About this business of Democracy comes a terrible query – Are these flippant people with hearts of rags and souls of chalk, are they worth preaching for and dying for upon the cross? Maybe not – maybe it is indeed a dream – but one thing sure remains – that the exercise of democracy, equality, to him who, believing preaches, and to the people who work it out – this is not a dream – to work for democracy is good, the exercise is good – strength it makes and lessons it teaches – gods it makes, at any rate, though it crucifies them often.¹

Contents

Introduction: Walt Whitman's Challenge →

Chapter 1: Conflict and Character Ethics in Atlanta →

Chapter 2: The Niebuhr Brothers →

Chapter 3: In Defense of the Obvious →

Conclusion: Clarity of Crisis →

Supplemental Info →

Sources →

Introduction: Walt Whitman's Challenge

Table of Contents→

The exercise of democracy is good. As history reminds us, we must not take it for granted. Democracy is the result of bold and bloody Declaration; it is a promise kept alive amid wars and depression, racial prejudice and poverty. At this moment – as at every moment – we have cause to ask, “what was it all for?”

Take a look around America today. Was it for the petty partisanship, bigotry, and hatred which commentators endlessly describe? A government mired in scandal and impeachment, complicit in its systematic rejection of equality and justice? Is the great “American Experiment,” after all it has witnessed, bound to regress into totalitarianism? Lincoln asked whether or not the dead at Gettysburg shall have “died in vain.” It was a good question.

The nineteenth century American poet Walt Whitman answers with an emphatic value judgment about the nature of humanity: despite our folly, any work done towards the ends of equality – “democracy” – is always good. In his unpublished Notes for Lectures on Democracy and Adhesiveness, Whitman asserts that without the individual pursuit of democracy, its profundity will ring hollow: “if we have it not in ourselves to defend what belongs to us, then the citadel and heart of the towns are taken.” ²

Whitman spent much of his professional life obsessed over the everyday experience of the American citizen, and how one’s own commitment to the democratic experiment relates to the survival of the nation as a whole. He tirelessly pondered what this commitment might look like. The nation’s founding documents were pragmatic in their design for democracy, but Whitman felt the world lacked an invocation of what being a democratic man or woman actually feels like.

In his poem, “Song of Myself,” Whitman begins to answer his own question, by cataloguing the day-to-day actions of an American:

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, The carpenter dresses his plank, The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats in rye. ³

That is, Americans ought to look at those whom they pass and say, “that too is me; that too I am.” For Whitman, democracy could not thrive without being wrapped into each citizen’s sensibilities and practices. An individual must come to know the “feeling” of democracy in order to “exercise” it. Whitman says that one must commit to the project “not only in his face – but in his limbs – the motion of his hands and arms and all his joints – his walk – the carriage of this neck – and the fleck of his waist and hips.”

This essay operates under two central assumptions. The first is framed by Walt Whitman’s challenge and strengthened by a variety of scholarly accounts: To understand democracy we must, to some degree, understand the kind of human being it creates. While the discussion of advanced theoretical accounts discussed by students and faculty in the seminar room of university yields expansive knowledge and understanding to those who partake, it is not particularly accessible outside of that seminar room. The individual’s experience of democracy is a poignant perspective from which to analyze the American Experiment because, if anything else, it is more accessible to the everyday American. Such accounts motivate analysis and change on the level most readily available to the individual – that of his character.

The second assumption of this essay is that American democracy is in crisis.⁴ Critics claim that the values that underwrite its institutions are being abandoned. ⁵ Consider not the contralto or the farmer, but the child born addicted to fentanyl or the generation of students accustomed to active-shooter-drills. Consider that at the beginning of the decade, while industrial metrics indicate a record-setting economic boom, three men own as much wealth as the bottom half of all Americans. ⁶ Surely, the experience of democracy today can feel disjointed and desperate, far from the ideal of any American poet.

Indeed, the present exercise of democracy is far from good. It has therefore become necessary to accept Whitman’s challenge and venture to understand the democratic practice of the everyday American and how this practice shapes present-day democracy. Given the sorry state of the American Experiment, we must begin by asking, first, where should we look to understand the individual experience of democracy, and second, how in such places is democracy characterized?

The first of these two questions is answered in the central and defensible argument of this essay—namely,

Theorists of democracy should look to institutions riven by the cultural conflict to understand democratic practice on the level of the individual.

If concerned commentators are in search of solutions to combat a culture on the verge of total ideological entrenchment, they ought to better understand the individual ethic at play in those institutions which maintain ideological diversity despite all odds.

