Republicans have been trying to pass some version of voter ID laws for years, with the latest attempt set for a vote in the Senate coming soon. Few expect the bill to pass, though, despite overwhelming popular support. And the reasons why have less to do with the ID requirements than with the rest of what the law is trying to change.

Why it matters: Election integrity remains a focal point for the Trump administration and many in the Republican Party. If Democrats continue to oppose the SAVE America Act, it could prompt Republicans to remove or alter the filibuster in ways that would have a profound impact on how laws are passed down the line. Or, if the bill stalls, President Trump has promised to push it through via executive order, even though a similar attempt was already deemed illegal last year. Either way, the issue doesn’t appear to be headed toward a resolution anytime soon.

The backstory: Third time’s a charm?

For the third consecutive year, the House of Representatives has passed a version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act for short. So far, it has died in the Senate each time without even getting a vote. Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised that it would not happen again, given that he now has the support necessary to bring it to the floor and force representatives to go on record as either supporting or rejecting it.

Still, few expect the law to pass. It would need sixty votes unless Republicans either get rid of the filibuster—a step leadership has repeatedly said they will not take—or change the requirements to oppose the bill. There’s a lot of risk either way, though, and it’s unclear if Thune will be willing to take that step.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why are the new voter ID laws so controversial? →

An Ash Wednesday reflection on what matters most in life

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by the New York Times as America’s “most influential Black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama,” died yesterday morning at the age of eighty-four. He was hospitalized last November with a severe neurodegenerative condition; his family said he “died peacefully.”

Rev. Jackson was with Dr. King when he was assassinated in 1968, eventually formed the National Rainbow Coalition, and ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Both times, he secured millions of votes in the primaries and delivered speeches at the Democratic National Conventions that electrified those in attendance. In 2000, President Clinton bestowed on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.

Another death making headlines this week was the passing of famed actor Robert Duvall at the age of ninety-five. He was especially known for his roles in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, and Tender Mercies (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar). He also starred in the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove; his costar Tommy Lee Jones said after his death, “Even though I have lost a friend, Bob’s work will be with us indefinitely.”

I appreciate his kind tribute, but let’s think about his words for a moment.

The eighty-six-year-old actor Ian McKellen recently told an interviewer, “I have accepted that I’m not immortal.” It is vital that you and I accept the same fact, for reasons that reveal what matters most in life.

When most people died of an infectious disease

Even if Jesse Jackson had been elected president of the United States, his earthly work would not have been immortal. As President George W. Bush noted in his Presidents’ Day tribute to Gen. George Washington, our first president’s humility in stepping down from office helped define that office. He also built a mansion at Mt. Vernon that I and millions of others have toured.

However, neither the nation he helped birth nor the mansion he constructed will stand forever.

Robert Duvall likewise acted in some of our most iconic films and will be seen in them long after his death, but his films will not live forever.

There was a time when we understood the fact of our mortality better than we do now. As Susan Wise Bauer reports in The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy, we are only four or five generations removed from a world where most people, most of the time, died of an infectious disease.

As examples, she discusses plague, typhus, smallpox, typhoid, influenza, polio, tuberculosis, dysentery, scarlet fever, cholera, measles, and malaria. The fact that medical science has defeated most of them does not make us any less mortal, a lesson the COVID-19 pandemic should have taught us.

There was also a time when we understood the temporality of our world better than we do now. But as I noted yesterday, materialism has convinced many that this world is all there is. Rather than using this life to prepare for the next, we ignore the latter and focus myopically on the former.

How death is like anesthesia

Could this be one reason God allows the reality of physical death? He could take us deathlessly from this world to the next, as he did with Enoch and Elijah. But he chooses to allow our bodies to die, in part to remind us of our finitude in the face of infinity and our mortality on the precipice of immortality.

When we die, we obviously have no agency by which to determine what happens to us next. At death, we are like a patient under anesthesia. What happens to us depends not on us, but on those who have power over us we no longer possess.

This fact should lead us to trust God not just with our lives beyond life but with our lives in this life.

As C. S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity, humans were designed to depend on God as the “petrol” on which our “car” runs. Accordingly, he wrote, “It is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

“Destinations of which the traveler is unaware”

How, then, are we to live most effectively for eternal purposes? I don’t know the answer for my own life, much less for yours.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber observed, “All journeys have destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” This is especially true with regard to God’s omniscient purposes for his people, plans our finite and fallen minds cannot fully comprehend (cf. Isaiah 55:8–9).

I would guess that Paul considered the individuals he won to Christ during his missionary journeys to be his most lasting legacy. His letters were “task theology” written to specific congregations and people for specific purposes. But it was these letters that became his global contribution to God’s eternal kingdom.

I would also guess that John thought his public ministry was over when he was exiled to Patmos. He had written a Gospel and three letters, so he presumably had no regrets. Accordingly, when he was worshiping Jesus “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s Day, he had no idea he would receive the Revelation that completed the New Testament (Revelation 1:10–20).

Our Father will lead us into our most impactful lives if we leave the choice with him. Every moment spent in his perfect will is obedience that echoes in eternity. If we choose to measure success in this world by significance for the next, and we ask Jesus to make our choice a reality, he will always answer our prayer.

“You became what you were not”

On this Ash Wednesday, as Christians around the world begin a season focused on Jesus’ suffering and death for us, we can join them in contemplating such sacrificial love. And we can respond by committing our lives to serving and glorifying such a Savior.

To this end, we can pray with Martin Luther:

“Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine, yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.”

How grateful are you for such grace today?

Quote for the day:

“A Christian knows that death shall be the funeral of all his sins, his sorrows, his afflictions, his temptations, his vexations, his oppressions, his persecutions. He knows that death shall be the resurrection of all his hopes, his joys, his delights, his comforts, his contentments.” —Thomas Brooks (1608–80)

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Denison Forum

I am writing this article on “Presidents’ Day,” but I am doing so under protest. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732. In 1879, the United States made his birthday a federal holiday. In 1968, however, Congress passed the “Uniform Monday Holiday Act” that moved the celebration of Washington’s birthday to the third Monday of February.

Since Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, many states have combined the two into “Presidents’ Day,” which is the case in my home state of Texas. Fortunately, in my view, numerous states still recognize this day as “George Washington Day” or “Washington’s Birthday.” In the city of Laredo, Texas, the Washington Birthday Celebration lasts the entire month.

With all due respect to Mr. Lincoln and our other presidents, George Washington deserves to be recognized by our nation on a specific day. Were it not for him, there likely would not be a “United” States of America to do so.

The reasons speak not only to our past but especially to our future.

 “Separate them if it be better”

By any measure, George Washington occupies a unique place in our national story.

As commander in chief of the Continental Army, he led his troops to eventual victory over the unquestioned superpower of the day. This despite the fact that most of his soldiers were farmers and merchants with no formal military training; the British fielded much larger numbers of professional soldiers along with the world’s strongest navy.

After winning our independence, Gen. Washington presided over the Continental Congress that created our Constitution, then became our first president (the only person ever elected by unanimous vote of the Electoral College).

However, the nation he led was not sure it was a nation. The thirteen colonies were widely disparate in culture and economics, united primarily in their opposition to King George III and their quest for independence from his despotic rule.

Our Declaration of Independence was titled, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” (note the lower case “united” and upper case “States”). The resolution adopted the declaration, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” Independence did not, in fact, create one nation, but thirteen.

During the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, the West threatened to secede from the East. At the end of Thomas Jefferson’s first term, New England threatened to secede over his economic and political stances. He responded: “Whether we remain in our confederacy, or break into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I do not believe very important to the happiness of either part.” He added, “Separate them if it be better.”

Blue cities within red states

We live in a day that seems as divided by partisan politics and cultural issues as ever. We are not just “blue” states and “red” states but blue cities and towns within red states and vice versa. A record-high 80 percent of US adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while only 18 percent believe our country is united.

There was a day when Americans could find unity in their shared religiosity, but a smaller percentage of us now claim a church membership than ever before. Those with no religious preference outnumber any other single religious demographic.

Additionally, a recent poll reported that two-thirds of US adults believe this is the lowest point in our nation’s history that they can remember; 76 percent said the future of the nation is a significant source of stress in their lives.

Do these facts correlate with our declining religious commitment?

I believe George Washington would say so.

An annual tradition worth emulating 

Since 1896, it has been an annual tradition for a current member of the US Senate to read Gen. Washington’s Farewell Address in honor of his birthday. I believe this is something every American would profit from doing as well.

There was no constitutional requirement for President Washington to step down after two terms, and he faced significant pressure not to do so. To announce his decision not to seek a third term, he presented his Farewell Address in a newspaper article on September 17, 1796. In it, he stated:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

His reasoning is compelling: a consensual democracy requires a consensual morality. The Dutch diplomat Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) noted more than a century earlier:

A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.

However, can our “passions” be “subject to reason”? Our first president would say no. Continuing with his Farewell Address:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be sustained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of particular structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Why was he right?

How Americans can “unite” today

After the Fall, the “will to power” has dominated human nature (cf. Genesis 3:5). We will therefore use the political process as a means to our ends. We will place our state ahead of the federal, our community ahead of the state, and ourselves ahead of all.

Consequently, America will remain a “united” nation only if we learn to subject our personal ambitions to the national good and serve a cause greater than ourselves. And we can consistently do this only when we experience the unconditional, selfless love of God and then share it with others: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19; cf. Galatians 5:22).

In this light, is knowing Christ and making him known not the single greatest service we can render our nation? Is experiencing his love and then paying forward his grace not the most transforming gift we can give?

In 1789, George Washington issued America’s first “Thanksgiving Proclamation.” In it, he called on Americans to render their gratitude to God as “the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

He believed that our disparate nation would then “unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country.” And that we would “unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations” (my emphases).

Can the “United” States of America flourish unless we embrace our first president’s wisdom?

Can you?

Denison Forum