Today, I was scheduled to help lead a study of a group of
men who have committed to a serious study of Scripture every Friday morning at
7AM. The psalms contain sacred history, a way of handing down important themes
and committing them to the memories of succeeding generations. Part of
community is the maintenance of shared values and vision.
In his second inaugural address, President Obama gave us a
version of civil history. He recovered the truth that governing can mix the
prose of policy with the poetry of rhetoric. He tried to steer a course between
ardent American individualism and our impulse toward community, mutual aid and
understanding. Whether you agree with his policies or not, I would think that
an objective observer would find it a compelling presentation. He wove important documents into a narrative
of our present and the arc of our common future. He took important historical
events to try to weave their pattern into our time and cast a vision of a
future.
The Russian literary theorist Bakhtin taught us that no text
is an island. All material swims in a sea of words and connections. Sometimes
we quote them directly. Other times, we hear their echoes distinctly. This
speech is a great example. It quotes directly from the Declaration of Independence
and quotes the first words of the preamble to the constitution, We the People
to serve as anchor and refrain for it.
We hear echoes of the great Lincoln Second inaugural with
its reminder of the lash of slavery that Lincoln
wondered was the very cause of the immense suffering of the civil War itself.
The emphasis on a security foundation for our citizens takes a cue from the
second inaugural of FDR.
He picked up the banner of equality as it has become
embodied in important social movements with the brilliantly alliterative Seneca
Falls (women’s rights: 1848), Selma
(the Civil right struggle of the 1960s), and Stonewall, ( the uprising of gay Americans in 1969). He
captured the sense of a march through history, and we bear its legacy.
The president and his writers grasp that traditionalism is
fealty to the dead hand of the past, but tradition is a living faith in the
principles of the past. Notice how they sought to finesse the generation gap by
“caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the
generation that will build its future.” So the see the need for us to honor our
tradition as a pole star but adapting methods and policies as required under
new and different circumstances.
I was impressed by his insistence that progress can be made,
but that we need to realize that it may not have 100 per cent approval. He
carries the notion that ideological purity cannot stand in the face of human
limitations. Still, imperfect, partial victories are what we can achieve. His
vision imagines responsive, adaptive,
active government. As any human institution, it will be flawed but it can have
achievements.
I caught at least three references to God. First he sees the
inalienable rights of the Declaration as gifts from god. Second, he uses the
image of god from gen. 1 as the basis for seeking global human rights and
dignity. Third, he again uses Gen. 1 to emphasize that we are called to care
for, to serve the well-being of this planet. He demonstrates that climate
change shows the futility of our thinking we can conquer or even subdue nature,
but we certainly have an impact on it. Just as he sees our lives are
inter-related, just as goals such as peace are inextricably bound to other
goods, such as justice, he see the natural order as an interdependent nexus of
relationships that ripple out in unexpected and unforeseen ways. In that sense,
the speech hangs together through its rich evocation of mutuality.
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