Love in a time of resentment:
Seeking hope in today’s politics
Lakeland University Mission House Lecture, Oct. 18, 2016
The tension between
religion and the public authorities goes back to the earliest days of
Christianity. But what does that mean for us today, living in a democracy, but
where resentment seems to be the coin of the realm this year. How might we find paths to living as followers of Jesus or from other faith
perspectives while still acting as engaged citizens in our nation.
It was early in the morning in June of 2007. Really early.
Like 5 a.m.
Kathy Cramer, a UW political science professor, was getting out of her Volkswagen Jetta at a gas station in a village along the Wisconsin River about an hour west of Madison.
She was not there to get gas for her car. She was there to
talk with a group of men and women, employed and retired, who gathered at the
station regularly to start the day with coffee and conversation.
Well, not really to talk with them. More to listen to them.[1]
Kathy Cramer was at the beginning stages of a research
project that would stretch from 2007 to 2012 – five years. She would spend time
with small groups in about two dozen communities all over Wisconsin.
During those five years, voters in Wisconsin would support Barack Obama for president in 2008 and elect Scott Walker governor in 2010. They would reject an attempt to recall Walker in 2011 and then they would support Obama for re-election in 2012.
Kathy wanted to hear what people in Wisconsin were thinking
about government, about education, about their communities, about their future.
What she heard was a lot of resentment.
Yes, resentment about government and resentment about the
big cities of Madison and Milwaukee from those who live outstate. But even
deeper, resentment toward their fellow citizens.
Kathy called the book that presented her research The Politics of Resentment.
Here's how she described what she observed:
The politics of resentment is “a kind of politics in which people
do not focus their blame on elite decision makers as they try to comprehend an
economic recession. Instead, they give their attention to fellow residents who
think they are eating their share of the pie. These interpretations are
encouraged, perhaps fomented, by political leaders who exploit these divisions
for political gain.”[2]
She said that grows out of “political differences that have
become personal” and the differences in political points of view are treated as
“fundamental differences in who we are as human beings.”[3]
I’m calling this talk today “Love in a time of resentment:
Finding hope in today’s politics.” The challenge for me – maybe for many of you
– is where to find a spirit of love when there seems to be so much meanness
pervading our public life – and maybe even our personal lives - and how to find
hope in a year when our political system seems dysfunctional at best, possibly even
destructive to the ideals of democracy.
I am coming at this from my own understanding of what it
means to be a follower of Jesus, so you’ll hear a lot of that in what I say.
But I don't think the ideas I’ll be exploring are limited to Christians. They
are ideas folks of many beliefs and no beliefs in particular can use to help
shape a more promising future. It’s just that mine grow out of my understanding
of the message of that itinerant rabbi who lived 2,000 years ago in an
always-contested narrow strip of land we know as Israel.
And – spoiler alert – here’s the conclusion: The politics of
resentment may fracture democracy but people of faith can draw on their
resources to change the tenor of public life by living in a way that offers an
alternative to what see around us. Within that, there is hope.
I’m going to explore this by delving into the experiences of
about a dozen people, including some of my own experiences. There will be some
common words in these stories – listening, crossing boundaries, proximity, courage,
humility, hope.
For Kathy, listening was at the center of what she was
doing. It was not always easy.
First of all, she was a university professor driving a
foreign car, often pulling up next to Fords and trucks to visit people who
figured most professors mostly just looked down on them. Kathy wrote: “I am
somewhat of an introvert, so often resorted to a chunk of dark chocolate and a
deep breath for courage. Most of the time, people welcomed me warmly. Sometimes
I had to have tough skin.”[4]
There’s a bit of a model there for the rest of us if we want
get beyond our own familiar circle of family and friends. It’s not always easy.
Sometimes it will not go well.
At that gas station along the Wisconsin River, folks chatted amiably during her first two visits. But in April of 2011, when the state was being torn asunder by Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to gut pubic employee unions, when she arrived, most of the regulars at the coffee gathering got up from the table and waited on the other side of the room until she left. The topic was simply too explosive and she was seen as one of those public employees.
It was not only public employees who were the targets of
resentment as Kathy drove around the state. It was immigrants and blacks,
professors and tourists. It was anyone not considered a “hard-working
American.”
In one of my favorite moments, when Kathy asked one group to describe a hard-working American, one of the men asked if she had taken a shower that morning. The question seemed odd, a bit too personal. Then he explained. If you take a shower before you go to work, you are not a hard-working American. They take showers after a hard day at work.
In one of my favorite moments, when Kathy asked one group to describe a hard-working American, one of the men asked if she had taken a shower that morning. The question seemed odd, a bit too personal. Then he explained. If you take a shower before you go to work, you are not a hard-working American. They take showers after a hard day at work.
Still, she found that in rural settings and urban ones, in
those gas station coffee klatches and in restaurants in the suburbs, people
were more open than you might expect.
“In general,” Kathy wrote, “I find that if you sincerely convey to people that you are interested in what they think and are there to listen, not to preach or lecture, they have a lot to say.”[5]
Listening as a journalist
Since I came out of the world of journalism before I entered
the ministry, you might think that I have done my fair share of listening over
the years. I have interviewed lots of people, a grieving mom after a son’s
death in a car accident, teachers in schools, and while on strike, mayors,
bishops, presidential candidates.
Along the way, I hope I developed the ability to listen
carefully to people and then convey the essence of their ideas to those who
read my articles. But journalism as a whole seems to have a problem in that
arena and as a long-time journalist, I suspect that I was also part of the
problem.
People in the news business think we have a pretty good idea
of what readers will want to know - or should want to know. So that’s what
guides our coverage. There are folks out there trying to turn that idea in a
new direction – not with lots of cute videos of cats (although we know those
are great click bait) but by finding out what questions and concerns readers
have and then working with them to find some answers.
My daughter, Julia, who has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and now a master’s degree in social journalism from the City University of New York, is working for a company that is at the cutting edge of this. Besides the fact that she is my daughter and I am proud of what she is doing, I think the approach her company is taking has some resonance with Kathy Cramer’s work and with the experiences of other people I will be talking about today.
The company she works for is called Hearken. It works with
news organizations to get in touch with people in their communities to find out
what their questions and concerns are, then makes them partners in the
development of the stories. Her colleague Ellen Meyer writes that this has led
to reports on about the names of streets
and towns,
the history of accents
and indigenous
languages, and why some public transit lines are so indirect and twisty.
As Ellen wrote, “These stories aren’t necessarily pegged to current events, they’re not breaking news…but they’re also not fluff…Every single one of these stories illuminates a power structure, unearths a history rarely told, or helps audiences understand the fabric of their community. A street name connects to a displaced indigenous tribe. A suburb’s ban on ‘For Sale’ signs is actually a corrective for housing segregation. A train line follows the path of least financial resistance.”[6]
As Ellen wrote, “These stories aren’t necessarily pegged to current events, they’re not breaking news…but they’re also not fluff…Every single one of these stories illuminates a power structure, unearths a history rarely told, or helps audiences understand the fabric of their community. A street name connects to a displaced indigenous tribe. A suburb’s ban on ‘For Sale’ signs is actually a corrective for housing segregation. A train line follows the path of least financial resistance.”[6]
Jeff Jarvis, recently offered this suggestion to reporters covering politics in
2016: “Listen. Go to the many constituencies who are unreflected in media and
do not ask for quotes to fill in the stories you've already invented. Ask them
what matters to them. And listen.”[7]
When listening is hard
Sometimes people learn the hard way about the importance of
listening in the midst of difficult situations. Here's the story of Sister Helen Prejean.
“I’ve come to St. Thomas (the name of the housing project)
to serve the poor and I assume that someone occupying a cell on Louisiana’s
death row fits that category,” she wrote in her powerful book Dead Man Walking.[8] She
had no idea what she was getting herself into.
She had come to New Orleans as part of a shift if the
Catholic Church to link faith to the work for social justice, standing at the
side of the poor. She was uneasy with that to begin with. Her faith involved a
personal relationship with God, kindness to others, not challenging social and
economic and political systems.[9] She really had no idea what she was getting herself into.
Elmo Patrick Sonnier – number 95281 to the Louisiana prison
system – along with his brother had abducted a teenaged couple parked in a
lovers’ lane near their town. They raped the girl, then shot both the boy and
the girl three times each in the back of their heads.
