Snippet
America
Comment
3 min read

America: two nations under God?

Red, blue, and rarely purple.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

a tattered American flag flies against a blue sky.
Mario Sessions on Unsplash.

I've just come back from the USA. A few days on the east coast was a chance to take the temperature of America after its recent election, a brief impressionistic sense from conversations, reading the runes – and the blogs. In short, I had heard much about the divided state of America. I didn’t realise quite how divided it was.  

America has always made a great deal of unity. The vision for the USA imagined immigrants from different nations across the world invited to forge a new life in a new continent, leaving behind the divisions of the old world. It was the coming together of varied States across the vast continent into one Union. The language is everywhere. Most cities have a ‘Union Square’, Street or Turnpike. The chosen name itself was the United States of America. The slogan E pluribus unum – “out of many, one” was first featured on the original 1776 design of the Great Seal of the United States and formally adopted by the U.S. Congress as the nation's official motto in 1782. The American civil war of the nineteenth century was such a trauma for the nation precisely because it threatened that union. “One nation under God” says the pledge of allegiance, recited by every American child. Yet today it feels that a more realistic description would be two nations under God. The Disunited States of America. 

The split is pretty even. 73.7m people voted Democrat. 76.4m voted Republican. That itself is no great cause for alarm. What does cause alarm is the utter divide between the two groups. New York, for example. is pretty solidly Democrat. Someone who voted Trump told me they would never admit to it publicly because of the public shame it would bring. The same is true in the red states. To admit you voted Democrat in some Southern Baptist churches in Texas would be to invite social ostracism. Many Evangelical pastors who have their doubts about Trump have to keep quiet otherwise they would lose the support of their congregations and quite possibly their jobs. As a result, the only Evangelicals that tend to criticise Trump will be academics or journalists who have little to lose. 

As a taxi driver joked, if a young Democrat goes out on a date with someone they've met on Tinder, and discover their partner voted Republican, there is unlikely to be a second date. A Christian visitor centre in Washington DC tells me that they are looking forward to Trump being President again, because the flow of evangelical Republicans visiting the capital dried up during the past four years as they felt it was Biden’s town. It’s well known that nearly 80 per cent of white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Such families were more likely to come to DC to see the seat of government if they knew ‘their guy’ was in the White House.  

It seems that in the current version of the USA, who you voted for is the number one identity marker. And the two groups rarely talk. In New York I preached in an Episcopal church. The Bible readings for the day spoke of ‘wars and rumours of wars’ – ‘everything will be thrown down’ – apocalyptic texts that invited me to talk about the election in the light of Jesus. Beforehand I asked the Rector what the voting pattern of the church was. “It’s genuinely purple” he said – “a mix of red and blue, Republican and Democrat, Trump and Harris. At least here they do talk to each other.” That seemed a rare thing in this deeply divided country.  

Jesus once said: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.” Trump may well fix the economy and illegal immigration. Yet such deep division, especially in a nation whose identity rests of unity is perhaps a more existential threat. 

Article
Comment
Death & life
Justice
Sport
1 min read

Diogo Jota, Thomas Partey, and the right to privacy

Distressing stories show that publicity hinders grief but enables justice
A couple hold each other as they look at floral tributes on the ground
Liverpool manager Arne Slot and his wife at a shrine to Dioga Jota.
Liverpool FC.

Content warning: rape and sexual abuse allegations are discussed in this article. 

It’s Thursday 3rd July 2025 and a friend has just sent a message. “Have you heard the news about Diogo Jota?” 

I love Diogo Jota. Love him. So I assume the worst. The club have sold him. He’s got another of the horrific injuries that have plagued his career. But the news is worse than the worst. 

“He and his brother died in a car accident in Spain,” the message continues. What? Surely not. But shortly afterwards the BBC News notification comes in. Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva have died in a car accident in Spain. 

It is unimaginably tragic news. The incident occurred just two weeks after Jota married his childhood sweetheart. He leaves behind three young children. His brother, André Silva, also recently married his partner in June. It is heartbreaking beyond words and seeing the tributes pour in from colleagues – no: friends – of the players only cements how upsetting a loss this is.  

It’s now Friday 4th July 2025. The day after Jota’s death. Another BBC News notification comes in. Now-ex-Arsenal player Thomas Partey is charged five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. 

Jota’s death was an utter shock. The news about Partey is anything but. It was the worst-kept secret in football. Everyone knew that he was under investigation for rape. In 2023, the BBC reported that two Premier League footballers continued to be selected by clubs, even “while knowing they [were] under police investigation for sexual or domestic violence.” In January 2025, the BBC subsequently reported that the Crown Prosecution Service had been given “a full evidence file about a Premier League footballer accused of rape.” 

As The Athletic reports, Partey was first arrested in 2022. Between then and being charged in July 2025, he was arrested, questioned by police and then bailed again, seven times. Seven times. All while continuing to play for Arsenal.  

Again: everyone knew that Partey was one of the players in question. Everyone knew. But no-one could say anything.  

And the juxtaposition between the news about Jota and Partey has led me to reflect on the ways in which both stories have (or have not) been reported. I’m almost loathed to mention Jota and Partey in the same breath to be honest. But then that’s the tension underlying all this, isn’t it? Who is given privacy, and who isn’t? 

One man is arrested in 2022 on suspicion of rape and sexual assault. He is afforded over three years of privacy and is permitted to continue in his high-profile, six-figure-a-week-paying job. Another is killed in a tragic accident, and, in the immediate aftermath, his family’s privacy is invaded at every turn.  

Despite Jota’s family clearly and publicly asking for privacy, the media coverage of the tragedy was deeply invasive. The Daily Mail posted pictures of his recently wed wife outside of the morgue having just identified the bodies of her husband and brother-in-law. The BBC – in one of the most tone-deaf acts of journalism I can recall – covered Jota’s funeral. They wrote: “The family has asked for the funeral to be private, but you can follow live pictures from outside the church by clicking watch live at the top of this page.”  

I promise that’s not a joke. Irony really is dead. But the real irony of all this is that this is a deep perversion of how things should be.  

I may grieve with support from other people, but this is fundamentally a deeply personal and private act, not one to be undertaken under the public gaze. Justice, on the other hand, is enacted with the help of a jury of peers and is an act of public peacekeeping and safeguarding.  

It is appropriate for one act to be undertaken privately while the other is conducted publicly. More than this, they are essential to those acts. Privacy enables grief, while publicity hinders it. I can only grieve effectively if given the time and space to do so. By contract publicity enables justice, while privacy hinders it. If justice is enacted in secret, public trust is eroded and the justice system is undermined.  

Grief is private; justice is public. And yet Jota’s friends and family have been forced to grieve with the eyes of the world on them while Partey has been afforded years of luxurious privacy under the auspices of ‘justice.’  

Real violence and harm are done to people when the appropriately private becomes inappropriately public, and vice versa. The news of Jota’s death and Partey’s charging with rape exposes the deeply flawed approach to privacy we have.  

There is no goodness in either of these stories. There are no redeeming angles or silver linings here. They are both deeply upsetting and distressing. But if the stark contrast between the ways they have been reported causes us to reflect on how they ought (or ought not) to be reported publicly, then that will be something, at least. 

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief