On Afflicting the Comfortable....

I have a love/hate relationship with American civil religion: as a subject of academic study, I love it, and as a citizen, I hate it.  Civil religion can bring people together, but it can also be ridiculously divisive.  At its best, civil religion allows people of disparate faiths to unite under one banner; at worst, it becomes a narrowly defined checklist of what is and is not American.  What we saw tonight in the auditorium of the Newtown, CT High School was an exemplar of what civil religion can and ought to be. 

But there’s more.  There’s always more.  Martin Marty argues that there are two kinds of civil religion: the priestly and the prophetic.  Tonight, President Obama, as “Comforter in Chief,” showcased the priestly—the quasi-official civil religion, often exemplified by the president in times of crisis.  There is also the prophetic—the type of civil religion which calls Americans back to their higher ideals.  Both of these can, and when used in a positive manner do, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  Tonight, the interfaith prayer vigil, the words offered, the scriptures read, the speeches given…all of these comforted those afflicted by unspeakable tragedy.  But the president’s words gave us a hint of what is to come, what ought to come: afflicting the comfortable.

Who are the comfortable here?  They are legion.  They can be found on both ends of our political spectrum, worried about any number of issues: guns, mental health, education.  People whose positions have become so entrenched that they simply cannot grasp that someone might have a reasonable opinion contrary to their own.  Inaction in this situation would be the greatest political sin.  We will not save the world.  We will not put an end to violence in this country or in the world.  But we should try.

I don’t have children of my own, and I can’t fathom what the parents who lost children must be feeling right now, but I do have a nephew who will turn two on New Years’ Eve and a niece who will be a year old three days after that.  They are both happy children, always smiling and laughing, often getting into trouble, but the apple of their parents’ eye (and Aunt Steph’s too).  My world is a better place because of them.  It is because of them and all of the children like them who are likewise the apples of their parents’ eyes that we should demand of our leaders that they afflict the comfortable, and that we, as citizens, should afflict our leaders because they have become the comfortable.  To quote one of the great priests of the American civil religion, Josiah Bartlet (given voice by Aaron Sorkin), “We can do better and we will do better and we must do better.”