By Rev. Scott M. Kershner, University Chaplain
I wrote this on Nov. 7, when we still didn’t have a result from this endless and tumultuous presidential election. Hopefully by the time you are reading this, there will be a clear winner. Even more than that, I hope the winner will have been gracious and humble in victory and the loser will have been gracious and humble in defeat.
Almost everyone from every side of the political spectrum seems to agree that our politics are broken. Our institutions of government—legislative, executive and judicial—are not functioning in the smooth and mutually balancing ways they are supposed to. Depending on where you locate yourself in the political spectrum, you will have a different explanation of why this is the case.
I heard a very interesting radio interview with a historian, whose name I didn’t catch, about why our country is so divided. He said our nation’s Founding Fathers set up procedures by which the young nation could govern itself.
Those procedures—like three branches of government to provide checks and balances, a legislative branch composed of a Senate and a House of Representatives, an independent judiciary—were the ground rules of government.
But the Founding Fathers understood something else was necessary. Rules, even good rules, weren’t enough to make a nation. What was needed to actually allow the political procedures to function effectively were cultural norms. These norms included the ability to work with people with whom you politically disagree, the willingness to compromise for the sake of the good of the whole and commitment to respect the outcome of elections even if you disagree with them. None of these norms were written down. They weren’t rules, as such; they were more like etiquette and patriotic spirit. But, make no mistake, they were and are essential.
The point is, rules and procedures are not enough to make a community or a self-governing nation. They are vital, but not enough. The unwritten norms are where we practice the tolerance, respect, care, understanding and humility that make self-government actually function.
We live in a diverse society. Virtues like respect and tolerance are easy when it comes to people who are just like ourselves.
Diversity is the real test. Diversity, you see, isn’t about the differences we like. Diversity, as Eboo Patel reminds us, is about the differences we don’t like. Life in a diverse society means finding ways to sit down at a common table with people very different from you, searching for common bonds despite the differences and finding ways to work together for the common good.
Whichever side of the political divide we find ourselves on, we will need to recommit ourselves to the forgotten social norms that hold us together.
Chaplain’s Corner reflects the views of an individual member of the religious field. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the entire university. The content of the Forum page is the responsibility of the editor in chief and the Forum editor
