GUEST BLOG / By Mike McCurry, Essayist New America.org
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In the fall
of 1972, I was about to turn 18 and because of the 26th Amendment to the
Constitution was also about to cast my very first vote for president. Visiting
my grandparents in South Carolina, I said at supper how excited I would be to
vote for George McGovern, assuming my textile mill working FDR-era grandparents
would be too. Long silence at the dinner table. “Well,” grumped my grandpa.
“I’m voting for a good Christian man, Nixon.”
Doing the dishes, my gentle
grandmother said, “Mike, it’s probably best not to talk about religion and
politics at supper.” Two things are clear to me in retrospect, recalling that
conversation. First, there were large political shifts occurring in America and
the South was moving away from the post-Depression era alliance with the
Democratic Party. And second, religious faith was entering the equation as an
important determining factor in the decision-making of voters.
Mike McCurry is a distinguished professor of public theology at Wesley Theological Seminary and co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates. He is also the former White House Press Secretary to President Bill Clinton.
Much has been said about what is often called the “God Gap” in politics and much of it is true. Those who consider themselves “religious” (measured by regular worship attendance, grace before meals, membership in a church, and a preference for political candidates who believe in the divine) are probably disproportionately conservative and Republican in their election choices. And those who are more secular and don’t affiliate with any organized religion (i.e. Sunday mornings are “Meet the Press” and the Sunday papers or golf, instead of singing hymns and praying) are more likely to be liberal and Democratic. Of course, none of that is universally true but they are telling indicators of where individual citizens likely land on the political spectrum.
Political divisions are
growing wider and deeper as America becomes more and more polarized. Partisan
affiliations are telling. Ninety-eight percent of Americans are likely to vote
straight party-line ballots in elections. We live closest to those we think
share our values and politics; yes, gerrymandering is a factor in drawing
election boundaries and that contributes to gridlock and dysfunction in our
institutions of civil democracy. But we are mostly congregating with those who
generally share our politics and values.
We also increasingly look
with disdain on “the others” who might disagree. Sociologists tell us, for example, that a
“mixed marriage” now does not mean differences in race; it likely means a
difference in political party registration. And that mix is becoming rare.
There are many reasons why
our political system has seemed immobilized in recent years and why it seems to
be impossible to make progress on the great issues facing our nation. We can’t
seem to balance the budget. We can’t decide how to control costs for social
insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. We can’t agree on how much government we
really want and (more important) who will be taxed to pay for those government
benefits and services. We even disagree on who should be “American” as
immigrants trapped in southern hemisphere poverty make their way to the United
States to attempt a better quality of life.
As the poet William Butler
Yeats wrote, Things fall apart/The centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world. My former boss, the late Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan of New York (perhaps one of the last public intellectuals we have had
in elected office), was fond of saying: “The quintessential question about the
future of American democracy is whether the center will hold.”
Is there a center in American
politics when our public discourse is mostly defined by various “talking heads”
hurling invective at each other on cable news programs all day long? Or when our leaders in Congress routinely
“whip” their members into party fidelity on crucial votes? Or when our nation
divides almost 50-50 in the election of our next President?
I am incurable optimist and I
believe that there is a “center” and defining its parameters and boundaries
will be crucial as we work our way through the tumult of the national
conversation we will have as President Donald Trump takes office. Many of my
political persuasion have significant doubts about our new President but I
believe he is more pragmatic than ideological. Perhaps there is a governing
agenda that can emerge that will re-unite politicians, pundits, and lawmakers
at the center of the political spectrum.
My work these days is focused
more on the role “the church” (broadly defined to include all houses of worship:
Christian, Muslim, and Jewish) can play. When we gather in worship, we set
aside our temporal affiliations to profess belief in something eternal,
lasting, and beyond the hazards of contemporary controversy. Yet most houses of
worship, with exception among black Protestants and Christian evangelicals,
seem to shun discussions of politics; “politics and religion” being the
subjects my grandmother would have said do not belong in polite conversation.
I think that must change.
Those who believe in a “beloved community” that reflects God’s love for us need
to come together and model ways that spirited public discourse can lead to
understanding, if not always to total agreement. When we learn to hear the
opinions of others, when we can restate their strong opinions authentically
even if we disagree, we will come to a better place of conversation about our
future as a nation.
There is ample reason to
doubt that we are headed in that direction as a new administration and
presidency takes shape. That makes it all the more important, to me, for
leaders in our faith communities to rise up and insist on different standards
for public dialogue.
In that, I cannot help but
notice the examples of Laura and George W. Bush. I worked to defeat our
incumbent President in 2004 when I traveled with Senator John Kerry at the end
of the 2004 campaign. I remained close,
however, to some of his senior aides like Mark McKinnon, Nicolle Wallace and
Dan Bartlett.
Our relationships helped us
navigate some treacherous moments including Election Night 2004 when Sen. Kerry
was not quite ready to concede and President Bush, gracefully, gave him to the
next day to make his genuine statement of concession. Moments like these need
to be enshrined and lifted up and not become the all-too-rare examples of how
we deal with division and conflict in our democracy.
As that example shows, the
power of genuine human relationships and friendship is what ultimately
overpowers division and mistrust. I also have seen this in play through the
work of our local Methodist annual conference. We have taken issues that
divides us – homosexuality, gay marriage, and gay ordination – and worked
through them in small “circles of grace,” where people who might disagree get
to know each other better and genuinely discuss differences.
Even in the very divisive
recent national campaign, I witnessed top aides from the Clinton and Trump
camps come together to negotiate details about the presidential debates with
nary a whiff of controversy. That’s because
the folks representing both campaigns knew each other and liked each other,
despite the obvious brittleness in the back and forth between the candidates.
A final example is the work
that President Bush and my former boss, Bill Clinton, have done to address
urgent human needs around the globe and here at home. That includes the
Presidential Leadership Scholars program their presidential centers, along with
those of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and George Herbert Walker Bush, have created
to groom prospective leaders who are interested in solving problems.
I hope these examples give us
inspiration in the months ahead. I think
they will be needed now as never before.
Source: www.newamerica.org
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