Last November, I presented a paper at the annual National Communication Association convention analyzing Bob Jones University’s recent statement on race based on my theory of romantic separation. I argued that rather than a standard apologia, theirs was more a code duello. My paper begins to round-out the dramatistic theory of romance. In fact, all the papers in that panel were a rounding-out of my theory of Burkean romance.

BJU’s rhetoric is more Lost Cause than we (especially Northern) 21st-century listeners might readily perceive. In their drama, God is not an active participant. He’s not even a goal that we might wish to reach someday. No, He’s he’s simply our pit bull — our vicious, Old-Testament force which will scare people back into shape for the sake of preserving that old patrician hierarchy. In sum, God god is not an actor, not an ultimate idealistic purpose, but simply the frightening and preservationist means for the socially successful.

And just this week, a new text plops into my inbox proving the same drama.

The BJU buzz this week swirled around two stories. One, Jim Berg is making a lateral move from the admin building to the seminary come July with Eric Newton taking his place as Dean of Students. Secondly, Bob Jones University finally sanctions its students to use Facebook — even on campus. The new liberty, however, comes with a set of regulations which I’ve cited below. Do you see the romantic drama that I see? Who’s the Actor in the text? What’s the Act? Where or under what conditions is s/he acting? And why? And how?

Another way of asking that is — where’s God in this? Notice that the reason for all the rules is to benefit Bob Jones University, not Christ or the Church. It all centers around BJU’s reputation and preserving that hierarchy.

Social Media Guidelines

Guidelines for Participating in Social Media

A Christian’s use of social media, like any other form of communication, can reflect positively or negatively on his Christian testimony. The guidelines below are common sense principles that will help a Christian maintain a consistent testimony when communicating with others.

• Social media are public forums; there are no private social media sites. Post only information that you are comfortable having many people, including potential future employers, read about you.
• Avoid posting personal information such as your address, phone number, etc., that could make you a target for identity theft.
• Post worthwhile information that adds value; avoid self-promotion and information of limited interest.
• Assume personal responsibility for what you post. Make sure it is accurate. Secure permission before citing another person. Respect copyright laws. Do not post proprietary information, including course syllabi, lecture notes or material on course pages. Cite references, and when you do so, acknowledge the source. Keep in mind that you are legally liable for what you post.
• Identify yourself by your real name and write in the first person. If you identify yourself as a student or faculty/staff member of BJU, be clear that you speak for yourself, not BJU. Keep in mind that what you post will reflect on BJU. As appropriate, add a disclaimer that indicates the content of your site represents your views and does not represent the opinions or positions of BJU.
• Respect your audience. Avoid abusive, slanderous, complaining, profane, irreligious, blasphemous or tale-bearing speech.
• Follow biblical principles when posting on your personal site: communications should be edifying.
• Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental permission in writing.
• Take the high ground and avoid picking fights. Do not respond to posts critical of you or the University if posting will prolong discussion. If you post information in error, be the first to correct your mistakes.
• Delay posting if you are angry or upset about an issue as this is the time when you are most likely to post information you later regret.
• If you alter a previous post, indicate that you made a modification.

Guidelines for Establishing/Maintaining a BJU Social Media Site

• BJU departments and pre-college schools wanting a social media site are to provide Internet Marketing with the goal(s) for the site, a brief three to six-month plan for how the site will be used and who will post and monitor information. Internet Marketing will launch the site, secure the handle and turn over the site to the existing department. This procedure will ensure there is a record of all “official” sites and that site names are appropriate and consistent. BJU Press departments should direct requests to Interactive Marketing.
• Official sites require time and people resources. In conjunction with setting goals, establish metrics for your site to continually measure its effectiveness. Keep in mind that effectiveness is not always measured by number of followers.
• Student groups such as the Collegian, UBA, etc., are free to establish sites as long as the faculty advisor monitors the site.
• Understand that a department site will bring negative and positive feedback; value the negative feedback and use it to improve as appropriate.
• Provide timely responses.
• In speaking on behalf of the University, be familiar with FERPA regulations and avoid disclosing personal information about a student.
• Avoid articulating positions contrary to the public position of BJU.
• Avoid using an official BJU site to endorse a cause, product or political candidate.
• Keep in mind that you may see student posts that reveal questionable activity or activity contrary to BJU student policies. Use this as an opportunity for dirtyhanded discipleship.
• Faculty and staff should limit access to personal sites during work hours to interactions with students.
• When posting photos, ensure people in the photos meet the dress code for the activity involved. Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental approval in writing.
• If a question arises you cannot answer, do not try to answer it. Find the appropriate person who can answer.
• Follow the University’s general guidelines for participating in social media.

I am presenting this paper at the annual National Communication Association Convention today. Check it out!

2009 NCA Standing Without And Within Apologia

My paper presents BJU’s apologia on race before and after November 2008 as well as the Please-Reconcile’s plea for BJU’s racial reconciliation. BJU’s statements are strange. To be quite blunt, they make no sense to a Yankee. But I’ve discovered that within the Old South ethic of the Lost Cause, the so-called apology makes perfect sense.

The best resource for understanding the Lost Cause rhetoric is an old friend to rhetoricians and a particularly familiar annoyance to Burkeans—Richard Weaver. In his 1943 LSU dissertation renamed Southern Tradition at Bay, Weaver surveys and appreciates Lost Cause literature post-Appomattox and includes a long discussion of Southern apologia.

Bob Jones University’s statements on race parallel Weaver’s Lost Cause apologia. The drama that Weaver both records and continues is a romance caught at a potentially tragic crisis point. The old rules of chivalry drive the action or rather reaction. Weaver’s hero, the southern Cavalier, moves more than acts. He is a man of leisure and good birth who simply is, until a moment of deadly crisis. When he is challenged, as if in a duel, his duty is to “serve the eternal verities” of the established order. Destruction, ruin, bankruptcy, injury are all irrelevant to preserving truth and maintaining “good form.” Guiding him is an unspoken code duello.

Even nearly one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the rhetorical drama of the Old South still persists in tiny provincial cultural pockets like Bob Jones University. Within the enduring rhetorical romance of sectarian religion, the code duello informs and contains conflict.  Intersecting Richard Weaver’s Old South drama with my previous description of rhetorical romance is a productive critical project. Each analysis rounds out the other and might provide a more organic explanation for the persisting romance in a micro-culture like southern fundamentalism.

Such an intersection also broadens BJU’s connection with the “segregationist ethos” of its founding family. Agrarianism, provincialism, populism, commerce, societal hierarchy, religion, nativism, and racism all goaded the Confederacy in their Romance-turned-tragedy. In our critical sweep, we, too, must avoid containing our cultural sin of racism in the South, in fundamentalism, or in Bob Jones University. The arcane mask these romantics don to distract their Other’s gaze from their own ugliness tempts us to our own form of tragedy. The Please-Reconcile effort was a comic attempt at removing their mask and correcting that sin without killing off the humanity underneath.

Further study intersecting southern fundamentalism with the Lost Cause drama would expose the salience and endurance possible (or not) in newer Lost Cause movements like Doug Wilson’s Federal Vision, southern secessionism, and identity Christianity. At the root of the problem within Southern romantic apologia is a juggling of the usual mystical purpose with the pragmatic agency. That is, by relegating the divine to the means of propping up a societal hierarchy, participants in the rhetorical drama are distracted from the essentially preservationist motive in their micro-culture. Further contrasting southern with northern fundamentalism, tracing how Weaver’s agrarianism found resonance in mid-century northern conservatism, and mapping the dramatistic similarities between the Civil War and current culture wars would productively assist scholars in deconstructing tragedy and creating a comic corrective.

A revealing moment in this interaction was the P-R’s admittance that they were shocked at their alma mater’s pervasively racist reputation. They offer one explanation that BJU is really not as racist as it seems, giving their alma mater a face-saving “out.” Another possible explanation is that the legal confrontation of BJU’s interracial dating prohibition sent the “segregationist ethos” far underground. The presumed inequality of the races remained in behind-closed-doors meetings. The students from both the North and the South who attended and graduated after 1983 Supreme Court case—which includes every member of the Please-Reconcile team—were witless about the racist foundation. They had been raised in the prevailing notion of “color-blindness” which made them deaf to the coded racism. They were literal-minded, morally earnest, personally outspoken, and driven to “do right.” Perhaps, by shedding the Old South rhetoric that was so prominent in BJU’s pre-1964 days and by generalizing for a larger audience, BJU was forging the tools for its own first homegrown public confrontation.

This intersection of the North with the Old South, of integrationist with separatist, of post-1983 students with pre-1964 administrators, of a second-generation Pollack with an Old South morality play — by putting together these two disparate “terms” we have our last place of freedom, Burke would say. In the end, such perspective by incongruity is our best source of comic correction keeping us from being too hopelessly ourselves.

When the Old South brushes up against this 2^nd-generation Pollack like that, I can’t ignore it. It’s what Burke would call Perspective by Incongruity — two dissimilar “terms” shoved together that each change the other simply by proximity. And that’s what happened a year ago when Bob Jones University produced a “Statement on Race” to say it was “profoundly sorry” for past racist policies.

I’m no stranger to Bob Jones University and so-called fundamentalism. Not only have I studied the rhetoric of American religious separatism formally, I’ve lived it. Having spent 20 years at BJU as a student, grad student, and faculty member, I am especially sensitive to their public discourse. Now that they fired me for being more scholarly than separatist, I’m looking anew at their public texts. While I was still inside the movement, I described their frame of acceptance as less tragic or comic and more romantic. My purpose then was descriptive as well as prescriptive—to explain to them, as an insider, how best to craft their message.

We all see how that turned out. So I am honing a new critical voice—one that’s still within a Burkean comic corrective, but without the apologist bent. I no longer need to prescribe to fundamentalists. And I’ve never sensed more strongly how incongruous it is to be a 2^nd-generation Pollack stuck in an Old South morality play.

The most recent example of a public text from Bob Jones University is this “Statement on Race.” BJU is infamous for its 1983 Supreme Court battle to maintain its policy forbidding “interracial dating.” The problems with their policy are so numerous and complex that we’d be here for weeks discussing them. Not only is their definition of “race” problematic—they limited their scope to only three races—but the definition of a “date” comes into play too. They lost that fight with the IRS, lost their tax-exemption status, but maintained this unseemly remnant of the Old South.

And not until Campaign 2000 did BJU’s racism rise again into public view. George W. Bush’s rather routine visit to an old Republican haunt in South Carolina didn’t seem too interesting until John McCain made it interesting. The media firestorm was so intense that BJU’s president went on Larry King Live to lift the interracial dating ban.

Alumni who had attended the school since 1983, however, didn’t think that was sufficient. One particular 1998 alum, Jon Henry, was so irritated by the continuing defense of racism among BJU constituency that he started, of all things, a Facebook group to force BJU to apologize for past racism. That on-a-whim action snowballed into a full-fledged alumni effort garnering 506 signatures attempting to move Bob Jones University one step closer to reconciliation and culminating in BJU’s 2008 “Statement on Race.”

I want to talk about DeWitt Jones. My teacher. My M.A. advisor. My boss for forever.

Now, I don’t know if Dr. Jones reads blogs. And I don’t want to embarrass him if he does. But I do need to gush a little. Not much. Just enough.

DeWitt Jones taught me how fun it is to read speeches by powerful dead white guys. And women. And live ones. And black ones too. He just liked civic discourse. He liked to watch how it changed stuff.

He taught me that Wade Hampton wasn’t just the name of a boulevard in Greenville.

He literally had a spring in his step the entire Reagan administration. Not because he voted for him (although he did). But because Reagan made it cool to teach speech again. Teaching Carter was such a drag with the sweaters and the fireplaces. ::yawn:: And the Malaise.

He told me that it would be good for me to study the early feminists even when some people violently scowled at the choice.

Now, DeWitt is no raving leftist in the politics department. Yes, he likes his NPR as much as the next academic. But Dr. Jones went to Louisiana to study American Public Address. He is Old School. Neo-Aristotelian. He got it hard core when studying dead white guys’ words wasn’t about the words at all. When context was king. Before all that new-fangled New Criticism messed us up (I say that good-naturedly since my academic path veered a different and “newer” direction after my M.A. with Dr. Jones).

And he distrusts political engagement. When our academic association (NCA) supported the ERA, he disengaged. He revoked his membership and never returned. His decision wouldn’t have been mine, but I understand it and respect it. He was consistent in his protests.

He showed me the Checkers speech for the first time. And explained why it was funny. . . . because of FDR’s Fala speech, of course.

And he loves FDR! But hates his policies.

Did you catch that? DeWitt Jones — that most Platonist of thinkers and most Aristotelian of critics and most sectarian of Christians and most conservative of ideologues — has enough generosity of spirit and mind to love a good speech when he hears it and still shudder at the ideology behind it.

That’s what you call a good egg.

I used to do an exercise in Freshman Speech when we’d talk about audience adaptation. I’d have a list of 5 speakers and 5 situations, and we’d imagine what would happen if . . . say, Oprah Winfrey spoke to a Kindergarten class. How would she adapt? What might she talk about? How would she speak differently than if she were talking to this college class?

The discussion was always profitable at BJU . . . until Bill Clinton became president. When I’d ask them what Bill Clinton would say if he came to talk to “this class,” they were stymied. They couldn’t fathom what this politician they detested could ever say to them.

I’m no Clinton fan, but I still find that odd. Are the boundaries between us that impermeable? Is there nothing that our political opponent could say to us as Americans that is of any value? Is being President that irrelevant?

And it doesn’t matter what the Democrats did or would do when G.W. Bush was president. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Every good fundamentalist knows that.

So it’s in the spirit of DeWitt Jones’ loving-the-speech-but hating-the-ideology that I’m going to offer some of my own discussion questions for Obama’s speech this Tuesday. The ed.gov‘s suggested discussion questions are lame, and others I’ve seen . . . well, they simply miss the mark. If I were conducting a college discussion, before viewing the speech I’d ask my students:

• What have you heard about this speech?
• Why do you think people find this controversial?
• What are the consequences of that controversy? Where would that leave political discourse and the civic sphere if we followed the trajectory of that controversy?

After the speech, I’d ask:

• What are your initial thoughts?
• What are his arguments? How does he support those arguments?
• How does he make those arguments “stick”?
• What cultural archetypes, assumptions, and themes does he build on?
• How does his character, knowledge, and judgment command (or not) respect?
• What is the President’s “second persona“? That is, what kind of person or student does he assume you — the implied auditor — to be? How do you judge that person? How do his words encourage you to be (or not) that person?
• Was he convincing? Why or why not?
• Who’s the actor in the President’s speech? And the act? The scene?  The purpose of the action? The agency? Which of those did the President emphasize and was does that say about his overall view of the world?
• What grade would you give the President? Why? If you were his speech teacher, what advice would you give him for next time?
• How did your expectations match or conflict with your actual impressions of the speech? What does that say about media coverage and its influence on civic discourse?

We’ll be watching the speech at home whether or not my son’s teacher decides to show it in school. It’s fine if she doesn’t; I really do understand. And my questions for him, to be honest, will be taken from those above. Why shouldn’t they be?

It’s not about politics per se. It’s about judgment. And there’s a long history in rhetorical scholarship about how to judge. Ancient rhetoric, after all, was simply the study of wisdom. And it’s when we’re exposed to those with whom we might disagree — those who are not-us (which includes everyone) — that we learn how to be wise.

Steve Brown cuts to the chase and summarizes my thesis for past projects and future ones:

Power really does corrupt. And absolute power does corrupt absolutely. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t want to see the Religious Right get power. Because, you see, they honestly believe that whereas human nature may be sinful, theirs isn’t (20:34+). . . .

Later on I watched pastors sell out for power. I watched pastors that I trusted say things that they never would have said if it had not been for the power. And I began to realize that there are two views of human beings but the second — which is the biblical view — is certainly true of me also. The reason I don’t want the Religious Right to get power is because they don’t understand what I just taught you. And that is, that human beings are basically evil — that includes Jerry Falwell, it includes Jim Dobson, it includes me and it includes you — but we have a proclivity for good (23:31+).

Reformed Theological Seminary lecture, “Grace in the Church“

A — a couple of examples that I can give in the — that I cite there that I might mention. I don’t happen to have the book with me but I can remember that — a — a range of them in there. And that is — that — the — take Veblen’s concept of trained incapacity.

Now — now your natural tendency is training is in one category and incapacity is in another. You think of them as — as mutually exclusive. The whole — the whole trick here was to — was to jump those across. Especially where you could speak of incapacity, as — as training itself as a form of incapacity. And the — and another one I recall that Elliot used in one place where he spoke of decadent athleticism. Where usually you think of athletics in the healthy category and decadence in another category. But by putting those together, you see, across there it gives you what I would call a “perspective by incongruity.” And then you can get — and I think this is, oh the whole essence of the — the whole, surrealist line of — of breaking down your categories in that way.

I had a — among my list of a — of a — modes of lining up vocabulary, the remarkable thing is I completely forgot to put that in my list, but I tend to go back and do it on the basis of — of each statement. And you’ll see that it is — it worked out in quite some length in the — in this whole section on perspective by incongruity.

Kenneth Burke, Lecture at Drew University, 1969, Recently transcribed by Moi and Ed Appel

Can you tell that we and our friends were having a little too much fun with the Roland the other weekend? I should explain. . . . Years and years ago, this nerd’s idea of fun at a party was playing with all Grant’s pre-sets on his Casio keyboard. Having heard the BJU “University Hymn” over and over and over for sooooo many Commencements, the funniest thing I could think of was mangling that tune into a thousand variations — caricatures even. I mean, what would it look like if the regalia-laden BJU “family” bee-bopped into the FMA to scat singing? Or if we line-danced down the aisle to steel guitar? Or if we all slow danced to the same tune?

Burke would call it “perspective by incongruity” — taking two disparate “terms” (because what is music but another symbol system?) and shoving them together to make something completely new. It’s the “last place” of “freedom,” Burke even says in that 1969 2-hour lecture I just transcribed. It is, at the very least, a source of comedy that keeps us from being too hopelessly ourselves, as Burke would also say.

And so the obsession began way back in . . . oh, 1990, I guess. And now I share it with you this latest one, “Safe Sax at the Bob.”

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The inside of the White House doesn’t have the luminous quality that you might expect from television or film; it seems well kept but worn, a big old house that one imagines might be a bit draughty on cold winter nights.

On a chilly January afternoon in 2005, the day before my swearing-in as a senator, I was invited there with other new members of Congress. At 1600 hours on the dot, President Bush was announced and walked to the podium, looking vigorous and fit, with that jaunty, determined walk that suggests he’s on a schedule and wants to keep detours to a minimum. For 10 or so minutes he spoke to the room, making a few jokes, calling for the country to come together, before inviting us for refreshments and a picture with him and the first lady.

I happened to be starving, so while most of the other legislators started lining up for their photographs, I headed for the buffet. As I munched on hors d’oeuvres, I recalled an earlier encounter with the president, a small White House breakfast with me and the other incoming senators.

I had found him to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections; you could easily imagine him owning the local car dealership, coaching Little League baseball and grilling in his backyard – the kind of guy who would make for good company so long as the conversation revolved around sport and the kids.

There had been a moment during the breakfast meeting, though, after the backslapping and the small talk and when all of us were seated, with Vice-President Cheney eating his eggs benedict impassively and Karl Rove at the far end of the table discreetly checking his BlackBerry, that I had witnessed a different side of the man.

The president had begun to discuss his second-term agenda, mostly a reiteration of his campaign talking points – the importance of staying the course in Iraq and renewing the Patriot Act, the need to reform social security and overhaul the tax system, his determination to get an up-or-down vote on his judicial appointees – when suddenly it felt as if somebody in a back room had flipped a switch.

The president’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded of the dangerous isolation that power can bring, and I appreciated the wisdom of America’s founding fathers in designing a system to keep power in check.

“Senator?” I looked up, shaken out of this memory, and saw one of the older black men who made up most of the White House waiting staff standing next to me.

“Want me to take that plate for you?” I nodded, trying to swallow a mouthful of chicken something-or-other, and noticed that the queue to greet the president had evaporated. A young marine at the door politely indicated that the photograph session was over and that the president needed to get to his next appointment. But before I could turn around to go, the president himself appeared.

“Obama!” he said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours – that’s one impressive lady.”

“We both got better than we deserve, Mr President,” I said, shaking the first lady’s hand and hoping that I’d wiped any crumbs off my face.

The president turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitiser in the president’s hand.

“Want some?” the president asked. “Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.” Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.

“Come over here for a second,” he said, leading me off to one side of the room.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice.”

“Not at all, Mr President.” He nodded. “You’ve got a bright future,” he said. “Very bright. But I’ve been in this town a while and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily just be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to slip. Know what I mean? So watch yourself.”

“Thanks for the advice, Mr President.” “All right. I gotta get going. You know, me and you got something in common.”

“What’s that?” “We both had to debate Alan Keyes. That guy’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” I laughed, and as we walked to the door I told him a few stories from the campaign.

It wasn’t until he had left the room that I realised I had briefly put my arm over his shoulder as we talked – an unconscious habit of mine, but one that I suspected might have made many of my friends, not to mention the secret service agents in the room, more than a little uneasy.

As I’ve been a steady and occasionally fierce critic of Bush administration policies, Democratic audiences are often surprised when I tell them that I don’t consider George Bush a bad man and that I assume he and members of his administration are trying to do what they think is best for the country.

After the trappings of office are stripped away, I find the president and those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us.

No matter how wrongheaded I might consider their policies to be – and no matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results of such policies – I still find it possible, in talking to these men and women, to understand their motives, and to recognize in them values I share.

This is not an easy posture to maintain in Washington. The stakes involved in policy debates are often so high that I can see how, after a certain amount of time in the capital, it becomes tempting to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values – indeed, that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.

Outside of Washington, though, America feels less deeply divided. Spend time actually talking to Americans, and you discover that most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe, most secularists more spiritual. Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of the poor are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular culture allows. Most Republican strongholds are 40% Democrat, and vice versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely track people’s personal attributes.

All of which raises the question: what are the core values that we, as Americans, hold in common? One core value, individual freedom, is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted.

Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope

We just got this book from the library, and it was quickly my sons’ favorite. They love the pictures and that we can sing along with it. And they love the message. Gavin even repeats, “You [in] God Hand, Mommy!” It warms my heart and encourages my spirit.

I remember hearing a sermon in my indy-fundy Baptist church when I was around six-years-old about how this song was wrong: “If God’s got the whole world in His hands, then He’s got sin in His hands. And that’s just not possible.” I was disappointed because the song’s message comforted me even then.

I now see that critique of the spiritual for what it really is: a near-gnostic, dispensationalist grasp for control.

But in spite of our flailing and our eschatological fads, God is in control. He is sovereign. He’s got the whole world in His hands! You and me, brother!

It’s odd for me to digest the intense reaction to my speaking out about my politics. My Facebook wall is even more colorful. Because in my view, I really haven’t changed. I’m just able to express it publicly now.

For a long time, people have whispered, “That Camille Lewis has some strange ideas.” They’ve called me “dangerous.” They’ve passed along their conclusion that I “have trouble with authority.” And I’ve even lost some friends because they now know the whole me.

This isn’t some wide-eyed, bandwagon-jumping celebrity worship for me. This vote actually makes sense in light of the last forty years. I learned my politics from elementary school through graduate school. And I’ve grown from a nondescript grey to a unwavering scarlet and now to an vivid indigo.  I learned that the company line was often misguided. That quilting faith to politics was often an ugly mess. That by the 1980s all good conservative Evangelicals were Republicans. That paleo-neo-theo-cons have hefty amount of naiveté in their worldview. That even well-intentioned patriarchs need rules. That learning a new (cultural) language helps you understand your own better. That the Left isn’t evil and that the Right is often mistaken. That I am pretty much plumbed to live in a liminal life. That the Religious Right has calcified. That my voting for Barack Obama is probably the most active political thing I’ve ever done in my life.

And most importantly that the Gospel changes the way we treat our friends, our neighbors, and our enemies.

And that’s really what I’ve been getting at. Remembering that we’re all totally unable to save ourselves means that we ourselves are as vulnerable to error as the next guy. When we feel that vulnerability, the knee-jerk response to make the divisions clearer. In other words, we identify with our friends because we divide against our enemies. That makes us feel safe and proud. “Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division.” If we sense a friend going to “the dark side” (a.k.a. the Other(‘s) side), we beg and plead for them to return to safety as if s/he’s going to run back into God’s hands. As if any of us can run in and out of God’s hands.

But muddling the lines is humbling. It points up that it’s not the human lines at all that matter because God’s taking care of His own as He always has.

That’s the comedy I’ve been talking about.

Christians keep repeating “God is sovereign!” during this campaign season. We’re all trying to see our way through the fog, the violent outbursts, the schmaltz, and the issues. It’s overwhelming.

But there’s more. And I really think that cover illustrates that “more.” It’s not that we just sit quivering in the fetal position in a dark corner repeating “God is sovereign” over and over until we pass out from exhaustion. It’s that we can smile in contentment. Knowing that God is in charge emboldens us and enlivens us. It’s confidence. It’s joy. We are at peace inside so we don’t have to pick fights on the outside.

Vote. Speak. Protest. Sing. Laugh. Stomp. Dance. Stick stickers. Don buttons. Stuff envelopes. Donate cash. Yell if you must.

Just act. Like a little kid who knows he’s safe because his dad is nearby. God will redeem what you do even if it is imperfect and full of sin (which it will be). Just like He has redeemed us.

God doesn’t stand back like a Great Watchmaker observing how the world moves. He doesn’t stand back and hold His “nose” because this world stinks with our sin. This is Immanuel’s Ground, my Father’s World. And God lovingly holds our hands because when He looks at us, He sees Christ.

So go. Act. It’s gonna be okay.

This past weekend, we went to see a Civil War Re-enactment. Since Grant and I are living history junkies, we thought this would be a vivid way to learn about an earlier time. My oldest brought his powder horn and dummy rifle (while I was the one who accidentally clobbered a Confederate general standing on the sidelines!). My youngest brought his revolver. We were ready.

Now, I’m a Detroiter — a Yankee! ::gasp:: — living in South Carolina — that state with a proud rebellious streak of red clay pan. When my oldest found himself getting lost in the noisy amateur theater and asked me, “Mommy, which ones are the bad guys?” I struggled to answer as I stood among my dyed-in-the-wool Carolinians watching the faux fight. I snuggled him close and said, “Oh honey, it’s complicated. They are all Americans.”

We left the battle early when it ambled too far down the hill to see, and we wandered toward the camp. Three “confederates” played some old-timey music for us with their bass fiddle, guitar, and mandolin. We were all entranced by the smell of the wood smoke, the cold autumn bite in the air, the sight of those beautifully simple white tents in a row, and the sound of a century ago. In a low-country drawl, one gentleman told us about their infantry and this all-encompassing hobby: “Yeah, we all have to play Yankees some of the time. Everybody owns two uniforms — one for each side. And if anybody won’t play a Yankee, we show them the exit! It’s no fun if you don’t have two sides.”

Burke would be proud. To be able to don the vestments of the opposing side is just that kind of comedic irony that keeps you from taking yourself too seriously. The guy you’re fake-shooting at today might be your compatriot next weekend. To walk in the shoes of the other side even for play-acting keeps the fight from becoming tragic. Brother against brother is as easily brother with brother even in just a week.

In other words, you have to act in this week’s skirmish in a way that makes next week’s alignment still possible.

And this election season I’ve seen that kind of comedy very clearly in one candidate’s words.

I have never seen Burke’s tragedy and comedy play out so predictably in an election. Oh sure, there are extremes on all sides. Many of Obama’s supporters, for instance, have skewered Hillary Clinton and have made their candidate a tragic hero. Humans are bent toward tragedy.

But in the candidates’ words themselves you can see their dramatically different metanarratives. McCain’s is simple. There is evil and he alone will destroy it. It’s a stock morality tale — with clear-cut characters for who’s good and who’s evil. Of course, in his telling, good is us and ours and evil is them and theirs. And he’s the hero in his story, rescuing the damsel America from the evil terrorists/Democrats/economy/communists/media/intellectual urban elite. He portrays himself alone as the hero. No matter what antics he tries to pull, McCain-as-Hero has been the consistent trope.

Obama’s story is more complex. There is no clear-cut good and evil. And, no matter how his supporters are portraying him (and it is nauseating. Don’t get me wrong), in his own words he is not the hero. He will even say that he‘s not fixing the problems. We are fixing the problems. “Yes, we can!” as the public-address-cum-music-video repeats.

All in all, McCain’s drama is tragic. Fear is the agency for destroying a clearly defined enemy of evil. Within Obama’s talk it’s us-vs.-the-problem.

There are many legit criticisms of Obama. I can understand doubting that the system can solve the problems that Obama claims it will. That’s fair enough.

But I can’t help but conclude that many have so internalized the black-and-white story of tragedy that they simply resist the complexity Obama dramatizes. They shrug it off as mere “eloquence.” They yell threats at crowded rallies. They hang him in effigy.

That’s why we were all relieved to see this recent comic relief — both candidates dressed like funny penguins and laughing at themselves. While some hacks were turning even that into a competition, it did help us all visualize a country post-November-4, after the battle, when we might be aligned with the person against whom we’re fighting now.

My oldest wanted a Civil War hat on Saturday. He chose a “blue coat hat” because “I like blue. And brother, you get a grey coat hat. Then we can switch!” . . . But he didn’t want a hat. He wanted a chicken.