“I wonder what I can say to this man?” Sr. Helen reflected.
“What will he have to say to me?” And as she wrote to him, she thought briefly
of the families of the two victims, but figured by now – five years after the
murder of their children – they had put the pain behind them and want nothing
to do with someone befriending their children’s murderer.”[10]
A year and a half later, at a Pardon Board hearing seeking
to stop his execution, she met the families of the victims.
As she left the building, she ran into Lloyd and Eula Le
Blanc, the parents of the young man who was murdered. Here’s how she describes
that moment:
“My heart is pounding. I fumble for words. ‘I’m so sorry
about your son,’ I say.
“LeBlanc says, ‘Sister, I’m a Catholic. How can you
represent Elmo Patrick Sonnier’s side like this without ever having come to
visit with me and my wife or the Bourques (the parents of the young woman) to
hear our side? How can you spend all your time worrying about Sonnier and not
think that maybe we needed to you to?”[11]
It was a deeply unsettling moment for Sr. Helen. I think it would be for any of us. I know it would be for me. But it is those deeply unsettling moments that can help us transform our lives.
It was a deeply unsettling moment for Sr. Helen. I think it would be for any of us. I know it would be for me. But it is those deeply unsettling moments that can help us transform our lives.
Sr. Helen did not back off her opposition to the death
penalty or her ministry to those on death row. But she learned the importance
of also caring for the families of the victims, of being in touch with them, of
listening to them, as hard and as uncomfortable as that would be in each
situation.
She wrote: “I feel I am still right to oppose capital
punishment, but I had not thought seriously enough about what murder means to
victims’ families and to society. I had not considered how difficult the issue
of capital punishment is. My response had been far too simplistic.”[12]
Chutzpah and humility
One of my guides as I thought about where love might fit in
a time of resentment is a teacher and an author and spiritual mentor named
Parker Palmer. Parker lives in Madison and has become a friend over the years,
but the scope of his work is national, even international.
In his marvelous book from 2011, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthyof the Human Spirit, Parker wrote about the two words that Americans need
in our era. They are chutzpah and humility. I think you saw both in the
story of Sr. Helen.
Chutzpah is a
Yiddish word for noncomformist but gutsy advocacy. Parker uses it in the sense
of “having a voice that needs to be heard and the right to speak it.” But it
shares top billing with humility,
which Parker says means “accepting the fact that my truth is always partial and
may not be true at all.”[13]
A few years ago, I was at a conference of journalists who
cover religion. One of the panels was called “Atheism Revisited” and on the
panel was Wendy Kaminer, who at that time was a regular writer for The Atlantic magazine. I had gotten to
know her husband, Woody Kaplan. They are both active in a group known as the
Secular Coalition for America.
It was an interesting combination – a Christian minister and two advocates from a group that defends the interests of atheists, agnostics, humanists and others who do not embrace religion as I know it.
As I chatted with Wendy, I told her I appreciated her
presentation and her perspective on the panel. I quoted one of my mentors – an
alumnus of Lakeland and a long-time member of the board of directors here, Rev.
David Michael. The words he used were not original, but they have become a
mantra for me.
“Here’s what I believe – but I could be wrong.”
Wendy smiled and said, “That’s what I think, too.” Then there was a pause. “You could be wrong.”
She was teasing, of course. But it was a vivid reminder that as we engage in conversations about politics or religion or any other hot-button topic, we would do well to embrace what Parker Palmer called the two essential words – chutzpah and humility and what Dave Michael articulated so clearly – what you might remember about this whole presentation – “well, I could be wrong.”
Parker Palmer had something else to say in Healing the Heart of Democracy that I
think has bearing on our engagement with public life in a time of
resentment. One source of resentment
comes when we believe that some issue we believed in, that people we support
had struggled for, that seemed settled is suddenly being contested again.
This is not unique to either the left or the right on the political
spectrum. We wish that the things we believe in were in place once and for all,
not to be disturbed by forces seemingly beyond our control.
What Parker reminded me is that democracy does not work that
way. Democracy works not by orders from on high that settle things once and for
all, but from the tension that exists as people work out over time how things
need to be adapted for each era.
Parker quotes historian Joseph Ellis, who wrote, that the governing institutions the founders of our nation created were “not about providing answers” but about “providing a framework in which the salient questions could continue to be debated.”[14]
Parker quotes historian Joseph Ellis, who wrote, that the governing institutions the founders of our nation created were “not about providing answers” but about “providing a framework in which the salient questions could continue to be debated.”[14]
Because the world around us changes, the needs and solutions
change as well, Parker observed. He wrote: “In the democracy crafted by the
founders, the most recent solution to a problem does not remove that problem
from our national agenda. Sooner or later, someone calls for a different
solution, and we continue to work away at problems so complex that they cannot
be resolved with a final stroke of a pen.”
Think about the issues before us today – immigration, guns,
race, marriage, abortion, economic inequality – pick your favorite. We continue
to work through the tensions as we grapple with basic principles and changing
times.
Parker suggests that religion is one of the entities that
helps us hold these tensions in our lives creatively. That may come as a bit of
shock to you if you think of religion as a static or rigid force in society,
always looking back instead of looking forward.
Here’s how Parker approaches that: “The true intent of all
the great world religions is to help people find meaning and purpose amid
life’s endless tensions – especially the tension involved in trying to live a
meaningful life despite the certainty of death, which would seem to obliterate
all meaning.”[15]
Transformation in South Africa
Let me take you to South Africa, where some of these threads
of chutzpah and humility, of daring and of hope, of seeking meaning in the
midst of change, came together in a fascinating way.
Let me first take you to St. George’s Cathedral in Capetown,
South Africa, in 1984, in the midst of the struggles of the black majority in
that nation to break free of the evil of apartheid – the laws of the white
government there to keep blacks segregated from and subject to whites.
The white government had just cancelled a political rally
and Archbishop Desmond Tutu had called for a worship service as an
alternative. Riot police and armed
soldiers massed outside the church. Police stood along the walls inside the
cathedral, conspicuously taping and writing down what was being said.
Tutu denounced the evils of apartheid. Then pointing his
finger at the police, the archbishop thundered, “You may be powerful, very
powerful indeed, but you are not God. You have already lost.”
Then Tutu came out from behind the pulpit. A smile broke out
on his face as he looked at the stone-faced police. “We are inviting you to
come and join the winning side.”
The winning side? Really. It surely did not seem like it at
the time. There was chutzpah and daring and hope. A decade later, apartheid was
gone. But the nation still was in desperate need of healing.
The new South African government set up a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, led by Archbishop Tutu. It was a place where victims
of gross human rights violations could tell of their experiences and
perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil
and criminal prosecution.
It was a place of listening to the other side. It was a
place to let love act in a time and place of deep resentment and distrust. It
was not a perfect process, but it helped South Africa acknowledge the past and
move beyond it. And for Tutu, it was his religious grounding that enabled him
to provide the leadership that was needed.
Tutu wrote in his 2009 book No Future Without Forgiveness about what I think is an essential part of listening: “Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon…The point is that if perpetrators were to be despised of as monsters and demons then we were thereby letting accountability go out the window because we were then declaring that they were not moral agents to be held responsible for the deeds they had committed. More importantly, it meant that we abandoned all hope of their being able to change for the better. Theology said they still, despite the awfulness of their deeds, remained children of God with the capacity to repent, to be able to change.”[16]
Tutu wrote in his 2009 book No Future Without Forgiveness about what I think is an essential part of listening: “Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon…The point is that if perpetrators were to be despised of as monsters and demons then we were thereby letting accountability go out the window because we were then declaring that they were not moral agents to be held responsible for the deeds they had committed. More importantly, it meant that we abandoned all hope of their being able to change for the better. Theology said they still, despite the awfulness of their deeds, remained children of God with the capacity to repent, to be able to change.”[16]
OK, so most of us are probably not going to be dealing with
people on death row or the parents of their victims. Most of us are probably
not going to be standing in the pulpit in a cathedral in a time of danger or
leading a nation in search of truth and reconciliation. Most of us won’t – but
maybe a few of you will have that opportunity.
Moving beyond the familiar
I find those stories sources of inspiration, not because I am likely to be in those situations, but because they give me opportunities to reflect on how I live in my daily life.
