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barack obama, Christian Calling, inaugural address, Justice Issues, politics, Redemption of Creation, the Christian story, the gospel of the kingdom
Below is the last section of Barack Obama’s list of unfinished business, the matters over which he holds out hope that he can make a difference in his second term in office.
The Long Journey Toward Justice
This section is what will likely be referred to in future references as, “the journey” or perhaps “the unfinished journey.” Journey away from injustice toward “alabaster cities” which gleam and where no tears dim the view is an essential theme within the U.S. national ethos. Instead of individual pioneers journeying away from collective tyranny, for Obama, the nation journeys together away from injustice toward “equal rights”.[1]
It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began, for our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.
Can anyone say, “Equal pay for equal work?” Can we believe this is not now guaranteed to every woman and man in the U.S.A.? It is not and it should be. Which is why in his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama called for passage of a law which would make it illegal to pay men and women with the same qualifications and experience different wages for doing the same job. Duh!
Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.
To legalize and to solemnize is not the same. If Christians had long-ago fought to reserve the word, “marriage” for what begins in certain worship services when a man and a woman enter into solemn covenant before God, then I would say, what the state legalizes should be called a civil union and not a marriage. At which point each and every denomination and/or congregation would need to decide whether they would marry, that is solemnize the unions of persons of the same sex because only their clergy could do that. Given that the word, “marriage,” cannot be so re-captured and reserved for what Christians, Jews and Muslims solemnize, there is no question that persons of the same sex should have the same legal, civil right to civil unions and thus to “marriage” as we regrettably define the word. Same-sex love is obviously committed love at least as often as it turns out to be so among those heterosexuals which we preachers marry and then so often counsel just before they divorce. The President is right: civil rights are rights and justice is justice.
Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.
I heard someone say about this the other day that they hoped the President would not spend too much time and trouble fighting this battle since the newest strategy in the long war of the minority to suppress the votes of the majority is Gerrymandering,[2] not long voter lines. Truly there are presently some “Blue” states controlled by “Red” governors and legislatures which have recently considered assigning Presidential Electoral votes based on their already gerrymandered congressional districts.[3]
The threat of state governments that can and have suppressed the votes of their citizens must be met head on however it presents itself. Since the debacle in Florida in 2000, election results have become less reliable and often less fair. The 102 year old black woman at the State of the Union Address who had waited for six hours in line to vote in Florida last November is symbolic of our antiquated and often unjust voting procedures. The world largely learned representative government from us. What must they think of us now?
Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity, until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.
The immigrants do keep coming, although fewer come illegally now than before the Great Recession. (That the U.S. is now the least upwardly mobile of the 40 top industrial nations makes this a bit of a joke. Sometimes myths live on long after their realities have died.) However, if we are going to practice justice those who do come here must have a way to earn fair wages and citizenship alongside their immigrant brothers and sisters who have been here for decades or even centuries. I am not Native American. Are you?
Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.
If the President and Vice President are going to get any gun-safety legislation passed, they had best hurry. The A.D.D.-infected people of the U.S. have grievously short attention spans – “Oh, look! Isn’t that Beyoncé or Kelly Clarkson or a murderous former LA cop?” Laying the rhetoric of the State of the Union over the gun safety proposal of this speech, if there is to be justice then those thousand-plus in the U.S. who have died from gun violence just since the Newtown massacre “deserve a vote!”
Conclusion
My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction… They are… words [which] represent our greatest hope. You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. [We] have the obligation to shape the debates of our time, not only with the votes we cast, but the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideas.
Whether Barack Obama is able to accomplish anything in his second term, he did something weighty and important in his Second Inaugural Address. He established a framework based on the original U.S. “liberty” document for how it must be for citizens of the U.S.A., who together must deepen and expand the community for whom life, liberty and an opportunity to achieve happiness exists as a matter of stated value.
