Pope Francis and an Appeal to Our Higher Angels

At the core of everything that the Cordoba Initiative stands for is the belief that religion is an essential ingredient to promote peace and reconciliation between Muslims and the West.

I know that can be hard to fathom for many people when religion too often has been used as an excuse to persecute people, to drive them from their homes and to kill indiscriminately.

With Pope Francis' visit to the United States , however, we see how religion can change the equation of what works in the pursuit of peace and reconciliation.

Politicians everywhere are pounding their chests in ego-driven declarations aimed at dividing people by appealing to their base instincts. Whether it's in the Syrian civil war, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict or even sometimes in this American presidential election, ego-driven leaders are willing to divide people into their tribes and say our tribe is good and their tribe is evil.

This translates into Sunni Muslims killing Shia, ISIS killing any religious group that does not adhere to its wildly distorted interpretation of Islam, ethnic Russians killing ethnic Ukrainians, Hungarians fearing refugees and native-born Americans believing that recent immigrants are dangerous.

But now Pope Francis comes to the United States as the embodiment of peace and good will. If nothing else, this pope has eschewed the trappings of ego. He drives around in a Ford Focus. He lives in monastic rooms outside of the Vatican rather than in the regal papal apartments. Like Jesus, he washes the feet of the poor and downtrodden. He shows how a humble appeal - not chest-pounding ego -- can capture the popular imagination.

The pope's visit reminds us that the human journey is a constant battle between our better angels and our lower self. At an individual level and as a collective group, falling into the abyss of fear-driven destruction is all too easy. Putting aside self-interest to achieve the common good is more difficult.

Some have called the United States "the shining city on the hill" and the beacon for the world. Those are the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, and they call us to be a community seeking our better angels.

The words enshrined on the Statue of Liberty welcoming the "huddled masses yearning to be free" declare our better angels. Waves of immigrants have built this country, even though they have been greeted with suspicion and resistance as far back as Benjamin Franklin's fear that the Pennsylvania colony was being overrun with German immigrants. But the nation would be impoverished without each and every wave as the newcomers sought better lives and became Americans.

The values of our better angels can be hard to live up to as our lower selves whisper to our greed to our fears and to our ego. