Month: August 2024

Since the days of the American Revolution, individualism has been a signature of our culture. Unique to America was the ideal that every person regardless of class was free to make the most out of their life as far as they were able. It was and is a worthy ideal that we have yet to fully realize although we have made much progress.  Sadly in the last 80 or so years, the ideal has become distorted.

The historic heroes of individualism were celebrated not only for their courage and perseverance, but also for their commitment to the communities they served. What made them heroic was their sense of duty and obligation to others. That began to change in drastic ways during the 1980s and has continued to the present day. Individualism has come to stand for the self and the self alone. The emphasis has been on my rights, not our rights, my freedom not our freedom, my welfare not our welfare. That kind of individualism is inclined to blind one to the duties and obligations each has for the communities in which they live. The move generated new fictional heroes in spaghetti westerns and hundreds of revenge movies. They glorified the hero who commits horrific acts in the name of self righteous justice. They can only destroy they cannot build up.

There are places where it is said that we look after each other, but that seems to be true, mostly in the breach. It depends in large part on whether the other is just like me and not much farther away than my nearest neighbors.  Individualism now appears to mean that for me to win you must lose. Relationships are defined as transactions in which each wrestles for the advantage. Trump is the most obvious example of what that looks like in real life, but he is not the cause. He is only the natural outgrowth of a process  long underway. In other words, we created Trump and made it possible for him to do what he does.

The nations motto is e pluribus unum, out of many one. The English poet, John Donne, famously wrote in the time of plague that “no man is an island: any one’s death diminishes me.” In more optimistic times it might be rephrased to say that no man is an island: my prosperity depends on the prosperity of everybody else, especially the least advantaged. 

Spiritual leaders have always known that achieving one’s spiritual hopes can be done only in community. There is no such thing as my spiritual reality. For spirituality to be real it must be a shared reality open to all who are willing to receive it. For example, Christians and Jews are commanded to love one another in ways that build up the community and expand the scope of moral and economic justice for those to whom it has been denied. Buddhists are commanded to surrender craving for self satisfaction, especially when it comes at the cost of dissatisfaction for others.  Western ethics has been strongly influenced by Aristotle for whom the character of a ‘man’ was marked by ‘his’ ability to control his passions and ‘his’ commitment to the good of the community.  

Some part of the solution must rely on public thought leaders to emphasize freedom for not freedom from. Not freedom from any and all restrictions on individual desires and wants, but freedom for contributing to the greater welfare of the community. In like manner, community planners must emphasize designs that bring people together, not spread them out. They must consider the ease and efficiency of getting around in an environmentally sound and healthy way possible for most people. Teachers must emphasize that what is most important about individual virtues is how they contribute to the building up of a healthy community.

America’s future does not depend on it being the greatest. It depends on it being a good nation. A good nation for all of its people living in community with one another. Perhaps we will never reach goodness, but we can be better. We cannot become better if we continue worshiping individualism in the way we have in these recent decades.  

What we need are celebrated public heroes to show us how to be individualists in service to the greater good, and there are plenty to draw from. Washington and Lincoln come to mind. Consider the courage of Frederick Douglass, John Lewis, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Frances Perkins, and who knows how many more Americans have been willing to stand alone as a courageous leader on behalf of others and the communities they represented and worked to build up.  If the myth of the American cowboy has come to dominate what rugged individualism means, consider that the classic western hero was always committed to the welfare of the other, especially the oppressed other.

I want to say something about people who form the base of society. Not the same as the political base to which politicians appeal, I’m thinking of the base upon which the structure of our modern society is built, and, if not maintained in good condition, could be the root cause of collapse. The people who form this base do the work often labelled menial; in jobs that pay the least, provide few benefits, and receive little recognition from the rest of us. 

Who is this base?They are people who sweep and clean, wash cars, work the land on factory farms, provide home health care, mow lawns, and generally do the work of what was once relegated to a servant class. There are exceptions but most of the base work is done to just survive rather than to flourish.  At the same time, society depends on the base to provide the necessary conditions for others to do more difficult, challenging and rewarding work.  It’s nothing new.  It’s always been and is the base of the foundation on which modern societies are built. 

The foundation itself is what we have ungenerously called the working class into which we’ve lumped those who work with their hands in places that are not offices, schools or hospitals. I’ve never understood why popular mythology holds them in less esteem than those we label as professional or executive, but it does and always has.  It’s not just an American trait so you can lay off the self abuse. It’s common among every complex society on earth.  But the base of which I write keeps our whole blasted society running. With their un-acknowledged levels of expertise, they know how to do their jobs better and more efficiently than anyone, especially the “higher ups.”

The metaphor of base and foundation can capture only a sense of a far more complicated reality.  Another way of putting it is that these workers make up the infrastructure of society.  We know what happens when infrastructure is not maintained, rebuilt when needed to use new technologies meeting new demands.  Everything else becomes more difficult, more costly, and less efficient. The problem is that it is too easy to take infrastructure for granted, to see keeping it up to date as a cost, not an investment, and to defer work on it as long as possible.  I fear we treat the workers who are the base, foundation, and infrastructure of society the same way. A predictable result is the sort of destructive populism fomented by Trump that has upended American political discourse. 

I have no doubt that base and foundation workers take pride in their work and know its value to society.  Studies suggest that they collectively believe society as whole, especially those in positions of power, look down on them as disposable cogs in a machine that can’t run without them but places little value on the dignity of their work or the value on any one worker. 

My own experience is anecdotal but possibly not unlike yours.  We have warm, friendly relationships with the people who clean our house, we exchange greetings with the UPS driver and say hello to the landscapers. We recognize the dignity of their work and its importance to our well being.  Yet we know little of their personal lives and struggles or whether they’re living from hand to mouth, unable to save or rely on the benefits my wife and I have had from our professional lives. Everything is transient. If one person goes, another takes his/her place as if nothing happened. It’s what’s led to the popular idea of people who are forgotten, invisible and left behind.

I believe all of this explains much of the social and political divisiveness experienced in recent years. The solution is both structural and emotional. Structural problems have been created by tax and labor laws that prioritize profit over social justice and privilege the wealthiest of investors. The problems could be addressed through modest changes in tax and labor laws.  The chance of that happening is not great considering the bitter opposition changes would face, but I believe progress is possible. An important subset I have championed before is the need to reform state and federal bureaucracies to make regulations easier to understand and follow, and to transform bureaucrats into customer service agencies.

Emotional problems will be more difficult to solve. The American public has been hammered during the MAGA era with propaganda that many workers who form the base and foundation are oppressed, demeaned, ignored, forgotten, and left behind. They have been told the people and policies most likely to make life better are their enemies, and the people and policies that would most take advantage of them are their friends. It has worked well. Divisiveness has been exaggerated by condescending supercilious voices giving credence to the myth of a patronizing liberal elite. I do not know how, but social and news media voices extolling the virtues of 21st century liberal democracy must learn how to stop talking to just each other and begin talking with a broader audience that has not heard them before.

Political name calling intended to humiliate, social media provocateurs, and cable news programs do their best to incite division and hostility between opposite sides, in a game most reasonable people do not want to play.  The final months of this year’s rush to the election finish line are likely to be even more brutal than ever, as one candidate or another tries to inflame animosities and incite violent rhetoric.  Even God has been used as a pawn to gain political  favor with voters. Sojourners put out a bumper sticker during the 2004 campaign that said “God is not a Republican or Democrat.”  It was popular, but the message didn’t get through.  Momentum remains twenty years later to put Christian faith under the umbrella of political identity.  God is not happy with it.

Snide remarks about others, nicknames that denigrate, and generalizations that slather whole groups with scorn, have become the usual way with which some politicians talk about their opponents and anyone who does not support them.  But it didn’t start with them. That way of talking began to flood public discourse as soon as it was learned that anyone could say anything and get away with it on the internet.  Let’s face it, that kind of talk has been the fodder of malicious gossip and cruel jokes for many centuries, but it was confined to small gatherings around the kitchen table or local bar.  There were a few notable exceptions, but it was not generally carried out into the streets.  The internet not only created an avenue for it to become a part of public discourse, it invited, encouraged, and rewarded it. No wonder it is so easily tolerated by some political leaders. 

Holy Scripture declares that God condemns it.  Secular history declares that it leads only to the undermining and downfall of civil society and economic prosperity.  There is such a thing as righteous indignation but unrestrained emotional venting and self-righteous indignation is never it. Righteous indignation is the honest, truthful confronting of injustice without rancor or viciousness.  It sounds simple enough, but we, you and I, too often claim as righteous, self-serving anger over the unfairness of it all . We claim as righteous the virtue of our own prejudices and our uncritical acceptance of rumors and conspiracies.  More often we mean no harm, but harm is done just the same.  It has become more common for words to be intentionally used to cause as much damage as possible.  It is a sinfully cruel act that generates evil extending far and wide.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul advised Christians to “ Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 4).

Words useful for building up extend beyond the community of faith into the larger communities of city, state, and nation.  There is a sense in which Christians are exiles in a land that is our home for only a short time, as we await a new and greater life in God’s kingdom.  With that in mind, it is incumbent on Christians to adhere to the exhortations of the ancient prophet Jeremiah when he wrote to the exiles in Babylon that they should “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29).

Amidst the incivility of today’s social media provocateurs and savage language from politicians and candidates, Christians are encouraged to offer a firm, confident, well-reasoned voice of civility in the public arena, advocating for greater godly justice and the building up of what is good and needed in the nation.  I’m an Episcopal priest who writes political commentary, so I confess it is sometimes hard to do so without dropping a few mean spirited words.  I’ll try to do better.  You too, whether in private or public. 

The U.S. was once a Christian nation, at least nominally. The majority of Americans self identified as Christian and the majority of them self identified as Protestant. I suspect it was a stream of faith 2,800 miles wide and an inch or two deep.  In other words, it was never a Christian nation, it was a secular nation of Christians for whom the civic religion was a gentle salve.  Social upheaval in the 1960s helped accelerate the secularization of American society, a process likely to go on for some time.  

That is very disturbing to many people. The Christian nationalism movement, which has little to do with Christianity, is one reaction.  So are the many church growth schemes most denominations have tried to implement with less than satisfactory results. It’s hard to build numbers from a traditional population (white low to upper middle income) that is both aging and declining as a percentage of the overall population.

The time is not far off when we Christians, stripped of our ethnic and race conscious baggage, will find ourselves to be a permanent minority.  Will that mean the church is near death? Absolutely not!  Jesus Christ died once for all and was raised that all might live.  Christ cannot be killed and the church is Christ’s body in this world. 

I think we will be called to get serious about what it means to be Christian, to follow in the way of Jesus and show by word and deed what the kingdom of God looks like.  Sometime in the last century Cambridge University stopped requiring chapel attendance which subsequently dropped to a handful.  C.S. Lewis is said to have remarked, “Now we know who the Christians are.  The revived church in a more secular age may be like that.” The church, meaning the assembly of Christians, will be more like the apostles Peter and Paul, and less like Popes Peter and Paul.

It isn’t a vision of pious holier than thou churchy types walking around with pretend halos and fake smiles.  Neither is it a vision of moral perfection.  It’s a vision of imperfect people in their imperfect clothes going about their imperfect ways in the same ordinary lives of everyone else. Their first and most important identity will be as Christians in spiritual kinship with all other Christians. Their habitual sense of what is right and good and how to act will be anchored in scripture, tradition and reason.

Oddly enough I believe Christians will have social and political influence beyond their numbers, because they will not deviate from advocating ways of healing, reconciliation, love of neighbor, and peace.  Powerful elements in society will be dismayed at their steadfastness in the face of strong opposition.  

