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Good morning.

Today marks the transition between the Democratic and Republican party conventions. The speeches at last week’s Democratic convention used strikingly emotional and even religious language. There was little talk of policy, but much talk of light and darkness, of love, suffering and mourning. Presidential biographer Joe Meacham claimed the election is a battle for the soul of America; ‘we might just save our country and our souls’, he said. This language of soul warfare is not just evoked by Democrats, but is also used by Republicans to advance the conservative cause. There is a battle, it seems, for the very language of the soul itself.

Particularly striking was Barak Obama’s hinting that America faces a moment akin to the Fall of Rome, a culture on the brink. Today happens to mark the anniversary of the day Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410; a crisis that produced some of the most enduring Christian writing on politics.

One response was St Augustine’s vast City of God. The political commentators of the 5th Century viewed Christianity as part of what had brought a once glorious empire to its knees. Augustine wrote to counter this blame-game, and offered a new allegory for reading politics. All life, including politics, is driven by two different kinds of love, described by Augustine as like two rival cities. The Earthly City and the Heavenly City. The earthly city is driven by love of self, love of power and lust for domination over others. The heavenly city is marked by love of God and neighbour. Each is seen by its visible fruits. Augustine admired one historian’s castigation of the end of empire for its visible ‘private affluence and public squalor’. These are signs of a sick body politic.

For Augustine each human heart across a lifetime, and every political community struggles with the battle between these loves; each soul, each community has to choose to reject the lust for the kind of power which takes the form of subtle and not so subtle domination over others. The quality of a society can be judged by what it loves, who it cares for and where it spends its money.

Augustine thought that the battle for the soul was at the heart of our politics, but that we should be wary of those who too easily or cheaply invoke its name. A common life worth its salt comes from judging carefully our loves and passions. The city that lasts is founded on visible and enduring justice and peace. The restless search for this is how we might save the soul of the city.

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