So, now he’s in.

Having just inaugurated a new president, we in the United States are now just about the farthest we’ll be in time from another election. Nearly four years. I've had a growing suspicion, over the recent few years, that the politics of getting elected and maintaining power have a habit of distracting us from policy itself.

Which is to say: we've got at least a year without electoral politics, at least a significant level of them. So how should we best use the time?

It’s our opportunity to refocus, to think (at least for a few days) less about how to retain power or gain power next time, and to think more about who we are becoming.

So: how can we best make use of the Obama presidency to lay the foundations for cultural improvements that will last well beyond 4/8 years? Is there anything particular to this moment in time, this unique moment, which we can use to help our children’s children live in a better world than the one we have now?

Really. I’d love your thoughts.

If the forty-fourth president of the US accomplishes nothing else than generating a sense of citizenship among those who (rightly or wrongly) haven’t acted on their rights—who haven’t previously owned their citizenship—he will have enriched the country beyond measure.

A nation’s greatest resource is its citizens. Sure. We say that all the time. But what is a citizen?

As envisioned by liberal democracy (small L; small D), citizens are participants. Citizens are distinct from consumers and tax-payers. Democracies prosper when warm bodies (who may be citizens in a strictly legal sense) become citizens in deed, by their actions. Citizenship is performed. In strict economic terms, creating citizens out of bystanders is only a long-term investment, but it is sustainable and creative.

Last week’s barrage of government rituals had one overarching purpose: to generate a sense of awe and legitimacy to the presidency and the constitution that creates it.
That legitimacy is asserted on two fronts:

• By reference to the timelessness of the constitution, with its enlightenment-era universal statements (“all men are created equal” and similar); and
• By reference to the historical lineage of the new president (how often did we hear the number 44?)

This latter point is hugely important for the direction of our culture: Obama has been placed, and has placed himself, into the lineage of American history. And since he seems to think of himself in part as a history teacher, we can expect more of this throughout his years in office.

Here’s why this is important: for a variety of reasons, some imposed and some self-imposed, there are many, many Americans who feel no particular ownership of their citizenship, but who feel great ownership of Obama. These people occupy all rungs of society, but I am thinking of one particular set: the urban underclass, those who are most likely to exhibit the full gamut of social pathologies, and who are most isolated from citizenship—whether by choice or not.

These people tend to view American history as someone else’s (white man’s) history. If Obama’s legacy consists of nothing else than in opening these lost millions’ eyes to the possibilities of citizenship, he will have served his country better than a thousand new deals.

[photo credit: flickr user mamamusings]
 

Why do we take the oath of office with a hand on the Bible?

One side-story this week was the Bible Obama used for his oath: the same one as used by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. The Library of Congress blog tells that book’s story—which is interesting enough, but the tradition itself seems theologically suspect to me.

I’m really not sure. Does the hand-on-Bible practice honor or dishonor scripture? I’d love your insight. Specifically:

1. What is the religious thinking behind the tradition—in its origins?
2. The use of Lincoln’s inaugural bible: how does this change the oath Obama took?

[photo credit: Library of Congress]

On Sunday, the preacher at my church said:

"Now I can tell my son that he can do anything in this country—and really believe it myself."

As a white US-American, I recognize the historical significance of our having a black president. Whether he’s the right person for the job—that’s why we have elections. That’s why we’ll have another election in four years.

But to sit back for a moment and consider our national racial history—this is quite remarkable. I belong to a generation that had colorblindness shoved onto us: the only appropriate way to discuss race is by pretending it didn’t exist, or that racism ended with Martin Luther King.

I can recognize the significance, but as I listen to my African American friends, I hear an emotional resonance—even among the Republicans. People took their children to rallies, not for civics lessons, but to show them a new world of possibility that didn’t exist until now. (Or, as Andy Crouch would say, new horizons of possibility.)

This is a truly liberating moment for the dreams and imaginations of millions—even if Obama turns out to be a political dud. Everywhere I turn I’m seeing Obama’s face on clothing. Far more than before the election. Baggy-pants teens wearing gaudy Obama shirts. Teen girls at church with Obama bible covers. This is way beyond politics. This is water on a thirsty land. As my pastor said: “I never thought I would see this day, in my lifetime.”

