Memorandum

To: John McCain and Barack Obama From: Douglas A. Hicks Subject: Leading a devout and diverse nation

As this campaign is wrapping up, it will soon be time to focus on governing. You will be leading the most religiously, racially, and ethnically varied citizenry in America’s history. Let me offer a few suggestions about the challenge of leading a religiously diverse nation in particular.

Devotion is a powerful force for good and for ill. Religious literacy, for lack of a better term, will be critical to your administration’s success. Understanding the dynamics of spiritual and cultural identity — in the Middle East, Central Asia, India, and sub-Saharan Africa, for instance — is correctly called the missing dimension in statecraft. And at home, the issues of homeland security, immigration, and economic health all require attention to religious and cultural differences.

Thus one challenge of leadership will be to shape the public square in ways that encourage citizens to express their deepest commitments and still get along. So a big question when you become president will be, What messages will your leadership send to a devout and diverse citizenry?

Like it or not, citizens from across denominations and traditions, devout practitioners and the unaffiliated alike, will see you as a kind of spiritual leader. If G.K. Chesterton was correct that America is “a nation with the soul of a church,” then you will be ordained as the high priest of our civil religion. You did not ask for that role, but it comes with the office.

To your stack of preparatory reading materials, please add the sociologist Robert N. Bellah’s classic essay, “Civil Religion in America,” and note the ways our greatest presidents have drawn richly and deeply on Scripture to shape a common American identity, while avoiding pious pandering. Lincoln is the great model here. Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address invoked God’s judgment on all parties for their complicity in the sin of slavery. Please attend also to Bellah’s air of skepticism as to whether civil religion can retain the critical (or prophetic) edge needed to resist merely stoking American exceptionalism or triumphalism.

Writing in 1967, Bellah was limited by the Protestant-Roman Catholic-Jewish framework of American diversity. Your declarations about faith and morality should speak to a country that reflects our world today. In no single speech will you be able to identify the laundry list of America’s faith traditions. Indeed, you should not become so concerned about connecting with every moral and religious view that you are afraid to talk about faith. But over time, Americans “from A to Z — atheist to Zoroastrian,” as one former White House staff member has put it, should recognize themselves in your speeches and remarks.

As president, then, you will have the opportunity to use your bully pulpit to support America’s first freedom and offer an inclusive vision of our common life. We need public education of our leaders and our citizens so they can recognize the value of religious diversity.

Here are six general principles to guide you:

• Your words matter. You are “image maker in chief.” Are we a Christian nation? If you say we are, then many Christians will be empowered. But at least some outside the Christian community will believe they are less than equal citizens. Refer to churches, but do not forget synagogues, mosques, temples, ashrams, gurdwaras, and other houses of worship that contribute to America’s civil society. Is the war on terror actually a clash of civilizations? Your appearances at mosques and Islamic celebrations are an invaluable part of the equation, but those significant acts of symbolism will be rendered irrelevant if, especially when crises occur, you or your staff members use sweeping language. What metaphor should you choose? I respectfully suggest you describe America as a crossroads of many great religious and moral traditions.
• Your presence matters. Although you will have crushing demands on your time, there is no substitute for “management by walking around.” That means building into your schedule the religious and cultural events that reflect America. Remember, too, to “think religion” beyond December. Many faiths bulk up minor festivals to stand alongside Christmas, but you should be there for the most-significant festivals throughout the year. For religious communities to receive you — not as an occasion for a politicized agenda — is a powerful symbol of an inclusive America.
• The White House workplace culture matters. You can model your own vision of American society through the culture you create among employees in your administration. There has been a lot of talk — not just in the United States but in European countries as well — about how leaders should build a team to reflect their country’s diversity. Gender and racial and ethnic diversity usually top the list; religion is rarely noted. Especially in the American context, religion cannot and should not be a test for office. But is the workplace welcoming to all? Would someone wearing religiously mandated attire or observing dietary restrictions face any hurdles fitting in? Are there appropriate venues to talk together about religion, morality, and how those topics influence “public” roles? Are you curious about religion and respectful of others?
• Policies matter. Do your policies reflect equal treatment of the religiously affiliated and the unaffiliated alike? Do all get a fair shake? The community and faith-based initiatives, now spread throughout the executive branch, should be carefully evaluated — and not only according to the rhetoric of equal eligibility; your administration should also determine whether the recipients of funds are roughly proportional to the religious, racial, and ethnic composition of the social-services sector. Such oversight will raise challenging issues about how to assess fairness, but they are the kinds of questions that should be a part of public debate.
• Your own faith matters. How should you draw on your faith and religious identity in your role as president? Deeply and carefully. You should not hesitate to find time for prayer, reflection, or worship if you find that to be of value for your leadership. You should make every effort to explain the ways in which your own convictions, which are not held by all Americans, inform your political values and decision making. Just as important, you should make efforts to ensure a clear distinction between your personal faith and the office of the president. Put in terms of the First Amendment, your religion must not receive any established or preferential status, and you should seek to avoid even the appearance of preference. Remember, too, that your faith is not the only faith that matters.
• Humility is important. Terry L. Price, a scholar of leadership, has written about the ways leaders fail because of the very position they hold. They come to think that, at the top, the everyday rules of morality no longer apply to them. Strive to maintain humility in your own leadership. I mean two kinds of humility: interpersonal and epistemic. In terms of religion, there is no need for you to wear your faith on your sleeve, and if you do, it will make you appear smug. As for the epistemic, or knowledge-based, part of humility, be aware of John Locke’s particular cautions about religious ideas and political power, remembering that political office gives you no special religious insight. Perhaps those who share your faith will be the most convincing in your mind. Give proper place to doubt.

