Closing Comments: Party Politics and Beyond
If you would like to comment on the January topic as a whole, please do so below.
Are Political Parties Still Important? And Issues for the Future
Are political parties still important?
Political parties are still important because they remain – transactionally, but not relationally – the central vehicle through which ideological and political intent is exercised and measured. They exist to find, develop, fund and get elected winnable incumbents and challengers. They raise money and organize conventions, rallies, and various media platforms. The elected leaders who represent the two major political parties in government are the instruments through which legislatively relevant political will is advanced and/or repressed.
In the normal warp and woof of daily life, I find – generally speaking – that a rarified group of megadonors exert an outsize influence on the ideological positions and legislative agendas of candidates and politicians. To the DNC: Tom Steyer – $91 million; Paul Singer – $26 million; and Michael Bloomberg – $23 million, and to the RNC: Sheldon Adelson – $82 million; Robert Mercer – $25 million; John Ricketts – $15 million), among many others. These persons and their singular interests hold inordinate sway over the legislative and political agendas of the two major political parties. Meanwhile, the interests of parents who children are addicted to drugs, alcohol, technology are minimally attended to; the safety and security needs of persons who want to live gun-free are suppressed and mocked; the need for affordable housing for middle and lower-class workers is subverted by race and class biases that ultimately increase homelessness, poverty, and suffering.
In the normal warp and woof of daily life, I find – generally speaking – that civic (civil, NGOs, non-profits, foundations) groups are far more important to the vitality and dynamism of the larger polis and to the development of an educated citizenry than are traditional political parties. I think for example about the (sustained) power and efficacy of the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to advance and protect the interests of African Americans; American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for strategically advancing the conservative interests of corporations, politicians, and groups; Southern Poverty Law Center for educating the nation about hate groups and terrorists in our midst; and Emily’s List for finding, developing, and helping viable female candidates win elective office.
In the normal warp and woof of daily life, I find that – generally speaking – grassroots organizing groups are actually performing the work of developing an informed and active citizenry through their regularly scheduled intensive training sessions, through finding and developing leaders and potential leaders, through forming relational rather than transactional models of power, and through the time and labor-intensive process of moving from problem to issue to winning on those issues. These processes tend to produce stronger mothers and fathers, children proud to see their parents standing up for important issues and forgotten people, and congregations come alive by seeing their deepest values powerfully enacted in the larger public discussions about how we will live together – nonviolently.
Ultimately, these processes and practices are still not enough. We need to reform how campaigns are financed, we need to organize new political parties – beginning in the states, and we need to radically expand the idea and practices of citizenship – up to and including running for elective office. Grassroots organizing groups are incubators for these kinds of initiatives and movements.
If there is to be justice, which is at the center of God’s will, churches and congregations will fundamentally rethink their role in society as less benevolent and more powerful. Charity and maintenance of an unjust status quo happen when congregations refuse to use their power to change cruel people, evil laws, crooked patterns, corrupt values, and death-dealing actions. A measure of justice can happen when congregations realize that we are part of the polis – the people, that the gospel has reach into all spheres of human life, and that the fundamental purpose of religion (religio) is to transform the world. Transforming the world means taking our seat at the tables of significant decision-making in our communities, speaking and organizing as full citizens who’ve taken up the responsibility of governing – along with business and government.
Liberty and Justice for All
Party Pessimism
It was with great appreciation that I found myself reading and re-reading Angela Cowser’s first two essays. Her pessimism about political parties in the U.S. comes through loud and clear.
- “Because of the way campaigns and parties are funded, I’ve little hope for voluntary structural change.”
- “Transcending Ideologies – Should they – yes, especially as it relates to poverty and poor people. Will they? No.“
- “As they are currently structured, political parties are not the answer to teaching good citizenship practices and deepening grassroots democracy.“
- “After election day, partisans have little use for voters.“
It is refreshing to see in print what I often hear in the community!
Interesting Similarities
I was particularly fascinated by Angela’s insightful recognition of the similarities between political parties and Christian congregations. And I love her comparison of asking citizens to vote with asking people to attend worship. The outcomes are similar, she notes – “many do, but many more do not“. Amen!
On a practical side, I have found myself in interestingly similar situations regarding my church affiliation and my political party affiliation. As a member of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, I’m grateful for my denomination’s rich doctrinal history based in scripture. But I find my denomination’s “position” on homosexuality and opposition to gay marriage to be extremely troubling. I found myself in a similar situation regarding its “position”, some 20 years or so ago, on the role of women in the church (unable to hold church office). I’ve felt like I’m left with a choice of finding another church that more closely mirrors my understanding of scripture or hanging in there and trying to influence church polity and practice. Similarly, I’ve indicated in a previous essay that I appreciate the Democratic Party’s emphasis (at least symbolically, as Angela suggests) on themes like income inequality, racial equity, and rights for marginalized citizen groups. But while I appreciate the important role of labor unions in society, organized labor seems to have garnered inordinate political influence within the Democratic Party. Unquestioned support of “labor” is typically expected of Democratic candidates. It’s a classic quid pro quo and there are typically political consequences for not supporting union positions on issues. If I have strong disagreement with a union on an issue, I feel like my options are to leave the party (with perhaps no better alternative) or to work from within to influence it in a different direction.
Blaming and Demonizing
I also appreciated Doug Koopman’s recognition of voters’ deep distrust of politics and the associated response of both political parties to blame and demonize the other. Personally, the overwhelming negativity makes political service very difficult. When I meet new people in social settings, which happens a lot while serving in local elected office, I’m glad to be able to talk about my “day job” when someone asks about what I do for a living. I’m often embarrassed when someone I know “outs” me in a group conversation by interjecting that “he’s also a County Commissioner”. That revelation typically changes the conversation, more often than not in a negative way.
Where are the Mediating Forces?
Kevin Den Dulk’s lament, about how the weakening of mediating forces in our society have contributed to the tendency of political parties to use symbols of identity to divide and mobilize, also struck home with me. As I write this essay, there is an ongoing Facebook conversation among a group of former local journalists in which the general conclusion seems to be that good journalism is dead. I can attest that it’s especially dead at the local level. When I began my service as a County Commissioner, some 25 years ago, there were multiple media representatives at every meeting and at least one reporter at a dozen or so individual subcommittee and board meetings. In addition, every two years, the local newspaper interviewed and endorsed Commission candidates. Nowadays, visits by the media are rare (local government coverage tends to be a regurgitation of news releases) and endorsements of local candidates are no longer made.
Getting Local
In this final essay, I’d like to offer two parting thoughts. The first is that it seems like we have lost an historical focus on local politics – at least until something comes up that directly affects us in a negative way. Then, when that negative thing happens, we’re ignorant about how to address it. We don’t know where to turn for support because we haven’t been paying attention. Angela talks about this in terms of building economic, faith and social community – “It’s in the hard work of organizing and reorganizing communities that concrete changes that materially improve lives happen; it’s where leaders, followers, and potential leaders are mentored face-to-face and in real time….“. In bygone days, national leaders often worked their way up the experience ladder, which included significant interaction with citizens all along the way. Our last Presidential election demonstrated that someone can now be elected to the highest office in the land without any of that experience of representing a broader and more grass-roots community. We may be worse off for it.
Racialized Outcomes
The other area about which I’d like to share some observations is the role of the institutional church, in the form of congregations, in our political life. In particular, I believe that the church and government can and should play significant and complimentary roles in addressing one of our country’s most significant and challenging issues – our pervasive and ongoing racism. While the overt racism that I grew up with in an all-white, middle-class town in the suburbs of Chicago has arguably been declining, racialized outcomes are as pervasive as ever in our communities. Disparities between white and nonwhite populations, in wealth, health, education, income, employment and access to power are significant, disturbing and unacceptable. These are areas that politicians, government and churches ought to be lock-step in addressing. When was the last time that you heard your pastor apply Luke 4:19 to the lack of a living wage that disproportionately affects African American citizens? “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And when did you last see a politician actually push for (not just talk about) a living wage for all?
As Angela suggests, it’s extremely hard to do this work, to call out injustice, in a climate where it is OK to lob anonymous, harsh and often hate-filled verbal grenades toward anyone who holds a contrary opinion. (Check out the online comments on most any news media website for vivid examples.) If the church and government want to fulfill their institutional callings, what better place to start than focusing on the relational meetings that are a fundamental part of their healthy existence!
You may have gathered, by now, that, while I’m not particularly enamored with either of our political parties, my personal preference is for the party whose platform emphasizes economic and social justice over the one that emphasizes preserving, protecting, and defending the nation. The former themes are woven throughout scripture and the latter is hard to find or even extrapolate. But more important than party affiliation, for me, is the need for our local communities be relationally engaged with each other (in ALL our diversity) and with the individuals who they elect to represent them. If we work toward that, I’m convinced that we’ll move closer to experiencing both shalom and “liberty and justice for all”.
Expecting Too Much and Too Little of the Parties
In her latest post, Angela Cowser describes some familiar ways that churches and other faith-based networks (hereafter I’ll often refer to those groups collectively as “the church”) have organized and mobilized people to do justice in their communities. She also highlights the reverse: serving a community can be a profound blessing to the church. Community engagement – participating together “at the grassroots” – forms Christians for faithful discipleship, including their motives and dispositions as good democratic citizens. Hence the relationship of the church and the broader community is richly reciprocal. It combines attention to felt needs with a formative spirituality and a public witness to shalom.
In comparison to the church, Cowser invites us to consider political parties as another site for organization, mobilization, and formation. Here the portrait is less flattering. Parties, in Cowser’s view, “do not build democratic practices and good citizens; they develop ideologues, partisans and party operatives and apparatchiks.” She goes on to decry the electoral competition in “gerrymandered districts where outcomes are predetermined,” which “diminishes healthy conversation” and “increase[s] tribalism that stifles democratic practices of deep listening” across lines of difference.
The contrast is stark. But is it apt? I share Cowser’s view that the church-in-community can have a powerful influence that is both formative and transformative. As I’ve suggested here and here, I also agree that parties have many of the pathologies that Cowser identifies (and others that she doesn’t). But I’d suggest that Cowser’s contrast is misplaced for two main reasons. First, it throws the baby out with the bathwater by essentializing party pathologies, that is, it treats solvable problems in our party system as rooted in the very nature of party politics. Second, it both overstates and underestimates the role of parties in our democratic politics.
First, while Cowser rightly calls our attention to a host of deep-seated problems with parties today, she takes those problems as evidence that party politics are dispensable – or at least that grassroots faith-based organizing is preferable as a way to do justice in the world. Consider one of those problems: gerrymandering. Cowser claims that partisan redistricting fosters non-competitive districts, deepens partisan divides, and impoverishes civic conversation. While some political scientists disagree about these effects (especially compared to other causes), let’s accept her assertions for sake of argument. What follows from them? Like Cowser, we could issue a plausible moral indictment against parties, especially at the state-legislative level, for use their cartographic machinations to devalue the power of the vote. But should we take the next step and condemn the party system itself as irredeemably broken? Is reform a hopeless and quixotic dream? From both her posts, I infer from her treatment of gerrymandering, as well as campaign finance and other features of American electoral democracy, that Cowser would probably say “yes” to both questions. Better to use the more effective and edifying strategies of grassroots organizing freed from partisan shackles.
But I’d suggest that we should answer “no” to both questions. The party system in the United States, from its formative years to the Civil War to the Progressive Era to the 1960s, has often remade itself. Sometimes the change has been for ill, but often for good as well, and that latter fact speaks to redemptive possibilities. And those possibilities are not lost to history. Gerrymandering is an intriguing example. Many states today are introducing or considering redistricting strategies that eschew partisan mischief. In addition, that party reform has emerged from the grassroots itself, precisely the same source of moral authority that Cowser champions. Doug Koopman, our fellow conversationalist in this series, is involved in just that sort of mass-based campaign to reform Michigan’s gerrymandered regime – and it looks like that effort might bear real fruit. Now, I’m not a Pollyanna about prospects for change; in fact, my optimism about a movement for reform is cautious to the point of skepticism. But I still see in our history and current moment the opportunity for electoral reform that enhances competition and pulls candidates back from tribal extremes.
Moreover, as long as that hope for change is alive – as long as we can imagine a feasible possibility for reform – I’d argue that we have an obligation to pursue it. This brings me to my second reason for seeing Cowser’s contrast between faith-based grassroots organizing and party politics as misplaced. We disagree about what parties ought and ought not do, especially in comparison to the grassroots work that Cowser describes. Indeed, that disagreement appears to be as basic as whether parties are largely dispensable to advancing public justice in electoral democracies.
I have no doubt about the evidence is that the church is well positioned to address the felt needs of the vulnerable and dispossessed. Churches and other faith-based groups are indeed the backbone of civil society today. Often their work is diaconical and nitty-gritty: stocking food pantries, tutoring kids and adults, offering temporary housing, finding jobs for returning citizens, giving a little benevolence to pay a utility bill, and so on. Sometimes that work might also move toward explicit public witness and advocacy, including mass mobilization and leadership development. The extent to which these efforts ought to be “political” is deeply controversial – and a conversation for a different time. (I wrote a bit about it in a contribution to this book.) But there is no doubt that the church is called to seek shalom through both its diaconal work and distinctive public voice.
The problem, as I see it, is that Cowser has conflated the role of the parties with the role of the church. If parties do share the role of the church, then it’s easy to see why anyone would understand parties as dispensable. After all, the church does a better job than parties at fulfilling the call to do diaconal work in their communities and speak the biblical truth of shalom to those in power. But the point is that parties and churches do not and ought not share that role; the comparison is apples-to-oranges. We shouldn’t expect parties to fulfill the diaconical work of the church or take on the same kind of public witness. Conversely, we shouldn’t expect the church to fulfill the work of parties. Parties perform crucial functions as linkage institutions in electoral democracies by connecting elites to the electorate and bringing structure to the lawmaking process. They might do this work poorly – again, Cowser and I agree about that – but it’s hard to imagine other organizations fulfilling the same functions.
In fact, confusing these expectations raises not only theological concerns (see the sphere sovereignty exchange between Koopman and Talen in earlier posts), but it can also be downright dangerous to both the church and the democratic process. We have all kinds of empirical evidence, including mounting evidence in our current political climate, that suggests a close association of the church with parties and electoral politics is generally a bad idea. We also have all kinds of evidence that many Christians are taking the myriad problems with party politics as license to drop out of serious engagement in electoral politics when that engagement requires that we maintain a faithful presence in political parties.
To differentiate roles is not to seal institutions off from each other. The church still has much to say and do in the context of party politics, including the church’s vision and practices of grace, which remind us in this era of partisan polarization that our political tribe can become its own kind of idol.
In Defense of Parties, and In Choosing the More Limited One
“So, Doug, who are you really rooting for in the game tonight?” It seems as though I am asked this particularly annoying question often, as there is always another Hope College-Calvin College athletic contest on the horizon. Given that I am both an unashamed alumnus of Hope and a voluntary employee of Calvin, my condition apparently presents to some an unresolvable moral dilemma.
My latest answers to such inquiries are a mix of “if that is a serious question, your God is too small,” or “I have friends at both places, and I always support my friends.” Although often asked in jest, questions about my Hope-Calvin loyalty irritate me, and I think for fundamentally the same reason as excessive partisanship between Republicans and Democrats irritates me: there is far more to life than this. I watch college sporting events to remember how difficult it is to achieve excellence in team sports in a heated competition before a boisterous crowd, and to appreciate when it is successfully accomplished. Often, Hope-Calvin contests illustrate that; I leave satisfied when the best team on that day won a well-played contest “fair and square.” And then I try to move on to something important.
Part of this last essay addresses that issue—how much moral weight is there to political involvement and partisan choice in the United States today. My simple answer is –far less than the questions imply or that my nearly forty years of full-time engagement with American politics seems to indicate. I feel personally called to significant political involvement. I also maintain a longstanding preference for the Republican Party. I don’t, however, see either choice as morally superior to minimal citizenship activity and support for Democrats. To me, politics is part of a life that has to be fully dedicated to God, and political parties are an invaluable tool in organizing government policies that hopefully move society forward. I find that work personally interesting, rewarding and comprehensible. I will try to explain a bit more in succinct form while reacting to at least some of the issues raised by my conversation partners.
Jim Talen’s second essay responds a bit to my first essay’s mention of the Reformed Christian analytical tool of sphere sovereignty and the Catholic tool of subsidiarity. I appreciate Jim’s appreciation of sphere sovereignty and searching for some background on subsidiarity. I would say the Van Til article is a decent source, but to any readers interested in pursuing this further, I would also recommend this article by L.D. Weinberger. Whereas Van Til seems to be looking for the distinctions between the two views to find the superior one, Weinberger looks how both views are useful analytical tools to examine the limitations of present policy solutions and show how politics might better respond. My analogy is one of carpentry tools—sledgehammers and crowbars are excellent, and perhaps sufficient, to demolish part of a building undergoing renovation, but different and finer tools are needed to build the replacement. Subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty help identify how policy can be more responsive and responsible by paying attention to localism and the rights and responsibilities of groups, but one would not want to rely on them exclusively to construct American politics and public policy. Other tools, including the insights of general revelation and common grace to use religious language, are perhaps even more important to employ in effectively working in the American polity. Neither Hope nor Calvin, nor another of my alma maters, the Catholic University in America, is the best college in the United States (although all have merit). So, get out more.
There are three other limits to politics to note. First, partisan political engagement around national issues is not a moral requirement to live a Christian life, even though it has occupied a conspicuous portion of my own. Perhaps writing only to myself, more than twenty years ago, in Reformed Christian Citizenship in America, I wrote that “I look for politicians who take the time to pay attention to their families, who have developed outside interests that are not political, who take time off every week, year, or within their careers to cultivate the other areas of life. . . . [E]vidence that life is more than politics is crucial. There is something tragic, even hypocritical, about Christian politicians and activists consumed by their political activity.” My voluntary relocation away from Washington, D.C. in the mid-1990s probably was required for me to follow my own advice on that point.
Second, a Christian seeking to engage the political system also has to feel deeply called. I believe the call has to be a rather specific one, to a particular type of service and in a particular time in life. After less than four years in my Washington, D.C. political career, in 1984 I was fortunate enough to connect to Paul B. Henry in his first campaign for the U.S. House, and to work in that campaign and in his first years of service in the U.S. House. After Paul’s death in 1993, my colleague in those adventures, Gary Visscher, wrote with me a short tribute to Paul in which we note how well fitted Paul was to the position of elected legislator. We made the case that his welcoming personality and skills in listening, balancing, and synthesizing made Paul perfectly suited for legislative representation, more so than careers in the executive or judicial branches for which he was also mentioned. It seems too often that people who claim a call to political service by seeking a particular office may be masking a more worrisome will to political power by any means necessary, misrepresenting a desire to dominate as an eagerness to serve. The challenging task for a Christian voter is to try to discern those motivations in the many candidates seeking such positions and, for the Christian contemplating his or her own political future, to a thoughtful and thorough self-examination of both abilities and motivations.
Third, the genius of the American systems of federalism and separation of powers illustrate the practical limitations of political power, reinforcing the moral limitations. Even the most confident and uniform political ideology, buttressed by firm religious conviction that God puts one in the right, will be frustrated under our system. This is fortunate. Every week in my church attendance and every day when I reflect as I should, I am reminded of the fallen state of both my will and my intellect. I do not always want what is best, and even if I did I probably would not know how to get there. I expect the truths about my own limits are true of others, including those with political power. It is providential that we have a system of government that prevents any one person’s will from being realized. Even the most politically skilled, ideologically pure, and religiously self-assured person will have a hard time imposing his or her will through politics and government for very long or to extend it very far.
As I reflect on these unavoidable limits, the Republican Party seems at least as acceptable a place for a Christian to sojourn while on this earth as is the other party. To my mind, a government limited in both reach and ambition and dispersed in its administration is both morally wise and practically expedient. Kevin den Dulk suggests that ideologically pure GOP elected officials and full-time operatives really do exist, and that #NeverTrump-ers are operating out of both. I think not. Despite the ideological rhetoric, both parties are essentially pragmatic. Healthy political parties seek voting majorities. We seem in a rather unhealthy moment when each of the two major parties is more intent on describing the other party as an offensive, if not lunatic, fringe. They are each doing so with the goal of presenting themselves as the majority, reasonable, alternative to lunacy. I don’t think this labeling of the other is a sustainable strategy for either Democrats or Republicans, as public distrust increases and political engagement declines further, particularly among the young. For Republicans, the sustainable strategy toward a voting majority is to try to appeal to their suburban target voters in more inclusive and substantial ways. The challenge facing the GOP in the near term is how to square a sufficiently large and comprehensive infrastructure program into its ideology. That is not very hard, and the GOP did it in its earliest years, promoting infrastructure partnerships that enhanced individual opportunity for good work and good employment, partnering with states and localities to produce the conditions for gainful employment and earned income for everyone. It will take time, at times, to include new pragmatic decisions into an ideologically coherent message, but it is not hard to see the Republican get there.
Political parties in the United States have very many practical uses to connect the will of groups of voters to government policy. There is moral content to all these activities, but it is very difficult to identify and label some as particularly Christian and some as not. Christians can certainly undertake political activity in both parties. More importantly, Christians ought not to think more highly of themselves than they do of others; on the contrary, Christians should be more aware of their own pride, mixed motivations, and unclear thinking than others involved in party politics. It has to be a calling, not a crusade; a humbling (and sometimes humiliating) journey and not a triumphal entry. So, root for one of the parties, and vote. But do other important things as well.
To Renew Grassroots Democracy is to Renew the Church
In this essay I argue that renewing grassroots democracy (not political parties) will also renew the Church. I’ll substantiate this argument by briefly outlining 1/ the purpose of political parties, 2/the purpose of religion and of Christianity; 3/what I mean by grassroots democracy, and 4/end with how the renewal of grassroots democracy can and is renewing (some) congregational life in America.
The Purpose of Political Parties in America
As I understand it, the purpose of political parties in America – Democratic, Republican, Green and Constitution -is 1/to raise money to fund local, regional, state, and national campaigns to elective office; 2/to choose Presidential nominees; 3/to promote winning candidates for elections; 4/to organize and execute voter turnout or voter turnout suppression; 5/to win elections; in 2012, the average cost of a House race was $1.7 million and of a Senate race was $10.5 million, with minimum-maximum costs ranging from $110,000 (American Samoa) to $42 million (Massachusetts).
- To explain ideological, philosophical, and political positions on issues in order to justify and make laws, represent the people and pass the federal budget.
- To represent the political will of their constituents and of the broader polis (this claim is highly contested). The problem with representation is that the typical Congressperson is a white, Protestant male, a lawyer by profession, and wealthier than the average citizen. For example, 25% of Americans are racial minorities; in the House and Senate, its 15% and 3% respectively. 50% of Americans are female; 14% (House) and 14% (Senate) of Congress is female. Only 1% of the U.S. population holds assets of $10 million or more, yet in the House and Senate, the percentages are 16% and 33% respectively. In sum, wealthy, white, Protestant males overwhelmingly represent a nation of middle class wage earners who are in the aggregate becoming browner and blacker every passing day.
- To distribute patronage jobs
The threats to traditional political party power include the rise of the independent voter, and of special interest groups and super PACs, and the effects of the Citizens United decision which determined that corporations and unions can use their treasury funds for independent political advertising.
As they are currently structured, political parties are not the answer to teaching good citizenship practices and deepening grassroots democracy. Their purpose is to raise money (small donors, mega-donors, PACS), distribute money to viable candidates, test and refine political ideas, field candidates, develop them through the rigors of fundraising and finding/mobilizing eligible voters, and getting those voters to the polls on election day. After election day, partisans have little use for voters. The best organizers understand this transactional, highly narrow process and offer a richer and more relational alternative.
The Purpose of Religion Particularly, Christianity Specifically, and the Practice of Grassroots Democracy
My understanding is that religion – religio – “puts fences around our behavior. It (should) inculcate in society the essential beliefs, values, and basic convictions on which a society constructs its life together. My understanding is that the purpose of the Christian religion is “to make disciples for the transformation of the world” (United Methodist Church). Lives are transformed when safety and security, education and housing, healthcare, clean food and water are secured for all people. All the better when Christian disciples are formed in the work of securing these benefits – these human essentials – for all people. This is what I envision when Jesus says to go into all the world making disciples of all nations. I know this command to be true in having seen thousands of poor Namibian woman (re)build their own houses, with their own hands and with the help of other men and women-and in so doing, substantially change their lives and the future hopes of their children (2008-2010). These houses were built – not because of political parties – but rather in spite of political parties. The houses were built through the work of ordinary people organizing themselves to demand land, money, and resources from the central government in order for the women to build their homes themselves. They waited not for a government or a political party to help them. They did the work themselves. In other words, it was grassroots democracy worked out on the land, with hands and bodies and concrete and bricks and pipes. In so doing, lives have been changed, people are living in dignity, safety, and community.
Renewing Grassroots Democracy and Renewing the Church
As I understand it grassroots democracy is the work of finding and developing leaders and potential leaders, working together across difference to do justice, developing trust and building community, and in so doing, transforming the world. At this moment, it seems that the Democrats are better at working across difference to enact policy, and that Republicans are using difference to divide the nation, propel forward progress for favored ones and to impede forward progress for the many.
In this maelstrom, the major organizing networks – IAF, Gamaliel Foundation, DART, and PICO – offer ordinary people the opportunity to participate powerfully in public life; that is, in taking their religious values into the public square and concretizing them in into policy. The relational alternative to transactional partisanship is laborious work. We find and develop leaders and potential leaders, catechize them through crucibles of heterogeneity, have them do research, action, and reflection on issues that are important to them and to the broader community, and learn how to successfully negotiate with business and government leaders. These parents and grandparents – steelworkers and rabbis, pastors and school teachers – speak before large delegate assemblies, present issue platforms and ultimately, win on their issues. We do this work primarily, but not exclusively, through religious congregations because congregations are organized, because they mediate in communities, and because they have a mandate to transform the world.
It’s in the hard work of organizing and reorganizing communities that concrete changes that materially improve lives happen; it’s where leaders, followers, and potential leaders are mentored face-to-face and in real time; it’s where living wage campaigns are waged and sometimes won. The glad result is that working people have more take-home pay and a bit more breathing room to live and move and have their being. It’s because of public pressure on the 364 days when people are not voting, but are just living their lives where new school buildings are built, new ecologically efficient buses are purchased, and new bus shelters are constructed
Political parties do not build democratic practices and good citizens; they develop ideologues, partisans and party operatives and apparatchiks. They seek winnable candidates for communities that have gerrymandered districts where outcomes are predetermined and settled. These predeterminations harden partisanship, ideological divisions, diminish healthy conversation and disagreement, increase tribalisms that stifle democratic practices of deep listening, understanding, conversation and relationships across race, class, ethnicity, and location, and embolden partisans and single-issue people to make narrow decisions @ single issues, and a decrease in decisions made for the good of the whole.
Paradoxically, it is in the deliberate, self-conscious focus on human beings and their development that we do in organizing that can also help renew religious practice. It is the focus on the common good and in having people who are affected by particular issues do research, action, and reflection on those issues that develops them. And it is in the house meeting, the relational meeting, and the delegates assembly where ordinary people gain a sense that they can be powerful and effective in making our communities more democratic and fair for all. For me, that is gospel work at its best and makes us be true and right Christians, making disciples for the transformation of the world.
Vote for Us! They’re Evil, and We’re Merely Incompetent!
In some of the workplace settings where I have been employed, one of the professional development tools taken by employees has been the Clifton “StrengthsFinder” assessment. It is one of many more-or-less sophisticated tools that companies use to identify each individual employee’s working style and preferences. The main idea of tools such as this is usually to identify and build on those work preferences, and to respect those of others, in order to enhance company performance.
Many of these tools provide some insight, and most of the time the hours spent on them seem worthwhile. My leading StrengthsFinder strength is Individualization. In brief, people strong on Individualization intentionally take people one at a time, and resist putting people in boxes or categories because such generalization and labeling reduces artificially and harmfully the complexity of each individual and unique human being. To these Individualizers, to categorize folks is to disrespect their individuality, which is far more complex than even a long list of socioeconomic and demographic boxes. Individualization advocates, when they are part of a work group, are likely to be good at figuring out how people who are different from each other work together productively, as they believe differences and individuality are strengths to be encouraged even on a tightly knit and production-oriented team.
The description of persons with this strength goes on to state two special obligations such persons bear toward the good functioning of the group and respect for the Individualization perspective. The first is to help others understand that true diversity is found in subtle characteristics of each individual and those differences among all individuals, and not just in big categories such as race, gender, denominational affiliation, college of graduation, age or national origin. The second obligation for people with this strength is to press to treat each individual in a distinctive way. From their view, it is both more just and more effective in a work environment to treat each person differently because the differences among people means “the same” treatment is essentially unfair to everyone.
Persons with the Individualization strength are frustrated and impatient with generalizations of “types” because it obscures the special nature and distinctiveness of each person. I start with this personal revelation to explain my frustration with the prompt this month to comment on the Republican Party in the United States and how (a disembodied) “its” values and priorities comport with Christian values. It is not that simple, and to make it simple is not fair. Political parties in America have at least four different centers of activities—elected officials, full-time employees (employed directly by a party group at some level or indirectly as full-time consultants of one type or another), core grassroots activities who are dedicated but essentially volunteers, and then fairly passive voters who typically vote for one party. These four party centers—elected officials, consultants, core volunteers, and voters, to be sure, sometimes overlap. But in the main, they are distinctive centers with tensions across, and even within, each of them. In the main, the key determinants of what political parties stand for are not the most public groups—the voters or the elected officials—but rather the two centers of activity within the middle—the consultants and the core activists. Later in this essay, I will detail my hopes for the GOP, with particular attention to suggestions directed toward the core paid and volunteer activists.
To complicate matters further, I can come up with a dozen political party functions undertaken by one, some, or all of these four activity centers, depending on the function. Briefly, this is what American political parties do. A major reason mass parties were created in the U.S. in the early 1800s remains their major function: to help (1) socialize people into the political system. The Democratic Party machines of large cities (mostly, although there were GOP machines as well) are known for including new Italian and Irish immigrants (not inconsequentially largely Catholic) into their spoils systems to increase Democratic Party voting clout. The GOP has also reached out to new groups of voters—that was one reason progressive Republicans supported suffrage for women—and helped develop political skills in them. This socialization purpose is connected to a second purpose, to (2) mobilize voter blocs on election day. Losing political parties in elections obviously receive fewer votes than winners. The losing party has a strong incentive to get more voters to vote for it next time, converting from one side to the other, but also reaching out to recruit persons who have never voted. They do so by reaching out and probably promising new policies. In this outreach to get more voters, parties (3) educate the public about the political process and the issues and candidates that align with the party. Formulating policies (4) that are targeted to keep long standing voters or to attract and reward new voter blocs is a fourth function of a political party. In this process of formulating new party policies and integrating them with more long-standing party planks, necessary (5) conflict resolution and compromise skill identification and development often takes place. Given that our two major political parties have been in existence for more than a century and one half, and have changed significantly in their constituencies and positions, conflict resolution also leads to an important sixth societal function, (6) stability in electoral choices which helps to provide continuity and a measure of assurance to the political system.
Several other functions show up in election campaigns. Because parties seek to win elections, and may have had poor candidates in the past, party leaders often (7) recruit candidates to run whom they believe can win and serve well. Parties and their identities, labels, and stereotypes help (8) simplify voter choices, because few voters have deep or broad interest in issues or candidates and appreciate decision making shortcuts. Simply knowing whether one is a Republican or Democrat is a crude, sometimes misleading, but usually helpful cue, and often the only piece of information that they want. When one party wins and the other loses, and when there is a particularly large or surprising shift, parties help (9) legitimate change by claiming mandates for a new policy course. Within the government institutions they might control after elections, political parties (10) encourage accountability by rewarding cooperation and punishing dissent, and help (11) link the different branches of government and various levels as well, to enact the policies that they have developed to attract voters and promised to pursue if voters gave them the influence to do so. When it works well, this linkage (12) makes government more responsible and responsive to public opinion as expressed through the common simple act of voting.
A few more points are appropriate. First, I make the obvious point that political parties are essential to democratic politics, and healthy political parties help politics achieve its ends in nations where voters matter. From the early years of the republic, government leaders looked for allies inside and outside the formal government structure to help them achieve their political goals. Parties were created to help in this task. In an electoral democracy, political majorities are always changing composition as historical events shape expectations and demands on government, and as the voter pool changes over time. As such, in a healthy political system well-functioning political parties are always growing and changing, always seeking new allies while trying to hold on to what and whom they have.
Second, what is politics really about? One well-known political scientist, Harold Lasswell, stated that “politics is who gets what, when, how.” Another, David Easton, said that politics is “the authoritative allocation of values for a society.” Although different in detail, these definitions are both widely used, and nearly consensual among political scientists. They both imply that politics is about the allocation or distribution of things of value within a society or nation. That thing of value may be material, such as income, wealth or necessary or luxury goods. But things of real value may also be largely symbolic and without a formal price tag—things like the value of life or the sense of belonging to, respect of, or participation in a society. Political parties help structure and prioritize these allocations of things of value; In the United States, Republicans and Democrats have different views about the list of valuable things government and politics should allocate, and if, how and when they should be allocated.
Third, politics takes place inside of a political culture that determines what is acceptable and not. That political culture, in turn, is downstream and dependent on the broader social and popular culture of the nation. While a very few perpetuate, profit from, and celebrate this coarseness, I believe fear and anxiety over this coarseness is far more widespread. It is common to “hate on” the vulgarity of politicians and political parties, but I believe that understandable hate is largely misplaced. Much of what we hate about politics and parties is not the fault, in a causal way, of politics, but a reflection of the state of American culture today. The coarse elements of politicians and parties are largely a function of these same elements within American culture generally. If this is true, it is logical (but perhaps not always morally defensible), for political parties and candidates to both exploit this fear and anxiety while simultaneously using the course attention tools used by the shapers of the broader culture.
I believe we are at a moment in the nation’s history where most Americans are rightly and deeply anxious and fearful about the nation’s future health. We are a short-term society, and both families and governments have borrowed funds to enjoy today without any thought to how the next generation will pay those debts. We have lost our rootedness in neighborhoods, local schools, nuclear families, local congregations, tight-knit voluntary associations, vocational expectations, and the like. (Often for some good reasons—I am not pining for a return to the ‘50s and its many tight structures that unfairly punished even small deviancies. My purpose is merely to note, as many scholars such as Robert Putnam have documented, that our human and geographic social networks, or spheres as Kuyper might say, are fraying). It is not a coincidence that the crisis of rootedness, and anxiety and fear about it, is particularly acute among the working class with high school educations or less. These are the demographic of voters that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump attracted, in different ways, into the primaries of 2016, and who live all over the nation, but most prominently in the South and Border states and the industrial upper Midwest.
Polls showing declining trust in institutions, including government institutions, illustrate that most Americans doubt that politics or government can do much to solve this anxiety and fear. Both political parties have responded in essentially the same way—not by trying to address the underlying issues but by accepting the widespread doubt and cynicism of government and blaming the failures of government on the other political party and its candidates. Both national political parties today have essentially the same message: “We may be incompetent and flawed, but our intentions are good and the other party’s candidates and those who vote for them are evil. Vote well-intentioned incompetence over evil.”
Neither Republicans nor Democrats need to continue down this path. Both should go down a new path—to clarify their views of the scope and purpose of government and parties, and show voters real plans to address substantive and material issues, not merely symbolic ones. A brief return to the first four party functions described above—socialization, mobilization, public education and policy formulation—help explain what I mean. The party’s work on socialization and mobilization in the 2016 election was fine. Key candidates in both parties went after a latent, potential, demographic that has been imperfectly described as the white working class. It is an imperfect description for many reasons, including that the working class has individuals of all ethnicities and that in a differentiated economy the “working class” is a highly ambiguous term. Both Sanders and Trump went after these voters, and in a completely fair primary system both insurgents might have made it to the general election. However, as a general comment, it is a sign of a healthy party system that insurgents in both parties identified and tried to attract this demographic and, in Sanders case at least, without alienating other traditional parts of the party coalition. It is a strong and perhaps ironic sign of the deep distrust of government and politics by the public that the traditional party of business, the GOP, was more easily invaded by a segment of working class voters.
Of concern to me, however, were the policy formulation and public education strategies of GOP candidates that were allowed and acquiesced to by core Republicans. Campaigns are not classrooms; little substantive teaching or learning happens in the exchanges between candidates and voters, and campaigns that try to educate almost always fail. Nevertheless, the winning GOP candidate, or another party candidate, could have stuck to promises to rework free trade agreements for fairer terms, to rebuild traditional infrastructure such as roads, bridges, rails and shipping lanes, to start new infrastructure such as universal internet access for rural areas and small towns, to propose other new rural and small town development programs, to promote ideas for strong local schools, health care facilities, churches, and the like, and to advocate for other matters that would create a financial and economic infrastructure to help non-urban areas. These would have been substantive policy ideas aimed at attracting the non-urban voter, particularly in the South, in ways and through means in which government is competent. Instead, the campaign was characterized by attracting these voters by appealing to their fears and prejudices, not their interests.
In the short term, and at the superficial level, it is no surprise that few in the GOP establishment resisted the tone and tenor of the successful presidential nomination and election campaign. The three established planks of the party are, as I noted in my first essay, a muscular foreign policy led by the military, free global trade that produces overall wealth, and acclaim for a set of values rooted in traditional religious expression that provide social stability. These are defensible positions, of high and worthy symbolic value, and with some material and tangible benefits to all, although more thoroughly for the upper classes. Their benefits to the working class are mixed, not very material, and Trump, at least, noted that and ran on that. After his successful election, however, the establishment GOP is now faced with a difficult choice in its strategy to keep Trump voters voting for the party. One choice is to alter significantly the standing Republican view of the role of the federal government in local economic development and in the material strains on the non-urban working class and their communities. This position proposes real, constructive, and appropriate ways to attract Trump voters over the longer term. In general, it is the road I believe should be taken. The other choice facing all three elements of the GOP establishment is to continue to tolerate, or at least acquiesce to in an offensive communication strategy that demonizes as evil the other party and the more varied socioeconomic and demographic groups that tend to support it in elections. It will be interesting to see which path is taken. The choice Republicans make will interact in some ways with what Democrats choose; but one could do worse that have a debate between the two major parties on how best to improve the material condition for all individuals in the nation.
The Symbolic Politics of the Parties
Doug Koopman presents a dilemma facing the GOP: “take new steps and adopt quite different trade and infrastructure ideas of the Trump agenda, or try to keep Trump voters attached to the party by more symbolic, and problematic, means.” The first horn of the dilemma entails ideological capitulation, at least in key areas of economic policy (both international and domestic). In recent decades (though not always), Republicans have championed free trade and muscular international engagement abroad and domestic spending cuts, deregulation, and deference to states. The problem for Republicans is that some of those commitments are in tension with President Trump’s asserted goals. The second horn of the dilemma moves from the ideological to the “symbolic,” by which I take Doug to mean the party’s use of cultural cues to distinguish “true” GOP stalwarts from RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). The idea of symbolic politics is that citizens join with others in political groups based on markers of identity (e.g., class, race, gender, religion), rather than substantive agreement over ideology or policy (though the symbolic and substantive may converge).
I agree with Doug that the GOP faces hard choices in the age of Trump, but I’d argue the alternatives he proposes are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. As I see it, the Party’s challenge is not a clear dilemma but a murky trilemma.
Doug’s alternatives are not exhaustive because there is a third option, namely, doubling down on a #NeverTrump strategy and confronting the president directly on both ideological and symbolic grounds. Certainly many Republicans and conservatives – including prominent Christian Republicans and/or conservatives – committed to that strategy during the campaign. Perhaps Doug doesn’t address this alternative because he’s surmised that it’s become non-starter within the halls of power. A very few elites notwithstanding (many of whom are now leaving office), Trump’s nomination and victory have either quieted never-Trump voices in government or turned them 180 degrees. For many, it’s a realist’s gamble: In the near term, half a loaf is better than no bread at all, and Trump is offering something more than a few crumbs. But I am curious what Doug might think about a Republicans-in-exile response to Trump that insists on greater ideological continuity and a moderated tone from the sitting president.
The alternatives Doug presents are also not mutually exclusive. The GOP could embrace both of them: the party could capitulate ideologically and play Trump’s brand of “symbolic” politics. I suspect Doug wouldn’t disagree with that point, and in fact he’d likely identify some ways that the embrace has already happened. But his post focuses much more on the former alternative (ideological change) than the latter (symbolic politics). Part of the reason for his focus, it seems, relates to Doug’s understanding of party politics. Like most political scientists (including me), he sees parties partly as organizations that seek to control government by winning elections. Moreover, for many political scientists (not necessarily including me), winning elections means linking party ideology and policy to the median voter’s preferences. In fact, the idea that parties are organizations that leverage ideology/policy among voters is the message of both posts from (chastened) party advocates: Like Doug, Jim Talen focuses largely on how he navigated the ideological and policy opportunities and pitfalls within the Democratic Party.
But Doug’s and Jim’s emphasis on ideology and policy leaves open the question of how they would address the symbolic side of partisan politics. One way of interpreting my original post to this conversation is that both parties play symbolic politics as a strategy of division and mobilization. In that sense partisanship moves beyond ideology and policy into the realm of identity. So I agree with Doug that a lot of focus on parties-as-organizations with coherent platforms that attract or repel voters is probably “myopic,” or perhaps more precisely misplaced. While it’s a complex argument, many political scientists find that ideologies and policy preferences are not that important to most ordinary voters. Some commentators have even suggested that the U.S. is “post-ideological.” So if we think that the goal of parties is to connect ideology to voters, and we then observe (as Doug does) how quickly Trump unended the GOP’s conservative platform – the “Reagan trinity” – then it certainly looks like the Republicans aren’t reaching their goal and may even be in decline. But my earlier post suggests that there’s good evidence that partisan identity isn’t necessarily rooted in ideology or policy preferences. I also argue that that identity, in its current “symbolic” or “tribalist” form, looms relatively strong, even if the allure of ideology or policy has waned.
Angela Cowser poses the challenge of the symbolic in stark terms, especially with respect to the GOP. As she sees it, the longstanding “values” of the GOP are relentlessly identity-based: “the symbolic … suppression and oppression of minority citizens and immigrants around issues of race, ethnicity, citizenship, and gender; a close melding of the goals and aims of the Republican Party and most conservative Christian fellowships in the US…; [and] the militant and unrepentant elevation of … Whiteness and White norms…” (my emphasis). Now, I don’t share Angela’s experience, and I would frame some of these values in different ways. But she raises questions about the history of the Republican Party that are mostly left out of Doug’s thumbnail telling of it, from the Party’s protectionist and nationalist moments in the early 20th century to its more recent flirtations with forms of authoritarianism and populism that have often exploited identity-based tensions. It would be interesting to hear what Doug would say to the provocative argument that aspects of the GOP’s underlying “individualism” have morphed into an ethno-nationalist pose grounded in the symbolic politics of identity.
I wondered why Angela did not lay quite the same kind of challenge at the Democrats’ feet. She suggests instead that “symbolic” Democratic values are in effect the opposite of Republicans’; the Democratic Party tries to “elevate ethnic, racial, and gender diversity” and seems to be “assiduously neutral” on religion. Her critique of Democrats is about policy substance, not symbolism, i.e., “no legislative victories” for African Americans or the poor. But I would simply note that the Democratic Party has its own history with exclusivist symbolic strategies that identify who’s “in” by defining who’s “out.” The Party certainly has not been “neutral” on religion, for example. A lot of political science on party politics in the late 1960s and 1970s shows that the Democrats made some clear decisions to signal welcome to the various rights movements of the day, which had the predictable – and some argue intended – effect of pushing away religious groups over issues of abortion, family life, and education. That period left many religionists without a clear home in the parties. Catholics, for example, have since become the classic “cross-pressured” group, committed to combat both poverty and abortion through state intervention. Southern evangelicals bolted for the GOP (though, of course, the Republican Party so-called “Southern strategy” helped bring them into the fold).
For my part, the greatest concern about the ways parties use the symbols of identity to divide and mobilize is that mediating forces have weakened. The institutions within civil society that have pushed against partisan tribalism, often by bringing citizens together in diverse groups, have eroded in their influence. Doug mentions that trust and confidence in institutions has declined, which comprises a crisis of authority of these institutions. The loss of the church’s moral authority is perhaps the most profound illustration. What’s more, as I noted in my early post, many of the institutions of civil society – unions, media, family, neighborhoods, and even churches themselves – are increasingly shaped by partisan forces, and so they are less likely to be countervailing. So it’s a double-whammy: At the same time the authority of civil society has declined, its partisan colonization has enlarged. I tend to think latter might help explain the former.
I wonder what Doug and Jim might have to say about that double-whammy, particularly in light of their exchange on sphere sovereignty. I’d like Doug’s to unpack his “walls-of-the-home” metaphor a bit, because my understanding of the sphere-sovereignty concept is that is does not merely suggest that the state provides structure for the other spheres. But I’m more interested in some of his asides about the church. I agree that the church has “little special insight” into the nitty-gritty of governing and that should limit the church’s reach. But I’m puzzled by Doug’s claim that “the real moral activities of life [are] outside of the church.” I ended my earlier post by asserting that the church makes profoundly “real” moral claims, and that its practices – most importantly worship – shape our political lives, even when the church doesn’t take partisan sides. I would also argue that the church ought to play that role, especially in this age of political tribalism, which is basically a form of idolatry.
I have a post-in-waiting about the parties and federalism, which Doug and Jim both raise and discuss. But I trust there is enough here to keep that other post for the next round!
And a post-script to readers who might not know: Doug and I occupy offices fifteen feet apart. We haven’t talked about this exchange, but I promise, in the spirit of Respectful Conversations, that our differences will not spill into a hallway brawl.
More Stories Along the Way….
With such articulate partners (who are also acquaintances) in this political conversation, it’s hard to know where to begin my response. There is so much food for thought. Thank you!
Diverging on Sphere Sovereignty
I’ll begin by recognizing the degree to which I was struck by the similarity between Doug Koopman’s and my experiences in our early years. Particularly surprising was the shared influence of the concept of sphere sovereignty on our thinking. Where I suspect we differ may be related to the influence of the concept of “subsidiarity” on his thinking. I admit that I was unfamiliar with the notion and had to do some research. I recognize a danger in speaking about it with minimal background. However, what I have been able to discover about subsidiarity seems to substantiate what I think may have helped land Doug and I in different political camps.
Kent Van Til published an article in the Theological Studies journal, Vol 69, Issue 3, 2008, in which he compared the principles of sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity. The conclusion to a section in which he summarizes some key concepts of Abraham Kuyper ‘s model of sphere sovereignty is enlightening:
“In sum, I find many similarities between Kuyper’s principle of sphere sovereignty and the principle of subsidiarity. First, both derive from a worldview that is assumed to be divinely ordered. Subsidiarity derives from natural law and sphere sovereignty from the reformed doctrine of common grace. Second, both limit state-sovereignty and seek to develop the roles and scope of intermediate institutions. Third, both insist that all areas of life are influenced by faith. Fourth, both agree that the state can and should have an active role in society, but do not wish to see the state dictate to, or take over the roles of, lesser institutions. In general, the principle of subsidiarity seems to construct a hierarchy that leads to the common good, whereas sphere sovereignty provides a process by which diverse spheres may successfully interrelate.” (‘Subsidiarity and Sphere-Sovereignty: A Match Made In …?’, 2008, 69 Theological Studies 626)
I suspect that Doug and I lean toward different political camps because his view of sphere sovereignty tends to emphasize limitations (perhaps influenced by the subsidiarity concept) and my view tends to emphasize interrelatedness. Stated another way, Doug’s concept seems to emphasize vertical relationships and my view tends to emphasize horizontal ones. I recognize that it’s a bit of a fuzzy distinction but I hope it’s one that bears further analysis and discussion.
Doug’s description of the concept of sphere sovereignty begins with “….sphere sovereignty claims that each sphere of life has distinct responsibilities, authority and competence, standing equal to other spheres and in direct responsibility to God.” He concludes that “….the main job of each level or branch of government, and government as a whole, is to protect the boundaries among the spheres.”
That contrasts with my understanding of the spheres as being interrelated but having a distinctive leading aspect, or modality, as outlined by Herman Dooyeweerd, a leading refiner of Kuyper’s sphere sovereignty concept. Richard Mouw (Reflections on Sphere Sovereignty) summarizes how Dooyeweerd’s interrelatedness contrasts with a heirarchical (subsidiary) view.
“Dooyeweerd sees the Roman Catholic view as a hierarchical scheme in which the state is the “totality of natural society,” with the church as representing an even higher manifestation “of Christian society in its supranatural perfection.” In such a view, as Dooyeweerd describes it, communities such as family, university, and corporation are lower parts of these higher organic unities: families are organically subordinate to the state, and the state to the church. By way of contrast, Dooyeweerd insists, sphere sovereignty does not merely prescribe a practical “hands off” policy; rather, the boundaries that separate the spheres are a part of the very nature of things. Neither the state nor the church has any business viewing the other spheres as somehow under them. Kuyper’s scheme places “the different spheres of life alongside each other” finding their unity not in some “higher” visible community but in the ordering of a creation that is ruled by God.”
In my years of elected service, I’ve always viewed my role as helping to find ways in which government can assist in ensuring that there is justice for all. That typically happens best, in my experience, when sectors, or spheres, work together. Shalom happens when church and state work together for “the least of these”. Shalom happens when business and state work together to ensure economic justice for all. Shalom happens when schools and state and families work together to ensure that every child is able to flourish within their individual capabilities.
Racism is Alive and Strong
Koopman ends with a nod that strikes a chord with me – to moving toward “a more genuinely diverse and tolerant nation.” A preponderance of experiences in my work, social and political lives has led me to believe that the most significant issue currently facing our society is racism. There was a time when I thought, like many others, that we had moved beyond the racism of my childhood. I now recognize that, while we may see less overt racism these days, the societal outcomes for people of color in our nation clearly indicate that systemic (often unintentional) racism is alive and strong. Learning to recognize the privilege I have as a white male has been a long struggle and is ongoing. One of the places I’ve landed in my learning has been to prefer to use words like “affirmative” rather than “tolerant”. The Kingdom that we help usher into this world should be one that does more than tolerate our diversity. It should affirm and celebrate its divine beauty!
So many things in Kevin Den Dulk’ essay resonate with me! In keeping with my tendency to tell stories, I’d like to highlight some of his observations with some personal experiences.
My Team – Aaaarrrggghhh!!!
Right off the bat, I love Kevin’s assertion that ” American political parties are making a mess of democracy….”. Oh my, yes! He goes on to say ” As many as one-in-three party members have serious reservations about their own team.” Even a partisan officeholder like me has serious reservations about my team! In my community we have a demonstrably weak local Democratic party organization. It is fraught with bickering and infighting. I’m often amazed that people can fight so hard….and over what? A Democratic candidate hasn’t won a county-wide election in 35 years! It’s the same old arguments and fights, year after year – what does the old saying suggest about doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results? I try to avoid local party meetings because there is so much dissention and I’m reluctant to suggest that any newly excited partisan attend for fear that they’ll be totally turned off and lose interest. I’ve also seen the state and national Democratic party come in to town during Presidential election years, try to totally take over local campaign efforts, and instantly disappear a few days after election day, leaving a host of hard feelings and bitter tastes.
Later on, Kevin suggests that “Parties in government appear….hampered by encrusted leadership.” My own local Democratic party was controlled for years by an “elite” group of local labor leaders. They controlled local party elections to ensure their continued control of the party. (Again, one would wonder why, in the absence of any election successes.) When some like-minded non-union activists tried to expand the party base, the efforts were met with stiff resistance. I’ll never forget trying to set up at a caucus site to sign up new party members, in the 1984 presidential caucus, and being evicted by the party chairperson. In my opinion, the local situation has improved but there is currently a somewhat similar situation in which Bernie Sanders supporters are accusing local party leadership of not being open to new ideas and participation. I suppose some things never change….
Comparative Campaigning
In his references to the competitive spirit that is inherent in political parties, Kevin says that “Competing and highlighting political differences are not necessarily morally disqualifying.” I’m reminded of my first campaign for County Commissioner. I had been encouraged to run by many in my urban neighborhood of older homes to run against the long-time Republican incumbent, partly because he owned a significant number of rental properties in the area that were not very well maintained. During the campaign, a volunteer did some research in public city records and found hundreds of housing code violations on dozens of my opponent’s rental properties. I received lots of encouragement to attack my opponent for those violations. After many conversations with friends and advisors, and considerable soul-searching, I agreed to send out a flyer that laid out dozens of the worst violations and compared that record of neglect to my opponent’s record of ignoring a number of local neighborhood issues that citizens had complained to me about as I campaigned door to door. As you might imagine, the piece was not well-received by my opponent and his supporters and was attacked as a despicable act of desperation. But I have often used the brochure as an example of appropriate “comparative” campaigning. To win an election against an incumbent, differences have to be pointed out. I’ve learned the truth of another campaign saying – “You can’t win a beauty contest against an incumbent.” But highlighted differences need to be verifiable and relate to qualification for office or performance in it.
Kevin also notes the danger in being a “critical insider”. “….it is surely a fraught vocation, especially considering how easily the mobilization of our differences can swerve into demonization of the other side.” Early on in my first stint as a local officeholder, I voted against accepting a grant to establish a local D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program. I had done some research on the program and the data was pretty clear that, although the program did an effective job of improving the perception of law enforcement personnel among youth, it had little or no effect on the level of substance use or abuse. That opposition to the program led to my opponent, in the election that followed, characterizing me as “soft on crime” for my opposition to the D.A.R.E. program. That’s contemporary politics for you!
Living In Bubbles
I have significant sensitivity to Kevin’s observation that “Housing patterns are increasingly correlated with partisan attachments (there are now companies that will help you find a match between neighborhoods and your partisan loyalties).” Until our recent move to a condo a few blocks away, my wife Pat, and I lived in the same house for 40 years. We often reflected about the” bubble” that we seemed to live in. While there may have been a few closet independents in our neighborhood, you would hardly know it from conversations or election-year yard signs. The one staunch Republican on our block eventually stopped coming to neighborhood social functions. Now, the population of the 30-unit condo that we eventually moved to seems to be similarly left-leaning.
Gerrymandering
One of Kevin’s concluding recommendations for combating political polarization is to “Crush the gerrymander”. How true! Over the three decades that I’ve campaigned for elected office, despite not having moved during the period, I’ve been in four different district configurations. My current district is the local poster-child for gerrymandering. It stretches from downtown to the southern border of the city and covers parts of all four of its quadrants (NE, SE, NW, SW). It is sometimes referred to as the “snake district” because of its unusual shape.
The Church and the church
Still another question raised by Kevin, that deserves further discussion (perhaps in the final postings of this eCircle conversation), is the role of the institutional church in partisan politics. He asks it this way – “But is there anything churches should be better equipped to tackle than disciples who turn their tribes, partisan or otherwise, into an idol?” He prompts me to ask – how can the church speak prophetically to the political issues of our time? I believe one thing for certain – that the political sphere is an integral part God’s world with which the church MUST engage.
My research on subsidarity, referenced earlier, led me to writings by Kent Van Til. Interestingly, an article by Van Til explores some similar themes to Den Dulk’s commentary on the election of our current President and the overwhelming support of white evangelicals. Kevin notes the question raised in many circles – “How could white evangelicals vote for him?”. Van Til engages in a similar analysis in regard to Roy Moore, a controversial candidate in the recent special election for an Alabama Senate seat. Readers of this discussion might find that article interesting and helpful. (“Evangelical Alabamans: Don’t vote for Moore, even if his Christian presuppositions are correct”, Religion New Service, Dec. 8, 2017)
I have enjoyed reading the analyses of my writing partners have benefited from their wisdom and experience. I look forward with great anticipation to the final segments of our discussion!
