By RAY WADDLE

It has been nearly 50 years since the Rev. James Lawson rattled the Nashville establishment by organizing sit-ins that shamed segregation and stirred the civil rights movement.

He still talks with urgency, as if the soul of America is imperiled, short on time, and the whole world is watching: we need a second American Revolution, he says, to inspire belief in something more than superpower force and all-day shopping.

Recently a packed Vanderbilt chapel hung on every word as this patriarch of nonviolent reform gave a civics lesson in Americanism.

What do we stand for? he asked. What are American values now?

“The 21st century is going to see either the waxing of this nations consciousness about itself, or we will see the waning of this nations experiment in self-government,” he declared.

Now 77, Lawson was kicked out of Vanderbilt in 1960 for organizing local demonstrations of civil disobedience. The university has since welcomed him back. He joins the Divinity School as a visiting professor in fall 2006.

His politics have not mellowed. Wartime nationalism is corrupting religion, eclipsing the message of Jesus, he says. And people are losing heart because a living wage and health care seem out of reach.

Agree with him or not, Lawson presses audiences to define what it means to cherish democracy and the Constitution. What does America stand for today?

Before the Soviet Union fell, the answer was easy. We opposed Russian socialism, gulag prisons, the atheistic repression of the human spirit.

When the Iron Curtain collapsed, a war of ideas ended. The miserable ideologies of the 20th century, fascism and Stalinism, were dead. Capitalism won. A peace dividend -- strange new idea -- would spread the new domestic happiness around.

Almost immediately, we got distracted. Gulf War I made us a reluctant world policeman. Back home, people defined new enemies, as if to fill the hole filled for so long by the communists. Culture conservatives identified a new menace: homosexuality. The left fretted about a right-wing theocratic domestic takeover.

The rest of the world divided itself into two remaining global ideologies -- Americanism and anti-Americanism.

Then 9/11 rained down. Amid the carnage, a new conflict was announced -- a “clash of civilizations,” democracy vs. religious fanaticism.

Within days, writer Salman Rushdie provided a provocative, widely circulated definition and defense of democratic values.

“The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing,” he wrote.

“To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the worlds resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.”

As I listened to Lawson at Vanderbilt last month, I thought of Rushdies defiant list, but now it seemed incomplete. Lawson argued for something more -- a stronger grasp of the ethical passion required of freedom and democracy, starting with a more serious embrace of his late colleague Martin Luther King.

He called King the great American prophet -- part Jefferson, part Isaiah -- a patriot who believed the Constitution could elevate human dignity everywhere, not just in the USA but across the world.

“Yet we have sanitized (King) and the movement,” Lawson said.
“He was perhaps the most hated man America has ever birthed ... The dead make convenient heroes. They cannot rise up to challenge our image of them. It is easier to build monuments than build a better world.”

Much has changed since 1960, but the fear element has not. Back then, it was fear of dissident youth and racial equality. Now it is fear of nuclear terrorism and the loss of pensions. But Lawsons voice of hope remains strong. He is convinced nonviolence is the only way out for humanity -- a vision of human rights and courtesy infusing both Holy Bible and U.S. Constitution and admired by the wider world, which secretly still looks to us despite anger against us.

“We must live by love not fear,” he said. “Its the only way for human aspirations to be fulfilled.