Making space for faith in the House of Representatives: Douglas Tanner set up an institute to inject faith values into the US House of Representatives—and to make sure that members are up to speed on their country's racial history - Profile

For A Change, Feb-March, 2002 by Bob Webb

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.