I got a letter from a friend today that I found very moving. My friend is an episcopalian living in the Chicago area. She gave me her permission to post her letter on Daily Kos.
An open letter to my friends on the Christian left (with a few fellow travellers)--
It occurs to me that here in Illinois, a beautiful sapphire-blue state, we saw one surprising outcome that may have something to teach us. John Kerry got about 55% of the vote, but Barack Obama got nearly 75%--which means that 1 out of 5 voters in Illinois supported a totally incoherent ticket of Bush and Obama.
How could this be? It's not about the issues: Obama is somewhere to the left of Kerry. It's not about race: both presidential candidates are white and both senatorial candidates black. It's not even about religion, since all four candidates are Christian (Kerry and Alan Keyes are Roman Catholic, Obama is UCC).
My best guess is that it's about "the message," in a not entirely shallow sense. Kerry's campaign appealed to fear and anger, but Democrats (to our credit) have never played the fear card as well as Republicans do. Nor could we succeed in persuading Bush supporters to share our anger, even about those glaring atrocities that the media bothered to report. Obama on the other hand appealed to hope, common decency, and an idealistic vision of America, just as successful Democrats have always done. He called us to our better selves, which may have grown rusty for lack of use, but there's something in even conservative America that respects such calls. Bush of course constantly appeals to high ideals; the only problem is that every word he utters is a lie.
Many of you have been saying that Democrats need to reclaim the high moral ground, and I agree. I would go further and say that we on the Christian Left need to bring our faith into the public square just as shamelessly as the Right does, because most of the country still has no idea we exist. But in fact, evangelicals have been in the forefront of every progressive social movement in America, from abolition right up to Jimmy Carter. It's only in the 1980s that the tables turned, and we can turn them upside down once more--just as Jesus did when he tossed the moneychangers out of the Temple.
The Right can easily co-opt "the biblical God" in support of Empire because--let's face it--that God all too often is on their side. But we cannot allow them to co-opt Jesus, who lived and died to overthrow everything they stand for. In fact, that's why Church and Empire joined forces to kill him. So we need to remind our co-religionists in season and out of season about the parts of the story Mel Gibson left out: how Jesus made friends, how he made enemies, and why he was so dangerous that he had to be crucified.
Our platform must be the Sermon on the Mount: social policies Democrats love from an authority Republicans can't deny.
Yours faithfully,
Barbara