Our faiths should bind us

Month after month in recent years, I would listen on Sunday morning as my pastor spoke of compassion and humility as key themes of the Gospel, and wonder when we as a country would be able to talk about faith and prayer and social justice all in one breath. That time might be upon us now, six weeks into a national movement for racial justice inspired by the killing of George Floyd.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, called upon to deliver Floyd’s eulogy in Houston on June 9, captured the feelings of many when he said, “God took an ordinary brother from the Third Ward, from the housing projects ... and made him the cornerstone of a movement that’s going to change the whole wide world.”

Sharpton told me in a recent phone interview that he’s heartened to see people of different backgrounds coming together in this movement. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised that a lot of them are openly evangelicals who have moved away from Trump,” he said.

I for one am praying for America. I’m praying for a spiritual reset that can help us move beyond the spiral of insult and attack, hate and resentment. I’m praying that we can have the courage and the grace to look within over the coming months and let faith and spirituality help guide us, even those of us who have long held reservations about organized religion.

There has to be room for different beliefs to be harnessed to find more common ground and work for structural change. The alternative is too odious. “We’re one people, one family,” Rep. John Lewis told me last year. “As Dr. King said, ‘Hate is too heavy a burden to bear.’ Lay it down. Respect the dignity and worth of every human being.”

Or to cite an Old Testament passage my minister shared with me, Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

A faith of reaching out and trying to bring people together has to have a better chance of lasting influence than a Christian nationalist movement in support of President Trump that has become ever more extreme and divisive.

I was startled when I recently tuned in by accident to a syndicated radio program talking up Trump as a “wonderful Christian.” Please. Christian nationalists have supported Trump in exchange for judicial appointments, even if that doesn’t always work out for them (see: Gorsuch, Neil, landmark ruling on gay rights).

But come on, in an infamous interview with Frank Luntz, Trump was twice asked if he’s ever asked God for forgiveness, and acknowledged “I don’t bring God into that picture, I don’t.” Oh, but he does eat the “little cracker.” Does that count?

The radio broadcast argued that all opposition to Trump is “satanic,” and any talk of living together in harmony a “lie.” It was an incoherent mash of paranoid fearmongering against the threat of “socialism and communism and a satanic regime” that seeks to take over, and amounted to an incitement to Holy War.

We can’t let such talk go unchecked.

No one has a monopoly on faith. We can all be inspired by the words of Jesus Christ, whatever our beliefs, and we can look to the beauty of nature as inspiration as well — from a natural cathedral of redwoods to the exaltation of crashing waves along this glorious coast. The message is: Human vanity and lust for power are overrated, let’s get back to that which unites us.

As important as the weeks of national protest after the killing of George Floyd have been, it will take unprecedented action — and selfsearching reflection — to give deeper change a chance to take hold. Faith may prove an important crucible in that effort. In a year of volatility and unpredictability, it would be unwise to extrapolate forward, but there are indications of a return to faith among some who have felt alienated and of a new approach to faith among the young. At the same time, Trump’s standing has begun to erode with white evangelical Christians, who in 2016 supported him in higher numbers even than they’d backed George W. Bush, an actual man of faith.

So much of the past four years has been about the story of the day or the tweet of the hour, leaving us so riled up that we spew venom and negativity. I see friends urging others to be positive — then sliding into nasty attacks on Joe Biden for not being quite what they want. I for one forgive Biden a lot of failings because I know he’s humble and genuine. You can see in his empathy for those who are suffering that his faith matters to him.

Former President Barack Obama, a man of faith, liked to cite Psalm 46, which includes the words, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble.” I will join him in praying that that’s the case in these difficult months leading up to November. We need to find wisdom and inspiration where we can.

“I think this pandemic exposed to a lot of us our vulnerabilities,” Sharpton told me. “The whole world stopped, which means you have to reevaluate what makes the world go around. I think that makes you speak more to God, because God is the only thing that is unstoppable. People reach for their faith more because everything they would normally reach for is no longer there.”

Steve Kettmann, codirector of the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods writers retreat center near Santa Cruz, is an author and former San Francisco Chronicle reporter.

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