By David Gushee
It was a humbled but hopeful America on display Tuesday in Washington. Staggered by economic crisis, wearied by two long, unresolved wars and damaged in its confidence and character, our nation summoned itself on Tuesday to enter a new era by drawing on older traditions and values that have carried us through our 233-year history.
Barack Obama was the central figure in yesterday’s national summoning, but all participants in the drama at the Capitol struck similar notes. It was a day of looking forward by looking back.
If there was a shared narrative visible in Rick Warren’s invocation, the oaths of office, the music, President Obama’s address and Joseph Lowery’s benediction, it began with a somber recognition that we are now in trouble — economically, internationally and morally.
Warren’s prayer alluded to our selfishness, our petty infighting and our failure to treat others and the earth (in a nice nod to creation care) with proper respect.
Obama noted how greed, irresponsibility and a failure to make hard choices have put us in a bad place economically, and called us to get past our conflicts, petty grievances, recriminations and worn out ideologies and dogmas. He also clearly rejected the needless sacrifice of American and humane values for expediency’s sake in national security policy over the last seven years.
Lowery referred to our national brokenness and the need for a mending of our wounds.
The shared narrative included common appeal to foundational national values and virtues. I heard references both to shared political values such as liberty, equality and justice, and virtues such as compassion, respect, generosity, integrity and courage.
There were many references to the kind of spiritual and interpersonal posture that makes right relations possible with our neighbors: humility, civility, inclusion and tolerance. And several speakers referred to the classic theological virtues of faith, hope and love.
America’s civil religion was on display, and undoubtedly the many references to God (and Jesus) were uncomfortable for some. But on the whole the “God-talk” of this inaugural worship service (which is basically what it was, a worship service) was constructive.
God was not invoked as a kind of national deity who automatically sides with chosen, almighty America. He was not aligned with our national power, as if (as in pagan times and so often in our own) the most powerful nation gets to claim the most powerful god.
Instead, language about God was used to remind listeners that God is sovereign and we are not. We were told that God is compassionate and merciful, that God commands that all people be treated with fairness and respect, and that the mark of a righteous nation is justice, health and opportunity for all as well as humility and restraint in its international affairs.
Warren’s prayer included the cautionary note that all people and nations will stand accountable before God, a note that if taken seriously must have humbled and focused the hearts of the powerful men and women gathered on that platform.
This shared narrative — after naming our situation of crisis, calling on our foundational values and offering a religious vision rooted in a transcendent rather than domesticated God — moved on to suggest the kinds of behaviors required of Americans at this particular moment.
Here the new president played the lead role. He emphasized the need for national maturity (“we must put aside childish things”), hard work, shared sacrifice, risk-taking and inventiveness. He asked us to make hard, pragmatic decisions leading to vast improvements in our health care system, schools, energy use and government execution of its responsibilities. He asked for “a new era of responsibility” as together we “dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.”
As for the very fact that a dark-skinned man named Barack Hussein Obama, of black African father and white American mother, was the one leading America into its next stage — after a while this staggering fact begins to recede.
We did it. We broke the color line. It’s amazing, it’s wonderful, and it’s done.
Now we need this man, and his executive branch team, and the Congress, and the business sector, and religious leaders, and cultural figures, and academicians, and nonprofit leaders, and auto workers, and state government officials, and schoolteachers, and parents, and everyone else, to just be their best selves and do their best work and together lead this nation out of the mess it’s in.