We collect ourselves. We coalesce. We marshal ourselves for the task of broadening and leveling the floor on which we all dance as people. For many citizens and other residents of the U.S. today, that level floor is laughably rough and tilted. Which is why the President has declared that his journey and mine and the collective journeys of so many of us will not be over until that poor child born in inner city Detroit or rural Appalachia or Selma has as much a chance at life, liberty and happiness as her sisters and brothers born in Newtown, Connecticut, Eden Prairie, Minnesota and Winnetka, Illinois.
Prayer
Lord God, you know this nation is far from perfect. You know its secrets, its hypocrisies, its failures to meet even its own limited vision of what it means to practice justice. Yet, Lord, whether we deserve to be or not, we have sometimes been an example to our world of what a nation looks like that gets things right.
Help us as a nation, Lord, to confess our sins, to receive your new start again. Help us to expand our vision, to meet our challenges with open-handedness and open hearts. And Lord, do help this President to find the best way possible to be the most powerful person on earth who uses that power to love justice, to practice compassion and to walk before you in true humility. Empower him, I pray, to make a difference in his moment, in this nation and this world. In the name of his king and mine, even the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Want to Chat?
In this entire discussion I have attempted to meet the U.S. President where his U.S. civil religious vision and his Christian understanding seem to meet. Anyone who would like to straighten me out on this is welcome to have a go at it!
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Endnotes
1 Back to Post For Christians the concept of “individual,” so basic to the modern notion of “rights,” should be problematic. Nowhere do “individuals” ever exist except as members of communities. Actual people are always individual members of marriages, churches, friendships, nations, businesses, etc, with both rights and responsibilities to and within those communities. Yet, the use of “individual rights” in U.S. law is a fundamental component upon which all else is built without reference to the communities themselves. This is fraught with problems since communities which have such individual members also exist normatively before God. Confusion abounds! Most recently, we have seen U.S. corporations assert they are “persons” in order to secure for businesses some of the individual rights of persons but without responsibility or the realization that they are not at all persons! Nuts!
2 Back to Post Elbridge Gerry was the Governor of Massachusetts who signed into law a map of newly drawn State Senate districts in 1812 which strongly favored his party. One of the districts was so long and tenuous that it was described as looking like a salamander. A pundit at the time was said to have replied, “No, that would be a Gerry-mander!” Republicans and Democrats have used Gerrymandering to tilt elections in their favor ever since, depending on who has controlled state houses and legislatures. Needed: non-partisan apportionment commissions in every state!
3 Back to Post At the present time six states which handily elected Barack Obama president have Republicans in power. Because of this we have a U.S. House of Representatives in this new Congress for which over one million more Democratic votes were cast than Republican votes but Republicans have a 33-vote majority anyway because of gerrymandered districts, many in those six states. In those states some have considered extending their gerrymandered Federal House Districts to a proportional distribution of the Electoral College from this time forward. It has been noted that if those six states had so assigned their electors in last November’s election, Mitt Romney would now be President. If such an arrangement became law in those few states we would thereafter see Republican Presidents elected over Democrats who would each time have won the popular vote, election after election. Proportional representation would be fair only if it applied everywhere and its electoral base was evenly apportioned. Needed: non-partisan apportionment commissions in every state!
I am standing and vigorously applauding! My shouts of “Brava, brava!” are deafening and extended!!!! Thank you for voicing THE TRUTH! I proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with you and will “have your back” if attacked! Lord, protect this man in his courageous stand in Your defense!
Thanks, Steve. Your ebullient praise embarrasses me but I appreciate it. God bless.
Thanks for this, and for the whole series.
I have posted part of what you wrote about same sex marriage on my Facebook wall, with a link to this post – which might get me and you some strong reactions from both sides.
Meanwhile on immigration reform you might be interested in http://www.e2visareform.org/. My wife and I are in the USA legally on this E-2 visa, but the arcane rules make it very hard for us, and for our children if we had any, to stay in the country even as we run successful businesses employing Americans.
