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?
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The Reverend Dr. 