By MARTIN DAVIS
Author of 30 Days with America’s High School Coaches

In Spotsylvania, Virginia, a sign reading “Crossroads of the Civil War” greets visitors driving into the county from the west on State Route 3.

They are driving through land that Gens. Robert E. Lee and Joseph Hooker would still recognize, as it is little changed since they clashed in April 1863 at Chancellorsville, from which Lee turned north and toward his fateful battle at Gettysburg.

There is no such sign to greet visitors traveling north or south through the county on Interstate 95. And while Lee and Gen. Ambrose Burnside—who collided in Fredericksburg in December 1862—would recognize the general terrain along the interstate, they certainly wouldn’t recognize the region.

This is the area that I call home. In local-government speak, it’s Planning District 16. In everyday speak, it’s the embodiment of a divided America.

Travel five miles east and west of I-95, and you’ll find highly educated, well-paid, professionals; as well as college-educated middle-class citizens. Many travel 50-or-more miles north to work every day. They settled here for plentiful land and relatively inexpensive homes. They were also attracted to good school divisions, the beautiful Rappahannock River, and the city of Fredericksburg with its arts and food scene.

The explosion in growth, the accompanying money, and the educational pedigree created a class of people unsympathetic to the Lost Cause. Their economic and social dominance also created a veneer of peace over the land that once played host to the battles of Chancellorsville (31,000 casualties), Wilderness (29,000 casualties), Fredericksburg (18,500 casualties), and Spotsylvania Courthouse (30,000 casualties).

The foes of Union, however, never went away. A small percentage of residents still fly confederate flags, and a larger percentage—through either quiet affirmation or silence in the face of pro-confederate propaganda—ensured the county remained a welcome locale for the very people who split Lincoln’s beloved Union in 1861.

Alongside these neo-confederates have risen the Christian Nationalists, the evangelical fundamentalists and the Trumpists. Donald Trump carried both Spotsylvania and Stafford counties in 2016. He carried Spotsylvania again in 2020, but by a smaller margin, and he lost to Biden—barely—in Stafford. Fredericksburg went Democratic in both races. (See here and here for a closer look.)

And the tensions that have erupted match those leading up to the Civil War in tone, if not in ferocity. I’ve spent the past two years reporting on these controversies—mostly in local school boards.

In the midst of such battles, I often wonder where the next Lincoln will come from—that one voice that can craft a vision forward to put down the forces opposed to freedom, and lead those who believe in the ideals of America.

That Lincoln, however, never existed.

Abraham Lincoln’s greatest moments were great in retrospect only. The Gettysburg Address, for example, was so short that most who were there didn’t even hear it. His rise to the presidency in 1861 brought not a unified Republican Party, but rather a divided body politic and a ferocious “team of rivals,” as Doris Kearns Goodwin described in what is surely the best biography of Lincoln over the past 50 years. (With all due respect to David Herbert Donald, and his magnum opus on the 16^th president.)

Lincoln doubted himself. He was prone to fits of depression. And the office rarely took as great a toll on any one man as it did him, as side-by-side photos from 1861 and 1865 make clear.

So how did this flawed, frequently politically weak, Lincoln become the Great Man we pine for today in places like my home? The answer lies in understanding what Lincoln had that too many have missed–his Quiet Fire—a side of Lincoln it took scholar Duncan Newcomer to unearth. This quiet fire was a spiritual compass born not of orthodox religion, but an awareness of his own finitude. And his connection to a higher power.

This is the Lincoln we need. And that Lincoln exists.

He lives in the collaborative spirit of The New Dominion Podcast, where the former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia sits weekly with a card-carrying progressive – the author – and interviews people in our community who understand the glue that is our local Union, and work daily to strengthen it.

He lives in the committed spirits of Nicole Cole, a member of the Spotsylvania School Board who caucuses with Democrats and has been stripped of power by a board majority of Christian Nationalist extremists, and Rich Lieberman, a parent who self-identifies as a conservative. Together, they are addressing issues related to student hunger, and challenging in court the many acts of questionable legality the board majority perpetuates.

And he lives in the life of Scott Mayausky, a Republican Commissioner of the Revenue in Stafford County who is committed to expanding our understanding of those not like us, and finding innovative solutions to taxing problems that unfairly burden the poor.

America the ideal is about e pluribus unum. From the many, one.

But the hard reality of America is that we are forever defined by the roads that we travel through our lives. Roads that bring change, and that remind us of who we once were.

Roads that once carried armies to battle, and that now carry children of all races and classes to school. Roads like Plank and Old Plank roads in Spotsylvania.

Lincoln still travels these roads today. In the lives of those who burn with quiet fire, and a commitment to union. A union of shared humanity.