Bold words from our President. Will they be treated as so many unfulfilled campaign promises are? Two things from me and then I’m out. 1. As long as the voting procedure is to force people to leave their homes and congregate at a central location, voting lines will be long and tedious. When will the country who invented iphones learn to embrace technology? It would certainly at least cut down on the long lines. 2. Since when is the US expelling students and engineers? As long as immigrants adhere to our laws, however stringent they need to be, there will be a place for them here. It is the thousands of illegal immigrants that are making it difficult for the legitimate few. I’m sure Peter can confirm that it is difficult and problematic, but not impossible to stay in the good graces of “uncle sam”. So, the question needs to be, “is it worth the hastle of paperwork?” And before you say, “technically, we are all immigrants!”…there is a difference between people that came or were forced into this country through the front door and people who sneak in under the back fence. Especially considering the financial predicament that this country is in…. they might want to consider a detour to China. They might have more oportunities there anyway.
I’m OUT!
Drice2, I agree on voting lines. But the US routinely expels graduates, in engineering and other disciplines, who are not citizens, although many would like to stay and work. Yes, it is not impossible for E2 visa holders like us to stay legal, but it involves a lot of time and expense taken from the business, and there is always the risk of renewal being turned down at an immigration officer’s whim, which makes it really hard to plan ahead as is needed for a successful business. Some simple changes could make life a lot easier for us, and for the government, without any risk of letting more illegals in. If you agree, sign this White House petition.
Drice2 and Peter
I must respectfully disagree with you both on voting. There is no way to make online or even local electronic voting dependable. In a recent study a group created the safest, least hack-able online voting hub presently possible and then challenged the world to hack it and change the results. This was done within the first hour. The hackers got into the secure hub and changed the results. I forget how it went but the new “results” were the equivalent of having student body at the University of Michigan declare the University of Minnesota to be the true “U of M.”
Electronic voting is inherently unsafe and with all that is at stake in local as well as national elections the only reliable way to vote is with paper ballots that can be recounted in case of a statistical tie. Recently several elections have been overturned under unverifiable circumstances. In one (2012) a Wisconsin Supreme Court special election result was reversed the next day because a (Waukesha) county election official “discovered” an extra 15,000 or so votes which had been stored, she said, on her home computer. The new winner, because of her “find” happened to be her former boss. Still, who was to say? The election was all electronic with no paper ballots that could be recounted and the fraud could not be proven. Efficiency and convenience are no substitute for integrity.
As to the long lines at voting stations. In most reported cases, the long lines occurred in places where fewer voting machines were available, especially in non-white precincts in Ohio and Florida. Only those precincts had the long lines like the one the 102-year old woman who sat in the First Lady’s section at the State of the Union Address had endured. The average wait time to vote in this past election was 12 minutes for whites and close to an hour for non-whites. In both those swing states, officials had limited the number of voting machines in poling places where most voters were black or brown, even pulling machines from those precincts in spite of record turn-outs in primaries. No one should have to wait to vote. And if people voted on paper no machines would be needed and ballots could be printed cheaply enough to assure that everyone could vote in a timely manner. The only reason we want electronic voting is to have quick results. I would rather wait a day for results I could trust than get instant results which do not match the exit polls as has recently happened in several recent elections. Why do paper ballots match exit polls at a high statistical rate but not in elections which were electronic? There is only one good explanation for this: the unreliability of electronic results.
Here in Minnesota I vote on a paper ballot which is then “read” by a scanner. Someone could hack the scanner, of course, but at least if an election was close, like the one I mentioned (above) in Wisconsin, the votes could be recounted here by hand.
I’m not sure you really disagree. I too would go with all paper ballots. But something needs to be done about those long lines, especially if there is deliberate discrimination going on. In the UK a high proportion of voting is now done by mail, paper ballots mailed out and back in advance. There have of course been some reports of fraud connected with this, but the same is true with voting in person. Do you have any comments on this method? Of course it depends on a good reliable mail service.