Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site

Will our common vulnerabilities in this moment lead us to unite for the common good?

OpinionDavid Jordan  |  April 23, 2020

David JordanMost Americans are “living apart” at the moment. We are separated, even as we experience a leveling and an equal susceptibility. A microscopic organism has brought the world to its collective knees. Yet perhaps from the fear and uncertainty this global pandemic has wrought, we will find a cure for more than the COVID-19 virus.

Politics in America

Livy, the great poet of Rome said, “We have reached the point where we cannot bear either our vices or their cure.” As was true for the Romans, so it is for us.

Americans were separated long before the shelter-in-place and social distancing required by the novel coronavirus. For more than a decade the political and social fabric of this nation has been frayed and torn. We have been here before – through slavery and Civil War, segregation and Civil Rights, Korea and communism, Vietnam and militarism, Watergate and pessimism. We could go on. And now the list of our national crises also includes measles, diphtheria, polio and AIDS, plus a host of other health crises our nation and world have coped with in the last century.

“Perhaps change is at hand – in the form of a tiny little virus that offers us no other alternatives but to work together.”

We Americans are famous for finding creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. And yet Livy’s words square well with our current dilemma. Our politics, our very democracy, was already at a crossroad. The current health emergency notwithstanding, our two primary political parties have wandered in the wilderness of lost identities and ill-defined parameters. And like many of our politicians, we are a nation starkly divided, increasingly lonely, politically despondent and progressively cynical.

Yet, consonant with Livy’s commentary, we cannot bear the vice, nor can we abide the cure. We have been paralyzed by fear, anger and a growing assurance of the absolute stupidity of those we oppose. Our disagreements have appeared as intractable as they are intolerable.

Religion in America

Alexis de Tocqueville, the astute French social philosopher, toured early America during the 1830s and catalogued prescient and insightful conclusions. In his critical work, Democracy in America, he famously saw in the American experiment a “religious point of departure” so embedded in our collective psyche that it motivated then even as it does now.

Quoting from John Winthrop (1588-1649), the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, de Tocqueville detected a bedrock beginning as well as an echoing essence:

“We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.”

In Winthrop, de Tocqueville saw “the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores.” But he also sensed a looming cloud within the broad horizons of America’s future. Winthrop envisioned a society based on and planned for the common good. He espoused a “moral freedom,” a true freedom birthed from a covenant between God and humanity, and a liberty “to that only which is good, just and honest.”

“This liberty,” Winthrop said, “you are to stand for with the hazard of your lives.”

By the 1830s, de Tocqueville detected the growing seduction of unchecked individualism. Nearly 200 years later, this has only gotten worse. Sometimes referred to as “natural liberty,” it has morphed into a “hyper-individualism.” We have lately been seduced into believing that my desires need to be met, that my happiness is what matters, and that my ability to get what I want when I want it flies as the standard for political, moral and even spiritual decisions. The seductive culture of my, me, mine has sadly corrupted Winthrop’s communal, compassionate vision. We are at an existential cultural crossroad.

A new vision for the common good. At two events in the last 18 months I have had the grand privilege of interviewing my friend, Barbara Brown Taylor. On both occasions, we discussed her latest book, Holy Envy. On stage, she reemphasized what she has written about with such passion and wit. Her course on world religions included class field trips from Piedmont College in the foothills of the north Georgia mountains to synagogues and mosques, to Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches, and to Buddhist and Hindu temples.

Her students trended toward fairly traditional, generally conservative and mostly Christian. In many cases, they displayed a reticence to learn too much from faith traditions outside their own. With poignancy, humor and great respect, Taylor recounted multiple stories of glad enlightenment. Students discovered new worlds of compassion, heard broad words of wisdom, gained new insights and experienced countless meaningful moments within traditions well outside their comfort zones.

Exposure to difference, encounters with “the other” and meaningful interactions beyond their previous experience changed lives. The majority of these students became more compassionate. They saw with different eyes and felt with hearts more open.

Respect is a vital beginning for us all. But there is more.

Our common vulnerability. This is the consistent theme in virtually every faith group, including the earlier warning in our Jewish and Christian traditions. The man and woman discover in the garden (Genesis 3), not so much that they are naked, but that they are vulnerable and exposed to the world around them. The knowledge they stumbled upon was less about what they couldn’t have and more about what they couldn’t control. They stand prominently as the early representatives of our common humanity.

We are equally fragile. Brené Brown frequently reminds us in her speaking and writing, including her most recent work, Dare to Lead, that our common vulnerability unites us in a coalescing need to confess our inadequacy, our woundedness and our fear of failure. The potential unity this understanding engenders is profound.

Our common humanity. David Brooks, in his most recent book, The Second Mountain, concedes these fragile moments are ubiquitous for us all. They unite us in a common heritage which should reconnect us firmly to Winthrop’s call for the common good. These fragile moments, Brooks says, also constitute the valley following the first mountain, that steep incline most of us endure for the success we hope for and the dominance our culture insists we deserve.

