Category: election

Not Just Christianity, Not Just Crime

.Reading time 9 minutes.

BIDENWith the entry of Joe Biden into the Democratic race for the presidency in 2020, I feel like the field is complete.  Anyone else getting in the game at this point is most likely on the wrong side of the wave.  And so we brace ourselves for the debates, the unearthing of old memos and twitter posts, the previous bad life or policy decisions…and the pandering to diversity.

I’ve already watched the media begin its campaign.  The “go to” face of immigration is a young central American mother (speaking in Spanish).  The stories about Muslims and Jews bracing for the aftermath of different kinds of attacks on their faith are out there aplenty. What gets me personally frustrated however is the default face of blackness in any election season as it tends to exclusively feature humble but well-spoken black folks who are invariably members of robust gospel singing churches.

But that is not all we are.  In fact, it is not all we have ever been.  Yes, there are powerful and deeply loving black communities that thrive around black churches.  But black churches in the United States have a rich and complicated history in their origins, with issues of sexuality, with gender, with economics and with healthcare.  As a result, they are not the only places where we thrive.  Black church experience is not monolithic or simplistic.  It cannot be boiled down to a meme or a trope.  Although African Americans are among the most “churched” in this country, there is a significant black population that prefers to attend diverse spiritual communities that are not exclusively black or Christian…if they attend any at all.

There are many black Atheists/Humanists who are happy to have no church.  There are parts of the country where most blacks are Catholic.  There is a strong tradition of black Episcopalians who are not AME.  There are a significant number of United Church of Christ and United Methodist black clergy and lay people and yes, there are even black Unitarian Universalists, like me. Not to forget about black Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists.  Black people in the United States are much more than a gospel choir footnote to a feel-good story on MLK Day.

The other stereotype pushed by the media and picked up on by candidates is black people and crime.  I can guarantee you that even back in the 1990s black people could have told you that the problem was not about crime or drugs, it was about social obstruction to opportunity.  Those laws were a band-aid on a heart attack.  A generation of black people were erased by those measures and now as there are efforts to help some of them out of the system late in their lives, formerly incarcerated people still face the same obstacles they faced when they went in 35 years ago: lack of access to employment, dismal healthcare, lack of education and cultural hopelessness inflicted by a society that sees incarceration as punishment and not a path to public safety through rehabilitation and restorative justice.

But there are plenty of black people who never touch the justice system, even though the statistics are framed to make one believe that black interaction with police is inevitable.  Every time a black person is shot and killed by police in an incident of profiling, we would do better to focus on the fact that it is a unique catastrophe rather than a common consistency of systemic failure.  There are plenty of black lawyers, and doctors and obviously by this election cycle, politicians.  HBCUs produce thousands of graduates every year who are not simply trading in their graduation gowns for orange jumpsuits.  The home health industry is dominated by professional and highly trained black (and Asian) women…ask anyone with an elderly parent.  Global Industry both on the corporate level and on the unionized worker level has large populations of black workers who want security, sustainability and safety above all…like anyone else.  We are not all swimming in a sea of crime.

Still, I don’t want to diminish the importance of historically black churches in getting us to today.  They were oases in times of widespread anti-black violence, and they are still community gathering points.  Nor do I want to diminish the fact that when crime and justice systems impact black people, the effect is decidedly more extreme for us than for any other demographic with the exception of Native people.  My point is that blackness, like other non-whiteness, has its own multi-faceted diversity…it is not just what creates diversity for whiteness.  We cannot let the next President of the United States ignore this.

The current election cycle has a great deal riding on it.  It is essential to delete Donald Trump from the equation of government and influence.  More than his individual actions, it is the lack of action by those around him who stand aside and let him “bull-in-the-china-shop” our government that we should beware of.  When he is gone (which will be soon), the rest of us will still need to recon with the Mitch McConnells and Lindsay Grahams who worked to normalize Trump and his blend of toxic masculinity and mob thug behavior.  If Democrats or anyone with a conscience really is serious about finding an antidote to Trump: The Sickness, they must completely reconceive of what it means to run for and then hold public office.  Trump won on a cult of personality squarely aimed at flattering male whiteness.  One look at the demographics of who voted for him, including the number of white Democrats who were willing to vote for him as a vote against Hillary Clinton is an indication of how well that strategy can burn through the institution when it is ignited.  As the wide Democratic field considers its own strategy, it must not play into that equation.  For me, playing into that game looks like shallow connection to black voters and other people of color through hot button issues that play well for hits and media likes.  The Democratic field of liberal and progressive candidates would do well to recognize that it must actually have a real relationship with the diversity of black communities as individuals, just as they must have a real relationship with Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people, conservatives and even white people in all their diversity.  None of the Democratic candidates can afford to take for granted that their brand of “liberal” will automatically speak to black voters…without actually speaking to all black voters.

