An Unintended and Unexpected Prologue

My intent was to complete these reflections about community and end on a positive note, but unfortunately, as you know, between the time I started writing and today, the Texas Attorney General brought to the Supreme Court a case for overturning/ invalidating the election results in 4 states that Biden won, thus giving the election to Trump. He was joined in declared, written support for this case by Republican Attorneys General from 17 other states, by 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives, and “in common cause” by the evangelical coalition that, in a particular context, I will talk about below, as well as by Trump’s entire base.

As you are aware, because the case was without evidence and without “standing,” it was rejected by the Court.  But the fact that such a request could even be made at all—especially with the support of so many—totally overshadows and sidelines the focus of this blog. A request of that magnitude to the highest court in the land goes completely beyond a threat to a sense of community to an attack on the very substructure of the democracy in which communities can thrive and upon which this country is constitutionally based!

I will try to be cautiously optimistic but there is no escaping the reality that with this systemic attack on our national foundation, along with this coronavirus pandemic, we live in a scary time. May we revel in and take advantage of the Covid-19 vaccine as it becomes available, and rise to do our part as best we can in the fight for our democracy.

If all of that sours your taste for continuing to read these reflections on community, so be it and I understand. Or, if you choose to “gird up your loins,” read on, and even leave a frank and honest comment, I will be most grateful.

And now, to continue . . . .

In the first post, I tried to make a case for the background and importance of community in our world—individually, locally, nationally and globally. Now, all that said, assuming it is sound, and that the case is basically made for the crucial importance of community, I want to explore some of the primary setbacks to the realization of community. The list could certainly go on and on, but I promised I would mention only three, and I will keep my word, mostly—although “mention” may have been too-weak and misleading a term!

The first setback to a sense of Community that I need to address is currently, and unfortunately, Religion.  Regrettably, it is true that religious persuasion has always been capable of being divisive. Even Fosdick, in his sermon on community originally delivered in the late 1930s, chose religion as one of the divisive forces that he addressed:

“Religion is one of the worst causes of discord in the world. Wanted: a religion that will stop accentuating human alienation, . . . . saying I, and my – my church, my doctrine, my prejudices – and then, looking  across the boundary to people of another tradition . . .  They – their mistakes, their falsehoods.”

If that was true almost a century ago, I would suggest that it is more starkly true today! Happily, there are movements among some denominations that rightly attempt to be inclusive and I am personally grateful for them, but I am honestly forced to say that their influence on a sense of community and inclusion is overshadowed and virtually crushed by the divisiveness fostered by the coalition of a religious group in the (so-called) “United” States.

I confess to some discomfort for edging into the political world yet again, but it is unavoidable because the religious group of which I speak has already wholeheartedly moved there. But before I proceed, let me be clear about three things:

• When I speak –as I must and will—of a group of “mostly conservative white evangelicals,” I am not singling out all conservatives, all white conservatives, all white evangelicals, or all conservative evangelicals. I am speaking, rather, of a specific movement among that self-identified group.
• Also, I am not denigrating their right to hold certain moral convictions, even though I might, and mostly do, disagree.
• And most important, I don’t want us to forget that the reason for and the focus of anything said has to do with its relationship to the importance of community and any setbacks to it.

That said, and with apologies to some of my friends or other readers who may be offended and insulted by what I say, I am speaking of the many persons in the self-identified conservative evangelical movement who have thrown their support to our current—but soon to be former—President. Do they have a right to do that? Yes, of course they do. But the relevant point here is the hugely divisive influence it has become and the impediment it is to any comfortable sense of community in this country.

As Jonathan Beasley asked in a Harvard Divinity School post,

“Given what we know about evangelicals and their social positions centered on family values, and given what we know about Trump, a thrice-married casino mogul facing numerous allegations of adultery, sexual assault, and bigotry, where does this evangelical support for Trump come from?” 

And the answer, I believe, is that it was given primarily on the basis of a specific issue—which, to be fair, they would identify as a prime religious (read “Christian”) and moral concern—namely, abortion, and for virtually a single cause: the appointment to the Supreme Court of conservative justices in a hope for the repeal of Roe vs. Wade.

