Time for a 'Moral Movement'

I FEEL POLITICALLY homeless as we enter 2018, and I know I am not alone. Many are feeling the same, as other Christians, especially white evangelicals, have offered uncritical support for a president who is the antithesis of the gospel of Jesus Christ, endangering the witness and reputation of Christianity, especially among the younger generation.

Of course, the two political parties are not morally equivalent. But the Republican Party’s political sellout to Donald Trump and the Democrats’ lack of a clear moral alternative that many people of faith are excited to support leave many of us feeling politically homeless.

Republican leadership has sold its party’s soul to an amoral, childish, and dangerous man. He has been revealed as intellectually shallow, a person who lacks a moral conscience, and an unapologetic promoter of racial bigotry and misogyny. His disrespect for the rule of law and our political system of checks and balances can best be described as narcissistic and authoritarian paranoia, which creates a dangerous threat to American democracy and national security.

While some Republican commentators and elected officials have voiced opposition to the president’s behavior, the Republican Party has substituted a moral relationship to the presidency for a transactional one, in which they ignore Trump’s manifest unfitness for the office in exchange for enacting policies that support the greedy demands of their wealthiest donors. In doing so, the GOP has disregarded the espoused values of principled conservatism: fiscal integrity and responsibility, an allegiance to truth and honesty, genuine pro-family values, national security through global engagement, a commitment to opportunity for all and empathy for those in need, and the worth and equality of every person under the law.

And while morally it hasn’t fallen to the same level, the Democratic Party also seems to have lost its way. Democratic rhetoric of late doesn’t appeal to the values of many Christians who care most about poverty and racism. For many election cycles, many Democrats have replaced the word “poor” with the words “middle class,” and the party is no longer perceived as one that cares enough about the needs of people on the margins of life in America. The text from Matthew 25 that draws many Christians into engaging in politics does not say, “As you have done to the middle class, you have done to me.”

Despite being dependent on African-American voters, the Democratic Party has often taken them for granted, instead of courageously addressing the realities of institutionalized racism and investing in organizers and candidates in African-American and Latinx communities.

Unfortunately, it feels as if the Democratic Party is no longer a faith-friendly party. Voters with religious faith are often ignored or dismissed without serious outreach or respectful dialogue. I have fought religious fundamentalism for most of my life, but the secular fundamentalism of much of the left and the national Democratic Party can be equally ideological and divisive, too often seeming to attack religion itself.

Moral issues of intrinsic concern to the faith community are often disregarded or disrespected by Democratic Party orthodoxy, which often takes extreme or overly strident views on issues such as abortion. Many of us in the faith community regard abortion as a moral issue and part of a consistent ethic of life and dignity. While many of us pro-life Christians don’t support the criminalization of often desperate and tragic choices, we find far too many Democrats in 2018 reluctant to say that reducing abortion is a moral and desirable policy goal. There’s a bitter irony here, because many public policies promoted by Democrats—such as supporting women with health care, nutrition, and social services—do in fact reduce the demand for abortion. And yet, in 2018, Democratic leadership seems allergic to making that link explicit.

Similarly, the central importance of marriage, family, and parenting for the common good of society is not a central topic in Democratic Party language, even as the party supports family friendly policies such as paid family leave, higher wages for working families, daycare, and education. Why is the discussion of family values—among every type of family—so absent from conversations on the left when we know it is a part of critical solutions to issues of poverty?

With part of the Christian community putting faith at risk by their idolatrous support of Donald Trump, and other Christians feeling alienated by the other party’s dismissal of faith and the moral questions it raises, our nation’s moral discourse is in serious trouble.

Perhaps a third way—or better yet, a “moral movement”—to revive and renew American politics, on both sides of the aisle, is the way forward for people of faith who put the poor and vulnerable, the consistent dignity of human life, strong families and gender equality, and the priority of racial and economic justice and peace at the center of their political convictions