issue 019: the trailhead—leadership for american unity

Issue 019: The Trailhead—Leadership for American Unity is a companion series to Liberatus Volume One, and both were made possible by the many contributors to and creators of Liberatus over the last seven years. Specific creators of this series include Claire Handscombe (editing), David Paxton (design), Marcie Lynch Assetta (writing), and anonymous donors.

To inspire American unity in your community, get a copy of Volume One, share it with your friends, family, and colleagues, give directly to the mission by donating or setting up a recurring contribution as a Liberatus Advocate, or help lead our country to unity by applying to join the Liberatus Leadership Council.

One of America’s first political cartoons is a message of unity. Published in 1754 by Benjamin Franklin, it depicts the now familiar image of a snake severed into pieces, each representing the colonies. With the image, a declaration is written: “Join, or Die.”

Unity is a choice, and we all know the effects of disunity. President Washington warned us about them in his Farewell Address. But how do we choose unity? How do we offer leadership for American unity as the purpose of any professional work in American politics and government? Whether you want to see the American experiment flourish, or simply want to take the deeper journey to love God and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, this journal series will offer perspective on how to live the answers to those questions based on firsthand professional experience.

With faith as our basis for political activity in the United States in the twenty-first century, this series will be built on three basic assumptions that we and others have covered in the past. Additionally, we will bear in mind that Christ-followers working in the context of American self-governance today with basic rights have opportunities that the persecuted Church does not. And we have opportunities to create a culture of unity because of what was created by those who came before us. 

Three Foundational Assumptions for Followers of Christ Working in American Politics:

Because we are all children of God, we don’t need to use political activity as a means to find significance, identity, or status; rather, the love we have received means political activity is an opportunity to make love our aim.

Second, with Jesus as our model for creative restoration, we know that winning politically is not the end goal, but rather that the way we work can be modeled after the artistic goodness of our Creator. And while policies matter because they affect human life, the flourishing of the kingdom of God does not rely on either electoral wins or policy victories made with the force of law.

Therefore, with the Spirit of God guiding us to move from partisanship towards wisdom, we are not servants of temporal political movements because we know that any ideology, when perfectly implemented, will leave gaps between its perfect end and the kingdom of God.

To our way of thinking, these assumptions should be the center, the substance, the foundation for any Christian actively involved in American politics. To be a Christian is to advocate for unity as foundational. And as citizens of the United States, understanding the meaning of “Join, or Die” is a prerequisite for everything else we might hope to accomplish as we self-govern our democratic-republic.

As Americans, we all believe in freedom, but we live with a culture of disunity every day. And 40 years from now, if we continue down the path we are on, we will not have met our generation’s challenge to create a culture of unity; instead we will have handed off a culture of disunity and its effects to the next generation. Our generation’s calling is to act where we live and work to create a new, deeper culture of unity that has not yet fully existed in American history.

While we are unified in our desire for freedom, we are not unified in what that means. As Abraham Lincoln said in 1864, “the world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one.”

In this tension, we created Liberatus in 2015 to connect America’s cultural concept of freedom to the kingdom of God and redefine freedom as “the creative pursuit of truth and beauty.” From that starting point, Liberatus began as a creative outlet for professionals in American politics to write about healing: to creatively explore truth and beauty.

Today, we still need a creative space to write, connect, and build up leaders for the sake of freedom, healing, and unity, and that’s why Liberatus exists. While the gospel is the foundation for unity, particularly for followers of Christ, to say that “we should be more loving” means nothing in a practical political context, because that’s what we all think that we are doing—even when we are being intentionally divisive. This journal series will begin to explore how we can both logically and practically offer leadership for American unity—regardless of the demands a political party or ideology might make of us to keep us in line with a limited expression of how to love our fellow Americans.

Since 2015, through years of conversation, research, and writing, we have found what we can refer to for the sake of imagery as The Trailhead. We have discovered at a deeper level the nature of unity and therefore the nature of freedom. The Trailhead is the place where any trail begins, a stake in the ground, a starting point. It’s where we begin running a new race, where we begin creating a culture of unity that has not yet fully existed in American history. The Trailhead is an evolution of the American mind.

The Trailhead is three actions that define unity

Out of the conversation, research, and writing of the last seven years, three ideas came to the forefront of our writing, and we also see the same three ideas in the writings of others. Somehow the nature of freedom or unity is trinitarian, and regardless of the context, this three-fold pattern appears to be inescapable. Each of the three concepts includes the other two, and they all have unlimited potential for expression in many contexts. The Trailhead is therefore the place where we understand how to move from disunity to unity, because we now know the pattern; we can create culture from this higher level of consciousness, or from this deeper experiential knowledge of the love that God has for us.

That is not to say it will be easy. It simply means we move from The Trailhead to crafting a culture of unity. So what is that starting point?

The Trailhead, or pattern of three parts that make up a whole, is ultimately a reiteration of the new definition of freedom: the creative pursuit of truth and beauty. Historically, The Trailhead would have simply been called goodness, truth, beauty. In the context of the Great Commandment, it’s love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor. In the context of American government, it’s the three branches of government, executive, judicial, and legislative, and this will be explored further in the first three articles in the series. Finally, in the context of the Christian view of God as three persons, it’s Jesus, the Spirit of God, and God the Father.

In her book Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores, Diane Langberg also uses the pattern of three as she describes steps to heal from trauma: talking, tears, and time, or to put them in the same order as in the above paragraph, time, tears, and talking. In Good to Great by Jim Collins, the trinitarian path shows up as the process by which a company can go from good to great: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. And in the same order as above, that’s disciplined action, disciplined thought, and disciplined people. In Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, he identifies three skills of successful team culture: build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose. Put in the same order as those above: establish purpose, build safety, share vulnerability. 

In a modern cultural context, and notwithstanding opportunities for improvement, the Olympic Games are a powerful model: record-setting athletic performance; rules of competition and safe venues; and a shared experience among athletes, coaches, sponsors, and fans from the nations of the world.

Leadership for American unity therefore means incorporating all three elements into one whole. And it’s in light of the trinitarian path noted above that we can establish The Trailhead: Leadership for American Unity with three actions that define unity: be inclusive, stay grounded in wisdom, and create!

Unity therefore happens when we act where we are to bring it to life, and it doesn’t hinge on what the culture “out there” is doing. We can create culture wherever we are. Like the three movements of the spiritual life which Henri Nouwen articulates in Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, we may spend our whole lives bouncing between the poles of disunity and unity, but the more we do, the more we will experience unity and desire it.

Finally, to all Americans, including both conservatives and liberals, unity is how we uphold the US Constitution and leave our country stronger for the next generation. Like the container and the contents that Richard Rohr articulates in Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, the Constitution and governmental structures and processes it created, and the work so far of the right and left to articulate differing views on policy, give us a container in which we can create a culture of unity. As political professionals, we can therefore enter politics to offer leadership for American unity, regardless of our political tribe.

Each of the next three journal entries in this series will offer perspective—based on fifteen years of firsthand experience—on what each of the actions that define unity mean and how they can become part of the way we operate as we offer leadership for American unity. The fourth journal entry in the series shares remarks on unity as prepared for delivery by Marcie Lynch Assetta, a congressional campaign staffer in Pennsylvania.

You are welcome to add your perspective to the series. For the first time, this series will be open-ended. To get started writing, first apply to join the Liberatus Leadership Council. Together we can take steps from The Trailhead to run a new race on a new trail and take up the challenge of our time.

-Caleb Paxton, Liberatus Founder

Journal Entry #123

Continue reading part one: