The day the news services began to project that Joe Biden
had won the U.S. Presidential election, I found it hard to stop weeping. As
joyous countrymen and women reflecting the colors of our human rainbow danced
in our nation’s streets, I felt as if a six ton elephant had finally stepped
off my chest. I could breathe again. And I slept well that night for the first
time in a long time.
Stanching the Hemorrhaging, Saving the Soul
Biden had been elected to be the Healer-in-Chief of a
people deeply divided and a nation-state grievously wounded after four years of
jingoistic, sectarian demagoguery. His election came at the end of a dark night
of the soul in which the world held its breath as its most powerful nation
appeared at times to be teetering on the edge of a dark authoritarianism only
hinted at by historical antecedents.
From the beginning of the recent election it was always
clear to me that the most urgent aspect of a change of leadership was simply the
stanching of the hemorrhaging of the nation. Once the patient was stabilized,
we would then have to look at deeper issues.
One of the real strokes of genius of the Biden campaign was
its appeal to his countrymen and women to vote to save the very soul of
America. It is rare that a political campaign can even recognize something as
deep and as non-immediate as a nation’s soul and even rarer that its populace
would respond to such an appeal.
That call came at a time when our nation is being required
to come to grips with the crisis of a pandemic that threatens the health and
the economies of the world. It also comes at a time when issues larger than the
immediate loom on the horizon: America’s
role in the world, systemic racism, income inequality and climate change.
Rosa sat so Ruby could walk so Kamala could run.
Mr. Biden will have his hands full, to say the least. It is
gratifying to know that he will have the assistance of a very capable Vice
President, the first woman and the first person of color to hold that office.
The American success story that Kamala Harris embodies has won the hearts of
our country and reflects the New America that is even now emerging from our
nation’s womb.
The election was not good news across the board by any
stretch of the imagination. At this point it is not likely that Mr. Biden will
have a Democratic Senate to work with. And a Supreme Court recently stacked
with Federalist Society ideologues could well prove a formidable obstacle to
any programs the Biden administration would propose.
But deeper concerns arise from the patterns of voter
response revealed by exit polls across the country. The divide between red and
blue voters largely boiled down to two basic factors: race and religion.
The 47% of Americans who voted to reelect a presidency marked by chronic
dishonesty, cronyism and xenophobic tribalism were heavily white and
evangelical.
Binding Wounds But No Cheap Grace
It is a troubling reality and in the time since the
election, two thinkers have shaped my response to this revelation.
The first is Abraham Lincoln. A deeply spiritual man
who stood at the helm of state through our nation’s deadliest war, Lincoln
wrestled with how to bring a deeply divided country back together as the war
neared its end. As he began his second term as president, he sought a reunion
of his war-torn country even as he recognized both the natural punitive
tendencies victors in wars always feel entitled to exercise as well as the
resentful reluctance of the losers to submit to their power.
Lincoln knew that a response from the victorious North rooted
in revenge would prove catastrophic to any hopes for reconstruction of the defeated
South and any reunion of the country that would prove more than superficial. And
so in his Second Inaugural address, he appealed to the “higher angels” of his
countrymen and women advocating:
With malice toward none; with
charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…
Binding up the nation’s wounds was the first order of
business for Lincoln much as it is for Joe Biden. The process designed to produce
healing would take place in an atmosphere marked by distrust, dishonesty and
disrespect felt by both of the former bitter opponents. And yet, with its
wounds unhealed, America could not survive. Lincoln knew this implicitly and so
does Joe Biden.
But it is important to recognize that Lincoln’s compassion
for the suffering in the nation was only part of his approach: “[W]ith
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
finish the work we are in.” Much like the Hebrew Scriptures upon which
Lincoln often drew for wisdom, mercy must always tempered by justice.
This brings to mind the second thinker who has shaped my
response to the election, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A leader of the Confessing
Church amidst the rise of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer would end up being
imprisoned and executed by the Nazis for his role in a failed attempt to
assassinate Adolph Hitler.
