“Divided and Angry,” an excerpt from Faithful Presence: the Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square

Some politicians write a book to set the stage to run for another office. Others write a book to be a memoir of their time in office. While those are valid reasons to write a book, and there are many good examples of those books, I wrote Faithful Presence: The Promise and Peril of Faith in the Public Square for different reasons.

I wrote it and agreed to co-chair the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & American Democracy because, like you, I am deeply concerned about the direction of our country. I also wrote it because, though the idea might sound farfetched to some, I think people of faith can and should play a leading role in healing the wounds of this country. Unfortunately, that is not what has been happening. Too often the words and actions of Christians have done more to inflict those wounds than to heal them. But there is a better way.

It is no secret that we live in a divided nation.

The last nine presidential elections have been decided by single-digit margins-the longest streak in the country's history. No presidential winner has received over 55 percent of the vote since 1984, and the new president has received less than 52 percent of the vote in seven out of the last eight elections. I do not see that changing anytime soon.

But we are not only divided; we are mad about it, and we cannot believe that the other side thinks the way they do. A January 2017 Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that one in six Americans had stopped talking to a family member or a close friend because of the 2016 election.

Of course, political division is nothing new in our country. When Andrew Jackson was on his deathbed, he was asked if he had any regrets as he looked back on his life. Any who were expecting words of remorse, sympathy, or kindness would have been surprised by Jackson's purported reply. As the Congressional Record put it, "Old Hickory said he regretted he hadn't shot Henry Clay [the Speaker of the House] and hung John C. Calhoun [his own vice president]." Things were similar for Alexander Hamilton, now best known as the subject of a hit Broadway musical. The politics of his day were so divisive that he was shot and killed in a duel by Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president. And this was only after Hamilton had narrowly avoided a duel with fellow founding father and future president James Madison.

But these times are different, and our divisions feel deeper. When Jackson's protégé James K. Polk was elected president, it took almost ten days for word of his electoral success to reach him at his home in Tennessee. Today, the president's Twitter account can reach 100 million followers at the push of the "Send" button. Protests and counterprotests can be organized in the time it takes to compose an email or a text. A virtual protest can overwhelm a business or an individual before there is even time to organize a response. Every issue quickly takes on political undertones. A case in point is the COVID-19 pandemic. It did not take long before views on who was responsible for the outbreak and opinions on how to reopen the economy after the shutdown, and even whether or not to wear masks, took on strongly partisan tones.

Along with our division, and maybe at least partly due to that division, we see a growing concern about the direction of our society. The quality of our discourse continues to decline as people get used to hiding behind the anonymity and safety of the internet. As real community becomes a smaller part of our lives, many of us feel a growing sense of disconnection and decreasing hope for the future. We can see this played out in the rates of marriage and childbirth, two leading indicators of confidence in the future. The current marriage rate (6.5 unions for every 1,000 people) is the lowest since the federal government started keeping statistics right after the Civil War. The fertility rate of 1.7 is also the lowest on record. It takes a rate of 2.1 just to replace the population. And a larger percentage of births are happening outside of marriage. In 2016, estimates showed that about 40 percent of births in the United States occurred outside of marriage. And on and on the list of items of cultural concern can go, with the only variable being who is making the list.