When Mat Schmalz was coming of age in western Massachusetts decades ago, he took a year to volunteer for a Roman Catholic order in rural Oklahoma, helping to minister to some of the region’s poorer and more isolated communities.

It was the first time he spent a significant amount of time away from the rhythms of his Catholic upbringing, and at first he felt a bit unmoored. But then it almost came as a surprise as he grew particularly close to a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, or when he started forming deep friendships with evangelical Protestants, including those from charismatic and Pentecostal traditions. 

“I mean, in one sense it was liberating,” says Mr. Schmalz, now a professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, which he calls “the heart of the Catholic left.” 

“Those experiences gave me a sense then, and then throughout my life, that people who I would consider ‘other’ could teach me something spiritually.”

Such openness to other traditions, and even other forms of faith, have long characterized some of the more liberal expressions of American Christianity. Along with an emphasis on the Social Gospel, which highlights the earthly ministries of Jesus and his commitment to the poor and oppressed, these traditions helped ground his Christian faith over the years, Mr. Schmalz says.

Even so, for nearly a half-century liberal Christianity has endured a steady decline. Often in tension with certain Christian teachings and their exclusive claims to truth, its openness may have in fact cut away the distinctiveness of traditional faith, some historians contend. As a cultural and political force, too, its influence has waned since the 1960s, even as conservative congregations around the country were growing and flourishing.

But the remnants of these once-powerful Christian traditions have in many ways sparked back to life over the past few years. 

A progressive coalition of religious liberals, spearheaded especially by Black Protestant churches, has reemerged as a political force in Democratic politics, disrupting what had long been the party’s more secular ethos.

“It does seem to me that there has been this resurgence of people who interpret their Christian beliefs as a call to action on behalf of the most vulnerable,” says Margaret McGuinness, professor of religion and theology at La Salle University in Philadelphia. “And then, all of a sudden, here comes President Joe Biden, who wears his Catholic faith on his sleeve – and I mean that in a good way, in a way that a lot of people are noticing.”

Only the second Roman Catholic to hold the nation’s highest office, President Biden has been one of the most pious and faithfully observant Christians in decades, many observers say, peppering his speeches with more than the kind of general religious references politicians often make. He’s quoted theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, and Catholic hymns like “On Eagle’s Wings,” a favorite among many liberal Catholics.

Countering Christian nationalism

Part of this resurgence can be seen as part of a broader reaction against the expressions of Christian nationalism that coalesced around former President Donald Trump, many observers say, who appointed an outsize number of Evangelicals and religious conservatives in his administration. 

“I think it’s been an important corrective to how in America, at least, when we hear about religion and politics, it’s always about the right,” says Kraig Beyerlein, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s usually very little discussion about the religious left.”

Over the past few years, however, a number of high-profile Democrats – including current New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg; and Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush, a pastor from St. Louis – have made their faith a centerpiece of their liberal policy positions as churches on the left become more politically active.  

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Sen. Raphael Warnock talks to a reporter as he leaves the Capitol at the conclusion of the second day of the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 10, 2021.

In a recent study, in fact, Dr. Beyerlein and his colleagues found that a “staggering” 41% of congregations who identified as politically liberal participated in demonstrations or lobbied elected officials during the presidency of Mr. Trump, compared with only 5% who said they were active during the administration of former President Barack Obama. 

Still, according to survey data, there are more than three times the number of self-identifying conservative congregations in the U.S. than liberal churches. Conservatives make up nearly half of the nation’s churches, while only 15% identify as liberal, he says, with 39% reporting they stand in the middle of the political spectrum.

A liberal Protestant who has attended churches committed to the sanctuary movement, Dr. Beyerlein was also surprised to find that a third of Catholic parishes across the U.S. declared themselves as sanctuaries for unauthorized immigrants during the Trump administration.  

Rising profile for Black Protestants

But the historic election of the Rev. Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate in January only underscores how much Black Protestants have taken the lead in reviving the liberal traditions of Christianity. As the first African American senator from Georgia, Senator Warnock has maintained his role as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the former congregation of Martin Luther King Jr.

