Rush Limbaugh's On-Air Reign

The news came this past Wednesday that conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh has died after an extended battle with lung cancer. Rush Limbaugh was a boon to the talk radio industry, but he was a bane to the community and a blight upon the broadcasting landscape. He tapped into our worst, most selfish actions and reactions and gave multitudes permission to abide in their hatred and bigotry. When his radio program first came to the Birmingham area it aired on the most widely listened to talk radio station, WERC. I would often listen in to find out what the brouhaha was all about. This was in the day when one could hear informative interview programs that were nationally broadcast, as well as local talk, of which Tim Lennox was a favorite in the city. It didn’t take much listening to the spouting of Rush and the fawning of the “ditto-heads” calling in to understand what was happening. Nevertheless, I kept my car radio tuned to WERC Talk Radio because I felt it was important to hear what was being said what others were thinking. 

The other part of my story was that I had been a Baptist seminarian who was so dismayed by the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that I had left the denomination 5 or 6 years earlier. I guess I still had some lingering hope for “my people,” why else would I have wandered into the Baptist Bookstore one day? As I entered the bookstore, which at the time was still on University Boulevard near UAB, there on prominent display was Rush Limbaugh’s newly published first book, The Way Things Ought to Be. I had listened to Rush enough to know that he made no claim to any religious faith and had stated as much, yet here in the store that once presented only what was considered to be aids for Bible study and Christian living was a book by a man who made no attempt to hide his narrow-minded bigotry and expressed no love at all for any faith practice.

That moment simply re-affirmed for me the rightness of my decision to have parted company with the church of my childhood. Moreover, it showed me that the core beliefs of the denomination rested not on the Bible, as was publicly stated, but on bigotry, xenophobia, and hate. It also showed me that you don’t have to be religious to be a racist bigot, but a racist bigot is readily welcomed by many religious folks. I walked out that day with no further desire to even look back, though I have carried the grief that good-hearted people can be so easily led astray.

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The Problem We All Live With

That moment when we come to the realization (perhaps while reminiscing upon our idyllic childhood in white America) that our security was founded upon the creation of a dystopian society, the likes of which we thought only existed in the pages of some novel that we could put back on the shelf in order to rest better at night.

In 1964, Look Magazine featured Norman Rockwell's painting, "The Problem We All Live With." It presented America as clearly as did his famous Thanksgiving Picture*.

With the Civil Rights Movement, some began to understand how Jim Crow laws had extended the dystopian society created by our predecessors. Watch this space in days to come for more about the problem we continue to live with.

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* "Freedom from Want" is the name of Rockwell's painting often referred to as the Thanksgiving Picture, or I'll be home for Christmas. It was one of four paintings he did during WWII as part of his Four Freedoms series, inspired by Franklin Rosevelt's 1941 State of the Union speech in which the president outlined the "Four Freedoms" that he envisioned for America, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

In 1964, Mr. Rockwell chose to memorialize in oil and canvas the racial conflict that gripped American life as schools were forced to integrate. He had left The Saturday Evening Post due to the limitations the magazine placed on the expression of his social and political interests. He found a more open environment at Look Magazine. "The Problem We All Live With" depicts Ruby Bridges, the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school.

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Image: "The Problem We All Live With," 1964, Norman Rockwell Museum Collections.

Artist: Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)

Medium: Oil on canvas, 36" x 58"

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When He Called for His Mama

This meme was posted by Sara Miles on Twitter. She included the invocation: 

Holy Mary, Victor over the Serpent, stand beside us.

If you heard Rev. Al Sharpton's eulogy at George Floyd's memorial service in Minneapolis, you learned that Floyd's mother is deceased, which makes his call all the more poignant. This meme does not diminish anyone's experience but speaks to the core of something vital to all of us.


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Just Like Jonah

Not Just a Fish Story

The Book of Jonah was written during a time in Israel’s history when they were focusing on some kind of racial/national/religious purity to the point that they wanted to get rid of all foreign influence. Yes, the Israelites were returning from Babylonian captivity to their homeland. They wanted to make their nation great again, and some of their leaders (Ezra and Nehemiah, to name names) thought that they needed to cleanse themselves from all foreigners. They were even willing to separate families, telling those who had taken foreign wives to send them back to their own respective lands.

