Bloody Summer of 2016 and Coming U.S. Elections: "A Great Sorting on the Trump Question Is Coming" (As Guns Fail [Again] to Save Us)

America,
Put the gun on the ground and step away.
Please.

— Amanda Kerri (@eternalkerri) July 8, 2016

Reader Writes: "How Do We Know That the Bigotry and Bullying 'in God's Name' Isn't What 'God' Is All About and What 'God' Wants?"

In a comment this morning responding to my posting yesterday featuring Tom Ehrich's observation that we in the American public square need to have done with the bigotry and bullying done in God's name and giving a very bad name to Christians, ClevelandGirl writes,  

David Bromwich on Obama's Pragmatism: Maxims That Ratify the Existing Order--Any Order

I'd like to return briefly this morning to the article by David Bromwich to which I linked yesterday, about how the Obama presidency is a continuation of the Bush one.  I see this morning that Bromwich's statement has made the round of progressive blog sites, and deservedly so: it's a sharp, pointed, necessary statement that I hope someone in the current administration will pay attention to.  Though I very much doubt anyone will, except to scorn Bromwich's critique . . . .

More Reflections on Parallels Between Discussion of Slavery and of Homosexuality: The Persistent Obstructionist Tendency of Churches

I’ve been involved in two blog threads this weekend, both of which had strong toxins flowing through them.  And it suddenly hits me: the toxins come from the same sources, though the threads are not similar in other respects.  Since this insight follows from what I posted earlier today about the national debate re: the morality of slavery in the 19th century, I want to develop it a bit.

One of the two discussions was at a local website where the blog proprietor posted some good comments about Charles Blow’s op-ed piece in this weekend’s New York Times.  As Blow notes, a recent Gallup poll shows that, for the first time since polling on this point has been done in the U.S., a majority of Americans approve of the morality of gay “relations.”  And the biggest jump in those shifting from disapproval to approval is among men.

Still Looking for Abraham: Lincoln vs. Stephen Douglas on the Morality of Slavery (with Implications for the Debate about Homosexuality in American Today)

*I mentioned a few days ago that I’ve been reading Daniel Mark Epstein’s Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (NY: Random House, 2004).  I noted that I might have more to share about that book in a few days.

One of the points sustaining my attention as I read this informative study of the amazing connections between Lincoln and Whitman is the backdrop of national debate about the morality of slavery at the time Lincoln became president.  The book does a super job of sketching that backdrop and showing how it formed the basis for the president and poet’s connection to each other.  It’s impossible to be reminded of what that national moral debate entailed without thinking about our current national debate regarding the morality of gay lives and relationships.

News Updates: Tennessee Gay Firing, Vatican and Human Rights, Obama and Lincoln

Interesting updates to several items I’ve posted in the recent past.

As I noted several days ago, when David Hill, a hotel employee in Tennessee, recently found himself fired because he was gay, another employee of the hotel, Leonard Stoddard, courageously blew the whistle and informed the media that his colleague had been terminated because of his sexual orientation (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/01/prop-8-and-black-voters-again-timothy.html). My posting notes that Stoddard expected to be fired in turn.

And so it has happened. Pam’s House Blend and Box Turtle Bulletin have just carried reports today that, following his whistle-blowing interview with the media, Leonard Stoddard was fired (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9009, www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/01/12/8012#comments). By email. Predictably, hotel owner Tarun Surti accuses Stoddard of lying. And just as predictably, he claims that the termination of Hill and now of Stoddard is due to financial exigency.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen academic institutions in states where there is no legal protection for gay employees subject to discrimination—states like Tennessee, in other words—behave just this way, I’d be a rich man now. Fire folks because they’re gay. Claim that they and their supporters have lied when they blow the whistle. Then invent a case of financial exigency or (undocumented) poor job performance to cover your backside.

This story illustrates why the battle for gay rights cannot be confined to the right of marriage. Too many gay citizens of the United States still live in places—in 31 states, for God's sake!—in which there is no legal protection at all from being fired, denied housing, or denied basic rights in many other respects, solely because one is gay. All LGBT citizens of the United States lack the most basic protection of all, in cases in which one is assaulted simply due to sexual orientation.

Laws defining such assaults as hate crimes in the case of women assaulted for their gender or people of color for their race are in place. There are no such federal protections in place for those who are gay.

We have a long way to go.

I’ve also blogged repeatedly about the Vatican’s opposition to the 19 December resolution presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations that called for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality and for inclusion of gay human beings in the human rights covenant of the UN (see, e.g., http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/01/questions-that-wont-die-vatican-and.html).

I’m heartened to see America magazine address this topic in its latest editorial (http://americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11348). As the editorial notes, the Vatican professes to condemn violence against gays and lesbians, but found the wording of the UN resolution open to applications that might, Rome thinks, lead to discrimination against people of faith who want to maintain anti-gay moral stances.

But as the editorial also notes,

Last year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hate crimes in this country against gays and lesbians rose by 6 percent, while crimes against almost every other group fell. Stronger public steps are necessary to oppose the execution and murder of gays and lesbians.

Yes. And in the tortuous and painful debates now underway about the relationship between the African American and the gay communities about which I don't know how to refrain from blogging, because they continue, I hope that these brute facts about the legal position in which gay citizens find themselves in this country can remain on the table.

It does no good to compare gay suffering and black suffering in a zero-sum game. Both communities have suffered and continue to suffer in gross and unjustifiable ways.

But one of those two communities nonetheless enjoys—at least, and thank God—federal protection from violent acts perpetrated against members of that community, solely because of innate characteristics of members of the community. The other does not. And this lacuna should not be justified or overlooked by any member of any marginalized community. What we allow to be done to others because of their skin color, gender, or sexual orientation will one day be done to us solely because of who we are, too.

I’d also like to note a very good article at Huffington Post recently, which deals with a topic about which I have blogged repeatedly: the relationship between Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln (www.huffingtonpost.com/john-stauffer/what-obama-can-learn-from_b_156997.html). John Stauffer’s interpretation of Lincoln’s 1860 inaugural address differs from mine, in that he sees Lincoln bending over backwards to appease slaveholders (for my reading, see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/12/societies-changing-moral-minds-changing.html and http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/12/lincoln-vs-obama-re-better-angels.html).

Even so, Stauffer ends up in precisely the same place in which I end up in my reflections on the Lincoln-Obama parallels. My postings argue that Lincoln saw clearly the need to chart a moral course for the nation that excluded slavery. He recognized the necessity of making momentous moral choices even as he engaged in the necessary work of political compromise.

And he eventually recognized that he had a moral obligation to form solidarity with his friends and supporters, not with those who appeared to have power but who had no intent of walking where Lincoln insisted the nation had to walk. Just as I think Mr. Obama has an obligation to do in the case of those progressive citizens who see his election as a mandate for real change, effective change, and not just cosmetic change. As Stauffer notes,

Their [i.e., Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’s] profound shift from enemies to friends stemmed in large part from Lincoln's abandonment of his "team of rivals" model of leadership, coupled with his realization that he needed radicals and progressives--especially blacks--on his side.

Douglass' response to Lincoln's Inaugural Addresses thus offers a salutary lesson for Obama: as he tries to move beyond partisan politics, he needs to be careful not to alienate his natural allies and renounce his campaign promise to "bring the change our country needs."

The choice of openly gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson to give a kick-off prayer at the Lincoln Memorial during Obama’s inauguration is a step in the right direction. The choice of Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration is not such a step, in my view.

The Lincoln Bible and Obama's Inauguration

Andrew Sullivan is reporting today that Barack Obama will use Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural bible at his 2009 inauguration (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/12/hell-use-the-li.html). This is the first time the bible will have been used since Lincoln’s inauguration. Sullivan links to a story about this at Politico (www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16813.html).

If memory serves me, the bibles used in presidential inaugurations are typically closed. I’d be interested in seeing the new president set a precedent and open the Lincoln bible as he puts his hand on it.

As he does so, I’d suggest several passages to which the Lincoln bible might be opened, ones that I suspect inspired the president who first used this bible, as he fought for human rights for those unjustly deprived of rights by the majority. Two passages that come to mind immediately are Isaiah 58 and Luke 4.

In the first passage, the prophet addresses the nation—a nation concerned that its fasts and religious observances never seemed to reach the notice of God. Isaiah’s advice to the nation? Stop fasting and start loosing the bonds of those unjustly bound. Then God might hear you, since breaking yokes and loosing the chains of injustice are the fast God desires:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke? (Isaiah 58: 6)

The passage from Luke is Luke’s account of what happened as Jesus began his ministry following his forty-day fast in the desert. In Luke’s telling of the story, Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth, stands in synagogue to read from the scroll of Isaiah, and makes an astonishing announcement.

He announces that in his life and ministry, the Jubilee is at hand, permanently. The Jubilee was an ancient motif of Jewish culture and religion, a year in which debts were to be forgiven and slaves set free. Needless to say, for making such an announcement, Jesus was hounded out of town:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read (Luke 4:16). 17The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Powerful passages that drive to the very heart of Lincoln’s presidency, and to the heart of our democratic society, in which there is a foundational commitment to break the chains of any people we see unjustly enchained. And are there such people in our society today? People whose bondage is not recognized by the majority, and is even approved by the religious worthies of the day—as slavery was at the time of Lincoln?

Christie Keith thinks so (www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/special-commentary-barack-obama-rick-warren-supposed-straight-allies). And she is perplexed by the apparent inability of millions of her fellow citizens to see the effects of this bondage on the lives of millions of their brothers and sisters.

Lincoln Vs. Obama re: Better Angels: Demands of the Moral Point of View

In the wake of the Rick Warren inauguration pick, there’s a lot of chatter online about the Lincoln-Obama analogy. I appreciate the discussion that has developed about my own posting on this topic (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/12/obama-and-lincoln-rick-warren-and-price.html).

In the discussion thread, Sandy, a blogger at the Direct Democracy site, suggests that Lincoln’s first inaugural address shows his intent to draw the country together rather than to divide it—just as Obama’s choice of Rick Warren intends to heal rather than deepen our wounds. I find that Sandy developed this argument at length yesterday in a posting at the DD site, entitled “To Understand Warren, Look to Lincoln” (www.mydd.com/story/2008/12/22/122856/26).

Sandy concludes that, just as Lincoln sought to preserve the Union in his “better angels” address, Obama is reaching across divisive ideological lines to hold us together as a people. In her view, “Maybe he is not so much giving Rick Warren a platform for his archaic and offensive beliefs, but rather delivering a statement that any continuation of the animosity of the culture wars is not going to emanate from this Administration.”

Mark Crispin Miller offers a contrasting analysis of the Obama-Lincoln analogy on a posting at the News from Underground site (http://markcrispinmiller.com/2008/12/obama-lincoln.html/comment-page-1). His piece builds on the argument of John F. Harris and Alexander Burns in a recent Politico posting entitled “Straw Man? Historians Say Obama Is No Lincoln” (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=38423BFB-18FE-70B2-A8EF01A155063BF4).

Harris and Burns note that Obama has repeatedly drawn the comparison between Lincoln and himself. They note the influence on Obama of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s study of Lincoln’s political strategy, Team of Rivals. They also conclude, along with various historians, that the analogy between Obama and Lincoln is easily overdrawn: the two lived in different eras and pursued different political goals.*

For Mark Crispin Miller, the Lincoln-Obama analogy breaks down with the selection of Rick Warren to deliver Obama’s inaugural invocation. Miller characterizes Warren as an extremist. In his view, there is an unwholesome “grandiosity” in Obama’s assumption that one can bring an extremist minority inside one’s tent, and that they won’t continue trying to burn the tent down.