Martin Davis is an award-winning journalist, founder of F2S, and co-founder of the New Dominion Podcast. His first book, 30 Days with America’s High School Coaches, examined how coaches are raising the next generation of leaders. His next book will explore the disconnect between education policy, and life in the classroom. Visit him at https://www.martindavisauthor.com.

.

Care to Read More in our Fourth of July 2023 series on Lincoln?

Whatever you choose to read next, you will find the following links to the other 2023 columns at the bottom of each page:

Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer’s introduction to this series includes a salute to Braver Angels, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to de-polarizing American politics that is gathering from across the country for a major conference at Gettysburg this week.

Duncan also writes about: What were Lincoln’s hopes for our nation?

And, he explores: What were Lincoln’s core values?

Then, journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

.

.

Want the book?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions.

 

.

 

.

By BILL TAMMEUS
Author of Love, Loss and Endurance

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln looked not just to the appalling carnage of the still-unwon Civil War but also to this split nation’s uncertain future.

“It is,” he said, “for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work” of freedom for which Union soldiers fought.

Lincoln’s charge still is our charge. But freedom for and from what?

In many ways the answer continues to be freedom from evils America’s slaves experienced for so long—the terrorism and extremism of white supremacy, of injustice, of economic, educational and spiritual degradation.

In my book, Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety, I describe the murder of my nephew in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but I also explore the roots of radicalism and suggest a few ways we might try to unplug extremism.

Those suggestions also can help Americans complete what Lincoln called our “unfinished work.”

Bridging Our Divides—Together

Here’s a summary of the recommendations in my book:

1. Respect (and love) others. Simple, right? Well, in my Christian tradition, one of the most difficult tasks we are given is not just to treat others with respect but to love them, which means always having their best interests at heart. But on what basis do we do that? One answer is that Scripture tells us that all people are created in God’s image. One way Christians think about is to say that they’re obliged to see Christ in every human being, Christian or not. And, having recognized Christ in another, the last thing we should want to do is to insult, injure or murder that person.

2. Become more religiously literate because our country is becoming more religiously diverse. Our human tendency is to fear what we don’t know. To break that habit, it’s necessary to commit ourselves to learning about religious traditions and philosophical worldviews beyond our own. There are many ways to do that. One is simply to read some helpful books. I’d start with Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t, by Stephen Prothero. Then get outside your comfortable religious and worldview surroundings. The most obvious way is to travel. Each time you experience a religious tradition beyond your own you gain not only knowledge but also the idea that people very much like yourself have made other religious choices that don’t threaten the safety and peace of their neighbors. That means you don’t need to exterminate them or push them out of town.

3. Engage in interfaith dialogue and cooperation. Many communities have interfaith organizations that promote understanding. The idea isn’t to work for the mashing together of different religions into one broad syncretistic mess. Rather, it’s for people of different faith traditions to know and to be known. It’s to understand the many different approaches to religion that people of goodwill adopt, an understanding that should lead to a bit of humility about whether our own choices are also God’s direction for everyone else.

4. Teach your children and grandchildren well. Specific hatreds must be taught. And children will learn hatred from people around them if they’re not taught respect, love and compassion — and, sadly, sometimes even if they are. At the very least, they must learn tolerance, which is a terrifically low standard but at least is to be preferred to contempt.

5. Deepen your knowledge of both American and world history. A fair amount of global terrorism is tied to the shockwaves that have radiated across the nation and around the globe from historical events about which many Americans seem to know little or nothing. That’s particularly true about geopolitical and religious history in developing nations, including parts of the Middle East. The list of problematic, even if sometimes defensible, actions taken by the U.S. over its history is long indeed, and despite all the great work here and around the world that the U.S. has done, it has made many enemies. I’m not suggesting we forgive acts of terrorism or that we consider American foreign policy simply one disaster after another. That would be both wrong and unfair. But it’s important to know both American and world history to understand what sometimes motivates America’s declared enemies.

6. In this remarkably divisive time in our nation, become competent in civil discourse, which may be next to impossible using social media. The practice of civility can teach us how to listen carefully and to appreciate points of view not our own. That, in turn, can lead us away from any tendency to align ourselves with people who imagine that they know all the answers. For help with this, start with You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield.

7. Spend time with people who have experienced profound grief. It can open our eyes to the countless ways that death — particularly unexpected, violent death — can affect almost every aspect of the lives of survivors. You may not know anyone who lost family members on 9/11 or in other terrorist attacks, but there are lots of surviving family members of those who died in attacks in El Paso, Pittsburgh, Poway, Charleston, Kansas City and on and on. If there’s an opportunity, meet some of them. Talk with them, if they’re willing to do that, but only if they’re willing. Let them tell you their story.

Now add your own ideas to this list and go be part of the solution.

Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website and book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and for The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at [email protected].

.

Care to Read More in our Fourth of July 2023 series on Lincoln?

