The Unclad Soul

It is time to face the facts in this country. We are dangerously divided. You can’t sugarcoat it by saying it’s always been this way between people and groups. You can’t dismiss it as just life in contemporary society. You can’t pretend there is any middle ground any longer. The evolutionary biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, has said, “When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.” How true. It’s not that the Democrats are a little right and the Republicans are, too. It’s no longer true that both sides share basically the same political ideals. They don’t. Maybe once, but not anymore. Democrats are not without their own hypocrisies, blunders, irritating passiveness, and cheap compromises. But there are clear differences in the crafting of traditional, well meaning, good for all of society political legislation, which they are still commit...

The small and almost silent group of religious leaders, politicians, authors, editors, social critics, teachers, physicians and others who seek to define themselves and live by a compassionate faith, a social conscience, and who work for a progressive approach to solving our massive problems in this country, swim against a raging current of resistance.  It comes from those who disdain unity, who are terrified of diversity, who hate government unless it works only to their advantage, who care nothing about preserving a social fabric that holds all of us in community. The struggle against this forceful cultural current is exhausting, expensive, and often defeating. No one will be surprised if those fighting to move against it grow tired and sometimes collapse in shallow waters. Bullies flourish in this environment and are always the last to go down. They prey on the defenseless, those smaller, those less powerful, those with gentle souls who have no lust for battle or conflict. ...