#shepersisted, #LetLizSpeak

Those are a couple of the hashtags on Twitter since the Senate leadership silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren last night. She had tried to read a 1985 letter by Coretta Scott King that opposed the administration’s nominee for attorney general. Some of Warren's Republican colleagues objected that she was impugning the character of a fellow senator.

Setting aside whether or not the letter did that (and whether or not rebuking Warren but not the men who have been reading the same letter on the Senate floor this morning), I find myself thinking about a brief but powerful Bible story. 

In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells the story of a widow with a grievance who confronts a judge, “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” The judge refuses to give the woman justice. She comes back, over and over, seeking it. One day the judge says to himself,  “I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.“ (One ancient manuscript renders that last phrase, “ Or so that she may not finally come and slap me in the face.") So, begrudgingly, the judge does what is right.

I wonder if the majority leader realized when he condemned Warren that he was invoking a Christian parable “She was warned,” he said last night. “She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”