But we tumble, stumble and bumble in our vulnerability and stark experience of unbridled hyper-individualism. We fall, inevitably, into the valley of loneliness, shadows and failure. Only there, in our confessional acknowledgment of common fragility, does the call of the second mountain begin. Brooks describes it as a “sweet compulsion,” a growing and deeply moral commitment to others, to the world around us and to a new vision of a common vulnerability that is uniquely life-giving and imminently hopeful.

Perhaps change is at hand – in the form of a tiny little virus that offers us no other alternatives but to work together, to face our shared vulnerabilities and to no longer ignore our truest human condition and our common human family.

COVID-19 is clearly no respecter of race, status, nationality or cultural leanings. It also might just unite us in ways that would surprise Livy and his Roman contemporaries. If we do well and learn carefully, perhaps this novel coronavirus will gather in each of us a calm assurance, having become so weary of our vices, we finally embrace our cure – by embracing one another.

Let us hope so; and let us begin. Today.

Read more BNG news and opinion on this topic:
#intimeslikethese


OPINION: Views expressed in Baptist News Global columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.
Tags:fearpolarizationReligion and PoliticspandemicBarbara Brown TaylorDavid BrooksBrene Brown#intimeslikethesede TocquevilleJohn Winthrop
More by
David Jordan
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • BNG dinner will bring together Anthea Butler and Beth Allison Barr for a conversation on race and gender

    Two of the most prominent voices speaking to the American church about race and gender will appear together at the Baptist News Global dinner during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s General Assembly in Dallas this June. Get your tickets now!

  • Featured

    • Intolerable cruelty is killing us

      Opinion

    • Another racist mass shooting and our failure to tend Jesus’ sheep

      Opinion

    • Baptists in Ukraine continue their humanitarian work amid devastation

      News

    • Sadly, I agree that a complementarian seminary shouldn’t offer women degrees in pastoral theology

      Opinion


    Curated

    • Don’t buy Alito’s assurances: here’s what happens next after Roe falls

      Don’t buy Alito’s assurances: here’s what happens next after Roe falls

      May 19, 2022
    • Leading Psychologist Bridges Trauma Healing and the Black Church

      Leading Psychologist Bridges Trauma Healing and the Black Church

      May 19, 2022
    • For some people, religious leaders might be most effective at communicating the importance of COVID-19 vaccination

      For some people, religious leaders might be most effective at communicating the importance of COVID-19 vaccination

      May 19, 2022
    • Former pastor in 2 states pleads guilty to child sex charges

      Former pastor in 2 states pleads guilty to child sex charges

      May 19, 2022
    Read Next:

    ‘It’s still the economy, stupid’

    NewsMark Wingfield

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • Oklahoma legislators say life begins at ‘fertilization’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Sadly, I agree that a complementarian seminary shouldn’t offer women degrees in pastoral theology

      OpinionAnna Sieges

    • Baptists in Ukraine continue their humanitarian work amid devastation

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Intolerable cruelty is killing us

      OpinionKris Aaron

    • Louisville police training quoted Bible verse to say officers are God’s agents of wrath

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Another racist mass shooting and our failure to tend Jesus’ sheep

      OpinionEmily Holladay

    • Becoming UNSTOPPABLE Christians

      Paid Promoted Content

    • Transitions for the week of 5-20-22

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Learning about change from Henry Ford

      OpinionBob Newell

    • ‘It’s still the economy, stupid’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Hymn stories: ‘Christ is alive! Let Christians sing’

      OpinionBeverly A. Howard

    • Pennsylvania Baptist church licenses transgender man for ministry

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Gifts of hospitality in the midst of grief

      OpinionSara Robb-Scott

    • Bubba-Doo’s gets a new sign

      OpinionCharles Qualls

    • Buffalo massacre is more evidence of white Christian nationalism, sociologists say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Why American democracy is threatened in Ukraine

      AnalysisRodney Kennedy

    • Displaced by the war in Ukraine, some African students battle to continue their education in Germany

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Conservative or liberal? Jesus widens our political landscape

      OpinionRussell Waldrop

    • Does the Johnson Amendment have any teeth left?

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Letter to the Editor: A response to Laura Ellis on abortion and Christian Realism

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • The Beloved Community and the heresy of white replacement: How ‘Beyoncé Mass’ gave me hope after the Buffalo massacre

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Roe v. Wade, the great divider

      AnalysisErich Bridges

    • The Holy Spirit: An advocate, comforter and encourager for times like these

      OpinionBarry Howard

    • Brian Dawkins says he’s blessed

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • Oklahoma legislators say life begins at ‘fertilization’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Baptists in Ukraine continue their humanitarian work amid devastation

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Louisville police training quoted Bible verse to say officers are God’s agents of wrath

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Transitions for the week of 5-20-22

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • ‘It’s still the economy, stupid’

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Pennsylvania Baptist church licenses transgender man for ministry

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Buffalo massacre is more evidence of white Christian nationalism, sociologists say

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Displaced by the war in Ukraine, some African students battle to continue their education in Germany

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Does the Johnson Amendment have any teeth left?

