The Winter Ahead

Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, I remember the joy we felt after Soviet Union satellite countries began throwing off Soviet rule and establishing democracies. Was that only thirty or so years ago?

Ukraine now braces for Vladimir Putin’s reawakened desire for a Russian empire as winter clamps down. Democratic governments worldwide have moved toward more autocratic rule. Xi Jinping has consolidated his rule in China, though lately his Covid lock down has caused problems.

Of course, we have no guarantee that changes in either Russia or China would bring in more humane regimes. Given the trends lately, some are understandably pessimistic.

Perhaps the greatest risk is to the country that has, since the mid twentieth century, been seen as the guarantor of democracy, the United States.

Trembles from the January 6th 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as continuing threats from groups espousing armed insurrection, continue to worry us. That numerous courts have upheld Joe Biden as the legally elected president of the United States seems not to matter for some. If you lose, the present pattern seems to be, you simply ignore the facts and declare a fraudulent election.

One major reason the United States was victorious in the long Cold War against the Soviet Union was the staying power of U.S. democratic traditions. Despite our nation undergoing long needed changes to overcome racial sins of the past, the people hung together against outside enemies.

We overcame huge disagreements, yet were united in holding to and even increasing our democratic practices.

Now we spend too much time fighting simply to remain humane and to overcome insidious slurs. And almost daily, it seems, moral pygmies decide to use guns to hurt as many people as possible.

How can we overcome these harmful trends even as winter provides an even more challenging environment?

Courage, perhaps, to uphold those who attempt civil discussion about real problems. Common sense to ignore those who would waste valuable time on lies or meaningless accusations.

Loving Our (Political) Enemies

Today, we are faced with a rise of what is called “Christian nationalism.” In this movement, the Christ story is supposedly tied to America.

This comes close to proclaiming the worship of a country. It also elevates political parties to claiming almost godly status. If our side loses, we, being God’s people, must prevail even if it means physically overcoming the other side, as was attempted at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Christianity can be championed in at least two ways. Too often, the church of the early modern era chose the political, nationalistic route: Those who didn’t follow the prescribed belief of an established church risked being killed, tortured, or exiled.

Though they certainly had their faults, the revived Christian groups of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries chose a decidedly better way of championing Christianity. Groups of Christians, not countries, were more likely to carry Jesus’ story to the non-Western world. This movement included “good works” like feeding the hungry and setting up schools, in home countries as well as on mission fields.

Today, we risk falling again into the trap of “might makes right.”

“Democracy is currently facing an unprecedented crisis, both in the United States and around the world.” (Daniel K. Williams, “The Forgotten Christian Cause: Preserving Democracy,” Christianity Today, October 17, 2022)

We are all sinners, prone to error. Until we recognize that we are not capable of playing God ourselves, democracy may be in danger.

“Democracy in the U.S. will succeed only if parties on both sides are ‘willing to allow their worst enemies to govern if they win an election.’” (Historian James Kloppenberg, quoted in the Williams article.)

 

Blessed Be the Tie

I grew up in the segregated South, and churches were, for the most part, as segregated as any other gatherings. White Christians have much to repent of.

On the other hand, the civil rights movement of the 1960’s owes much of its success to Christian church leaders, the majority black but including white Christians as well.

My own church was segregated, although not purposely so. No sermon that I ever heard in that church preached segregation. It was a working class, lower middle class white church in a working class, lower middle class white neighborhood.

We can be faulted for not having questioned the culture in which we operated. We didn’t respond to racism when we should have. We didn’t think about abolishing nuclear weapons, either. Nor were we found in the ranks of those working for women’s equality.

Yet, in looking back, I find redemption in the love that permeated my church for those who were there, not a small thing. The greatest love I knew after the love of my family came from that church.

That love planted its seed and enabled me to grow and one day led to conviction for my own racial sins and to ask for forgiveness and to change.

Love indeed covers a multitude of sins. In an imperfect world, it also changes us and leads us toward overcoming those sins.

Finding the Lost Continent

“Violent conflict exists in 20 African countries, and potential upsets in others cannot be ruled out. The violent activities of extremist groups are spreading.”

So wrote Mark G. Wentling, a retired diplomat (“Much Cause for Worry; A Clear-eyed Look at Africa,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2022.) Wentling spent most of his career working in aid programs for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.)