They are stories that encourage me to move beyond the
familiar and the comfortable, to get beyond just talking with people who are
like me, who think like me. They are stories that encourage me to treat them
with respect even when I disagree with them or with what they are doing.
I grew up in northeast Wisconsin, in a city on the Michigan
border called Marinette. It was a virtually all-white community in those days.
Diversity meant Catholic or Protestant (although there were some Jewish
families in town.) It meant your heritage was German or Polish, French or
Irish.
When I was in the first years of college, I had a chance to
spend a week in Chicago with an organization known as Friendship House. This
was in the late 1960s, when the Civil Rights movement was changing our nation.
It was a week designed to give people like me a chance to
immerse myself in the lives of African Americans in Chicago. We attended
programs during the day and I lived with a black family in the evenings.
The first day I went to the bus stop to ride down to
Friendship House, I was acutely aware that I was the only white person on the
bus. I had never had that experience before.
A couple of nights in, as my host parents and I were getting
to know each other a bit better, they began telling what it was like to be an
African-American man and woman in America, in Chicago. I felt uneasy, defensive, like somehow what
had happened to them was my fault. I had never had a conversation like this
before. I had never thought about all the benefits I had as a white man that
had come about in part because of the work their ancestors did as slaves in our
shared country.
It’s not like they were attacking me. They were kind and gentle folks, educating this white kid from the north woods about their lives. Thank goodness, I had enough sense to listen and ask questions instead of trying to tell them it could not possibly have been that bad.
It’s not like they were attacking me. They were kind and gentle folks, educating this white kid from the north woods about their lives. Thank goodness, I had enough sense to listen and ask questions instead of trying to tell them it could not possibly have been that bad.
Jumping across several decades, someone I have gotten to
know in the last year is Dilshad Ali. She is the managing editor of the Muslim
channel on the Patheos web site – a
site devoted to global dialogue about religion and spirituality.
When I first met Dilshad, she was on a panel of journalists
and talked about the worry her folks had when she took the job at Patheos a decade ago. As you well know,
there are factions within Islam just as there are in Christianity and every other
faith group. Her father was worried about her getting in the cross fire not
only with Muslims, but with her fellow Americans who have targeted Muslims for
special ire.
As I have gotten to know her, I have had a chance to learn
from her web site and from our conversations about the complexities and
confidence of Muslims. Here’s one example. Dilshad wears a hijab – the
headscarf the many Muslim women wear. She chose to wear it when she was a young
woman, a decision that put her at odds not only with her mother, but also with
her husband.
This is interesting because the common American view of the
hijab is that men force women to wear it as a sign of submission to them. For
Dilshad, it is just the opposite. It is
a sign of her independence and of her identity as a Muslim. And yet she listens
respectfully to those who take other approaches.
One more recent excursion for me of learning from people who
are not normally in my orbit involved Russell Moore, the president of the
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists are the nations’ largest
Protestant denomination – and theologically and politically, they are a long
ways from where I am and where the United Church of Christ is.
And yet Russell Moore has given me fresh insights into a
dimension of Christianity that I have not always understood or agreed with –
and he has helped me clarify my understanding of the role I can play in a
sharply divided society.
In his book Onward:Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, Moore writes that Christians
are called to what he describes as “engaged alienation” – a “Christianity that
preserves the distinctiveness of our gospel while not retreating from our
callings as neighbors and friends and citizens.”[17]
Listen to his words on one of the hot button issues of our
day – what to do about the proliferation of guns in our society.
“I have a position on gun control,” Moore writes – and his
position is different from my position. But here’s the critical part, the thing
to remember when we want to claim God’s mandate for whatever political position
we take.
