Language of the Times II

The Co-Opting of the term Faith

In a nation where religious affiliation is on the wane, now is a good time to look closely at the term faith. In politics, in particular, an increasingly desperate Republican party that has for years girded its loins with the mantle of superior “faith” is now completely losing whatever sense of prudence, decency, or ethics it might have had—if any. And as we watch these Republicans rightfully relinquish their grip on power, we realize that, at some point along the decades-long arc of their rise and fall, the term faith was co-opted. A perfectly useful term that had always been dependent on a definitive modifier (Christian faith, Muslim faith, Jewish faith, etc.) was seized by white male Republicans who branded themselves men of faith, without giving us the faintest idea what that actually meant. “We’re just better than those godless Democrats,” the phrase said. “Just shut up and follow us.” And of course, millions bought into the ruse and did just that, to disastrous effect.

This despite the fact that these supposed “men of faith” were not using the term faith to express their embrace of Christian teachings: of sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, of “thou shall not kill,” “thou shall not steal,” and “honor thy father and mother.” They were not using the term to be inclusive, they were using it to be exclusive—to declare themselves saviors, to apply the salve of justice onto the wounds of shame and fear their followers were suffering: the shame of incurable racism and xenophobia, and the fear of impending poverty slowly descending on their families and communities. And this has always been both the true crime and the genius of the Republican rise: these “men of faith” were never saviors, but were in fact, with their policies of austerity for the deserving poor and prosperity for the undeserving rich, the bringers of shame, and the bringers of poverty.

Which is why this co-opting of the term faith has been so insidious and so evil. It has not only manipulated the religious among us by making them feel special and exclusive, it has diminished the faith we are all at liberty to feel, each and every day, as participants in the American experiment. Because ours is a prosperous nation, founded on and governed by the rule of law, and given to fits of great compassion and ceaseless innovation. There are imperfections, certainly, as there are and will always be in any large human undertaking, but the vast majority of us, as citizens, can have faith, when we rise and go out into the world, in the people around us, in the safety of our streets, in the integrity of our customs and enterprises. Binding the term faith up in a religious context, and particularly, in a right-wing Republican conservative Christian context, in fact, binds all of us by denying us one of the best terms available for our national identify: our relationship to our communities, our system of government, and the public servants we all trust and rely on each and every day. Because, in America, the faith we have in our teachers, first responders, school boards, town and city councils, trash collectors, road workers, postal carriers, and cops on the beat, and, most importantly, the faith we have in each other, is much more important to our social fabric than faith in any unseen deity in the sky.

Craft and Inspiration – Third Installment

Dispatches from Poets & Writers Live San Francisco, January 2017, Part 3

In the first two installments of notes from Poets & Writers Live San Francisco, which I attended the weekend of January 14th and 15th, and which carried the theme Inspiration, we shared inspirational and practical advice from the likes of U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, author Benjamin Percy, and a team of top literary agents.



This time, let’s rise above again with some thoughts on the appearance of poet/activist Ishmael Reed.

Ishmael Reed

As a six-foot-four-inch middle-aged white dude sitting dead center in the PW Live auditorium, I’m pretty sure I caught Ishmael Reed’s eye when he took the Art Institute stage with his daughter Tennessee. He seemed to be looking straight at me, and his eyes seemed to be saying, “What’s this old white dude doing here?” I’m probably making that up—a flight of self-importance, perhaps—but if he had been looking at me, and if he had been thinking that, I certainly wouldn’t blame him. In our current divisive political climate, with levels of racism and misogyny bubbling up out of their cauldrons—cauldrons being stirred, for the most part, by old white dudes like me—I can only imagine what must be going through the mind of a man like Reed, whose long career as a novelist, poet, playwright, lyricist, essayist, and educator has been devoted to studying, illuminating, and exposing issues of racial and cultural discrimination and injustice. Thoughts like I told you so, I’ve been trying to tell you, and Haven’t you all been listening to me? come to mind, but I’m sure that’s just my own pedestrian speculation, wholly unworthy of a mind as expansive as Reed’s.

On the Art Institute stage that Sunday, Reed started with a lengthy poem excoriating Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, a poem that dispensed with traditional poetic devices like rhythm and rhyme and simply started every verse by repeating the Speaker’s name, then issuing one scathing rebuke after another. I found it interesting that Reed would choose Ryan rather than Bannon or Pence or even Trump himself as his object of poetic ire, but on reflection it’s clear the younger man, the one so many people have been led to believe is the level-headed and reasonable one, is by that misconception the most dangerous of them all.

Freed to speak his mind after the readings were over, Reed discussed the purpose and inspiration for one of his long-standing pursuits, the Before Columbus Foundation. Described as “a nonprofit educational and service organization dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature,” the foundation resists the dominance of Anglo perspectives in American literature since long before the nation’s founding. But Reed dispensed with the word contemporary in that description and urged all of us to explore the literature that existed hundreds of years before Anglos came to destroy and displace the indescribably rich cultures and storytelling traditions that had existed for millennia in what is now North America.

Reed reminded us that, in fact, the first Anglos who came to New England were fundamentalist Christians, closed-minded people not unlike today's Trump voters, people who were not curious onlookers, but committed extremists bent on destruction and ethnic cleansing. The carnage wrought by these early invaders was the beginning of a great hijacking of the literature that had existed on the continent for centuries, the work of Spanish writers and Native American writers that over the 300 years has either been shoehorned into the dominant Anglo tradition or completely set aside and ignored. Reed explained that the Before Columbus Foundation and the impressive cast of authors that make up its Board of Directors are essentially issuing a plea to thoughtful readers everywhere to reach out and expose themselves to the broad range of North American literature that existed centuries before the Anglos arrived, and the foundation’s work, including the American Book Awards, is to provide resources for all of us to do just that. As the foundation’s website explains, “Everyone should know by now that Columbus did not ‘discover’ America. Rather, we are all still discovering America—and we must continue to do so.”

And if you’ve made it this far, kudos! As if it weren’t obvious, I’d encourage any writer to watch Poets & Writers magazine and pw.org for announcements about the next PW Live conference, and If you’re able to, by all means, attend. All of the sessions were captured on video, and I assume they’ll be posted somewhere eventually, so I promise to post an update to this blog when they are. Many of these will be well worth watching.