There were some, however, who said "Wait a minute, not so fast. This does not sound like the God we worship, the God we know to be compassionate and merciful." They had a more universal vision of their faith and how they should live, so there began a resistance movement to counter the hardliners.

In order to address the xenophobic error that threatened to distort the faith  even while attempting to preserve it, the story of Jonah arose to illustrate to the people that the Israelites were not the only ones who could hear and respond to the word of God. Indeed, the story reflects God's compassion for all people and gives us reason to welcome the foreigner in our midst*.

Confronting the Other

In the story, the Lord told Jonah to go and preach to the people of Nineveh. They were foreigners and heathens, after all, in Jonah's mind. His message was that they needed to repent, or God would bring down judgment. Jonah had been reluctant to even meet with these ungodly heathens, but he eventually delivered the message (after some detours, including a ride in the belly of a big fish). Once he had his say, Jonah headed out of town to find a nice vantage point to view God’s mighty destruction upon the people.

Much to Jonah’s dismay, the people of Nineveh actually repented and turned their hearts toward God. The biblical story recounts that Jonah was angry with God for the way it all turned out.  “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (Jonah 4: 2, NIV)

Thomas Carlisle wrote a beautiful book, You! Jonah! He recasts the story in a series of poems which can be read in a single sitting. I highly recommend the book. Here is one of the poems from Carlisle’s work:

The generosity of God
Displeased Jonah exceedingly
And he slashed with angry prayer
At the graciousness of the Almighty.
“I told You so,” he screamed.
“I knew what You would do,
You dirty Forgiver.
You bless Your enemies
And show kindness to those
Who despitefully use You.
I would rather die
Than live in a world
With a God like You.
And don’t try to forgive me either.”

Confronting Our Own Xenophobia

In America today, we are seeing a rise in xenophobic fear and recrimination. We are hearing cries to build walls and pass legislation to keep the foreigners out. People of faith seem just as loathe to show kindness and love to a foreigner as Jonah was. We are seeing a huge swath of Christian believers who apparently would rather not live in a world where the words of Jesus must be taken into consideration.

As a Southerner who grew up Southern Baptist, I find it quite ironic that we are hearing a higher ethic from The New York Times and greater compassion from Hollywood than we are hearing from our pulpits on Sunday. We, like Jonah, could learn from those “heathens” on the East and West Coasts, if we but had ears to hear and eyes to see.

We find ourselves in a world where many professing Christians confronted with Black Lives Matter or Hispanic refugees at the border do not want to hear any word about the love of God or the compassion of Christ. Instead, they want to “Keep them Out,” “Send them back,” or “Push them Down.” 

Deep down we surely know, as did Jonah in the biblical story, that God intends peace and compassion, not strife and hate.

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* The book of Ruth was written during this same time period and also illustrated the value of the foreigner by reminding the people that even their great King David had foreign ancestry in his bloodline.

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Image at the top: "Jonah and the Whale,"  ca. 1400 , Iran (At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)

Medium: Ink, opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper 

                 A folio from a Jami al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Chronicles)

Note from The MET page regarding the painting:

The story of Jonah and the Whale, mentioned in the Qur'an (37:139), was popular in the Muslim world and frequently illustrated in manuscripts of world history. This large-scale painting, however, never formed part of a manuscript. Rather, it may have been used during oral recitation or storytelling. Scholars have also suggested that with its strong palette, monumental figures, and spare composition, this work may reflect a now-lost wall painting tradition. Here, we see Jonah after his release from the belly of the fish. Above him, a gourd vine grows—sent by God to protect him from the elements—and, gliding across the top of the painting, a spirited angel with colorful spreading wings offers Jonah a garment.

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The State of Our Nation

We are now in the middle of a growing national crisis that half of the population seems to be troubled by, a third of the country seems to celebrate, and the remainder seems to be standing idly by. Yet all seem powerless to effect any change in national trajectory, a significant investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller notwithstanding. Even so, there are numerous resistance groups and that continue to offer some hope that at least a moral voice can be heard.

President Trump’s recent statement casting vulgar aspersions upon Haiti and all African nations has raised the ire of many in the U. S. and across the globe as he exemplified racist and fascist attitudes long recognized from the beginning of his presidential campaign. Jonathan Alter, in a recent article, has called for Congress to censure Trump for “conduct unbecoming of a president.”

It is only the latest of disturbing trends that we have seen over the past year.

Ominous Parallels

I am reminded of my college days as a ministerial student at Samford University. It was the mid 1970’s and some of us were beginning to do some serious examination for the first time. Our parents had been part of “the greatest generation” that combated Hitler’s regime at great personal costs as they bore the brunt of the horrors of war. I remember one of my classmates commenting that Germany was the most Christian and most intellectual country in the world, and yet they were responsible for such unspeakable evil and darkness, plunging the world into the most violent and destructive war in history.

My friend’s comment did indeed reflect a great irony and a big question that we were still facing 30 years after a war that to us twenty-year-old novices seemed like ancient history. The irony was that even then, any serious theological study involved extensive reading of German theologians (and anyone pursuing a doctorate had to be able to read three languages: Hebrew, Greek, and German). It was a huge question in our minds from that day until now, “How could Hitler’s rise have happened in such a civilized, educated, and Christian country?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was included in our studies and he was admired for his stand against Hitler when most German churches, Catholic and Protestant alike, were in support of the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church movement saw the problem early on. Those were difficult  times that we could hardly fathom, and perhaps none of us imagined ever having to endure such times in our lifetime. An article in the February edition of Sojourners Magazine asks if this is not a Bonhoeffer moment for American Christians. The authors point out:

[Trump’s] “Make America Great Again” nationalism seeks to close the borders and recover some idealized picture of what America supposedly used to be, a picture steeped in white supremacy and the misguided ideology of “separate but equal.” Disturbingly, large numbers of white evangelical Christians share in this longing for Mayberry.

The fact that today I can see a correlation between our times and those times in Nazi Germany indicates that the question, “How could this happen in such a civilized, educated and Christian country?” is not as mysterious now. That is not to say that I have any clear answer to the question. I do have a few observations, and would welcome any other observations from anyone who would care to comment.

1. Uncertain Times

With Trump’s election in November of 2016, I became more aware that fascism seems to be the default mode of government that people tend to fall back on during times of uncertainty. It never ends well, but it seems to be a basic tribal response of people when they are confronted with fear and uncertainty. We want to be with people who look like us, and we demonize the other (whoever looks different). I have watched evangelical Christians I grew up with and worshiped with expressing such fear and hatred, especially after the nation elected its first black president in 2008. I have seen them making political decisions based upon fear and hate rather than on faith and love.

2. The Paralysis of Single Issue Voting

I understand that each person must make his or her own moral choice in civic matters when going to the polls. Unfortunately, voting on the single issue of abortion blinds many to the wider issues at stake.

I attend a Roman Catholic Church and have utmost respect for Catholic social teaching regarding human dignity and the common good. I have been shocked, however, that so many of my Catholic colleagues have allowed the issue of abortion to paralyze their ability to discern other issues concerning the common good. I was dismayed to hear a colleague say with some resignation, “I guess I have to vote for Trump because he is pro-life."

I would not choose abortion, but I realize that my choice for life has not been hindered in my entire adult life since Roe v. Wade.  I also realize that the practice of my faith does not hinge upon the reversal of established law – a law which allows options for young women in dire situations.

Through the years, I have seen Catholics vote for people who have no knowledge of, or interest in, Catholic social teaching and whose agendas are even counter to that teaching. The best way to support life is in our teaching, values, and actions. We can abide by the law of the land and still uphold our faith values without thinking we have to reverse legislation in order to live a moral life.

3. The Desire for Political Power

Another factor that cannot be ignored is that with the success of the religious right in political campaigns, beginning with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and continuing on with groups like Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, has progressed to the point where the religious right seems more concerned with political power than Christian principals.

Apparently, some conservative religious groups are now seeing Donald Trump as God’s chosen one for America. It is beyond me how a thinking, committed Christian could come to such a conclusion, but the founder of Charisma Magazine stated in an interview that Christians should tolerate no dissent when it comes to Donald Trump. If that is the case, what has become of the prophetic role of the church? Are we simply a willing arm of the state, no matter how corrupt the state becomes?

