Humility is the antidote to grievance

There are moments in the political life of the nation when we see recognizable virtues in play.

In the 1960’s I was a member of CORE (The Congress of Racial Equality). Led by James Farmer, it was one of the “big four” civil rights groups of that era. I did my share of protesting and had served as president of the campus civil rights groups at Penn State. I was also a postulant in the ordination process of my diocese. Religious life and the civil rights movement took up much of my time at the University. I was a member of the Episcopal Canterbury Club but spent more time with the Methodists at the Wesley Foundation. Coffee and a great lounge. That allowed me to sign up for a trip to DC to meet with members of congress and their staff. Tom was a seminary intern from Union Theological serving at the Foundation. He organized the trip. Much of that trip was taken up with looking at how the 1964 Civil Rights Act had passed just the year before. Given my religious leaning I was thrilled to hear several legislative assistants say that “the bill wouldn’t have passed if it wasn’t for the pressure from religious organizations.” But of course it was more than just that. It was an effort of President Johnson to complete the work of John Kennedy who had been assassinated the year before. And it was the work of Republicans and Democrats in Congress to support  “an idea whose time has come.” In that event the nation experienced an incarnation of traditional virtues. We saw persistence, courage, and wisdom in the leaders of the nation.

I think today in the House of Representatives is another such moment. There are recognizable virtues in play.

Humility is the antidote to grievance

There are two columns in today’s New York Times that speak to the moment.

From the right there is Ross Douthat’s, “How New Wars Have Brought Back Old American Divisions.”  He shares a bit of political history. “For all the ways that our political coalitions have changed over the last few generations — Southern Democrats joining the G.O.P., Northeastern Republicans turning Democrat, “Reagan Democrats” moving right, suburban Republicans voting for Joe Biden — there are patterns that persist across the generations. That’s what we’re seeing in foreign policy right now, where Democrats and Republicans are dividing over Israel-Palestine and Ukraine-Russia, respectively, in ways that would have been familiar to the version of each party that existed 50 or even 75 years ago…. If you wanted to push the analogy further, you could even say that the recent shift by the embattled speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, from skeptic of Ukraine spending to supporter of a big aid package, resembles the switch that the leading Republican senator, Arthur Vandenberg, made across the 1940s, from isolationist to Cold Warrior.”

The other article is from the left by Frank Bruni, “The Most Important Thing I Teach My Students Isn’t on the Syllabus.” It’s a call for humility in American politics. Frank Bruni in his column wrote “humility is the antidote to grievance. ..: We live in an era defined and overwhelmed by grievance — by too many Americans’ obsession with how they’ve been wronged and their insistence on wallowing in ire. This anger reflects a pessimism that previous generations didn’t feel. The ascent of identity politics and the influence of social media, it turned out, were better at inflaming us than uniting us. They promote a self-obsession at odds with community, civility, comity and compromise. It’s a problem of humility.”

Pragmatic humility

Bruni’s piece is a related take to Douthat’s analysis on what we face as a nation. The bills in the House today to support our allies involve a good measure of pragmatic humility.

The situation we face now isn’t addressed by pounding away about old resentments. The Speaker and the President have for a moment acted with some humility to protect our national security and offer support for our imperfect allies.

Again from Frank Bruni, “We all carry wounds, and some of us carry wounds much graver than others. We confront obstacles, including unjust and senseless ones. We must tend to those wounds. We must push hard at those obstacles. But we mustn’t treat every wound, every obstacle, as some cosmic outrage or mortal danger. We mustn’t lose sight of the struggle, imperfection and randomness of life. We mustn’t overstate our vulnerability and exaggerate our due. While grievance blows our concerns out of proportion, humility puts them in perspective. While grievance reduces the people with whom we disagree to caricature, humility acknowledges that they’re every bit as complex as we are — with as much of a stake in creating a more perfect union.”

In today’s Daily Office we read of the Mercy Seat, “There I will meet with you” says the Lord. A place of healing and reconciliation between God and the People of God.  And Paul calls us, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:12-14)

This abides,

Robert