At one point, back in the 1970’s, when Wentling began his work in Africa, the future seemed hopeful. Many countries were gaining their independence from colonial rulers. Today, writes Wentling, “It is difficult to find an African country where competent and honest governance prevails and where justice is rendered to the people.”

Wentling details numerous areas of concern: population growth that has not made the transition the rest of the world has made toward sustainable birth rates; a massive movement of the population into cities without historical parallel; low educational and health standards; and an agricultural system unable to meet the continent’s food needs.

Of course, since the Portuguese first explored Africa’s coastal areas, too many developed countries have seen Africa as merely a treasure for them to exploit, beginning with slavery and extending to its mineral and natural wealth. Except for the work of a few missionary and aid organizations, Africans were not given the freedom or the means to make the transition taken earlier by today’s developed nations.

Wentling ends his article on a pessimistic note: “It seems few Americans care about Africa. I care, but I am helpless to change the course of history. I can see that if the negative trends of this large and diverse continent of more than 2,000 ethnic groups are not reversed, there is much cause for worry.”

These words do not have to be the epitaph on a continent with such possibilities. Some have seen the possibilities and determined different courses. They include two past presidents, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. African writers also are more prevalent, bringing their stories to Western readers.

Perhaps what is needed now is more awareness, not only of Africa’s needs, but also of her gifts, of how revolutionary Africans would be if her young people were given the educational and vocational training they need.

Perhaps if we centered on encouraging the skills, both educational and vocational, for ordinary Africans, the people themselves would be able to change their governments and protect their vast resources.

We Have Never Been a Christian Nation

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” (First Amendment to the United States Constitution)

We Americans tend to forget how revolutionary was the founding of our nation without a state religion. So long as a religion does no obvious harm, it has usually been acceptable for a group of Americans, large or small, to practice it. Certainly groups have been persecuted, but the U.S. government is forbidden by the Constitution to favor any religion.

Nevertheless, the majority of Americans until the beginning of the post World War II years probably thought of America as “Christian.” Other groups existed, of course. Some followed Judaism or were even (usually quietly) agnostics or atheists. However, the culture, most supposed, was “Christian.”

Leave aside the fact of our failing to act as Christians in practices like slavery and our relations with the area’s original inhabitants. The point is that we were, the majority would have said, a Christian nation. That was the fallback position.

However, the United States was a young nation with plentiful land and opportunities and freedoms unavailable in many parts of the world. Immigrants flocked here. Countries suffering hardships from war and dictators sent wave after wave of immigrants to this country.

Roman Catholic numbers grew steadily. Jewish immigrants increased. Russians came and also Asian immigrants. More Hispanics arrived from south of the border, joined by smaller groups of Haitians.

The latest immigrants have included Muslims escaping wars in the Middle East and most recently the collapse of Afghanistan.

As each group is joined by others, diluting and diluting again the former immigrant mix, some of those already established in the United States tend to resent the newcomers. These new people are different, not like our ancestors, not truly American. Of course, unless you count the original inhabitants, we’re all interlopers or descendants of such.

Each established group is tempted to believe that they are true Americans, not the newcomers with different religions and styles of clothing.

We have made many mistakes in our attempts to make the world in our image. That is not what this essay addresses. Nor does it address the need for a sane immigration policy with proper safeguards for both would be immigrants and the country they flock towards.

What should be understood, however, is that American Christians must give up the idea that America has ever been a “Christian” nation. A nation can be influenced by certain faiths, but it can never be “Christian.”

Christians, it is supposed, worship Jesus Christ. To try to make America in some way an example of a “Christian” nation is to defeat the religion of the Jewish teacher who chose to enter Jerusalem on a donkey, not striding in on the prancing steed of a conqueror. He did not worship power politics nor should we.

“Take as Many Pills as You Need . . .”

Several years ago I had surgery from which I fortunately recovered quickly. While I was in the hospital following the surgery, a nurse brought me pills to guard against any pain I might be feeling. She said I could take them whenever I needed to, as they apparently weren’t habit forming.

Fortunately, I don’t remember feeling much pain. I recovered quickly and soon stopped taking any pills.

Later we learned about the efforts of some in the pharmaceutical industry to push as many pain pills as possible in order to make as much money as possible. Apparently the medication was pushed whether the pills were needed or not or whether they might be dangerously addictive. (As we found in frightening ways, some indeed were.)

Sam Quinones, in his book, The Least of Us (True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth) tells a horrifying story of this shameful part of our past, when addiction was ignored so drug makers could make more money.

The story reveals how we too often see illness or injury as a part of the consumer culture: a way to make money, not as a need for healing.

I champion capitalism as long as it pertains to buying and selling the normal goods of a society and as long as capitalists pay their fair share of taxes.

However, any caring society, it seems to me, will do better if all people have access to safe and basic medical care, whether they are rich, working/middle class, or poor. Children, especially, should not have to depend on the income of their parents to grow in a healthy, safe environment.

That means, for me, seeing certain activities like the healing and treatment of illness as a public good, closely regulated to encourage good health, not to feed our normal capitalist system.

Christian Nationalism? Which Christianity?

Recently, we’ve seen discussions about saving “Christian America.”

What would it look like to “save Christian America”?

Which Christian America would we save?

A generally establishment Protestant Christian America? An evangelical Christian America? Would it allow citizenship for those practicing Roman Catholicism? What about Greek Orthodoxy?

Not atheists or Jews or Muslims, I suppose. That does, however, seem to suggest taking a lesson from some Middle Eastern countries which uphold Islam as the state religion. Is making some form of Christianity a test for holding office any better than Iranian mullahs dictating an Islamic government?

Unfortunately, saving Christian America might end up like saving Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious wars devastated Europe. Christians who didn’t agree with other Christians killed their Christian enemies with sword and torture while presiding over mass devastation of the countryside.

Getting to practical considerations, what kind of litmus test would we require of seekers after public office? What must they swear to uphold in order to have a “Christian” America?

Maybe we could just require Christian office holders to “follow Jesus.”

Of course, one test for a “Jesus follower” might be a test Jesus mentioned, the “last judgement test.” The only ones accepted at the end of the age are those who followed Jesus in his concern for the “least” people—the poor, jailed, hungry, and so on. Possibly we could make this a criteria for leadership.

 

That Voting Privilege

There may have been an election or two for which I was eligible to vote and did not, but I don’t remember it.

I once searched out a notary public in Kotzebue, Alaska, to notarize my vote. I have voted absentee from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia., and Washington, D.C.

I have voted in various towns in the United States: Jackson and Adamsville in Tennessee, Oak Park in Illinois, and other towns in California and Georgia, whose names I barely remember.

As a U.S. Foreign Service officer, I have helped overseas Americans cast absentee ballots for their home states when they were abroad in foreign countries.

My connection with voting began early. I played around polling booths growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, where my parents helped as poll volunteers.

Also, of course, I have lived in countries where citizens couldn’t vote, where elections were not held at all.

These experiences cause me to wonder why so many Americans don’t bother with voting.

I’m particularly saddened by the efforts of a few misguided individuals to discourage some Americans from being able to easily vote.

Perhaps, they need to experience what it’s like to live in countries where only privileged individuals have a voice.

The Lost Sabbath

Uncomfortable Sunday best clothes. Curtailment of sports and recreational pastimes. Long, boring sermons.

These are pictures we retain of puritanical Sabbath laws. Trish Harrison Warren suggests a different purpose for a Sabbath rest. (“How to Fight Back Against Inhumanity at Modern Work,” The New York Times, October 16, 2022.)

Today, Warren suggests, we need to revisit the Sabbath again: “When a careerist culture meets a digital revolution that allows unlimited access to work, something’s got to give.”

For workers in the beginning of the industrial revolution, who often toiled from sunup to sundown six days a week, a day off was a much needed day of rest, a day to connect with family, and perhaps to think of a deeper meaning for life. After all, in many ancient cultures, slaves and menial workers had no days off. One day was very much like any other. Surely, the beginning of a Christian Sabbath would have been welcome.

For several years of my life, I worked as a computer programmer. Most of what I did was, to me, boring and without meaning. I commuted to the city, swiped my badge before entering the work place, and settled in to staring at a computer, making minute changes for hours to computer programs.

I can understand why workers, working more and more on remote computer stations, would prefer at least the benefit of doing their jobs in a comfortable home setting. They at least can wear comfortable clothes, eat their own meals, and forgo a time-consuming commute. But, of course, if work can be done at home, one is indeed not limited by commutes or a set number of hours.

Computer monitoring also may mean that those who work selling to the public can be tasked minutely even to the bathroom breaks they take. Forget stopping to chat with a fellow worker and fostering a human connection.

Writes Warren, “The labor movement fought to change both culture and policy to limit our work weeks, and the 40-hour work week eventually became a norm.”

Today, we’re again overdue for a humanizing of work practices in keeping with our latest machine revolution.

Non-practicing Christianity

Vladimir Putin’s campaign against Ukraine has apparently been blessed by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church, one example of political religion. Dying while part of Putin’s army of invasion into Ukraine is even said to wash away all sins.

Political religion in several forms has long been a part of conflicts in the Middle East as well. From Islamic forces spreading their religion throughout the region and beyond, to Crusader soldiers of the Middle Ages, the differences linger on in many of the area’s conflicts today.

Political Christianity appears to be growing in the United States, even as some churches close their doors due to dwindling membership. The growth of political Christianity seems in direct contrast to the growth of actual practicing Christians.

Russell Moore suggests it might be kin to saying “those who declare themselves employed but have no income.” (From Moore’s newsletter, “Christian Nationalism Cannot Save the World,” September 29, 2022)

As Moore points out, a national Christian may be one who uses the term to distinguish themselves from those they wish to exclude, such as today’s immigrants. It is used as a way to exclude, not to serve Christ.

The teachings of Jesus, whom Christians purport to worship, spoke often of what distinguished his followers from others. In one comment on the final judgement of nations, Jesus talked of a separation of nations. The division was based on who had ministered to the needy and who had not. Those who were accepted into God’s kingdom had fed the hungry, given water to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, ministered to the sick, and visited the prisoner.

Not mentioned was nationality or the origin of one’s ancestors or what culture one lived in. Despite the fact that Jesus was a practicing Hebrew, that was not a factor in being accepted into God’s kingdom. What mattered was how one lived out God’s love for those he had created.

America certainly needs citizens concerned about the country’s problems. To bless nationalism with Christian favor, however, is a serious misrepresentation of Christ’s teachings.

Turning the U.S. Into a Democracy

The United States, at this time, is not a democracy, that is a country ruled solely by its citizens. The founding of the country certainly was at the forefront of the movement to give power to citizens, compared with most other countries in the world at the time. As the years passed, however, we did not build on this beginning as we should have.

We have certainly progressed from those white mostly upper class men who hammered out a constitution for the new nation in the late 1780’s. The progress, however, has been slow and incomplete.

It took us almost a century to rid the country of slavery, and the racism that lingers from that time still impedes us. The election of senators by citizens and not state legislatures was granted in 1913. Women weren’t give the right to vote until 1920.

We also are burdened, as we discovered on January 6, 2021, by a relic from the past, the electoral college. This gives power to individual states to elect the president rather than to the popular vote. It also allowed for the growth of political parties, not foreseen by many of the country’s founders at the time.

One suggestion for giving more power to citizens over political parties is the institution of ranked-choice voting. Voters rank candidates by choice. The two candidates with the most votes win. They could be from different political parties, the same party, or have no party affiliation. It would tend to give more power to voters and less to political parties.

Who knows? In time, perhaps we might eventually tackle the problem of gerrymandering, in which outsize power is given to party leaders to set voting boundaries.

Beyond the Unborn

Since the Supreme Court decision dismantled Roe vs. Wade, much of our attention has centered on abortion. Perhaps the more important concern should be: Why do we have so many unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

We have more ways to prevent the conception of a child than ever before in history. Why are so many unwanted children conceived?

At some point in our recent history, conception became disconnected from family. Perhaps some of the disconnect began with the industrial revolution and the beginning separation between family and livelihood. Homes were located further from jobs and sometimes from older family members as well.

As the industrial revolution played out, suburbs grew and became havens for nuclear families. Fathers were gone all day as children separated according to age into larger and larger schools. Eventually, women looked for lives with meaning beyond increasingly lonely suburbs.

Much has been written about the exodus of women from the home, but men left first. In addition, the location of homes further and further from work stole valuable time from families.

Women, denied the part they had always played in the economic sphere on farms and in family businesses, began to leave the children in school and head for jobs in the city. Some suburbs emptied out during the day.

The reign of the nuclear family was followed by the rise of the single household dweller. More single folks set up their own households. Eventually, just as the nuclear family eclipsed the extended family, the single householder began to overtake the nuclear family.

