Democracy

Protesters lie on pavement. One holds a sign that says "We Are Tired of This."

A protester holds a sign outside police headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on June 17, 2020. Credit: Micah Casella/Alamy Live News.

I know I’m not alone in feeling exhausted. In 2018, More In Common — a nonprofit that researches what’s driving political polarization — found that two-thirds of Americans share a series of characteristics that make them a part of what they call the “exhausted majority.” This group of people is “fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society,” feels forgotten in the public discourse, and often has flexible views that don’t fit consistently in the Left/Right binary. Yet, they believe we can still find common ground. Sound familiar?

Mitchell Atencio 6-21-2022

In his new book, We Need to Build, Patel seeks to inspire others to build with him instead of just criticizing policies and structures they dislike. The book draws on Patel’s work with Interfaith America and considers what we can learn from good (and bad) institutions across the globe.

Retired bishop Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun arrives the Court of Final Appeal to support media mogul Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily during a hearing an appeal by the Department of Justice against the bail decision of Lai, in Hong Kong, China December 31, 2020. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Zen, a 90-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, was questioned for several hours on Wednesday at the Chai Wan Police Station close to his church residence, before being released on police bail.

Adam Russell Taylor 11-04-2021

Attendees join hands while singing "We Shall Overcome" during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Nashville on Jan. 21, 1991.

I remember the flood of emotions I felt almost a year ago when I heard that the major news networks were calling the 2020 election results: overwhelming relief and renewed hope. Far beyond a victory for then-to-become President Joe Biden, it felt like a victory for our democracy — and an imperative to resuscitate, revitalize, and reinvent that democracy.

Fast forward a year: I’m filled with a festering weariness and escalating heartache.

Mitchell Atencio 8-25-2021

Dr. Deborah Turner of the League of Women Voters (LWV), Rabbi Jonah Pesner of Religious Action Network, Virginia Kase Solomón of LWV, Rev. Melvin Wilson of Saint Matthew AME Church, and Ben Jealous of People for the American Way lead a civil disobedience action during a voting rights rally at the White House. LWV, People for the American Way, Black Voters Matter, and many other organizations hosted the rally to pressure Congress and President Biden to protect voting rights after many states passed laws to make voting more difficult for minorities. Photo by Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via Reuters.

The House of Representatives passed HR 4, known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advacement Act, 219-212, which faith leaders and other voting rights advocates believe is a crucial step in voter protection.

“Tireless hours by members of Congress and civil rights leaders have brought the issue of federally mandated voter suppression to the forefront of conversations around American democracy,” Rev. Al Sharpton said in a news release through March On For Voting Rights. “This is only the start of the fight to move farther and farther away from the Jim Crow Era.”

Jim Wallis 11-30-2020
An illustration of people climbing up a ladder, out of a ditch that is on fire. At the top of the ladder is green grass and a person helping them up.

Illustration by Jackson Joyce

THE PEOPLE HAVE spoken, democracy has worked, and it is time for a peaceful transfer of power. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have fairly won the presidential election, and I am hopeful about their commitment to both healing and change. We should accept the results, and call upon our faith communities to do the same, in order to help our nation move forward together.

We should be grateful for and inspired by the ways our faith communities worked for free, fair, and safe elections in 2020. Thousands of multiracial and interfaith poll chaplains helped to protect vulnerable voters from both suppression and intimidation at the polls and helped secure this election.

Racism was recognized as a religious issue in this election—and we must commit to a much deeper, and even uncomfortable, conversation in the body of Christ about the great and painful divisions between white Christians and believers of color that this election has again revealed. Addressing systemic racism, economic injustice, inhumane immigration policies, and climate change—all of this is required as expressions of our faith. Let us begin with healing our nation from the COVID-19 pandemic and then from our polarized divisions with grace and love and the reconciliation that comes from working together to build a more racially just and inclusive America.

Gina Ciliberto 10-30-2020

Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

As Election Day nears, one thing is clear: We all need as many prayers as possible. After you vote, while you wait in line to vote, or while you anxiously tune in as votes are tallied, here are places that you can pray on Election Day.