How Will We Respond?

These are a few reasons that Christian America has somehow embraced a president with no visible moral compass, no claim to a Christian faith, and has exhibited little grasp of the responsibilities of the Presidential office. The fact that we are now facing such a national moral dilemma is distressing to many and should be a call for those who are able to offer some kind of resistance, each in his or her own way. The question is, how?

I don’t think there is one way or one answer. I do think that it is important for us to affirm the better angels of our nature, our higher aspirations, and our nobler national purpose. We can do that through the arts, by way of community action, and by voting at the polls. Some of us can engage in politics at the local level, all of us can write our congressional representatives. People of faith can consider the golden rule and seek to practice acts of love, compassion and concern. In other words, churches can renew their commitment to their higher calling and “not grow weary with well doing.”

Those of us who are part of a faith community can consider the challenge that Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers us from his witness in Nazi Germany. I would challenge you to read the article in Sojourners Magazine by Lori Brant Hale and Reggie L. Williams, “Is this a Dietrich Bonhoeffer Moment? Lessons for American Christians from the Confessing Church in Germany.”

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, made an observation worth noting that gives me some hope for a way forward:

  “Donald Trump did us a favor, because he shows us how active and significant white supremacy is in this country. I mean, we needed to know it. We needed to see it. We needed to punch a hole in the mythology of post-racialism, because we need to deal with it. I mean, we think about an oncologist — we don’t want our oncologist telling us a little lie that we don’t really have cancer.”

What are your ideas? How do you see the times we are in today? I would welcome any comments reflecting your thoughts or actions in light of the current state of our national life.

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Photo: Night time view of Washington, D.C. (Public Domain)



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Grace in a Time of Hate

A side street view of Grace Episcopal Church

Some of us have been distressed by the season of hate that seems to have taken hold in the U.S. Earlier this month, the presence of white supremacy groups marching on Charlottesville to protest the town’s decision to move a statue of Robert E. Lee was disturbing to many. As a Southerner who seeks to live a Christian life, I was particularly distressed to see how so many white Christians could not bring themselves to denounce white supremacists and the hate speech they promote. Southern Evangelicals have been especially shameful, in my opinion, in refusing to call out white supremacy, and refusing to hold a president accountable for his blatant disregard for moral values and democratic ideals. 

The torches, the swastikas, the chants of "Blood and Soil," and "Jews will not replace us" were so out of place for the America I thought we should be living in by now. At the same time, so few white Christians were willing to speak out; so many conservative politicians stood silent, offering no opposition to the words and actions of hate.

Southern Confession

I will tell you a secret. I am “southern born and southern bred,” having grown up in Alabama. We have a state rich in natural beauty, but also steeped in racial prejudice. Here is my secret: I have been assuming all of my adult life that the rest of the country would help my state redeem itself. When I saw the success of the civil rights movement along with the advances made in the U.S. to bring about equity and justice, I thought that my home state would eventually realize its errors. I thought we would have to mend our ways as we came to realize the responsibility that comes with being part of “one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

I thought a just nation would bring my state in line so that humanity would flower and prejudice would subside. As I have looked out at our country over the past several months, I fear that Alabama has had more of an influence on the rest of the nation than the nation has had on Alabama. The fear, hatred, prejudice and violence that I thought would subside in my state, have instead spread across the country.  We seem to have dispensed with the guardrails of common decency in our public discourse.


Is This the New Normal?

So now you see why recent events have been demoralizing for me.

I know that not everyone is turning a blind eye to white supremacy and hatred. I know that last November a little over half the country voted against a right-wing demagogue. I know that many people at the time found his bigotry and sexism beyond the pale. Yet the fear is that this “beyond the pale” bigotry is in danger of becoming the new normal. Some days, it can all seem overwhelming.

By the end of last week, I felt the need to spend some time in prayer in light of what I saw as the state of our nation. Though I have my own faith community, I have also visited other churches in town. Having been to Grace Episcopal Church on a number of occasions, I felt that this would be the most beneficial church for me to visit. I knew that because of the prayers they pray, the music they sing, and the work they do on the city streets, this would likely be the place for me to find some respite in light of distressing national news. I hoped that it would be a place for me to settle my mind and spirit; a place to pray and contemplate; a place to hear a word of hope and encouragement.

