7. Who Will Lead?
7
Who Will Lead?
Good faith Christians make space for people who disagree.
“Can I get you coffee or tea?” our host inquired as we walked into the room.
Already tense, I (Gabe) was taken aback at the offer and promptly refused. “No, I’m fine, thanks.”
I lowered myself onto an overstuffed caramel-colored couch and nearly kicked myself for being an idiot. Did I really think President Barack Obama was offering to personally make me a cup of tea?
I forgot that presidents have butlers.
My jitters were understandable. I think I would have been nervous even if we’d been there just to shoot hoops with the president of the United States—but we weren’t. The occasion that brought us together was a serious and, we hoped, fruitful conversation about affirming the freedom of people of faith to live out their beliefs.
The week before, President Obama had appeared on ABC News for a sit-down interview with Robin Roberts. On national television, he affirmed for the first time his public support for gay marriage.
Just a few years earlier, during the 2008 presidential campaign, then-candidate Obama had defended traditional marriage in an interview with Pastor Rick Warren. He said, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian . . . it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”1 He had always been supportive of civil unions for gay couples, but he was careful to clarify the unique bond of covenant marriage between one man and one woman.
But in this month of May four years later, all that changed. The president’s conversion was emblematic of a sea change sweeping the nation and foreshadowed the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015.
We hadn’t come to talk about gay marriage. I think we recognized, even then, that the tide was turning against those of us who hoped the historic Christian vision of marriage would continue to have an honored place in the public square.
No, we had come to discuss the rights of good faith Americans to swim upstream against the cultural current. This was our one objective: to persuade the president that faithful citizens who disagree with new cultural norms must be able to exercise their beliefs in their daily lives—including in their churches, religious institutions, and engagements with the public square.
Anxiety about religious freedom is on the rise, and not just among Christians. In late summer 2015, Barna polled US adults on their perceptions of religious freedom, using a question we first asked in 2012. As the table shows, across the board, every population segment—including the “nones”—showed an upsurge in the belief that religious freedom has weakened over the past ten years.
Perceptions of Religious Freedom
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Religious freedom has grown worse over the past ten years.
% “strongly” + “somewhat” agree
2012
2015
All adults
33
41
Evangelicals
60
77
Practicing Christians
44
52
Other faiths
19
32
No faith
23
32
N
Barna OmniPoll, December 2012, N = 1,008
There is also widespread agreement with the statement “The government has gone too far in limiting the freedoms of Christians.” Two-thirds of adherents to faiths other than Christianity and nearly half of those with no faith say they agree.
That day in the Oval Office, we were there to remind the president of his earliest predecessors’ commitment to protect a person’s freedom of conscience as a sacred human right. A few days prior I had drafted a letter to the president. Cosigning was a group of twelve diverse Christian leaders, people who had been friendly to Mr. Obama, enjoying Easter breakfasts in the East Wing or providing counsel on domestic issues involving people of faith. We didn’t send the letter to score political points or to please a constituency; no one who was involved thought that way. Our simple, single goal was to do the small thing we could do: use our meager influence to make sure good faith Americans would continue to enjoy First Amendment freedoms.
Dear President Obama,
In light of your personal endorsement of the legalization of same-sex marriage, we, as Christian leaders, appeal to you to guide this moment toward respect and civility lest our public square further descend into divisiveness and hatred.
Our purpose is not to debate the merits of your opinion on same-sex marriage because we simply disagree. Rather, we ask you to preempt the divisions and bitter wrangling, both political and legal, which are sure to follow. We believe that your leadership will make a decisive difference and that you can lead Americans to be respectful and to find ways to live with one another despite our greatest differences. The genius of the American Founders was in their ability to enable our people to live together notwithstanding their deep religious divisions—ones that parallel our debate about gay marriage. Americans have enjoyed the freedom to promote and live by their moral and religious beliefs—in private as well as public settings, individually and in institutions—without being forced to conform to the latest, evolving moral consensus. But now we are in a moment of peril when these arrangements of mutual respect are at risk.
After clarifying a few of our concerns and reiterating our commitment to work alongside the president to mitigate rising tensions in the days ahead, we appealed to his unique opportunity to calm the storm:
Mr. President, the nation needs your leadership in making a very strong statement against the swelling trend to label people and institutions that remain committed to historic marriage as being hateful, homophobic, and bigoted. To be sure, some religious people may simply be bigoted. Yet, bigotry is surely not the motive of most who stand for historic marriage and sexual purity. Your own previous views did not suddenly become homophobic just because your opinion changed. Help us elevate this dialogue.
Please speak consistently about the tone of the dialogue when you talk about gay rights and same-sex marriage. Share your disappointment about the extremists on both sides of the divide that would use fear and hate to drive a wedge between Americans. Empower civilized discourse around matters of gay rights and religious rights, and specifically call out those who would treat this as a zero-sum game.
A couple of days after the letter was delivered, I received a call from the White House. “The president would like to meet with you and a few other signatories to discuss this issue. Can you make it next Friday?”
Gulp. “Of course.”
So now Pastor Tim Keller, myself, and a couple of others found ourselves sitting (without tea or coffee) with the president, ready to make a personal plea for his leadership in the coming days.
I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge my trepidation. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and ruin our opportunity. Yet I had a still, quiet assurance that the words would come, that we would say what needed to be said. Instead of thinking I’d somehow worked my way into the Oval Office, I knew that God had appointed this time in this place for his purposes.
Good faith doesn’t mean memorizing a script but cultivating a quiet dependence on the God of the universe to meet you in the difficult conversations he brings your way.
I opened the meeting by thanking President Obama for inviting this discussion, and then I jumped right in. Reaffirming the contents of our letter, I explained that we were not there to discuss his theological position on gay marriage but rather to talk about the incredible opportunity he had to lead our country through a conflicted, divisive moment.
I paused to catch my breath, and he nodded to indicate I should go on. I continued, acknowledging his unique opportunity to lead. With the ear of the LGBT community and as a Democrat, like no Republican president could do, the president had a rare opportunity to bring both sides of the gay marriage debate together—toward true tolerance.
The stakes were high. If he didn’t lead, the days ahead could get ugly.
Fake Tolerance
We hear the word tolerance and nod. Yes, tolerance. Duh, tolerance. Of course, tolerance. We all want tolerance. Who wouldn’t? Tolerance is a good thing, right? Yes, except that the meaning of the word has become obscured.
True tolerance is an ability to acknowledge and permit other people’s views. To put up with opinions with which you don’t agree. To live with ideas and people you find appalling. True tolerance—some call it “principled pluralism”2—is a fundamental feature of a truly free society.
But a new definition of tolerance, let’s call it “fake tolerance,” has emerged over the last decade. It goes something like this: “We will tolerate you as long as your opinion falls within the range of what we deem acceptable.” Diverge from society’s groupthink on any number of issues, and you are a bigot—or an extremist. In the name of tolerance, fake tolerance is a terrible and ironic counterfeit.
Comedian Bill Maher chastised people who practice true tolerance when he quipped that they are “so tolerant, they [tolerate] intolerance.”3
But, that’s the point. Tolerating intolerance is a feature, not a bug, of principled pluralism.
Thanks to fake tolerance, we aren’t becoming a “more united” States. If anything, we are more divided than ever. And Americans feel the pressure. A majority of adults feel their values and beliefs put them in the minority among their fellow citizens. That’s right. More than half of Americans say they feel out of step with the prevailing values of America. What does this tell us? Everyone feels alienated when those who practice true tolerance shrink into an ever-smaller minority.
Cultural alienation isn’t a problem only for Christians. In fact, our data suggest that non-Christians are more likely than non-practicing or nominal Christians to feel outside the American norm. It’s the challenge of modern life. The ideological media echo chamber, which specializes in fake tolerance, invites us to become further divided, even tribal. And many of us offer little resistance. It’s so much easier to spend time only with those who believe, think, talk, and vote like us.
No wonder division and divisiveness are the order of the day, even as our world is more connected than ever.
Former president Bill Clinton recently remarked, “You know, Americans have come so far. . . . We’re less racist. We’re less sexist. We’re less homophobic than we used to be. We only have one remaining bigotry. We don’t want to be around anybody who disagrees with us.”4 Whatever your opinion of him, on this, President Clinton is right on the money.
