DNC-Day 4

The Democratic National Convention is now concluded and the rehashing will continue at least until Monday, when the Republicans start up. The Democrats should be given their due, for they achieved some goals that seemed in doubt when the convention began—party unity, that risky outdoor closing event, seamlessly headlining the stars of politically liberal America. Though none of the speeches will live in history and though there were few symbolic or rhetorical moments to stir the blood, the convention did give the nation its first black presidential nominee. This is, perhaps, enough.

What was also historic was what was largely unseen, and this was the presence of religion and religion of a new kind for a Democratic convention. We must remember that it was once the conventional wisdom, as Howard Dean repeatedly told his campaign staff, to avoid discussing “God, gays and guns.” Indeed, Dean once famously said in an interview with Pat Robertson that the Democratic Party “had a lot in common” with Christians—as though there were no Christians in the Democratic Party, as though Christians lived on a difference planet from Democrats. These were, until recently, not uncommon attitudes on the left.

At the convention in Denver, though, religious gatherings abounded. An interfaith service opened the whole affair and religious meetings continued throughout the four days. There were even prayer breakfasts at which people actually prayed, a rarity in American politics. Each night was opened and closed with prayer as well and, though this is not unusual, some of those who prayed were evangelicals. In fact, the man who closed the last night was an evangelical, pro-life pastor from Florida.

I’m not suggesting that the Democratic Convention was secretly a religious revival. Nor will the Republican Convention be. Yet, it is clear that the political left in America is finding its religious voice and this is due, I believe, to three factors: a deep disgust with the Bush administration and its perceived manipulation of religion, a broadening of the moral concerns of politically active Christians in America, and, of course, the trumpet call of faith that Barack Obama has sounded. We will see all of this playing out in the next two months of the presidential campaign.

We will also see the influence of a new kind of evangelical. For nearly three decades, it has been the evangelical as defined by the Right Right which has played a role. This evangelical was largely concerned with school prayer, abortion and the homosexual agenda and he raged against a loss of Christian heritage in his country. Now, many of the leaders of that movement having passed from the scene—Falwell and Kennedy are dead, Haggard discredited, others tainted through folly or excess—there is a new evangelical on the rise, one who perceives religion and American public life more broadly.

This new evangelical certainly sees abortion and gay rights in biblical and moral terms, but he also realizes that the Bible speaks of the poor hundreds of times more than nearly any other public morality issue. There is, too, the command to deal kindly with the stranger, the instruction to tend the earth righteously and the summons, accompanied by fearful judgments for disobedience, to assure justice for the downtrodden. The new evangelical understands, perhaps, a more fully orbed biblical worldview than his predecessors and so also realizes that both political parties represent positions close to the heart of his God.

This new evangelical would wish for a difference type of leader, as well. Most evangelicals are impacted every day of their lives by the teaching of James Dobson. Yet many do not understand why this last of the lions of the Religious Right attacked Mr. McCain and Mr. Thompson in the primaries, harshly attacked Mr. Obama for a two year-old speech once he became the nominee, and yet worked to build or encourage nothing of value in this campaign season. Many evangelicals wish that James Dobson, who is known for his transforming teaching on righteous parenting, would have heard Barack Obama’s Father’s Day Sermon and said to him, “Mr. Obama, we disagree on many things, but if you want to encourage righteous fathering in America, particularly among African-Americans, I’m with you. Let’s build something of value together.”

This is the new sprit that the new evangelical seeks. And this, too, is why many evangelicals are “in play” in the 2008 campaigns. They have not abandoned their values. They have embraced a broader understanding of their values than before and now wait not to endorse a candidate, but rather for a candidate to endorse them, or, more precisely, to endorse what their God has taught them to believe.

It is a new attitude, for a new evangelical, in a new day of faith.

DNC-Day 3

I have learned that time helps us measure the meaning of events. I often ask myself whether a song or a speech or a book will be remembered in ten years. It helps me know whether I’m dealing with something which, if not quite eternal in value, at least transcends the moment, and perhaps the immediate era.

It is easy to miss the lasting meaning of last night at the Democratic National Convention. Bill Clinton gave a fine speech and showed uncharacteristic humility, but we will not likely remember his words a decade from now. Nor will we recall the speech of Joe Biden, who seemed to wrestle with the text prepared for him but who gave the convention its best Freudian slip when he merged Bush and McCain into “George McCain.”

No, the significance of last night—and I hope we are all big hearted enough to acknowledge it—is that a black man became the nominee of his party for president of the United States. I lay this alongside the U.S. House of Representatives’ recent apology for slavery and I am grateful that one of our great national sins is being expunged through deed and not just sentiment.

It was in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, that twenty black men and women were offloaded at Jamestown, Virginia, in exchange for food and tobacco. They were supposed to be indentured servants but the recent decision at Jamestown to attempt economic salvation by tobacco changed all that. As I wrote in Then Darkness Fled, my brief life of Booker T. Washington:

So began the horrors that were American slavery. So began the kidnappings and betrayals and murders in Africa. So began the dreaded Middle Passage across the Atlantic with its suffocating coffin-like confines, its disease and stench and madness and death. So began the screaming and the haunting clanking of chains and the sound of dead black bodies splashing into mid-ocean with such frequency that even the sharks learned to follow ships departing the coast of Africa. So began the markets and the humiliating inspections and the whippings. So began the dehumanizing of both black and white and the woven fabric of lies required to protect the illusion of Christian civilization.



What we now know, of course, is that the horrors of this practice spilled out into our land, ripped us asunder in the bloodiest war of our history, and left stains on the souls of generations yet unborn. Even half a century after this war of brothers, Americans heard a racist president, Woodrow Wilson, extol the virtues of a film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan—in the epic Birth of a Nation—and thus emboldened that Klan to march down the streets of our capitol en masse on more than one occasion.
It was only the beginning of a renewed season of demonic rage. There would be the thousands lynched in a South aflame and leaders assassinated by the most despicable conspiracies. And when civil rights were assured by our courts, we hoped that an even higher Court would assure a change in men’s heart. It has taken time and it is not yet complete, but perhaps a new day is now upon us.

I watched last night as Barack Obama was nominated. The camera of the network I was watching kept cutting to an older black woman, gray hair gracing her thick locks, who wept with near disbelief as a man of her race stepped unmolested toward the presidency of her country. I thought of what she might know that I did not. I wondered if she could name relatives killed by rage-blinded mobs or what she might have been denied in her life because of her color. And now a man of that color might rule her land. I shared her joy even if I could not fully share her understanding of the meaning of that moment.

Barack Obama is not my candidate and I do not share most of his political principles. But Barack Obama is my fellow countryman and I refuse to let politics keep me from pride and gratitude that a black man who grew up in a family often on food stamps has now graduated from some of the great universities in our land, served in the nation’s senate, and is a nominee for President of the United States. Hopefully, a bit more of our national curse is broken this day.

God, how I love this country.