No Justice, No Peace: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and the Black Lives Matter Movement

No Justice, No Peace: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Racism in America looms large in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead. She probes white Americans’ increasing avoidance of and apathy toward issues of racial injustice in the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. However, as Robinson thoughtfully diagnoses white America’s ills, she prescribes a healing balm for the next generation that comes from an unlikely source: America’s past. A product of the fiery Christian Puritanism brought over on the Mayflower, the eldest Rev. Ames preaches that slavery is itself a war, and that peace is impossible without abolition. A prophetic stance. Boiled down, his motto is identical to that of the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement: No Justice, No Peace. Through Rev. Ames, Robinson establishes that American Puritanism is the type of demanding doctrine—a philosophy of action—necessary for white America to heal itself of its carelessness, which is a necessary step in healing America of its original sin of racial injustice.