In my view, the most perceptive consideration of the Lincoln-Obama analogy I’ve read to date is Geoffrey Dunn’s “Et Tu, Obama?: The Choice of Rick Warren Is Unacceptable” on Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-dunn/et-tu-obama-the-choice-of_b_152165.html). Dunn notes that he was an early supporter of Obama who criticized the Clinton campaign for its willingness to employ racist tactics in the primary.

Up to the Warren selection, Dunn has been willing to give “a couple of free passes” to Obama, because of his strong support for the new president. Now things have changed. The choice of Rick Warren has changed things for Dunn. In Dunn’s view, this choice is “morally reprehensible.” Dunn zeroes in on the crucial difference between Lincoln and Obama—that is, the radically different way in which these two leaders address the burning human rights issue of their day, as they build their teams of rivals:

Lincoln may have brought together a "team of rivals" in his cabinet, but at his First Inaugural, Lincoln was absolutely steadfast and unequivocal about the about the sanctity of the Union. He made a celebrated plea for Americans to find the "better angels of our nature" on the issue. He gave no ground.

And Lincoln also had something very interesting to say at that First Inaugural that sheds light on the issue of gay marriage in America. "If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view, justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one."

And that is, of course, precisely my point in my own posting probing the Lincoln-Obama analogy. Like Dunn, I supported Mr. Obama early on in the campaign; like him, I continually expressed consternation at the racist overtones of the Clinton camp. Like him, I have been willing to give passes to the president-elect.

Until the Warren selection. Where Lincoln “gave no ground” in defense of human rights, in my view, Obama is willing to give ample ground, when it comes to the human rights of gay persons. And since I am the ground being given, I naturally have certain concerns about this softness regarding my human rights. Obama’s selection of Warren signals his willingness to give ground—a willingness woven through the culture that dominates the American religious landscape, the culture of evangelical Christianity, as well as the culture of those allied with evangelicalism on “family” issues, including the Catholic church.

Where Lincoln was willing to challenge the dominant perception of people of faith in his time frame, Obama asks for conciliation. Where Lincoln recognized that the “moral point of view” demands that we react strongly to any attempt of the majority to deprive the minority of human rights by “the mere force of numbers,” Mr. Obama has shown himself (along with his evangelical friends of the right) to be tone-deaf to the most urgent assault on human rights in our culture at present.

When I compare the two men as leaders, I see a world of difference. And that difference lies along the simple, stark line of doing what is right. Right at the moment. Right when there is a price to pay for doing right.

Lincoln sought to preserve the Union. But he did not do so by abdicating his unwavering commitment to the human rights of enslaved people. He stood unshakeable on the side of right, and the Union did split over this issue—as anyone could see it would certainly split from the time this advocate of the human rights of slaves took office. As Lincoln himself knew would happen if he continued standing for what was right.

I am intently concerned these days with the way in which the “team of rivals” metaphor is being used by Obama and some of his supporters. I wrote yesterday about the attempt (an illicit one, in my view) to use the rubric of cooperation and conciliation as a way of silencing gay persons advocating for their rights, vis-à-vis the Rick Warren selection, and of silencing the growing number of American citizens who are willing to make common cause with gay citizens in this historic movement for rights.

Here’s how I see what is going on. Our participatory democracy is a big table at which everyone has to have a place, if we want that democracy to be authentic. Many voices are now telling gay Americans and our allies to come sit at the table. Stop being petulant. Eat and enjoy; talk and make merry with everyone else who has to be invited to the table.

And yet we look at the table settings, and we find that there is no place at all there for us. And it’s not as if Rick Warren and his cronies are suddenly being invited to a table from which they have long been excluded. God knows, they’ve been at the table lo these many years, eating and drinking and making merry. And assuring that the gays don’t get to the table.

Now all of a sudden the problem of inclusion and acceptance and reaching out is the gays’ fault? And the problem of making a place at the table is a problem of finding room for Rick Warren and the religious right?