It needs to be said that this is in a sense a “johnny-come-lately-issue,”—i.e. in 1971, two years before Roe vs. Wade, the biggest white evangelical group in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, supported the legalization of abortion. Eventually, however, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham called for evangelicals to fall in line in their support for Trump or to “face God’s wrath,” which has largely resulted in this coalition’s support for virtually all of President Trump’s initiatives, even when they have been inimical to Christian ideals.

And yet, some other prominent evangelicals, such as national columnist Michael Gerson—an opinion columnist and author of “Heroic Conservatism,” who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post—wrote in the Atlantic that, “Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership.”  And that incongruity is also true of a number of initiatives taken by this administration—for example:

• One of the administration’s first acts upon assuming office in 2017 was attempting to implement a Muslim ban, a strike at religious freedom even if the “tunnel vision” of some in the evangelical coalition is not offended by it, nor by the promotion of Islamophobic content on multiple occasions.  Anti-Semitism also has repeatedly come from the administration itself.
• The administration has also launched a series of policy attacks on LGBTQ rights, directly harming LGBTQ people of faith.
• The 2017 Tax Cuts negatively affected small nonprofits, including many churches, because it reduced the number of taxpayers who itemize, eliminating  the tax incentive for charitable giving—73% of all U.S. charitable giving goes to faith-based organizations and individual giving fell 3.4 percent.
• The administration has supported the idea religious nationalism—equating social conservatism with religion at large—which is a threat to the core American principle of the separation of church and state.
• The administration’s immigrant policy supported the separation of children from their parents, some of whom for years have not been united with their families, hardly consistent with Christian values.

Perhaps that’s enough said to make my point, but for any who would care to explore a more detailed account, see the article, “How the Trump Administration has Harmed Faith Communities” noted in the list of Sources Consulted at the end of this post.

It would appear that this contingent of white, conservative evangelicals, which forms a significant core of the President’s base, lives in a “silo” where anything and everything the administration does is supported and where no contradictory religious principles are allowed to penetrate.  And, to be fair, perhaps some of the rest of us are not immune to the temptation to exclusively apply our own favored religious, and secular, values to the issues that confront us, and we are not excused if we do so! As the Editorial Board observed in an opinion piece in the New York Times,

Americans cannot agree on a shared reality. Too many of us live in echo chambers, consuming information tailored to support our existing biases. Partisan warfare impels people to deny the legitimacy, even the humanity, of those with different viewpoints (“The Decency Agenda,” Dec. 5, 2020).

As I indicated at the outset, this is certainly not the first time that religion, which ought to be a unifying force, has become a divisive threat to our sense of community. Let’s do be clear that this has nothing to do with evangelical Christians’, or anyone else’s, freedom to practice their religious tradition—it’s about turning blind eyes to actions and personal behaviors inimical to generally accepted Christian ideals; about forming an immovable block that becomes one of the significant means of a divisive split to American life, thereby becoming an impediment to any sense of the genuine community we sorely need.  As observed in the article noted above, any concern for the well-being of faith communities “must not be limited to a narrow understanding of the political concerns of conservative Christians. Rather, it must encompass the needs and concerns of all religious Americans.”

My friend, David Johnson, expressed it—as he always does—more insightfully and succinctly than I can, when he said that “. . . the evangelical movement has exacerbated the destruction of the larger idea of community in so many ways.”

Enough said for today! In a final post in the next few days, I will address the other two impending setbacks to the realization of community. Thank you for following this far—I hope you will stay with me.

Sources Consulted

Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Mankind’s  Deep Need—The Sense of Community,” Riverside Sermons: Harper and Brothers, 1958.

Jonathan Beasley and Dudley Rose,.” For Trump’s Evangelicals, the Inconvenient Teachings of Christ,” Harvard Divinity School, November 1, 2018.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, Maggie Siddiqi, and Samantha Behar,” How the Trump Administration Has Harmed Faith Communities,” Center for American Progress: September 21, 2020.

“The Decency Agenda,” Opinion, Editorial Board, New York Times, Dec. 5, 2020.