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I bring you greetings
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from the 52nd-freest nation on earth.
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As an American, it irritates me
that my nation keeps sinking
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in the annual rankings
published by Freedom House.
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I'm the son of immigrants.
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My parents were born in China
during war and revolution,
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went to Taiwan and then came
to the United States,
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which means all my life,
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I've been acutely aware just how fragile
an inheritance freedom truly is.
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That's why I spend my time teaching,
preaching and practicing democracy.
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I have no illusions.
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All around the world now,
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people are doubting
whether democracy can deliver.
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Autocrats and demagogues seem emboldened,
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even cocky.
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The free world feels leaderless.
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And yet, I remain hopeful.
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I don't mean optimistic.
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Optimism is for spectators.
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Hope implies agency.
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It says I have a hand in the outcome.
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Democratic hope requires faith
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not in a strongman or a charismatic savior
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but in each other,
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and it forces us to ask:
how can we become worthy of such faith?
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I believe we are at a moment
of moral awakening,
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the kind that comes
when old certainties collapse.
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At the heart of that awakening
is what I call civic religion,
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and today, I want to talk about
what civic religion is,
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how we practice it,
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and why it matters now more than ever.
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Let me start with the what.
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I define civic religion as a system
of shared beliefs and collective practices
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by which the members
of a self-governing community
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choose to live like citizens.
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Now, when I say "citizen" here,
I'm not referring to papers or passports.
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I'm talking about a deeper,
broader ethical conception
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of being a contributor to community,
a member of the body.
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To speak of civic religion as religion
is not poetic license.
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That's because democracy
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is one of the most faith-fueled
human activities there is.
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Democracy works only when enough of us
believe democracy works.
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It is at once a gamble and a miracle.
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Its legitimacy comes not from
the outer frame of constitutional rules,
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but from the inner workings
of civic spirit.
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Civic religion, like any religion,
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contains a sacred creed,
sacred deeds and sacred rituals.
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My creed includes words like
"equal protection of the laws"
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and "we the people."
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My roll call of hallowed deeds
includes abolition, women's suffrage,
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the civil rights movement,
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the Allied landing at Normandy,
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the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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And I have a new civic ritual
that I'll tell you about in a moment.
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Wherever on earth you're from,
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you can find or make
your own set of creed, deed and ritual.
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The practice of civic religion
is not about worship of the state
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or obedience to a ruling party.
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It is about commitment to one another
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and our common ideals.
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And the sacredness of civic religion
is not about divinity or the supernatural.
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It is about a group of unlike people
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speaking into being our alikeness,
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our groupness.
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Perhaps now you're getting
a little worried
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that I'm trying to sell you on a cult.
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Relax, I'm not.
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I don't need to sell you.
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As a human, you are always
in the market for a cult,
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for some variety of religious experience.
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We are wired to seek
cosmological explanations,
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to sacralize beliefs
that unite us in transcendent purpose.
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Humans make religion
because humans make groups.
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The only choice we have is whether
to activate that groupness for good.
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If you are a devout person, you know this.
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If you are not,
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if you no longer go to prayer services
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or never did,
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then perhaps you'll say
that yoga is your religion,
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or Premier League football,
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or knitting, or coding or TED Talks.
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But whether you believe in a God
or in the absence of gods,
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civic religion does not require you
to renounce your beliefs.
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It requires you only
to show up as a citizen.
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And that brings me to my second topic:
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how we can practice
civic religion productively.
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Let me tell you now
about that new civic ritual.
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It's called "Civic Saturday,"
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and it follows the arc
of a faith gathering.
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We sing together,
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we turn to the strangers next to us
to discuss a common question,
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we hear poetry and scripture,
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there's a sermon that ties those texts
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to the ethical choices
and controversies of our time,
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but the song and scripture and the sermon
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are not from church
or synagogue or mosque.
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They are civic,
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drawn from our shared civic ideals
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and a shared history of claiming
and contesting those ideals.
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Afterwards, we form up in circles
to organize rallies, register voters,
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join new clubs, make new friends.
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My colleagues and I
started organizing Civic Saturdays
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in Seattle in 2016.
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Since then, they have spread
across the continent.
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Sometimes hundreds attend,
sometimes dozens.
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They happen in libraries
and community centers
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and coworking spaces,
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under festive tents
and inside great halls.
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There's nothing high-tech
about this social technology.
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It speaks to a basic human yearning
for face-to-face fellowship.
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It draws young and old, left and right,
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poor and rich, churched and unchurched,
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of all races.
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When you come to a Civic Saturday
and are invited to discuss a question
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like "Who are you responsible for?"
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or "What are you willing to risk
or to give up for your community?"
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When that happens, something moves.
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You are moved.
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You start telling your story.
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We start actually seeing one another.
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You realize that homelessness,
gun violence, gentrification,
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terrible traffic, mistrust
of newcomers, fake news,
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these things
aren't someone else's problem,
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they are the aggregation
of your own habits and omissions.
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Society becomes how you behave.
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We are never asked to reflect
on the content of our citizenship.
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Most of us are never invited
to do more or to be more,
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and most of us have no idea
how much we crave that invitation.
