Friends, I’m in Atlanta for the AAR and so I wasn’t able to attend Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity. (My husband attended and sent me jealousy-inducing text messages from D.C.) In today’s post, guest blogger Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans, who writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Huffington Post, reflects on what the rally was able to “restore” in her own life–not just reasonable civic discourse, but something far deeper. –JKR
By Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans
I’m still looking to find a reason to believe.
And though comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert didn’t save my soul, they may have, indirectly, provided a reason for hope.
You know the old truism about a skeptical, hard-bitten journalist – he (or she) is an idealist who has been mugged. As someone who also serves as an ordained minister in a shrinking denomination torn by infighting, I find cynicism too easily becomes my default mode.
The trouble is that my lineage, on my mother’s side, is redolent of passion for social change, humanitarianism and visionary activism. Why did I take my 13-year-old son if I didn’t believe, somewhere in my tarnished and dismissive heart, that rallies were somewhere in his future – and he might as well get to experience a hip one first?
But the “why are we here” question continued to bug me, right until we arrived at the Mall. What does it say about our political culture, I wondered, that hordes of people would come from all over the nation, without a vision or even a firm agenda, at the behest of two middle-aged comics? Are other jaded souls so bruised by the political upheaval of the last decade that they can only tolerate activism as satire?
In the absence of a hint from the Rally to Restore Sanity promoters that there would be anything spiritual or evocative of even pallid civil religion about the gathering, I arrived most uncertain of finding a spiritual hook.
In a moment of happy coincidence our hosts took us for breakfast to a restaurant where, in a basement room, representatives of “Faithful America” were welcoming members gathered for the rally. An online community that numbers roughly 100,000 members, the interfaith organization promotes grassroots activism on social justice and environmental issues. Spokeswoman Kristin Williams graciously agreed to let me know how her members felt after the event ended.
Judging by the signs, the huge crowd represented not only age diversity but a spectrum of interests. “Radical moderates” knocked placards with “Manatees for Sanity.” A man held up a bright orange sign that said “I see you went half black and you’re trying to decide whether or not to go back.” Other signs were more chiding: “Tea Parties are for little girls” and “Take it down a notch, Ms. Palin.” Pro-pot legalization advocates were prominent as was, apparently, the weed itself.
But overt religious references were rare – unless you count Stewart’s “We live in hard times, not end times.” Coming near the end, the rally’s most stirring moment was his reflection on the news-cycle-driven, polarized dogfight promoted by media on the left and on the right. While Stewart said that “if we amplify everything, we hear nothing,” the truth is that we live in an America in which those of opposing ideologies work together to get things done “every damn day.”
As true as his critique was, I saw nothing in it to restore my personal faith in democracy. The anti-Washington, anti-media critique he offered is common currency among conservative and liberal elites and activists alike.
Seeking enlightenment (had anyone else experienced a moment of Stewart-Colbert revelation?) I turned to several passengers on the DCRally bus we took home. Was there anything spiritual about the experience for them? Describing herself as non-religious, Swarthmore College student Annie Myrvang told me that while she hadn’t known what to expect, it had turned out to be a great day, mostly because she felt a sense of being connected to others. Traveling companion and fellow student Dan Duncan seemed to feel that it was all a great lark – he’d come along for the irony and hadn’t been disappointed. A few rows down, renewable energy employee Katy Collardson said she’d enjoyed the opportunity to be with others seeking a “more compassionate and accepting” discussion of issues on the national stage.
It wasn’t until I spoke to Williams that my persistent unease about the purpose of the whole event both sharpened and, to some extent, resolved. While her members had been excited to come together to testify proactively to their own values, they weren’t waiting for a sign from on high to get on with it.
The rally wasn’t all about words of insight from the hosts, she said. Instead Stewart and Colbert, and the occasion itself, became “a powerful rallying force for people to assert their values. That’s what made people want to be a part of the event.”
The power of Faithful America, a post-institutional community driven by its members’ common passions and interests, isn’t bolstered artificially. It is organic, driven by the principles of those who want to make a difference in everyday lives.
If there’s a message of spiritual hope and of uplift for me in the aftermath of the rally, it is that simple. If the political and even the religious institutions within which we work are sick, we don’t have to continue to feel bound by them. Christianity will find new ways to be heard, even as a minority voice in a culture of competing gods. Men and women will find ways to reach across ideological divisions to help each other, regardless of what goes on in Washington or state legislatures.
Even if the institutions crash and burn, we still have each other – and the help of a merciful God.
Every damn day.
posted November 1, 2010 at 9:42 pm
I wanted to raise a discussion here of a topic which Joanna Brooks, blogging at Religion Dispatches, has tried to suppress by deleting comments, despite its relevance in light of the burning of one or more Mormon meetinghouses by gay arsonists angered by President Packer’s talk.
Mormonism is Exclusively Heterosexual
To follow up on Elder Packer, not only can you not repeal the law of gravity, you cannot declare it unconstitutional either. Up and down are physical facts. Male and female are physical facts. Fertility and sterility are physical facts. That male and female are sterile without one another is a physical fact.
?The Dean of the School of Theology of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote: “Mormonism . . . is in reality an Americanized version of a Canaanite fertility cult.” Russell D. Moore, “Speaking the Truth in Love”, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 9/2 (Summer 2005) at 71. Despite the fact that he believes much of Mormonism to be false, this hireling clergyman of an apostate sect actually appreciates Mormonism better than does born-in-the-covenant Joanna Brooks.??
Maybe Sister Brooks thinks Dr. Moore is a boob, so let’s turn to the greatest religious explicator and religious popular educator of the 20th Century, the Harvard-educated Mormon scientist and Apostle, Elder John A. Widtsoe, Ph.D:
?“Sex which is indispensable on this earth for the perpetuation of the human race, is an eternal quality which has its equivalent everywhere. It is indestructible. The relationship between men and women is eternal and must continue eternally.”
John A. Widtsoe, A Rational Theology: As Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 6th ed. 1952) at 69.?
“Every really successful marriage is founded in love—the love of man for woman, of woman for man, based upon physical attraction and spiritual harmony. This love which leads to mating and parenthood—which obeys the divine command ‘to multiply and replenish the earth’—is the sweetest and most ennobling gift of the Lord to man. The quality of sex is eternal. The union of the sexes is ordained of the Lord, eternal, so that life may ever be multiplied. As we have a Father in Heaven, so we have a mother there.”
?John A. Widtsoe, “Woman’s Greatest Career”, Improvement Era (1940).
?“The beginning of the family is marriage. By marriage is meant the lawful association of sexes and the having of children. . . . Such marriage is ordained and sanctioned by the Lord. . . . Marriage and the family, the home, are sacred institutions. They are not man-made, but of God. Marriage carries with it great consequences. Pre-existent spirits are begotten into and obtain their being in the world; and are thus placed on the way to eternal joy.”?
John A. Widtsoe, An Understandable Religion (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1944) at 152-53.
So Heavenly Father did not give humans sex organs, marriage and families in order to make humans feel good. Instead, He gave humans the task of and the means for providing tabernacles for His spirit children and then nurturing and preparing His spirit children for mortal probation. This is essential and central to Mormonism, Dr. Moore is not too greatly wide of the mark in concluding that this is Mormonism, and this is necessarily exclusively heterosexual.
There is substantial scientific evidence to lend weight to the claim of gays and lesbians that urges for same gender sex are, like Downs Syndrome, a genetically caused birth defect for which no one is to blame. It seems likely that much the same is true with respect to the urges felt by serial killers such as Ted Bundy and the Son of Sam and mass murderers such as Charles Manson and Richard Speck. Although the urges of such serial killers and mass murders are un-chosen accidents of birth, society cannot accept the gratification of such urges and, if the urges are acted upon, society must remove the actors. Similarly, even if the urges of gays and lesbians are un-chosen accidents of birth, Mormonism cannot accept the gratification of such urges and, if the urges are acted upon, Mormonism must remove the actors.
mormon.unregenerate
posted November 2, 2010 at 7:57 am
I don’t know who annointed Witsoe “the greatest religious explicator and religious popular educator of the 20th Century.” Or, for that matter, what he would think of homosexuals and homosexuality. Or, why we should care.
As a lifelong Mormon, I find your claim that “Mormonism … is necessarily exclusively heterosexual” to be repugnant bigotry. Your sex-is-for-reproduction-only arguments fail, as society (and Mormonism) accepts marriages that include the infertile and those past their child-bearing capacity.
Like it or not, homosexual people are also Children of God. To equate them to sociopaths is un-Christian. And, to the extent there is any difference, un-Mormon.
posted November 8, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Excellent response, Paul. mormon.unregenerate’s argument is completely stupid.