[Oe List ...] The Race is On: The Theological and Human Issues in the 2012 Election

Thu Sep 13 04:16:06 PDT 2012

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	The Race is On: The Theological and Human Issues in the 2012 Election
	The nominating conventions for both parties are visible now only through the rearview window. The banners have been taken down, the balloons have fallen, the local bars are back to their normal patrons and the campaigns are now in full swing.  The nominating conventions are actually a strange ritual, something of a dated hangover from our political past.  They have not been nominating conventions since 1960 when during the role call Wyoming’s votes actually put the Democratic front runner, John F. Kennedy, over the top, defeating Lyndon B. Johnson who hoped that by stopping Kennedy, he might emerge as the winner of a brokered convention.
	The choice of the vice-president today is left up to the presidential nominee alone who taps the running mate.  The last contested vice-presidential nomination came in 1956, again at the Democratic Convention, when presidential nominee Adlai E. Stevenson II, then the former governor of Illinois, threw the nomination of his running mate open to the convention without a recommendation.  Senator Estes Kefauver won that spirited battle over two primary opponents, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Senator Al Gore Sr., of Tennessee.
	Today, these conventions nominate no one.  The nominees have normally been picked long before and are not only known, but have also been actively campaigning. These gatherings have become little more than political theater or “infomercials” and are used primarily to launch the campaign.  They are carefully crafted to recognize all the special interest groups that gather around each party, to showcase either those rising star candidates seeking national office (one thinks of Ted Cruz, Republican senatorial nominee in Texas and Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senatorial nominee in Massachusetts) or to give a boost to a candidate deemed to be in a tight race.  They also serve to introduce or re-introduce the nominees of each party and hopefully to frame the issues that will be at stake in the election. All of us are familiar with the hackneyed phrases that are endlessly repeated: “The next President of the United States,”  “This is the most critical election in our lifetime” and “Mr. Chairman, the great state of Wisconsin where cheese is our state product, Green Bay is our football team and cheese heads are our fans, casts its 28 votes for the next, etc.”
	There is little objectivity in the speeches.  Rather, in many voices, speakers say again and again words that sound like: “Our candidate will save America.  Our opponent will ruin America.”  Nonetheless, in these political gatherings there are occasionally inspiring moments that become indelible memories.  I recall James Brady, still paralyzed from having been shot by the would-be assassin of the then president Ronald Reagan, appearing at a Democratic Convention to endorse a plank in the platform calling for the passage of the Brady Bill, limiting the use of legal firearms.  I remember the tribute to Ronald Reagan at the Republican Convention after his death that brought back memories of his career allowing the nation to relive: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  I even remember the Republican galleries in 1940 chanting, “We want Willkie” and stampeding that convention until they got him as their nominee.
	In my life as a weekly columnist, I have attended these conventions in the past and watched them from gavel to gavel.  In 2000 I saw the long kiss planted on his wife Tipper by Al Gore, Jr. It lasted 30 seconds!  In 2004, I heard the keynote address delivered by the young state senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.  It was a moving speech.  I filed a column that week saying, “I have now seen a black politician who has the potential to be elected President of the United States.”  I did not think it would happen four years later. Election year is an American ritual and despite terribly long campaigns and countless “robo” calls it is one that we treasure.
	I see the election of a president every four years as a time to read the cultural and political signs that tell me where my country is at that moment, what is happening to its values and dreams and where this nation appears to be headed. The placement on the ballot in Ohio in 2004, of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, for example, probably brought out enough anti-homosexual voters to win that state and thus re-election to a second term for President George W. Bush. In 2012, the Democratic Convention endorsed gay marriage in its platform and in countless speeches.  I don’t think either the anti-gay amendment in 2004 or the pro-gay marriage platform plank in 2012 would have been employed by either party had not the consensus developed that this was a winning strategy.  That means that on the issue of homosexuality this country has shifted its majority opinion dramatically in just eight years.  Overt gay-bashing politics has thus gone the way of overt racist politics.  Homophobia and racism are both still present, but neither is any longer socially acceptable unless well disguised. Today only code words are allowed.
	In the two recent conventions it was clear that women are a crucial voting block that must be wooed. The rhetoric was far more positive than the platforms, however, which in the Republican case reflected issues not debated in America since the 1950’s.   Both campaigns featured women.  Both showed off their elected female senators, governors and representatives.  Both listened to magnificent speeches made by the wives of the presidential nominees.  I have a hard time imagining Pat Nixon or Bess Truman giving a speech!
	As I look at America today, it seems to me that we are in a dramatic period of consciousness raising. It began to be visible in the campaign four years ago when among the serious and viable candidates for the presidency were a woman, an Hispanic, an African-American, a Mormon and a man who had been married three times. None of these would, in all probability, have been taken seriously twenty-five years earlier. Consciousness breakthroughs always raise up a hostile reaction from those who feel displaced by the broadening of those who are considered acceptable for leadership. We are living with that reaction.  The real issue to be measured in this year’s election is how rapidly we, as a people, will be able to embrace this new consciousness.  One party says it focuses on individuality and freedom, the other on the quality of our corporate society and the corporate good.  One party is rooted in the quality of leadership coming from traditional sources and it does not appear to be welcoming to newcomers.  They value merit, ability and the kind of competitiveness that produces wealth.  The other is rooted in a wider demographic pool, stressing openness to rising minorities.  One party is conservative because it values and wants to conserve the virtues of the past, which, it argues, have made us the great nation we are.  The other party is liberal because it believes that all people must have equality of opportunity that will allow a steady influx into leadership of those, who have not been born into wealth and privilege, enabling merit to rise to the top of our political, economic and social pyramids.  I think both emphases are needed.  Conservatives need the challenge of new ideas and new people lest they become quickly dated and irrelevant. Liberals on the other hand, need the witness of the traditional values that conservatives espouse lest they become wide-eyed and kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
	The nation is healthiest, I believe, when elections are close.  The minority must be strong enough to challenge and to rein in the excesses of the majority.  Progress should come through the hard task of compromise.  We are in danger of losing that in today’s polarized politics. Someone once observed that “politicians are like underwear the only way you can keep them clean is to change them regularly.”  In the last 52 years of American history, the Republicans have controlled the White House for 28 years, the Democrats for 24.  That balance is part of what makes our nation great.
	I worry most in this election about realities that are real, but unspoken.  America is changing demographically.  We are no longer a nation that is overwhelmingly of European ancestry.  The non-white population is today right at the tipping point of 50%.  How well this nation incorporates its Asian citizens, its Latino citizens and its African citizens into its body politic will go a long way in determining the stability of our nation in the future.  The fact that we have elected an Afro-American male to the White House was a signal accomplishment.  The fact that his citizenship, his legitimacy and even his place of birth are regularly challenged indicates that racism is still alive, hiding below the surface in America.  When a consciousness shift in our national self-identification occurs there is always anxiety, anger and sometimes violence.  Today, minorities are rising, women are rising, gay and lesbian people are rising, but fear is also rising. Political gridlock, the inability to compromise, is a manifestation of this fear. When members of either party put political victory ahead of the well being of the nation, that is a danger sign.  The yellow light flashing a warning sign in this year’s election is twofold. One is the result of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the case known as “Citizens United.”  That decision opened the floodgates to individuals and corporations to give unlimited money to a campaign without having to disclose the donor names. The effect is to maximize the power of the vote of the wealthy and to minimize the power of the vote of the poor. One person, one vote is compromised. The second is the attempt by various methods to suppress, handicap or stop the elderly, the poor, the young and minorities from voting.  Special ID is a modern poll tax. Its purpose is nothing less that to disenfranchise some voters.  It is an expression of great fear.
	I hope this nation will move to correct both of these assaults on democracy itself.  America is too precious an experiment to allow the integrity of a vote to be challenged.  An election that ends not with a winner, but with a court challenge reveals a nation in trouble.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

	Question & Answer
	Paul of Rockport, Maine, writes:
	Question:
	As much as I thoroughly appreciated Eternal Life and Jesus for the Non-Religious, I would welcome your thoughts regarding what has traditionally been called "contemplative prayer."  I feel pretty squared away as to the prayers of petition and the question of flattering God in hopes of getting God to change the divine mind.  But what about contemplation and the mystics?  Is it auto-suggestion or a self-induced mystical experience?  Even if self-induced, is it an authentic experience of the divine or an illusion?
	Answer:
	Dear Paul,
	If we could remove from prayer the idea of request or petition, then prayer would be defined as the awareness of a relationship with the ultimate reality, however that reality is defined.  That awareness could take the form of contemplation or meditation, but it is still a relationship.  Relationships can grow and deepen, but they can also fade and become shallow.  Relationships require time, sensitivity and nurturing.  That takes dedication, commitment and attentiveness.
	“Self-induced” does not appear to me to be the word I would use.  Everything we do is self-induced.  If you mean by “self induced” that it is not real but delusional, that is always a possibility and one should never rule out that possibility.
	That is not my approach, however.  I simply bear witness that I live in a relationship with what I call the Source of Life.  I practice that relationship by living life fully.  I live in a relationship with the Source of Love. I practice that relationship by loving, loving wastefully. I live in a relationship with the Ground of Being.  I practice that relationship by having the courage to be all that I can be.  Contemplation is, therefore, not something that I do so much as it is something I am. Contemplation, defined this way, then makes sense to me.  I never fall into the idolatry of pretending that I am defining God.  I am trying to define only my human experience of God.  I thus believe that I live in and into the reality of transcendence.
	I hope this helps.  Thank you for your letter.
	~John Shelby Spong

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