An epidemic of moral injury

During times of turbulence in politics, culture, and religious life, it’s tempting to hold tightly to current convictions. Allowing a change of one’s mind or heart can be difficult work. With this in mind, we have resumed a Century series published at intervals since 1939, in which we ask leading thinkers to reflect on their own struggles, disappointments, and hopes as they address the topic, “How my mind has changed.” This essay is the 12th in the new series.

COVID-19 arrived just as I began contemplating what to write for this series, and I kept changing my mind about what to say in the face of so much suffering. But on January 6, I knew. That afternoon, as I exited my dentist’s office in Washington, DC, a black pickup truck roared past, loaded with White men in MAGA caps who shouted something that was drowned out by the truck’s blaring horn. Annoyed by the shrill spectacle, I checked my phone for news and discovered that a siege was in progress at the Capitol just three miles away.

I made my way to the Metro train, where an automated message announced a 6 p.m. curfew. After skipping several trains packed with boisterous, unmasked people in MAGA gear, I boarded a train car that held few people, all masked. Exiting at my stop a half hour later, I hurried past a group of men in MAGA caps loitering near the turnstiles. I arrived home five minutes before the curfew descended upon Alexandria, Virginia, which had sent its police force to the Capitol.

As I watched news reports of the siege deep into the night, I had the unsettling thought that I was watching a national apocalypse unfold. Thoughts about apocalypse had been on my mind as the pandemic surged and George Floyd’s murder captured global attention, igniting the largest social movement in US history. I had resisted apocalyptic thinking, however, because of the way far-right evangelicals use natural disasters and tragedies as dire denunciations of any challenge to their White male supremacy.