I am going to try to make a statement here that transcends the current political storm. Is that possible? I don't know, but I'll try.

When, after this election, all the dust settles, we have some serious soul-searching to do as a nation, especially as to what it means to be American. It is the vast range of different answers to that question that drives what we call "the culture wars," and which contributes to a paralyzing polarization between our parties. I would like to suggest that we have been looking to wrong places when we try to answer that question.

I would like to suggest that the essence of American identity consists in our willingness to live according to the ideals of the U.S. Constitution. One may come from any religious background, and have any theory of economics they want. They are in, as long as they desire to abide by the Constitutional pattern for the conduct of civic life. If they have embraced this idea and want to enter into it, that's enough.

We need to be careful of adding other expectations, such as, "They need to embrace an American way of life." As reasonable as that sounds, it allows us to exclude people based on what is comfortable for us, instead of whether they have embraced the idea of democracy. It allows us to exclude people who wear clothes we don't like, or wear head coverings, or the wrong kind of head coverings. It allows us to exclude them because they pray, or don't pray, or pray facing in the wrong direction, or pray in a language we do not understand. For these reasons, we cannot insist on requirements beyond the requirement that one desire and intend to live within the land governed by Constitutional ideals.

We also, though, cannot insists on less than this. If we know for certain that somebody intends to set up a theocracy on our shores, to force the practice of their own beliefs upon those who do not voluntarily share them, or to commit crimes, they are not an acceptable candidate for immigration. There is no religious litmus test that can determine this, though. Religious life in a democracy needs to be of the kind that is able to find within itself a tolerance for the practice of other religions, or no religion at all, alongside itself. The arguments about whether or not certain religions are inherently more susceptible to being intolerant than others is an important one, but our immigration policy needs to be blind to everything except the question of whether this or that particular person is capable of practicing their convictions, whatever they may be, without jeopardizing others, or infringing on their freedoms.

There is much debate about the place of religion in American identity, and about the relationship of religion, properly speaking, to the American "civic religion." I think this confusion is cleared up if we dare to think of the Constitution (along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights) as the quasi-scriptural documents that make up the text of our civic religion. We furthermore have a series of historical moments, monuments, proclamations, and documents that have acquired status as part of the canon of our self-understanding, including (by no means limited to) the annals of the Civil War, the advance of the suffrage and civil rights movements, the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.--not to mention the record of legal interpretation by the Supreme Court.

My thinking about this is stimulated by reflecting on how the Torah, in the Old Testament, functioned as the founding myth for the nation of Israel. It was none other than a constitution. Our own constitution holds a place very much parallel to that. Most Old Testament scholars agree that, as Israel evolved in its self-identity, tribes were grafted in on the basis of their coming to understand themselves in light of this story--and not primarily because of their biological or genetic heritage. Inclusion was always by adoption, as tribes recognized the story of the Exodus to be the story that essentially defined them. They thereby came to call Israel's God their own. Israel, in turn, embraced them as one of their own.

It makes sense that we sometimes feel our nation's founding story possesses a sacred quality, and that it brought into being something transcendent to the work of mere mortals, because that is the nature of myths of origin. Establishing a reasonable premise for how things got started, they then form the basis for reasoning about what takes place from that point on--about how we will conduct ourselves civilly, for example. In other words, myths of origin reflect particular values, which then get projected out into the details of how we will conduct ourselves.

It is not then a complicated thing to understand how someone is established as "American" in their identity. It is by joining oneself to the quasi-sacred story reflected in our own myth of origin, as it is conveyed in our founding documents and our history. To require that one, in addition, subscribe to the Bible, or to any particular interpretation of the Bible--or, on the other hand, to forbid someone the practice of their religion, whether that is to a particular understanding of the Bible or any other religious perspective--is to add to this list of requirements in a way that unjustly (from the standpoint of our Constitution) excludes.

It is not, then, a complicated thing to determine what it means to be American. At the same time, it seems to have become very difficult for us to do so, and we have become polarized and contentious in the process. I would like to suggest--continuing with the understanding of our Constitution as our myth of origin--that part of the reason is that we are not very good at practicing our civic religion. Most of us have not reviewed the the basics of our Constitutional form of government since eighth-grade civics class. There is little chance we can be informed and inspired by its values if we do not have a conception of it in our minds. It is ironic but true that recent immigrants usually know more about American civics and history than those of us who were born here.

