1 The Lord is king! Let the earth rejoice;
let the many coastlands be glad!
2 Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
3 Fire goes before him
and consumes his adversaries on every side.
4 His lightnings light up the world;
the earth sees and trembles.
5 The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
before the Lord of all the earth.
6 The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
and all the peoples behold his glory.
7 All servants of images are put to shame,
those who make their boast in worthless idols;
all gods bow down before him.
8 Zion hears and is glad,
and the towns of Judah rejoice
because of your judgments, O God.
9 For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth;
you are exalted far above all gods.
10 You who love the Lord, hate evil;
he guards the lives of his faithful;
he rescues them from the hand of the wicked.
11 Light dawns for the righteous
and joy for the upright in heart.
12 Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous,
and give thanks to his holy name!– Psalm 97 (NRSVUE)
I recently flew back to the United States from a trip to Iceland. The stunning earth and sky panoramas and earth transforming vistas of the island display the divine at work in creation, the theophany that the ancient writer of Psalm 97 sings about in v6, “The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples behold his glory.”
As an upper middle-class white woman, I’ve enjoyed the unwarranted privilege of traveling easily across international borders many times in my life, most often in my capacity as a professor of international relations, and sometimes purely for pleasure. The gift of unhurried travel to Iceland included visiting sites of unparalleled natural beauty in a country where people are happy and people in power are attempting to improve the lives of the vulnerable.
My transatlantic flight took me from a country that has wholeheartedly embraced social justice in its politics back to the United States, which is in the throes of a racist, constitution-shredding administrative coup encapsulated by the actions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Standing in the reentry line to come back into my home country, thinking about the ways in which cruelty around border crossings has been normalized, and now reading about the concerted effort to dismantle civil and political rights across the board and roll back all forms of environmental protection, I felt the joy I knew in Iceland dissipating.
Psalm 97’s vision of divine sovereignty manifested in majestic geology and social harmony felt approachable in Iceland. In contrast, I feel despair as I witness life shattering and earth damaging policies enacted by the agents of ICE and Project 2025.
Iceland’s breathtaking and enigmatic landscape could serve as the cinematographic setting for a music video of Psalm 97. The poet sings of many coastlands (v1), which is an excellent description of the many fjords and peninsulas of Iceland. These are so deep and extensive that even though the country is, in area, no larger than Kentucky, it has a coastline as long as the entire US Eastern seaboard. An intriguing illustration of the coastline paradox, a lesson in fractal geometry, is that as one uses more and more precise units of measurement (kilometers, meters, centimeters), the Icelandic coastline gets longer and longer. Although I am no mathematician, I love this approximation of infinity as a source of awe and a reason for rejoicing in the mysterious handiwork of creation.
Iceland’s awesome weirdness is climactic as well as geologic. Being so close to the Arctic Circle, for much of the year the land is shrouded in clouds and thick darkness (v2). The weather is notoriously stormy for a confluence of reasons. The island sits where polar air collides with warmer air masses and where the North Atlantic Drift meets the Arctic Ocean; these contrasting temperatures fuel storm development. Moreover, Iceland’s mountainous landscape forces air masses upwards, increasing both precipitation and wind speeds. If that were not enough, there is a persistent low atmospheric pressure system, the Icelandic Low, that creates a channel for Atlantic cyclones to regularly pass over the country. Parts of the landscape are so desolate that in the 1960s, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) brought astronauts to Icelandic craters in order to acclimatize them to work on the moon.
In contrast to these barren places, the mesmerizing colors of the Aurora Borealis that frequently dance across Iceland’s night sky testify to God’s lightnings lighting up the world (v4). Iceland’s topography also bears witness to God’s glory through volcanic activity and tectonic movement illustrating Psalm 97’s imagery of fire and melting mountains (v5). The island straddles tectonic plates and grows two centimeters wider every year as the North American and Eurasian plates spread apart. Its landscape has been formed by ponderous ice caps, by eerie geysers and hot springs that erupt regularly, and by ancient and current flows of lava. Although engineers have some tricks for diverting lava from inhabited areas, towns are sometimes destroyed by seismic and volcanic activities.
