“The political polarization of our society has now reached a new and dangerous level. Honest disagreements over policy issues have turned into a growing vitriolic rage against political opponents, and even threats of violence against lawmakers. Political debate, even vigorous debate, is a healthy thing for a democracy; but to question the integrity, patriotism, and even faith of those with whom we disagree is destructive to democratic discourse, and to threat or even imply the possibility of violence toward those whose politics or worldview differs from ours is a sign of moral danger, and indeed a sign of democracy’s unraveling.”—Jim Wallis www.civilitycovenant.org
Sojourners magazine has issued an invitation to “Church leaders from across the political and theological spectrum” to sign a “Covenant for Civility.” They offer this covenant to counter the “polarization” that they perceive as “reflecting a degeneration of public debate in our national culture.” Certainly, civility and charity towards those with whom we disagree is a virtue to be encouraged especially in extreme times. Sojourners is fundamentally mistaken, though, in their reading of our times. At this horrible juncture in history when crimes against humanity are committed daily by our government and in our names, it is not a lack of civility but the absence of outrage on the part of Christians and the Church that “is a sign of moral danger” to our nation.
“The political polarization of our society has now reached a new and dangerous level,” says Sojourners’ president and CEO Jim Wallis. This fear of polarization serves as a smokescreen to our real problems. Not only is there no political polarization in our society, there are no poles. Far from suffering from polarization, in our nation there is not even a dialogue. In the political sphere there is only one operant position and that position is pro-war and pro-corporate, even as it is offered as two opposites, liberal and conservative, Democratic or Republican. Differences that in are reality negligible are presented as being so disparate, so far to opposite extremes that our nation is in danger of tearing apart. This illusion serves to bolster those in power and to stifle dissent. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was accused of polarizing the racial issues of his day by intemperate words and actions, he responded in a letter from the Birmingham Jail that “too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.” King saw the “need for having nonviolent gadflies to create the tension in society,” tension that is required before any real dialogue could happen. Rather than “fan the flames of discontent,” as King and the IWW commended, Sojourners’ covenant seems to seek to diffuse the tension in our nation today.
Discussions over the use of torture, of suspension of habeas corpus, extra-judicial executions, military aid to Israel, wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, development of new nuclear weapons, to name only a few of our nation’s present crimes, do not constitute what Wallis calls “honest disagreements over policy issues.” There are many issues that good people can disagree on, but these are not the issues that threaten “democracy’s unraveling” in America at the present time.
To “question the integrity, patriotism, and even faith” of those who support torture and wars of aggression is a moral imperative, not the transgression against civility that Wallis implies. These are the hard questions that are prerequisite to civil discourse. Can a politician, soldier or citizen who supports the use of torture be said to be a follower of the crucified Savior? (A recent Pew study shows that while a majority of Americans condemn the use of torture, most church attending Christians DO support its use!) Of what credibility is a claim of “patriotism” in the mouth of one committed to holding prisoners indefinitely without recourse to a court? Of what meaning is our own faith, our own love of home, our own integrity if we do not ask these questions?
In a recent visit to Senator Tom Harkin’s Des Moines office, members of his staff took great offense that some of us gathered to protest Harkin’s support for the siege of Gaza and his votes to continue to fund war crimes against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq raised questions regarding the senator’s ethics and his faith. Some in our group were clergy and long time personal friends of Tom Harkin. Questions concerning the state of Tom’s soul were not raised lightly. Failure to ask these questions in the name of civility would have been egregiously irresponsible.
Tom Harkin and the 47 other senators who voted to pass President Obama’s recent supplemental bill to pay for the surge in the killing in Afghanistan and Iraq are not friends with whom we have “honest disagreements over policy issues.” They are criminals whose crimes are putting the earth in danger. Like their brothers and sisters on the streets and in prisons, these criminals must be treated with charity and patience with the aim of their reclamation and rehabilitation, rather than their destruction or punishment. A pledge to act civilly towards and to refrain from violence against ALL who commit crimes, be they in congress or on death row, would be a useful work. A covenant not to condemn their crimes in the name of civility, however, does not help these perpetrators or their victims.
Wallis and Sojourners seem to hold that we can comfortably share a faith with those who are in favor of murder to achieve “national objectives.” The Trappist monk, poet, theologian and mystic Thomas Merton would fervently disagree. “It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threaten to destroy the whole race of man (sic) and the world with him,” he wrote in 1966, two years before his death. “And when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my church can ever be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe, is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustice, believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also and perhaps against these most of all.”
While it may be unhelpful to civil discussion to compare our nation and its current leadership to Germany under the Nazis, it may also be a hard necessity to compare the situations of the churches and of people of faith in these different times and places. In 1948 the philosopher Albert Camus was asked by a group of Catholic scholars to address the question, why did not the Church speak more clearly and forcefully against the crimes of the Nazis? “Why shall I not say this here?” Camus asked. “For a long time I waited during those terrible years, for a strong voice to be lifted up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Exactly. For I knew that spirit would be lost if it did not raise the cry of condemnation in the presence of force. It appears that this voice was raised. But I swear to you that millions of people, myself included, never heard it; and that there was in the hearts of believers and unbelievers a solitude which did not cease to grow as the days went by and the executioners multiplied. It was later explained to me that the condemnation had indeed been uttered, but in the language of encyclicals, which is not clear. The condemnation had been pronounced but it had not been understood. Who cannot see that this is where the real condemnation lies? Who does not see that this example contains within it one of the elements of the answer, perhaps the whole answer to the question you have asked me? What the world expects of Christians is that Christians speak out and utter their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never a single doubt can arise in the heart of even the simplest person. That Christians get out of their abstractions and stand face to face with the bloody mess that is our history today. The gathering we need today is the gathering together of people who are resolved to speak out clearly and to pay with their own person.”
Now is not the time for a call for civility. Wallis and Sojourners are mistaken as to the very real moral dangers that our society faces. They are even more gravely mistaken about the response that Christians should take to meet this danger. Rather than a “covenant for civility,” perhaps we would better enter into a covenant to speak out and utter our condemnation of our nation’s aggression in such a way that never a doubt, never a single doubt can arise in the heart of even the simplest person. Let us instead covenant to be the gathering together of people who are resolved to speak out clearly that the Gospels call us to be, a community ready to pay with our own person the price that such clarity of speech and action will necessarily exact in evil days such as ours.