It’s a Small, Small World
Sidebar story – The name Kent Van Til, referenced in this essay, piqued my curiosity since my mother’s maiden name is Van Til. It didn’t take long to discover that Kent and I grew up in the same town of Highland, Indiana and went to the same elementary school, high school and college. We share a somewhat well known “Uncle Kees” (pronounced “Case”), Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Seminary, and that makes us second cousins. Most interesting was the discovery that Kent and a first cousin on the Talen side of my family, both married sisters from the same Grand Rapids family. That was “double bingo”, as we sometimes say about discovering Dutch, Reformed family connections.
A Reformation Model for Church and Political Party
I write as a middle class, African American female professional scholar and Minister of Word and Sacrament (Presbyterian Church USA) who has devoted her life to the propagation of a Christian gospel that is rooted absolutely in the richness of Hebrew and Greek notions of justice, in Jesus’ call for all people, groups, and nations to repent (metanoia – to turning around, reversing course), and to full financial and educational reparations for the sociopathic, anti-social, evil foundations upon which this nation was founded, and upon whose poisonous roots upon it continues to enrich itself today. I also write as a former community organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) affiliate – Tying Nashville Together – which did its good work from 1991-2009 in Nashville, Tennessee.
This essay is informed by reflection upon racial, gender, and class discriminations which I have suffered through, the (successful) struggle to become an educated, informed citizen of the United States, and most importantly, to respond to the high call on my whole life of discipleship in Jesus Christ – in this life and the next. I will take each of the leading questions posed, answer them forthrightly as I see things. The vernacular is straightforward, in plain language, in hope of clarity of argument and rich discussion and counterpoints.
The Political Priorities and Values of the Republican Party in the Early 21st Century
The political priorities of the Republican Party in 2018 are to raise money, find and provide financial and strategic support to candidates who can win elections (no matter how ethically odious they may be), build a variety of media platforms for propagandistic purposes (Fox News, Breitbart, TBN, CBN), and use whatever means are necessary – including gerrymandering, allowing foreign powers to “meddle” in US elections, and sustained, systematic suppression of minority and poor voters, etc) – to win elections. The values of the Republican Party include a fanatical obsession with individual rights of Whites (anti-gospel), a narrow and fanatical obsession with abortion and private sexual politics (not mentioned by Jesus), and a murderous obsession and advantaging with and of guns, gun owners, gun cultures and gun life (those who live by the sword will die by the sword) which places non-armed citizens at particular dangers in both public and private spaces.
The values of the Republican Party in 2018 are the same as they have been for as long as I’ve had a consciousness about it: the symbolic and substantive suppression and oppression of minority citizens and immigrants around issues of race, ethnicity, citizenship, and gender; a close melding of the goals and aims of the Republican Party and most conservative Christian fellowships in the US (especially the Southern Baptist Convention, non-denominatioal, Pentecostal, and conservative evangelical groups), the militant and unrepentant elevation of (male, heterosexual) Whiteness and White norms, and the political satiation of Republican mega-donors to the exclusion of and denigration of the material lives of white, working class and poor Republican voters (no action to keep Carrier jobs in Indiana as promised; destruction of the ACA which many Republican voters use). America is being made great again for White Americans! While working class whites are visually prominent at Trump rallies, it’s the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Rebecca Mercer, and many Fortune 500 leaders, among others, who drive the legislative and cabinet-level priorities, works and accomplishments. The poor and indigent are stigmatized and demonized as lazy, shiftless freeloaders. Their concrete needs are cannibalized to serve the interests of mega-donors and higher income Americans.
The Political Priorities and Values of the Democratic Party in the Early 21st Century
The political priorities of the Democratic Party in 2018 include raising money, fielding candidates who can win elections, supporting the gerrymandering of districts, satisfying mega-donors (Harvey Weinstein, George Soros) and national constituency groups (NARAL, unions), and building (and supporting) media platforms that undergird their positions and constituencies (MSNBC, The New York Times).
Symbolically (at national conventions) and in some instances substantively the 2018 Democratic Party elevates ethnic, racial, and gender diversity as core values (Nancy Pelosi, Hilary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Baraka Obama, Kazir Khan), support of women’s thriving including reproductive rights (and responsibilities) and some level of accountability on sexual harassment within Congressional ranks, and expands a pro-life position to include legislation and actions that support human life from newborn to old age (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, CHIP, GI Bill). Symbolically, President Obama was a powerful and energizing symbol of African American racial progress and inclusion, yet there were no legislative victories under his presidency which were specifically aimed at and named with African Americans as primary beneficiaries. Legislative victories were framed as good for Americans, not specifically African Americans for had that happened, those initiatives would have failed.
The post-modern Democratic party seems assiduously neutral on religion, and yet, much of the theological rhetoric coming from progressive, mainline pulpits and denominations track many of the aims and goals of the Party’s platform – care for children, the poor and the disabled, and the elderly; pro-gun control; female reproductive and workplace freedoms, and a penchant for diplomacy and multi-lateral foreign relations. The poor are ignored.
The Parties’ Comportment (or not) with Christian Values
What are Christian values? There seems to be no universal consensus on what they are. In common parlance, some fellowships emphasize prohibitions against certain behaviors: no smoking, drinking, dancing, abortion, or premarital sex (Southern Baptists). Others labor to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” (United Methodists), perform “servant leadership” (SBC), “do God’s work of restoring and reconciling communities” (ELCA), perform “spiritual unity, truth, and faith” (COGIC), or “teach the truth, feed the hungry, heal the broken, and welcome strangers” (PCUSA).
Jesus’s values as demonstrated in the gospels include truth-telling (Nicodemus), leadership calling and development (the calling of the disciples, the woman at the well), confronting oppressive religious beliefs and practices (The woman at the well, the hemorrhaging woman), teaching and action (Sermon on the Mount), and calling all people (and nations) to repent (Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Mark).
About one year ago, I did an informal survey of 25 United Methodist elder-clergy coaches (pastors) who serve in urban congregations for some consulting work I was doing with them. I asked the pastors to track their (work) time and activities for two weeks. What I found was that for almost all of the respondents, their time apportioned as followed:
- 40-50%: worship planning and worship
- 30-35%: administration (e-mails, meetings, online activities, buildings and grounds, fundraising)
- 25-30%: pastoral care
- 2-5%: outreach and evangelism
Additionally, what we actually ask people to do in congregations is teach, give money (tithe?), fundraise, maintain buildings and grounds, and organize worship, and attend worship, Bible study, and festival celebrations. Our congregations are for the most part domesticated; our response to structural injustice often reduces down to hand-outs, coat drives, and food basket giveaways, especially around holidays. We pray for the poor, the tortured, those living and dying in war zones, victims of injustice. We do not repent and we don’t repair the people and structures that are broken by our injustice
So we have three data sets: what denominations say they value, what Jesus values, how top-performing clergy actually live out their values. Put these data against what the major political parties actually do and we have essentially two groups: political parties and Christian congregations mirroring each other in institutional maintenance [fundraising, administration], fielding winnable candidates (new members), and outreach and evangelism [fundraising]. Every two to four years we ask citizens to vote (many do, but many more do not); and every week we ask people to attend worship (many do, but many more do not).
Changes Needed in Priorities and Values
Is this a question about the need for change in political parties and/or churches? The changes needed in churches is perhaps for another essay. Because of the way campaigns and parties are funded, I’ve little hope for voluntary structural change. What could happen for political parties as they are currently structured, is to create a leadership academy that teaches potential candidates and interested citizens how to run successful campaigns, how governance actually work – at every level, and how government, business and civic sectors intersect and interact. In other words, create citizenship schools for ordinary citizens. Move from the strictly transactional and financial to the relational.
Transcending Ideologies
Should they – yes, especially as it relates to poverty and poor people. Will they? No.
How?
Collectively, congregations have millions of organized people and millions (billions) of dollars in organized money. Because we disagree on values (and doctrine and the role of the church in society), that collective power remains unorganized and dormant. Presently, the pressure on political parties to change is coming primarily from corporate and mega-donor spaces, with spasms for change coming from voters on each election cycle. For churches, which still remain the largest unorganized, organized block of voters in the United States, little will change in the larger polis without a change in consciousness about power, its use, misuse and non-use and a radical change in how the Bible is read, interpreted, and applied away from a neutered Jesus, and an incessant and infantilizing spiritualization of material injustice.
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