Moore says he does not believe that his position on gun control is a matter of divine revelation, “so I am more than happy to gather around the Lord’s Table both with those with lifetime memberships in the National Rifle Association and with those who think guns ought to be licensed and restricted for public safety. Those aren’t gospel arguments but prudential arguments about whether gun control works and what the Constitution guarantees.”[18]
Moore says he does not believe that his position on gun control is a matter of divine revelation, “so I am more than happy to gather around the Lord’s Table both with those with lifetime memberships in the National Rifle Association and with those who think guns ought to be licensed and restricted for public safety. Those aren’t gospel arguments but prudential arguments about whether gun control works and what the Constitution guarantees.”[18]
What this means is that Russell Moore and I can have a
discussion, listen to one another, about a volatile issue like guns in America
and not wind up consigning the other to eternal damnation. We can respect one
another as two sincere Christians, created in God’s image and likeness, who see
the world in different ways, shaped by different experiences, yet we still can
find space in our hearts for love.
Grounded in religious tradition
Ebo Patel learned about that in another way. He is an
American Muslim whose grandparents live in India. He grew up in Glen Ellyn,
Illinois, a comfortable Chicago suburb. As he moved through high school and
college, he shed his Muslim identity. He hung out at a Catholic Worker house in
Champaign, Illinois, while he was a student at the University of Illinois.
Catholic Worker houses, based on a model started by Dorothy
Day in New York City in the 1930s, are places volunteers and people in need
work together, eat together, cross the boundaries that so often keep people
apart. Ebo stayed for dinner one night and asked, “Who are the staff here? Who
are the residents?” And the person he was talking with responded, “We’re a
community. The question we ask is: ‘what’s your story?’”[19]
That’s a good question for all of us as widen our circles
and strive to listen.
But Patel was still seeking. He explored Buddhism, but did
not feel at home in that tradition. He visited his grandmother in India. At
first he was turned off by customs there, but in time, came to understand that
she was living a life of service to others. Why do you do that, he asked her.
“I am a Muslim,” she replied. “This is what Muslims do.”[20]
He had a chance to meet the Dalai Lama, that revered
Buddhist leader, who saw Ebo not as a skeptic or a Catholic or a Buddhist but
as what he truly was – a Muslim. And in time, he reclaimed his Muslim identity,
encouraged others to find their religious identity and then to listen and learn
from one another, not by giving up the essence of each one’s beliefs, but by
being open to divergent views in a very complex world.
A lesson in listening
A few weeks ago, I was standing outside the brand new
National Museum of African American History and Culture on the mall in
Washington D.C. There have been huge
crowds since it opened on Sept. 24, so there was a line waiting to get in. I
started talking with the African American woman next to me, a lady probably in
her 70s from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As you may know, Tulsa is the place where a white female
police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man as he stood outside his car
on Sept. 16. The woman from Tulsa knew the man’s father, knew the man himself.
She had been at a prayer service for him the week before we met. Now here she
was at this museum that tells the story of both the pain and the promise of the
African American experience in our shared nation.
So we talked. I heard her story. I learned about the Tulsa
race riot of 1921, when the white citizens of Tulsa rampaged through the
prosperous black neighborhood in that city, burning down 35 city blocks, killed
up to 300 black residents. In the aftermath, every insurance claim from the
black businesses and residences was denied.[21]
I knew nothing about that awful episode in American history.
Taking time to listen to someone from a different background, with a different
life experience, helped me expand my understanding,
Let me introduce you to Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical
Christian, a scientist, and someone who has worked hard to learn how to talk
with people who disagree with her about climate change.
A profile of her in TheNew York Times on Oct. 10 captured her approach: “She has found that she
gets her science across more effectively if she can connect with people
personally. In a nation seemingly addicted to argument as a blood sport, she
conciliates. On a topic so contentious that most participants snarl, she
smiles. She is an evangelical Christian, and she does not flinch from using the
language of faith and stewardship to discuss the fate of the planet.”[22]
I had a chance to hear her last fall and was intrigued by
the spirit with which she approached a topic that can quickly become a hostile
conversation.
“If you begin a conversation with, ‘You’re an idiot,’ that’s
the end of the conversation, too,” she said. She has learned to listen
carefully to people’s questions, concerns, objections. She treats them with
respect, even if she has a different conclusion. She incorporates their
concerns into her presentations.
What I draw from all of these stories is that it is possible
to encounter one another across the political, racial, religious divides in our
country at the moment. It is possible to listen to and learn from those we disagree
with.
Listening with respect
There was a vivid example of that last August on an obscure
Sunday morning program on C-Span, the network that covers government and
politics. The guest was Heather McGhee, the president of a public policy
organization focused on democracy and equality. (Here's a link to the video.)
