I am not a Bible-waver.
Let me explain. The other day, I was describing my work to an old friend I hadn't seen in awhile. I explained the mission of The Beatitudes Society as "equipping the next generation of progressive faith leaders to advocate in the public square for justice, inclusion, compassion and peace."
"What do you mean 'advocate in the public square'?" she asked.
"Show up, speak up, enter public conversations about issues that matter to people," I answered. "You know, the kinds of issues you and I have always cared about: the environment, war, health care, immigration."
"Really, Anne?" she said, "Really? Why would anyone want to hear from church people? When church types show up in public, they just wave Bibles at each other -- liberal wavers and conservative wavers. Your Bibles are your bumperstickers. We don't need any more screaming bumperstickers."
Ouch. My friend is right, of course. We don't need any Bible-wavers. We never have.
And we sure don't need any more screaming. My inbox and my Facebook feed fills up every day with screams from my favorite progressive organizations and people, faith-based and otherwise. I can tune in to all the screaming I want from my favorite progressive news and nooz broadcasts and from The Others who are not my favorites. There is no end to the trading of screams, as we've just witnessed in the Capitol Hill back-and-forth about the federal budget.
What we do need are some voices of reason. We do need folks who can join the public debate, and speak about our budgets and our schools and our workers and our children and our planet and our wars with some facts (not just slogans) and some grounding in ethics and morals and, yes, even religion. This doesn't mean waving Bibles.
It means, first of all, keen attention to our inner lives, so that we can speak with authenticity. It means recognizing our self in that other, and seeing the shadow within ourselves, acknowledging both our better and our lesser angels. It means holding opposites in tension through the long process of reaching understanding. It means not jumping to resolution of differences but spending time on bridge-building. It means remembering that the common parlance of all the world's great religions, as Karen Armstrong and so many others have championed, is compassion.
And it means not screaming, but listening.
Among the emails in my inbox this week was one about the "inward work" of being a democracy, from Krista Tippett's weekly foray into the public square at On Being. The email included some lines from her 2003 interview with philosopher Jacob Needleman in which he said, "Shouting is not thinking." Quoting Isaiah (without waving a Bible), Needleman says, "Come let us reason together" and describes such moment of reasoning: "I spoke to some members of Congress not long ago. We had a very quiet evening together and we started opening up. ... And they said, in effect, you know, 'We never get a chance to do this. We're in there trying to, you know, speak to television cameras or make points with electorates or with lobby groups, but we never...' I said, 'You mean you never come together and just reflect together?' And they said no. To me, that's the dirty secret of America at the moment. That's the problem."
That is a dirty secret. It was dirty back in 2003, and even worse, it's not all that secret now. This story from Needleman breaks my heart, but it doesn't surprise me.
How about we imagine some new ways to get together and "just reflect together?" How about we show up, put down our Bibles and our bumperstickers, and listen to each other? We can do that in local conversations about our libraries, our parks, our kids' health, and we can do that in our blogs and our Facebook posts. We can listen to one another and talk about what we need to build stable and healthy communities. We can't wait for folks in Washington to do it. We have to show them how. I pray it's not too late.