Tag: democracy

Enlightened America, Part 1

“Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.”
Langston Hughes, American Poet

In my last blog, supported by the writings of our nation’s Founders, I asserted America was not founded as and is not today a “Christian nation.” I did not identify the founding principles of America or why in the world we should care about them nearly 250 years later. Addressing that means I must digress to provide some crucial historical context, and since our Founders were European, this must be some European history.

(Ugh! History. I know, we all hate it, but stick with me for a few minutes. It’s important.)

In the 15h and 16th  Centuries, leading into our nation’s founding, Europe was emerging from 1,000 years of a social order built on three pillars – hereditary rulers (aristocracy and nobility), Church authority, and brute force.* In various ways each pillar supported the other to maintain power. The state supported the authority of the church, the church sanctified the authority of the state and, should you rebel against either, they could resort to brute force to keep you in line.  Your heredity determined your social class and no matter how good or vile a person you were with few exceptions, you and your progeny maintained that class and the privilege or burdens that came with it. The religious authority insisted the aristocracy and nobility had a divine right to rule over commoners and commoners had a divine mandate to submit. The Church also taught that, in a world filled with demons, angels, saints, and witches,  we are all in danger of hellfire. Conveniently the Church, via moral instruction and ritual, offered a way to escape damnation, extending or withholding eternal salvation. Your body was owned by the aristocracy and your soul belonged to God who was available only via the Church. Each were intent on expanding their wealth and influence and when negotiation failed, brute force was called to action. Religion became political, and with the force of the state the political became brutal. Religious wars became devastating political wars [see the 30 Years War]. A change of monarch altered the fates of millions based on a monarch’s religious loyalties. Millions died in war’s combat, disease, and starvation. Commoners were the foot-soldiers and cannon fodder of the powerful political and ecclesiastic elite.

In the 14th Century, the technology of the printing press with moveable type and published translations of the Bible in the common languages eventually germinated the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century. This fractured the authority of the Church as Protestants asserted every man had a right to a direct connection to God and the right to study the Bible on their own terms.

Out of this ferment of new technologies and ideas, the Age of Reason emerged in the 15th and 16th Centuries and “natural philosophy” of ancient Greek scholars was rediscovered and refined. This was essentially the birth of the mindset of modern science, although the term “scientist” would not be used until the 19th Century. Inductive and deductive reasoning was used to examine everything, including religious claims. New scientific discoveries demonstrated that much of what had been explained by God or demons could be explained by natural processes. Deism was a theology claiming the nature of God could be determined by the study of his creation rather than divine revelation. And in that creation, it was the nature of every man – we didn’t get to women yet – to have certain inborn, natural, and inalienable rights. This gave rise to the Enlightenment.

Enlightenment thinking deemed all men are created equal (goodbye to aristocracy) and that every man owned his own self (goodbye, hereditary authority) and that his life was his alone. Anything which a man produced by his own labor also became his property (so long, serfs) and he could not be deprived of it without a due, fair process. The church provided opportunities to pause and commune with God – who still had His rules – but it was no longer the sole authority of that access. As these ideas took hold, more commoners began demanding a say in their own destinies.

Our nation’s Founders were educated men who embraced the Enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson once said that “Bacon, Locke and Newton are the greatest three people who ever lived, without exception.” Enlightenment philosopher John Locke especially influenced our Founders. Locke insisted life, liberty, and property were natural rights that pre-exist any government or religion. While Locke held his own Christian views and his writings were influenced by them, he insisted religious tolerance was necessary to a civil society since a man’s conscience was his own. Likewise, no government should establish a particular religion since it could not verify absolute truth nor command a person to believe what they do not believe. Violating a man’s conscience violates his property and therefore his natural rights.

These are Enlightenment principles on which America was founded. When Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” he did not echo words from the Bible, he stated Enlightenment philosophy. This seed sprouted into both the American and French Revolutions. It also upended hereditary monarchy as a ruling force across Europe. Monarchies acceded to democracy in various forms, giving people a say in their own lives to an extent not seen in 1,000 years.  

Across American history our major conflicts have been around Enlightenment principles – the nature and rights of individuals. Sadly, our Founders cultural blinders let them create a nation with gaping contradictions to Enlightenment theory including the rights of enslaved people, the rights of non-European native peoples, and the rights of women. This blunder is our great national sin which abolitionist, suffragette, and union member progressives have continually tried to correct to make “a more perfect union.” We are now in a period where the forces pushing us back are the same old ones. Religious “authority” in the guise of Evangelicals using political power to control the lives of the majority. As our new “aristocracy” the uber-wealthy now own our legislative processes and wish to own us as “human resources.” The Republican Party wants to restrict the power of the common person to vote.  These movements are coordinated. They are also as unAmerican and as unenlightened as any tin-pot dictator.

