The Raven Foundation

Are you wondering what to make of all the God talk in today’s politics? It seems we can’t decide if we want God nosing around our political decisions and anointing candidates for us. Remember the dove that descended on Jesus at his baptism and the voice from heaven booming for all to hear, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased”? It’s as if some of today’s politicians think they have a dove floating over their heads and they can’t understand why they are the only ones who hear the divine endorsement: I’m God and I approved this message. Republican candidates in particular like to dally in this double-edged delusion: that (1) God takes sides in American politics and (2) is keeping his divine fingers crossed for your victory.

 

Of course, God will only root for you if your position is the right one. You have to be on the right side of every issue from economics to immigration. Stray across into the grey middle ground and God will join the crowd in calling you weak or wishy washy. Stray all the way to the wrong side and you might as well admit you are siding with Satan. And don’t be fooled by Democratic candidates who don’t use God-talk because they are just as guilty of certainty in the sanctity of their positions. They just claim to be “right” instead of divinely chosen. I’m not sure whose voice they hope we hear, but the point is the same. Being on the right side of an issue, whether you think in religious or secular terms, naturally results in absolute, unwavering, uncompromising faith in your position and total condemnation of your opponent’s. When it comes to casting our votes, they want us to believe in their differences from one another, but the thing that is becoming more and more apparent to voters is how alike the candidates are, not only in their pre-election barnstorming, but in how they behave in office. Choosing one over another seems to be a futile exercise, like choosing which pair of blue socks I’ll wear today. Just reach in and grab one/ vote for one, because the differences don’t matter.

 

And that, folks, is where we are today. Oddly it is where we have been before and the result was an American tragedy. The American Civil War was fought by two sides (there were a slew of diverse positions which telescoped into two opposing armies when the war broke out) that each believed that God was on their side. It was all God talk back then, because religion was assumed to be part of political life. Everyone was more or less a Christian in name if not in practice, and the Bible was the go-to reference book for how to vote or who to support in an election. Folks on both sides of the slavery issue whole-heartedly believed that they had Biblical and therefore Godly support for their position. Did you get that? Both sides of the slavery issue believed that God was on their side and the proof was in the Bible. I won’t go into that here, but if you can attend our conference at Wheaton College on March 16-17 you will hear directly from Civil War historians about how even the pro-slavery South could feel divinely inspired.

 

The salient point for us today is that the abolitionists and pro-slavery folks were locked in a heated argument about their differences, differences so extreme that God was supporting one side and condemning the other. Which side you thought God supported depending on which side you were on, of course. But each side resembled the other in a critically important way: their confidence that they knew the mind of God. Today’s debates around moral issues have a bit more diversity because all sides aren’t making the God argument. But if you substitute “certainty that I’m right and you’re wrong” for “knowing the mind of God” then our debates on same-sex marriage and reproduction, immigration and terrorism, fall into the same pattern as the slavery debate. According to Mark Noll, the insistence of both sides on absolute certainty that you are reading the Bible and the mind of God correctly created a hostile environment leading up to the Civil War that “transformed the conclusions reached by opponents into willful perversions of sacred truth and natural reason.” (The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, page 20) In other words, both slavery and anti-slavery positions were called “perversions of truth” by their opponents so confidently that the truth itself, that both sides were guilty of blind racism, was hidden from view for the next 100 years.

 

But what’s the risk today for a politics of certainty? Politics has become a form of entertainment. No one thinks that all this certainty and God-talk will lead to violence, do we? I mean, we’ve come a long way since the 19^th century; we’d never let things go that far. But there is a place where God talk is part of an outbreak of violence: the fight against Islamic terrorism. Americans insist that we are completely different than terrorists whose conviction that God is on their side leads them to die for their cause and to murder civilians without ever doubting God’s favor. To prove how different we are, when we fight back we are careful to avoid God talk of any kind. But is that a difference that matters? Just like our adversaries, when we kill civilians, we don’t doubt our own goodness. When our soldiers die for our cause, our certainty does not waver. In a very real way, we are exporting our violence right now, allowing our combating certainties to play out in foreign wars. Our Civil War, four years of escalating violence in which over 850,000 Americans died, may be a warning to us that if our current wars end and we don’t start another one, all this certainty may find a violent outlet at home. We may be marching to the tune of our own infallibility toward a Sophie’s Choice of war abroad or the risk of war at home. I wonder which side God is on.

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I reflect on the 9/11 anniversary events I attended in the Chicago area: the Ground Zero 360 exhibit at the Field Museum and a conversation with community leaders at the WBEZ studio sponsored by the Project on Civic Reflection. When asked how we could recapture the unity of those early days after 9/11, one women I met at the Field said, "Turn to God". That got me thinking.

