Exploration of Values: One

by Brad Cotton

 (published Circleville Herald 29 August 2011)

 

Professor Dave Garrison invited me to speak at his honors student assembly at Ohio Christian University this past March. Readers of the Herald Op-Ed page will recall Prof. Garrison wrote a weekly business column. My disagreements with Dave’s viewpoint caused me to step up my writing pace to biweekly, where it remains. Sadly, considering the desirable democratic goal of open discussion in a hometown forum, Dave has moved to Texas and no longer writes for the Herald, although he has been invited to contribute to these  planned series of “Exploration of  Values” columns.

I must say I was expecting to be “Bill O’Reillyed” at OCU. FOX television host Mr. O’Reilly is well known for shouting down, interrupting and shutting down the mike of his liberal guests. My wife tells me that some of the MSNBC hosts I enjoy do the same. I am, of course, less aware of this disrespectful behavior when exhibited by my side, as I suspect are we all. More dangerous still to democracy is when liberals and conservatives, retreat to only watching, reading opinions that reinforce pre-existing beliefs. Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts.” Nowadays, studies show that where we live, the churches we attend, the news and opinion we seek out, keeps us more and more among folks just like us. Studies also show that the more we talk and interact only with “us”, the more we move away from, don’t understand, and demonize “them”. This is  dangerous for democracy, as Ohio Federal and State congressional districts are this very moment being drawn to favor the party in power, now Republican, but Democrats have done  this in the past also. Thus politicians instead of being chosen by the voters, get to choose their own voters instead, and we become more and more polarized as politicians in “safe” gerrymandered districts play to their base.

Speaking at Prof. Garrison’s class I was not “Bill O’Reillyed” or “Tea Partyed” as were Congressmen that long Summer of 2009 holding health care reform town halls. No one questioned my birthplace. No one shouted at me “You Lie!” as did South Carolina Congressmen Joe Wilson during a President Obama address on health care. Again, following the tendency to  see incivility only from the opposition, I would have applauded anyone shouting the same charge at President Bush January 2003, as he used the known false evidence of a Saddam-Nigerian-yellowcake uranium connection to sell us his war of aggression  against Iraq. Rather Prof. Garrison and his students were quite polite and respectful, yet I remain puzzled that folks who seem so nice, from a Christian university, can back  a Rightist economic theory and politics that causes so much widespread suffering—suffering I see every day on the faces of the poor in the emergency department. Leaving OCU, Prof. Garrison and I planned a public exploration of values, a conservative and liberal “debate” of our most deeply held beliefs and their expression in politics, thus the inspiration for these series of columns.

“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.” declared  Gandhi, one of the most effective political leaders of our time and  inspiration for our greatest U.S. faith leader, the  Rev. Martin Luther King. Politics is faith and values lived out loud. The Religious Right treats Jesus as if he was mute, his only role that of substitutionary atonement for our personal sins.  What did Jesus say for three years? What did he say that earned him such a large following of the poor and outcast? What did he say that made him such a threat to the established order that public crucifixion, often reserved for political insurrectionists was deemed necessary by the church/state authorities? What social sins did Jesus condemn?  Was social justice of central importance to Jesus? What did he mean by the Kingdom of God?

Roman Catholic Archbishop Dom Helder Camara noted of faith and politics: “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” In America today this same epithet is hurled at Obama, at myself, at others of faith who ask why the poor have no healthcare, no jobs, no homes and no hope. Last month, as the Congress passed a debt limit bill that places more of us outside the gates and warmth of our national village, Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society  was arrested in the Capitol Rotunda with 11 other faith leaders. Winkler said “It has become increasingly apparent that elected officials intend to punish the poor and needy to protect tax cuts for the wealthy. So we knelt, prayed and went to jail.” More faith and values in upcoming columns.

 

Brad Cotton