Donald Trump invoked faith as a blunt instrument. But faith is what will get us through this year. President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech topping off the Republican National Convention last night compounded surrealities: on the South Lawn of the White House, with an army of flags behind him and a sea of unmasked people seated together — after millions of Americans have sacrificed togetherness with loved ones for the past six months.
It was an abdication of presidential norms, a flouting of the Hatch Act, an upturning of public health guidance, and an insult to those who’ve died in this pandemic. It was a night when God Almighty was invoked. It was a speech full of lies.
It’s been a year of grief and loss for many Americans. 2020 has been the sort of year that carries a mythic quality; it’s a cosmic test, the darkest timeline, the year from hell. Last night, on PBS’s convention coverage, presidential historian Michael Beschloss warned us that the way symbols of our country had been mixed with those of Trump’s political movement is “what happens in autocracies.”
We’ve been stacking trauma on trauma: a global pandemic, more than 180,000 Americans dead, 5.84 million diagnosed with Covid-19, elderly family members isolated, children’s school routines destroyed, careers up in a snuff of business closure. It’s catastrophic hurricanes and wildfires. It’s been the graphic witness of the country’s systemic racism laid bare in a knee to the neck, a killing in her own home, followed and killed while jogging, seven shots in front of his children. It’s also the wash of tiny disappointments; the birthdays that became just another Zoom meeting; not being able to dine in at a favorite restaurant; not being able to hug a friend hello.
In all the chaos and death, where does one find the energy to keep going or the light to energize oneself to face a new day in 2020?
Faith helps, it seems. By this, I do not mean the sort of posturing that no longer veils Christian nationalism within campaign speeches or bastardizes scripture, as Vice President Mike Pence did, substituting Old Glory into verses from 2 Corinthians and Hebrews, deleting out Jesus.
The faith that helps a country find itself again can’t be specific to any one tradition. For me, this week, a thread of something to believe in began with a cheerleader.
Recently, The Cut’s podcast returned with an episode titled “Optimism” that contemplated what it means to attempt optimism in a year with so much loss and disappointment. The episode featured La’Darius Marshall from the Netflix series Cheer. A breakout from the show, Marshall experienced abuse as a child, but through cheer, he exhibited the grit to manage extraordinary physical feats and maintain the sunny disposition required for the sport. In the interview, he balanced optimisic advice (“Baby, do what makes you happy”) with a call out for justice for Breonna Taylor; he encouraged those feeling disempowered to vote. He spoke of chasing joy but also a desire for the world to be good, to be better. His optimism is grounded in realism. He expresses faith in God, faith in change.
Trying to see my way through this year, to picture what might come of so much strain and tragedy, I am often envious of such faith. It seems like a comfort, that place to lean.
In so doing, Marshall mirrors the linkage between faith and justice that has defined many movements. Gandhi often described God as truth itself, which allowed him to “see God face to face as it were” as he defined the principles of nonviolent action and revolution. When John Lewis closed his speech at the March on Washington 57 years ago today, he proclaimed that through the force of the movement’s demands, determination, and numbers, “we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of God and democracy.” The capacity to picture something larger and imbued with good is its own power.
The display last night and throughout the Republican National Convention also demonstrates the danger of weaponizing religion for power’s sake.
I want to be careful here. There’s a great difference between the faith that gives one stamina to pursue justice and abusing others’ faith for political ends. What I’m talking about is the personal bit, the quiet thing that can help someone get through this moment.
Trying to see my way through this year, to picture what might come of so much strain and tragedy, I am often envious of such faith. It seems like a comfort, that place to lean.
In my adult life, I’ve transitioned from Christian to atheist; and now, in 2020, I’m a theological agnostic whose faith in humanity has, moment by moment, been tested and restored only to be tested again. I’ve felt my body fill with fear and dread more times than I can count, and even as it washes away with some new, hopeful nugget of true human goodness or kindness, a residue remains. As Tara Haelle recently wrote for Elemental, for many of us, our surge capacity, the “collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations,” has been depleted over the pandemic’s long haul. And that’s real even before shouldering a lifetime of other immediate, systemic stressors.
I’m concerned that my capacity for optimism might be broken by this year.
If that happens to enough of us, I don’t know how we’ll navigate 2021. Superstition aside, the great curses of 2020 we’re all dealing with — inequities in public health and basic human treatment, economic insecurity, the impacts of climate change — won’t snap away with the flip of the calendar.