CLEVELAND -- Recently, The Plain Dealer had a front-page article headlined, “GOP fracture spills into the chamber.” The article detailed a fight over Ohio House rules, while giving another indication of how our ever-more-right-leaning Republican Ohio House of Representatives is slipping deeper into the pit of incongruous hypocrisy.
The dissension over the two Republicans who had been vying for the office of House Speaker is one indication of the continuing hypocritical slide. But reading about several of the amendments to House rules being proposed for the legislative chamber put me in a less than pleasant mood.
Two of those proposed amendments -- both ultimately not adopted -- were to allow guns in the House chamber and to require that opening prayers before sessions only be “Christian prayers.” Who would have decided what are exclusively Christian prayers and who would have been authorized to offer them?
Guns and God. It has always been a tragic alignment in politics. Indeed, it seems the politics of the ever-more-hysterical right-wing Christian evangelicals are motivating these amendments being put forward by those currently in the majority in the Ohio House. Guns and God are an old and lethal mix. Such proposals also illustrate a breathtaking spiritual arrogance, as well as an indication of infantile spirituality. And now in the Ohio House, some want to be armed when voting!
In so many places, the United States is politically not a very happy place. In my current bad mood and ranting about it, all I am asking is: Whatever has happened to the decidedly fundamental American pursuit of happiness?
In his Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” Jon Meacham helpfully expands our understanding of Thomas Jefferson’s famous Declaration of Independence phrase, “the pursuit of happiness.” Meacham points out that the sense of this happiness phrase was understood by the founders of our nation to mean a government that will foster virtue, good conduct, and a generous citizenship in its people.
Yes!!
Pursuing happiness is not about advocating a new nationalism or the right of individuals in America to have a self-satisfied life or some guaranteed freedom for individual pursuits. Rather, as important as such individual pursuits may be, the pursuit of happiness in this nation is more about the general mood of a nation’s people. Or, as the ancient Greek definition of happiness conveys (and the sense in which Jefferson understood the word to mean), pursuing happiness is to seek the flourishing of a nation’s people.
I find this a very helpful clarification. It lifts my bad mood when reading and thinking about current Ohio politics.
It is centering and uplifting to think that our nation’s founders – at least on their best days – envisioned a nation in which government would seek the happiness – the flourishing of virtue, good conduct, and generous citizenship of all its people. Can we resolve to make happiness, in Jefferson’s sense of the word, aspirational again?
Pursuing happiness and getting out of a bad mood take place when we choose to join the voices crying in the present wilderness, saying, “Enough!”
We cannot be discouraged by the seemingly louder voices of political, moral, and religious selfishness of those in the Ohio House or anywhere else who seek exclusively Christian prayers and advocate for unrestricted guns. Ultimately, no matter the fiery trials which such initiatives create, those voices will be overcome by the better angels of our nature.
We must keep on declaring our independence from the voices of division, no matter how presently successful and presently powerful their amplified platforms. We must work hard in every way open to us to advance the flourishing – the happiness – of our country.
To do so is to see the prayers of love offered by the followers of Jesus, or Moses, or Mohammad or all the world’s people of faith as efficacious. To seek such a happiness is to put those prayers into action.
The Rev. Kenneth W. Chalker is the retired senior pastor of University Circle United Methodist Church and is an appointed member of the Citizens Advisory Council on Equity for Cuyahoga County.
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