Singles searched out other singles for the “family” no longer a part of their lives or not easily available. Children were conceived as a byproduct, not as part of a family’s ongoing. The responsibility for bringing life into the world was too often ignored by young people who didn’t take responsibility for the life that might be produced by their coming together.

A greater need for families does not ignore the fact that not all families are ideal. Some are, in fact, harmful. Women also were too often abused within a male-dominant culture. Nevertheless, nothing has replaced the need for families. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and relatives are vital for nurturing. If humans are to survive, they need the caring provided only by families.

Conception separate from family bypasses both wisdom and responsibility. The best fix for abortion is the conception only of wanted children.

Strange Meetings and Grace

People called to some task when they were not expecting it have changed the world: Moses discovering the burning bush as he leads sheep in a desert; disciples of Jesus who don’t even recognize him when he meets them on the road to Emmaus; Paul meeting Jesus on the way to Damascus even while he is intending to arrest Jesus’ followers.

Some may at first resist the calling and the changes it requires. Commenting on Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Caitrin Keiper notes the time it took for Valjean to change from thief to benefactor of those in need. In the beginning, after Valjean is caught stealing and brought before the bishop, the bishop not only pardons the man but even gives him more silver. Valjean, however, leaves only to steal again—but then he realizes what he has done, and the redeeming process begins. (“Masterpieces of Impossibility,” Plough, Autumn 2022)

At some point, a calling is answered or a debt is forgiven or a gift is bestowed and accepted. The results, Keiper writes, are a “contract with grace.” The contract stretches “to infinity as it is passed on from one person to the next.”

Somewhere today, even among political hatreds or attacks on defenseless civilians or misery caused by selfish oligarchs, those usually small but called ones are working. They are the ones we search for, to join our callings with theirs.

Taking Democracy for Granted?

Watching events in Britain following the death of Queen Elizabeth II has given me a new admiration for a country that has practiced an evolution of democracy through centuries of existence. To an outsider, the British form of government is a gigantic hodgepodge of laws and practices and traditions. Yet it works as a democracy.

I’m concerned about my own country of America in comparison. You would think, considering our traditions of self-government and “government by the people” and our Constitution, we would be just as firmly certain of our democratic traditions here.

Yet, we’re the ones who almost lost, if not the republic, something close to it with the storming of the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots on January 6, 2021.

Writes Adam Russell Taylor: “It’s both alarming and bitterly ironic that false claims of a stolen election continue to be used to make a truly stolen election increasingly possible.” (“Democracy Can Be Easily Taken for Granted,” Sojourners, Sept/Oct 2022)

In that same issue of Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger writes of the recent visit of seventeen international religious leaders to Ukraine. (“Come and See.”) They were answering an appeal from requests on Ukraine social media for religious leaders to visit Ukraine in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

She commented on the false religious teaching of Putin and others seeking to build a country around “a particular ‘race or tribe.’ It’s what happens when religion cloaks ethno-nationalism with a veneer of mortal rectitude.”

The temptation of political power is strong. Some would even use religion as a weapon to gain that power instead of as a path to God.

Jesus Was Not an American

I never actually made the mistake of thinking Jesus was an American. However, I may have assumed that my beloved country, the United States of America, was his, that is, a “Christian nation.”

In my childhood’s Vacation Bible School (of which I have many fond memories), our procession at the opening of the day included the American flag, the Bible, and the Christian flag. The American flag was the one I preferred to carry, as I think most of my classmates did. That was a long time ago when the Cold War was at its height.

Perhaps it’s safe to say that most of us in my beloved church automatically assumed that the U.S. was a Christian nation. We belonged right up there with Jesus and the Apostles.

The change for me did not come because I left my church, since I never “left” it. Though I’ve experienced plenty of examination of spiritual matters, my church’s love is probably the reason I’ve remained a member of a church group every place I’ve ever lived, even in foreign countries.

No secular movement has ever surpassed Jesus, in my estimation. I never joined protest movements. Instead, I joined the U.S. diplomatic service and served my country in embassies and consulates in other countries. Seeing “established” religions in some of those countries turned me off the idea of any partnership of religion with state.

Jesus, God’s Son, as I believe, was perfect. No nation can ever carry his name and not smear it.

As a Christian, my duty to my country, as I see it, is to serve it in civil matters: voting, service as I am able, and, keeping up with national and international happenings so that I can vote and serve with knowledge.

To equate America with Jesus or even Christianity is, I believe, a form of idolatry.

Lose the Republic or Lose an Election?

Does the idea of democracy—people rule—come from an optimistic view of humankind or a pessimistic one?

Do its adherents believe that people, given the chance to rule, will always (or most of the time) choose the best leader? Do they believe that the alternative, dictatorship or oligarchy, would prove too liable to corruption?

If you believe that power spread widely will naturally result in good rulers, you will be be disappointed in some of our U.S. elections. (I don’t mean only in the 21st century.)

On the other hand, if you believe that the people are going to elect bad leaders at least once in a while, you may weather the occasional bad leader with more optimism.

A problem arises when a significant number of people are not willing to accept the view of the majority (or of electors, given our electoral system.) After the past election, some who voted for the losing candidate were so disappointed in the outcome that they could not accept the evidence of multiple investigations and court cases indicating that Joe Biden had, in fact, won against Donald Trump.

It couldn’t be, they proclaimed, that Trump didn’t win. Surely, he represented what the people wanted. They seemed unable to understand that they had backed a losing candidate.

Of course, loss this time is wrapped up in strong opinions about particularly divisive subjects like abortion and public school curriculums, to name just two.

Perhaps it’s a lesson each generation of Americans must learn: rule by the people (or their electors) means we lose sometimes—even in matters that deeply concern us.

Congratulate the winners and start working for the next election. Be grateful for the promise of a next election.

Divide and Fail

The United States doesn’t have a state religion. Freedom of religion is guaranteed in our Constitution.

The founders of the Republic, despite shortcomings, had learned one thing from the history of countries they or their recent ancestors had left, usually in Europe. Religion as a form of government was deadly. Groups fought, burned at the stake, beheaded, cut in pieces, and otherwise practiced atrocities in attempts to force their particular religious beliefs on society as a whole.

In fact, religious beliefs pertain to ultimate questions: What happens after death? Does life have meaning? What is my purpose for living?

How can answers to such questions be decided by a king or even one group of religious believers for everyone else?

Yet, some of our citizens now practice a kind of “no quarter” politics. It’s them or us, and if our side doesn’t win, it doesn’t just mean we loose for another two or four years, after which we get to try again.

No, it’s now between them and us to decide ultimate questions or the country is doomed: The elites and the true Americans. The other side is not just wrong. They are out to wreck Christian America.

Interesting that the early Christians spread their beliefs so widely in spite of outright opposition, even persecution, by the mighty Roman Empire.

And then Christians, after conquering that empire in a spiritual sense, somehow lost sight of how they had won. Some of them began to assume that this Jesus whom they worshiped needed political power.

Eventually, of course, this seeking after political power led to breakups among Christians and then to abandonment by many, disgusted by this un Christlike behavior.

When the United States was formed, leaders wisely saw what political religion had done to Europe and tried to avoid that mistake in this new country.

The attempt to separate religion and state led, not to an abandonment of religion, but to its unprecedented growth. The current attempt to change course and tie the country to a form of political religion may end up making religion as unimportant in the United States as it grew to be in Europe.

 

Blood and Soil Christianity

I grew up white in segregated Nashville, Tennessee. My neighborhood was white, my schools were white, and my church was white.

Along the way, my ideas about race and the segregated system were challenged. Why couldn’t black families enjoy traveling and motels like my family did? Why did a group of white boys jeer at an old black lady walking to the bus stop?

After a while, I no longer believed in the segregated system or that whites were a superior race. Eventually, the churches I joined as I moved around for job changes in the south and elsewhere were integrated.

However, I was an old woman when I read Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.
At that moment, what I had not understood all my life came into focus. Every time a black American stepped out of their neighborhood, they had to remember what I rarely thought about—that they were likely to be noticed because of their skin color. Always, they must be on guard.

A country that, for most of its existence from early settlements until centuries later, treated a segment of its population as inferior has much baggage to unpack. Interestingly, some of the difficulty comes not so much from those now-integrated or willing-to-be-integrated churches, but from those who used to attend them but now don’t.

As we know, attendance at churches in the south and elsewhere has dropped and is dropping. Some of those who, in their youth attended white only churches, dropped out before many of their churches answered the altar call to change their ways.

Yes, Southern churches have changed, but, as Russell Moore commented in an interview with historian Daniel K. Williams, studies show “a fast-growing trend among white Southern Protestants who seldom or never attend church and yet self identify as evangelical Christians.” (Russell Moore “When the South Loosens its Bible Belt,” Christianity Today, postdated August 11, 2022.)

