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Red
and Blue Diplomacy:
Debating the Soul of
America
 “How can
they believe these things?” my neighbor exclaimed the day after the
2004 election. “What kind of people are they?” I had paid a
“political pastoral call” on distraught neighbors lamenting the
results and shocked by the widespread media explanation of the huge
turnout of born-again Christians, galvanized by
“moral values” including abortion and gay marriage. Like so
many Northeast and West Coast folk, my neighbor has been increasingly
alarmed by the growing strength of the religious right, wondering from
which planet those people had landed to sidetrack
America
from its progressive path. Many urban liberals feel threatened by
unfamiliar, seemingly un-American forces, just like so many of those
born-again Christians feel threatened by my neighbors’ liberal,
“un-American” sentiments. Each of these groups sees the other
through shocked, fear-tinged spectacles.
A struggle to define the soul of
America
is at the heart of the culture clash which revealed its political power
more fully in the November elections at both state and federal levels.
Call the two sides what you will — conservative vs. liberal,
traditional values vs. secular humanism — but it will only make things
worse to use labels that distort and demonize rather than working to
understand more clearly where the other side is coming from.
(We’ll explore this more fully in our February seminar,
“Religious Zeal and the Culture
Wars.”).
Most conservative Christians are hardly “ignoramuses,” as
distraught and disappointed neighbors and friends have called them, nor
are most socially liberal people “duped by foreign ideas” as a
conservative email I got asserted. Such epithets only cloud the mind and
inflame emotion. The history of the world is full of examples of where
that combination leads. We need to understand one another better, even
if only for the purpose of disagreeing more effectively. And it just
might happen that we find some areas of common ground.
I’m a card-carrying liberal (though I prefer the word
“progressive”), but I know those “other” folk out there in the
rest of
America
very well. My roots are deep in fundamentalist Christianity, and I never
stopped being a “born again” Christian even when my theology and
social convictions became radically different. I can still speak the
lingo, as I was reminded on a recent trip to the South. I spent many
days totally immersed in my cousin’s Pentecostal Church of God
network: reading the Bible,
praying at the drop of a hat, and organizing a community effort to build
a house—totally free of labor cost—for an old woman whose motor home
was rusting out under her feet. These are “salt of the earth” folk,
deeply worried about the future of
America
.
As am I, for very different reasons. Since we’re both worried
about the state of the soul of
America
, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we cut through the carefully crafted,
highly-manipulative rhetoric coming from Left, Right, and Center, and
tried to understand one another’s concerns better? Dialogue and debate
are the lifeblood of democracy. Fear, mudslinging and demonizing,
however common in the history of American politics, are the building
blocks of demagoguery, the prelude to tyranny—whether that be the
tyranny of an individual, or of the majority.
Those of us who are not religious rightists need to understand
three main areas in order to see more clearly what’s going on here.
1) Religion has
always been a major force in American culture and politics, and
conservatives have felt deeply troubled by its progressive exclusion
from public life. The way American history is taught these days in
school often leaves out the religiously-based origin or influence in the
abolition of slavery, the women’s suffrage movement, the labor
movement, and even the civil rights activism of the 1960s, so heavily
church-based. Religion has been on both the pro and con side of almost
every major political issue in our history. Too often,
Hollywood
and academia portray only religion’s opposition to progressive values,
not its support of them.
Religious values inevitably influence one’s opinions about
social issues: many liberal Christians support gay marriage for
theological reasons, just as most conservatives oppose it. As
conservatives see clearly, humanism or secularism are also moral meaning
systems, secular parallels to religion no less rooted in values and
worldview. It’s impossible to keep religion out of politics. We’ve
got to learn how to have it enter debates without paralyzing it—and
keep one religious group from gaining the clout to impose its own
sectarian values on the rest of the country.
2) The current clash
is only the latest round in a religious/general culture battle that’s
been going on since the early days of the republic. The book Touchdown
Jesus shows that conservative protest against the “corrupting”
power of the entertainment industry, for example, began early in the
1800s. The battle over the teaching of evolution in schools
(brilliantly, but unfairly, satirized in the influential play and movie Inherit
the Wind) has erupted more than once. The issue of prayer in school
was seriously debated in the 19th century.
3) The idea that
America
is divided into two camps on values is misleading at best. The reality
is much more complex culturally, and personally. My liberal neighbor
finally confessed that she does share some concerns with the religious
right “now that I’m raising teenagers.” Maybe some forms of
censoring record lyrics aren’t all wrong, and violence in video games
is out of hand, she opined, awkward in her departure from liberal
political correctness. A recent brain study shows conclusively that many
people who voted for Bush had some positive feelings about Kerry, even
if they denied it verbally.
Conservatives are typically most vocal about the moral values
surrounding sex and family; liberals about the moral values relating to
large social issues like poverty and the environment. Both have families
and live in society. We need to look for common ground, even as we
disagree. The theologically conservative, socially liberal Christian
leader Jim Wallis suggests that we can begin by “claiming the major
values of the Hebrew prophetic heritage” which are the basis of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as an important element in
Humanist thought. Respect for the individual, concern for the poor,
distrust of money manipulating power, humility before humanity’s place
in creation, and a stern call to morality and personal accountability.
Maybe the common ground of our shared heritage could create a better
vocabulary for our debate.
And a lot better than thinking the other side landed from Mars.
—Robert Corin Morris
Our Winter 2005 Guide to Wholistic
Living, mailed to members, will include an excerpt on "Making
Meaning" from Bob's forthcoming book. Become
a member now!
People who
live in the South Orange-Maplewood area and points East will have a chance
to attend select Interweave events nearer home this Winter/Spring
semester. We’re launching a new evening lecture series, Tuesdays in
Maplewood
, in the facilities of
St. George’s
Church
,
550 Ridgewood Rd.
at
Woodland
, near the “
Maplewood
Village
” shopping area. A Saturday workshop in March is also planned.
Ever
wished you’d have a chance to catch an event you missed, or get a
mini-version? Our February 8 lecture “Beyond Red and Blue” will
feature highlights from our six-week Summit course, “Religious Zeal and
the Culture Wars” with Director
Robert Morris and Drew Professor Michael Christensen. The March 8 evening
will be a catchy presentation of “The Biological Roots of Mysticism and
Religion” featuring material in our longer “Is there a God Gene?”
course in
Summit
. (Take the longer course and bring a friend to the one-evening event!) On
April 12, Lisa Green will be breaking new ground with “A Poetry
Primer.”
You
don’t have to live in the
Maplewood
area to enjoy any of these events, and especially not for our Saturday,
March 5 workshop, “Seeking the God Beyond God: Transpersonal Images of
the Holy,” with Bob Morris.
St. George’s
has opened its doors to Interweave, so you can expect other events in
future semesters. Come and bring your friends!
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