Religion & Power
I am 65 years old and have been following politics closely since I was a boy, since at least the Eisenhower-Stevenson election of 1952. I can't remember whether partisan differences were so bitter then, but I'm inclined not to think so. This morning I heard Bob Dole, when asked what he thought about the Republican threat to use its Senate majority to kill the ability of the minority to filibuster, say he thought the Republicans ought to go slowly and not forget that the Senate will one day, likely sooner than the leaders think, be back in the hands of a Democratic majority. He said, "The members of the other Party are your opponents, not your enemy."
I don't know if it is a fool's errand to try to return us to a day in which we respect those who are on the other side. I hope not. My sense is that those least likely to do so are those who believe they are right and that they must hold fast to their position rather than make a compromise that might settle for less than the absolute righteous outcome.
The issue seems more about personality types than about policy differences. A friend once said it is never a fair fight between a liberal and a conservative because a big piece of the liberal agenda is that there is room for many opinions, while the conservative believes the fight for truth requires him to throw over the side those who disagree unless they convert to his view.
Having spent my working life in the church, I fear nothing more than religion joining hands with power. To the extent that I colluded in that unholy alliance during the civil rights days and the Viet Nam anti-war days, I repent. Not of speaking the prophet's conviction that justice will not be denied forever, but of claiming an exclusive understanding of God's mysterious ways.
I don't know if it is a fool's errand to try to return us to a day in which we respect those who are on the other side. I hope not. My sense is that those least likely to do so are those who believe they are right and that they must hold fast to their position rather than make a compromise that might settle for less than the absolute righteous outcome.
The issue seems more about personality types than about policy differences. A friend once said it is never a fair fight between a liberal and a conservative because a big piece of the liberal agenda is that there is room for many opinions, while the conservative believes the fight for truth requires him to throw over the side those who disagree unless they convert to his view.
Having spent my working life in the church, I fear nothing more than religion joining hands with power. To the extent that I colluded in that unholy alliance during the civil rights days and the Viet Nam anti-war days, I repent. Not of speaking the prophet's conviction that justice will not be denied forever, but of claiming an exclusive understanding of God's mysterious ways.
posted by Blayney at 1:13 PM
2 Comments:
I have trouble believing that you, of all people, would have ever claimed to have an "exclusive understanding" of anything, much less God. Maybe I just caught the older more mellow you.
I am a litigator. I "do" conflict for a living. Sometimes I have opposing counsel who understand that we have a symbiotic relationship. Without them, I have no job, and vice versa. Without us, our clients have no resolution - just animosity. Politics is an even worse example. Church politics is worse still.
Where there are two wrongs, two rights or two opinions, the high minded people can find a mutually beneficial outcome.
A colleague of mine is a full-time mediator. She says that if everyone leaves a little unhappy, she has done her job well. We need more people like her, and Bob Dole, to bring the world back to the middle.
You know, Ian, I suspect most people who know me, especially, my enemies, would laugh at the notion that ever claimed an exclusive understanding of anything. I was likely the sort of preacher that you are a litigator, always aware of the validity of the other side's position.
But I also know I had my self-righteous moments, especially when faced with angry, implacable foes of what I thought right. Civil rights, Viet Nam. I think, as a young man I even let myself have contempt for the Congressman in Ohio against whom I debated the Viet Nam War. Likely that was one reason he came away from our debates with more sympathy and support than I did.
Before one demonstration we were trained by the Fellowship of Reconciliation who taught us to consider where, in our solution to the wrong we were trying to right, our opponent fit. If there was no place for him, it was not a solution
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