This essay will employ the application of this central claim in order to defend it. A majority of its pages will be in service of an articulation of the individual “exercise of democracy,” derived from a present-day institution riven by cultural conflict, to encourage similar study. If the account of this institution can yield an agreeable articulation of the “exercise of democracy,” which in turn yields agreeable premises which can be expected to illuminate, in any meaningful way, democracy and its crisis, then the central claim of this essay must be true: future study ought to be encouraged. In reply to the second question, a provisional articulation is as follows:

According to research done in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, the exercise of democracy entails a character ethic that regards the practice of humility and sympathy.

I will argue here that the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta is an institution that can help us better understand democracy precisely because it is riven by cultural conflict. Pew Research indicates that while the Protestant Episcopal Church in America is among the most ideologically diverse denominations, the Metro Atlanta area is among the most politically “dissimilar” parts of the country.6 Chapter 1 investigates how the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta maintains ideological diversity in a culture opposed to it.investigates how the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta maintains ideological diversity in a culture opposed to it. ⁷

My research base, a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with a mixture of lay people and church leaders, shows that from the perspective of the individual, within and beyond the brick-and-mortar Church, Episcopalians employ a specific character ethic. It regards the virtues of humility and sympathy, derived from Anglican notions of scripture, liturgy, and tradition, as essential to task of “walking the big tent down the street” of one of the most polarized cities in America.

Chapter 2 begins the task of showing how this character ethic, distilled from a narrow study of a culturally fraught institution, can be understood as part of a broader exercise of democracy. In service of this goal, Chapter 2 introduces the work of twentieth- century theologians and ethicists Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr to strengthen the account of the character ethic in Chapter 1 and situate it within their shared notion of “Christian realism.” Chapter 1’s account of humility and sympathy relates to the paradoxical vision of human nature that the Niebuhr brothers share. This vision identifies the tension between divine creation and human imperfection; judgment and obligation; humility and sympathy. By suggesting that the Episcopal Church in Atlanta practices de- facto “Christian realism,” Chapter 2 provides a robust moral resource to relate the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta’s character ethic towards democracy itself.

Both of the Niebuhr brothers spoke directly to the character of democracy in their writings, particularly concerning the moral and ethical dimensions of democratic faith, the relationship between church and state, and more broadly, the relationship between religion and politics. Both brothers were thus political theorists and cultural critics, although Reinhold is the only one of the two who continues to be read in American Studies courses. Reinhold’s early Christian socialism informed his later understanding of liberal democracy and his work in contexts as diverse as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Americans for Democratic Action. Although H. Richard’s writings on democracy are less extensive and less widely known outside religion circles than his prolific brother’s, they are every bit as powerful and important to this thesis. Insofar as the character ethic of the Episcopal Church in Atlanta is associated with these two theologians and ethicists, their writings on democracy indicate that its claims regarding conflict and character relate to the trajectory, practice, and origin of American democracy.

Chapter 3 employs the methodological claims of the Niebuhr Brothers to suggest that the character ethic of the Episcopal Church can also be derived from the elementary principles of the United States Constitution. After defining these principles, this chapter articulates H. Richard Niebuhr’s dialogical understanding of the relationship between ethics, politics, and religion. Niebuhr’s belief in the correspondence between these realms clarifies the mechanism through which the character ethic of the Episcopal Church is derived from religious symbolism and suggests that such a character ethic can be derived instead from political symbolism found in the Constitution. This thesis does not claim that democracy requires religion for its maintenance or that humility and sympathy can only be derived from religious sources; rather, as anyone looking honestly at America today can see, certain forms of religion (and of secularism) take humility and sympathy more seriously than others. That the character ethic of humility and sympathy – the “ends” – can be derived from both universal notions of religion and political principles of American Democracy – “divergent means” – suggests that an ethic first understood in the practice of an ideologically diverse institution can indeed provide a provisional articulation of the “exercise of Democracy.”

If we accept Walt Whitman’s challenge, where should we look to understand how to “exercise democracy?” The central claim of this essay is that theorists of democracy must look to institutions riven by the cultural divides of our day to understand the individual experience of democratic practice. If this essays’ provisional articulation of the “exercise of democracy,” derived from such an institution, yields agreeable premises which can be expected to illuminate, in any meaningful way, democracy and its crisis, then the claim must be valid. An implication of this study, then, is that going forward, theorists of democracy should direct their attention away from the seminar room and towards the practice of democracy within institutions riven by the cultural conflict.