Living in Twilight and Hope
John Meacham
April 28, 2006
Too many activists have convinced themselves that they have a monopoly on truth. A little humility and a sense of history could move us all forward.
In Washington the other day, I had just finished a 20-minute talk about the American tradition of religious liberty—from the experience of 17th-century Massachusetts Bay to our own time—when my host, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, took the podium and posed a difficult but essential question. What do you do, he asked, when you are in debate with someone from a religious tradition who believes his truth is the only truth—and that his way of belief does not tolerate any other truth?
I was there to talk about the arguments I make in a new book, “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation,” an account of the role of religion in American history and a plea for a moderate course between the extremes of left and right.
Mr. Foxman's question was particularly apt, for in it he framed what is perhaps the most important issue in the American culture wars, wars that shape and sometimes define our politics. Too many people in activist circles today have convinced themselves that they have a monopoly on truth, and all too often those activists tend to be motivated by religious concerns and religious zeal. And there is no escaping the fact that what we broadly refer to as the religious right can appear intolerant and extreme. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell do not represent all evangelical Christians—not by a long shot—but their frequently harsh, uncharitable words echo around the country and around the world.
History, I said in reply to the question, is, I think, the best and most effective answer to those who give the impression—or who in fact believe—that there is a single exclusive truth to which only they and their coreligionists have access. And not just secular history—that is, the history of the American Founding, where Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams and Washington fought to preserve freedom of religion as a basic human right—but sacred history, too. I am a churchgoing Episcopalian, and I cherish my private religious life. But I equally cherish the American tradition of personal liberty and pluralism, and I delight in the fact that we live in a country in which, as George Washington said in a 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” (The image comes from the prophet Micah.) Liberty of mind and conscience is what makes America America.
My argument for religious freedom is not only a political one but a theological one, and I offered it to the ADL for whatever good, if any, it might do. If God himself did not compel his creatures to believe in him, then who are men to try? When the crowds tried to make Jesus king, he hid from them; before Pilate, he said: “My kingdom is not of this world.” The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews said, “we have no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come,” and, in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul declares that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men.…” For now, we can only “see through a glass, darkly,” as Paul said elsewhere, and for believers to assume that they can fathom the mind of God, or grasp all of his ways and means, seems foolhardy. We live in twilight and in hope, but we cannot have all the answers—which means humility and a sense of history can offer us light as we try to move forward. Or least more light than might be shed if either side on a given issue reflexively declares the other side wrong. (I was honored to speak at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, last week, and touched on many of the same themes at the inauguration of the institution's new president, John Lilley, who took the admirable risk of asking an Episcopalian, a journalist, and a Tennessean to come to a major Baptist university in Texas to speak. As I said at the event, the invitation was evidence that, like Jesus, folks at Baylor obviously don't mind keeping company with sinners.)
The point of the American system, best expressed by Madison’s Federalist No. 10, is that competing interests can contend against one another peaceably within the republican arena of checks and balances, an arena in which the rights of the minority are protected from the tyranny of the majority. There is more than enough for us all to do without turning every political conflict into a religious one. When I was researching my book—and the book was what prompted the invitation from the ADL in the first place—I came across a fascinating book of Revolutionary-era sermons. One sticks in my mind. “The magistrate is to govern the state, and Christ is to govern the church,” said the Rev. Samuel Stillman in a 1779 address to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. “The former will find business enough in the complex affairs of government to employ all his time and abilities. The latter is infinitely sufficient to manage his own kingdom without foreign aid.”
Sound words, for even if you don’t believe in the church, you can agree with Stillman’s sentiments. The other quotation that I think would be useful for Mr. Foxman (or anyone) who finds himself arguing with someone who believes he has the ultimate truth comes from Thomas Jefferson, who said that “… it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” And so the battles of this world go on—but here’s hoping our conversations can become more rational, our arguments less heated, our politics more civil.