Some of these former churchgoers may become even more extreme. Says Russell: “The kind of cultural Christianity we now see often keeps everything about the Religious Right except the religion. . . . Cultural Christianity, as we once knew it, is largely being replaced by a kind of blood-and-soil sense of belonging and obligation not to a church but to a particular brand of white political and cultural identity.”

Moore calls for what, indeed, the church has always called for: reaching out to those in need.

“Yes, if all people see of ‘Christianity’ is the anger and loneliness of half-Christians, they will not see the real Jesus. But the converse is true, too. In a time of loneliness, separation, and boredom, we ought to see craving for what Jesus told us we all need.”

From slavery to women’s rights to civil rights and more, the needs have always called forth those who answered. Sometimes they seemed to have failed—Germany as a nation followed Hitler. However, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others in the confessing church are the ones who inspire us today.

I can see the faults of my south only as one raised there can see them. I also know that people, black and white, are working to overcome those centuries of wrongdoing. May God have mercy and bless these efforts.

Reading Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton, an eighteenth century refugee to America from the West Indies, served as a young aide to General George Washington in the Revolutionary War. He served his adopted country again as President Washington’s first treasury secretary.

After reading Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, I realize how much we owe Hamilton for the financial structure he laid out in our nation’s beginning years. However, I was most struck by the nation’s titanic political battles during those years and our continuing struggles into our present day.

Indeed, we have fought over our nation’s directions and choices for its entire existence. We fought Great Britain to gain our political freedom, yet many of our founding fathers owned slaves with no freedom. Great Britain abolished slavery in most of her empire a few decades after the American Revolution, while its former colony, having won the struggle for independence, would not give up slavery for almost another century.

We have struggled over racism and women’s rights. We struggled over the power of monied interests to bribe politicians. We have struggled for a civil service uninfluenced by those interests. We have struggled over the use of our military power and our influence in the world.

Our discovery of the internet and social media have increased ways to share news and ideas, but the struggles evidenced in our tweets mirror the old battles between selfishness and service. Demagogues take advantage of those frightened by changes, as they always have, encouraging an us/them mentality.

Overcoming the never ending dangers to the republic bequeathed to us by Washington and Hamilton is a constant struggle. We will always struggle; that’s the price of choice by fallible humans.

The issue is whether we can disagree without hatred. It depends as much as anything else on our ability to sympathize with those with whom we disagree. As long as we respect each other, we can work for solutions.

Return to Political Patronage?

James A. Garfield served the shortest term of any U.S. president. Sworn in on March 4, 1881, he was assassinated a few months after taking office by a disappointed seeker for a political job. The assassin was one of many seeking a government job, not because of any expertise, but because of simple loyalty to a politician.

Garfield’s tragic death led to a movement resulting in our modern civil service. Our government seeks to hire employees because of ability, not because of loyalty to an individual.

Max Stier (“Opinion: The Patronage System Was Corrupt. It’s Threatening a Comeback,” Politico, August 2, 2022) writes: “Today, our nation’s 2 million career civil servants swear loyalty to the Constitution, not fealty to an individual president. They’re hired based on their ability and skills and cannot be fired for partisan or non-merit reasons. These protections provide civil servants with the latitude to offer unvarnished advice, to execute important policies and report illegal activity and misconduct without fear of retribution.”

Yet, some are calling for a return to the corrupt ridden patronage system. Presumably, if the patronage system were returned, civil servants, to avoid losing their jobs, would be tempted to report only news the president wanted.

Remember when former President Trump tried to overcome a weather report about a hurricane? He insisted that his incorrect statements about Alabama having been in the possible path of Hurricane Dorian were true , even altering a forecast map with a permanent marker. Government forecasters, not fearing for the loss of their jobs, stuck to the true forecast.

One of the stark differences between democracies and dictatorships is the freedom democratic sources are given to deal with facts and truth

Without unbiased government reporting on numerous subjects from foreign affairs to unemployment, presidents could hide any facts damaging to their power.

Writes Stier: “The arbitrary firing of tens of thousands of civil servants by a new administration could not only put the nation at risk, but potentially hamper the government’s ability to effectively deliver important services, from veterans’ benefits and Social Security to farm programs and ensuring military readiness.”

Do we want truth from government reports or political propaganda pieces?