"THE BIG WEEK"

 “THE BIG WEEK”

Caroline and I were grateful to be among the hundreds of Zoom participants on Saturday for the memorial service for Murphy Davis, as we celebrated her gifts and her ministry.  We mourned her untimely passing after a courageous fight with cancer over 25 years.  Murphy’s work was to point us the way to justice and equity and mercy for all of us.  She was such a powerful witness – what a life!  She finished her book “Surely Goodness and Mercy” shortly before she went into hospice.  It is the story of her battle with cancer, both individually and institutionally.  If you’d like a copy, let me know, and we’ll be sure to get one to you.  

I’m thinking of Murphy as we come to the end of the voting period for national and local elections on Tuesday.  It is a day and a time that many of us have been anticipating and dreading for a long time.  The current Trumpdemic is antithetical to Murphy’s work and to the values of justice and equity and compassion, for which so many of us have worked.  Whereas Biden is not the ideal candidate, his life story and moderate values stand in stark contrast to the narcissistic and bullying values of Trump’s story and presidency.  Biden’s election means that we will get a chance to deepen some of the values of justice and equity.  Trump’s election means a continued policy of seeking to eradicate the values of justice and equity.

This election of 2020 reminds me of the watershed elections of 1860 and 1932, when the course of American history would be altered by whoever won the election.  Lincoln’s race against John Breckenridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas was centered on the issue of slavery and preserving the Union.  The 1850’s had seen the second Fugitive Slave Act, requiring all American citizens to assist in capturing people escaping from slavery, and the Dred and Harriet Scott SCOTUS decision in which Black people were declared not to be worthy of American citizenship.  In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt challenged incumbent president Herbert Hoover, who had downplayed  the Great Depression.  FDR won in convincing fashion and began a long journey to move us back towards the values of justice and equity.

We face a similar choice now, and I am assuming that all readers of this blog have voted or will vote on Tuesday.  Please make sure that all of your friends, neighbors and colleagues do the same.  This is a watershed election, and we hope that the water will flow in the correct direction after all the votes are counted.  I do believe (and I fervently hope) that Joe Biden will win the election and will be inaugurated in January as the 46th president of the United Sates.  I also believed that Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump in 2016, so my predicting powers are not great.  Yet, I believe that Trump’s leadership has been so egregious, especially in regard to Covid-19, that American voters will turn him out, as we did in 1932 with Herbert Hoover.  If that is not the case, then God help us all. And, indeed, if Trump wins again, we will deserve what we get.  

     I was quoted in an Atlanta Constitution column by Bill Torpy last week concerning whether God had sent Trump to be president.  Torpy and I talked on the phone, and he was puzzled as to why white evangelicals supported Trump so strongly, since his behavior was so abhorrent to them.   We talked about Trump being seen as King Cyrus of Persia, who was praised in the Bible, even though he was a pagan.  Cyrus was praised because he had allowed the Israelites to return to Israel, after their exile in Babylon.  In his column, Torpy quoted his many conversations with white evangelicals, but he closed with part of our conversation:  “So, if God sent Trump to be president and gives him another term, what does that say?”  My reply was: “If that’s the case – and I don’t agree with this – then God is saying ‘The American experiment of equality and equity is over, and I’ll send the man to end it.”

This is a scary and dangerous week(s) ahead of us.  My fervent hope is that Biden will crush Trump as FDR did with Hoover, so that there will be no real debate about whether Trump was cheated or not.  I’m sure that Trump will contest the results if he loses, but if Biden’s margin of victory is strong enough, such challenges will not go anywhere.  Our daughter Susan has cautioned me not to jinx the election with such speculations about a Biden/Harris victory, and I hear her loudly and clearly.  But, I just can’t abide the thought of 4 more years of Trump.  I also recognize that in many ways, this is an exercise in white privilege, that Indigenous and Black people have lived under these issues for hundreds of years, but for us to have any chance of moving towards justice and equality, we must have a new president.  Please lift up your prayers and cast your votes.