Democracy

In the winter of 2004, during several conversations with Mark Nepo, the legendary and late historian Howard Zinn explored the nature of being an American today. This essay gathers those musings on moral progress and the myths of freedom into a meditation on America called "The Common Cradle of Concern," which was put together and edited by both Zinn and Nepo.

In this essay William F. Winter, the 58^th governor of Mississippi, reflects on the progress we have made in addressing racial conflicts. He reminds us that “as we seek to embrace our common humanity, we must also face the reality that there are forces in this increasingly complex world that threaten to continue to divide us.” Read this essay and learn Winter's perspective on how we pass on to the next generation a better country than the one we inherited.

W. Douglas Tanner, Jr., the founder of the Faith and Politics Institute traces his own journey; from growing up in the South to his own formation as a spiritual leader to his commitment to supporting the inner life of those called to govern our country.

In this far-reaching essay, renowned historian of religion, Huston Smith, and his wife, the scholar Kendra Smith, trace the American sense of liberty as a spiritual concept that has both inspired us and eluded us through a checkered history in which we have trampled many in the name of the very equality and freedom we hold so sacred. They trace the erosion of the American Dream in the twentieth century and look toward our inevitable membership in the global family of nations that is forming in the world today.

This provocative essay by Betty Sue Flowers examines the limitations and deeper opportunities of the economic myth which governs our society today. It asks how we might articulate a common good through which we might treat each other as citizens and not just consumers. We are challenged to imagine ourselves anew: “We can't hold up a myth of community and wait for it to take hold. We have to work within our own myth, however impoverished it seems to us. To deepen the American Dream is to engage the imagination—to create better stories of who we are and who we might become.”

This essay, by Robert Inchausti, is a convincing look at how we "see," how living in America can impair our deepest "seeing," and how education is the sacred medicine entrusted in each generation with restoring that deeper sight that lets us know that we are each other.

An elder of the Civil Rights Movement, Vincent Harding suggests that the dream is never finished but endlessly unfolding. He suggests that America's most important possibility for the world is not to dominate, threaten, or compete with, but to help each other in a search for common ground. He suggests that when we simply attempt to replicate our free-market materialism, we miss our most vital connections.

In this essay, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela draws from her experience and observations as a member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She discusses the relationship between empathy and the victims' capacity to forgive perpetrators and argues that empathy toward others is the essence of our ethical responsibility. She evokes the word inimba in her native Xhosa language, which can be translated as “umbilical cord,” to locate the origins of the response of empathy in the body.

This essay explores America's relationship with the rest of the world. As executive director of The United Religions Initiative, Rev. Gibbs proposes that “The future of America cannot be separated from the future of the rest of the world. There are no longer chasms deep enough or walls high enough to protect us or to protect others from us. So what do we do? We might begin by seeing ourselves as citizens of Earth and children of the abiding Mystery at the heart of all that is.”

In this essay, Carolyn T. Brown speaks deeply about the gifts and frictions that exist between our authentic self and the society we live in and grow in, and how returning to the well of spirit keeps forming who we are in the world.