In the canon of 20th century American literature, few novels hold a higher place than Harper Lee’s 1960 classic "To Kill a Mockingbird". Told from the perspective of eight-year-old Scout, a girl in 1930s small town Alabama, the novel addresses issues of race, prejudice, courage, and self-sacrificing love.
For many of us who grew up reading the book, it was hard not to be inspired by Scout’s father, Atticus—a southern lawyer who defended an African-American man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Though facing the scorn of his fellow white townspeople, Atticus mounted a brilliant defense for a client who nonetheless was found guilty.
Atticus served as a model of what would later be called an “upstander”—one who is willing to fight evil on behalf of another. I first read "To Kill a Mockingbird" when I was in Tom Pasko‘s freshman English class and from the moment I put the novel down, I wanted to be Atticus Finch. And I was not alone. He was a model of selfless, courageous humanity…and an amazing dad.
In 2015 HarperCollins released the novel "Go Set a Watchman" to great controversy. The novel, which featured many of the same characters she would later develop in "To KIll a Mockingbird", was an earlier attempt at telling the story of Scout in her mid-20s returning to her hometown in Alabama after having been away in New York.
Many argued that the book should never have been released—that Lee was duped into publishing it. Watchman stunned the reading world because it revealed the unthinkable: Atticus Finch, a man who risked everything—his name, his livelihood, even the lives of his children—by defending an innocent Black man, was a racist.
His was the racism that was the mix of racial prejudice and elitism that manifested itself in a paternalistic dismissal of Black people as being like children. To help determine a way of meeting the challenges of the Civil Rights Movement, he attends White Citizens’ Council gatherings—”lace-curtain” Klan meetings.
This revelation about a character so beloved sent shockwaves throughout the world, and I know of many who cannot bring themselves to read the newer novel. But as difficult as it is to read, it’s important that it was published because it reveals, in narrative form, an important truth expressed by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: namely, that "[t]he line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts” (The Gulag Archepelago, Vol. 2).
Harper Lee’s stories are as much about Scout coming to terms with the humanness of the father she idolized as anything else. She saw the line that ran within her father—it was a line that showed her (and we readers) that Atticus was a man at once in need of redemption and worth saving.
Atticus was white, he was middle-class, he was an American, and given the political landscape of the mid-century American South, he would have been a Democrat. None of these things would have made him—or his real-life contemporaries—good or evil. He would have lived out that conflict in his natures within the world in which he found himself.
Like all of us.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25-37) Jesus teaches many lessons, one of which is that just because somebody is on the “other side” does not mean they have forfeited their worth or their goodness. Samaritans, we recall, were the mortal enemies of the Jews. For Jesus to suggest a Samaritan was “good,” in the context of His times and the audience to whom He spoke, would have been shocking. He uses that particular person from that particular community to make His point.
And the point would be made repeatedly through the rest of Scripture.
It was a Roman centurion—a leader of the hated occupiers of Judea—who both crucified Jesus and publicly acknowledged Him as the Son of God (Mt. 27:54). It was a bitter Saul (Acts 7: 54-60), who, after having held the cloaks of those who stoned St. Stephen to death, would dedicate his life spreading the Gospel throughout the known world. Conversely was one of the 12 closest to Jesus who would betray Him for thirty pieces of silver (Mt. 26: 17-19). Each of these men thought that what they were doing in the moment was right.
Now that the 2024 presidential election is in full swing, the rhetoric, the division, the venom that have become characteristic of our political process and our national dialogue are surfacing yet again. The hopes voiced in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump that somehow civility would return to our political process have proved to be overly optimistic and naïve. The reason is simple: as a society we ignore the essential truth that those who disagree with us politically are not, for that reason, stupid or evil.
It’s easy to allow ourselves to fall into that trap. It’s also intellectually and morally lazy. We do well to remember that the overwhelming majority of those with whom we disagree politically are the people who cut our hair, provide us with medical care, who sit across from us in business meetings, and who we trust to watch and educate our children. They support candidates and positions not because they seek to bring down the country, or destroy its moral fabric, or because they harbor deep-seated prejudices: it’s because they have a vision of the world—and what can make it better—that may be different than our own. Most of our opponents, like us, want to promote human dignity, end poverty, provide a safe and secure society for their loved ones–they just disagree with us on how to get there. We may think they are wrong in their opinions, but in my experience, they are wrong for the “right” reasons.
As we journey through this election cycle, rather than succumb to the temptation to demonize the “other side,” we should remember the line that runs through us all. And as we work to correct what is evil in our own lives, let us focus on what is good in everyone else’s.
A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.