Despite these bleak and alien conditions, quite a few studies document Icelanders as being among the happiest people in the world. A recent BBC report notes that the diversity of Iceland’s “otherworldly landscapes” encourages people to spend time outdoors, enhancing mental health. The 2025 World Happiness Report further concludes that Icelandic happiness is high because the country has generous infrastructure, strong social supports, and low income inequality. 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of a nationwide women’s “day off” that served as the hard fought catalyst for robust gender equality in government, public policy, and daily life.
In 2023, for example, the town of Grindavik was declared uninhabitable as a result of “earthquake swarms” and lava fissures breaching protective barriers. Rather than engaging in any victim blaming or defunding the Icelandic equivalent of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government purchased homes and assisted in resettlement efforts. The town may not be rejoicing, but neither has it been devastated by wickedness on top of the trembling earth.
Of course, Iceland is not perfect. It has its own problems and challenges, yet never before have I felt that crossing the border into the United States was a choice I might not want to make. Today, when the president talks about ending critical environmental protections and suspending habeas corpus, I do not recognize the country that has been my home for my entire life. I grew up singing about love for fruited plains and purple mountains and my hand over my heart pledging allegiance to liberty and justice for all. I grew up believing that my country was proud to lead the international community in the defeat of authoritarianism and the promotion of human freedom.
All of this is denied in deed, if not in word, by the heartless policies of Project 2025 and the insincere president who claims to know nothing about the vision he implements. What is this country where white South Afrikaaners who were the beneficiaries of the apartheid regime are welcomed at this border as refugees and black and brown people risk deportation because of the color of their skin? Who is standing up for the holy unity of justice and the amazed appreciation of the earth that is the theme of Psalm 97? Never have I so clearly longed for the indivisible connection that the psalmist’s draws between singing heavens, melting mountains, and guarding the lives of the faithful.
Just as the author of Psalm 97 sings about the juxtaposition of abundant love for the created world and recognition of an imperative for social justice, National Laureate Joy Harjo imagines an intimate connection between earth care and social witness in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings:
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children,
and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the
night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
Seeing leaders and ordinary people standing up for accountability and enacting resistance is a balm for my despair. I need to see concrete action in response to the psalmist’s calling the righteous in to oppose evil at v10, “You who love the Lord, hate evil; he guards the lives of his faithful; he rescues them from the hand of the wicked.” It is important to read about the Episcopal Church withdrawing from the federal refugee resettlement program with these words, “As Christians, we must be guided not by political vagaries, but by the sure and certain knowledge that the kingdom of God is revealed to us in the struggles of those on the margins.”
In the United States today, another one of the visible political actors speaking out against corruption, against worthless idols and the hand of the wicked as denounced in Psalm 97 and made manifest by Donald Trump and his team of kleptocrats, is Alt National Park Service, which describes itself on its Facebook page as “the official ‘Resistance’ team of U.S. National Park Service.” Its mission is “to stand up for the National Park Service to help protect and preserve the environment for present and future generations.” Notably, this mission statement explicitly does not limit itself to “generations of white people, born in the USA.”
Given the populist authoritarianism that is now strangling democracy in the United States, it is hard to hold onto hope. It is hard to imagine that our government could ever be an instrument of peace, justice, or environmental stewardship. Quaker peace studies scholar Kenneth Boulding’s insight that “anything that exists is possible” takes on prophetic weight when read alongside Psalm 97. Iceland exists—a place where social justice and environmental stewardship create genuine happiness under the same divine sovereignty that governs America. This means such alignment is possible here too.
The heavens that proclaim God’s righteousness cover both Reykjavik and Washington, DC. Even though I do not live in the shadow of volcanoes or glaciers, I can see and know that God is at work in the awesome and majestic unfolding of creation. Humans cannot build anything that outshines the Northern Lights, but we can choose leaders who govern with justice as their foundation (v2). We cannot control tectonic plates, but we can create policies that help communities displaced by disaster rather than abandoning them. We cannot command the coastlands, but we can work to make them genuinely glad (v1) through just infrastructure that serves all people, environmental protection that preserves creation, and economic justice that reflects God’s care for the vulnerable.
The same divine sovereignty that moves mountains can move human hearts toward the kin-dom—if we have eyes to see and courage to act.
