Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Polarization In America

As you can read in the “About the Rabbi” section of the website, before I entered the rabbinate, I worked on Capitol Hill.  While there I started a Bible study that met in a building adjacent to the Senate office buildings.  It was quite popular with Congressional staff, in part, because I required that everyone leave their politics at the door.  By virtue of Congressional work, many of those who attended were politicians, and thus everything they did during the work day was political.  But I wanted to create a respite where individuals from either party could come and be ministered to.  It was tricky because at the end of the meeting I invited prayer requests, and occasionally a request focused on a current political matter.  Due to the potential volatility of something prayed for, I was the only who prayed out loud, and I finessed requests that were political in nature.  My purpose in leading the study was to show a young, highly intelligent and ambitious group of people that God cared for them and could meet their needs.

By its very nature, politics is rough and tumble.  From the earliest days of our nation, personal attacks by one politician against another were common.  By and large, however, most of the population either were unaware of the attacks or simply didn’t care.  Now, all that has changed.  In the past twenty years an ugly, vicious and potentially dangerous infection has polarized America.  Mass media has contributed to this societal breakdown by highlighting and replaying every individual misstatement or misstep.  A life’s reputation can be ruined by one mistake that is blown widely out of proportion.  Often, politicians’ positions are deliberately mis-characterized by others.  The effects of proposed legislation often are misconstrued, highlighting the worst conceivable scenarios, however unlikely.  America faces very serious problems at both home and abroad, and without cooperation from all sides, her future is grim. 

The saddest part is that religious leaders and members often instigate or accentuate the divide.  Rather than calling for humility, respect and upholding the reputation of others, they fuel the fires of hatred and division.  At a critical time in America’s history, a religious leader who had been vilified, jailed and beaten, rose above his own personal experience to give hope not only to his own discriminated race but to all mankind,

                      We must forever conduct our struggle on the high
                      plane of dignity and discipline. . .I say to you today,
                      my friends, so even though we face the difficulties
                      of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a
                      dream deeply rooted in the American dream. . . I
                      have a dream that my four little children will one
                      day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
                      the color of their skin but by the content of their
                      character. . . I have a dream that one day every
                      valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall
                      be made low, the rough places will be made plain,
                      and the crooked places will be made straight, and
                      the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh
                      shall see it together.

Martin Luther King refrained from blame and attack politics.  Rather, he like the prophets of old painted a vision of a different society that all could join.  I think we forget that first and foremost King was a religious leader.  His words and conduct led to healing a nation and ultimately rectifying a terrible wrong.  As religious people shouldn’t we be doing the same in our generation?