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Role of Religion in Public Life

On Sunday, Sept. 28, some 33 pastors across the country participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an effort by conservative Christians to challenge federal tax policy and to endorse John McCain for president. 

Pulpit Freedom Sunday was organized by a conservative legal group called the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) as the first step toward a constitutional challenge to a 54-year-old tax law that prohibits tax-exempt organizations from engaging in partisan political activities. ADF and the participating church leaders maintain that the law has a chilling effect on their First Amendment rights to free speech.  (To read more, see this piece on All Things Consideredor this piece on Talk of the Nation, both on NPR, or this piece at the Christian Science Monitor.

This isn't all that new. In 2004, some Catholic priests reportedly advised their parishioners to vote against Democrat John Kerry because of his views on abortion.

Legal scholars seem to agree that this is not a free speech issue, that any person may endorse a candidate, including a pastor from the pulpit. They simply cannot, then, turn around and claim tax-exempt status. Or, they can advocate for nonpartisan political participation by encouraging parishioners to vote or to discuss issues of public concern.

This situation raises many questions, however, about what it means to be “inclusive” in the public square.  How far do we go to welcome all viewpoints in a public dialogue? Are there some views that don’t belong because they are based on personal opinion or a belief, and not fact or reason? What is the appropriate role of religion in politics? Is there a way to separate religious and political speech? What are the moral issues when a minister uses his position to divide a congregation across political lines?

For links to resources on the role of religion in public life and on the First Amendment right to free speech, visit The Democracy Imperative. Find other resources at Everyday Democracy’s new Issue Guide Exchange:a discussion guide developed by LaGuardia Community Collegefor community dialogues in the incredibly diverse borough of Queens; another guide developed by Franklin Pierce’s New England Center for Public Life. Also see the Wingspread Declaration on Religion and Public Life, available through the Society for Values in Higher Education – a call to campuses to talk about the role colleges and universities in a religiously diverse democracy.

Friday digest-open thread 8/29/08

What a week this has been, with its historic anniversaries and future history unfurling all around us. A day ahead of Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination for the presidency, the public radio program On Point spoke with African American writers Maya Angelou, Ishmael Reed, and Alice Walker about the nomination's historical impact. You can listen to the show here. Also, check out what some bloggers of color have written about Obama's nomination at Jack & Jill Politics (Jill Tubman) and Field Negro, as well as what a swing-voting African American has to say about the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket at Booker Rising. And the first two black mayors of Hartford, Connecticut, tell Jesse A. Hamilton of the Courant about the long road from D.C. (August 28, 1963) to Denver (August 28, 2008).

Just as the Gulf Coast is marking the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, Tropical Storm Gustav is gaining strength after killing at least 68 people in the Caribbean. Is Louisiana ready? Nearby St. Tammany Parish has already declared a state of emergency, key floodgates are being tested, and evacuation plans are in place. Yet the anniversary commemorations went on this morning, albeit in abbreviated form as a tense city waited and watched for news of the next storm threat.

One speaker after another at the Democratic National Convention this week spoke of clean energy and green jobs, and in his speech Thursday night, Obama pledged a $150 billion investment "over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced." Republican nominee-in-waiting McCain has also spoken of government investments in some alternative energy sources. September 27 - the day after the first presidential debate - will be a Green Jobs Now National Day of Action, with the message, as the event website says, that Americans are ready "to tackle the climate crisis by building a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." Learn more here.

Enjoy your holiday weekend, and we'll see you back here next Tuesday.

LBJ's civil rights legacy

In this week of landmark dates in civil rights history - Tuesday's 88th anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote and Thursday's 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech - another date stands out. One hundred years ago today, Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on a farm in central Texas. He is remembered for America's involvement in Vietnam, but also for the wealth of civil rights legislation that he and the Congress passed during the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - introduced by John F. Kennedy (before his death) to outlaw racial segregation -  and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 both became law during Johnson's presidency.

Without these acts, spurred by years of organizing by Dr. King and other civil rights leaders, it's unlikely that Barack Obama would be making history this week as the first African American nominee of a major U.S. political party. LBJ also introduced legislation that created Medicare, took aim on poverty, boosted education, attacked diseases, spurred urban renewal and highway beautification, advanced natural resources conservation, and addressed crime and delinquency.

Yet Johnson always maintained that, in a democracy, it wasn't enough to pass laws; that people had to be empowered to actually live by them. A quote on the LBJ100 website reads: "We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip people to walk through those doors." This is a paraphrase of a charge Johnson delivered during his 1965 commencement address at Howard University, when Johnson told the graduates:

Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society--to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

The LBJ Library and Museum on the University of Texas campus in Austin are celebrating today with free birthday cake, as well as the kickoff of an exhibit called "To the Moon: The American Space Program in the 1960s." (As Senate Majority Leader, LBJ co-sponsored the legislation creating NASA.) Other observances planned today include the Opening of the Texas White House at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Park and a birthday celebration at the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park & Historic Site. (Another fitting way to honor LBJ's legacy would be attending the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation's conference, which happens in Austin October 3-5.)

For further reading, you might also want to explore the website of a symposium on the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, held  in 2004 at the University of Texas at Austin. Of course, Everyday Democracy has resources for communities that recognize that our national journey toward racial equity continues today.

Here's to good works

Last week, I wrote about one especially resonant exchange at the Harwood Institute's Public Innovators Summit, held August 1-3 in Stevenson, Washington. Now, as promised, I'd simply like to share links to a few organizations with which I wasn't too familiar before attending the summit. It was great to learn about the good works being done by these organizations, as well as to re-connect with others whose work I already knew. I only wish we could mention every one of them here ...

Ashoka is a global association of social entrepreneurs. Its website says that, since 1981, Ashoka has supported more than 2,000 social entrepreneurs in more than 60 countries as Ashoka Fellows. Ashoka "envisions a world where Everyone is a Changemaker: a world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change."

We all hear a lot about giving peace a chance, but the Center for Global Nonviolence is advocating a much more in-your-face ideal: nonkilling. Based on the work of Glenn D. Paige (whose 2002 book is available as a free download at the center's website), nonkilling political science suggests that, contrary to popular assumptions and centuries of history, killing fellow humans is not a normal part of the human condition. This movement, according to Paige, "seeks to direct attention beyond 'peace' and even 'nonviolence' to focus sharply upon the taking of human life."

The Five Freedoms Project is dedicated to the freedoms outlined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Its website says the Five Freedoms Project "provides local school leaders with the leadership development, coaching and support they need to address two of America’s greatest challenges — improving the performance of our public schools, and strengthening the quality of our civic discourse."

Everyone knows about Goodwill, but the work of Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties goes far beyond its network of 17 neighborhood retail stores with its commitment to creating solutions to poverty and training people for living-wage jobs.

The Heat and Warmth Fund of Michigan (THAW) helps people pay their utility bills but also encourages folks to change how they use energy and advocates for long-term solutions to energy issues. THAW partners with Detroit radio station WWJ in an annual Winter Survival Radiothon to raise money for Detroit residents' essential heat and lighting costs.

The Omidyar Network - founded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam - makes grants and investments based on a belief that every person has the potential to make a difference. Although I didn't know the name of Omidyar, I know the work of some of its grantees, including Witness (musician Peter Gabriel's project to help human rights defenders use videography to record abuses and pursue justice) and Digg, which allows people to categorize and prioritize the vast quantities of content on the Internet.

Revenue Watch Institute promotes the transparent, accountable and effective management of oil, gas, and mineral resources for the public good. RWI and its partners work in about 30 nations worldwide to help countries avoid "the resource curse" of corruption that sometimes accompanies great resource wealth. From its website: "With effective revenue management, citizen engagement and real government accountability, natural resource wealth can drive development and national growth. RWI provides the expertise, funding and technical assistance to help countries realize these benefits."

Rural Development Initiatives "is a catalyst for community vitality in rural areas. We work with rural leaders and volunteers to expand the knowledge, skills and networks for building communities that foster opportunity, thrive and endure."

Survivor Corps started as an organization to help land-mine survivors, and it's now a global network of people helping each other to overcome the effects of war and violence. Its credo: "Working together, we rise above our injuries and give back to our communities." Founder Jerry White was on ABC's "Good Morning America" last week to discuss the organization and his new book. (Video here.) Jean Feraca, another summit attendee, will welcome Jerry as a guest on her radio show Here On Earth this Tuesday, August 12.

Do we have the right to vote?

The Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, says we don't necessarily have the right as Americans to the most basic act in our democracy: voting. The group today released In Pursuit of an Affirmative Right to Vote, a preliminary report on the possible need to amend the U.S. Constitution in order to explicitly guarantee that all citizens have a fair, equal, and inclusive voice in our democracy. From its news release:

The United States voting system's foundation is built on the sand of states' rights and local control. There are fifty states, 3,141 counties and 7,800 different local election jurisdictions. All separate and unequal. The combination of unduly burdensome procedures, underfunded bureaucracies and partisan officials has created a patchwork of arbitrary practices tending to contract, rather than expand the franchise.

For example:

• In Ohio, in 2004, hundreds of voters were given faulty ballots or deprived of voting machines. In one Ohio municipality voters waited up to 11 hours, until 4 a.m., to cast a vote.
• In New York City, in 2004, Asian American voters were routinely asked for identification when trying to vote - even though city laws didn't require voters to have an ID.
• In Florida, in 2004, election officials rejected registration applications because potential voters failed to check a box on the application that duplicated information that had already been asked.
• In 2006, also in Ohio, hundreds of state residents were identified to be purged from voter rolls - during a state effort to make the list more accurate - under the assumption that they were deceased. Four hundred of those voters contacted the state to say they were indeed alive and should remain on the voters list.

The Advancement Project contends that major voting problems are likely again in 2008, especially given the extremely high level of new voters who are registering this year:

In some states, like Louisiana and Mississippi, the secretaries of state have already found that registrars' offices are overwhelmed with the large number of voter applications from new registrants. And many states are still seeking to follow Indiana in requiring a photo ID to vote, making it more difficult for non-drivers to register.

Most embarrassing, according to Jamie Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law and director of its program on law and government and its Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, the United States is one of only 11 democratic countries that do not explicitly provide the right to vote in their constitutions. Raskin says this Constitutional silence on a basic right to vote leaves the United States in the backward company with such regressive nations as Iran, Libya, and Singapore.

Read more here. Would you support a Constitutional amendment explicitly guaranteeing the right to vote in the United States?

Three steps toward healing

Yesterday at the summer meeting of the Everyday Democracy Book Club, we had a good exchange with James W. Loewen, author of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Dr. Loewen offered this three-point plan for the thousands of U.S. communities that have a history of excluding people of color, writing:

Every (former) sundown town in the US needs to do at least these three things:
1. Admit it. ["We did this."]
2. Apologize. ["We did this and it was wrong, and we're sorry."]
3. State "We don't do it any more," and put teeth into that last statement -- if someone thinks we have discriminated, we have this racial ombudsperson to see, or this civil rights commission, or whatever. And we have indoctrinated our real estate agents. And we are hiring diversely for our school system and public works departments.

He also suggests:

• That cities consider becoming part of the National League of Cities' Inclusive Communities Partnership of cities that are committed to diversity in all its forms. Nearly 200 cities - including at least one former Sundown Town - have done so.
• "If you know a history teacher whose students might do this as a project, or if you can form a study group or action group at your church or civic organization, or if you need a project for a course you plan to take next fall in college ... consider something on sundown towns. It's virgin territory, and your work will likely lead to change." You can report anything that you learn about a town's history at Loewen's website. Click this map to learn more about what's already known.

You can read a transcript of yesterday's discussion here and order Sundown Towns here or from your local bookseller.

Welcome to the water cooler (7/08)

Update: Click here for an easier-to-read threaded version of this discussion, now archived at our wiki. You can read past discussions with Frances Moore Lappé and Matt Leighninger at our wiki, too.

Welcome to the summer installment of the Everyday Democracy Book Club. Our guest for today's live blog session (from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern) is Dr. James W. Loewen, author of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. I am Julie Fanselow, online organizer for Everyday Democracy and manager of its DemocracySpace blog, and I'll be the moderator for today's online discussion. (We call these events "water coolers.")

Published in 2005, Sundown Towns was a groundbreaking book that helped document how thousands of U.S. communities, mostly in the North, had "whites-only" policies, often stated via signs at the city limits, forbidding people of color to stay after sunset. More critically, Professor Loewen shows in his book how the legacy of those policies lingers across our landscape today: in towns where black families are still rare, in feelings of prejudice and privilege among whites who grow up in homogeneous places, and in nearly every major issue we face as a nation today.

In an article written recently for the World magazine published by the Unitarian Universalist Association (read it here), historian Dan Carter summed up the challenge Loewen's book presents to us:

Everywhere we look, we see the long shadow of our racist past in the re-segregation of our public schools and the growing isolation of the poorest African Americans in impoverished inner cities, in the continuing wealth and income gap between black and white, and in the unconscionable explosion of a "prison-industrial complex" that incarcerates millions of black men, consigning them to a lifetime in the shadows of our society.

None of us should feel personal responsibility for what our parents or grandparents did or did not do. But there will be guilt enough for our own generation if we do not confront and address the bitter consequences of the story that James Loewen has revealed so powerfully in Sundown Towns.

Because Everyday Democracy works with communities to address issues of racial equity, that quote seems like an especially apropos way to frame today's discussion. What can those of us working for racial equity and justice do to overcome the lingering legacies of our history? What's already happening (and where), and what more needs to be done?

Here's how the water cooler will work: I'll ask Jim the first question at 1 p.m. Eastern, and he will answer in the comments as well. To follow this Q&A discussion, click on the word "comments" below this post. If you'd like to pose a question or add a comment, look for the phrase "POST A COMMENT" at the end of the existing comments. Below it, insert your name (real names, please); email address (it will not be visible online); and, if you like, the URL of your organization or program’s website. Write your question or comment in the box, then click “post.”

Please note: You will need to refresh your browser periodically to see the latest questions and comments that have been posted and answered. If traffic gets heavy, you may be asked to verify your comment with a "captcha check," or typing in a string of letters.

Also, if you see that several questions have already been asked, please be kind and give Jim a chance to catch up before posting your question. We'll post a rethreaded, easier-to-read version of this live blog at our wiki within 24 hours. (You can read past water cooler discussions there, too.)

Thank you for joining us for today's meeting of the Everyday Democracy Book Club! And now, let the discussion begin ...

The Obama opportunity

Feeling dismayed about the way race remains a persistent theme in the presidential campaign, months after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy? You shouldn’t be. With the selection of Barack Obama as the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, we’ve begun the next chapter of the civil rights movement. We shouldn't expect this to be any easier than the historic battles in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, but we should also realize the possible gains in our country’s race relations could be just as great.

How can we best use this moment in time to make a big step forward for racial understanding and racial justice? In particular, how does the racial aspect of this year’s presidential campaign relate to the types of things that the many organizations, communities, and individuals who are working on racial equity in this country are addressing?

A few months ago, I heard Melissa Harris-Lacewell, from Princeton University, a Barack supporter, say on the “Democracy Now” radio show that the state of race relations in the U.S. at this point in history is such that we shouldn't expect to elect a black president without having a wrenching debate about race. She added that we'll have to go through it to get to the other side -- we can't go around it, or over it, or under it.

You know, that really fired me up. I had gotten depressed watching the TV pundits recycle the Wright thing, and had just stopped watching, horrified at the place the national conversation had gone. There didn't seem to be anything I could do. But then I realized that we have an opportunity every bit as historic as that of Obama’s nomination, and that is to use this moment as a chance to move to greater progress and understanding on race.

The really important thing is that this is the first time since the Black Power movement that large numbers of black people and white people are working together. That's part of Barack's miracle. The other part is that it's multicultural as well as multiracial, and that's completely new.

We have a new opportunity to explore the meaning of “race” (it doesn’t have a biological basis) and the meaning of “racism” (it’s more than personal prejudice or bigotry—it’s social). This time of our country becoming more diverse, of ethnic categories blurring, could be the turning point. We can create a large-scale, multi-ethnic movement to close racial disparities and create racial justice.

What hasn't changed is that there's resistance from those who benefit by keeping us all divided. What also hasn't changed is that a fight like this can't be won just over the airwaves or even on the Internet. If people want to see greater equity among all people and a stronger democracy, they'll have to get out and fight for it. To do that they'll have to be mobilized and trained, not just to get out the vote but to carry on a conversation in our communities that competes with and eventually replaces the one on TV. Then, we must also work to take those conversations to the next step, to create communities that include and work for everyone, of every color.   

I personally support Barack Obama and will work to help him become our next president, but that’s not my point. What’s important now is that we have an opportunity to use Obama’s nomination to turn off the TV -- and yes, talk about race - but also to work together to make big gains toward greater racial equity, no matter who wins the election.

Harold McDougall is a professor of law at Howard University and a board member of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, a non-partisan organization that oversees the work of Everyday Democracy.

Friday digest-open thread 6/27/08

Welcome to the second official weekend of summer. From coast to coast, we have reports of people working together to strengthen the democracy whose 232nd birthday we'll mark next Friday. Here's an email we received today from Carolyn Lukensmeyer of AmericaSpeaks:

One of our current projects that I am particularly excited about is a workshop that AmericaSpeaks, Demos, and Everyday Democracy are convening in late July. We are inviting 40+ key people from the fields of deliberative democracy, electoral reform and community development to develop an agenda for expanding democracy to be presented to the new president in November.

More and more people are recognizing this is a unique moment in American politics and that it is essential that we seize the opportunity to become more of the country we really want to be. We have the possibility of demonstrating that transparency, inclusion, and accountability, key principles underpinning the foundation of our democracy, can be realized.

That realization is happening at the local level, too. In Burlington, Vermont, a Thursday luncheon with the theme "Vermont Leadership at the Crossroads" drew about 40 people who are eager to promote and pursue a new, more diverse leadership style for the state. The guest speaker, civic entrepreneur Hal Colston (founder of Good News Garage and NeighborKeepers), told of a vision where, by 2018, the state's aging, mostly homogenous leadership would meet regularly with upcoming minority leaders to forge new levels of trust and understanding between races and class groups.  "That apparently sounded pretty good to his audience, which applauded warmly at the end," Tim Johnson of the Burlington Free Press wrote today. " Why wait till 2018, someone then asked. Why not start now?" Wanda Hines, co-coordinator of the Burlington Legacy Project and head of the Social Equity Investment Project - which sponsored the luncheon - confirms that people are eager to get moving. "After the event was over nobody wanted to leave," she wrote in an email today. "Instead the majority stayed discussing what could be, where do we sign up and when do we get started."

Community members in Colorado Springs, Colorado, are looking ahead, too. Today marks the kickoff of Dream City: Vision 2020. "The aim of the project is to give everyone living here - kids, construction workers, artists, teachers, military personnel, engineers, retirees - a greater role in shaping our future," Warren Epstein writes in The Gazette. The first phase is  inspiration, he adds, centered on a Dream City 2020 website, "which will give you many opportunities to participate. Whether you'd like to give your two cents about what our community needs or you'd like to find a place for your classroom or organization in Dream City, you'll find it there." Epstein was among a team of Colorado Springs people at our recent Making Every Voice Matter national conference in Denver, and we are eager to see where citizens and the plan's partners - which include the newspaper, Leadership Pikes Peak, the Pikes Peak Library District, and the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region - go with this project.

And in California (plus one at the NCDD conference in Texas), Antiraciscm.com has a full schedule of its White Ally Learning Lab workshops this summer and fall. Some W.A.L.L. experiences are one day; some are weekend events; all will help participants get the tools to recognize privilege, overcome racism, and pave the way for a better, more socially just world. CoAction also plans a summer reading group club around Understanding & Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America by Joe Barndt. We'll post more info on that when we get it. You can see a preview of the book here.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court made one of its most anticipated rulings of the year, deciding 5-4 to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban. Many politicians from both major parties hailed the ruling as a 2nd Amendment victory, but Dawn Turner Trice of the Chicago Tribune expressed some reservations in her column today, writing that in the ruling, "five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count. In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens." (More here.)

We'll skip the Friday digest next week in order to celebrate the Fourth of July. But watch DemocracySpace next Thursday for an opportunity to say what everyday democracy means to you.

Summer book club selection

We're pleased to announce the summer selection for our Everyday Democracy Book Club - Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. The author of the book, James W. Loewen, will join us to discuss the book at 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 23, right here at DemocracySpace.org.

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about Sundown Towns in its starred review:

According to bestselling sociologist Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me), "something significant has been left out of the broad history of race in America as it is usually taught," namely the establishment between 1890 and 1968 of thousands of "sundown towns" that systematically excluded African-Americans from living within their borders. Located mostly outside the traditional South, these towns employed legal formalities, race riots, policemen, bricks, fires and guns to produce homogeneously Caucasian communities—and some of them continue such unsavory practices to this day.

Loewen's eye-opening history traces the sundown town's development and delineates the extent to which state governments and the federal government, "openly favor[ed] white supremacy" from the 1930s through the 1960s, "helped to create and maintain all-white communities" through their lending and insuring policies. "While African Americans never lost the right to vote in the North... they did lose the right to live in town after town, county after county," Loewen points out. The expulsion forced African-Americans into urban ghettoes and continues to have ramifications on the lives of whites, blacks and the social system at large.

You can order Sundown Towns from your local bookseller, find it in many libraries, or buy it online here, here, or here.  Read the book, then be here at Democracy Space.org at 1 p.m. Eastern on July 23 as we join author James  W. Loewen for a lively discussion of Sundown Towns.