 

 

 

For the last two months or so at Raven, we have been thinking about how to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that will be occurring this September. Because we want to invite you to do something that day that is a bit more meaningful than flag waving or grieving, we have to think ahead. Now I know it’s the middle of summer and really not the best time to be asking you to think about such a serious subject, but maybe it’s the perfect time. As I’ve remembered those dark days the closer I’ve inched towards feeling something like a glimmer of hope.

 

I have dipped back into the darkness as Adam and I have prepared a music video to go along with a song written by a friend of the Raven Foundation, Michael Hardin. Michael is a gifted preacher, teacher and writer who has devoted his life and ministry to spreading a gospel of peace. He was in New York City on 9/11/01 and his song captures the fear and panic we all felt whether we were in New York or miles away. His chorus goes:

 

How are we supposed to pray in a time of war?

What are we supposed to say to the gods above?

How are we supposed to feel, when everything’s surreal?

When all that’s left are the ashes of those we love?

 

Notice that the chorus is a series of questions, which captures how I felt that day. A galaxy sized hole of panic had opened up where my sense of safety and security had been. My grief was expansive and I can still feel it threatening to swallow me up. In the months following the attack I became paralyzed with grief and then gripped by despair as I observed our nation’s response. We succumbed to the age old reflex that has kept humanity trapped in endless cycles of violence – return attack for attack, hate for hate, while accusing our opponent of being aggressive and justifying our response as defensive. It made me sick then but I rarely expressed how I felt. Everyone was so caught up in fear and a belief that we had no choice but to respond in kind that it seemed futile to voice anything but agreement. And if I did venture a question about whether invading Afghanistan was the right thing to do, I was greeted with responses that ranged from disbelief to outright anger.

 

So where’s the hope? It’s coming, I promise. More than war, terrorism, surges and insurgencies have been going on during the last 10 years. Below the headlines the work of peace building has been quietly and steadily taking place, even on the African continent, so long a symbol of intractable violence, poverty and illness. In a story for the New York Times, An African Adventure and a Revelation on July 1, Nicholas Kristoff gives a hopeful portrait of the changes taking place there. Here are two highlights: the number of electoral democracies in Africa has risen to 18 from 4 in the last decade, and because of anti-hunger and poverty aid initiatives, child mortality has dropped from 12.4 million children in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009. Still too many children dying from preventable causes, but the trend is moving in the right direction.

 

Another note of optimism is sounded by our friends at Nonviolent Peaceforce who report that they are working with the United Nations to develop a training program in nonviolence peacekeeping for UN peacekeepers. The move away from a belief that violence is more powerful than nonviolence is slow but palpable, not only at the UN but in the democracy movements that are part of the so-called Arab Spring. I could go on but instead I hope you’ll respond to this column with the signs of hope that you have been observing going on in the world. I’d like to collect enough to create an avalanche of hope that will inspire more of us to get actively involved in working for peace.

 

After nearly a decade of war, I believe that there is a silent majority in America fatigued by violence and longing for us to rethink our military response to the 9/11 attacks. When I question the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, the responses I get are not nearly as hostile as 10 years ago. Folks are honestly, though still skeptically, looking for an alternative to violence. It seems more and more difficult to dispute that violence can only bring more violence into the world and that if we our goal is peace, it’s time to be more creative about our methods. We need to tap the commitment and heroism we saw in the rescue efforts on 9/11 as well as the heroism of our troops abroad toward the larger goal of global peace.

 

I’d like to invite you to a different sort of 9/11 anniversary this year. If you have been part of that silent majority for the last 10 years, take the occasion of 9/11/11 to make a public commitment to nonviolence. It will take courage and commitment to change America’s course but it is my fervent hope that America will take a leadership position in the effort to build a peaceful world by peaceful means.

 

Here’s what you can do. As a first step, “Like” our Facebook page for the 9/11 anniversary, “Honor Their Memory – Be a Hero for Peace”. Ask your friends to “Like” the page, too, so we can build a network of people committed to peace by peaceful means, one big enough to get the attention of U.S. policy makers. And please reply to this email with your signs of hope. In the coming weeks, visit the “Honor Their Memory” Facebook regularly for inspiration and ideas about how you can shape a 9/11 anniversary for your community this year that represents your longing for peace by peaceful means. I will close with the last two lines of Michael’s song and invite you to keep this hopeful lyric in your mind as inspiration for your efforts for peace: “I do believe in love, and I do believe in life/ And I do believe that evil will not triumph.”