I was asked the other day if I could explain what’s happening in America and American politics right now. My flip answer was, “How much time do you have?” In other words, I didn’t have a good answer. Today, however, I think I found it.
I’ve been reading a book called Christianity After Religion by Diana Butler Bass. At one point she writes, “Some people fear change and flee to leaders who promise to restore the glory of the past when the future is uncertain.” As an example, Bass talks about the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. One offered a return to the “faith of our fathers,” to order and authority. The other offered the hard work of moving into an unknown future. Voters opted to embrace the nostalgia of the past and go back to what they were told were better times. Sound familiar?
Bass goes on to quote historian William McLoughlin: In times such as this, “‘There almost always arises a nativist or traditionalist movement within the culture that is an attempt by those with rigid personalities or with much at stake in the older order’ to organize a backlash to ‘return to the ‘old-time religion,’ ‘the ways of our fathers,’ and ‘respect for the flag.’”
She continues, “Such movements scapegoat others (most particularly immigrants and outsiders), and they work to maintain high levels of fear among their adherents since they feed off of the ‘chronic stress.’ If the defenders of the old system elevate anxiety to a fever pitch, they can actually block the growth of consensus and prevent necessary change from occurring.” If this isn’t our reality right now, I don’t know what is.
Politicians and even some Christians today have become masters at raising the nation’s blood pressure by promoting anxiety and fear. Women in the workplace or in leadership roles, Islam, pluralism, environmentalism, “illegal” immigration, homosexuality, people eating our pets…they prey on people’s fears through gaslighting and lies.
To counter this, we must proclaim hope where there is despair, love where there is hate, peace where there is war, and unity where there is division. Our future is not in our past. A new “Great Awakening” is needed…one that includes recognizing and correcting systemic injustice, working for equality, equity, and fundamental human rights, and promoting a common good not driven by theology, doctrine, or dogma, but by love and a desire for all humanity…for all creation…to flourish.
The role of the church in the world today has changed; it isn’t to convert people to Christianity or our way of thinking, so they (and we) can get to heaven one day. It is to work to create heaven here and now…to build the Beloved Community, and see the kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven by embodying the love of Christ for the good of all humanity.
Order and authority…doctrine and theology…will not make this world right…grace and love will. If scripture is true, the whole of creation bears the image of the divine, so the only politics that should matter to us is the politics of compassion and love Jesus practiced that challenged the powers and principalities of this world.
What’s happening in American politics right now is a battle between what was and what could be. Fear is natural in times like this…but it is also an invitation to wake up and transform our fear into the urgency and courage needed to change the world. As Diana Butler Bass puts it, “Awakening is not a miracle we receive; it is actually something we do.” Now is a good time to do it.