"Endangered Values in America"
For forty plus years I lived my life as a pastor in the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Because I tend to do my job 24/7 and was consumed with being a husband, father, and grandfather as well, I treated politics and national life as a secondary matter. I always followed progressive values that were tied to democracy as I understood it to be. As someone who received a good liberal arts education at a Lutheran private school I was knowledgable in American history and in the global movements that not only effected the church, but arts and culture. To a certain extent I took the factual information I learned and the movements that I followed, and in which I participated, for granted. Although there were some warnings that there were other beliefs and movements afoot, especially since the sixties, I did not think those beliefs and movements would effect me.
How wrong I am. As I have continually been learning through my reading and my following of current events, the progressive values I hold near and dear, and which many of you also cherish, are now at great risk. What are some of these values? 1) That our country and government should seek the good of all people, 2) That our country should care for all people, especially for those who have been mistreated (like indigenous people and blacks) and give them opportunity to succeed today, 3) Academically, above all, we should seek to be truthful, and that truth and honesty should be practiced in how we receive historical data, 4) Within our American democracy there should be balance of powers that check one another and seeks the good of all parties, 5) Religious leaders should humbly be open to those who hold beliefs other than their own and should remain open to them. 6) Human beings should always seek knowledge and that knowledge should be followed for the good it will do for all people. Although science is an ongoing work of adding new data and evaluating that data against previous assumptions, we should abide by the latest conclusions of scientists.
Many of the values which I have listed above have been tried by my reading and discussion of Christian Nationalism. In the two books I have read The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019) and The Psychology of Christian Nationalism by Pamela Cooper-White (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022) I have discovered that most of the values I articulated above have been endangered by opposing forces in America who see things totally differently. By and large, they read American history differently. According to the texts I have read, they see the Founding Fathers differently, countering that they are deists who constitutionally established the separation of church and state. These individuals believe in the survival of the fittest, but seek to be those who survive by divine right by working together to defeat the groups that they consider to be weakest and unfit. There is no understanding that we as Americans have wronged the natives from which we took the land or the black persons we enslaved during the first century of our existence. They believe that God has chosen them to dominate United States policy today and will accept leadership by anyone, even someone who lives their life and governs antithetically to the very values we find in religious texts.
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