Spirituality

I just read an article in the Stanford Report entitled Deans for religious life question meaning of 'moral values' (I could just let you be impressed with my knowledge of obscure newspapers, but I’ll be honest. I’m getting Google alerts on 'values.') The deans expressed a view I share: that the religious right "has achieved its might at the expense of its soul." I’m reminded that the last gasp of the Catholic Church’s power was the Inquisition. But if Christianity is losing its soul--which was the power of Jesus’s message of acceptance and connection--what’s all this wailing, whining, and awakening about moral values about? There are two directions on our spiritual compass.

One is about fear:

... the deans—-all self-described religious progressives-—suggested that liberals reach out to their conservative brethren to better understand how a climate of fear lingering since Sept. 11, 2001, helped re-elect Bush. "Our country has been gripped by grief and fear, by test and terror, by alarm and apprehension," Karlin-Neumann said. "Neither left nor right has a monopoly on fear. The rhetoric [of the election] may be of hope and power—-of freedom on the march--but the reaction is one of circling the wagons and contraction."

One is about a deeper and more visceral sense (thus the collective aha! in response to the news that values mattered in the election) that:

Unlike other nations that are held together by an ethnic identity, Americans are united by a common idea about human hope and human potential, McLennan said: "The idea of America includes not only liberty but also a deep commitment to equality and justice, starting with equality of opportunity." He said that although the United States has fallen far short of its dream, most Americans want to make it a better country. "I suggest that America has important moral values that bind us together-—which we abuse at our peril," he added.

In another article, Candy Crowley said:

... journalists and blue-zone leaders must grasp that many parents feel threatened by the "coarsening" of American culture. They feel attacked. "It’s like they are saying, 'I was made to feel like a freak because I go to church' or 'I was made to feel like I was an idiot because I believe in God,' " she said. "They’re telling us, 'I want my family safe and I want to be able to teach my children what I believe is true.' ... It's time to listen to them."

I think Candy Crowley and others are misinterpreting what those parents are thinking and feeling. What I hear isn’t about being attacked (which then would put blue-zoners on the defensive), but about a profound need for faith and hope for the future. Red-zoners have faith without vision, but blue-zoners think they can have vision without faith.

I submit to you that one of the keys to capturing the hearts of America--and the world--is to reinvest the spiritual into the discussions and considerations. This doesn’t mean we need to cave in to the demands of the religious right, but we need to hear the yearning for grace. We need to hear the spirit of their expressions, not the physical words they say. We need to hear that spirit as the expression of hope and potential that unites all Americans-–even though we sometimes seem to speak different languages.

When threat is physical, there does not seem much point in discussing spiritual resources. But there is. The reason that so many have backed a military solution is that no one talked about the spiritual solution--which meant talking about faith and hope and love. In the absence of a persuasive presentation of uniting faith, the fallback position becomes physical.

The president set the lead on this, but where were the challengers; where the voices saying "We've seen worse, we can stand as a nation without fear because we have a uniting faith." They made faith into specifics, and it's time we take it back as an attitude.

Here's a question to ponder: If the US suffered several thousand deaths, and that meant we had to attack somebody, what if a natural disaster were to kill thousands. Would we have to hunt God down and kill him?

Posted by Elissa Bishop-Becker at December 2, 2004 10:56 AM | TrackBack