Will you strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being?
The Baptismal Covenant
This week Bishop Kristen White of the Diocese of Southern Ohio writes of what life has been like for the people of Springfield:
Because of hate-filled words and fabricated stories, the community of Springfield, Ohio has been thrust into the national spotlight, prompting a barrage of racist threats against our Haitian neighbors… These dangerous falsehoods have resulted in a tense moment of palpable racism, bomb threats that have shut down schools and workplaces, and the cruel politicization of one child’s tragic death.
She commends the Episcopal congregation in Springfield, for their witness, alongside other faith communities, against hate and calling for compassionate welcome. She concludes:
Together, we can confront this hate with love, this fear with compassion, these words of evil with the words of the Good News: that the way of Jesus is the way of God’s boundless and never ceasing love.1
Violent words encourage violent action, with devastating impact on targeted populations and putting elected officials and public servants at risk for their lives. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”2 Bishop White demonstrates that while we are right to denounce hateful and deceptive speech, we can do so both unequivocally and with dignity.
This week I signed a Dignity Pledge:
As an American who knows and loves my country, I am convinced there is no America without democracy, no democracy without healthy debate, and no healthy debate without dignity; therefore, I pledge to do more to treat others with dignity, not contempt.
The pledge is a specific application in public life of one of the promises we make every time we renew our baptismal covenant. But how faithful am I to the promise to respect the dignity of every human being? Am I immune to what Arthur Brooks describes as our national addiction to contempt?3 Are you?
UNITE is an organization founded in 2018 by Tim Shriver to find ways to help heal the divisions in our country. Its mission is to present dignity as a positive alternative to the culture of contempt fueled by an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting people against one another.
UNITE has developed an assessment tool known as the Dignity Index. It’s an eight-point scale—ranging from contempt to dignity—for measuring how we talk to each other when we disagree. Lower scores (1-4) reflect divisive views of language while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity.
It also provides agency for change. Spending time with the Index, we realize how pervasive contempt has become, that we all contribute to it, and thus we can take steps to change our behavior and modify our speech toward dignity.
If you’d like to learn more, I recommend watching Tim Shriver’s lecture on the Dignity Index at the Aspen Institute. One hopeful assertion he makes is that when given a vision of dignity over contempt, we are drawn to it. Moreover, when we are given tools to promote dignity over contempt, we rise to the challenge of using them. “While it’s hard to see contempt when we use it,” he says, “it’s hard to use contempt when we see it.”
I also invite you to join me in one of two online conversations about the Dignity Index in October. Together we’ll practice using it to evaluate both political speech and our own. And we’ll encourage one another to put our baptismal promise into practice in both our personal and public lives.
Register to participate in a Dignity Index Conversation:
