Engaging with “A More Perfect Union”
Like many (I hope most) people, I was deeply moved and impressed by Senator Obama's speech on race. Almost as interesting as the speech itself have been the responses to it, which usually come in the form of opinions: the speech was good or bad or didn’t go far enough or went too far, and so on.
Opinions often don’t tell us much about the content of the speech - it's truth, beauty, or goodness; they tell us more about the perspective, bias, fears, hopes, and interests of the commentator. I hope we can go beyond talking about the speech to talking about America, and the state of race relations in America. I hope we can go beyond offering old and often utterly predictable opinions and instead, through honest engagement and dialogue about the speech, seek to have our opinions modified and improved and deepened and perhaps even challenged and changed.
We have many places for people to react and practice opinion-giving and other forms of punditry, but what we seem to lack is space for people to have a more generous and generative kind of intelligent shared reflection and consideration. So, I decided it might be worthwhile to offer some commentary on the content of the speech along with questions for conversation, so that people could download the text, make copies of it, and read it through together, stimulating potentially constructive dialogue about a truly important subject.
The best case scenario would be for mixed groups to read and discuss the speech together – gathering a group of friends from work or a sports team or a neighborhood or church. Three questions would guide this kind of dialogue:
What can we learn about America?
What can we learn about people of other races?
What can we learn about ourselves?
The goal here is not agreement, but understanding. Each participant has to desire more to understand than to be understood, and more to learn than to teach.
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on the anniversary of the Iraq War
On this anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, readers may be interested in a sermon I wrote for President Bush before the invasion in 2003.
They may also be interested in downloading this imaginary speech that President Bush could have given after the Sept. 11, 2001 elections.
Here's a prayer for the day from the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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children in emerging churches
Last Sunday I met with Dave Csinos who is doing important research about spiritual formation for children in emerging churches. He's written a great paper on children in the Bible, available here.
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Will nothing change? Or everything?
Senator Obama’s speech today was, I think, one of the most important speeches of my lifetime. I hope people will read it and ponder it – here’s the complete text.
I hope each of us can encourage intelligent and civil conversation on the content of this speech. I feel we’re at a moment where our history could take a different turn depending on how we respond. In the context of "Everything Must Change" - Senator Obama has said things that America desperately needs to hear and engage with.
Here are lines I especially hope we take to heart:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
I resonate so much with these words. Will we choose - as we do so often - to focus on the latest distractions? Or will we go for the deep shift that's needed in our hearts, our attitudes, our values, our beliefs, our priorities, our purpose, and our vision? I believe we can make the better choice and take the better path. I believe we can.
Andrew Sullivan's comments on the speech are spot on.
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Sociology & EMC
It’s encouraging to receive a note like this one …
"I just want to express my deep appreciation and admiration for Everything Must Change. I’ve just completed leading an adult Sunday School book discussion of it (one part per Sunday) in my church, and have assigned a book review of it to my students in Introduction to Sociology at my Christian college. As a sociologist, I must say that, conceptually, much of your analysis is very sociological, though there is no overt sociological terminology or reference to sociological theory. Theoretical perspectives like structural-functional theory or social conflict theory, and concepts like ideology, hegemony, false consciousness, and distributive justice could further ground your analysis in scholarship and buttress your arguments in presentation… Thank you for all you’ve done for the Kingdom. I pray God will use and bless you more."
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