“The amazing thing about Raphael Warnock’s movement into the U.S. Senate is that it fits perfectly into the trajectory of African American Christianity post slavery,” says Willie Jennings, professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

“It is a Christianity that aimed from the very beginning to call America to its better angels, its better light, and to try to draw the nation away from hypocrisy and toward living up to the Constitution and the nation’s founding documents.”

But the easy demarcations of “liberal” and “conservative” have never really captured the traditions of the Black church, he says. “The better word would be ‘biblicist’ than conservative, which has its strengths and weaknesses.”

“The central strength of our biblicist tradition is that certain very powerful stories about how life ought to be lived is what guides us,” Dr. Jennings continues. “So the life of Jesus, the story of healing the sick and feeding the poor and fighting for the orphan and widows and turning to the least of these, has always made us recognize that this is where God’s attention is turned. All of that is crucial to African American Christianity.”

“But on the other side, which is also problematic, there are certain ways in which the biblical narratives describe the role of women or describe the ideal household in ways that do align with a social conservative vision,” he says.

In December, a group of 25 Black pastors wrote an open letter to Senator Warnock urging him to oppose abortion. Many Catholic bishops have raised similar concerns about the abortion-rights stance of President Biden.

A modest yet significant movement

Make no mistake, though energized and resurgent, liberal Christianity remains on a relatively small space in the country’s religious landscape. 

But its traditional de-emphasis on exclusive doctrines may fit well into the larger social movements in the country right now. Millennials and younger Americans increasingly care little about the exclusive particulars of traditional Christianity, even as Christians on both the left and right see faith as an integral part of political action. 

Yet the value of a liberating openness to the “other” in liberal traditions can be challenging as well, says Mr. Schmalz. When he worked with Catholic converts among those on the bottom rung of India’s caste system, many resisted attempts to develop specifically Indian forms of Catholic worship. 

“Many of the [lowest caste members] I knew considered that to be a concession to high caste Brahmins, and so they were more comfortable with the traditional aspects of Catholicism, like the old mass when it is sung in Latin and so forth,” he says. 

“And it was really interesting to me how powerful charismatic Catholicism was,” continues Mr. Schmalz, talking about a faith that combines Catholic doctrine with evangelical traditions, including the laying on of hands. “It was in this context that these people could touch and be touched,” and for those whose caste meant that others avoided touching them “that’s obviously something incredibly meaningful.”

Deeply conservative, both charismatic Catholics and Evangelicals were well represented at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, even as each make up some of the fastest growing movements of Christians on a global scale.

But the rejuvenation of liberal Christianity today “represents an opportunity for Christian political discourse to move from the culture wars to the social gospel,” Mr. Schmalz says, or offer a chance for the country “to gradually shift away from what they call ‘pelvic issues’ to broader social justice questions, such as the death penalty, immigration, and universal health care.”

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., with impeachment managers Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, speaks to members of the media during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, after the U.S. Senate voted not guilty, to acquit former President Donald Trump of inciting riot at U.S. Capitol, ending impeachment trial, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021.

After two tumultuous impeachments of former President Donald Trump in little over a year, it’s clear that today the impeachment process works far differently than the Founding Fathers intended.

The authors of the Constitution believed that members of Congress would rally together to defend the legislature’s prerogatives against intrusions from the executive. But James Madison and his fellows didn’t foresee the effects of the rise of political parties.

Partisanship has proved a far more effective unifying force than institutional identity. Last week the votes of all but seven Senate Republicans acquitted Mr. Trump of charges related to the invasion of the U.S. Capitol.

But this isn’t the only constitutional hole exposed in the Trump era. From the ineffectiveness of congressional subpoenas to the White House, to the imbalance in the relative power of urban and rural votes, Mr. Trump’s norm-breaking presidency has highlighted a number of flaws in the U.S. democratic system.

