It is the 4th of July in a fraught and divided nation, a nation in turmoil. Some are giddy with the seeming success of Donald Trump and MAGA’s agenda. Many are frightened and scared. How to live now? What to think? How to pray?
I’ve previously mentioned the podcast, “Good Faith.” It comes from evangelical spaces, though not Trumpist or MAGA ones. One of their projects, cleverly named, is “The After Party.” It has the tagline “Toward a Better Christian Politics.” A founder of both “Good Faith” and “The After Party” is David French, who is a columnist at The New York Times. Another founder is Russell Moore, who is the editor of Christianity Today magazine. Both French and Moore have been courageous in their opposition to Trump.
French recently recorded a podcast at “Good Faith” on five ways to pray for America at this fraught time. I found it helpful, as well as challenging. I commend it to you and offer this link to listen (or if you prefer, to read, the transcript). The episode was recorded before the awful assassinations in Minnesota, but they only underscore the urgency of much of what French has to say. He describes America as, at this time, “a tinderbox.” That feels about right. (By the way, the AI generated transcript renders that as “tender box.” Would that we were a “tender” box!)
French speaks of five ways, or maybe foci, for our prayers for our nation in turmoil: peace, justice, grace, repentance, and reconciliation. It’s a good conversation and a good prompting for our prayers and thinking.
What did I find challenging? There’s a big part of me that detests Trump and MAGA and wants to see all of it crushed. French points out that this is the attitude of both sides in our divided nation. Here’s an excerpt:
“It is that sense of hatred from one to another that is driving us to the brink. And look, peace and justice and grace can go a long way towards removing hatred. But what is it that can bind us together again in relationship? That takes reconciliation. And so that’s what I’m praying for. I know it’s an ambitious prayer.
“I mean, right now . . . if you talk to the median Democrat, like a partisan Democrat, about 87 percent of them to 85, 80, you know, depending on the survey, will say that Republicans are hateful, bigoted, ignorant, etc. And if you ask the average Republican the same questions, with the same levels of ratios, they will say the same thing about Democrats. There is a lot of, how many of us want to be friends with somebody that you view as hateful, bigoted, etc.?”
A call to practice reconciliation is challenging. It will be met with a charge, from many, of “both-siderism.”
A similar appeal to something different than tribal animosity, though not from a religious or Christian perspective, comes from Bari Weiss at The Free Press. She lifts up Ben Franklin’s 1754 cartoon of a snake, representing the thirteen colonies, cut into pieces with the caption, “Unite or Die.” She decries the “ideologues and demagogues who divide us,” and calls for something different.
“These are people from every colony in our modern, subdivided country who reject the idea that our differences are the most important thing about us. They are people who tell me that they have longed for an island of sanity in a world gone mad, a place that still believes that disagreement does not mean dislike, and where people are more than who they vote for. And they have found it in The Free Press and in one another.”
My prayer is that my disagreement not turn into dislike — or worse, hatred. And that I am given the grace to trust that “our differences are not the most important thing about us.”
A blessed and happy 4th of July to you, and to all Americans.
Discover more from Post Alley
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
