Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Summer   Democracy in its fundamental form is also patience. It requires you to listen, in the Pauline sense, to the lesser member, and some- times, if the lesser member isn’t convinced, you have to wait. Looming behind this year’s presidential campaign are, of course, the September 11 attacks. That trauma continues to be operative in American politics. Our nation, allegedly the strongest in the world, runs on fear. The American people are frightened to death. Fear, by the way, is the reason that our foreign policy is just the flip side of our commitment to developing increasingly technological forms of medicine. We hope that medical technology will get us out of life alive! The American people simply don’t seem to know how to deal with death–we’re basically a death-denial country. Denial of death might be why there now seems to be a concerted campaign for the acceptance of euthanasia. We seek to disguise the reality of disease and dying with the illusion that we’re in control. Yes. I say that in a hundred years, if Christians are identified as people who do not kill their children or the elderly, we will have done well. Because that’s clearly coming. Does electoral politics have a place in combat- ting evils like these? Sure. Christians can run for office. I just want them to run as Christians. They may even be elected once–you never know! But how to speak the truth in the public arena as a Chris- tian is a deep challenge. Speaking the truth in the Christian arena can be a big challenge too. Take same-sex marriage, which continues to split churches across the denominational spectrum–as someone who attends an Episcopalian church, you’ve seen this firsthand. How do we learn to speak the truth to each other about marriage, about singleness, about sexuality? The first thing we need to say is that we want to make marriage difficult for people to enact. The idea that falling in love is sufficient for getting married is just a deep bedevilment. In order for two people to be married and have their marriage witnessed by the church, we need to know how their mar- riage is going to build up the holiness of the community. In practice, this means they may not be terribly attracted to one another. We forget that for centuries Christians married one another and had sex on their wedding night even though they didn’t know one another; they may well have never met one another until the day of the wedding. And yet the church blessed it because the community would hold them to the promises they had made. That’s why divorce and remarriage is such a serious issue. So marriage is not something to be done because two people think they love one another. Rather it’s based on faithfulness to one another in the community such that over a lifetime, we’re able to look back on the relation- ship and call it love. Faithfulness becomes the defining mark of Christian marriage. And how do you define marriage? Well, I don’t define it but I will describe it. Marriage is the lifelong commitment to be If in a hundred years Christians are identified as people who do not kill their children or the elderly, we will have done well.