Whatever you choose to read next, you will find the following links to the other 2023 columns at the bottom of each page:

Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer’s introduction to this series includes a salute to Braver Angels, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to de-polarizing American politics that is gathering from across the country for a major conference at Gettysburg this week.

Duncan also writes about: What were Lincoln’s hopes for our nation?

And, he explores: What were Lincoln’s core values?

Then, journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

.

.

Want the book?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions.

 

.

 

.

‘Sometimes the world … breaks our hearts and shakes our hope.’

.

“It is this Jesus—the Jesus who calls us to dangerous unselfishness, the Jesus who tells us that we love and serve God by coming near to those in distress, the Jesus who teaches that there are no parties or sides, that, beloved, we all stand on human ground—it is this Jesus we meet this morning.”
From a climactic sermon in Bastille Day by Greg Garrett

.

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Readers who have been enjoying Greg Garrett’s moving and thought-provoking fiction and nonfiction through the years will not be surprised to learn that his dramatic new novel, Bastille Day, turns on one particular broadcast by a cynical TV reporter and one particular sermon by a compassionate pastor.

These are worlds Greg has bridged in his long career as a media personality, theologian, scholar and author.

It’s not a spoiler to say that the climactic sermon is so moving that readers are likely to quote from it in the future. The Rev. Dr. George Mason—who we just featured in last week’s Cover Story about his new book The Word Made Fresh—joined in a global Zoom conversation with Greg to make that very point. Greg conducted that Zoom event from the American Cathedral in Paris, where he serves part-time as canon theologian.

As one of America’s master preachers, George joined the conversation and told the global Zoom audience: “As a preacher, I was taken by the sermon at the cathedral in Bastille Day. The theology of evil and suffering in it is unsurpassed.”

George paused then added: “Greg, you made us preachers proud.”

And what about the authenticity of Greg’s main character—a multiply traumatized network-TV war correspondent, Calvin Jones, who is sent to Paris to report on terrorist attacks in 2016?

Greg researched all of his fictional characters’ lives before completing this novel, including talking to friends like David W. Peters, whose own new book, Post Traumatic Jesus, will be featured in a ReadTheSpirit Cover Story next month. Peters served as an enlisted Marine and Army Chaplain and was deployed to Iraq in 2005. Peters’ own experience mirrors some of Calvin Jones’ hard-earned wisdom in the novel.

“Greg and I talked as he was writing Bastille Day,” Peters told me. “And, now that I’m reading the book myself, I can see some of what we talked about reflected here. For veterans I’ve known, myself included, combat trauma opens a much deeper wound inside us that is unable to be healed or medicated or numbed in the normal ways people do. In Bastille Day, he really captures the way that kind of trauma affects relationships and our ability to function in the world.”

So, from expert early readers like these, we know that Greg has believably captured the realities of the main characters who collide as the events in this novel unfold.

On the depiction of journalists, including Calvin, I can add my own affirmation that Greg has nailed a lot of the professional personalities I have known through 50 years as a journalist, reporting from the U.S. and other parts of the world.

This careful attention to authenticity won’t surprise Greg’s regular readers. After all, his career as an author has moved from one grand challenge to another. A restless researcher and writer, his books surprise readers each time a new title is announced. His previous book, which I also highly recommend, is A Long, Long Way—Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation. Now, for summer reading in 2023, he has given us this novel, Bastille Day. Then, in September he will launch a book about one of his mentors: James Baldwin. Stay tuned later this year for an interview with Greg about Baldwin. No question: That’s an astonishing breadth of research for any author!

Three R-words: resilience, renewal and reconciliation are themes that run throughout Greg’s 20-or-so books, because both his fiction and his nonfiction are shaped by his own journey in faith. That journey has led him to ordination as an Episcopal priest and an appointment as the “canon theologian” occasionally in residence at the American Cathedral in Paris.

And that phrase means literally “in residence” at the Cathedral for some weeks each year. As his novel is launching, Greg has enjoyed hosting Zooms with readers and interviewers from an “apartment” in that cathedral where he and his wife Jeanie stayed in May 2023. That apartment, which I enjoyed seeing as I Zoomed with Greg for our author interview, looks more like a stone-walled cell in the Tower of London than what we would think of as a living space. But that same Cathedral tower apartment-space also is one of the many real-life settings in Paris that readers will enter in Bastille Day.

So, what is Greg doing in a cathedral tower in Paris?

“Can you explain for us this unusual appointment you have in Paris?” I asked Greg in our Zoom interview. “I think most of your readers probably know you as a professor of literature and culture at Baylor in Texas.”

Greg said, “In Episcopal life, one of the offices a person can hold is canon and I am the canon theologian for the American cathedral here. Before that I was called the theologian in residence here. So, this is a community I’ve been visiting for about 10 years now for teaching, preaching, writing, research and building partnerships. If I total up my time here, I’ve spent something like eight months here in Paris, staying in one of the apartments here.

“I have spent so much time here at the Cathedral, now, that this has became one of my communities of faith. I mean that, wherever else I might be in the world, I can think of this group of Christians here as friends who care about me and my family and the work that I do—so much so that they help to make that work possible.”

On the reality of trauma from terrorism

“Bastille Day is ‘based on a true story,’ the movie version will say someday,” I said to Greg. “You have deliberately set this novel in 2016. The story opens after the tragedies of the January 2015 Île-de-France attack and the multiple attacks in Paris in November 2015. That’s why Calvin’s TV network has sent him to France, because more violence is anticipated. Then, it’s no secret that, in 2016, Bastille Day was the occasion for a horrific attack in Nice. I would assume readers of your novel in France understand what’s going to happen in this novel the moment they see the title and open to the first page that is dated in early July 2016.”

“Yes, readers here remember that attack in Nice on Bastille Day in a way that Americans may not,” Greg said. “And there’s more to that title reference, of course.”

“Yes, the title makes multiple references, but I don’t want to spoil any of the suspense for readers. Mainly, I want to stress in our interview that you’re taking readers to quite a number of real places.”

“Yes, in researching this novel, I can say that I have spent time in most of the locations myself, carefully taking note of each setting—and that includes all of the locations in Paris and Nice. There’s even that scary winding staircase in the cathedral in the novel and, from where I am sitting right now, I can see those stairs,” Greg said. “I wanted to carefully research these places to really get my head around what happened there, particularly in Nice.”

I said, “Without revealing too much, I can say that Calvin really is not you in this book, but Calvin embodies parts of you. Parts of your personality are spread across a couple of characters, I would say.”

Greg agreed and added, “Well, talking about that staircase—I gave Calvin my own fear of heights, which is very real. And I did experience some of the things Calvin experiences in the novel, like watching fireworks over Paris and hearing the news from Nice.”

On capturing reporters’ habits

“I really enjoyed your authentic sense of how journalists work—and also some of their preferences after a day’s work is done,” I said. “When I’ve traveled around the world with other journalists, I know we collectively like to visit spots our mentors have frequented, like the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem or the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Here, you serve up some vivid scenes at Harry’s in Paris.”

I added, “However, one of the truths we all learn about these places is that some of them don’t exactly stand up to their storied reputations, do they?”

“I will say it this way: My wife Jeanie prefers something a bit more upscale than Harry’s, so she is not eager to go back there,” Greg said. “But, for myself, I go to Harry’s on every trip I take to Paris because of the incredible amount of journalistic history at Harry’s. Last week, I posted online from Mr. Hemingway’s chair at Harry’s. The story is that Hemingway could drink 30 whiskey sours in one visit! I find that hard to believe, but that’s the story.

“I’m a deeply religious person and take the sacred seriously, but I can say that Harry’s feels like a sacred space to me,” Greg continued. “Hemingway felt he belonged here and that’s one of the main things that the characters in my novel are searching for: a space, a community where they feel they belong.”

The authenticity of the final sermon

Finally, we talked about the climactic sermon in the novel. I pointed out to Greg that it may sound odd to potential readers to describe a sermon as a dramatic high point in a suspenseful novel. “But it’s true and it’s not a spoiler to point out that this particular moment—an actual sermon—plays a key role in what unfolds,” I said. “You really elevate the power of preaching by daring to use that format in such an important part of the novel.”

“It fits with what I teach students about public speaking,” Greg said. “I tell students: ‘You have to earn the speech.’ Speeches themselves usually are not dramatic. I’m now 35 years into teaching at Baylor and I keep making this point: ‘You can’t give a speech or deliver a sermon unless you’ve earned it.’ When you reach those places in the novel where someone is talking—Calvin to his TV audience or in that final sermon—they have earned the right to speak.”

I wanted him to continue to explain these choices in the narrative, so I said, “And I hear that you actually delivered a version of that final sermon yourself—so it has that added level of authenticity, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, I was the original preacher of that sermon and I continue to think of that as one of the most important preaching opportunities I’ve had in my life—to speak at a moment like that to a full cathedral about the possibility of finding hope.”

And without spoiling the plot, that’s a good way to explain and authenticate the intriguing format Greg has chosen for those dramatic passages.

Yes, there is violence throughout this novel, because that’s the quest on which this TV correspondent finds himself. But this also is a novel that leaves readers with a sense of fulfillment and reassurance as we reach the final pages. I wouldn’t call it a happy ending. I would call it an authentically aware and very satisfying conclusion, which is rare in fiction today.

.

Care to see more of Greg Garrett’s Paris?

 

.
.