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Brian Dawkins says he’s blessed

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • Bailey and Perrin named Vestal Scholars

      NewsBNG staff

    • Professor writes book to explain his journey from inerrantist to historicist

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • SBC presidential candidate wants ERLC leader fired for joining 75 other pro-life leaders in urging compassion for women who have abortions

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • $100 million gift to Samford is state’s largest to higher education

      NewsBNG staff

    • No formal name change proposed for SBC, and entities report back on use of NDAs in annual Book of Reports

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Accountability to God increases sense of well-being, study finds

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Campbellsville University custodian receives degree after stopping education in the 1990s

      NewsLinda Waggener

    • Progressives need to stop letting Christian nationalists set the agenda, author asserts

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • In reelection year, Texas governor proposes statewide voucher program for private schools

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • There’s a path for Ukrainian refugees to the U.S. but the process remains too slow

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • After days of unrest sparked by religious clashes, Ethiopians are beginning to get back to normal life

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • First review of SBC sexual abuse report begins today

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • In Charlottesville, an effort to reuse bronze from Lee statue for new public art

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Sadly, I agree that a complementarian seminary shouldn’t offer women degrees in pastoral theology

      OpinionAnna Sieges

    • Intolerable cruelty is killing us

      OpinionKris Aaron

    • Another racist mass shooting and our failure to tend Jesus’ sheep

      OpinionEmily Holladay

    • Learning about change from Henry Ford

      OpinionBob Newell

    • Hymn stories: ‘Christ is alive! Let Christians sing’

      OpinionBeverly A. Howard

    • Gifts of hospitality in the midst of grief

      OpinionSara Robb-Scott

    • Bubba-Doo’s gets a new sign

      OpinionCharles Qualls

    • Conservative or liberal? Jesus widens our political landscape

      OpinionRussell Waldrop

    • Letter to the Editor: A response to Laura Ellis on abortion and Christian Realism

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • The Beloved Community and the heresy of white replacement: How ‘Beyoncé Mass’ gave me hope after the Buffalo massacre

      OpinionRobert P. Jones

    • The Holy Spirit: An advocate, comforter and encourager for times like these

      OpinionBarry Howard

    • The air of gathered worship: A 12-Sunday challenge

      OpinionPaul R. Gilliam III

    • Choose Life: Putin reminds us how bad theology can turn nuclear

      OpinionJillian Mason Shannon

    • I’m disappointed with the world but still wanting to hope

      OpinionRuss Dean

    • Racism from the perspective of a white man

      OpinionTerry Austin

    • ‘The Religion of the Lost Cause’ is back, and it may be winning

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • What is a Baptist?

      OpinionH. Stephen Shoemaker

    • Assessing the damage Twitter has done to American Christianity

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • In our dystopian world, I’m leaning into the Korean concept of han

      OpinionSusan M. Shaw, Senior Columnist

    • Letter to the Editor: Wingfield is wrong on ‘performative Christianity’

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Do or donut; there is no try

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • Will we be silent as stones or voices of light?

      OpinionPhawnda Moore

    • It is a lie

      OpinionDwight A. Moody

    • A brief history of the Hateful Faithful threat to democracy through the Supreme Court

      OpinionWendell Griffen

    • Gov. DeSantis should learn a lesson from Southern Baptists about taking on Disney

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • Don’t buy Alito’s assurances: here’s what happens next after Roe falls

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Leading Psychologist Bridges Trauma Healing and the Black Church

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • For some people, religious leaders might be most effective at communicating the importance of COVID-19 vaccination

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Former pastor in 2 states pleads guilty to child sex charges

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A rabbi who ‘speaks to Christians’ condemned them on Twitter. It cost him his job.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Deadly explosion damages historic church, Baptist offices in Cuba

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Faith on the ground in Buffalo: Voice Buffalo executive director Denise Walden

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • What Is Antisemitism? Evangelicals Favor Different Definitions

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Russian Religious Communities Opposed To Ukraine War Face Pressure And Censorship

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Pope’s recipe to heal his painful knee? A shot of tequila

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Why Not All Pro-Lifers are Celebrating

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Montana pastor J.D. Hall, Pulpit&Pen founder, charged with DUI, carrying weapon

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Grove City board accepts full CRT report, says college promoted CRT

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • What you need to know about the antisemitic ideology behind the Buffalo shooting

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • What is ‘personhood’? The ethics question that needs a closer look in abortion debates

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Interfaith group asks Starbucks to drop vegan milk surcharge

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Cuba hotel explosion badly damaged major Baptist church

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Op-Ed: Conservative Christians will regret overturning Roe. They’re sacrificing religious liberty to do it

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • The Global COVID-19 Summit left children off its agenda. The church should not.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Deconstructing? There’s a coach for that.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • No more murder charge for women in Louisiana abortion bill

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Vatican Expresses ‘Concern’ Over Cardinal Zen Arrest For Ties To Pro-Democracy Fund

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Study: Girls raised by Jewish parents outperform Christian girls academically

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Hong Kong police bail Catholic cardinal arrested on national security charge

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Report: Christians May Have Helped Run Half of Native American Boarding Schools

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2022 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS