If you think some praise is due him,
Now’s the time to slip it to him,
For he cannot read his tombstone when he’s dead.
THESE LINES of Victorian doggerel tumbled out of the attic of my
memory when I recently attended a banquet at the Corcoran Art
Gallery in Washington, D.C. to honor the founders of the Trinity
Forum (TTF). This organization, often succinctly described as a
Christ-centered Aspen Institute, has been dedicated for the past
two decades to exploring the ideas that connect faith, character,
and leadership.
A discussion group that arose from the ashes of the failed
Carter administration in 1981 is surprisingly relevant to
contemporary presidential politics as Obama stumbles toward the
defeat many are predicting for him. For what TTF tries to do is
reinvigorate leadership ideals with intelligent readings and
arguments set in the context of faith.
Almost every presidential candidate travels some distance along
this road. This is because Americans apparently like their leaders
to be religious— but perhaps not excessively so. Back in 1954
President Eisenhower caught this mood by declaring that the
nation’s institutions made no sense “without a deeply
religious faith — and I don’t care what it is.”
Ike’s superficial contradiction caused some chuckles at the time
but it concealed a profound truth. From the codifiers of the
Constitution to today’s voters, the prevailing view of Americans is
that spiritual values are important but that they should flourish
in a framework of mutual tolerance and respect. It was in that
spirit that TTF’s charter declared it to be “open to people of all
faiths and of none” even though the original creators of the group
were all Christian believers.
The principal co-founder of TTF was Alonzo McDonald, Jr., a
former CEO of McKinsey Worldwide who became a pivotal aide in Jimmy
Carter’s administration as trade ambassador and White House staff
director. McDonald in those days was a somewhat lukewarm
Episcopalian, with none of the Born Again certainties of his boss.
But he was influenced by Carter’s sincerity of faith and thought it
would be a good idea to start a discussion group from which would
emerge leaders committed to Christian renewal.
This group, TTF, did not have an easy start. “We tried to
establish an institution in which, like McKinsey, perfection would
be tolerated,” Al McDonald recalled. But he soon discovered that
the efficiency standards of management consultants and spiritual
discussants are worlds apart.
To make matters more difficult, TTF’s initial circle of business
and political leaders did not always want to be led. In his
entertaining speech at the Corcoran, Al McDonald described how his
efforts to found the group were confounded by characters who might
have stepped straight from the pages of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress. “We had Mr. Vainglory, Mr. False Intentions, Mr.
Feebleman, Mr. Flatterer, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman,” observed
McDonald, conveniently forgetting that such types can be found in
any corporate boardroom or presidential team. “And we soon ran into
the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty, and the Doubting
Castle.”
Even the iron will of McKinsey’s most legendary leader might
have crumbled in the face of such obstacles. But fortunately for
the fledgling TTF, McDonald paid a visit to what Bunyan would have
called the House of the Interpreter, a.k.a. the home of the sage
and Oxford scholar Os Guinness, who was then a visiting fellow at
Brookings working as lead drafter of the Williamsburg Charter.
As co-founder of TTF, Os Guinness provided the intellectual
firepower to compile anthologies of readings, known as curricula,
which have educated and inspired Trinity Forum participants for the
past 20 years.
The seminar material he designed is still in frequent use around
the world among groups that range from Rhodes Scholars at Oxford to
aspiring and actual politicians in Washington. Under the new
leadership of Cherie Harder, a former aide to First Lady Laura
Bush, TTF is reaching out to a 21st-century generation of elites
with fresh curricula and reinvigorated material from its
archive.
To give one example: TTF has just published as its latest
biannual reading Tolstoy’s short story “How Much Land Does a Man
Need?” This beautifully crafted parable on the meaning of money has
timely resonance in the age of double-dip recession and global
economic crisis.
In his introduction to Tolstoy’s story and in the curricula he
created, Os Guinness has a genius for finding spiritual gold seams
in writings that can captivate and deepen the souls of leaders who
find time to ponder on them. But finding this time can be
challenging. Guinness feels that the age of the Internet has
produced the most distracted, disorientated, and dislocated
generation in history. Western civilization, he argues, can only
move forward by going back to the first principles of its faith. At
the Corcoran dinner he cut through the glitz of Britain’s royal
wedding by highlighting its deeper messages on memory, monarchy,
and church.
Such observations may seem a long way removed from the clamor of
the 2012 presidential election. Yet the mysterious processes of
U.S. democracy are already unveiling questions in the political
arena that deserve the quieter reflection of a TTF forum. Why, on
the Democratic side, is weak leadership so unappealing? After he’s
delivered so little, one wonders if Obama has any argument for a
second term, apart from an updated political version of Hilaire
Belloc’s immortal lines:
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse
Yet are the “worse” (i.e., Republican contenders) any less
appealing than the incumbent? Some of them seem to be making a lot
of noise about their faith but that may not be to their long-term
advantage, for religious stridency and political electability are
uneasy bedfellows. Ike, in his muddled way, got it right. Leaders
who aspire to govern America need spiritual gravitas but not of the
intolerant fundamentalist, dominionist, homosexual-curing type.
The Founding Fathers of the nation, and the founders of TTF,
well understood the importance of thoughtful but tolerant spiritual
seriousness. This is why TTF has carved out its own distinctive
niche with forums and readings that continue to resonate with
leaders. Al McDonald and Os Guinness built better than they knew
when they started their discussion group and created an archive of
intellectual excellence. They deserved their pre-tombstone tributes
at the Corcoran. And, if by some miracle their TTF curricula on
character and leadership could be made mandatory reading for all
2012 presidential candidates, the quality of the national debate
would rise considerably.