So many of our culture wars, and the endless arguments they generate, originate from our appeal to things which, though they may be vitally important to many individuals in our society, cannot fairly be considered essential to whether or not one is American. One of the more damaging forms of this, in my opinion, is the claim that adherence to Christianity is essential to American identity. Once that becomes part of our understanding, the question of what it means to be American becomes as complicated and contested as the debate about which religion or denomination is correct. (If you haven't noticed, that's not an argument likely to come to quick and peaceful resolution.)

This view of citizenry still leaves ample room for disagreement about how to interpret the Constitution, and ample room for argument about which values--in addition to the civic values embodied in the Constitution--take precedence in public life. That's why we have democracy, so we can settle questions about how our daily lives together are going to look. That's why we have a legislative branch of government, and why that legislative process is reflected on all levels, from the federal to the local. That's why we have the Supreme Court, and state and local courts beneath that.

Framing ourselves as adherents to America's civic religion, though, and making sure not to confuse that civic religion with religion in general, will allow us to partake in these disagreements productively, and to see our government as more than just a necessary evil. Our participation in it can possess a sacred quality, in that it represents our participation in our sacred founding myth, and our continuity with those who oversaw its coming into being, and with those who have struggled to define its ideals for generations. It allows us to experience our identity as Americans as uplifting and inspiring, without confusing that with the identity that individuals derive from their participation in their religion of choice (even if that religion happens to be no religion or atheism).

I started this post by saying I hope to say something that transcends the current political storm. I hope I have. In any case, I do think we have plenty of soul-searching ahead of us. As for me, the above thoughts show some of the directions that might take.

U.S. Christians who have supported Donald Trump, you have shown how weak your judgment is, how superficially you have read your own Gospels, and how laughable is your supposed commitment to any kind of spiritual vision that goes beyond the desire for strength and toughness--exactly as the world defines those things. God forbid that the world should ever again believe you when you speak about unseeable things, when you have spoken so falsely about things that are obvious to the eye. You should have been wise enough to know not to yoke the Gospel message to such a dubious political venture, and to remain publicly silent if your heart--for whatever reason--continued to insist that you vote for it. There was no justifiable reason to contaminate the Christian message by associating it with something so obviously controversial and foul.

People in the world have access to the words of Christ, through the Bible you claim to live by. They hear these words in their plain and simple sense. They may not share your conviction that Jesus is the son of God, but they are rightly offended when you suggest that real Christianity means accepting cultural goals that cut, perpendicularly, across the plain meaning of what he said (think about the Sermon on the Mount, for example). Ironically, they see your own spiritual condition more clearly than you do, noticing that your behaviors and attitudes bear no resemblance to those of the person you claim to be the perfect embodiment of God, and God himself.

As a result, many will choose to be atheists, just to avoid association with those who honor Christ's words with their lips, but not with actions that reflect those words--or those who cherrypick those words to fit their prejudices against others, but not to judge themselves. Ironically, in doing so, many of these atheists will be more possessed by the truth of Christ's words--and perhaps by the life that is in them--than those who, although they wear the name of Christian, do not tempt anyone to apply that name to them as an adjective.

Runners are priests, in a way.
They dance against gravity
as a kind of ritual.

They exchange air more rapidly
than anything else
currently on the planet.

I wonder what village elders discover
when they run long distances
well into old age.
I will only know if I do it.

The meditation is never over
until you say it is over.

I do not fast for forty days.
I run for thirty minutes.

I do not run to get in shape.
I run to run.

The first animal we humans ever domesticated was ourselves. We have been seeking solace in lofty ideas and spiritual experiences ever since, as a way of compensation. Visions of spiritual possibilities are the projection of the order and harmony we lost when we forsook nature. The reason we experience nature as a potential evil is because we have become detached and estranged from it--to the point we perceive it as our enemy rather than as the ground on which we stand. 

Civilization is like a game we play. How high can we build it before nature tears it down once again? Also, when civilization is leveled, what parts of it will remain intact, demonstrating that they were built in a way not simply at odds with nature? What parts were built and remained sufficiently close to the ground? Finally, when it is leveled, will we remember and retain anything of what we have learned about the potential improvements to nature brought about through the idea of humanity, or will we simply return to nature with a vengeance, which is barbarism?

At some point in our evolution, the human species became impressed with an idea: it did not need to define itself merely in relation to nature. It could create an order of its own--a second nature. It could be a nature unto itself, and to that it would refer for meaning. The realm of spirit is the projection of this ideal. The apex of this idea is the dictum that mankind is made in the image of God. Our possession by this idea is what Genesis alludes to when it speaks of God breathing a soul into our bodies of clay. It corresponds also with the development of language. 

When you see humanity in its highly domesticated forms (someone polished, seemingly living above nature’s brutish demands), we rightly may imagine that nature, in its wild state, remains underneath, and is paying some price for all this civilization. We have not entirely bred that out of ourselves, after all. Unless some conscious rapprochement with it has been made, it lives underground as shadow, and is subject to all the mechanisms that attend repressed material, including projection. 

Buildings, indoors, electric lights, and social protocol and decorum--all of these can be occasions of suffering for the underlying human animal, in whom wildness continues to live. ”My life fits me like a straitjacket," we might say. Similarly, we could describe society as a consensually agreed upon (mostly) straitjacket. Religious forms, as a projection of the spiritual ideal, console us in the tension we experience in this situation. In addition to this function though, which could be construed as a negative one, they could also be seen as inviting a retrograde movement, a return to more primitive forms of experience, that are nonetheless in service of forward motion. This would be to recognize a uniquely positive function of religion, and not merely to rest with a negative conclusion about what it accomplishes.

Some people are better at being human than others. We frame this as a moral achievement. We need to recognize, though, that our criterion of “moral” is self-referential. Failure is defined from the standpoint of those who have succeeded. There are numerous biases and presuppositions at work in this, which contribute to the suffering of those who, for whatever reason, may not be able to achieve the same integration into society. We need to recognize much of our judgment upon failure for what it actually is: the suspicion that our construct of society is not as secure as we put it forth to be, and the fear that it may not hold. Failures remind us of the fact that civilization is not guaranteed, or even the deepest truth of our own experience. Little children are like little animals. More to the point, they are like animals who have only just begun to experience training towards domestication. We tolerate instinctive behavior from them that we are less willing to tolerate in adults, by which time training should have had its proper effect.

A condition that commonly attends the above-described situation is shame. Shame is basically fear that one’s underlying animal nature will be discovered. Since that underlying animal substrate is perceived as threatening to the construct of society, we are eager to keep it entirely out of sight. In the case of the most extreme scenarios—and undoubtedly as has actually happened at points in history—the public outing of one’s animal nature has been punished even by death. In addition to fearing such punishment from others, though, we have largely internalized the attitude of suspicion, fear, and hostility towards this nature as it exists in ourselves, putting us at war with ourselves. There is hardly a hair-shirt rough enough to satisfy our animosity towards it. Most remedies for healing of shame do not touch upon this deeper layer from which it originates. Instead, they involve constructing a relatively deep image of self about which one can feel positive—yet that image is still one that must meet the criteria of civilization. The underlying animal resides beneath that, completely unassured of its all-rightness, and its safety.

The ear, the eye, and the brain are not primarily physical things, but symbols that indicate to us the interface of transmutation between the realm of the objective and the subjective (to the extent we even know what that means), and vice versa. Moreover, these symbols are not static, but evolving. This generation’s progress in neuroscience demonstrates how dynamic is our grappling with the question of how it is that we know, and how it is that we are at all. At the same time, it demonstrates how our philosophical, psychological, and material-science understandings constantly bleed together in our acts of considering, theorizing, and knowing.

We humans are by no means the swiftest of animals—yet, through our unique powers of consciousness, we routinely travel faster than any other animal on the planet. Likewise, we fly higher and faster than any bird, though there is nothing about us, on a strictly physical level, that makes it possible for us to fly at all. We do not possess traits that would make us the most destructive of creatures, yet we have surpassed, a-million times over, the damaging capacity of any other living thing on earth. Perhaps we do not ponder often enough how strange we are as humans. In us, physiology introduces a power to evolve and adapt almost at will, once an idea of the advantage of doing so becomes compelling to us. We may not be entirely able to call ourselves God, but we certainly have god-like powers.

Joy is tempered by hatred far more painfully than by sadness, these days. Hatred will have to be abandoned and renounced before entering any heaven worthy of the name.