Wise and Wonderful

The Liberal Left needs to speak up more often

When I sat down at church on Sunday I noticed that my kneeler for the day was particularly beautiful, as you can see below. My eyes was drawn especially by the beagle, since I have one myself, and the fox, since it’s my favorite animal besides a dog, and the cardinal, which has always been my favorite bird. I loved the centered horse and everything else: the trees, the sheep, the river.

Then I thought about the simple message of the prayer bench, “All creatures great and small,” a line from the Anglican hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (words 1848, melody 1600s), which features this refrain:

All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful:
the Lord God made them all.

The verses of the song go on to list all the things in the world that are holy, including little birds and flowers, sunsets, rivers, and many other things we take for granted daily. The point of the song is that everything that is, is holy (as Merton wrote), and that the environment is precious, that every tiny part of it matters in the larger picture.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. As I think about everything that is endangered, my chief concerns of the moment are the rights of others and the environment. And while bigoted legislation at least has the possibility to be overturned eventually, devastation of the land cannot be recovered as easily. I shudder to think of how much of the land, sky, and water is endangered right now.

While some say that I am overreacting in these fears, I believe that all of us are under-reacting.

I am fortunate to attend a church that focused its sermon that day—as it does always—on love and forgiveness, two of the foundations of faith. I attend an Episcopalian church that focuses on helping others instead of judging. I thought about all the church services happening across the land and I know from personal experience that many of them are focused on shunning those who are the Other, whether they be immigrants, LGBTQ people, or others. I was raised in that kind of church, and left it when I was about sixteen. I’ve experienced both great love and great damage in those churches.

The thing is that when most people think of Christians these days, they think of the latter kind of church I’m describing, not the former. Christianity has been hijacked by a loud, empowered lot who are distorting the message of Christ to fit their own agendas instead of adhering to his message of compassion and humility. More and more I see them turning it toward nationalism, which I believe is a very dangerous road. They have taken up so much of the air in the conversation around Christianity that they had distorted not only the very message of the faith but its ultimate goals for many. So many around the world now associate Christianity with discrimination and judgement that I am more comfortable calling myself a person of faith. [I explored much more of that in my twelve minute talk on what I call “the Secular Holy” when I spoke recently at the Festival of Faiths, linked above]

I will not allow them to take my faith from me. I’ve held onto it my whole life, even though I’ve always felt it offered me comfort more than answers, even though the churches I attended made it clear that they didn’t welcome who I really was (as a gay person, as a liberal person, as a questioning person). But early on I understood that church and God are two very different things, just as religion and faith are. One of the things I love about my faith is that it is The Great Mystery. I don’t have the answers, and that’s part of the beauty. And to a large degree, one’s faith is a personal thing. While so many in the Religious Right have increasingly trumpeted their religiosity and used it for their own agendas in every way possible, the Religious Left has tended to stay quieter and is especially hesitant to use their faith in the many battles that have to be fought in the culture wars and the newer battle for democracy.

The Religious Right has politicized LGBTQ issues, the environment, reproductive rights, and much more, claiming that their views on these issues are the moral high ground and usually viewing anyone who supports LGBTQ people, believes in climate change, or has a different interpretation of choice than they do, is a sinner. It has become quite common for Republican politicians to call Democrats demonic or Godless. Trump—a man who has repeatedly said that he has never asked God for forgiveness, a man who cannot name a single Bible verse, a man who thinks that II Corinthians is called “Two Corinthians” (just about anyone who has studied the Bible would refer to it as “Second Corinthians” in speaking about it)— often pushes the rhetoric that Democrats are not people of faith.

Trump’s hand-picked Senior Advisor to the White House Faith Office, Paula White, has said that “Saying no to Donald Trump is saying no to God.” That’s some scary—and blasphemous—stuff. She has said that anyone who is against Trump (like Democrats) is part of a “demonic network” and that liberals “mock people of faith” (which blatantly insinuates they are not people of faith themselves). She says so much it’s hard to keep up, but this one terrifies me, too, mainly because she said it and yet she still received a White House position: “Wherever I go, God rules. When I walk on White House grounds, God walks on White House grounds. I have every right and authority to declare the White House holy ground, because I was standing there and where I stand is holy.”

Lord, have mercy.

I think among the reasons a lot of progressives don’t talk about faith more are four in particular: 1. it is a private matter, 2. they don’t want to weaponize it in any way, as so many conservative Christians have, 3. faith is too complicated to articulate briefly; it requires a longer conversation than one can have on social media, and 4. people don’t want to be painted as bigoted because they’re declaring themselves as believers.

I would venture that for most progressives, their faith is a matter of mystery and questioning. This is not the way evangelical Christians are raised to think about their faith. Anytime I had questions as a young person in church I was usually told to not question God or I was reminded that “God moves in mysterious ways”. And most conservative Christians go to churches where they are encouraged to evangelize and even outwardly judge others in order to save them from the fires of hell they might bring upon themselves otherwise. Conservative Christians are taught to talk about their faith constantly but progressive denominations tend to not teach this.

The thing is, more people of faith who are also progressives—or Democrats, or liberals, or whatever you want to call people on the Left—need to be talking about their faith as we fight back against the rising threats to our democracy. I’m not saying we should use our religion/faith the way that people like Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, and Paula White have. But I think we need to let people know that we exist, and that we vote, that our values do not make us nonbelievers, or demonic.

I’ve been particularly inspired by the way Kentucky’s current governor, Andy Beshear, a Democrat, talks about his faith openly and complexly. Anytime he speaks of his faith he is almost always talking about how it has taught him to be good to others and to treat everyone equally. That’s a message anyone should be able to get on board with. And talking about his faith certainly hasn’t hurt him—he’s the most popular Democratic governor in the United States and maintains huge approval ratings in the deeply red Commonwealth of Kentucky. People respond to his message of kindness and they never feel as if he is weaponizing his faith, but being genuine when discussing it. We need more politicians who are willing to do the same.

Pete Buttigeig has also been very open about his deep faith, which is doubly important since he is not only a politician but also a gay man—and LGBTQ people are often accused of being Godless (despite the fact that a recent poll found that 77% of LGBTQ people believe in God). I wrote about how important his visibility has been to me, especially as a person of faith, in this essay.

Kamala Harris has always been vocal about her strong faith but refused to weaponize it in any way. In her memoir she wrote of growing up being exposed to the Baptist faith and Hinduism. She is a member of a Baptist church and in her memoir she wrote that her “earliest memories of the teachings of the Bible were of a loving God, a God who asked us to ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’ and to ‘defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Despite a lifelong faith, her belief system has constantly been questioned by racist, antisemitic, and xenophobic attacks that suggested her knowledge of Hinduism and marriage to a Jewish man somehow negated her Christianity.

There are many other members of the Religious Left, too, and I am thankful to them. Rev. Traci Blackmon has repeatedly warned progressives that they should not be quiet about their faith and has emerged as a major activist and leader who is inspiring others to speak out. There’s Rev. (and Senator) Rapahel Warnock, the progressive Jesuit priest James Martin, the influential pastor John Pavolitz, who has done so much good work, and many more on the national stage.

But I believe we everyday people of faith who are progressive…we’re the ones who need to be speaking up more, the ones who need to refuse to allow our religion to be taken from us by a vocal, vitriolic lot intent on declaring all of us unworthy of God. We can do that as simply as mentioning our faith in conversation or presentation. We don’t have to evangelize, but we need to make ourselves known. We cannot be invisible lest people believe that we don’t exist. Personally, I believe it is especially important for us to be leaders in the Resistance.

The greatest contemporary example of this, of course, is Mariann Budd, the Episcopal bishop of Washington who made international headlines when she dared to beg Trump to show mercy to people during the National Prayer Service the day after the inauguration while Trump glared and Vance pouted petulantly. The Right had a meltdown, saying she had politicized the pulpit (despite the fact that their preachers do that constantly and despite the fact that I find it hard to see how asking to show mercy to people is politicizing anything). In turn, she became an inspiration to many, not only because she dared to speak about compassion to a president who delights in rejecting it, but because she did it with grace and intelligence. She reminded many that the very act of standing up for kindness is now considered an act of defiance under this regime and its apostles.

And now, an admission that brings me, quite circuitously, back to where I began: when I saw that lovely prayer bench with the beagle, fox, cardinal, and other creatures great and small, I wanted to tell people about it. I wanted to take a picture of it and share it on Instagram. Then I thought, “But people will think I’m just virtue-signaling by showing that I’m in church.” And then I thought, “And some others might think I’m conservative just because I’m a Christian.” And I thought “I don’t want to have to go into the tangled complications of explaining what all I believe in.”

I put all of this aside that Sunday morning in our Episcopal church to hear the singing, and the sermon, and even to kneel on that little bench to join in the prayers of the people, to say the Lord’s Prayer aloud, to be still and thoughtful after I had received the Eucharist. I relished the discomfort offered by the bench. While beautifully decorated and well-padded, the kneeler is not meant to offer the greatest comfort. I relish the bit of pain in my legs when I kneel there to study on what I believe, what I hope for, and what gives me the greatest sorrows and worries. The pain centers me and reminds me of what I believe in.

Obviously I ultimately decided to share the picture and some of my own story. But for the most part I can do that while also retaining that most sacred private thing for myself. I can let people know I am a person of faith, a Christian, and release myself from worrying what they might think that means, because I want them to not make judgements based on bits of information. I try to always remind myself that people, for the most part, are good. I believe that, even in dark days like these when I see so much meanness being broadcast by those in the highest seats of power. I believe that perhaps even more in dark days. “In a dark time, the eye begins to see,” Theodore Roethe wrote, and that line has been a mantra for me ever since 2016. I believe that most people are good because that is what my faith teaches me.

The Fox Hunt by Winslow Homer