In my years representing Braver Angels I have made continual refrain to the social and moral philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. Intuitively it has seemed to me that the Americans to whom I have spoken of the work of Braver Angels, be they students or baby boomers, Republicans or Democrats, Black, white or otherwise, understand that there is some connection between the spirit of the Nonviolent Movement as led by Dr. King and the vision of a more unified country as it exists in the work of Braver Angels and our larger movement to bridge the partisan divide.
Each is rooted in a commitment to seeing the human dignity in our opponents and healing the divides of society in so doing. But the Nonviolent Movement was the leading edge of the Civil Rights Movement, which was a movement for social justice in American society, while our movement (the Civic Renewal Movement, or alternatively, the Bridging Movement) is a movement to revive (or ignite anew) trust between the American people, and between the people and their institutions. In principle at least these goals should be complimentary. But given the decades old tradition of exploiting the moral standing of Martin Luther King Jr. to legitimize political projects that have had little to do with King, it is worth asking if the connection between the work of Braver Angels and that of Martin Luther King Jr. is in fact a meaningful one. My answer to this question is that it is – and over time is likely to become more so. But it raises in me the question as to Braver Angels predominant influences, to which must be added at least one other name that has also long been questionably appropriated by opportunistic partisans and politicians…and that is the name of Abraham Lincoln. It is from the language of Lincoln that Braver Angels ultimately derives its name, and whose mission to preserve the union of the states serves as a certain backdrop for our own efforts to bridge the partisan divide in the modern day. In the mainstream telling of American history the names of Lincoln and King, separated by a century in their works, are linked in a thread by the issues of race, equality and the goal of reconciling American principles to the living realities of our society. But the ethics and spirit of their practical politics and philosophy also leave a legacy, one that has nurtured the character of Braver Angels at the roots.
A Politics of Empathy
Braver Angels is a community of practice with a mission to mend the wounds that fester between the American people so that democracy itself can endure. We are an ideologically diverse community to our core. As such Braver Angels is influenced by many traditions and many strands of history. Most conspicuously, the influence of Abraham Lincoln looms largest over the founding of Braver Angels. Originally named Better Angels by David Blankenhorn (president and co-founder of Braver Angels), this phrase harkens back to the closing words of Lincoln’s inaugural address, delivered on the cusp of the Civil War, in which he beseeched a divided nation to turn back from the precipice of armed conflict:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Lincoln’s pleas failed to steer the United States away from the bloody Armageddon to which it was headed. Yet the United States stands today, functionally united (however tenuously) and though this union was ultimately held together by cannon fire the time that has intervened between now and that historic collision has reinforced the fraternal bonds of American society. For all our great diversity there are overarching themes of American culture that can be identified across geography and generations. The independence of spirit and the resistance to the rigid hierarchies of old Europe that Alexis de Tocqueville identified in America nearly two-hundred years ago still largely characterize the nation we live in today. The idea of the union, that we are “one nation, under God [though we must grant that the role of God in events grows more controversial as America has become more secular], indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” is a deeply ingrained sentiment that immerged a generation after the Civil War and has generally traveled down with us to the present day.
Perhaps more importantly than any of that however, the interconnectedness of the American people through commerce, culture, and the continuity of time has ensured that we as a people exist in a fabric of relationships that ties us to friends, relatives and associates that defies the expanse of geography and politics. We leave our home states for far flung coasts and regions to go to school. Corporate America calls enterprising Americans from all corners of the nation into its ranks. And the children of immigrants and descendants of slaves wear the uniform of the United States military alongside rural “rednecks” and “good ol’ boys” from the once slave-holding south.
One might still argue the idea that “we are not enemies, but friends,” in Lincoln’s words, is a mere matter of perspective. One could argue that we are both, or neither. As an aspiration and an affirmation, however, this is the perspective we stand upon at Braver Angels.
The relevance of Abraham Lincoln to the spirit of Braver Angels goes beyond grand appreciation of the sanctity of the union and efforts to effectively preserve it. Lincoln also speaks to us in the interpersonal ethos with which he practiced his political craft. As a politician Abraham Lincoln was a uniquely empathetic statesman, and though the word ‘empathy’ was not a part of the lexicon in his time he articulated the value of it in practice nevertheless. In a speech given to the Washingtonian Temperance Society as far back as February 1842 (and back when the Temperance movement was a rising force in the land) Lincoln applauded the swelling influence of that cause. He then attributed much of that success to the shifting of the movement’s leadership away from an old class of “champions” who suffered from “a want of approachability.” For “these champions for the most part, have been Preachers, Lawyers, and hired agents.”