Bonhoeffer is perhaps most remembered for his critique of
what he called “cheap grace:”
Cheap grace is the preaching
of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline,
Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap
grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without
Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
One should hear an echo of Lincoln’s concern here: “with
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right…” Healing cannot
happen without a recognition of the harm done to others, as all exercises in restorative
justice teach us.
What is required before reconciliation can occur is repentance
- rethinking, reconsideration, reexamination and reflection - on the part of all
the parties involved. It means recognizing that the first elephant in the back
of the room is systemic racism. It is the product of America’s original sin beginning
with the genocidal conquest of the indigenous peoples and continuing with the practice
of chattel slavery whose legal and cultural progeny haunt us to this day. It is
going to mean coming to grips with the fears that play out in nightmares for European
descendants who can no longer presume their own lives to be the norm for what
it means to be an American. It means they will be called to share space and
power with people from around the world. It means facing the fears that blind us
to the creative potential of the synergy this New America promises.
For many people of faith, it is going to require a
willingness to admit that the candidate they fervently and uncritically supported
was a walking repudiation of the faith they say they profess. In their support for
an administration that routinely embodied virtually all of the Bible’s deadly
sins beginning with “a lying tongue,” it is difficult to see much of the Way of
Jesus in any of that.
Regardless of its appeal to a fetishized approach to abortion, the tsunami of misanthropy that has marked the outgoing administration is simply impossible to reconcile with the great commandment at the heart of the Christian tradition that calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
That begins with the racial divide revealed in our voting
patterns. It is hardly a secret that the outgoing administration engaged in systematic
appeals to racist dog whistles and coddled white supremacist groups even as a nationwide
outcry erupted over the targeting of black victims by police violence. That doesn’t
necessarily make its supporters racists any more than it makes mere bystanders
at a fire arsonists. But when the bystanders begin to supply the kerosene for
the arsonist (unquestioned loyalty) and block the fire engines seeking to extinguish
those blames (denial of the harm being done), at some point they must be seen
as aiding and abetting a social pathology.
A religion which consistently engages in behaviors which betray
the beliefs they allegedly profess will rightly be seen by outsiders as lacking
in respectability if not legitimacy. In a day when the fastest growing reported
religious affiliation is “none of the above,” being seen as illegitimate could
well be the kiss of death.
A Festering Heartland
While the divides that this election revealed were
primarily racial and religious, other distinctions also raise failings where
repentance must occur before reconciliation can result. The rural/urban and
educational attainment divides revealed in exit polls reflect a culture whose
technological revolution and globalized economy have left many behind to suffer
alone. The addiction and overdose rates from our heartland are a warning sign
to a country mesmerized by the various forms of media which largely serve to distract
us.
It is not hard to understand how the people left behind in
these fundamental shifts in our economy would be resentful of the beneficiaries
of these shifts, those who have been more prone to view them with contempt than
compassion adding insult to existential injury. It is precisely among such people that
charismatic demagogues - whose siren songs of rage and resentment have
recognized and articulated their suffering - have always found support. The blind
loyalty their followers display never arises in a vacuum.
It is deeply tempting to want our country to simply get on
with things, to get back as close to “normal” as we can amidst a pandemic now
that this election is completed. We are exhausted, mentally and spiritually. But
we cannot just move on. There is no cheap grace to be had. If we are to recover
from this round of the cold civil war just ended, it will require coming to
grips with the demons that haunt us. Once our nation’s bleeding has been
stanched, it will be time to begin that long road to self-confrontation and recovery.
In the Morning Prayer I led on Election Day, I ended our
prayers with this plea: “May G-d please bless America…” If there has
ever been a time when America needed G-d’s guiding presence with us, it is now.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life
is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or
political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in
sound bites.
Those who believe
religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d
require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
your G-d? - Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the
enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly
now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to
abandon it. - Rabbi
Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
©
Harry Coverston, 2020
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