November 2, 2004 - It has begun. As the sun speeds its way from the easternmost tip of Maine in the Atlantic to the westernmost island shore in Hawaii Americans will go to their polling places to cast their ballots renewing the experiment our political ancestors started in 1787. Only once in the history of the Republic has a divided people refused to accept the result of the quadrennial renewal of the American Revolution. No matter what the result of today’s poll of our citizens; whether it is a continuation of the present administration’s stewardship of the American dream or a new beginning under a new steward; we pray that 1860 will continue to stand alone as the only time that the result of a Presidential election was bitterly rejected in a resort to bloodshed. Seldom has the country been as deeply divided as it is on this Election Day. Seldom has the political rhetoric of the Presidential campaign been so bitterly divisive.

Forty-four years ago I cast my first ballot in a Presidential election. That was a century after the result of an election was Civil War. Then, as now, the nation was sharply divided between the continuation of the old regime and the commencement of a new era.. Even in the long hours we waited out the counting of the votes in 1960 did we consider that the result of our election might once again drive America apart.

Today my ballot, marked a few weeks ago, will be cast in what will be one of the last Presidential elections in which I will have the privilege to participate. Never in that intervening four decades and four years have I greeted Election Day with anything but a sense of pride in America and the feeling that the promise of America was being renewed. Yet this year I greet the dawn with a sense of foreboding.

The question nags, can the man who prevails in this election lead a united nation? Has the tenor of this year’s campaign so divided the people as to make it impossible to govern the nation? Can the winner of a contest in which one has been labeled “liar” and the other “traitor” weld an effective administration accorded the support of a united country or has the bitter divisiveness of this campaign so tainted the national spirit that we are no longer one nation, indivisible? I pray that it has not but I genuinely fear that no matter what the outcome my America has been forever changed by the experience.

I take some comfort in the words of the man who will be the Junior Senator from Illinois. “There are no Blue States. There are no Red States. We are the United States!” It was a ringing call to renew the American spirit. But as the campaign wore on and grew too close for comfort the slogans of division drowned out those inspiring words and gave them a new and ominous meaning. We are not now a united people. We have become the Reds and the Blues arrayed against each other in a bitter struggle for cultural dominance.

So pause today and take a moment to speak privately with your God. Ask of Him that he save the United States for we have grown so bitter that we cannot do it for ourselves.