“What I would emphasize is that there are structural problems with our democracy, some of which are really hard to fix, but some of which have emerged recently which there are fixes for,” says Thomas Keck, a professor of political science at Syracuse University in New York state. 

Three presidents, tried and not convicted

Impeachment is the problem most recently on public display. It was meant as a check on abuse of power by officials, via threat of removal. While federal judges and lower-level members of the executive branch have indeed lost their jobs through impeachment trials, no president has ever been impeached in the House, convicted by the Senate, and summarily removed from the Oval Office.

The sample size is small. Only three presidents have been impeached by the House: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. (Richard Nixon resigned under threat of almost certain impeachment and removal.) But Senate votes to convict impeached presidents have been almost entirely partisan. The seven Republicans who voted “guilty” on Mr. Trump’s second impeachment represent a high-water mark for bipartisanship, by far. Prior to last week only one senator had ever voted to convict a president of their own party.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was one of the seven. In a statement explaining his vote, he said that Congress has become a weaker institution than the framers thought it would be. If Congress can’t respond to an attack on itself instigated by the head of the executive branch, the constitutional balance of power will be further tilted away from the Capitol, according to Senator Sasse.

“That’s unacceptable. This institution needs to respect itself enough to tell the executive that some lines cannot be crossed,” he wrote.

Should Congress just give up on impeachment, recognizing that in today’s balanced and fraught political environment the removal of a president is highly unlikely? A vote to simply censure Mr. Trump might have had a better chance of success.

Professor Keck believes that impeachment remains an exceptional tool for exceptional circumstances, but that lawmakers and voters should realize its primary function is not removal, but documentation. It lays down a marker for historians. In decades to come Mr. Trump’s impeachments will be mentioned high in descriptions of his presidency, as will Mr. Clinton’s and Mr. Johnson’s singular impeachment rebukes.

“I do think the House managers did a really effective job of getting out the first draft of history,” says Professor Keck of last week’s Senate trial.

Could impeachment become commonplace?

There is also the chance that impeachment, rather than being abandoned, will become more regular, a common tool of partisan struggle. In the wake of Mr. Trump’s acquittal some Republicans have threatened a tit-for-tat retaliation if the GOP retakes the House in 2022.

On Fox News on Sunday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina implied that Vice President Kamala Harris could be impeached for expressing support for a bail fund for Black Lives Matter protesters. During Mr. Trump’s trial his own lawyers warned that impeachments will become “commonplace,” and said that even out-of-office Democratic presidents might now be hauled back for trial.

It’s possible that the downward spiral of partisanship could take the country into a place where any and all means of harassing a president from the opposing party become conceivable. But that would likely mean taking flimsier charges more seriously, or trying to impeach a president for relatively small offenses.

Many in the Senate probably remember Bill Clinton’s impeachment on charges of lying about his affair with a young intern, says Frank Bowman, an expert on impeachment at the University of Missouri School of Law. Voters at the time had a negative view of the prosecution of Mr. Clinton. His approval ratings rose.

“If these guys have got any political memory or anybody around to remind them, they’ll remember that egregious misuses of impeachment have a tendency to backfire on the party,” says Professor Bowman.

He rejects the notion that impeachment is more broken than it has ever been. It simply reflects the reality of hyper-partisanship in the country and a Congress where real work has almost ground to a halt.

“The impeachment mechanism, like any other of the components of the Constitution ... is no better than the people that move the levers,” he says.

Constitutional hardball

The frequency of impeachments has accelerated in recent years, but given that the numbers are still very small, it’s hard to know if that’s a stable trend or just statistical noise. There have been periods of intense polarization and divided government – think the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama – that didn’t produce impeachments.

Political scientists don’t really have a unified theory on the conditions that lead to impeachment, but they may occur in periods when the rules of government become muddled, says Julia Azari, assistant chair of political science at Marquette University.

“It’s really about when gray areas emerge. And that’s just as much about the political context as it is about the president himself,” she says.

So, whatever occurs with the cycle of impeachments, other aspects of partisan realpolitik may accelerate. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s long blockade of Obama nominee Merrick Garland to save a Supreme Court seat for Republicans could lead to further tough actions on high court nominees. Mr. Trump ignored many congressional subpoenas for testimony and administration witnesses, with apparent impunity – perhaps setting a precedent. The Trump presidency also proved that it is possible to avoid the need for Senate confirmation for top officials by simply playing a shell game with “acting” appointments. 

Today’s voters like it when their politicians play constitutional hardball, says Professor Azari. This is especially true of Republican voters increasingly insecure about their place in the U.S. as the nation becomes more diverse and their party’s strength wanes.

On the other hand, the lesson of 2020 and 2021 may be that competence and policy matter. Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, organizing vaccine distribution, keeping electricity flowing in the face of climate-change-driven storms – all of this requires political action as opposed to shouting on cable news.

“We are ... seeing a resurgence in the idea that there needs to be some governance,” says Professor Azari.

The big picture is that the country is struggling to deal with all these real problems even as its politics attempt to represent more constituencies than ever before. Discomfort is inevitable.

“Democracy has expanded,” says Professor Azari. “The kinds of people who have access to positions of power has expanded, and that is going to make things more complicated and that is not a bad thing.” 

Courtesy of Jane Riekemann

Campaigners from the Bath for Europe group protest in London on Jan. 30, 2020, with Steve Fray, known as Mr. 'Stop Brexit' for his daily protests outside Parliament. Jane Riekemann, second left, is sporting her homemade 'EU beret.'

By her own admission, Jane Riekemann steered clear of politics for much of her life. That all changed when Brexit happened, and her German husband had to take dual British citizenship to stay in the country.

With Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, Ms. Riekemann says she felt a new sense of a European identity – even if it is one born out of loss.

“Being part of a wider community where once I could live and work freely was very important to me – countries without borders,” she says from her home in the historic English city of Bath, a place she describes as politically “donut” – an enclave of those who voted to remain in Europe surrounded by Brexiteers.

“I feel the loss of my legal EU identity keenly,” she says. “The people I’ve campaigned with have similar feelings and still consider themselves European.”

Ms. Riekemann is part of a significant number of Britons who regard themselves not only as British, but as European. Despite Britain’s decision to leave the EU, a sense of interconnectedness with the continent has manifested itself increasingly since the 2016 referendum. But with Brexit now realized, European-minded Britons are left to find a new way to express their identity. For some, that has meant trying to create a new, pro-Europe media to counter the largely Brexit-leaning mainstream. Others are attempting to set the stage for a British return to the bloc in some form.

Though a Europeanist path for Britons is foggy, if it exists at all, those like Ms. Riekemann are staunch in their faith. “I have never wavered in my belief in Europe,” she says. “In the almost five years since the referendum, I have become stronger in my conviction that leaving Europe is a huge mistake. But where do we go now?”

Feeling European after Brexit

For Britons like Alex Agnew, a university student and campaigner, being in the EU meant being part of a “shared cultural identity” that “genuinely worked to bring down artificial travel and work barriers.” And anti-Brexit journalist Sam Bright says a European identity has helped him to feel a “part of the struggle to protect and extend liberal democracy, social equality, opportunity, and common welfare.”

“Having a general sense of cooperation and treating asylum seekers and immigrants with fairness; having a fairer and more just economic system,” he says. “That’s perhaps not quite as radical as people may think, but being European meant supporting these core values.” The rise of populism, he argues, only serves to “increase people’s desire to identify as European in Britain.”

Ms. Riekemann has expressed herself by establishing grassroots protest groups and publicly displaying her affection for all things Europe. A yellow-painted owl statue by the name of ‘Libby’ (named after the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s pro-EU political party) sits perched proudly by Ms. Riekemann’s window. Her anti-Brexit campaign group Bath For Europe created handmade EU-themed berets that quickly became iconic symbols of British Europeanism for protests that attracted a million people into London's streets in 2018. Her anti-Brexit group designed fake anti-Brexit banknotes featuring Boris Johnson, now stored in the British Museum.