– ALD

Liberal Religion…Where Are You?

.Reading time 7 minutes.
MIssissippi Aborton
The death of religious liberty, signed into law. (Photo: KTVZ)

Religious liberty is under attack, and liberals, progressives and even the centrist Democratic Party is nowhere to be found.  Not a single Democratic candidate has found their footing in addressing the religious based bigotry that is being put into law across the country at the urging of radically conservative Christian factions in the United States.  In the vacuum left by moderating faith voices, the shrill and draconian voice of Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and numerous others in the Trump Administration has created an environment that has emboldened states to actively turn back the clock to pre-Roe v. Wade days and further.  The latest fetal heartbeat law, just enacted in Mississippi makes this state now nearly impossible for women seeking abortion services (there is only one clinic in the entire state.)  This law was driven by conservative religious groups just as was the “religious exemption” in the Affordable Care Act, the anti-transgender bathroom bills and the wedding cake bills.  What is more, the administration has aligned itself with global faith-based partners to limit access to a variety of reproductive health care and social protection options that make it clear that this administration is working overtime to push an agenda that is entirely shaped by a narrow religious perspective on human sexuality.

But this should be no surprise.  One look at the Republican Party Platform and the religious agenda is in plain sight.  The platform mentions the word “faith” in the context of religion 22 times in its 66 pages and includes an entire section on the first amendment and religious liberty.  This strategy has galvanized a portion of the party around a religious ideology that calls itself victim while restricting women’s rights, erasing LGBTQ people and ignoring the racial and economic realities of HIV/AIDS at the cost of yet more black and brown lives.  The Republican Party Platform should in fact be called the “Conservative Religious Party Platform.”

And Democrats are silent.

The Democratic Party Platform mentions the word “faith” once and the word “religion” four times and always in the context of civil rights.  Many applaud this absence, believing that the separation of church and state must begin in politics.  As I watch the march toward government endorsed limitation and oppression being led by rabidly conservative faith, I know that silence is the most dangerous response.  Ignoring these legislative efforts as being the actions of fringe outliers, is a mistake.  After blocking most of Obama’s court appointments, the Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump Administration has successfully stacked the national courts with young conservative justices who are aligned with the Republican platform and its faith based agenda.  They are the buffer that will keep these obscene laws in place.

I do believe that there must be a bright light between religion and government. But politics is an entirely ideological exercise and even just from a strategic standpoint, one has to recognize the power of religion in that dialogue.  Although politics should never be driven by religion, it must always answer to ethical, moral and yes, religious ideals, that are the personal level of the political game.  This is why we talk about a candidate’s family, or their like-ability or how we trust them.  The challenge for Democrats is that with such a ‘big tent’ attempting to be inclusive of such a wide swath of religious ideologies, this could appear to be an impossible task.  The result is that candidates largely avoid the topic altogether, except when trying to court orthodox communities or telling their personal stories.

The current and growing slate of Democratic candidates for the 2020 Presidential Election must recognize and address the religious war that is unfolding on the state legislative level and in communities across the country.  The candidates must put a stake in the ground around faith in the public discourse and they must be willing to take the counsel of not just traditional Judeo-Christian leaders with large and devout “flocks”.  What is more, they can’t just court Islamic leaders simply as a “show” of faith and solidarity.  The smart Democratic candidate will convene a coalition of faith leaders that also includes Unitarian Universalists (like myself), Bahá’í, Buddhist, Humanist/Atheist and other spiritual/ethical voices that have a broad reach to create a platform that defends true religious liberty by bringing in as many perspectives as possible.

Religious liberty is under attack.  If non-conservatives, religious nones and liberal faith leaders do not place themselves squarely in the dialogue about politics, religion and society, our voices will be permanently legislated out of the discourse.  WE will be the fringe. The evolution of belief, the ability to activate global reach and increasingly fluid dialogue between cultures requires that faith leaders of all stripes be ready to fight for both freedom of religion and freedom from religion when necessary.   This is the unique position on faith that a progressive candidate has the opportunity to leverage.  My fear is that without this effort, we will all be headed to a new dark ages and the tools to create enlightenment will be out of our reach, just like what has now happened in Mississippi.

– ALD