Adam Russell Taylor 10-29-2020

A person casts his ballot for the upcoming presidential election during early voting in Sumter, S.C., Oct. 9, 2020. REUTERS/Micah Green/File Photo

Racism is on the ballot next week. Democracy is on the ballot next week. These two things two are inextricably linked because racism has disfigured American democracy from the founding of our nation. The road to a more perfect union has been long and uneven. And this road requires that we continually become a more perfect democracy and more just nation. And while our democracy will never be perfect, we must continually defend the rights, institutions, and laws that help safeguard our freedoms and advance the common good. Increasingly this election represents a test of whether we embrace and will work to realize a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy with liberty and justice for all.

Lisa Sharon Harper 10-22-2020

1. Character matters
In 2016, we heard the recording of Donald Trump bragging that he could grab women by the genitalia and kiss them without consent. This reveal of sexual abuse was a blinking red warning sign: “No character!” But most white American Christians voted for him anyway. Now hundreds of thousands of Americans are no longer with us. Children are dead, separated from their parents, neglected and abused in our detention centers. Police continue to kill unarmed Black people with impunity. Evidence shows that wherever there is violence against women, there will also be violence against ethnic minorities and the land. Character matters.

2. Our votes matter
If you ever doubt that, remember 2020: body bags, 175 cities on fire, food lines, closed businesses, fears for the future, the president having tear gas shot into a crowd so he could walk across the street and hold a Bible in front of a church he doesn’t attend. Let us learn that a non-vote is a vote for the winner. In a democracy, votes have the power to bless or curse millions. It is our civic duty to approach elections as informed citizens. It is our Christian duty to leverage elections to protect the least of these.

Voters line up to cast their ballots outside of a polling location after Democratic and Republican primaries were delayed due to the coronavirus disease restrictions in Atlanta, Georgia. June 9, 2020. REUTERS/Dustin Chambers

These types of failures in the voting process may become additional tools in the arsenal of voter suppression, and the Black community must be prepared.

Brian Kaylor 12-05-2019

Mysterious people with political connections arrived from a country off in the East. They brought news the ruler did not like. There was a new claim to the throne. An effort was underway to remove him and install another ruler. King Herod wanted to dismiss the claims as “fake news” and a “hoax” — not because the intelligence report was inaccurate, but simply because he didn’t like the news. These Magi, after all, had done their research.

David P. Gushee 3-21-2019

I REMEMBER THE EXACT DAY I discovered that some conservative Christians are not all that into democracy. It was 20 years ago. My daughter asked me for help with her social studies homework. I discovered that her Christian school taught a neo-Puritan civics curriculum, which proclaimed that God’s design for human government is rule by “godly Christian men” applying scripture under the sovereignty of God. I was shocked.

In the Trump era, we again witness a conservative Christian flirtation with authoritarianism. These conservative Christians compare Donald Trump to Cyrus of Persia—both authoritarian rulers, both “friendly” to but not part of God’s people, both supposedly used by God—and Trump is lauded as the president of divine providence in shlock films such as Liberty U.’s The Trump Prophecy.

Meanwhile, a quote attributed to Russian Orthodox priest and monarchist St. John of Kronstadt that “in hell there is democracy, in heaven there is a kingdom” is making the rounds on social media, occasioning much comment leaning in the direction of authoritarian rule. John of Kronstadt died in 1908 before the Russian revolution and likely associated democratic tendencies with atheism.

Myrna Pérez 3-18-2019

Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com

On March 8, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “For the People Act,” a historic piece of ethics and election reform legislation that responds to some of the biggest problems our democracy has experienced in recent times. The bill itself is bold and expansive — sweeping even — in the terrain it covers, and in the marker it lays down for what democratic reform should look like.

Jim Wallis 11-01-2018

Our faith is offended by these assaults that contradict the biblical commands to love and protect our neighbors. Our conscience is seared by the lies and strategies of hateful politics that will lead to more and more violence in this country and put the soul of our nation in jeopardy. Words matter and hateful words do lead to violence. Our commitment to our brothers and sisters under attack will lead us to pray, stand, act, and vote against the politics of fear and hate, because of our faith and patriotism.

In the richest nation in the history of the world, 140 million Americans are poor or low income — one emergency away from not being able to meet their basic needs. We cannot be distracted by arguments about which president or party in recent history had more quarters with over 4 percent economic growth while Congress seriously considers cuts to programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Donald Trump is not on the ballot this November, but the fate of poor people in America certainly is. In state legislature and congressional races, we must ask ourselves which candidates are willing to challenge the lies that keep millions of our neighbors in poverty.

Erica Hunt 10-25-2018
FREEDOM LANGUAGE HELPED ME to understand the grief and rage of Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile who witnessed his killing by a police officer in 2016.
 

Reynolds arrived at an early morning protest in St. Paul, Minn., a few hours after Philando’s death. I heard her tell her story to a small crowd gathered on the street. Weeping, she shared how impossibly stuck they felt in the 74 seconds between stopping their car for the police and Castile being shot multiple times.

Castile was never given a chance to show identification because he was shot as he reached for his wallet. He tried to tell the officer about his legally licensed handgun, but the screaming officer didn’t seem to hear.

As Castile, Reynolds, and her young child ran errands on that summer night, civil rights laws did not protect their “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” The Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed for Castile’s employment at an elementary school and made legal their right to move through town. But these rights were not enough to protect Castile’s freedom to live.

What is democracy?

As U.S. Christians and others fight to defend the space for justice created by civil rights movements of the past, another theme rises: What does freedom mean in America today? What does Reynold’s rage require of people of faith?

At a minimum, it requires moving beyond a Sunday school version of democracy, as Southern Freedom Movement leader and historian Vincent Harding put it in 2002. “A solution of the present crisis will not take place unless ... [we] work for it. Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle. ... This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action,” Harding said, quoting Martin Luther King’s Stride Toward Freedom.

 

A Deeply Moral Act

Voting is a decisive statement of Christian faith that I matter, justice matters, and others matter.

by Richard Rohr

Low voter turnout is generally a sign of a demoralized society, and people of power feed on that demoralization, knowing that they can then easily gerrymander, suppress and limit voting rights, and give elections to the rule of money and lobbyists—and there will be little outcry, because there is so little trust or even interest in the whole system anyway.

Yet this is largely where the U.S. is today.

The powers that control society are quite happy that it is always minorities of all stripes that first feel this powerlessness and this demoralization. Since the early days of representative government, it has been believed that democracy would only work if there was a truly free and informed citizenry. We presently seem to lack both in the U.S. This is why voting is a deeply moral act for me—in rebuilding confidence and encouraging an intelligent and hope-filled society. It is also a decisive act of Christian faith that I matter, society matters, justice matters, and others matter.

Not to vote is to hand our power and our dignity over to people who fear actual freedom, honest intelligence, and faith in the very goodness of humanity.

Voting for Change

I vote because many of my brothers and sisters can’t.

by Myrna Pérez

I vote for a lot of reasons. I love joining my fellow citizens in a community-minded act. I love having a say in picking the leaders who get to decide on things that matter to me. Increasingly, I love to vote and feel compelled to vote because I know there are about 4.5 million Americans living and working in communities across the country who cannot because they have a criminal conviction in their past.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The Watergate era triggered record growth in Americans’ collective dissatisfaction with government. But that record could still be broken.

Tom Heneghan 3-17-2017

Image via RNS/Screenshot from CNN

With his anti-Muslim rhetoric and planned travel bans, you’d think President Trump would be a favorite target for Islamic State’s propaganda. The jihadist caliphate in Syria and Iraq must be pulling out all the stops to slam him as the epitome of Islamophobia.

Well, think again. The extremist group that Trump vows to “totally obliterate” has hardly printed or broadcast a word about him since before the November election. The caliphate’s Ministry of Media acts almost as if he didn’t exist.

Image via Gage Skidmore/flickr.com

A decade ago, a critic accused me of writing a book about a “nonexistent” threat from the religious right. One reviewer called my work a “paranoid rant,” while another detractor wrote my “alarmist” views were “exaggerated and implausible.”

In The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans For The Rest Of Us, published in 2006, I had warned that a well-financed and highly organized group of religious and political leaders was seeking to impose their narrow extremist beliefs and harsh public policies on the United States, even as our nation’s population was increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, and multiracial.