The discourse of inclusion with which many of us are being bombarded these days, not only from the right but from the center as well, is, to say the least, false. It covers over the real problem of inclusion in our participatory democracy. It shields those who keep creating that problem and manipulating it for ugly political ends from responsibility for what they are doing. It inverts the problem of inclusion and blames the exclusionary impulse in our culture on those being excluded!

When religious language—honeyed language about love and forgiveness—is used to drive home the point of gay responsibility for exclusion of the religious right, then something is radically wrong. Religious rhetoric should never be used to justify exclusionary impulses that then target those excluded as if they are responsible for their own exclusion—and that of others who have the predominant places at the table.

How can those on the right—and, increasingly, those in the center—get away with such a bold distortion of the actual dynamics of inclusion-exclusion that govern the place of gay Americans at the table of participatory democracy? To their shame, they can do so because they are in the majority. They have the larger voice. They can shout louder.

They can more easily make it seem that God is on their side.

This is precisely the manipulation of religious consciousness Lincoln aims squarely at and disempowers in his first inaugural address, when he observes that the moral point of view does not permit the majority to trample on the rights of the minority, through sheer force of numbers. Morality is about something else entirely.

It is about taking the side of the oppressed, no matter who they are. It is about evaluating every social situation at each point in history to see whose rights are most tenuous and threatened, who is most in need of a place at the table.

It is about creating a table big enough for us all, at which no voice is allowed to shout others down simply because it represents a bigger majority. It is about setting a table at which the voices of those most marginalized receive a hearing every bit as respectful as the hearing given to those who represent the big number, the big bucks, the power and glory of the political and economic spheres.

In my view, Lincoln got it. Obama? I’ll wait and see. But as I wait, I have the Rick Warren selection to contend with. And it does not bode well for the new president’s unwavering commitment to human rights—for all.


* In her response to my Lincoln-Obama posting, Sandy points out that there was no invocation at Lincoln’s inauguration. She’s right, of course. The practice of having religious authority figures pray at presidential inaugurations is a very recent one—one that dates from 1933.

My question about whether Lincoln would have invited a religious advocate of slavery to pray at his inauguration is a fantasy question, one that retrojects a present practice back into history, to make a point about the present. The force of my argument lies not with precise descriptions of historical precedents. It lies with the juxtaposition of Lincoln as an opponent of slavery with Obama as an advocate for the human rights of threatened minorities in his day.

As the husband of a friend of mine—an African-American couple, as it happens—said to me recently, given the historical precedents available to the new president (invite pastors to pray, or dispense altogether with this very recent custom), it seems even more strange that Obama chose Rick Warren for the inaugural ceremony. As my friend’s husband noted, venerable tradition would have allowed the new president to ask, for instance, that the nation observe a moment of respectful silence at the beginning of the inauguration.

That moment might have spoken more powerfully by far than any invocation we could possibly hear. And it might have healed more and been more genuinely inclusive than any partisan prayer.

Obama and Lincoln: Rick Warren and the Price of Leadership

As the Civil War approached, a majority of Americans believed that the scriptures support slavery. The abolitionist movement represented a minority of Christians—a prophetic minority who read the scriptures to support the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God. This prophetic minority challenged the presuppositions of the majority of American Christians who pointed out that Christianity had historically always approved of slavery, because the bible endorses slavery. Slavery represented the ancient practice of Christians for centuries, taken for granted as both “natural” and biblically mandated.

As the Civil War neared, many Americans began to change their mind about the practice of slavery, not primarily because of religious opposition to the practice, but because of political and economic objections to the extension of this practice westward across the continent. The alliance of the prophetic minority of people of faith opposing slavery and the majority of those who opposed the institution on pragmatic grounds led to a war to end this practice.

For the prophetic minority of abolitionist Christians who opposed what had been the longstanding dominant interpretation of the bible in support of slavery, and who challenged the cultural assumption that the bible was in favor of slavery, it was essential that churches and the culture at large begin reading the bible in a new way. This way of reading scripture would depart from literal readings that inevitably supported slavery, since the institution was taken for granted and endorsed by the bible.

This way of reading scripture would call for people of faith to recognize that the weight of scripture, beyond verses here and there taken literally, was on the side of a love that regarded all people as equal in the eyes of God, and that could not be harmonized with the subjugation of other human beings into slavery. This reading of the bible contested both the longstanding literal reading of the scripture, which easily lent support to slavery, and the assumption of the majority of Americans that, because the bible upholds slavery and because it had been practiced for millennia around the world, slavery was a morally acceptable practice.

Today, a large number of Americans, including American people of faith, believe that the bible is clear in condemning homosexuality. This widely held cultural and religious consensus argues that Christians and other religious groups have always condemned homosexuality, and that what has always been widely held and appears to enjoy biblical support should continue to obtain in our land.

A prophetic minority of people of faith departs from this longstanding reading of the scriptures and the cultural consensus that reading reflects. This prophetic minority sees the weight of scripture as endorsing love rather than hate, as respecting the worth of every individual in the eyes of God, regardless of the innate sexual orientation of the individual.

This minority of people of faith is increasingly supported by many people in the culture at large who, for philosophical and other reasons, have come to regard oppression of gay human beings as morally insupportable. For many of us today, we are at a tipping point in our culture and religious development precisely parallel to that facing Americans of the 1860s.

Just as slavery presented Americans and American churches with hard choices about where truth and right and wrong lie—and how either to go on living with slavery or to abolish it once and for all—the battle over human rights for gay and lesbian persons presents Americans and American churches with the same challenge today.

At the tipping point of the 1860s, a presidential leader came on the scene who refused to compromise or to engage in pragmatic games regarding slavery. Abraham Lincoln decided that, once and for all, the nation must do what is right and abolish slavery.

As he came to power, an influential Southern religious leader, Rev. James H. Thornwell, composed a statement on the churches, the bible, and slavery. Rev. Thornwell wrote the following words in defense of slavery in 1861. They were then adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America as the Presbyterian communion, like several other major American churches, divided over the issue of slavery:

We [supporters of slavery] stand exactly where the Church of God has always stood—from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ, from Christ to the Reformers, and from the Reformers to ourselves. We stand upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief corner stone. Shall we be excluded from the fellowship of our brethren in other lands, because we dare not depart from the charter of our faith? Shall we be branded with the stigma of reproach, because we cannot consent to corrupt the word of God to suit the intuitions of an infidel philosophy? Shall our names be cast out as evil, and the finger of scorn pointed at us, because we utterly refuse to break our communion with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with Moses, David and Isaiah, with Apostles, Prophets and Martyrs, with all the noble army of confessors who have gone to glory from slave-holding countries and from a slave-holding Church, and without ever having dreamed that they were living in mortal sin, by conniving at slavery in the midst of them? If so we shall take consolation in the cheering consciousness that the Master has accepted us (“Address on Slavery,” in The Role of Religion in American Life: An Interpretive Historical Anthology, ed., Robert R. Mathisen [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1982], p. 106.

Rev. James H. Thornwell read the bible re: slavery in 1861 precisely as Rev. Rick Warren reads the bible re: gay human beings today. As did Rev. Thornwell, Rev. Warren claims to “stand exactly where the Church of God has always stood.” As Rev. Thornwell did in 1861, Rev. Rick Warren points today to the “noble army of confessors” who have “gone to glory” from Christian cultures condemning gay people over the centuries.

In defending his choice of Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, Barack Obama states, “. . . [D]ialogue I think is part of what my campaign's been all about, that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

Question: Does disagreeing without being disagreeable permit us to dispense from making moral and political judgments about right and wrong when principles of human rights are at stake?

Question: Should Abraham Lincoln have invited Rev. James H. Thornwell to give the invocation at his inauguration? You know, to build consensus and draw together those with differing ideas and various ways of interpreting scripture? To heal the nation and keep it united?

The image is from the Atlantic website, Sept. 1999 (www.theatlantic.com/issues/99sep/9909lincoln.htm).