“The preacher, it is said, advocates, temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of Church and State; the lawyer, from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent, for his salary. But when one, who has long been known as a victim of intemperance, bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors…however simple his language, there is a logic, and an eloquence in it, that few, with human feelings, can resist…Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted; or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example, be denied.”
Lincoln continued further to suggest that the old class of champions might have been more effective if they had been less judgmental.
“Too much denunciation against the dram sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged in…When the dram-seller and drinker, were incessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother; but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation…that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land…I say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow,..to join the ranks of their denouncers, in a hue and cry against themselves.”
These early insights of Lincoln’s speak to his understanding of the power of fellow feeling in human persuasion. It is through the development of shared feelings that so much of the fabric of human relationships is woven. As David Blankenhorn has written of Lincoln, “This way of thinking meant that Lincoln never treated opponents as enemies. Even during the Civil War, he did not demonize Southerners or the South. He did not view those fighting on the other side as evil.”
Those familiar with the work of Braver Angels know that this is what the foundational layer of our work is dedicated to, through one method or another. Braver Angels Red/Blue Workshop teaches Americans how to question one another’s beliefs in ways that eschew condemnation in favor of curiosity. Our Disagreeing Better workshops train Americans in the art of empathetic communication, stressing the value of accurately paraphrasing the positions of others, listening to hear rather than respond, and more. Though he was an effective debater these softer skills were traits Lincoln possessed in abundance and that made his brand of political communication distinct.
From Trusting People to Trustworthy Institutions
Ultimately, while Braver Angels’ model for social impact begins with the exercise of fellow feeling in civic relationships, it matures in the spreading of this culture of “patriotic empathy” across the landscape of American communities and institutions. Fundamentally, the problem of affective polarization (a polarization based on inter-group alienation as opposed to mere policy disagreements) in America is one of declining trust not only between groups of the American people, but between the American people and their institutions. Rehabilitating trust in our institutions (and making our institutions worthy of that trust) is central to our movements mission because, absent trusted and trustworthy institutions, democracy can only careen into chaos.
This was a topic upon which Abraham Lincoln had much to say even before it became a visceral concern of his eventual presidency. Bemoaning the proliferation of vigilante justice and lawless mobs “from New England to Louisiana” to the Young Men’s Lyceum as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives in 1838, Lincoln sought to educate his audience on the critical need for confidence in our political institutions—a confidence threatened by the inconsistent application of the rule of law:
“I know the American People are much attached to their Government;—I know they would suffer much for its sake;— I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.”
There are reasonable parallels that could be drawn between Lincoln’s description of a moment of falling trust in institutions and our own, particularly with respect to the rise of mob culture. Federal and state government and law enforcement failures to curb the riots of the summer of 2020 and to protect law abiding citizens in various cities across America deeply diminished confidence in these institutions. (One might also be tempted to cite January 6th as an example, though the drop in institutional confidence that resulted from that day accrued most specifically to the president.) Rising crime in parts of the country and real or perceived reluctance on the part of public officials to respond fits into this pattern.
But the word ‘mob’ has expanded applications in our own time which serve the basic point even further. From campus mobs to social media mobs ours is a moment where popular anger seems to trump institutional protections of the right to free speech in the eyes of many. When college faculty, corporate leadership and politicians seem to defer to or even abet the demands of offended groups in ways that threaten liberties and livelihoods, institutional confidence also diminishes. Such groups may in fact be righteous in their views. But as Americans have come to feel that certain fundamental liberties “are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob” their affections for American institutions have become alienated in much the way Lincoln suggests.
In a generation where Americans have quickly gone from taking the workings of our institutions for granted to taking it for granted that our institutions don’t work, Braver Angels refuses either posture. Instead, implicit in our culture is an ethic of citizenship—far from a mere legal status, it is roughly the notion that to be a part of democratic society is active participation in the work of self-government and a felt responsibility for the welfare of the nation and its people. It is an applied patriotism that is willing to apply itself from within our institutions and our communities alike.
A Vision of Citizenship
As is often the case with military service, part of what rouses us to greater civic participation is an aspiration to serve a project worth believing in. To be a part of the American story as not merely a passive observer but as one who rose to the challenge of advancing the most audacious experiment in human history, this is one principal motivation that has moved many to the service of their country over the ages, in whatever way that service manifests.
This romantic commitment to the cause of America has had its high and lows tides over the generations. In the revolutionary era, according to Abraham Lincoln, a common drive for social recognition led to the advance of the American experiment. “Then, all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment…Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world, a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition…namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves.”
Yet when the experiment was proven successful, when the fledging republic passed the tests facing the new nation and showed that a free people could peaceably pass the torch of power with continuity and legitimacy, the glory to be gained by being a part of proving that experiment in its earliest phases was gone. “The question then, is can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others?” So Lincoln asked. His answer was grim. “Most certainly it cannot.” Lincoln feared the fading glory of the Revolution. Rather, he feared the consequences of its receding beyond the dim reaches of memory.
In our time, however, there are many who claim the Reverend/Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. as our modern American founding father. The Civil Rights Movement, and the period of time extending from 1956 to 1968 (from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the assassination of Dr. King) was a time in which the foundations of American civil rights and the heart of American social conscience were refreshed and revolutionized in ways that new media broadcast unto a newly dawning modern world.
It may not have been lost upon King that the Civil Rights Movement was ushering forth a transformation of the nation’s consciousness that was arguably tantamount to a renewed founding. Looking out upon the assembled hundreds of thousands on the National Mall King referenced Abraham Lincoln in declaring “Fivescore years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”
If Dr. King could be looked at as a modern founder, it is hard to argue that a similar distinction was not attained by President Lincoln a century before. In freeing the slaves and preserving the union, Lincoln shifted the identity of the nation in a manner punctuated by the moral leap forward described by King in these glittering terms. “But one hundred years later,” so King continued, “the Negro still is not free…”
The cause of their time, so King argued before the nation standing before the Lincoln Monument, was to continue onward in stride towards the realization of the American promise—a promise King described in the following way:
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The heroics of that age still reside in living memory. There are still among us Americans who remember Martin Luther King Jr., including some who were there to hear him speak on the National Mall, who marched alongside of him, and who in one way or another were a part of this movement to awaken the conscience of America.
“At the close of that struggle,” Abraham Lincoln said of the Revolutionary War era, “nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family—a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related—a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all…But those histories are gone.”
The living histories of the Civil Rights Era are not quite gone in our time. But they are leaving us, with every passing year, for those eternal shores beyond the oceans of this life. The passing of former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and hero of the Edmund Pettus Bridge John Lewis, in 2020, brought our nation together in mourning in a way that we might now expect to be the case for few living Americans. 2024 saw the home-going of the reverend James Lawson, a leading peer and ally of Dr. King’s. Reverend Jesse Jackson, a younger contemporary of Dr. King’s, still lives and there are others. Of the most preeminent leaders of that movement, however, most of them have by now passed on.
Within Braver Angels however, the living memory of the Nonviolent Movement and the spirit and ethos of Martin Luther King Jr. is kept alive in the person of Harry Boyte Jr., a leading organizer and a professor of Public Work at Augsburg University, and once field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organizing poor white southerners in advance of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 for Dr. King. Boyte’s father, Harry Sr., was one of the sole white members of staff at SCLC, leading dialogue programs across racial lines in ways that would seem to resemble the work of Braver Angels today. Harry Boyte Jr. (whose room adjoined that of Dr. King’s, whom he could hear rehearsing his I Have a Dream Speech through the hotel walls the day before that monumental event) bears witness to the civic organizing work of the movement that instilled a patriotic commitment to traditional civic values of free speech, discussion, and active citizenship through grassroots community organizing.
In an America’s Public Forum program from 2020 Professor Boyte spoke to Braver Angels members about the invitational nature of King’s iconic address and that of the larger strategic framing of the March on Washington of which it was the culmination.
[Bayard Rustin, a principal organizer of the March on Washington and a chief proponent of the philosophy of Nonviolence] “framed the march as a way to have a conversation with the American people. So that’s the way to see King’s great speech…he was actually having a conversation with the American people about what we share…”
This being said, the success of the March on Washington, in Boyte’s recollection, was dependent not merely on the power of King’s visionary eloquence but a larger culture of civic organizing at its foundation.
Thus, “nonviolence was not simply a philosophy that was articulated by great leaders like King…what gave the march its power was the everyday citizens who came from across the country on buses on railroads on cars, sometimes by foot, to be involved. And the program notes of the march read that ‘in a neighborhood dispute there may be stunts, rough words and hot insults but when a whole people speaks to its government the quality of the action and the dialogue needs to reflect the worth of the people and the responsibility of the government.”
This spirit was cultivated across an organizing infrastructure that developed the civic knowledge and character of the marchers and foot soldiers of the movement in what were called “citizenship schools.”
As Boyte explains, “we had over 900 across the south. And they educated people in Nonviolence, they also developed people’s literacy skills to pass the stringent tests, [tests used to disqualify voters of color and sometimes poor white voters in the Jim Crow south] there was historical dimension. Unlike a lot of activists today there was a professed love of America.”
These citizenship schools were “held in church basements and community centers.” Active members of Braver Angels listening to Professor Boyte at this event would no doubt relate to the community based organizing spirit that in our own work often unfolds at libraries, campuses, and churches as well. Braver Angels, holistically, is itself a community that deeply prizes and leans upon civic education in a variety of forms, and in ways that strengthen our understanding of American values, our shared history, and that equips citizens to engage in the difficult work of conversing, debating and organizing across the deep seated tribal/political differences that rend our social fabric here in the 2020’s. Harry Boyte’s living witness to the spirit and culture of the Nonviolent Movement helps solidify our own felt connection to the organizing legacy of this extraordinary social enterprise. In no small way, this helps to preserve in Braver Angels a sense of our own potential to reform the conscience of America in a way that may contribute to a transformation that honors the ideals of the Founding such as the Civil Rights Movement sought to do some 60 years ago.
Redemption and the Braver Angels Way
It is a dramatic understatement to say that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. were challenged by their opponents. But each was also challenged by allies who at times could be adversarial.
For Lincoln, it was the abolitionist faction of his party known as the “Radical Republicans” who scourged him, for whom Lincoln’s efforts were never bold nor decisive enough. As David Blankenhorn explains of Lincoln:
“Within his own party, the ‘Radical Republicans,’ those most fervently opposed to slavery, never trusted him. Lincoln, in turn, considered them unreasonable zealots. He complained to his secretary that they were ‘utterly lawless’ and ‘the unhandiest devils in the world to deal with.’ But he also could admire their idealism and recognize their goodness, explaining to his secretary that ‘after all, their faces are set Zionwards.’”
The second principle of the “Braver Angels Way” states that “we treat people who disagree with us with honesty, dignity and respect.” Though, to allude again to Lincoln, passion may strain the bonds of affection, what we have deeply ingrained at Braver Angels is an understanding that the manner in which we pursue our disagreements determines whether or not disagreements shall break them.
Like Lincoln and the Radical Republicans, King was challenged as moderate and naïve by what would become the Black Power wing of the Civil Rights Movement, as represented in the person of Stokley Carmichael (who succeeded John Lewis as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). The more militant wing that came into its own in 1966 wished for King to abandon Nonviolence as a fundamental commitment and wished to push in the direction of an all-Black movement.
Dr. King reflected upon the rise of these criticisms and sentiments in his book Where Do We Go From Here? During the Mississippi Freedom March of ’66, King recalled hearing SNCC activists exclaiming, “I’m not for that nonviolence stuff any more,” “If one of these damn white Mississippi crackers touches me, I’m gonna knock the hell out of him,” and “We don’t need any more white phonies and liberals invading our movement. This is our march.” As the march matured, unprecedented rhetorical battles broke out between activists, with dueling chants of “Black Power!” being met by retorts of “We shall overcome!” in collisions that threatened to tear the movement apart.
King was heartbroken by the rise of Black Power as a phrase and a rallying cry, and what it signified in the rejection of his commitments to integration and Nonviolence. But while King felt wounded by these developments and was pointed in his criticisms, this did not prevent him from being generous in his expressed understanding of the legitimate feelings that motivated Carmichael and his followers:
“First, it is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain…If Stokley Carmicahel now says that nonviolence is irrelevant, it is because he, as a dedicated veteran of many battles, has seen with his own eyes the most brutal white violence against Negroes and white civil rights workers, and he has seen it go unpunished.”
Lincoln and King alike were charitable to their enemies. Lincoln and King alike sought to engage those with whom they disagreed. The third principle of the Braver Angels Way states that “we welcome opportunities to engage those with whom we disagree,” and indeed this civic spirit is evidenced in the four hours Dr. King spent seeking persuade Stokley Carmichael from his path in a spirit of friendship, the long hours Abraham Lincoln spent debating Stephen Douglas with civility and sophistication in their legendary debates on the question of slavery in the western territories, Lincoln’s earnest appeals to the humanity of the slave-holding south, and King’s insistence that the way of Nonviolence demanded his followers recognized that those who stood against them were not truly their enemies in the most fundamental sense. They were their opponents, but their mission included not the annihilation, but rather the redemption, of those who stood against them.