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We've since created a civic seminary
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to start training people from all over
to lead Civic Saturday gatherings
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on their own, in their own towns.
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In the community of Athens, Tennessee,
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a feisty leader named Whitney Kimball Coe
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leads hers is an art and framing shop
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with a youth choir
and lots of little flags.
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A young activist named Berto Aguayo
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led his Civic Saturday on a street corner
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in the Back of the Yards
neighborhood of Chicago.
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Berto was once involved with gangs.
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Now, he's keeping the peace
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and organizing political campaigns.
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In Honolulu, Rafael Bergstrom,
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a former pro baseball player
turned photographer and conservationist,
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leads his under the banner
"Civics IS Sexy."
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It is.
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(Laughter)
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Sometimes I'm asked,
even by our seminarians,
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isn't it dangerous
to use religious language?
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Won't that just make our politics
even more dogmatic and self-righteous?
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But this view assumes that all religion
is fanatical fundamentalism.
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It is not.
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Religion is also moral discernment,
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an embrace of doubt,
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a commitment to detach from self
and serve others,
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a challenge to repair the world.
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In this sense, politics could stand
to be a little more like religion,
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not less.
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Thus, my final topic today:
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why civic religion matters now.
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I want to offer two reasons.
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One is to counter the culture
of hyperindividualism.
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Every message we get
from every screen and surface
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of the modern marketplace
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is that each of us is on our own,
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a free agent,
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free to manage our own brands,
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free to live under bridges,
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free to have side hustles,
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free to die alone without insurance.
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Market liberalism tells us
we are masters beholden to none,
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but then it enslaves us
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in the awful isolation
of consumerism and status anxiety.
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(Audience) Yeah!
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Millions of us are on to the con now.
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We are realizing now
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that a free-for-all is not the same
as freedom for all.
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(Applause)
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What truly makes us free
is being bound to others
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in mutual aid and obligation,
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having to work things out the best we can
in our neighborhoods and towns,
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as if our fates were entwined.
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Because they are,
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as if we could not secede
from one another,
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because in the end, we cannot.
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Binding ourselves this way
actually liberates us.
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It reveals that we are equal in dignity.
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It reminds us that rights
come with responsibilities.
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It reminds us, in fact,
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that rights properly understood
are responsibilities.
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The second reason
why civic religion matters now
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is that it offers the healthiest
possible story of us and them.
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We talk about identity politics today
as if it were something new,
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but it's not.
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All politics is identity politics,
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a never-ending struggle
to define who truly belongs.
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Instead of noxious myths of blood and soil
that mark some as forever outsiders,
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civic religion offers everyone
a path to belonging
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based only a universal creed
of contribution, participation,
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inclusion.
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In civic religion, the us
is those who wish to serve,
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volunteer, vote, listen, learn,
empathize, argue better,
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circulate power rather than hoard it.
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The them is those who don't.
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It is possible to judge the them harshly,
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but it isn't necessary,
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for at any time, one of them
can become one of us,
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simply by choosing to live like a citizen.
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So let's welcome them in.
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Whitney and Berto and Rafael
are gifted welcomers.
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Each has a distinctive, locally rooted way
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to make faith in democracy
relatable to others.
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Their slang might be Appalachian
or South Side or Hawaiian.
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Their message is the same:
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civic love, civic spirit,
civic responsibility.
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Now you might think
that all this civic religion stuff
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is just for overzealous
second-generation Americans like me,
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but actually, it is for anyone, anywhere,
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who wants to kindle the bonds of trust,
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affection, and joint action
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needed to govern ourselves in freedom.
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Now maybe Civic Saturdays aren't for you.
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That's OK.
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Find your own ways to foster
civic habits of the heart.
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Many forms of beloved
civic community are thriving now,
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in this age of awakening.
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Groups like Community Organizing Japan,
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which uses creative performative
rituals of storytelling
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to promote equality for women:
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in Iceland, civil confirmations,
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where young people are led by an elder
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to learn the history
and civic traditions of their society,
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culminating in a rite-of-passage ceremony
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akin to church confirmation;
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Ben Franklin Circles in the United States,
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where friends meet monthly
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to discuss and reflect upon the virtues
that Franklin codified
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in his autobiography,
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like justice and gratitude
and forgiveness.
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I know civic religion is not enough
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to remedy the radical
inequities of our age.
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We need power for that.
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But power without character
is a cure worse than the disease.
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I know civic religion alone
can't fix corrupt institutions,
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but institutional reforms
without new norms will not last.
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Culture is upstream of law.
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Spirit is upstream of policy.
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The soul is upstream of the state.
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We cannot unpollute our politics
if we clean only downstream.
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We must get to the source.
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The source is our values,
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and on the topic of values,
my advice is simple: have some.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Make sure those values are prosocial.
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Put them into practice,
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and do so in the company of others,
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with a structure of creed,
deed and joyful ritual
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that'll keep all of you coming back.
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Those of us who believe in democracy
and believe it is still possible,
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we have the burden of proving it.
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But remember, it is no burden at all
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to be in a community
where you are seen as fully human,
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where you have a say
in the things that affect you,
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where you don't need
to be connected to be respected.
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That is called a blessing,
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and it is available to all who believe.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)