America in Search of a Soul

Rev. Jim Antal looks back in history to reflect on our current "theological emergency."

Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis courtesy of Unsplash.

by Jim Antal, TAF Coordinating Committee Member

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.’S SPIRITUAL ADVISOR, Howard Thurman, once wrote how 250 years ago, America’s founders imagined a country whose people were bound to one another by a common embrace of the principles and practices described in America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, including freedom from tyranny and freedom of religion. Gradually, over centuries, as we tested, refined, and applied these principles and practices in new circumstances, the soul of America began to be revealed.

And Howard Thurman also observed that it wasn’t that simple. Eventually, Thurman said, there would be a reckoning. And there have been many: the Civil War, women’s suffrage, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and others. While the soul of America is rooted in the principles and practices described in America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, so much of the “the life of America” is expressed in an embrace of rugged individualism, racism, sexism, inequality, extractive capitalism, private material dominance and achievement, and the routinely reinforced fear that each of these corrupt values is under constant attack.

Against this backdrop, for over 20 years, as an advocate for climate justice, I’ve been writing, preaching and speaking about what it means for everyone who is alive today — our generation (whatever generation you may be part of) — to have a shared vocation. As it turns out, you and I and everyone who is alive today, have been given the opportunity to be part of the most consequential generation of human beings that has ever lived. The climate crisis places an inescapable moral claim on our generation and, therefore, on every one of us. It urges our generation to embrace a fresh understanding of human freedom, fulfillment, vocation, and salvation.

BUT THAT IS NOT AN EASY ASK. At the close of 2015, it seemed as if the miracle of 197 countries signing the Paris Climate Accord was real. Three years later, when 16-year-old Greta Thunberg went to Davos and spoke truth to power, not only did the most powerful business and political leaders on the planet rank the climate crisis as a top concern, they pondered if Greta was right when she said “everything had to change.” Then, a year later, a more immediate and personal threat – the Covid virus – upended the lives of billions of people, while claiming the lives of 20 million and plunging the world into an economic recession.

So this was our situation: a worldwide economic recession, universal fear of an invisible personal threat, and a truth-telling 16-year-old kid shouting at the most powerful people in the world that we need to change almost everything. You don’t have to read much Timothy Snyder or Ruth Ben-Ghiat to realize that this is a perfect set-up for the rise of both authoritarian leaders and religious fundamentalists.

Rarely if ever has the tension between the soul of America and the life of America been as great as it is today.

With each passing week, the lives and careers and futures of millions of people are being torn from them. And even if our particular life and livelihood may not yet be impacted directly, none of us can be confident that we are somehow insulated from the knock on our door; the theft of our online identity, data, and assets; the loss of our job; and worse. Need I remind you of the confession German pastor Martin Niemöller shared after his release from Dachau, just after the end of WWII: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist…and then for the socialists…and then for the trade unionists…and then for the Jews…and then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Yes, “the soul of America” has been riven — torn by the shredding of the principles and assumptions that for centuries have guided our lawmakers and civil society.

In the same way, the earth — our common home, the source of life, the midwife of consciousness, and the foundation of every future — has seen its life-sustaining climate sacrificed. And to what end? So that a handful of unimaginably wealthy companies and their CEO’s and shareholders can become still richer.

WHILE NONE OF US ASKED FOR IT, we have been given the gift of life amidst a polycrisis in which truth and facts and freedom are on the scaffold, while lies and fear and tyrannical power are on the throne.¹

It was 62 years ago that Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that America had defaulted on its promissory note to black Americans. And what did lawmakers do? Seeking to realize the soul of America, a year later, lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act, and a year after that they passed the Voting Rights Act.

It was 55 years ago that an oil spill off Santa Barbara, a river on fire in Cleveland, and an alarm bell in the form of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring prompted 10% of the American public — 20 million people — to take to the streets on the first Earth Day. And what did lawmakers do? Seeking to realize the soul of America, in a few short months they created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed the Clean Air Act. Two years later, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, and a year after that, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act.

We must come to grips with the fact that we are no longer living in that America. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, we are now living in a state of “moral deregulation: a rolling back of civic and ethical norms against defrauding, silencing, bullying, and physically harming others. Democratic societies inculcate such norms in schools, religious spaces, workplaces, and other social institutions and networks. Authoritarian takeovers mean such norms are discredited and dismantled. When moral deregulation advances because violence and corruption have been institutionalized, including in the behavior of national leaders, then a society can experience moral collapse.”

And we must recognize what Martin Luther King, Jr., Hannah Arendt, and others warn: that our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. In a recent post, Cameron Trimble put it this way. She reminded us that “justice is not passive; it requires action, voice, and courage.”

If the soul of America is to be restored, it is up to us — We the people.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.²

Let’s be clear. You and I are now living amidst a theological emergency.

The question I am wrestling with is this: Not long after Hitler rose to power, Dietrich Bonhoeffer organized the Emergency Pastor’s Seminary, commonly known as Finkenwalde.³ What are we being called to organize now? How can our living truly become a seed, so that the future may truly have roots?⁴

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Acknowledgements

My ongoing attempts to answer the above questions have benefitted from the wisdom of many. I commend to you the books and ongoing posts of Timothy Snyder, Rebecca Solnit, and Cameron Trimble.

This essay is based on Jim Antal’s comments at a recent webinar, entitled “American in Search of a Soul,” hosted by the United Church of Christ. A video of the webinar is available online.

About Jim Antal

Jim Antal serves as Special Advisor on Climate Justice to the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. Antal’s 2023 book, Climate Church, Climate World: Revised and Updated, is being read by hundreds of churches. From 2006 to 2018, Antal led the 350 UCC churches in Massachusetts as their Conference Minister and President. He has preached on climate change since 1988 in over 400 settings and has engaged in non-violent civil disobedience on numerous occasions.

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1. This image comes from James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis,” Poets .org.

2. This quote originates in a poem by June Jordan called “Passion,” which she read in 1978 at the United Nations commemoration of the 1956 women’s march in Pretoria to oppose apartheid. In 2006, Alice Walker used it for her New York Times best-selling book, and in 2008, Barak Obama used it in his presidential campaign, as Patrick Howell describes on HuffPost, and Mary Fenton writes on the Segal Family Foundation website.

3. See Charles Marsh, Strange Glory – A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Vintage, 2015. p. 215.

4. Thanks to Andrea Gibson for inspiring this question.