Who’s in and who’s out | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Much is written about polarization in American life today. Examples of things that separate us - like the urban/rural divide and the college educated/ high school education divide. We all want to figure it out either to fix it or use it to gain power. We stand on either side waiting for the other to blink and back down.

    Matthew Dowd, political pundit and former GOP Chief Strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney Campaign offers four nouns that go a long way toward explaining the criteria of separation and disdain of other. His words are: White. Male. Christian. Heterosexual. I was taken aback when he offered this conclusion. I am married to a white Christian, heterosexual man. Many of my friends fit the same criteria. They are not the problem.

    But I hear Dowd's description and I see white male men marching in Charlottesville shouting, "Jews will not replace us." I see Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and young men who do heinous acts like bashing Mr. Pelosi's head with a hammer, then saying on a talk radio that he wished he could have done more harm. I see a young white male neo-Nazi white supremacist talk about a plan to destroy the city of Baltimore!

    I go back to Dowd's words and can imagine drawing a square with a door on each side. Each door is labeled with one of these words. You can only open the door if you align with the noun on the door.

    If you charted a graph of whether we could open one of the doors, there would be more of us on the outside than on the inside. Women, people of color, Muslims, Jews, and all other religions would be on the outside. And if you are gay, you can forget about getting "in."

    This is obviously an oversimplification of a multi-faceted problem, but what I see seems to bear this out in many instances. Laws to suppress the vote happen more often in poor minority areas. Bathrooms are banned for any who do not fit the male/female signage on the door. Women's rights are being stripped at an alarming rate and white Christian nationalism claims God on their side, and their side only.

    Something else happens when the doors are shut. Those on the inside stagnate, rot and stink as they work to keep everybody else down and out. Hate and mistrust are hard work. Stoking fear of the other is a cheap shot. Opening the doors lets the cool breeze through. Opening doors creates community and a recognition that at the end of the day, beyond the fuss and the hoopla, we are really one people.

    Recently a group that was discussing the disaffiliation happening in Methodism - largely over homosexuality - I told them that when I err, I want to err on the side of grace, on the side of love, the side of justice. The many of us who are not male, white, Christian, and heterosexual have numbers and mass on our side. We can be the influencers who open doors to healing and oneness.

    Am I the only one tired of the ugly? Am I the only one ready to be done with everything from self-righteous piety to stinking thinking? Perhaps it is my naivete, but I think it is my faith that fuels a hope we can be better than we are. The Old Testament vision of the lion laying down with the lamb, and swords turned into plowshares seems as far away from reality as ever. I think there will be a special place in hell for people who delight in hurting others for their own gain.

    There are enough of us to demand a level playing field and a right to vote. There are enough of us to tell name-calling politicians, election deniers, coup plotters, and conspiracy theorists to cease and desist. Peaceful resistance is always appropriate. Show up to vote. Find out about candidates; see who funds their campaigns. See with whom they align themselves. It's likely a very loud minority. They are afraid they will be replaced. They are afraid of education that would influence change. They taunt and bully. If you stand back and look at the antics it appears foolish and out of step at best, and malicious at most.

    Like I said, not every white, male, Christian, heterosexual is guilty of the ugly antics. Why then do so many sit silently, thus feeding the frenzy? Everyone born has a place at the table and a right to live an abundant life. There are so many circumstances of a broken world that work against us, even when we are just being the who we are. At the heart of the issue is a spiritual breakdown. Values, integrity, civil discourse, truth, and all the other hallmarks of a civil society are on the chopping block. The conscience of America needs to be awakened again for our time.

    Lib Campbell is a retired Methodist pastor, retreat leader and hosts the website: avirtualchurch.com. She welcomes comments at libcam05@gmail.com.