Mapping as Power
Photo by GeoJango Maps on Unsplash
Laura Trethewey is an environmental and ocean journalist. In The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans (2023) she reports that she enlisted on a mapping cruise on the Nautilus. Her book proceeds in a chatty, informal way to give an account of her experiences and observations on board the Nautilus. Early on, she quotes the journalist, Stephen Hall:
A map always presages some form of exploitation (p. 5).
And indeed, her use of “high-stakes” in her title suggests that mapping the bottom of the oceans constitutes, among competitive nations, a chase of resources in the service of exploitation and domination.
Trethewey’s sentence linking “mapping” and “exploitation” set me to thinking about maps that exhibit the power to exploit. Likely the most pernicious map in the Bible is the sketch of King Solomon’s tax districts (I Kings 4:7-19). That map articulates twelve tax districts with twelve officers, each of which “had to make provision for one month of the year” (v. 7). Two factors suggest the urgency of these tax districts for the royal apparatus that ran roughshod over old tribal boundaries. First, among the tax officers are two of King Solomon’s own sons-in-law, Binabinadab (v. 11) and Ahimaaz (v. 15). Their presence in the roster of tax officials suggests both how important tax collection was to the king, and how lucrative it was. Second the index of luxurious foods at the king’s table attests to how much revenue was required to finance the royal appetite (I Kings 4:22-23).
It is evident in the narrative of I Kings 12:1-19 that the mapping of royal tax districts imposed unbearably heavy tax burdens on the peasant subjects of the king, so heavy that resistance and rebellion were evoked among the populace. The outcome of the peasant action was the killing of the king’s “taskmaster over forced labor” (v. 18) and the secession of ten tribes from the royal state. In effect, the resistant crowd tore up the map, and made Solomon’s tax collection impossible.
On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a decree entitled Inter caetera that detailed a division of the Americas between the Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, two states that were fully committed to papal authority. In effect the Pope mapped out the zones of conquest, exploitation, and wealth for the two European powers. Implicit in the decree is the assumption that white Europeans were free and entitled to claim, occupy, and possess the new world, its population, and its resources. While this division of the New World in this way was promptly challenged by England, France, and the Netherlands, the papal decree set in motion the rapacious contest for control of the rich land that was already otherwise inhabited. Thus the new papal mapping declared and legitimated new “ownership” of the new land, as though the pope and his white European subjects were fully entitled to it. The papal decree initiated the contest of colonialization that was to persist well into the 21st century.
These two mappings from long ago fully illustrate the thesis of Trethewey that mapping is for exploitation. Thus Solomon, via his tax districts, exploited his peasant subjects. Thus the papal decree authorized brutal exploitation of the new land, its population, and its resources. These two old maps set me to thinking about more contemporary mappings that unambiguously were designed for exploitation. I could think of three such practices that are so familiar to us that we may fail to notice their pernicious intent:
First, banks in the United States have for a very long time been engaged in “redlining,” a practice that intends and leads to discriminating home lending habits. The outcome of such mapping by banks is to deny loans to some areas and neighborhoods, while at the same time readily investing in others. Such mapping has helped to produce and sustain disadvantaged neighborhoods that have been historically labeled as “slums,” that is, neighborhoods denied resources. The basis of such mapping has most often been related to race, so that banks could systematically deny loans to neighborhoods of non-white neighbors. The practice has been unofficial and covert, and for that reason has prevailed for a long time as though it were beyond challenge.
Second is the current vigorous contestation concerning maps for voter registration and voting. Some states, through legislative action, have been able to draw district lines in ways that disempower non-white voters, either by depleting their voting strength or by placing non-white voters in a few districts, thus leaving many more districts free from effective non-white voters. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 moved effectively against such racist gerrymandering. Since that time have, however, the courts have, at every turn, sought to dismantle the force of the Voting Rights Act, leaving state officials free to map out racist discrimination.
Third, even in such local matters as school districts, mapping has been concerned with racist distinctions. Thus in my long-time hometown of Webster Groves, a suburb with a very small Black population, the school board reorganized the district in the 1960s and strategically placed three Junior High schools in the district that would channel Black students in the district into one school, so that the other two schools, located in wealthier parts of town, would remain free from Black students. (This is the same community that chose, for a while, to close its public swimming pool rather than to integrate it racially.)
In all of the instances—bank loans, voting districts, and school districts—mapping was clearly designed for exploitative purposes. It is easy enough to imagine that in discussions that produced these maps the matter was regarded as “high-stakes,” to take up Trethewey’s phrase. In every case, the “victims” of such maps were largely rendered powerless and forced to accept assigned places and roles of vulnerability. Thus:
In King Solomon’s regime, the peasants were helpless, until they mobilized.
In 1493 the native populations in the Americas were largely powerless against European force, even though there was resistance to such imposition.
On “redlining,” such action was slowly challenged through legal action, but for a long time was assumed to be legitimate and left unchallenged.
Concerning voting rights, the Act of 1965 mattered decisively, but the long process of dismantling the requirements of the law continues even now.
In school segregation, the victims were largely powerless, with some indecision whether the urgency concerned integrated schools, or good schools that might remain segregated.
We can all remember the mapping of the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe. The maps were usually in red. And then on June 12, 1987, President Reagan in Berlin boldly addressed the Soviet Union: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.” He referred to the Berlin Wall, but the point was far larger than that. He might have said, “Tear up that map.” Surely the president said more than he knew, because his demand was the endless demand everywhere of the vulnerable against the powerful who have imposed their will and order on the world.
Of course gospel faith has a stake in these matters and must mobilize all of its courage and insistence against such exploitative mapping, wherever it occurs. In a dramatic instance of such courage and insistence the leaders of the tribal peasants of Israel convened at Shechem (I Kings 12). Their intent was to dismantle or tear-up the power arrangements of Solomon’s that provided royal opportunities for exploitation by the crown. In the horizon of the New Testament the great map drew lines of exclusion between Jews and Gentiles. We may take these maps in Israel (Solomon’s districts) and in the church (Jews and Gentiles) as paradigmatic for all of the mappings I have enumerated here, along with many others. Powerful people are always drawing maps of privilege, advantage, and exclusion.
In John 4:7-15 concerning “the Samaritan woman at the well,” the narrative gives us background commentary:
Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans (John 4:9).
The matter is front and center in the narrative of Acts 10. Peter, good faithful Jew that he is, refuses the command of the voice of heaven, “Get up, kill, and eat.” Peter has a clear mapping in his head and heart about the proper relationship between Jews and Samaritans.
By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean (Acts 10:14).
Against his resistance and refusal, the voice asserts:
What God has made clean, you must not call profane (Acts 10:15).
In effect that voice from “elsewhere” intends to delegitimate the long-standing map of Jewish-Gentile relationships. The declaration of Gentile food as “unclean” is characteristic of such mapping. The distinction between “clean” and “unclean” is long-running in the Bible (see Deuteronomy 14:3-20).
It turns out, in the New Testament church, that the division between Jews and Gentiles in the community of faith was definitional for the map-destroying import of the gospel.
The most programmatic statement of the rejection of such maps is in Galatians 3:8, likely an early baptismal formula:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).
Paul’s declaration addressed three common barriers that defined social relationships in his world, and that continue to make the same divisions even among us:
There was, as among us, a decisive division between Greeks and Jews;
There was, as among us, a sharp distinction between slaves and free people, and we may add, among the descendants of slaves and owners among us.
There was, as among us, a barrier between males and females, with males enjoying unspeakable privileges in a world with a pernicious maintenance of the “glass ceiling.”
To this triad we may in our time, add a fourth such distinction between heterosexuals and gays and lesbians. And now, in Christ, no more! Because “in Jesus Christ” all such barriers are overcome. All such maps that trace out advantage and exclusion are now nullified in the gospel. Jesus Christ has put an end to the common ways in which we have apportioned the benefits of our common life. This assertion by Paul is reiterated in the later Epistle to the Ephesians:
For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us (Ephesians 2:14).
Our several maps trace out and legitimate walls that breed hostility. And now Christ Jesus has eliminated such distinctions, so that all parties have access to the resources for wellbeing.
As I was writing this comment I received a first copy of a new book authored by my friend, Troy Jackson, along with Chuck Mingo, Living Undivided: Loving Courageously for Racial Healing and Justice (2024). Jackson is a smart, fearless community organizer who has for a long, effective time faced the ways in which racism divides our society. The book grows out of the long experience of the authors of dealing with racism, and finding practical, immediate ways to overcome racist barriers in our society. In their final summation, these authors offer a summons:
This entire book has been written to encourage you to walk humbly, love mercy, and do justice. And to see that by doing so, God can use you in the work of racial healing and justice.
It starts with you.
It starts with you choosing courage over fear.
It starts with you choosing love over indifference.
It starts with you allowing God’s redeeming power to lead you away from stagnancy toward loving action (225).
It belongs to the early church, as it belongs to the contemporary church, to be at work overcoming such barriers, that is, nullifying such maps that maintain and protect privilege and so require disadvantage for others. Trethewey regards the mapping of the bottom of the oceans as “high-stakes,” a term in her subtitle. By that she means that the nations are rivals and must compete in order to control resources that are to be found in the oceans. National interest, as Trethewey understands, is always to seek to establish control, and therefore privilege and advantage. But the work of the gospel is to the contrary. In our own season of scarcity, fear, and greed prone to violence, we erect many barriers. The church, to the contrary, insists that such barriers, distinctions, and privileges should be and can be overcome. The God of love and justice engages, always again, in an embrace of creation that draws together all that we divide in fear and greed. That work is now urgent among us.
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles.
