RELIGION, CAUSING DIVISION OR HEALING IT?

By Rev. Dee Eisenhauer

Eagle Harbor Congregational United Church of Christ

December, 2004

A smile came over the radio recently in this joke: Have you heard that two out of three Americans agree that rudeness is on the rise in our nation? And the third person is just a stupid jerk who doesn't know what he's talking about.

As in all the best humor, the laugh comes partly out of a recognition of truth. Rudeness does seem to be on the rise, and we seem to have lost some of our ability to have a civil discourse regarding something about which we disagree. We've come through one of the nastiest campaign seasons in recent memory. We've wound up in many ways a divided people who don't know how to talk and listen to one another.

As the leader of a faith community, hearing that religion, or moral values informed by religious practice, played a larger-than-expected role in the election caused in me some mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was gratified that the mostly secular media recognized that faith is a real force in real people's lives. I feel strongly that we should not leave our convictions, including our religious convictions, outside the door of the voting booth. On the other hand, it was dismaying that the religious community was painted with such a broad brush, as if Christianity, in particular, is uniform (i.e. the implication that people of faith all voted with the majority). It was also dismaying that the way it played out, religion seemed to exacerbate the divisions between Americans rather than being a force for healing those divisions.

Now that the election is behind us, I am hopeful that the religious community might find ways to bring about healing. Religious communities are uniquely positioned in our society to be healing agents, if we have a will to be.

Most living faiths include among their teachings some version of what is best known as The Golden Rule: Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. There is in that simple teaching a recognition of our common humanity that forms the basis of a social contract. We could be leaders or healers in a rude era simply by speaking to others in the way we would have them speak to us, or by listening to others the way we would like them to listen to us, or by accepting others the way we would like them to accept us.

What's more, those of us who are committed to religious communities have discovered that there are ample opportunities within our families of faith to practice forgiveness and forbearance with one another. If practice makes perfect, we ought to be well equipped to take this skill out to the larger community and practice forgiveness and forbearance with our neighbors.

Dear to me in the Christian tradition is a teaching that challenges us to a ministry of reconciliation. I call on my companions in the journey of faith to accept this calling to be reconciling.

We need not paper over our differences to be reconciled. We need not water down our convictions. As Episcopal priest Jennifer Phillips has written, Christian speech does not require that we give up our passion, or even our anger, and certainly not our differing opinions. But it does ask that we pay attention to who might be listening (including God). It does ask that we debate without dismissing, distorting, derogating or demeaning others, and without untruth. It does require an effort at empathy, careful listening and assuming the best of one another's efforts at truth, without a saccharine 'making nice' or pretending difference or distress is not real.

I believe we can be both civil and diverse. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.