The long-term impact will yet be seen, of course. But it is truly significant that those kids most likely to drop out of school are celebrating a political moment (as opposed to, say, a popular culture moment).

I have to celebrate along with these my family, even if I can only listen to the joy. All of us should take a moment to celebrate. If we can’t stand him, let’s celebrate for the teens in the hood, just for a moment, before returning to our political conversation in progress.

If you consort with the Devil, are you the Devil too?

It seems the Rick Warren inauguration kerfuffle is an opportunity for everyone to re-fight the culture war aspects of the last election. On the one hand, Obama has spit upon the liberal “coalition” that supported him by inviting an evil clansman-bigot-hatemonger to his party (that's the tone on the radio and in the papers up here in Madison); on the other hand Warren is implicitly supporting a liberation-theology baby-killer (that's the stuff I'm finding in evangelical blogs).

I am not interested in entering this debate, largely because I find it tangential and uninteresting. Political symbolisms do not do much for me; in any case, I’m more concerned about the long-term changes in our society.

Still, this to-do sheds light on just how isolated we are from another in this country. I’m talking about within the American church. As a member of a majority-black church in disproportionately liberal Madison, in historically Populist/Socialist Wisconsin, I did not see much public debate—only through national publications and the web. So I’ve been a little unnerved by the degree of hostility out there over Rick Warren at the inauguration.

In a very roundabout fashion, I was dragged into the debate. It’s not a really big deal. Mike Pohlman, a blogger at crosswalk.com suggests that Warren would do well to read Blessed Are the Uncool: Authentic Living in a World of Show—a book I wrote two years ago.

Pohlman’s point seems to be that Warren is trying to be cool by being associated with Obama. I’m not sure I agree that there’s much coolness to be gained from speaking at the inauguration. Warren already has a large audience, and seems genuinely uninterested in the trappings of fame. I met him a few years ago at Urbana 06, when he visited our webcast room; previously I interviewed him about AIDS in Africa and his local interests in Orange County.

My impression was that Warren was keen to disarm the mystique around him, and liked to draw attention to small people around him. So I don’t think the inauguration prayer is important to him in that regard.

But Pohlman’s greater point seems to be that Warren ought to reject acclaim from “the world”—meaning, presumably, that association with Obama taints Warren’s credibility as a church leader. Such a view would derive from the (questionable) convictions that

1. Christians are to live out Jesus' call to holiness by disassociating from unholy political leaders, and
2. Obama is one such an unholy leader.

Is that fair? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Not about point (2), as there's only name-calling and indignation to be gained in discussing that issue. I mean point (1), about Warren. Is our Christian credibility compromised by association with politics?

Another day, another racial flap in American politics. This week the subject is a disc of conservative joke songs including the track Barack the Magic Negro, a rendition of Puff the Magic Dragon.

News stories are playing out along tried and true lines: phony outrage and “I’m not racist defenses”. We’ve gone through this story a million times, and never grown from it.

The song in question may or may not be racist, may or may not be funny or may or may not be stupid, or all of the above, but it provides the opportunity to have a real conversation about race. So far, it’s not happening. We’re going to get angry at each other, and nothing will change.

This is the important part: “magic negro” is a real term. It comes to the satirical song in question from a column in the LA Times, written by an African-American film critic named David Ehrenstein, who in turn references a stock figure in movies—the wise, exotic, and subservient or handicapped black man or woman who materializes to impart wisdom or power to the white characters (like the blind Oracle in the Matrix movies).

The phrase is intentionally and offensively anachronistic, because “magic negro” characters reproduce the black-person-as-child trope in American culture. The phrase is offensive because phony exotic respect is offensive.

Ehrenstein:

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

Republicans are getting raked over the coals over this song, and probably with some justice, but for the wrong reasons: because they've attacked an African American political opponent with an offensive word.

Democrats and others doing the raking should use the moment to ask: can we allow Obama to be a real human, and if so, can we kill off our need for these exotic fantasies?