We are not without elders from whom we can learn.  Jews have four thousand years of experience at being a minority in steadfast commitment to God. Theirs is a story of self inflicted moral failure, oppression on every side, pogroms and genocide.  Yet they are still here bearing God’s holy word as a torch leading their way.  Have they stumbled badly along the way?  St. Paul said so but not to their condemnation.  Consider today when Netanyahu and his supporters have committed atrocious sins agains peoples who, by their own admission, are bitter enemies of Israel.  God has no part in the debacle no matter how often he’s used as an excuse by Israel and Palestinians alike. In the meantime, the hard work of being a God fearing jew in the greater world will go on and the world will be better for it. 

We Christians can learn from that.  Christians will go on following in the way of Christ, even as Christian nationalists stumble into the pit they have dug.  Christians will continue to advocate for godly justice even when some go another way. It will be true because God is true. God, who is faithful will not abandon the earthly manifestation of his body no matter how many abandon him and his ways. And the point of it all will be to continue bearing the unquenchable light of salvation for all.  How that will happen we do not know.  All we are required to do is to bear the light as faithfully as we are able. 

I tuned into a podcast self described as a center for social conservatives.  The hosts praised the virtues of family, community, individual responsibility, public accountability, and education as the foundation of their socially conservative ideology.  It seemed to me these are virtues cherished by social liberals in equal measure, although the program hosts were adamant about denying such a thing was possible. 

The odd truth is that the liberal side of politics has a conservative streak. It treasures the ideals of the Declaration Of Independence and Constitution, including its amendments. It believes that democracy depends on the guarantee of individual rights and the duties and accountabilities associated with them.  Polls suggest that the public finds it hard to believe social conservatives and social liberals can share the same core values and call them virtues necessary for a healthy society. But it’s true.

One reason for public incredulity is the public has bought into the idea that conservatives and liberals are on  extreme opposite sides divided by an unbridgeable chasm. That’s the story pitched by propagandists, news media, and social rumor mongers.  Told often enough in colorful ways, it becomes believable as a self evident truth. There is also a strong tendency for people to engage in false equivalency in the assumption, I suppose, that if one side is dominated by extremist voices, the other must be also. There are times when only one side is dominated by extremists and that has been true for well over a decade.  There are left wing extremists who grab what headlines they can, but they have little influence. 

At the same time there are legitimate differences between the more reasonable elements of social conservatives and liberals who make up the broad center right – center left public whose views will shift from one side to the other depending on issues and conditions.   Social conservatives tend to define their values and virtues as adhering to social norms popularized during the two or three decades following WWII, but which they call traditional. Family for instance is defined as a married man and woman with children.  Extended family is an appendix to the nuclear family. Social liberals hold family in equal esteem but give it a broader definition that includes different ways for people to associate as family.  Extended family is important to them but need not be limited to kinship ties.  For both liberals and conservatives, family and friendships form the bonds on which community is built. A spectrum ranging from impenetrable barriers to permeable boundaries separate communities from one another.  Conservatives tend to favor the barrier side until they are certain removing them will do no harm.  Liberals tend to favor the boundary side, and assume the good will of those crossing them. Who is right?  It depends. 

Conservatives and liberals  assign high value to education, especially in the so called STEM subjects.  They differ greatly in the area of social studies, history, English and the like. Conservatives favor a curriculum little changed from the three post war decades. Liberals are more willing to engage K-12 students in new ways of examining current social problems, teaching a more complete and honest history, and including wisdom from cultures beyond the Western canon. What liberals see as building up, conservatives see as tearing down. As for public schools, it’s a free-for-all over funding, vouchers, choice, charters, integration, with way too much rock throwing by everybody.

Social conservatives are certain the federal government is an intrusive meddler intent on indoctrinating people with liberal values contrary to the received post war tradition. Social liberals expect the federal government to provide funding and expertise that will benefit everyone regardless of location or condition of life.  Conservatives want the federal government to keep its nose out of state and local matters.  Liberals want it to keep state and local authorities from abusive and discriminating practices.  For example, a conservative commentator I listened to said child tax credits don’t work, that’s just fact, so no need to debate it.  Liberals believe they are an investment that will yield huge returns to the nationsas they help lift children out of poverty and better equip them for education.  Opinions too often take precedence over inconvenient facts.

Social conservatives believe they pay their own way and receive few benefits from the government.  They don’t approve of free handouts to anyone.  Liberals see the poor as being denied government benefits that have become so embedded in the lives of the non-poor that they are no longer recognized for what they are. More than others, the poor need a hand up. 

It all comes down to two big questions.  What social norms should guide American society? How active should the federal government be in seeing that opportunity to have what’s needed to achieve a good life is distributed as equitably as possible to all persons without discrimination?  Imperfect but acceptable agreements are reached in the push and pull of a healthy democracy where opposing sides willingly negotiate in good faith.  A final note of warning. The spectrum between conservative and liberal is long.  People may self identify as conservative or liberal but they move back and forth on the spectrum depending on issues and conditions.  Most do not drift too far from the middle.

We have allowed people of bad faith and no interest in democratic processes to control  the public conversation. They are political parasites who will suck the life out of the nation if allowed.

What do you think about Chat GPT as a writing aid? My career has had many twists and turns but writing has always been at the center of it. Speeches, public policy reports, issues, analysis, books, links, manuscripts, newspaper columns, academic papers, and more have been at the core of my communicating ideas to others. Writing Country Parson for the last 15 years has been a rewarding part of my life.  It brings me great joy and it’s hard work. I have to do a fair amount of research, check my sources, and put heart and soul into words.

Why not use Chat GPT to provide a little help? All I would have to do is suggest a subject and word length, and within a few seconds, I would have the draft of a paper more or less in my style. Then I could mess with it to make it something I could claim as my own. Think of all the time saving that would provide. Think of how much more writing I could get done. After all, it’s only a matter of efficiency, isn’t it?

The problem for me is that the product would lack all integrity. I would not be invested in the hard work of doing research, verifying information, learning something new, and pondering the deeper meaning of what I’ve discovered. There would be no sense of accomplishment in having translated thoughts into words and carefully examining them to see that they say what I wanted them to say. Of course, as a blind guy that last part is something of a problem anyway. It’s why I rely on my wife to do some heavy editing that includes telling me when my words are not making any sense.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said there are three elements to a happy life. The first is struggle, the second is contentment, and the third is a healthy social life. I think he had something in that. Struggle has to be a part of life if we are to become as fully human as possible.  Using artificial intelligence to deprive us of the struggle to create and understand also diminishes some of the fullness of the humanity into which we can grow. By no means does that imply we should do things in the most difficult and old-fashioned way possible. Technologies that improve human efficiency and unnecessary forms of work are important in every way.  I am reminded of Benedictine monks and American shakers who developed many technological advancements  to relieve them of repetitive work so that they could spend more time in study and prayer. Our generations have done much the same with industrial robotics and computer assisted design. The Internet makes it possible for me to do a lot of research without having to leave the house. With my lack of vision, most of my books have been donated but Kindle and Apple book libraries have expanded because my iPad can read them out loud to me.

We can and should celebrate all the advantages that new technologies bring to us, but on the other hand, we must recognize that new technologies can have a dark side. Consider the industrial revolution that ripped the humanity out of cottage industries and rural communities. Many were deprived of their ability to become more fully human because they were made into expendable cogs in the new machinery. That was long ago, but are we any better now at paying close attention to how new technologies affect individual and social humanity? 

All creation is sacred and our creation in the image of God is the most sacred of all. Every new technology must be used in ways to honor that sacredness, not undermine it. In the past, we have failed to do that as new technologies have been introduced. The consequences were a disgrace to history and did harm of many, but time and attention have allowed us to make amends and do better. 

Artificial intelligence is a new technology that will provide an extreme challenge. It has the potential of undermining what it means to be human by depriving us of the essential elements of a happy life: struggle, contentment, and a healthy social life.  The three go together and cannot be separated. They depend on each other. If they can flourish with A.I. then so much the better, but let us be wary and careful.

Note: a healthy social life is defined by the strength and integrity of social relationships that include family, friendship, and community.  It is a subject worthy of its own discussion, but not here.