Whatever Shade or Stripe

Last year, on the morning after July 4th, I drove to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to participate in the 2023 national convention of Braver Angels, a bipartisan organization working to bridge the political divides between “Blue” and “Red” America. I was one of the Blue delegates selected to participate in drafting a depolarization platform only one year ahead of a contentious presidential election. Braver Angels wanted to have a balanced number of Democratic- and Republican-leaning voters there, as well as a representative sample of Independents. A quick scan of the crowd showed how well they had succeeded in that. The Independent delegates wore their name tags on yellow lanyards; the Republicans wore theirs on red; the Democrats wore theirs on blue. For the three days we would be meeting together, we were instructed to mix and mingle. On the college campus where we gathered, we were assigned to mixed rooming groups. We were assigned to workshops enrolling mixed participants. We were told to sit at mixed tables in the dining hall and we did.  

So when I found myself having a meal with a handful of delegates wearing white lanyards, I was confused. They told me that they all — for institutional reasons — were required to maintain a neutral identity and had to exempt themselves from any partisan identification. Mostly, they were employed in governmental, educational, or religious organizations. I immediately envied them their exempted status. It never occurred to me to request this for myself, despite having been a religious professional for decades. How had I overlooked the separation of church and state that Americans have enshrined in law? 

It is clearly established in the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Even before it was ratified in 1791, though, the First Amendment was the subject of impassioned debate. Impassioned debate about it continues centuries later. 

In his 2004 book, The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America’s Founders, the late Forrest Church, a mentor of mine in ministry, wrote that “how citizens today view the founders’ intent is as much a Rorschach test of our personal religious and civic views as it is a true picture…” Twenty years ago, he asked readers: “Does church-state separation discriminate against religion, or, to the contrary, is organized religion increasingly trespassing on secular ground?” Rev. Church observed that “issues such as these dividing the American people right down the middle,” and in the two decades since his book was published, the divide he describes seems to have widened significantly. 

Election Day is almost here, and by all indications, the 2024 presidential contest is too close for anyone to predict its outcome. We are very far from from anything resembling a national consensus about either the Democratic or the Republican candidate, much to the consternation of the people active in each of their campaigns. There are more than 16o million registered voters in the U.S. today, and poll after poll shows them almost evenly divided. Regardless of whomever we elect, our next President will be tasked with governing a deeply divided country with approximately 80 million unhappy voters. What then?

Throughout our weekend in Gettysburg last July, Braver Angels arranged for convention delegates to take tours of the surrounding Civil War battlefields, including the spot where President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous address in 1863, voicing a hope and a determination that in the aftermath of such bitter conflict, “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” I was taught to memorize great passages from American history as a school-child, so these lines remain stirringly familiar to me.  More and more these days, I hear them as a prayer.

Let me state the obvious: democracy is a difficult undertaking. Democracy demands an awful lot of citizens, and there have been eras in our history when  its demands have felt almost too much to bear. “On both the religious right and the secular left,” Rev. Church wrote in his book, “much contemporary confusion stems from an inability to distinguish between… the universal spiritual values that underlie the American experiment in democracy, and… the role assigned to government to advance those same values by protecting freedom of conscience and belief.” I worry that not enough Americans on either the right or the left truly appreciate those universal spiritual values. 

It is a fundamentally moral project, our attempt to collectivize conscience, however imperfectly we might do that. Instead of asking who is right, we have to ask what is right, and answer with out best understanding. By guaranteeing every individual’s freedom of conscience, by each of us voting in accordance with our beliefs and values, we work to approximate the highest and greatest good. 

A classmate of mine from seminary, Sen. Rapheal Warnock of Georgia, is fond of saying that “a vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and for our children, and I think our prayers are stronger when we pray together.” Like many Americans, I have worked hard to get out the vote this election cycle. For the past couple of months, I have staffed a Monday night phone bank that works to recruit poll observers in a swing state. I have written scores of postcards to voters in the deep South, which is a number that is dwarfed by thousands upon thousands that my clergy colleagues report their churches have mailed.

As that blue lanyard clearly indicated, I am a lifelong Democrat. In our admittedly flawed two-party system, I have stayed fairly consistent; I mostly believe in my party platform and generally support Democratic candidates for office. But I also mix and mingle with Republicans, and occasionally vote for them, too. This hotly contested presidential election is seen as an intense competition between Red States and Blue States, yet only a few undecided voters in some swing states (they usually appear yellow in the media maps) will decide this race in the end. More often that I care to admit, I hear accounts of people from Blue States refusing to even travel to Red States and vice versa. Braver Angels has suggested that we find ourselves in the middle of “a cold Civil War”. How do we imagine it will end? 

In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, editorial writer David Books cautioned that rancorous partisanship in American politics was taking on the emotional contours of a holy war. “In days gone by, parties were political organizations designed to win elections and gain power. Party leaders would expand their coalitions toward that end,” he wrote in mid-October. “Today, on the other hand, in an increasingly secular age, political parties are better seen as religious organizations that exist to provide believers with meaning, membership and moral sanctification,” he observed. 

“If that’s your purpose, of course you have to stick to the existing gospel. You have to focus your attention on affirming the creed of the current true believers,”  Brooks concluded. “You get so buried within the walls of your own catechism, you can’t even imagine what it would be like to think outside it.” Brooks notes that as our two major political parties become “more like quasi-religions,” the real power lies with what he calls “the priesthood — the dispersed array of media figures, podcast hosts and activists who run the conversation, define party orthodoxy and determine the boundaries of acceptable belief.” The heterodox and yes, the heretical, are silenced as those boundaries of belief become battle lines.

As a student of religious history, I understand that holy wars never end well. They function much like civil wars in that the costs of the conflict are altogether devastating. When I think about the separation of church and state in our contemporary context, I think it serves to warn us against mistaking our political allegiances for religious commitments. In his book, Rev. Church was encouraging us to keep “our personal religious and civic views” distinct, to the fullest possible extent. He wrote this as the son of a U.S. Senator, a man he called his hero. Remember: your spiritual worldview is not on the ballot this November or any other November, either. Our deepest commitments and our dearest values — these are not things that people of faith would ever dream of putting up for a vote. Whatever happens in the 2024 election, our freedom to believe as we do remains. Whether or not you candidate wins, our hearts, minds, and souls are ours alone to lose. Keep that in mind this November 5th.

Rev. Church contends that same metaphysic that undergirds the Declaration of Independence — that among the truths Americans hold “to be self-evident” is a conviction that in addition to us all being created equal, we are each “endowed by [our] Creator with certain inalienable rights”  — undergirds the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights. “The founders’ professed goal was to establish a nation true to the spirit of divine law… These two streams met to affirm the dual imperatives of equality and liberty, best expressed in the above-mentioned motto of e pluribus unum,” he wrote. “Sworn (‘on the altar of God’ as [one founder] put it) to protect freedom of conscience, they established a clear line of demarcation between church and state, not to abridge but to fulfill the nation’s spiritual mandate.” 

When our very first president took his inaugural oath, he added the phrase, “So help me God” to the solemn vow he made, and every president since then has added that language simply as a matter of custom. I think it speaks rather powerfully to the exercise of spiritual humility required in the practice of democracy and expresses due reverence for the sacred dimension of our civic life. The greatest privilege and the chief duty we have as American is to inhabit a nation that seeks to stay true to the spirit of divine law, that affirms those dual imperatives of equality and liberty and by protecting individuals’ freedom of conscience in precise fulfillment of our spiritual mandate. I believe this with all my heart and mind and soul and strength. And yet — an article of faith that complete would never fit on a bumper sticker or lawn sign or campaign button. 

Every Monday night, as soon as we’re done with our phone banking, we volunteers get a text thanking us for participating in a voter protection action and asking us to reply with a message explaining why each of us “took action” that evening. Because I’m pretty tired by that point, I reply with same curt response, week after week: “Decency,” I type. “Dignity. Democracy.” Those words provide a capsule summary of my deepest commitments as a citizen; they always end in democracy. 

My friends with teenagers and twenty-somethings tell me that their voting-age kids have said that they no longer believe in democracy. “Fine,” I say, although I honestly doubt it is —“ then tell me what what form of self-governance they prefer.” I have yet to get a satisfactory answer. I understand younger voters’ gravest reservations; they see a democracy badly damaged by toxic polarization, menaced by autocratic impulses, and downgraded in international rankings. We have serious work to do now, all of us, whether we identify as Democrats or Republicans or Independents. We have serious work to do as Americans who are committed to putting our country above any political party.

While we have yet to hit the mark set by E Pluribus Unum —  the Latin motto that translates, “out of many, one” — we can still aim to strike that balance between plurality and unity, between then and me and you and us. In my front yard sits a lawn sign I ordered from Braver Angels in January 2021, shortly after an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol Building. It reads “Hold America Together” and has the American flag shaped as a heart, bright red, white, and blue. I had planned to leave it out through the first hundred days of the incoming presidential administration, but then I never took it in. It may well stay there another four years. Who knows?

What I understand now is that we need the brightest white between the Red and the Blue now more than ever. We have to stop confusing partisanship with patriotism, because it is not that. Political fanaticism makes a truly terrible religion; we need to take care we don’t make a idol of an election cycle or a graven image out of the White House. We the people are charged with the sacred duty of making sure that these United States shall yet “have a new birth of freedom,” as President Lincoln said centuries ago, “and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Let that be our common prayer this November. 

One of the gifts of having Rev. Church as my mentor in ministry was that he was always presenting with a signed copy of his latest book. Most volumes he signed over to me “with love, Forrest.” His book on that fundamental freedom guaranteed by the separation of church and and state, however, is signed simply, “with hope.” However we can, we ought to try lending one another hope in the coming months. They are likely to be challenging. 

Democracy is predicated on differences of opinion and it matters how well we navigate our national disagreements. That’s what makes a horse race, we might say, or rather — that’s what makes a competitive election. Of course, voting feels better if we believe that we simply choosing between opposing goods and much worse if we think we are choosing the lesser of two evils. Either way, we have decisions to make. Vote your conscience on Election Day and urge your family and friends to do the same. Alongside your highest hope for this county, though, hold an abundant love for its people, whatever their shade or stripe. We Americans are most readily recognizable when we stick together.