NO…OUR DEMOCRACY IS NOT AT STAKE; NO…OUR CITIES ARE NOT ABLAZE. AMERICA HAS A LONG HISTORY OF VIOLENT PROTESTS AND COUNTER-PROTESTS, AS WELL AS STRONG AND ENDURING INSTITUTIONS
By Roland Wrinkle
The Battle Cries. “The Future of Our Democracy is at Stake” -Democratic Party shibboleth crafted to rouse fear.
“They want to destroy this country, and everything that we have fought for and hold dear” -Republican Party shibboleth crafted to rouse fear.
C.S. Lewis, trying to re-orient a nation that had just endured World War II and was now facing the potential of nuclear annihilation, cautioned and reminded an understandably anxious world with this jolting observation: “Do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.” What would Lewis say about the two American political parties exchanging high-decibel alarms of impending national extinction if November’s election goes to the other guy?
We Answer to a Higher Calling. We are presently dealing with five pungent and polarizing issues: the pandemic; how to handle the pandemic, the economic and health consequences from the shutdown; racial justice; and a presidential election—all interconnected and swirling in a riptide of chaos. But the church is called to be different. It is called to serve as the body of Christ and, as such, to reflect the light of Christ into the world. “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1.4). In other words, the Lord lit the light of the Church in order to give light to the world and to have that light be seen. We make the mistake of thinking that God’s plan for “the renewal of all things” (Matt 19) is dependent on who gets elected and who is on what side of whatever issue. No! We are commanded, as followers of Jesus of Nazareth, to not only carry His Cross, but to also carry His light. If we are not the light of the world, then the world is dark because we are not shining the light of Christ. We are too busy demonizing our own brothers and sisters in Christ because of the positions they support (and we oppose).
We Inflate the Uniqueness of Our Ruptures. Now, back to Lewis. Our foundational error, it seems to me, is “exaggerating the novelty of our situation.” Since the founding of this relatively young nation, we have managed to endure and survive 394 violent riots and protests and their obligatory counter-riots and counter-protests. In the year of my birth, the country celebrated with no less than four deadly race riots (Fairground Park riot, June 21, 1949 St. Louis Missouri; Anacostia Pool Riot, June 29, 1949 Anacostia, Washington, D.C.; Peekskill riots, Peekskill, New York, 1949; and the Englewood race riot, November 8–12, 1949 Englewood, Chicago, IL). Several months after the Revolutionary War ended and five years before George Washington was sworn in as our first President (we’re now on No. 45), 400 soldiers of the Continental Army held an anti-government riot in Philadelphia (which literally means “brotherly love”) and the government refused to quell it (Sound familiar?) and, as a result, the nations’ nascent capital was moved to Washington DC. Yet this experiment in democracy got off the ground…and has proven itself to be an enviable model. Riots, protests, a savaging civil war, all of our differences and all of our passions…and our democracy has persevered. It has persevered because of the genius and prescience of those who crafted (amidst often viscous debates) our institutions of governing; three co-equal branches of government so that power could not become concentrated as in a monarchy or dictatorship; a relatively short written constitution establishing the controlling principles of governance; the veto power of the executive branch to check the power of the legislative branch; entrusting all law-making to the legislative branch to check the power of the executive branch; and the judicial branch to serve as a check on the other two.
As a result, even after 394 violent protests and riots, our institutions of governance have stood as a bulwark against all-too-familiar politically-motivated hysterics claiming “Our democracy is at stake!” and its doppelganger, “Our cities are ablaze!”
And, yes, these violent confrontations have resulted in killings. But it goes essentially unreported that, during the month of August alone in Chicago, 503 people were shot, 63 fatally and none of this had anything, or next to nothing, to do with the violent protests and counter-protests that saturate our 52” plasma TVs. It’s simply (and sadly) the crippled human condition.
What I learned from Alfred E. Newman and Mad Magazine. Are we “exaggerating the novelty of our situation”? Of course we are. I have some original artwork from Mad Magazine and I was going through it the other day. Mad Magazine takes contemporary issues and then satirizes them. So, it can be a pretty good window intohistory when you look back at issues published fifty years ago. What arguments and controversies dominated our country back then? Guess what I found? In a single issue from December of 1970, it offered 18 comic strips satirizing protestors clashing with police. Half of the jabs were directed at the protestors and half at the police. The drawings depicted massive crowds marching with signs and placards, buildings on fire, throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, vandalizing stores, cops with batons wanting to “crack a few heads,” demonstrators “fighting for Blacks and Mexicans,” an indoctrination school “where they train aliens to be typical Americans so they can infiltrate our society”… and most of what we’re seeing on our isolationist television screens today. One cartoon strip has a father and son yelling at each other while the mother hovers over both combatants asking, “Why do you always have to fight when you’re together?” The son answers, “Because he represents everything, I’m against.” Another strip depicts a proud mom regaling her friend with a photo album of her son as he grew up, “Here’s Milton when he was five with his toy fire truck. And here he is at eight, wanting to be a fireman and at 10 wanting to be a fire captain.” The friend then asks,“What does Milton want to do now?” Mom replies, “He wants to burn the country down.” Finally, a twenty-something son is yelling at his father, “I hate your whole stupid middle class… and I hate your hypocritical organized religion with their hypocritical standards! And I hate your entire hypocritical establishment!” The dad interrupts to ask, “All right, enough of your hate already! Tell me what’s that you’re wearing around your neck?” It’s love beads, resting on a “Peace” tee-shirt.
Fifty years ago, Joe McCarthy warned, “The work of this committee [The House Unamerican Activities Committee] may well determine whether this country lives or dies.” Spoiler Alert: It lived.
Homothymadon. Luke loved this word. It refers to the “single-minded
purpose of the early church.” That did not indicate a bland uniformity or a
total absence of disagreement or avoidance of controversial issues.
Controversies swirled around gentile widows not getting a fair share, Peter
fraternizing with gentiles, a split over whether gentiles had to be circumcised and a personal pissing match between Paul and Barnabas. But the early church hung together…because it united around the common purposes of following Jesus and mutual concern for each other. It’s easy to go off and do your own thing, do what’s right in your own eyes, fill a church with clones of yourself, without any concern for the wider body of Christ. But that was not the church in Acts. That is not homothymadon.
Humankind Has Always Tended to Brutalize Disputes; The Cross Points in a Different Direction. One week after God created human beings, the world’s first son got offended by the world’s second son offering a sacrifice thought to be more worthy by God. So, he protested…violently…and lethally. This is an intractable strain of human brokenness and fallen Creation: DISAGREEMENT → PASSION→ HATRED→ VIOLENCE. But such is alien to the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God, this is a perversion of God’s plan to “restore everything.”
“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid the calf and the lion and the fatling together, …. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.” (Isaiah 11)
Paul instructed the quarreling Roman Christians, “To be zealous [spoude],
but keep your spiritual zeal, serving the Lord.” In other words, our passion
should not be spent on disagreements, but saved for our Christian service
and discipleship. The wolf and the lamb have their disagreements. So the
leopard and the calf, the cow and the bear, the child and the asp. So
Republicans and Democrats, progressives and conservatives. Debates will sow discord and divisions will form. But at the end of God’s day, we will all be together, side by side, drinking from the same “river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God.” (Rev 22).
Fear and hate wither and die when bathed in the light of the love of God. And we carry that light.