But hanging around people who disagree with us is exactly what God calls us to do. He calls us to engage with real people, and especially with those who see things differently.
In fact, true tolerance isn’t a high enough standard for Christians. To tolerate—to put up with someone—isn’t exactly praiseworthy. It should be the lowest bar for a good faith Christian. We are called by Jesus to love, not to tolerate. We are called to go far beyond the cultural standard. Our Lord commands us to love our neighbor, even when we vehemently disagree with them. And not only our neighbor. We must also love our enemy. Our physical enemy, our ideological enemy, even the enemy who threatens our life should be the object of our sincere goodwill and godly affection.
When your neighbor despises you—love.
When your enemy attacks you—love.
When a Facebook comment gets under your skin—love. (Yes, even on Facebook—love.)
When a fellow Christian has a different theological perspective than you—love.
There are no excuses or exceptions. If we faithfully live the countercultural life Jesus calls us to, we’ll endure uncomfortable situations, lose a few arguments, be embarrassed when we’re backed into a corner. And always, in everything, we will love.
An increasing number of Americans aren’t sure they should have to acknowledge and permit the historic beliefs of Christianity. With antireligious sentiment strong and a growing divide on what it means to be moral, fake tolerance is on the upswing. For Christians, what does it mean to participate in public life where fake tolerance is applauded and true tolerance is disparaged?
That day in the Oval Office, we offered a specific example of how this is playing out.
I asked if the president was familiar with the Catholic Charities of Boston case. It’s a bellwether of this environment. They were forced to shut down their long-standing and well-regarded adoption agency because they couldn’t, in good conscience, comply with new state standards that require all agencies to place children into same-sex families. Although many other agencies in the Boston area are happy to serve same-sex couples, Catholic Charities was not exempted from the regulations. They made the difficult decision to shut down operations rather than violate their beliefs about what makes the best family for an orphaned child.5 Whether or not you agree with their theology and values, less good—not more—is being done for children today because of a law that infringes on religious freedom.
I recall the president shaking his head and expressing dismay that fewer children in need were being cared for. However, he didn’t seem very worked up about the threat we perceived to religious freedom. Attempting to allay our concerns, he said, “People of faith will always be free to practice their faith in their churches, mosques, and synagogues.”
I think he hoped his response would appease us. It did not. In fact, it had the opposite effect. The president had merely affirmed the most limited interpretation of religious freedom—the same version practiced in communist China.6 In other words, “Keep it under your own roof and everything will be fine.”
Members of our group glanced at each other in a bit of disbelief. Either we weren’t persuasive enough or the president was missing the point.
One of his predecessors, founding father James Madison, once wrote, “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.”7
The United States of America was the first nation to enshrine religious freedom into law. The freedom to practice a faith different from the country’s leader, to associate with others who share our convictions, to fund efforts that align with our beliefs about human flourishing, and not to participate in practices that violate our conscience are fundamental, inalienable rights. These are bedrock American ideas, adopted as the law of the land less than ten years after the Revolutionary War was won. The freedoms spelled out in the First Amendment protect the God-given right of every human being to live by his or her own conscience and prevent government coercion to do otherwise.
Soldiering on in a conversation that had just become even more difficult, Tim Keller pointed out that faiths with a high view of scriptural authority—evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity, traditional Catholicism and Anglicanism, Orthodox Judaism and Islam—are growing around the world. And not just elsewhere, Tim said—even in his hometown, New York City, where he had served in ministry for thirty years. Millions of people in America define themselves as “people of the Book,” and asking them to disregard one part of their authoritative text is to demand they abandon the very basis for how they live their lives.
Just a few years earlier, we reminded him, then-senator Obama had made a compelling argument in his presidential campaign for religious convictions in the public square. In his “Call to Renewal” address, he recognized the unique contribution people of faith make to public life and even scolded secularists who hoped to limit the public exercise of their convictions:
Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King—indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history—were not only motivated by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.8
Two decades earlier he had gotten his first community-organizing job on the south side of Chicago because of the Catholic Church’s commitment to social action in the public square.9 The president knew firsthand the value of public faith.
We reminded President Obama of his own words and work, both of which had contributed to his rise to leadership. At a moment when so much was at stake, we suggested, this was an opportunity for the president to lead the way. He could color the imaginations of the American people so they could see that differences make us better. He could help to make public space for vastly different, deeply held beliefs to coexist in peace.
If America can’t figure it out, who will?10
As religious conflicts spiral out of control around the globe and true extremists win converts and the news cycle, we must find a way.
A Potluck, Not a Melting Pot
Western democracies are becoming more diverse, not less. As this trend continues, many leaders see that traditional secularism, which insists religion has no place in the public square, is a dead end. There are undeniable historical reasons—mainly post-Reformation political-religious conflicts that lasted for hundreds of years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives—that traditional secularism arose in the West. Secularism separated church and state, ultimately becoming the referee that decides when and where faith can play a role in public life.11 And taken to an extreme, it ultimately leads to fake tolerance of the Bill Maher variety.
Secularism pays lip service to diversity but has narrow bandwidth for real differences. It prefers the melting pot metaphor for civil society, where our differences melt away and we all become the same. Anything not the same is, in the name of tolerance, skimmed off the top and thrown out. In this climate, those who dissent are evil and must be neutralized.
The time has come, we urged the president, for secularism to step aside in favor of “confident pluralism.”12 This is the way forward not just for America and the West but for the world.
Confident pluralists—or principled pluralists, as some prefer—like to think of civil society not as a melting pot but as a potluck: everybody brings their best dish to share, and nobody goes home hungry. No one is forced to eat tuna casserole or green bean salad, but neither are those dishes taken off the buffet to appease those who don’t like them.
In a confidently pluralist society, people of good faith do not insist that those who don’t share our values be legally compelled to live by them—to eat our green bean salad. That’s fake tolerance. But neither should we be compelled by force of law to eat someone else’s tuna casserole.
Confident pluralism requires that good faith Christians concern ourselves with defending everyone’s liberty. This may feel uncomfortable at first for those who are used to Christianity holding a privileged place in American society. But pluralism and, more importantly, Christ’s command to love our neighbors oblige us to defend the rights of all citizens to live by their conscience—in and out of the public square.
Yes, this means vigorously defending the rights of our Muslim neighbors to practice faith beyond the neighborhood mosque and of our gay neighbors to publicly express pride in their identity.
It would be great to report that the meeting with President Obama ended with his declaration of an unwavering commitment to promote confident pluralism as the way forward for US civil society. But, sadly, he did not make such a pledge.
Just a few months later, in the run-up to his second inauguration, the president missed a significant opportunity to model pluralism and true tolerance. Louie Giglio, an evangelical pastor in Atlanta, was initially asked to offer the benediction for the inaugural ceremony. When video surfaced of a twenty-year-old sermon in which Giglio preached on homosexuality and gay marriage, the outcry from LGBT rights groups was deafening.
Rather than insisting Pastor Giglio should bring his green bean salad to the inauguration potluck, President Obama’s inaugural committee allowed him to withdraw. (According to some accounts, they may have pressured him to do so.)
The president did not violate Giglio’s rights, as some Christians argued at the time—but what a missed opportunity! Can you imagine the impact if President Obama had issued a statement like this?
I understand the LGBT community’s anger at the comments made by Pastor Giglio. In fact, I agree with you—and I do not endorse Pastor Giglio’s position or point of view. But that’s all the more reason for his participation in the inauguration ceremony. In America, you don’t have to agree with everyone else in order to have a place in the public square. You don’t even have to agree with the president. Pastor Giglio and his church’s work to end human trafficking contributes to the common good in America and around the world. And while I don’t agree with his views on sexual orientation and gay rights, I welcome his involvement in the inauguration and in the social fabric of a truly diverse United States.
Unfortunately, such a statement never saw the light of day. As meaningful as our meeting and correspondence with the president had felt going in, I came away from the experience more confident than ever that politics cannot truly solve these problems. The ideas are too embedded at street level to be dislodged by a good speech or a new law. Solving these problems is up to good faith Christians, starting with how we engage our neighbors with whom we disagree.