In a speech given to the YMCA at UC Berkeley in 1957, King remarked:
“…the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community…the end is redemption.”
King went on to say that “the nonviolent resister seeks to attack the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in the system.” In this again, King and Lincoln were of the very same spirit. Speaking of southern defenders of slavery Lincoln once said “We mean to remember that you are as good as we; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances.” Like King, Lincoln believed that those who were caught in the throes of racism where people who were afflicted with something rather like a disease by which they were made susceptible by the circumstances of the society into which they were enmeshed. Lincoln hoped to free both slaves, and those who believed in slavery, from its evil grip, as King hoped to free both those who were victims of racial segregation as well as those who would uphold it. Each man saw his political foes as redeemable, and calibrated their political language to emphasize this fact.
The Better Angels of our Heritage
The fourth principle of the Braver Angels Way states that “We believe all of us have blind spots and none of us are not worth talking to.” What is implicit in this is a recognition of the human worth of those who may disagree with us, even on the most profound issues, and an acceptance of the reality that, as Lincoln made clear, we are all of us human-beings with human failings. Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of Nonviolence rested first and foremost on the virtue of “agape love”—that is to say an overarching goodwill for one’s fellow man regardless of their race, color, creed, or even their political opinion. It was the sort of love demonstrated by Jesus in the gospels, by Gandhi in the struggle for Indian independence, and by anyone who is willing to refrain from hating their opponent in politics and society. even if their opponent should hate them.
Braver Angels, and the Civic Renewal Movement that finds itself nurtured in the wake of our work, is one that is born forth in an effort to heal the wounds of the body politic opened by an ever more polarized political society. These are wounds that tear apart families over questions of justice, questions of morality, in ways that add up to conflicts of identity that produce the collisions of warring political tribes. To reverse this momentum Braver Angels has given life to a suite of workshops and programs aimed to rebuild the bonds of affection between relatives, between friends, between classmates and coworkers, and ordinary Americans at every level of society who have forgotten how to see the good in each other due to the rampant demonization of our times.
But the effort to heal these wounds has always been understood by Braver Angels as the first level of a mission that reaches further upwards into the healing of our institutions and the stabilizing of the pillars by which our republic may hold together. Thus Braver Angels programs and influence reaches into government, academia, media, art and culture, as well as local communities where American life is rooted in place. For, as Lincoln knew well, the institutions of society cannot endure absent the trust and affection of the people they serve. And they fail to be worthy of that trust and affection, society itself may be condemned to the flames of violence and anarchy…at which point our experiment in constitutional democracy may find itself at an end.
But the stability of institutions does suggest the absence of injustice. Indeed powerful institutions may themselves become tools of injustice, as Dr. King well knew. Braver Angels commitment to debate, to fostering consensus on questions of reform, and to elevating the experiences of Americans across the spectrum of social experience in our country stands as testimony to the fact that activism and speaking truth to power (and each other) is the method by which we refresh the American conscience in every age. The question is, can we do so in a way that brings out the best in our opponents and ourselves, as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Nonviolent movement ultimately sought to do?
Ours is a community and a movement unique in American history. I do not mean anything grandiose by that statement. It is a novel movement, small but dynamic, and still finding itself after eight years time. It is a movement predicated on uniting Americans on the basis of our differences politically, but in the conviction that there are deeper values that yet unite us as an American people.
As was written, and voted into approval, in our 2019 Platform by Braver Angels delegates at our 2019 convention in St. Louis, MO:
Proud of our origins, today we dedicate ourselves to the great task before us—to safeguard the spirit of our republic and to preserve its deepest unity. In our politics, let us work together when agreement is found and oppose one another in civility and good faith when it is not. In the work of Braver Angels, let us build trust between individuals and restore trust in our institutions. Let us labor together to discover and cherish our common heritage and identity as Americans. Let us strive as one for the “beloved community” of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s vision and the “more perfect Union” of the Founders’ summoning.
We find ourselves as Americans, in part, by rediscovering the better angels of our common heritage. What the destiny of our work shall be in this modern day is up to we of this generation to make known. But as we do so, let us do so remembering that we are buoyed forward by the moral and civic examples of many might forebearers.
And that among them stand Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
