The Presidential Debates and the Shrinking American Moral Imagination

After watching the recent presidential debates, I was so disappointed at the lack of substance. Not only were there very few policy issues discussed — and certainly not discussed at any depth — but there was a glaring lack of moral imagination. There was no compelling vision cast about who we are as a country, what kind of people we should be, and what we should be about both domestically and around the world. Perhaps we as Christian leaders can play a meaningful role in this relative vacuum.

Roger Cohen, an opinion columnist with the New York Times, mirrored my mood precisely. Here are the opening words of his piece, “The Shrinking of the American Mind” (NY Times, Oct 23, 2020):

“Among the words or phrases that were never spoken in the two presidential debates were: Syria, human rights, drones, democracy, inequality, dictatorship, Israel, Palestine, Middle East, United Nations, World Health Organization, Guantánamo, European Union, Britain, Brexit, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Africa (or any single African state), South America, terrorism, multilateral, authoritarianism, alliance. That’s a pretty good measure of the shrinking of the American mind.”

How did we get here? Well, never mind about that for now … how should we move forward?

In my Christian Ethics class recently, we were discussing 5 principles of Protestant Social Ethics. These five principles are ways to sum up many of the concerns of the scriptural witness — and by extension, God — about social matters. They are taken from Brian Matz’s book Introducing Protestant Social Ethics: Foundations in Scripture, History and Practice. I agree with Matz that they should be part of our moral imagination. Here they are:

Human Dignity: “The status held by humans entitling them to respect from the moment life begins to the time of natural death” (169).

Common Good: “the set of conditions within society that enables everyone to have the opportunity to flourish” (182).

Justice: “the virtue of giving people what is due them as a consequence of their God-given dignity” (192).

Solidarity: “unity among persons within a social organization.” Such unity is  “a commitment on the part of every person to the common good” (203), which means we need to look out for the good of everyone, especially “the least of these.”

Subsidiarity: “Subsidiarity hold that problems within a social organization ought to be solved at the lowest possible level of that social organization” (217). Respecting local wisdom, fostering the dignity and responsibility of all, and being wary of too much power being collected in one place are all part of this.

If you consider them carefully, you’ll see that they carry within them concerns close to the hearts of both Democrats and Republicans. Why can’t more of our political leaders use this kind of language in debates and weigh policy proposals in light of them? I’ve heard people in church and in the public realm do it, and it is like a breath of fresh air when I do. At the very least we should be using these terms in our churches, in our social media, in our communities, and among our friends and family.

We can do better as a people. May we be part of the expansion of our churches’, our communities’, and our country’s moral imaginations.