In November 1883, 38-year-old Emma Lazarus wrote a poem as part of a fundraising effort for Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s “Liberty Enlightening the World” — what we now know as the Statue of Liberty.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Mary Alice Birdwhistell
Her words were not penned by someone detached from their significance for the country. As a Jewish woman, Lazarus was well aware of the persecution of Jews across the world, and the widespread violence toward immigrants already living in America. This was, after all, just one year after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — America’s first law to severely restrict immigration. Lazarus was under no illusion about America’s resistance to immigrants.
And yet, she wrote those words anyway. A bronze plaque featuring her poem, “The New Colossus,” would go on to welcome more than 12 million immigrants passing by the Statue of Liberty on their way through Ellis Island.
This summer, as we mark 250 years as a nation, I find myself wondering if our democracy is more than a political system to defend. Because at its best, democracy might be one of the best ways we can practice love of neighbor in a world of difference.
“Democracy might be one of the best ways we can practice love of neighbor in a world of difference.”
The truth is, we don’t seem to know how to live with one another anymore.
Our disagreements feel sharper. Our divisions feel deeper. And more and more, the instinct is not to lean in, but to withdraw. To curate our lives around people who think like us, believe like us, vote like us. It’s easier that way. Less friction. Less tension.
But also — less love.
The Apostle Paul once wrote a letter to a community struggling to hold itself together. We often hear his words from 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings, but they were not meant to be about romantic love. They were written to a fractured community — one marked by conflict, division and disagreement.
After describing the many gifts that sustain a community in chapter 12, Paul writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way.”
And that way is love.
New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl argues Paul isn’t offering a sentimental guide for individuals here; he is describing a sociological tool for a community under extreme pressure. The early church was an unlikely gathering of Jews and Gentiles, people of profound cultural and religious difference, and love was what gave that community the elasticity to hold together without erasing anyone’s difference. Love was measured not by how easy it felt, but by how much tension and diversity it could bear, its capacity “not to insist on its own way.”
Read this way, the passage takes on new meaning. This is not a “warm and fuzzy” kind of love. It does not depend on agreement or affinity. It is the kind of love that shows up even when it’s hard. Even when we disagree. A love that doesn’t get irritated, but gets curious. It refuses to reduce people to their worst opinions or most frustrating traits. Instead of moving away from one another, this kind of love moves closer.
We often practice a kind of love that assumes harmony, ease and sameness. So we gather people who are like-minded, like-looking and likable, and we call that love. But Paul’s vision here is the opposite. The gift of love is precisely that it makes diversity, tension, even conflict possible. It bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things— without tearing a community apart.
At its best, is that not what democracy asks of us?
Because democracy is not simply a system for tallying votes. It is a way of living together that insists every voice deserves to be heard. Not just the loudest, not just the majority, but the minority, the marginalized, the ones most easily dismissed or forgotten. It asks us to stay at the table with people we didn’t choose, to work toward a common good that includes those who are different from us, and to protect the dignity of those with whom we deeply disagree.
“Democracy refuses to let us draw too small a circle around ourselves.”
Democracy refuses to let us draw too small a circle around ourselves. It keeps pushing the boundary outward — toward the neighbor we don’t yet know, the stranger at the door, the voice we haven’t yet learned to hear. And if we are honest, both love and democracy ask more of us than we usually want to give.
Sister Simone Campbell is a Catholic nun and attorney who travels the country with “Nuns on the Bus.” She and her fellow nuns hold listening tours to find common ground and work toward the common good.
In her book See No Stranger, Valarie Kaur describes a conversation Sister Simone once shared with a man convinced that Muslims and immigrants were invading “his” country. She wanted to argue back at him — to tell him all the reasons he was wrong. But instead, she pushed herself to get curious about his story.
So she kept listening. And after some time, she began to notice the man’s pain. He kept returning to a refrain: His grandparents had worked hard, his parents had worked hard, and they had wanted a better future for him than the one he was living.
Sister Simone paused and asked him, “Do you feel ashamed — like you couldn’t live up to your families’ expectations for you?”
Immediately, the man’s eyes filled with tears.
As Kaur tells the story: “That was it. The need to belong. To be seen. To be loved. To succeed. To matter. His rage was a symptom of his pain.”
This is what it looks like to love across difference. Not to always agree. Not to abandon deeply held convictions. And certainly not to excuse harm or ignore injustice. But to stay curious long enough to see a human being where we might otherwise see only an obstacle or an opponent. To resist the urge to dismiss, erase or dehumanize one another — especially when disagreement runs deep.
“Democracy, at its best, is just another name for the difficult, daily work of loving our neighbor.”
The threats facing democracy today are not only political. They are deeply spiritual. Because democracy, at its best, is just another name for the difficult, daily work of loving our neighbor, and when we abandon one, I fear we are in danger of losing our very capacity for the other.
Perhaps Emma Lazarus knew this, too. She didn’t write her poem because America had lived up to its promise. She wrote it because she believed it could — because she refused to let the gap between what is and what ought to be have the final word.
This is the work of love and the work democracy calls us toward, too.
And so, on this 250th anniversary, may we work together to lift our lamps toward one another — toward the tired, the poor, toward our neighbors, strangers and even our enemies.
May we lift our lamps with courage and curiosity. With stubborn hope in a “still more excellent way.”
And may we refuse to stop looking until we find what love promises is there: The face of God.
Mary Alice Birdwhistell most recently served as pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.
Discussion questions:
- When you think about your neighborhood, your workplace or even your social media feed — how much genuine difference do you actually encounter? How much have you curated your life around people who are similar to you?
- Paul’s famous love passage was written not for a wedding, but for a fractured, arguing community. Does knowing that change how you hear it? What would it mean to read it that way in your own context?
- Krister Stendahl says Paul’s definition of love is measured by how much tension and diversity it can take. What do you think of that definition? Does it challenge or expand how you usually think about love?
- Reflect on the story about Sister Simone. Is there a difference between loving someone and agreeing with them? Where do you draw the line between curiosity and compromise?
- The article suggests that democracy, at its best, helps us “stay human with one another.” What do you think it means to “stay human” in a time like this? Where do you see that happening — and where do you long for more of it?
Previously in this series:
What is democracy? | Caroline Smith
The church as school for democracy | Emily Hull McGee