A caller from North Caroline posed this question:
“I’m a white male and I am prejudiced. It’s something that I
learned.” He
made references to the crime rate, drugs, his fears. “I don’t like to be
forced to like people. I like to be led to like people through example. What
can I do to change, to be a better American?”
OK, this was a question that invited a thoughtful response,
it was a question that suggested the man who asked it was open to listening a
view from outside his worldview. Heather McGhee’s answer was a classic example
of treating someone with a different worldview with respect and with
seriousness.
“Thank you so much for being honest and for opening up this
conversation,” she replied. “Asking the question you ask – how do I get over my
fears and my prejudices – is the question for all of us, people of all races
and ethnicities and backgrounds who hold these fears and prejudices. Most of
them are actually unconscious, right? Your ability to just say, ‘I have these
prejudices and I want to get over them,’ is one of the most powerful things we
can do right now.”
She did offer some specifics as well.
“Get to know black families. Turn off the news at night
because we know nightly new overrepresents African-American crime and
underrepresents crime by white people. Join a church that is interracial. Start
to read about the history of the African American community in this country.
Foster conversations in your family and in your neighborhood where you are
asking exactly those kinds of questions.”[23]
Yes, I know that can be hard if the other person does not want to listen to you as well, wants to shut you out or put you down. Sometimes, we may need to step back. And yes, there are times when we simply need to articulate what we believe without worrying about whether everyone will see it our way. Here’s a clue – not everyone will see it our way. The world is way too interesting for that kind of uniformity.
LAST THOUGHTS
I’d like to leave you with two final thoughts and one image.
The first thought comes from a theologian of the last
century who wrestled with great dilemmas like power and progress, good and
evil. His name was Reinhold Niebuhr and one of his famous quotes is a good
reminder that when we think we have got things all figured out, we really are
not at the finish line yet.
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our
lifetime;” Niebuhr wrote. “Therefore we must be saved by hope.
“Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
“Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
therefore we are saved by love.
“No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”[24]
“Love” is the vital word here. It’s how we can counter the
destructive forces of resentment that swirl around us. It’s a reminder of some
of the words that Jesus said about loving our enemies. Yes, even our enemies.
Even forgiving them.
The second thought comes from a United Church of Christ
minister and author named Richard Floyd offers a reminder that even after the
whole election campaign of 2016 comes to an end, even after we have new leaders,
“many of the same old problems of race and class and injustice will remain. We
will still have public institutions that do not serve everyone equally. We will
still have dying cities and crumbling infrastructures. Inflammatory rhetoric
will not solve these problems that affect us all, no matter what our political
party.”
Bypassing inflammatory rhetoric does not mean putting away
righteous anger over the injustice in our world or the passion to make our
world better, Floyd wrote. Our challenge is, in his words, “to model a way of
living that treats others with respect and dignity.” [25]
The bridge to cross
The image comes from Jim Wallis, who has long been one of my
personal heroes. Jim is one of the founders of Sojourners, an organization
based in Washington, D.C, that has been around for 45 years, seeking social
justice, peace, environmental stewardship across faith boundaries, even though
they are rooted in an evangelical approach to Christianity. They publish a
magazine and have a vibrant web site and Jim has written a dozen books.
In his most recent book about racism in America – America’s Original Sin, he calls it –
Jim describes being on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 2015 as
people gathered to reenact the walk across that bridge 50 years earlier,
risking their lives in the face of hatred and violence trying to establish the
right to vote for African Americans in this country 100 years after the end of
the Civil War. If you saw the stunning movie Selma that came out in 2014, you know the story.
Jim joined people who had marched across that bridge 50
years ago and today’s workers for racial justice as they walked across the
bridge once again, this time with President Obama, the nation’s first
African-American president in the lead. At the top of the bridge, Jim hugged
John Lewis, now a member of the U.S. Congress, but 50 years ago a Civil Rights
marcher who had his skull cracked on that bridge.
Through the tears welling up in his eyes, Jim saw the Edmund Pettus Bridge - a bridge named after a Confederate General who became a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan, a bridge that had been a symbol of resistance to racial integration and then a symbol of justice overcoming hate. Now that bridge offered a symbol for our future as we cross over to a new America.
Here’s what Jim wrote: “Seeking, finding, learning, welcoming, embracing, and
creating new relationships and frameworks for a richly multiracial culture,
with economics and policies that reflect our diversity, is the great task
before us now…Perhaps the first and most important thing to learn is how to
listen, really listen, to one another, as we are walking together to a new
America.”[26]
Reuniting the frayed fabric
Listen to one another. Do you detect a recurring theme
through all of this?
I called this talk Love in a Time of Resentment. And my argument is that one
way to overcome the resentment that poisons our civic life is to make efforts
to listen to one another. I think that requires a willingness to do what Jesus
talked about 2,000 years ago, what the Hebrew scriptures said thousands of
years before that, which many faith traditions say in one form or another –
love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Out of that love can grow respect. Out of that love can grow a willingness to hear those we disagree with. We don’t need to agree with them – I know I surely don’t agree with everyone. I know I have core beliefs that I hold on to.
But I also know that I could be wrong. I also know that I can learn from people when I least expect.
I know that when Kathy Cramer got up early in the morning and drove to a gas station in southwest Wisconsin, she showed me how listening can increase my understanding and out of that understanding, we can begin to reknit the frayed fabric of our society.
Out of that love can grow respect. Out of that love can grow a willingness to hear those we disagree with. We don’t need to agree with them – I know I surely don’t agree with everyone. I know I have core beliefs that I hold on to.
But I also know that I could be wrong. I also know that I can learn from people when I least expect.
I know that when Kathy Cramer got up early in the morning and drove to a gas station in southwest Wisconsin, she showed me how listening can increase my understanding and out of that understanding, we can begin to reknit the frayed fabric of our society.
I think that is a holy task. I hope you will join me in that effort.
[1] Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the
Rise of Scott Walker, The University of Chicago Press, 2016, p. 34.
[2] Ibid., p. 6
[4] Ibid., p. 34
[5] Ibid., p. 39
[6] Ellen Mayer, “More Than Fluff: Dismantling
Journalism’s Hard New Bias,” (Medium), Aug. 17, 2016, https://medium.com/we-are-hearken/more-than-fluff-dismantling-journalisms-hard-news-bias-5028414a2ca3#.b0w01k1ug
[7] Melody Kramer, “How To Do Good Journalism Between Now
and Election Day,” (Poynter Institute) Sept. 27, 2016,
http://www.poynter.org/2016/how-to-do-good-journalism-between-now-and-election-day/431978/
[8] Sr. Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking, Vintage Books, 1993, p. 3.
[9] Ibid., p. 5
[10] Ibid. p. 11
[11] Ibid, p. 64
[12] Ibid., p. 65
[13] Parker Palmer, Healing
the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human
Spirit, (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2011), p. 43
[14] Ibid, pp. 74-75, quoting Joseph Ellis, American
Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic (New York,
Knopf, 2007), p. 123.
[15] Ibid., p. 83
[17] Russell Moore, Onward: Engaging the Culture Without
Losing the Gospel (Nashville, B&H Publishing Group), 2015, p. 8.
[18] Ibid., p. 105.
[19] Ebo Patel, Acts
of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a
Generation (Beacon Press, Boston), 2007, p. 49.
[21] Sarah Sidner, “Tulsa Shooting Stirs Memories of Bloody
Race Riot,” CNN, Oct. 4, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/04/us/tulsa-race-riot-memories/
[22] John Schwarz, “Katharine Hayhoe, a Climate Explainer
Who Stays Above the Storm,” The New York
Times, Oct. 10, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/science/katharine-hayhoe-climate-change-science.html
[23] Heather McGhee on C-Span’s Washington Journal, Aug.
21, 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsUa7eCgE_U&index=3&list=FLM9j-MiZlGFv_ZXgiIKk0yw
[25] Richard Floyd, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,”
Stillspeaking Daily Devotional, United Church of Christ, Sept. 25, 2016,
http://www.ucc.org/daily_devotional_the_better_angels_of_our_nature
[26] Jim Wallis, America’s
Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to a New America, (Brazos
Press, Grand Rapids, Mich.), 2016, pp. 194-5
