By Glen Stassen

I ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE HEALING AS WELL AS CHANGE YOUR CAMPAIGN MOTTO. WE NEED BOTH.

So many disasters have happened during this administration that it seems as if the judgment of God is coming. We need change, and you need a clear mandate. That's why you are communicating the change clearly in your public addresses.

So much division has happened. So many people feel left out, unheard, disrespected. We need healing and you need to hear the fears and concerns of many diverse voices. That's why you speak to many diverse concerns.

Republican David Brooks of the New York Times is greatly impressed with your ability to get inside differing perspectives, and bring them together into a thoughtful solution. That's the kind of healing we need. The present administration's neocon strategists have brought us ideological policies that have alienated most Americans as well as most nations. They have not even consulted with Congress, let alone the large majorities who disagree with their policies. Our nation is badly divided. You will take diverse positions into account. You treated Hillary Clinton with respect, and now you speak of John McCain with respect, and you want to lead all of us to speak of each other with respect. We hope for healing.

That also means spiritual progressives need to give you some of our patience. Sometimes we care so much about the injustice of the present system, and about the restorative justice that we deeply believe is right, that we can become judgmental of other perspectives. We have seen too much self-righteous, judgmental authoritarianism from spokespersons of the religious Right. We don't want to become their mirror image on the Left. We all need the Mennonite virtue of Gelassenheit, patience.

But we do worry that the pressures of the election process can squeeze you into giving up the real change that is needed for healing to take place.

Please assure us that when you say we need healing, you don't mean to heal our wounds lightly, crying "peace, peace," when there is no peace--or justice. You have the gift for understanding where different factions are coming from, and being sensitive to varieties of concerns. But you also need to be more than a mushy middle. We have hurting problems that need decisive action. We need healing that really heals.

We need racial healing. You have the personal strength of being able to identify with your white mother and your black father; you symbolize the potential for racial healing in your very person, and so will your election, dramatically.

We need economic healing. People are increasingly worried about the rapidly growing gaps between the very rich, the 60% at the bottom and middle whose incomes have decreased for the last thirty years, and the 20% above the middle who have just stayed the same. Reagan dropped the top tax bracket from paying 60% for the topmost earnings to only 29%. The result: the U.S. budget deficit quadrupled, from the debt accumulated by all previous presidents of $1 trillion, to $4 trillion during only the twelve Reagan-Bush years. Clinton raised the top bracket to 39%, and began paying back some debt. George W. Bush not only dropped that bracket back to 29%, but cut capital gains taxes and dividend taxes to 15%, so the wealthy pay less than the middle class on their big investments, and the U.S. debt has skyrocketed in only eight years to over $9 trillion. That is unfair to the large majority of taxpayers, and to coming generations now saddled with that enormous debt. As you have said, "We need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill, and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you've got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don't need and weren't even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate."

Consumers make up 70% of the economy, so when the income is shifted away from consumers to the very rich, purchasing slows, and the economy tanks. Americans, including those who are rich, sense that our nation's policies are unfair to coming generations and to workers and to the poor. Michael Lerner and our spiritual progressive movement call for policies of generosity. That fits a virtue that we all value. We need generosity and economic justice within our own nation as well as internationally.

A major cause of divisiveness has been the Bush policy of refusing to talk directly with North Korea, Iran, Hamas, or Cuba. Now Christopher Hill talked with North Korea and got the North Korea reactor closed down, and Egypt talked with Hamas and Israel and got a major step toward peace, and the Bush administration is at last talking with Iran. Thank you for saying you would talk with adversaries and seek healing, not just threaten and condemn. See www.Matthew5Project.org for clear advocacy of following Jesus' command to talk and make peace with adversaries.

On healthcare, we literally need healing--healing medically, and healing from our sense of gross unfairness to the 47 million people who have no health insurance. The United States is spending an average of $6,096 per person for healthcare, but the infant mortality rate is a high 7 per 1,000, and the male life expectancy is only 75. Too many put off going to the doctor because they lack insurance, until they are so sick their hospitalization costs skyrocket, and they may not recover. Spain, Germany, Austria, Canada, England, and Israel have an infant mortality rate of 4 or 5, their combined male life expectancy is 78, and their healthcare costs only half what ours does. Norway, Sweden, and Japan have an infant mortality rate of 3, and they spend less than we do. Even Cuba has an infant mortality rate of 5. We need truly universal health insurance. I urge you to adopt the program advocated by the American nurses, who know the needs best. Everyone knows the system is broken, and our nation is hurting. We need healing.

We need healing of the earth. That doesn't come by drilling oil faster and using up what little is left so the next generations have none. You're clear that the emphasis should be on conservation and new technologies, and you're right on that.

We need your commitment to engage actively from the start in helping heal the gaping sore between Israel and Palestine. What power structure will defend minority rights in Jerusalem? How will we get the creeping occupation stopped and reversed?

We need healing between secular people and people of faith. E.J. Dionne wrote in the Washington Post that your speech on faith of June 28 2006 (available on barackobama.com) "may be the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican."

You said then that we need to "tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America." Secularists need to allow room for voices of faith. You testified to your own path to faith in Trinity United Church of Christ. "That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans--evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. ... If we truly hope to speak to people where they're at--to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own--then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse."

And conservatives need to remember "the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland ... it was the for bearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it."

You spoke a humble and a healing word: "So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us brings to this debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that to happen ... And that night, before I went to bed I said a prayer of my own. It's a prayer I think I share with a lot of Americans. A hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all."

For the common good--the good of all--and healing.

Glen Harold Stassen is the Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary. His Kingdom Ethics won the Christianity Today award for best book of 2004 in theology or ethics.