Although I worked there for 15 years and have visited on numerous other occasions, my two most moving experiences in Washington were 42 years ago this month, and this past week. Forty-two years ago, I happened to be on vacation with my family as a 15 year old when the Senate was debating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We were from Illinois, and Sen. Dirksen's office gave us tickets to the Senate gallery. Why was that so moving? We happened to be there for the cloture vote on the bill (at the time, as I recall, cloture required 2/3 of the Senate, rather than the current 60%). It wasn't clear until the last moment which side would prevail.
I am now 57 years old, and I am convinced that I had the great good fortune of being present for the finest moment in the history of the United States Senate. A bipartisan coaltion of Republicans and Democrats took the vote that changed our country vastly for the better. I remember Clair Engle, a Democratic Senator from California, being wheeled in on a hospital bed to cast his vote in favor of cloture, He had been robbed by a brain tumor of the ability to speak, and he was dead within weeks, but he painfully raised his hand and pointed to his eye to signify his "AYE" vote. It was the last significant act of his life.
His courage was supported by a Democratic President from the South who was ostracized by many of his best friends from the Senate for his action in supporting the bill. And it was backed by my Senator at the time, Everett Dirksen, a Republican, and by many other Republicans who were willing to buck the argument by too many businesses that their "rights" would be interfered with by telling them that they had to serve anybody.
That result was achieved because Martin Luther King and the other leaders of the civil rights movement, fallible human beings though they were, appealed to the moral values to which they had been led by their Christian faith, but in terms that could appeal to the basic values and sense of decency that almost all human beings shared. What they were demanding was no more than what decency called for, and what the morals of Christians demanded. And they did it not by demonizing their opponents, but by PERSUADING people of the moral rightness of their cause.
They were so successful, and I was so moved, that I responded by going home and donating the entire proceeds of my week's paper route collection to SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which was somewhat to the left of Martin Luther King) voter registration efforts -- a decision for which I caught no end of grief from my very conservative father.
The other moving experience was this week, when I attended a Sojourners/Call to Renewal Conference in Washington, DC to announce their "Covenant for a New America" which has 3 basic planks: (1) Making work work by increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour; (2) eliminating child poverty, including committing to specific, achievable goals to cut it in half within the next 10 years; and (3) eliminating extreme global poverty (the more than 3 billion people in the world who live on less than $1 per day) by fully funding and implementing our national share of the Millenium Development Goals.
More than 500 people, predominantly (although not entirely) Christians from virtually every tradition (Catholic, Orthodox, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Proestant, Pentecostal, and anything else you can think of) from virtually every state in America descended on Washington to hear and learn about the Covenant, to march through the rain to Capitol Hill, and to lobby our elected Senators and Represenatitives to respond to the needs of the poor. Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, Sen. Frist pulled the proposed major reduction in the estate tax from the Senate calendar for the week, which was a point that many of us had made to the staffs of almost every Senator.
But I look at Washington in 1964 and today, and it's difficult not to despair. Far too many Republicans seem to respond solely to the demands of their corporate lobbyist supporters, and to be impervious to any moral argument that might cost those supporters any significant money. And far too many Democrats (not those in elected office, but those in the blogosphere) seem to regard those who come from a position of faith as ignorant, superstitious rubes whose values are worthy of contempt.
I'm sure I'll be attacked for the second phrase of that sentence, but it needs to be said. I'm appalled that so many in the liberal blogosphere have condemned Barack Obama's speech to the conference that I attended earier today as pandering to the Religious Right, since he did no such thing. He merely suggested to a religious audience committed to liberal social values that ALL Americans needed to treat each other more respecfully (and if you doubt that those on the left have a problem treating religious Americans -- even those who share their liberal social positions -- with respect, just take a look at some of the comments here: http://atrios.blogspot.com/... ).
If this country is ever again going to experience a moment like I experienced in Washington 42 years ago, we're going to have to keep calling our public officials to what we see as the moral path (and organizing our fellow citizens to do likewise), but we're going to have to do it with respect for those who differ with us, and by trying to PERSUADE them, rather than demonize them. And we are certainly not going to do it by demonizing those who actually AGREE with us on the vast majority of issues simply because they are people of faith and come to their political positions from a background of faith. Whether secular liberals like it or not, people of faith are a substantial majority of America, and if they are treated with contempt and therefore driven away from liberal causes, liberalism will be condemned to permanent minority status in this country. And that's a result which will advance neither liberalism nor the values of Christians as I and many other Christians understand them.