Initiatives of Change - Detailed view of For A Change Articles

As dawn breaks in Washington, six members of the US House of Representatives arrive at a Congressional office where coffee and juice await. There, too, is the Rev W Douglas Tanner Jr, President of the 10-year-old Faith and Politics Institute. After exchanging pleasantries, the six take seats as Tanner begins reading an excerpt, ‘Blaming never helps’, from Peace is every step: the path of mindfulness in everyday life by Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh. The atmosphere contrasts sharply with that of the sometimes-raucous processes of lawmaking. It’s time for an hour’s reflection.

The legislators centre down and focus on the deeper currents in their lives. Tanner, who turns 55 in February, is their facilitator. Such ‘reflection groups’ are held several times weekly. Some 40 House members attend regularly, though more than 100 of the 435 House members have done so at some point. One active participant is Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, of San Francisco, the new House Democratic whip—the highest House office ever attained by a woman.

Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, Republican from Missouri, says of Doug Tanner and the Institute, ‘By giving us opportunities to share our personal and faith-related beliefs, barriers which would otherwise exist are removed, and we’re able to cooperate for the common good.’

There are also facilitated reflection groups for Congressional spouses, staff members, lobbyists, public interest advocates and political professionals. The aim is to inject more faith values into the political process.

Doug Tanner did not always have such an aim. Growing up in a small town in North Carolina, he dreamed of attending the US Naval Academy. That dream began to slip away, however, after his high school history teacher, Clarene Robertson, assigned him to read Black like me, an explosive book by a white Southerner, John Howard Griffin, documenting his life as a ‘black man’. Griffin had managed to darken his skin chemically to learn what it was like to be African American in the South, and his book exposed the rank indignities and cruelties he suffered. This was emotional dynamite for Tanner but he continued to cling, if more lightly, to his moorings in the segregated society into which he was born. Nevertheless, Griffin had planted a seed that was eventually to sprout and change him radically.

That seed was nourished when Robertson, at the brink of her 100th birthday as these words are written, assigned him to be part of a project team on ‘The American Negro’. ‘I didn’t want to be on that team!’ Tanner told me in his office near the Capitol.

He said his first experience of a racially integrated meeting came later in a United Methodist youth fellowship group in 1963. In the church where that group met, he was deeply shaken by the words of an African American Methodist minister from Mississippi. ‘He was talking about the murder of Medgar Evers (the African American Mississippi civil rights leader who was slain 12 June 1963),’ Tanner recalled. ‘He didn’t speak with any bitterness but was opening up on what it was like and the sadness of it. At the end of his talk, a lot of stuff began turning around in me.’

Yet another soul-searching experience was in August 1963 when he heard Martin Luther King Jr. ‘The National Methodist Human Rights Conference was in Chicago the same week of the March on Washington,’ Tanner said. ‘King spoke to us the day before the march... and gave us some of his “I Have a Dream” speech.’

By the time Tanner received his high school diploma in 1964, it was clear he wouldn’t become a naval officer. Instead, he enrolled in Pfeiffer College, later transferring to Duke University where he received a degree in psychology, ‘then remained for divinity school’. He also interned at the Virginia Episcopal Seminary. With his Master of Divinity degree, he was ordained a United Methodist minister. But he never lost his interest in another field—politics. ‘In the eighth grade I was handing out (Presidential candidate) John F Kennedy bumper stickers at county fairs,’ he said. Even then he could ‘see the connection between politics and faith’.

Along with ministerial assignments Tanner ‘became acquainted with the Church of the Saviour in Washington DC’. He enrolled in its Servant Leadership School and came under the influence of the World War II chaplain, Gordon Cosby, who founded the church and its internationally acclaimed outreach ministry to the poor. The church is also known for its rich variety of programmes to help Christians apply their faith more effectively. Tanner was struck by its mission and began thinking, with others, about how to strengthen the links between faith and politics. One friend he consulted was Robin Britt, a Democratic lawyer who shared his convictions.

The upshot was that in 1982, with Tanner as his campaign manager, Britt won a House seat from Illinois. ‘I became his chief legislative aide and then his executive assistant,’ Tanner recalled. ‘We spent a day with Gordon Cosby talking about how to make ours a faith-filled office.’ But strive as they did, Tanner said that in the hurly-burly of House activities, ‘we failed’. In 1984 Britt narrowly lost his seat. Tanner’s congressional experience taught him that to deepen the spiritual elements in political life requires structure and time ‘set aside for members to reflect’. He became pastor of two churches on the eastern shore of Virginia. But ordinary pastorates weren’t his main interest.

He was soon back in Washington. As deputy director of Project Vote, he campaigned to energize minority-group voters. He formed another key friendship in 1989, with newly-elected Democratic Congressman Glenn Poshard of Illinois. ‘Poshard came from the Southern Baptist church,’ Tanner said. ‘We began having meetings together with members and [American University] Chaplain Joe Eldridge, a United Methodist minister who was active in human-rights work. We searched for spiritual discernment. It was kind of like a modified Quaker meeting—we sat still and quiet until something bubbled up.’

Tanner took off in 1990 to work for the African American Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, Harvey Gantt, in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Republican Senator Jesse Helms.

Next, plans for a Faith and Politics Institute quickly consumed Tanner’s interest. Although its pattern was set with those Quaker-type meetings in 1989, the official start of this non-profit organization was in 1991. With a staff of six, it runs on an annual budget of about $600,000 from tax-deductible contributions.

Congressmen John Lewis, Democrat, Georgia, who headed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s drive for civil rights, and Amo Houghton, Republican, New York, co-chair the Institute board. It also includes two rabbis and several clergy.

The Institute also works with the Catholic chaplain of the House. Tanner says the Institute has participated in some events with Muslims and expects to reach out more to that group. It also partners with such organizations as Hope in the Cities in helping implement their mandates for racial reconciliation.

One of the Institute’s major goals is to ensure that lawmakers grasp the racial history of the 1960s. They lead periodic pilgrimages to Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. There on 7 March 1965 law officers blocked and brutalized many of the 600 voting-rights marchers heading for the state capital, Montgomery. The national revulsion was such that Congress swiftly enacted the Voting Rights Act to ensure all Americans unfettered access to the ballot. Lewis says the Institute takes lawmakers there ‘not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Americans—men and women who believe... that we can find a way to create... the American community.’

After a pilgrimage he and Lewis led, Houghton said, ‘We are trying to encourage others to get involved in this enormous experience we had down in Selma.’ With its history and Voting Rights Museum, Selma offers a unique slice of American history. And with its new African American mayor, James Perkins Jr, it symbolizes how much the South—and nation—have changed.

The Institute also helps with the bipartisan House ‘civility retreats’ in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And it brought General (now Secretary of State) Colin Powell and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Capitol Hill as part of its Congressional Conversations on Race. The move to reach out more actively to Muslims will put another item on the Institute’s agenda.

Clearly Tanner is up to the task. ‘This is an unusual man—decent, fair, always reaching out to people and sensitive to the core issues of faith and politics,’ says Houghton. E Terri LaVelle, the Institute’s programme director, says Tanner has a ‘very strong work ethic’. At the same time he occasionally breaks his pace: ‘Sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, he belts (out) a bluegrass song... The first time he did that I thought, “This guy is having a nervous breakdown,” but now we all expect it, especially after working on some long-term projects.’ Obviously Tanner is no stranger to stress.

For all his energetic commitment, Tanner knows he’d be lost without his staff, board and volunteers. ‘He’s learning to share and solicit ideas,’ says LaVelle. And he believes in nurturing his staff. Every other Monday, for example, he and his co-workers have a reflection time. Once or twice a year he takes them on a staff retreat. At root, his faith shines through. ‘As a Christian he knows that we’ve been given the ministry of reconciliation, and that conviction shapes his strong desire to be in word and deed bipartisan and have events that bridge and build across divides,’ comments LaVelle.

Bob Webb