America: two nations under God?

Red, blue, and rarely purple.

Graham Tomlin

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.

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25 September 2023

4 min read

The challenge of filling your blank page or keeping it empty

The start of a sabbatical sets Ian Hamlin thinking through the tension between contemplation and action.

Ian Hamlin

Ian Hamlin has been the minister of a Baptist church since 1994. He previously worked in financial services.

A notebook is open at two blank pages. a pen rests across the page.s.

Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

The famed anxiety inducing nemesis of any writer or creative, the ever-daunting blank page. Well, I’ve bought myself a new notebook, so I have a literal open page in front of me, but also something more.

I’m starting a three-month sabbatical from my role as a Baptist minister. Stepping down from my day-to-day responsibilities of work, but also, to a degree, away from the basic structures that define my life; the people, purpose and rhythm of, not only what I do, but who I am. It’s a weird sort of job like that.

What would you do with three months off? From work, family commitments, whatever it is that defines your day to day ordinarily? Well, buy a notebook, obviously, but after that?

I’m conscious, of course, that this is a rare privilege, a consequence, I guess, of the strange link between a professionalised clergy and academia from days past, but also, a recognition of the all-encompassing nature of the role. Maybe, because of that, it’s also a real challenge, a true ‘blank page’.

The first instinct, I guess, is to take a break, to stop, to breathe. That’s undeniably good, but how long for? Is that it? At what point does stopping and breathing become lazy indulgence? I’ve been reading quite a lot lately, perhaps subconsciously preparing for these months, about taking time out, resting, slowing down. Often, these thoughts have been expressed as an exploration of the notion of ‘Sabbath’ that Judeo-Christian notion of keeping a period of time, a day a week, special, sacred even. This, of course, is the route from which ‘sabbaticals’ have grown, not so much the ivory towers and quadrangles after all, but more the Hebrew prophets and itinerant Jewish preachers of ancient days, seeking to find the rhythms of a fulfilled life There’s John Mark Comer’s ubiquitous The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which seems to have touched a cultural nerve, but also Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Solitude and Silence. Then, out of the blue, I was invited to reflect again on Walter Brueggemann’s sense of Sabbath as:

‘the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption, and the endless pursuit of private well-being’.

He also observed that, recognizing just how we, like multiple generations before us, each in their own way, are utterly enmeshed in systems and structures designed, not so much for our well-being but rather the benefit of others,

‘the departure into restfulness is both urgent and difficult, for our motors are set to run at brick-making speed.’

(A reference to one of those earliest structures, highlighted in the Bible, where Egypt’s Pharaoh had Hebrew slaves building ever larger structures, to assuage their growing thoughts of freedom.)

Most recently of all, I’ve been struck, by following Pete Grieg’s pilgrimage walk from Iona to Lindisfarne, and the passing comment that the original Celtic monks, in making the same journey, eschewed the offer of horses to ride, preferring to walk, fearing that the increased pace of travel might cause them to miss something.

I’m sure I’ve missed lots, I’m convinced I’m caught up in a whole range of hectic, consumerist structures, and I’m often tired, so rest, gets a big tick from me. At least I think it does, but barely do I sit down, and I’m feeling restless again. How long can/should I keep this up? There are so many things to do, opportunities to explore, people to please. I need to justify this privilege of time and space.

His speaking, his marching, his campaigning and protesting, even his sitting, was driven with a passion and an urgency that was infectious, and effective.

And then there’s that ever-present sense within me, my natural instinct if you will, true, I’m sure, of many. That I like the idea of contemplation, the need for it even, but, actually, I’m more driven by activism, by getting stuff done. The focal point of my whole break, planned for quite a while now, is a trip to the USA to follow the life of one of my spiritual heroes, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Now, there’s an activist if ever there was one. His speaking, his marching, his campaigning and protesting, even his sitting, was driven with a passion and an urgency that was infectious, and effective. His consistent rage against injustice has been a call to arms, both to his immediate contemporaries, and generations subsequently, to get up, go out and do. Ultimately, of course, he poured out his whole life in the cause. It’s taking me an age to read a few preparatory biographies of him, stimulated as I am from every page, challenged to act, to never let injustice rule while I have voice and agency.

So, there we have it, another paradox, in the complicated business of being the person I’m meant to be, realizing the best of God’s investment in me. The conflict between rest and exploration, being and doing, contemplation and activism. I imagine we are all drawn to a certain place on that spectrum.

Blank pages, freed up days and diaries, only serve to underline what we already are. But, I suspect, we can all also hear the call to either end of the range; to be stirred to action by the things that break the heart of God, and to lay down our burdens, take upon ourselves the easier yoke, and live increasingly in ‘the unforced rhythms of grace’. Maybe, to start with at least, listening to that call, recognizing the tension, while not allowing it to create pressure in us, is enough. Hearing, praying, scribbling my first, semi coherent, thoughts on that vast empty page, making myself another coffee, and wondering what I might do next.