Grace Notes

On Sunday morning, I headed over to Grace Church. I was not disappointed. The Anglo-Catholic liturgy, music, and prayers provided the space to settle. The homily, delivered by the Rev. Robyn Arnold, gave acknowledgement to the political distress that I felt. She stated as she began her Sunday message that her parishioners understood that she seldom spoke politically from the pulpit. Nevertheless, she felt the need to address the events of the past week. Because she spoke from the heart to the heart, I found her message to be more pastoral than political. 

I left with an encouragement that I can carry on and perhaps even do this hard thing that may be called for in the days ahead. Moreover, I was reminded that we can be faithful witnesses even in the small things we do right where we are and that can make a real difference.

I jotted down a few sermon notes on the service leaflet. In the margin beside the parish prayer requests there was enough space to write . Here is what I walked away with from the homily:

 
Remember who you are.  You are created by God and made in God's image.

Realize that anger  leads to hate and that hate will eat you up on the inside. It is possible to “be angry and sin not,” so take care not to let hate take control.

In the Gospel reading for the day, Jesus said that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." (Matthew 15:11)

Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

We must remember that God is love and therefore trust in God’s love.

We must respond to hatred and injustice, but that response will differ with different people: some will respond publicly to oppose injustice, hate, and greed; others will respond more quietly to do small things in love right where they are.

We are to be Christ in the world at every opportunity.

We are called to show the peace of Christ in our words and in the work of our hands.

Benediction

The other thing I like about attending Grace Episcopal Church is that as I drive back home, I can listen to “A Writer’s Almanac” on NPR. I get to hear Garrison Keillor tell about literary milestones for this day in history and then share a poem. On this day, the words he always closes with were a particularly appropriate benediction:

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

And then the road home, to carry on tomorrow.

_________________________

Photo taken from the website for Grace Episcopal Church


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A White Southerner Takes another Look at Racism

[This essay was originally published June 23, 2015 online at Americablog.com shortly after the massacre at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. I am re-posting it here as a reminder to myself and all of us that we still have some work to do.]

We’ve been reeling lately from blatant issues of racism in our country that illustrate how much work there is yet to do in matters of racial equality. We thought we were making some headway, at least that’s what we kept telling ourselves, yet we continue to be hit with evidence to the contrary. This year is was Freddie Gray in Baltimore dying in police custody from a spinal cord injury. Last year it was Eric Garner dying in New York City after a choke hold by the arresting policemen. There was also the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; before that it was Trayvon Martin in Florida. All the while, we have seen numerous laws passed throughout the country that made it harder for African-Americans to vote.

Our racial bias is evident, and it’s not just in the South. Just this summer, The New York Times released its summer reading list with nothing but white authors – and The New York Times is supposed to know better. Moreover, we have a prison system nationwide that is systematically removing black men from society, and most of us take no notice at all.

Now we are faced with another mass shooting, this time in an historic African American Church in Charleston, South Carolina, that highlights the blindness and the hatred that still exists in our nation. How have we gone this long with blinders on, refusing to deal with prejudice and hate?

The hopeful moment that fell apart 

I’ll never forget the electricity, the excitement and the amazement that I felt when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. I had to work that day, so I set the DVR to record. At work, people gathered in the break room to watch Mr. Obama take the oath of office. The sea of people, as far as the camera could take into its field, spread down the National Mall and spilled into the streets. One of my college buddies was there, sending pictures via Facebook as the event unfolded. What an accomplishment! This country had elected an African-American president, and I was witnessing it in my lifetime after having seen the struggle for civil rights during my childhood. Perhaps we have made a breakthrough, I thought.

What I was not prepared for, however, was the almost immediate outpouring of hatred seen in social media comments and in the Tea Party’s media events. Bear in mind that the day President Obama was elected, our nation’s most popular hate site, Stormfront.org, received so much traffic that it shut down. I realized that the racism that I had witnessed in the South growing up never really went away; it just lay dormant until people became threatened by the notion of an African-American President. I really should have seen it before, but my white working class eyes kept missing the clues.

One such clue surfaced recently when some friends and I went out for Sunday brunch at a popular restaurant in town. The place was busy – we had to wait for a while before a table was available – but the service was good and the food well prepared.  By the time we sat down, we noticed that all of the people serving in the restaurant that day were African-American. As one friend put it, “the people who are doing the serving, the cooking and the cleaning,  are the same ones who cooked and cleaned in 1850 – something is wrong with that.”

What is wrong with that is that we look at how far we have come since the civil rights movement of the 1960s while we fail to see how much has remained the same. We tell ourselves we are making progress and doing fine, while entire segments of society continue to face injustice and oppression.

Persistent cultural racism

It is true that our country has made great strides for equality. On the day of President Obama’s first inauguration, I was thrilled to see how far our nation had come. Dismay soon followed with a deluge of verbal attacks on the president making thinly-veiled references to his race, and the unspoken (and frequently denied) racism in the call to “take our country back.”

When I have pointed out the element of inherent racism in the system to some of my friends on the far right, the response has usually been quick denial. Someone at one point asked if I placed myself among the racists in the privileged class. After giving it some thought this was my response:

Speaking as a white man and having grown up in the segregated South, I have to say that what was ingrained in us culturally is very difficult to shake. We learned not to use the “N” word and thought that meant we were no longer racist. In truth, there are a thousand other ways we show disrespect without always realizing it.

I am challenged to examine those cultural things that I take for granted but which may be painful or disrespectful to someone else. So yes, I would say that because I was born white, I have to try harder to understand the plight of the black, the Hispanic, and the immigrant in our society. I must examine the attitudes I have, the jokes I think are funny, and the phrases I use that may try to put one person down just to make me feel more secure. (from my blog post, "Who Me? Racist?")

In addition to examining our personal attitudes, we must face up to our systemic social inequities. We can no longer pat ourselves on the back for allowing blacks into our schools when the combination of white-flight and social elitism has left us with schools that are every bit as segregated as they were in the 1950s, and entire neighborhoods living with economic devastation and little hope for advancement. We can no longer tell ourselves how wonderful we are as a society to grant equal opportunity, when those opportunities often seem to be mere isolated tokens compared to the larger needs that exist. 

It is time to listen

I am no mover or shaker; I can claim no gifts at social organizing. One thing I can do is to listen. That is what I recommend to all of my white cohorts, privileged and working-class alike. We must start listening to those who are oppressed and excluded from society. We must hear the black community when it speaks of police brutality, unfair voting regulations, exclusionary institutions and bias in the judicial system. 

We must also be willing to listen to all of those who have a stake in our society but limited representation – the LGBT community, immigrants, etc. White men such as myself don’t know what it’s like to live in an America in which the game is rigged in someone else’s favor. If we don’t listen, we run the risk of thinking our problems are solved just because we’re in good shape.

I may not like everything I hear, but I need to be listening. I do know that on a personal level when we truly listen to someone else’s story, it can change our whole orientation and attitude. We have had a very long spiral of racial unease that has now hit us all with pain, heartache and tragedy. It is time that we listen, on a national level, to someone else’s story.

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Post Election: Do Not Grow Weary with Well Doing

The Year the Bat Cracked

The year was 2003, and I was quite distressed and growing weary.  The United States launched a war in Iraq, the consequences of which we are still dealing with. I was opposed to the war as was half the country. There were demonstrations in major cities with people chanting “No Blood for Oil.” It was a misguided endeavor from the beginning, and in 2003, the news reminded me each day of our nation’s misdirection.

That year, baseball, the national pastime, was a great national distraction for many of us weary of the drumbeats of war. Sammy Sosa was on a roll as he continued what he was best known for: hitting home runs. A few years earlier, he and Mark McGuire had been in competition as they were both trying to break the world record for the most home runs in a single season. He seemed to still be on top of his game when in March of 2003 he stepped up to the plate, got a solid hit, and his bat cracked revealing that it was corked. A home run hero was found to be using an illegal bat. It was symbolic to me for so much of what I was seeing in the country.

This year we have seen another crack that is showing us who we are as a nation: what values we hold at our core. There was an ominous foreshadowing soon after Barrack Obama’s election in 2008. I was elated as I watched that first inaugural ceremony and thrilled that we had finally taken further steps toward racial equality in America. Yet almost before they could get the folding chairs put away, we began to see the hatred and racism that had been just beneath the surface breaking out into the open. Racist memes about President Obama were appearing in the social media and angry Tea Party protesters were disrupting Democratic as well as Republican town hall meetings, using racial slurs to protest healthcare legislation.

With the 2016 Presidential election, our bat cracked. The racism and hatred that we tried to keep under wraps, and which some of us hoped we could move on away from is suddenly exposed to the world, but more important, revealed to ourselves.

A Divided Nation

Many have been writing about what the election of Donald Trump to the presidency means for the days ahead and for our future. My initial response of how to go forward was a bit humorous, but also a serious call to carry on with daily life:

• Jesus said to love your neighbor.
• St. Paul said to take a little wine for the stomach’s sake.
• The only thing I would add is to eat your vegetables and get some sunshine and we will make it through this together.

In other words, we go about our daily tasks of doing what we need to do. We keep our social ethic and we also practice self-care. I see this as being in line with the Zen proverb, “Before enlightenment, tote water, chop wood. After enlightenment, tote water, chop wood.” 

Neal Gabler wrote a bleak commentary about the election outcome in an essay,  “Farewell, America.” He wonders if we as a nation will recover, yet he finds some hope in quoting from W.H. Auden’s poem. “September, 1939”:

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

As disheartening as it is that we have elected a man who demeans women as sex objects, who spouts words hatred and fear, and who taps into the racism of the populace; and as distressing as it is to hear Christian leaders thanking God for his election victory, we must remember that fully half of the country also rejected that vision of America.

It is that other half that carries some hope going forward, yet also underscores the fact that we are a nation divided. Whoever had won the election would have to face governing a polarized and divided country.

Nothing Really New

I am not an expert in history, so there are people who can recall dark times in our nation’s history better than I, but the two great evils that continue to characterize America are the institutionalizing of slavery from the very beginning, and the acts of genocide committed toward the indigenous population. We were born out of a conflicting ethos of securing freedom for all while condoning slavery and ethnic cleansing.

History tells the story of how the Cherokee Nation made use of the legal process in order to remain in their ancestral lands. They took their case to the U. S. Supreme Court and won. Yet that victory did them no good when President Andrew Jackson disregarded the rule of law and implemented the Indian Removal Act by military force. There were some highly shameful acts that established our “sweet land of liberty” of which we love to sing. The evil in our midst that we must face is nothing new. 

There are three things that I take away from the lessons of the 2016 election cycle:

• Our country’s racism, hatred, and bigotry has been exposed (like Sammy Sosa’s bat) to reveal what is at its core.
• It is dismaying for me as a Christian that so many Christians were willing to overlook the corrupt character of a presidential candidate in order to keep their ties to the political empire.
• It is also true (and herein lies some hope) that fully half of the country voted against a legacy of hate, racism, and bigotry.

We have made it through some dark days of division in the past, and we can make it through these times as well.

Now What Do We Do?

We must now face the reality of our hatred and bigotry. Like Sammy Sosa's cork filled bat, we would be more honorable without it, but it has been exposed. Now we can choose to celebrate the points of light in our darkness (as W. H. Auden noted in his poem). “We must not grow weary in well-doing,” as St. Paul encouraged the Galatians who were living under another corrupt empire years ago. 

The thing we do now is what good people have always done in our country. Christian groups have the example set forth by Protestant Evangelicals of the 19^th Century who advocated for the abolition of slavery, prison reform, education, and an end to child labor. There is also the Catholic tradition of advocating on behalf of the poor and implementing works of mercy to create a better society.

In the 20^th century during the Great Depression we saw the Catholic Worker Movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, which sought “to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ,” taking the Sermon on the Mount as their social ethic.  We witnessed the long struggle for civil rights, voting rights (first for women, then for African Americans), and equal rights for all. We saw a new awareness of people with disabilities as we made room for them in the public square rather than shutting them away from society. We saw safeguards put into place to provide a safety net and access to healthcare for the elderly as well as the poor and disadvantaged.

All of these changes that have benefited our neighbor and helped us as a society were hard won by farsighted people who understood the ethics of living together with peace and justice. It was good people of all faiths and of no faith who understood the need for a better way and saw many changes slowly put into place.

Charity vs. Systemic Change

There is a difference between charity and systemic change. Growing up in the South, I saw that difference. Charity would help some poor black families have a little more to eat and clothes to wear during the holidays, but with civil rights legislation, we saw systemic change that enabled those same families to make a way for themselves in society, allowing them to have the long-lasting and substantive benefits of full participation in society. 

That systemic change, however, is not yet complete and that is the thing that people of goodwill must ensure for all of our citizens. It will require vigilance and advocacy for the vulnerable groups in our society that now feel threatened by the advent of a new administration. 

None of our efforts need stop with a new president in the White House. We still have half the country eager to see those points of light. We still have people of good will who will hold our government accountable. We will continue to do what we have been doing, so that in spite of setbacks, we will still make it a priority to work for the common good.  

Now we have to carry water and chop wood, which reminds me of those matters of infrastructure. We'll save that topic for another day. 

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Photo by Marco Vincenti: Zen sand garden



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The Day I Took Down the Flag

I remember my first awakening to what the Confederate battle flag meant to African Americans. It came remarkably late, but illustrates the endemic Southern culture and how we white folks can be so blind to "other people's histories," as the late Rev. Clementa Pinkney put it. I was a seminary student at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary in Mill Valley, California. The year would have been 1978, and I would have been 23 years old. My roommate in the men's dorm was from east Tennessee and I was from central Alabama. One day we were out somewhere in San Francisco and happened to see some small Confederate flags in a shop. We thought it would be a real hoot to show our Southern heritage back on campus at our dormitory, so we each bought one of the flags.  They were small, only about 3 or 4 inches, attached to a stick that was 8 to 10 inches in length.

We mounted them on the door of our dorm room for all to see, crossing one over the other to make an "X" with the flags draping down. To us, we were affirming our regional heritage in a place that had students mostly from the western states, but there were some from all over the country and even other parts of the world. We were outsiders on the California West Coast, in a part of the country that was far from Southern in culture, and we were affirming our heritage. 

A Quick History Lesson

Just down the hall from us was a fellow student a little older that we were (he was 29 or 30). Willie was from Mississippi and was African American. One afternoon when I came in from class, Willie called me aside and asked me to come to his room. He wanted to know why we had those flags on our door. I told him why, in similar terms as I have just related. He then told me about how the Confederate flag was viewed by the black community and what it elicited for him. I heard from him of the pain of racism and the fears of violence from white supremacists that he had grown up with.

His concern was that he wondered if people who waved the Confederate flag were in support of the white supremacists' legacy of subjugation of blacks. I told him that was not at all what we were thinking. I'm not sure he believed me at that moment, but I went immediately to my dorm room and removed the flags. When my roommate came in, I explained to him that we could not have those flags on the door. He was a little put out, but I told him about the conversation I had with Willie. My roommate was not immediately convinced. After all, the country had enacted civil rights, voting rights, and equal opportunity – we were not wanting to go back to the 19th century. We were just celebrating the place of our birth. Nevertheless, I told him, we cannot have these flags on our door. My own understanding at that point was only about 30 minutes ahead of my roommate's.

Seeking Equity

My roommate and I had lived our entire life in the South with very little knowledge of the different world that our African American neighbors lived in. It would be many years later before I would even begin to comprehend that while my childhood in the rural South was quite idyllic, my black neighbors just a few miles away lived in what would have to be termed a dystopian terrorist state – because of the Jim Crow laws that were in effect. We were all citizens of the same country, but our experiences were so very different.

In that moment back in 1978, it was more important for me to hear someone else’s story than to proudly proclaim my own story. Hearing about another person’s history began to open my eyes to my own actions. It was far more important for me to inflict no further harm and to eliminate any cause for ill will than it was to celebrate some half-remembered heritage. I remain a citizen of the South to this day, but my hope is for a South that can celebrate its present and future possibilities more than some idealized remembrance of the past.

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