Faith & Democracy Require Empathy & Translation
What role does empathy play at the intersection of faith and democracy? Can institutions be empathetic? How might empathy help us achieve moments of justice and liberation? Is there such a thing as the “common good?”
These themes of faith, democracy, and the role empathy play at that intersection were the focus of the latest Community of Practice, a learning cohort program led by the Ideos Center for Empathy in Christian and Public Life (CECPL). As the Director of the CECPL, I have the honor of facilitating these important conversations with our cohorts that consist primarily of undergraduate students, seminarians, and emerging leaders in the Christian tradition. As a faith-inspired leader, I have the space to consider and explore these questions for the learning benefit of myself and my organization.
These questions have been on my mind for a while, but following PACE’s recent Faith In/And Democracy gathering in Chicago, I was eager to bring this conversation to our Fall learning cohort that focused on the intersection of empathy and justice. We began with several framing questions: What is democracy? Why do we not use the language of “republic” if America is both? This quickly led to deeper questions of the relationship between faith and democracy: Whose Christianity is represented in democracy? What happens when “common goods” conflict? Can civic work be the medium by which we bring our faith into the public square?
Taking a historical perspective, we can see that people of faith in our nation have often been civic leaders. John Winthrop, Harry Emerson Fosdick, William Jennings Bryan, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Billy Graham, Howard Thurman, James Baldwin, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and countless others throughout American history have held the belief that faith and civic life must go together. However, even among the limited group mentioned here, the relationship between faith and democracy has led to diverse ends. Some chose to uphold exclusion while others sought to embrace those in need; some saw violence as a necessity, others pursued a non-violent path to peace; some choose to prophesy hope in a country that failed to love them while others remain complacent in the presence of evil.
This dissonance in how faith has informed civic engagement led our Community of Practice cohort to question demands for “evidence,” that often accompanies work in the public sector. In her book Notes of a Native Daughter, Keri Day argues that this call for evidence in relation to racist institutional practice is grounded in the belief that America is innocent. “Given such an underlying belief of innocence,” Day writes, “how can other people legitimate their claims of exploitation and injustice? How can they justify or ‘prove’ that oppression exists?” This question of proof, especially in government and scholastic systems, is often overlooked and yet incredibly pertinent. When stories are excluded and the existence of racism must be proven exclusively through data and statistics, those who want to hold an innocent history of America have the upper hand. This is because, Day argues, “the question or demand for evidence assumes a position that rejects the existence of racism.” Further, to convince this person that racism does indeed exist, one must provide “evidence” from the little data accumulated due to the failure of institutions to document substantively the many experiences of overt and subtle acts of racism.
The FIAD Learning Community has also discussed this question of evidence. We have collectively learned in grant-making and non-profit work that metrics and data fail to tell the whole story of projects and initiatives. A study conducted by the Fetzer Institute and FIAD member Sharif Azami expounds upon this. By combing datasets and stories, Fetzer has provided a more holistic framework in which the outcomes of grant projects and initiatives might be analyzed to both the benefit of grant-makers and recipients. For example, Fetzer’s resource What Does Spirituality Mean to Us? A Study of Spirituality in the United States does not only provide expansive statistical survey data pertaining to religion in America, but it also shares stories and interview excerpts of individuals who were surveyed. This approach to philanthropy, grant-making, and civic engagement provides a much-needed hybrid that brings together the strengths of surveys, data analysis, and metrics, and also stories in the context of complex relationships. Where the quantitative falls short, the qualitative succeeds.
The approach of the Fetzer Institute and FIAD avoids a key pitfall of bringing together faith and democracy: essentialization. Simply put, to essentialize religion is to abstract it from its cultural, lived context and instrumentalize it for one’s personal good. To essentialize is to say “all Christians” support X cause, or “all Muslims” fit Y group. These essentialized generalizations quickly fall apart when complex narratives are brought to the table, and that is exactly what FIAD and Fetzer have made room for.
This work of storytelling and making space for complexity and nuance, I believe, is deeply empathetic. In short, it is a work of empathic translation — the communication between faith and democracy. In his co-edited book with Tim Keller, John Inazu speaks of translation as a “God-given opportunity…of making the unknown known, making the inaccessible more accessible.” As those who work between the sectors of faith and democracy, it is our job to translate between those who reside exclusively in one space.
Translation, however, cannot be prescriptive. That is, translation cannot be the work of the translator reading their bias and beliefs into the content being didactically conveyed in order to achieve a certain result. Instead, like those who act as translators between languages or interpreters in the deaf community, translators between faith and democracy are tasked with perceiving and faithfully conveying the intended meaning of terminology and language between institutions and denominations.
Because there is often civic illiteracy in faith communities and religious illiteracy in the civic sector, the work of the translator is integral to the flourishing of faith in/and democracy.
As the FIAD Learning Community collectively agreed when we recently gathered in Chicago, separation of church and state should not be mistaken for a separation of religion and philanthropy. Indeed, philanthropists and religious communities often hold a common desire to see communities flourish in sustainable and constructive ways. Both often want to see our nation become more unified around shared goals and beliefs, rather than polarized across lines of tribalism and ideology. Fortunate for us, religion is both long-standing and comprehensive. Faith is not short-term, it is all-encompassing and requires embodiment. This collective experience and holistic formation positions faith leaders to be incredibly constructive and effective mobilizers in their communities.
Our Community of Practice concluded with a wholehearted affirmation of a recent observation from Michael Wear that our public theology must view Christianity as being for the world. In doing so, faith communities will be in a “much, much stronger place to contribute something positive, something needed, in this moment.” As a cohort, we agreed that history has brought us collectively to this moment in the religious and civic life of America where meaningful, long-standing change is possible and where empathy is a needed virtue in the public square. I am deeply encouraged by the passion, commitment, and empathy present in these emerging leaders and my fellow FIAD Learning Community and I cannot wait to see what both groups will accomplish in the years to come.