Courtesy of Jane Riekemann

The anti-Brexit campaigners Bath for Europe created and distributed fake bank notes satirizing prominent Brexiteers Jacob-Rees Mogg, member of Parliament for the constituency surrounding Bath, and now Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Mike Buckley, director of the Labour for Europe group, says Britons will increasingly miss out on chance encounters with European migrants that enrich daily lives. Over 700,000 migrant workers left Britain in 2020, a vast majority of them returning back to Eastern Europe. “We’ve all been used to finding Europeans behind the counter at Starbucks. ... [Now] suddenly you’ll get British accents talking at you. We’ll think, ‘What’s happened to London?’”

The pro-European, small-scale media that have rapidly emerged since Brexit are helping to create a community for Britons to maintain a pro-European identity despite the U.K’s rupture from Brussels. Mr. Bright, who has worked for pro-European British publications Scram News and Byline Times, says pro-European Britons have created an “impetus for new media publications tapping into a desire” to keep Britain European in vision. And in that pursuit, pro-Europeans have caused a “realignment of the media space” dominated by conservative-leaning legacy publications in favor of Brexit.

A path back to Europe?

While Brexit has faded from public discussion this year, pro-European Britons continue to pour their energy into campaigns for a political, and cultural, union to return. Campaign group Stay European gained more than 162,000 members in 2020 with its vision for Britain to apply for associate membership, the closest relationship a country can have to the bloc while remaining outside the EU.

Mr. Agnew, who was too young to vote in 2016, says that while “the emotive arguments have been lost” for Britain returning to the European fold, change requires “baby steps, such as trying to get facts out in a nonpartisan way” and informing the public about how “boring policy” hits people’s daily lives.

Mr. Buckley says he staunchly believes that young Britons’ growing sense of belonging to a pro-European movement will “inevitably” lead to the country returning to the EU. “If you think gay marriage is fine when you’re 20, you don’t hate it when you’re 50. I think young people’s pro-Europeanism will stick around as they get older and are more likely to vote.”

Like many others though, he fears there are few, if any, political cheerleaders championing Britons who feel aligned with Europe.

Still, across the English Channel, Liesje Schreinemacher, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, says the centuries old exchange of people and ideas between the U.K. and her native Netherlands is an example of a deep-rooted Europeanness that will never be broken.

“There will always be cultural ties between the EU and the U.K. I think we will keep that bond strong,” she says. “Speaking as a Dutch woman, they [Britons] are our neighbors; many of our citizens have connections with the U.K. through family or study or work.

“I believe it will be good for the U.K. to return to the EU. There’s a new word: the Breturn!”

For years, nations around the world have wrestled with how to handle surges in migrants and asylum-seekers. Colombia’s decision to offer 10-year temporary legal status to 1.7 million Venezuelans who fled economic and humanitarian crises is being hailed as a historic move. Some hope it will set an example for the region: After decades of watching its own population flee due to internal conflict, Colombia is giving back to neighbors.

What is Colombia offering?

Last week, Colombia announced that Venezuelan migrants who entered the country before Jan. 31, 2021 can legally stay for a decade if they register with authorities. The plan will allow Venezuelans to work legally and gain access to government services, like health care and education, largely pulling them out of the shadows.

The government says the initiative is both practical for Colombia and necessary for its neighbors suffering a prolonged humanitarian crisis. President Iván Duque said it would help the government identify the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants, design better social policies, efficiently track down anyone who violates the law, and hopefully have an expanded workforce to rebuild the economy once the pandemic settles down.

“We hope other countries will follow our example,” he said in announcing the move.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans already in the country have some kind of temporary visa, which they will no longer have to renew in order to extend their stay.

Why are there so many Venezuelans in Colombia in the first place?

Venezuela is experiencing multiple crises under President Nicolás Maduro, with citizens facing criminal and state violence, repression of political expression, shortages of essential foods, economic insecurity, and lack of access to medicine and essential services. An estimated 5.4 million Venezuelans have fled the country, making it one of the largest crises of displacement in the world.

Colombia and Venezuela share a border, which has made it a destination for nearly 40% of all Venezuelan migrants and refugees in South America. More than half of the estimated 1.7 million Venezuelans in Colombia don’t have legal status.

Many Colombians are frustrated with the decision – especially coming from a conservative president who pledged a hard line against the Venezuelan government. A January Gallup Poll found that 67% of Colombians have an unfavorable opinion of Venezuelan migrants, and 80% responded that they were not in favor of how the Colombian government managed migration from Venezuela. Many Colombians blame Venezuelan migrants for upticks in crime, and some believe offering temporary legal status will up competition for jobs and social services at a particularly challenging time.

Why would Colombia want to do this?

Colombia is no stranger to conflict and migration. It endured nearly 60 years of internal armed conflict that displaced millions, and at least 1 million Colombians fled to neighboring Venezuela in the 1980s and ’90s. Many view the move as returning a historic favor, since neighbors took in Colombia’s most vulnerable in their time of need.

But it’s also pragmatic: Colombia’s attempts at halting the inflow of Venezuelan migrants hasn’t borne fruit, despite periodic border closures, and diplomatic moves like recognizing Venezuela’s opposition government and refusing to reinitiate bilateral relations with Mr. Maduro.

The president’s plan has been praised by politicians, academics, and international humanitarian groups, despite its unpopularity among most Colombians. A migrant with legal status is harder for criminal groups, employers, or landlords to exploit, experts argue. Colombia will gain more control over policy planning, national security, and will likely win fiscally, too.

And the move could serve as an example for the region, where nations like Peru, Chile, and Ecuador are meeting the vast number of Venezuelans crossing their borders with a mish-mash of ad hoc policies, and where the pandemic frequently overshadows immigration governance.

The United Nations refugee agency praised the decision, noting that the body is willing to contribute logistical and financial aid in implementing the ambitious program.

Offering protected status is “a humanitarian gesture of an unprecedented scale in the region – and the entire world,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. “This initiative is an extraordinary example of humanity, commitment towards human rights, and pragmatism.”

For about two weeks after Inauguration Day, I didn’t watch the news, read my daily news feeds, or listen to late-night talk show hosts joke about serious matters.

COVID-19, protests against racial injustice, unending litigation about election integrity, the Capitol insurrection, and the heavily armed inauguration had stretched me beyond my emotional limits. I took a breaking-news break. And with the head and heart space that opened up, a fresh idea had the chance to emerge and invited me into a whole new perspective on our nation.

America is not divided, was my thought; we’ve merely been broken open. We have been forced to see the vices that have always lived among our virtues. We have been given this gift of broken-openness before, but we left the reality of “liberty and justice for all” languishing on a bottom shelf, only partially opened.

After the Civil War, Reconstruction could have given formerly enslaved people the 40 acres and a mule needed to start a new and flourishing life. Instead, it handed them 100 years of a slavery remix called Jim Crow. Post-World War II opportunities for housing loans could have helped Black citizens obtain a vital American dream. But racially restrictive covenants kept Black families from building generational wealth through homeownership. Voting rights wins in the 1960s could have changed the makeup of local, state, and national legislatures. Voter suppression strategies ensured that didn’t happen. America has not used its gifts to their fullest. We are great, but not as good as we could be.

Every time we have faced a national flashpoint, we have feared to look long enough and deep enough at our broken-openness. We fail to realize that it’s in our darkest and most broken places that God’s light will shine the brightest.

And here we are again, this time dealing with the formidable trifecta of racism, health care, and economic recovery. Are we willing to move beyond our binary historical narratives that cause us to see everything in terms of us/them, Black/white, red/blue, and haves/have-nots? Yes, it’s hard. It feels so much easier to take the road of defensiveness or denial than to face our long-overdue need for systemic change.

I get it. For about six years, I went – off and on – to see a mental health clinician. Every time I was about to make a breakthrough, I’d stop, not wanting to relive the sorrow of what I’d done or the trauma of what had been done to me. But the truth is, the way out was through.

Individuals and nations have to deal with their good, their bad, and their ugly. While we can’t undo what we’ve done, or unsee what we’ve seen, we can choose to engage with the gift of each new day differently. To go where we’ve never gone, we’ll have to do what we’ve never done. We’ll have to soldier through.

Our first steps toward what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “the beloved community” might not feel like steps at all, but they are essential. First, we must find a comfy chair and a quiet space where we can sit and ponder thoughts that are honest, just, and lovely. And we must breathe. Yes, just breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Slowly. Intentionally. Deeply … for at least 10 minutes.

We must give our hearts and minds a rest. We’ll think about nothing while thinking about everything and allow the thoughts that emerge to emerge. If we stay in that comfy chair long enough, a sense of calm and goodness might overtake us. Peace, hope, joy, and gratitude will have the opportunity to become top of mind. We’ll ask ourselves where we can offer healing rather than harm, provide comfort instead of complaints, and give without a need to receive. We’ll ponder a small, doable act of kindness – and then we’ll set out to get it done.

As we are humbled by a greater awareness of our own broken-openness, we’ll take pride in a new ability to listen to those we think are not like us. We’ll discover that we have a lot in common with “them” – whoever “them” happens to be. We’ll notice that we all want safe neighborhoods, livable wages, quality health care, good schools for our children, and peace of mind about our retirement years.

In our comfy chairs, we can meet our “better angels.” I like to think that’s how President Lincoln understood the “still small voice” that speaks in the quiet. And when we get to know those angels, we won’t waste another day listening to demons of divisiveness. We’ll reimagine our so-called great divide as an open door into the lavish generosity, governed accountability, gracious forgiveness, bipartisan cooperation, and inexhaustible love that God’s light is waiting to stream into us all.

That’s the sound of silence. 

AP

Buddhist monks march during a protest against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 16.

More than two weeks after a military coup in Myanmar, over 100,000 protesters were again on the streets Wednesday demanding a return to democracy. For days, the variety of the crowds has been as impressive as their size. Demonstrators include comedians, cyclists, civil servants, teachers, railway workers, farmers, members of the old royal court, and even women dressed as Disney princesses (to inspire young girls to participate). Yet in the eyes of the coup leader, army Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the most worrisome protesters may be saffron-robed Buddhist monks.

In largely Buddhist Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, monks were in the front lines of protests in 1988 and 2007 that finally led to the military granting a partial democracy in 2011. In ancient days, the monastic order, or sangha, merely had to hint that a king was illegitimate and he was gone. The power of monks to shape public opinion comes from their daily ritual of receiving alms from believers, walking barefoot door to door with shaved heads carrying begging bowls.

They are seen as selfless, above worldly ways, and dedicated to relieving human suffering. This allows them to call for compassionate rulers who are peaceful and meet the needs of all the people. It also may account for the peaceful nature of the protests.

Their moral and spiritual authority could once more bring the military to heel. The army is taking no chances. Since the Feb. 1 coup, a number of leading monks, such as well-known U Thawbita in Mandalay, have been arrested and sentenced. (These pro-democracy monks are opposed to some in their religious community who call for suppressing non-Buddhists in Myanmar, such as the Muslim Rohingya.) They may be less popular than Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy, but during the protests, multicolored Buddhist flags are waving beside the red banners of her political party.

Both the military and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi have competed to persuade the monks of their righteousness. She is now under arrest. Most of the monks are not. Their people-centered humility in service to democracy may again sway the future despite the army’s threats of violence against the protesters. Power in Myanmar doesn’t always come out of the barrel of a gun.