Toward a More Civil Union
If there is any holiday that invokes a sense of national unity and display of the American flag it is July 4th. We celebrate our independence and stand side by side pledging allegiance to “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
This year especially, the words rang false. We are at war with ourselves. We recognize different gods or none. We have no common understanding of what liberty and justice for all means in practice.
What has brought us to this place?
The attractiveness and power of ideological purities and the inability of our politics to bridge the divides among conflicting Truths.
Politics at its best is the lubricant that makes living together in relative harmony possible. As Bernard Crick wrote in Defense of Politics, “Politics enables us to enjoy variety without suffering either anarchy or the tyranny of single truths.” In every community, from the smallest to the largest, people have different values, competing interests. The task of political leaders is to be creative in finding “some reasonable level of mutual tolerance and support.”
Our politics today, however, does not reward those who conciliate, but those who push “our” agenda and promise to pass the laws “we” want.
Paradoxically, we can become “one nation” only if we recognize and respect that we are many. Only if we embrace the diversity and refrain from imposing our own beliefs, seeking to force others to conform, particularly in matters of personal behavior.
Democracy as a political system depends on an acceptance of differences. Where uniformity has been imposed it is accompanied by authoritarianism.
The danger to democracy and peaceful coexistence becomes particularly acute when the motivation for imposing unity is rooted in religious belief. At that point, it is not just that one is arguing for one’s own values because one believes they are better. It becomes my values are God’s values. This is what God commands. Other values come from the Evil One.
It is only a short step before one sees one’s self as a soldier fighting on the side of righteousness in a Holy War. That attitude is spreading, particularly within parts of the Republican Party.
The Republican winner of the Republican primary for Governor in Illinois references a Bible verse on the door of his campaign bus. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against … the rulers of the darkness of this world.”
At one of his rallies, the prayer request to God was, “More than anything, I ask for that, in this election, you raise up the righteous and strike down the wicked.”
In an email exchange between Mark Meadows, then chief of staff to President Trump, and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in the days leading up to the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, Meadows writes, “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs.”
Thomas replies, “The most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war.”
Democracy, however, is just that, a set of rules. Rules for making community decisions peacefully. Decisions people are willing to live with. Democracy is not about results. Democracy is a process. When the process is abandoned and there are no rules, we are left with the “tyranny of single truths.”
In ancient Greece where democracy had its early beginnings, Aristotle noted that when those in power follow only their own interests and the law is not “fair and acceptable all round,” the result is “constant strife and civil war.”
It is the law that has to be fair and acceptable all round. We don’t all have to have the same values. There is room for personal belief and a role for persuasion. But, too many would rather command that persuade.
Without broad social support any law is unenforceable. We see that in the response to the Supreme Court decision on abortion and the newly resurrected state laws banning abortion.
In a substantial number of jurisdictions, district attorneys have said they will not prosecute, police officials have said they will not investigate. In Wisconsin, Governor Evers has announced he will grant clemency to anyone charged. When there is a fundamental conflict in values and the population is divided any law coming down on one side or the other leads inevitably to social and political splintering.
Despite their reliance on legal banning of abortion, pro-life activists know that a ban will not eliminate abortion. Ultimately, persuasion would have to make the case. After making the legal and philosophical arguments for banning abortion in a piece written for the New York Times, a leading pro-life scholar acknowledges:
“The reality of the unborn child’s utter dependence upon its mother — coupled with the availability of medication abortion which remains just a click of the mouse away — means that no abortion prohibition, on its own, is going to ‘abolish abortion’. My fellow pro-lifers and I will also need to make the case to expectant mothers, and fathers too …”
Why then the law? Why not just “make the case”? The incidence of abortion would not be much different. There would be less conflict and controversy.
One can’t just make the case, however, when one is on God’s side, the goal is to make God’s will the law of the land, and there is no wall between secular and religious.
The Christian theology that unites Church and State describes God’s relationship with humans as primarily between God and the nation, not between God and the individual. It is rooted in the story of the Old Testament in which Israel was a chosen people with a promised land. The nation prospered when the people obeyed God. When the people strayed, the nation was punished, its armies defeated and its people sent into exile.
A growing Christian faction in this country has adopted the story as its own. Founded as a Christian nation, we are now the chosen people. The Church is responsible for cleansing the land and bringing the nation back to God. There is no space for diversity. Church and State are one.
Speaking at a church in her home state, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-CO, echoed that theme, “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.” The congregants, the New York Times reported, rose to their feet in applause.
There were crosses as well as gallows carried to the Capitol by the insurrectionists on January 6.
A Patriots Arise rally at which the winner of the Republican primary for Governor of Pennsylvania spoke, opened with a video and an image of a guillotine and the promise of “executions, justice, victory.”
It is precisely because too much blood has been spilt over the centuries in the name of God – the blood of heretics, witches, infidels, unbelievers, ordinary sinners – that we have the separation of church and state. The violent rhetoric by those who would do away with that separation make history seem not that far away.
Although they wrap the cloak of Christianity around their efforts, the teaching of Jesus is ignored. In the first century Jews and Samaritans were enemies; each had desecrated the other’s holy places. Yet in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells us the other is a neighbor to be helped, not an enemy to be defeated. “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Peace is possible when the law is “fair and acceptable all around” to believers of all faiths and unbelievers alike. Harmony comes with space for different values, for different ways of living.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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