State of the Country 2009

Presented by Rev. Edward Scott
for the Committee on the State of the Country
143rd Session of the Virginia Annual Conference
(2nd Episcopal District), April 2009

The task before our committee has challenged us to exercise the utmost caution to highlight the matters that demand the greatest attention from our republic, its leaders and citizens alike. The national election in November of 2008 was as significant a moment in the entire history of our country as any after the founding of the country in the late 18th century and its rebirth following the Civil War a little more than half a century later. For those of us who witnessed it that chilly but sun kissed day at Mid-January, the oath of office taken by our 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama, will often be recalled as a moment of singular civic ecstasy. From the Lincoln Memorial, throughout the whole length of the National Mall, even to the very steps of the Capitol building, the sense of common purpose and the feeling of universal joy saturated every living being. People smiled beatifically at one another in a shared and unspoken understanding that somehow we had managed to make our electoral process work on behalf of our tortured history and an alienated world. The day’s celebrations concluded the difficulties of governing commenced with a near fever pitch as one interlinked national problem after another obsessed the new administration.

Our report then is less about the fulfillment of our nation’s political and spiritual principles in the election of the first African American President. We reference instead our nagging worries over health care, our worsening infrastructure, our depressed and ineffective public schools, the prosecution of two interminable wars, the disenfranchisement of ex-convicts and the devastating international consequences of our debilitated economy. And yet, our major emphasis and focus lies beyond all of these. It is the emergent debate that threatens to swamp all other considerations because what is at stake in that debate and discourse is the very soul and conscience of the nation, a nation that prides itself on the rule of law and its obedience to the highest moral precepts regarding justice and liberty.

To read the full report, download the PDF.