Next time I’ll say more about how our Enlightened Nation is threatened. Until then, as I opened with the words of Langston Hughes, let me also close with them:

“O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.”

Langston Hughes, American poet

Tikkun Olam

(*I am deeply indebted to Seth David Radwell for his concise summary of medieval social order and other definitions in his excellent book American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret for Healing Our Nation. I highly recommend it to those concerned for our country.)

Is America a Christian Nation?

“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”
James Madison, Father of the U.S. Constitution

May 23, 2022 Kandiss Taylor, Georgia Republican Gubernatorial Candidate: “We’re going to do a political rally and we’re going to honor Jesus… They’re not going to tell us ‘separation of church and state.’ We are the church. We run this state!… The church runs the state of Georgia.”

July 26, 2022 Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican member of Congress “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk. It was not in the Constitution; it was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”

Boebert and Kandiss are the most recent politicians to claim the United States of America was founded as a “Christian nation” and suggest separation of church and state is a subversive concept. Current advocates of this view appear less interested in Christian doctrine and more determined to use the Bible as a political weapon. They hope to impose into our nation’s policies their interpretation of Biblical morality while also using religious fervor to raise money and motivate voting. Their intent is to grasp power to advance unChristian and anti-democracy agendas. As an American citizen holding advanced degrees in theology and policy, I find this revolting.

So let’s be clear. America is not now, nor has it even been, a Christian nation. Moreover, our Founders never intended it to be.

Saying this is neither anti-American nor anti-Christian; only a matter of history and from much more than “a stinking letter.” In 1797, the U.S. Senate, a body more than 50%  composed of original signers of the U.S. Constitution, unanimously affirmed a Treaty with Tripoli clearly stating:

[Article 11] As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, [Muslims] -and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

Obviously, time has altered this relationship but it clearly demonstrates at our nation’s founding neither Christian dogma nor identity played any role in how our government was constructed or operated. Separating political power while carving out a cultural space for each person to follow the dictates of their own conscience was a clear goal of our nation’s Founders and one of their crowning achievements. In their time, this was considered radical, so why did they do it?  

Our nation’s founders knew first-hand from European history how the mingling of political power and religious dogma was a toxic brew leading to bigotry, social divisions, bloodshed, and repeated religious wars. In 1785 James Madison, the Father of the US Constitution, published a letter to the Virginia legislature as it worked out the State’s constitution where some wanted a tax to support a state church. In opposition Madison wrote, “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?” ( in Memorial & Remonstrance)

in other words, Southern Baptists would rebel against a government mandate to live by Catholic doctrine and vice versa. In 1803 Madison again pressed this point stating:“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

Nearly 20 years later on July 10, 1822 Madison wrote  to Edward Livingston still insisting, “Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” 

Distancing church from state protects both, a belief held by many of our Founders. Despite biographies published after his death portraying George Washington as a fervent Christian, his own letters and diaries portray a different person. In one such letter he assures a Hebrew [Jewish] Congregation of their status as equal citizens in this new nation. As an adult, Washington only occasionally attended worship services, was never a church communicant, and on his deathbed no minister or priest was called into attendance. Academic study by known historians has debunked fabricated stories and misattributed quotes intending to portray him otherwise.

When someone asked Alexander Hamilton why the U.S. Constitution makes no reference to God, he famously quipped, “We forgot.”  The Founders did not, of course, merely forget; it was a conscious decision based on both their principles and their experience. The writings of our nation’s Founders never refer to the Bible as an authoritative source for governing or policy. Neither Christianity nor the Bible are quoted as a basis for their political views.  Our Founding documents do not cite Jesus Christ and rarely reference God in more than general terms such as “Providence” or “Creator” or “Nature’s God.” To read even those statements with 21st Century Evangelical lenses is to misunderstand profoundly, even dangerously, what they intended. While some of the Founders were church members most viewed religion, broadly defined, as a source for moral guidance, not absolute or spiritual truth.

For example, while Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of independence, viewed Jesus as an excellent moral example to which one could aspire  – a view he called “Christianism”—he rejected Jesus’ divinity, resurrection, and miracles. I could continue with similar documentation about Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Paine (who called the Bible “the pretended word of God”) but you can explore these links for yourself. There is ample, written documentation the nation’s Founders deplored the idea of the United States ever establishing one religion over another, including Christianity. Moreover, for those Founders who were observant Christians, their beliefs would fail the current litmus test of being “true” Christians by today’s Christian Nationalists, Evangelicals, and Fundamentalists. 

The Founders’ chief interest in religion was not its dogma but its usefulness in providing a common moral code within which a democratic society could function. Yet in the 21st Century large portions of American Christianity have abandoned that moral code, supporting highly immoral individuals and political tactics. Moreover, parts of that religious segment have become arrogant, autocratic, punitive, and more lately, violent. All of these are traits inherent in religion that our Founders feared and sought to uncouple from the power of the state.

Intermingling state and church is becoming coercive and dangerous to our democracy and to the free exercise of religion. Their wisdom is once more revealed by a violent Christian presence in the January 6th insurrection, an eye-opening moment for many of us. Boebert’s shockingly ignorant comment that the church is supposed to direct the government, coming from a sitting member of Congress, reveals how far we have strayed. The most recent ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade protecting access to abortion was made by a predominantly conservative, Catholic Supreme Court and supported by Evangelical Fundamentalists. It is not the will of the larger American public. These are the latest examples of intermingling church and state. Christian dogma must never be the source of national policy. Our Founders would applaud our resistance to it.

Tikkun Olam

[A following article explains the principles upon which our nation was founded and why our forgetting them is costing us so dearly.]

Truth or Consequences

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

It’s time for healing in our nation. In fact, it’s well past time. Our American democracy has gaping wounds, and we the people long to see them closed. Yet, as with many injuries, healing only comes with an accurate diagnosis of what caused and is causing the damage. In the immediate situation, in a nation with a barricaded Capitol and threats of violence across the country, the most damage is being caused by a particular set of lies, those being 1) the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, 2) Trump actually won, and therefore 3) he is being unfairly robbed of a 2nd term. All three of these statements are inflammatory, damnable lies wounding our nation.

How do we know? Because representatives who have the most reason and resources to know have told us so. This includes then-Attorney General Bill Barr who, despite being an unflagging Trump loyalist and apologist, said there was no evidence of fraud. We know because Chris Krebs who headed the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reported absolutely “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” We know because Ben Hovland, the Trump-appointed head of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission said there was no evidence of fraud. Likewise, those overseeing elections in various states – including members of the Republican Party, have told us there was no fraud and the votes have been counted and recounted as required by law. We know because Trump loyalists one after another have marched into courts of law from the state level to Supreme Court of the United States and in over five dozen court rulings have universally been told they have no evidence and therefore no case. This has not stopped Donald Trump – for whom lying is his chief skill set – from repeating these lies over and over for three months now. Trump is shameless in his lying and, perversely, this gets people to believe him because they would never lie so guilt-free and so can’t imagine anyone would.

Trump even pre-lied about the election outcome by casting doubt on its integrity before it happened. This was to groom his base to accept the lie when it became necessary and it appears to have worked. Last week an angry mob invaded the Capitol building with the stated purpose to “Stop the Steal’ even though there was no steal. Thus, their true purpose was to overturn a valid election. It was a Trump-inspired coup attempt but, even with the death and destruction, they felt their actions were morally righteous and politically patriotic. This does not excuse their actions; it simply notes that the responsibility does not start, nor should it end, with them. Prosecute them for their bad behavior, but they had help.  

Recall Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and the 145 other Republicans who voted to overturn the U.S. 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden won by over 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral college votes. Nonetheless, these members of Congress voted to invalidate the election because of the “concerns” of those who lost. Those concerns existed only because Trump and company, bolstered by vast media networks – FOX, OAN, Breitbart, and certain members of Congress – worked to sell the lie and keep raising the level of concern. By stirring up doubt on the election outcome, they hoped to provide cover for their representatives to undo a valid election. And rather than stand up to tell the people they represented there was no evidence of fraud, these Senators and Congressional Representatives chose to perpetuate the lies and the social unrest they generate. They don’t actually believe the lies. But it serves their own personal careers and political agendas to validate them. This makes them not only liars, but craven liars. It’s unfortunate to believe and act on an untruth; it is a whole new level of betrayal to support a known lie for personal interests. Their vote may have been the cruelest cut to American Democracy because – despite their best efforts – Trump will be gone but they, their lies, and the unrest they generate will continue.

So, to the Republican Party and their followers: If you want healing, the ball is in your court. Quit repeating convenient lies. Trump is a passing problem. Trumpism’s commitment to lying is an infection in the body politic and it might be deadly. There is only one cure for this infection and that is the truth spoken by those these disgruntled citizens have reason to believe. We can be certain Trump will never do it; it is not in his nature to be honest. It must fall to others in the Republican Party to now stand up and say this was a tough but fair election and Joe Biden won it by proper Constitutional processes. Until the balm of truth is spread on this festering lie, the body will continue in dis-ease. What say you GOP? Will you stop being the party of Trump and once again become an American party? Will you heal our nation with an anti-inflammatory honesty? The cure is in your hands. What will you do?

Tikkun Olam

AB

How to Tell a Fish It is Wet

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA, Photographer, Nick Hobgood, Wikimedia Commons

In my Master of Social Work studies, I was required to take a class on policy. I was not enthused because I viewed policy as boring. How wrong I was. I soon realized we all swim in a sea of policies making our lives easier or harder, wealthier or poorer. Policies express our values. From paved roads to public toilets, from tax codes to building codes, from education to economics, from abortion to Jim Crow, from definitions of marriage to unpaid maternity leave, there are tens of thousands of policies impacting and shaping our daily lives. Every law  or regulation implements a policy. We are all in the sea, and we are all soaking wet. Those policies get put into place by politicians and politics is how we select them. So, when people tell me they are not interested in politics, I know they are, as I used to be, a fish who has no idea what it means to be wet; failing to recognize the sea in which we swim. Politics determines policy and we should care about that as much as a fish cares about the quality of the water in which it lives.  

Around this same time, I came across a quote by one of the most conservative Presidents of the 20th Century, Calvin Coolidge:

“When you live in a democracy, you are a politician whether you wish to be or not.”

By voice and vote we all influence policy, but the opposite of that is also true. When we silence our voices or ignore our votes, we also influence policy. The difference is that by the first means we do it intentionally while by the latter, we do it by default. Either way, policies are added or subtracted from the sea in which we all swim; we all get wet. Failing to be “political” means I have ceded all my influence to others and must live with what they choose to give me. It also means I fail my democracy.

While policy bores us, politics annoys us and we love to hate politicians who run “the Government”. And this is not accidental. From at least the time of Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural pronouncement that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” we have been fed a steady diet of how bad government and politicians are. We have been taught the government should get out of the way of the market and let the market rule. We have been made cynical about government and this led us to today, what many Gen-X and Millennials refer to as “end stage capitalism.” As anti-tax warrior Grover Norquist put it, the plan is to make government so small you can drown it in the bathtub.

Here’s the problem. We’re the government. We’re the politicians. We’re the ones called to pay attention, educate ourselves on the issues, and vote accordingly. Our learned cynicism has diminished our voices in the face of market forces that care nothing about societal good. The markets will not save us, nor do they plan to give us a better society. Indeed, they are told their ethical obligation is to maximize profits even over societal good. (Read an excellent blog on this here.) One of the most expensive crimes in the nation is wage theft where businesses fail to pay their employees for worked hours. This theft amounts to $8 billion dollars stolen annually from workers. If corporations are people, many are sociopaths.

While we held politicians in contempt, failed to vote, and proudly proclaimed our disinterest in “politics”, powerful monied interests simultaneously found ways to absorb the vast majority of the wealth and fix the laws so that what was once considered blatant corruption is not only legal, it is the general practice of the day. When the Supreme Court—packed with conservative judges placed there by “trickle-down” politicians—ruled that money was free speech, they silenced us by taking away the volume of our voice. It now takes millions of us to match a single billionaire. We are outshouted by the wealthy. For example, 89% of Americans favor universal background checks on gun purchases, but so far the NRA and other gun manufacturing lobbyists have  successfully stifled any legislation to this end by “donations” in black money. Why doesn’t a bankruptcy clear student loans? Because banks didn’t like it. As Congress became less responsive to us, our cynicism about government grew. Enough.  

What to do? Dismiss your cynicism about government. The government is not the problem because the government is us. But it will only work for us when we invest ourselves and demand those we elect represent us. Reclaim your voice and your vote. It will not be easy. The monied interests have deeply embedded themselves in our psyche, and in electoral and legislative processes, i.e. in our government. They may say they hate it, but they sure know how to use it. They have diminished our power and our voice. Right now, the tools we have are our bodies, our voices, and our votes. They will fight with every trick, every personal attack, every backroom arm-twist they can muster to keep us cynical, silent and passive. Why is voter suppression rampant? Because your vote matters. Why are peaceful protesters met with violence? Because your bodies and your voices matter. Don’t badmouth the government; be the government. Insist your family and friends be the government, work to change the election laws and legislative processes that have crippled our voices and suppressed our votes.

The most cruel way to teach a fish it is wet is to leave it high and dry. We are nearly there. That is the brutal lesson we are forcibly learning now from our oligarchy bought-out Congressional and state legislatures. It’s past time to rouse ourselves back into the polluted waters of our political processes and demand the policies that will make the swamp clean again.  It will never be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be poisonous.

May we heal the nation. AB