In 1816, just a few years before he would die fighting a
duel, the dashing American naval hero, Stephen Decatur, offered a
toast at a banquet in Norfolk Virginia. He ended it with words
that have become more famous than Stephen Decatur. "...our
country," he said, "our country, right or wrong."(1)
I confess I have a problem with that sentiment. And I am
not the only one. G. K. Chesterton wrote, "'My country, right or
wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in
a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or
sober.'"(2) I hear that. So saying, I love my country, but to say
"right or wrong" smacks pretty close to idolatry, and, as you
Bible scholars know, idolatry, as far as scripture is concerned,
is a very large no-no.
More than 80 years later, in 1899, another American
recognized the problem. Carl Schurz, a Civil War General, US
Senator from Missouri, and finally, Secretary of the Interior, in
a speech in Chicago, amended Decatur's famous toast: "Our country
right or wrong," Schurz said, adding, "When right, to be kept
right, and when wrong, to be put right."(3) OK. That I can live
with much more comfortably.
Carl Schurz's editing does more than steady Stephen
Decatur's swagger. The added words imply a certain principal,
namely this: if your country is to be "kept right" or "put
right," there must be some moral compass higher that mere
national interest; there must be some loftier moral standard,
even a God, dare we suggest, whose ethical compass steers a
course truer than national interest alone. That is a good
reminder on this weekend that we celebrate our independence and
in an election year in which we will hear gracious plenty about
the values we hold dear.
But of course, as soon as we dive into the values fray, we
face a big question: how do we know what is right and what is
wrong? Easy, right? Not really, not these days. We live in a
unique period of American history. Never before has this nation
launched a "preventative" war. For the first time we have heard
serious discussions at the highest levels about the acceptability
of torture. We have seen the suspension of constitutional due-process rights as suspects are held indefinitely without charges.
We have experienced warrant-less searches of our telephone and
banking records. This is an environment that Americans have, up
to now, only known in the practices of foreign dictatorships. In
such an atmosphere with everything excused as an effort to thwart
terrorists, "How do you know what is right and what is wrong?"
Are right and wrong the same things as the national interest? Or
are right and wrong measured by some authority higher and wider
than nation alone?
You know me well enough to know how I will answer that
question, of course. Think about it for more than a minute, and
you know how anybody who believes in a God worth the name has to
answer that question. In the language of the card table, "God
trumps nation, even my nation, every time."
But religion and politics don't mix, they say. At one
level, that is good counsel. It would be wrong for me to try to
tell you how to vote come November (not that it would work
anyway). It is wrong when bishops or ministers, rabbis or imams
pronounce that there is one and only one Christian or Jewish or
Muslim position on complex political issues, when in fact, these
are issues that good Christians and good Jews and good Muslims
disagree about. So if that is what they mean by not mixing
religion and politics, of course, they do not mix.
But if they mean that I am supposed to check my faith and my
religious values at the door of the political arena, I cannot do
that. What I believe about God, my trust in Jesus Christ, the
values that grow out of that faith, this is who I am. My faith
cannot HELP but shape my values, including my political values.
Our lesson from the book of Acts has Peter and John butting
heads with the authorities in Jerusalem. They have been hauled
before the council and told to stop preaching and cease and
desist with the miracles, please. Peter and John respond with a
veritable call to civil disobedience. "Judge for yourselves
whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God."
And then this zinger: "For we cannot help speaking about what we
have seen and heard." In other words, they had no intention of
shutting up. The message is, when push comes to shove and you
have to choose, God is the higher authority.
On this Independence Day weekend, we need the reminder that
faith, if it means anything to you at all, has to inform your
politics. I cannot leave what I believe outside the legislative
hall or the voting booth. In this sense, religion and politics
simply have to mix. Admittedly, that is not as simple as it
sounds.
The Brookings Institution published a book two years ago
entitled, One Electorate Under God?(4) It is a collection of over
50 essays on religion and politics in America. The writers are
Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others, liberals and
conservatives. They all bring their faith to their politics and,
surprise, surprise, they come out all over the political map!
The question we deal with in our day is how do we have legitimate
political discourse that includes issues of deeply held faith in
a pluralistic society?
This past week a gathering of religious leaders in
Washington was seeking to call Congress' attention to the plight
of the poor in America. One of the featured speakers, Illinois
Senator Barak Obama, addressed the issue, and he recalled an e-mail that he received from a doctor at the University of Chicago
Medical School shortly after he had won the Democratic nomination
in his US Senate race.(5)
It read: "Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary
win. I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am
seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I
write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me
from supporting you." The doctor described himself as a
Christian who understood his commitments to be "totalizing." His
faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay
marriage, although he said that his faith also led him to
question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to
militarism that seemed to characterize much of President Bush's
foreign policy.
Obama continued, "The reason the doctor was considering not
voting for me was not simply my position on abortion. Rather, he
had read an entry that my campaign had posted on my website,
which suggested that I would fight 'right wing ideologues who
want to take away a woman's right to choose.' He went on to
write, "I sense that you have a strong sense of justice...and I
also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard
for reason...Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that
those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse
desires to inflict suffering on women, then you, in my judgment,
are not fair-minded...I do not ask at this point that you oppose
abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded
words."
Obama said, "I checked my web-site and found the offending
words. My staff had written them to summarize my pro-choice
position during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my
opponents were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.
Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame.
It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller
conversation about religion in this country. They may not change
their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from
those who are willing to speak in reasonable terms - those who
know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives
of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another
political issue with which to score points. I wrote back to the
doctor and thanked him for his advice.
"The next day, I circulated the email to my staff and
changed the language on my website to state in clear but simple
terms my pro-choice position. And that night, before I went to
bed, I said a prayer of my own - a prayer that I might extend the
same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had
extended to me. It is a prayer I still say for America today - a
hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles
the beliefs of each with the good of all. It's a prayer worth
praying, and a conversation worth having in this country in the
months and years to come."
Happy Fourth of July. Amen and Amen!
1. The Decatur illustration and some of the support material here is from a sermon preached
by Michael Lindvall at the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City, 8/24/04, entitled "Can
Religion and Politics Mix?"
2. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Defendant, "Defence of Patriotism," (1901)
3. Carl Schurz, "The Policy of Imperialism," Speeches, Correspondence and Political
Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119-20 (1913)
4. E. J. Dionne, Jr., Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Kayla M. Drogosz, editors, .One electorate
under God? : a dialogue on religion and American politics, (Washington, D.C. : Brookings
Institution Press, 2004)
5. "Obama: On Faith and Politics," Chicago Sun-Times, 6/28/06
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