Let’s keep the faith so that our students don’t lose theirs. 

In late February, I attended a discussion about faith and democracy at the National Cathedral. Since then, I have been reflecting on how our Quaker values can add to the conversation and foster resilience in our students during intensified national and global conflicts. 

Cathedral Dean Randy Hollerith hosted a vibrant dialogue with Christine Emba, Peter Wehner, and Eboo Patel, the founder of Interfaith America who has addressed our students on two previous occasions. In his opening keynote, Patel asserted that an imperfect but consistent commitment to pluralism has defined U.S. history. “This is the prologue to American greatness,” Patel insisted. “To be a heritage American means to embrace the diversity of our sacred union.” 

Patel offered a compelling counternarrative to those who have sought recently to define American heritage in homogeneous, ahistorical terms. What makes the union sacred, he argued, recalls the impetus for William Penn’s Holy Experiment: a vision that people of many faiths and backgrounds could one day live together as citizens. “This is a country that’s built on a set of propositions,” observed Wehner, a former speech writer for George W. Bush. Among those propositions is the notion “that all people are created equal.” 

The panelists recognized that when it comes to practicing equality, the United States has lived its creed unevenly, even unjustly. We must not lose sight of this self-evident truth, especially as officials seek to scrub historical references to enslaved persons and Native Americans from national monuments. Purging our history assaults the dignity and exonerates from responsibility those who lived it. 

It took centuries for the United States to move tangibly toward honoring equality at the ballot box. Forged through persistent struggles for justice and landmark Supreme Court decisions—and codified in the Voting Rights Act—a sacred consensus emerged in the 20th century, one that ostensibly made the vote accessible to all citizens. By the late 1960s, this commitment had become a central (if not yet universally agreed upon) pillar of our national profession of faith. 

We now see efforts to attack this once sacrosanct principle, to gerrymander congressional districts, require voter identification, and deny birthright citizenship. Faith in what had served as a unifying if unrealized democratic standard has wobbled. Should we surrender this commitment, we run the risk of attenuating the moral ties that bind us, of forsaking the sacred for the profane. In fact, Emba warned that the vitiation of similarly “thick” social compacts has enabled “weak or flimsy moral frameworks” to emerge in our society, frameworks that promote “harsher” ideologies, including nationalism, nativism, racism, sexism, and authoritarianism. 

The desire to restrict the vote and revise longstanding definitions of citizenship to a narrowly defined group of so-called heritage Americans demonstrates little knowledge of American heritage: Our history has been largely shaped by the ongoing struggle to obtain the citizenship rights that democracy promised and law denied, to unify diverse voices into a vibrant and representative body politic. Failure to proclaim this truth dishonors the promise and the struggle alike. 

As educators in a Quaker school, how can we help students build capacity for practicing both pluralism and democracy? The panelists offered several suggestions: 

1. “Celebrate stories of pluralism,” said Patel, “and define the country around them.” As an example, Patel frequently cites the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance, in which colonists of New Amsterdam denounced the persecution of Quakers. 
2. Honor the diverse people you encounter throughout your day. Patel encouraged us to demonstrate genuine and active curiosity about and compassion for one another. Small, simple gestures of kindness matter. 
3. Emba, a contributor to The New York Times and senior fellow at Georgetown University, argued that we should “prioritize practice over belief.” It is one thing to preach the virtues of pluralism; it is another to let your life speak to them. The United States, Emba observed, is experiencing a “crisis of civic connection,” a failure to engage in meaningful conversation with those whose beliefs differ from our own. We cannot find common ground if we don’t seek it. 
4. “Debate for truth not for victory,” offered Wehner. First called the Religious Society of Friends for the Truth, Quakers have long sought to discern truths that benefit the broader society rather than allowing a particular individual or group to “win.” How can we enter political discussions with the humility to discover what is best for humanity as opposed to what is best for particular interests, including our own? 
5. Avoid cynicism because, as Wehner observed, it “corrodes the hearts of those who hold it.” In doing so, it inculcates a tacit resignation to the status quo, thereby permitting its holder to shirk social responsibility. Cynicism disables dialogue and confuses critical thinking for action. 

When Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention for the last time, Elizabeth Willing Powel, a well-connected Philadelphia socialite whose husband had been born into a Quaker family, asked Franklin whether he and his fellow statesmen had designed a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” he replied cautiously. “If you can keep it.” 

This year marks the Republic’s 250th anniversary. As a young child, I recall with nostalgic longing the excitement I felt when we celebrated our bicentennial in 1976. I wonder if our students see the 250th as worthy of celebration. Improving our democracy, building a peaceful society that honors the sacred dignity of every human being, should be causes to which we all let our lives speak. Let’s keep the faith so that our students don’t lose theirs.