of white European cisgender-men; and nations believe in a God-given right to conquer and colonize.

Despite this, colonized Black communities’ indigenous faith practices, evolving alongside Christianity, were integral spiritual tools for resistance.

From 1492 and onward, Taínos, and Africans, fought against colonial rule on Ayiti/Quiskeya. The fall after Columbus’ arrival, upon his return to Spain, at least 30 or so soldiers and barracks were left on the lands they occupied. Spanish soldiers raped Taíno women; Taínos fought back, destroying all barracks and killing soldiers.

In 1791, Romaine-la-Prophétesse, a trans woman born in 1750, Santo Domingue (The French name for the colony that would become Haiti), led an early revolt in the Haitian Revolution. I am learning the role queer and trans people played in resisting. The priestess fought ultimately for land, and for the freedom for Black people to move and live freely.

This revolution is integral to understanding anything about the Americas, including its religious landscape. There are tragic border crises worldwide. Refugees continue to die at the U.S.-Mexico border, at the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. Violence against refugees, especially against Black refugees, continues while politicians dispute policy. Police brutality and repression is on the rise against Black and Brown people and communities fighting for Palestine, Sudan, Haiti, Congo.

Today’s readings arrive, the Lenten season begins, at a time when we must be unafraid to confront violence against refugees, and the historic, geopolitical efforts that have led to our displacement, exploited labor, and death. What does it mean to grieve and learn this Lent? What does it mean to deeply believe in the promise – the liberation – to never destroy again? What does it mean to fight for a more sustainable and cleaner world with this promise, grounded in fighting for the most oppressed among us? What does it mean to fight for and steward the Earth?

There’s a “covenant between me and you
and every living creature with you…
of the covenant between me and the earth.
When I bring clouds over the earth,
and the bow appears in the clouds,
I will recall the covenant I have made
between me and you and all living beings,
so that the waters shall never again become a flood
to destroy all mortal beings.”

We are not meant to destroy ourselves, each other, plants, other animals, our Earth.

The Haitian Revolution is integral to any faith committed to justice for ourselves and our planet. The power/divinity/power of faith/power in God lies in the belief that we deserve better than this; that true dignity for ourselves, all creatures, plants, and lands requires us to drastically fight for a world free of material suffering, suffering caused under white supremacist patriarchal systems.

These resistance stories demonstrate the themes we hold most dear to our faith, a commitment to justice, community, human dignity, and life. They teach us a deep ecological historical concern for land; a deep love rooted in care for each other, ourselves, a commitment to sustainable living that prioritizes the whole over the individual.

How will we learn and fight for liberation? How will we emulate God’s love and promise? How will we fight for and care for the Earth? How will we uplift and learn from the most oppressed among us, the very Black and indigenous communities that steward our lands?

What does it mean to grieve and learn this Lent? What does it mean to deeply believe in the promise – the liberation – to never destroy again? What does it mean to fight for a more sustainable and cleaner world with this promise, grounded in fighting for the most oppressed among us? What does it mean to fight for and steward the Earth? 

How will we fight for each other? 

This Lenten season, I invite you to sit with the history of the Haitian Revolution; how it connects to what we see today at our borders; and what these resistance stories can teach us about solidarity. 

I invite you to also dream of a world built from the very promise God made Noah, a world where no one is destroyed.