Victor Hugo’s legendary novel, Les Misérables, offers a rich tapestry of ideas for exploring where established Church leadership and institutions stand with regard to the world’s oppressed people. By juxtaposing the experiences of his protagonist, Jean Valjean, with his antagonist, Javert, Hugo takes us into two fundamentally different ways of seeing the world.
Jean Valjean represents the oppressed, whose survival and quest for justice often place them outside ‘The Law.’ In contrast to Jean Valjean’s nuanced view of right and wrong, where his compassion for the poor is entirely nonjudgmental, Javert represents an unyielding obedience to authority. Within this framework, the rights and wrongs in applying the law are determined solely by the interests of the powerful and wealthy who form the establishment.
In the novel, Jean Valjean is rescued from certain imprisonment by Bishop Myriel, who famously offers him his best silver candlesticks in addition to the silver Valjean had just stolen. This radical act of kindness underpins the core Christian message of compassion and redemption. The Bishop’s words, “I buy your soul for God,” echo throughout the novel.
Conversely, within Javert’s narrow frame of righteousness and his ruthless quest to see Valjean returned to prison, he cannot comprehend that he has lost his moral grounding, not Valjean. Only in the final chapters, when Javert is forced to face the emptiness and treachery of his beliefs, does his life crumble. In a dramatic scene, contrasting starkly with the higher moral calling of Jean Valjean, Javert cries out to God in anguish at the ultimate deception of his obedience to a law bereft of mercy, before leaping to his death.
Christian teachings would undoubtedly place us in Jean Valjean’s world. However, current evidence suggests that those facing and resisting oppression in today’s real-life struggles for justice are far more likely to face the authoritarian treatment exhibited by Javert, rather than anything resembling the compassion expressed by Bishop Myriel. By rooting its theology in a literal understanding of Old Testament scripture, Church leaders have allowed a rigid interpretation of biblical law to take precedence over the Christian message of compassion, justice, and redemption.
If one transposes the structure of Les Misérables onto the contemporary geopolitics of the Middle East, it introduces not only a crisis of faith within the Church, but also shifts the dynamics to create a complex web of modern parallels. The 1832 June Rebellion of the dispossessed at the barricades can be read as a mirror for the Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination from within their occupied country.
Today, these resistance groups are placed entirely outside the law. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansarallah, though born from a population of dispossessed people, are proscribed as terrorist movements by the powers that oppress and occupy them. Meanwhile, groups like Palestine Action, along with their supporters opposing the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, recognize that under international law, a people facing a brutal, decades-long occupation have both a legal right and a moral obligation to resist.
In the UK, where “might has become right,” demonstrators rising up in support of Palestinians have been met with heavily policed operations and an overwhelmingly draconian state response. Protesters risk prosecution not only under criminal law, but under terrorism laws as well. Given that many of these protesters are elderly, ordinarily law-abiding citizens, this overreach of power is on full display.
Church leaders, alongside government bodies, have repeatedly expressed their loyalty toward Israel. By continually speaking of Israel’s biblical entitlement to the land of historic Palestine as “God’s Chosen People,” they have reinforced the Zionist view that the Palestinians’ claim to the land they have lived on and nurtured for centuries counts for very little. There is nothing in Christ’s teachings that would support this exclusionary interpretation of ownership and entitlement, nor is there anything that sanctions the Church leaders’ calculated omission and condoning of a brutal occupation.
Christ spoke of all humanity being God’s children. His message to “love thy neighbor as thyself” did not sanction the murder of a neighbor’s children with quadcopter drones. Using Old Testament writings that call for the wholesale slaughter of the Amalekites as a justification for modern genocide is as far away from Christian teaching as one can imagine. Christ spoke of equality and justice; He preached that the poor and the dispossessed will inherit the earth, and that they will more easily enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not those who wield power and control over others. For the powerful, entering the heavenly realm will be as difficult as passing a camel through the eye of a needle.
Ordinary, unelected people who have incorporated these teachings into their lives now stand at the modern barricades. Yet, through silent omission and politically motivated alliances, many of the Church leaders who preach love and compassion do not live by their words. Instead, they follow a different creed. It reflects a much closer connection to Javert’s rigid beliefs.
The Church’s silence on dispossession and injustice sends a hollow message to its parishioners. As church halls become increasingly empty, many of those former parishioners are out in the streets, demonstrating support for Palestinians and openly expressing their disgust toward the actions of Israel. None among these ‘wayward’ parishioners doubt that Christ would be standing directly alongside them at the barricades.
With no Bishop Myriel to provide a moral anchor within the institution, the divine Christian message is no longer to be found inside the cathedrals, but out in the streets among those willing to face oppression head-on.