Now some tactical points to translate those principles into practice:

• Identify the public vision and charge advisers to keep it on the table. Religious freedom, civic engagement, and mutual respect are abstract concepts. They will not cry out for your time on a daily basis, and their needs are not usually as immediate as domestic or international crises. You can be sure that such issues get proper attention by charging people around you to make religion and America’s diversity a part of your agenda. What are the impacts of policy X on American Muslims? Evangelical Christians? Mormons? Your Office of Public Liaison will filter comments to you from devout and diverse constituents. Even closer to your daily work, you could also appoint your chief of staff or key domestic and international advisers to pose such questions relentlessly.
• Establish crash courses in religious literacy for key staff members. The Muslim community in the United States is as varied as the American Christian community or as the Muslim community abroad. Sikhs and Jains are regularly confused with Hindus. For that matter, not all secularists are atheists. That understanding matters for domestic and international policy. Who can offer such education? Federal agencies that already train employees and rising leaders can play a part by revising their curricula. For a fuller picture, scholars in politics and religious studies at American universities could develop such courses. Ideally, you would instruct some government agents to work with scholars to design fitting programs.
• Your religious outreach should be as broad as possible. It should extend across the gamut of traditions in this country. The effectiveness of your leadership will be enhanced by communication with people who tend to disagree with you. President Clinton directed his staff to coordinate religious-outreach breakfasts that included religious conservatives who tended not to agree with him. Those were give-and-take sessions conducted with the aim of two-way listening and learning.
• Work with American communities to build bridges among groups on international questions. One of the most fundamental agenda items for your domestic and foreign policy is this: You can help all Americans to clearly distinguish the campaign against Al Qaeda from animosity against Islam as a whole. Our leaders and citizens must isolate the radical extremists who are motivated to use violence from the approximately 1.4 billion adherents of Islam around the world. Look to the millions of Muslims in this country as potential allies between the United States and the Islamic world. Remember that like American Christians and Jews, the American Muslim community is not uniform and has no single spokesperson.
• Renew and expand public-diplomacy efforts abroad. The Bush administration appointed Karen Hughes, a trusted confidante and former high-profile official, as undersecretary of state on matters of public diplomacy, a welcome acknowledgment that went some way to helping America’s image abroad. Yet her efforts were framed almost entirely by the war on terror, as Hughes publicly took Muslims and others to task for not condemning terrorism more explicitly. When public diplomacy is so closely aligned with the war on terror, foreign observers readily interpret the program as just U.S. propaganda. U.S. leaders should appeal to friends in foreign governments who would cooperate in distinguishing terrorists from the rest of the population. The whole effort will require a commitment to building strong relations with various foreign leaders.
• In crises, invoke a broad and deep American civil religion. As president, you, together with your team, are charged to confront the unthinkable, to prepare for severe crises. That certainly includes acts of terrorism, but it extends far beyond them. Prepare words and symbolic acts that would appeal to citizens’ higher motives. You can send a strong signal of an inclusive American identity, especially at times when religious or racial and ethnic minorities are at risk. What symbols and language will you draw on when crises hit? Charge members of your staff to turn now to the leaders and other contacts in America’s religious communities and prepare together. Invoke the profound images of American civil religion in the broadest possible language. If you cite passages from Christian or other scripture, frame them as texts treasured by some Americans that might provide comfort to all Americans. In moments of temptation to vengeance, be careful not to fuel American intolerance or belligerence. At those times, especially, you must exercise leadership by empathizing with citizens, showing wise restraint of anger, and drawing people together in solidarity.

Thank you for taking the time to consider these issues. Among America’s devout and diverse citizenry, you have an opportunity to help frame a continuing public conversation in which religion is a rich resource. Let there be no doubt that your leadership is needed to frame an inclusive approach. I encourage you to stand with integrity and openness about your own faith but to reach out as broadly as possible to God on all sides, to the crossroads of communities and traditions that is America today.

Douglas A. Hicks is executive director of the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement and an associate professor in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. This essay is adapted from With God on All Sides: Leadership in a Devout and Diverse America, to be published in January by Oxford University Press.

http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 55, Issue 9, Page B14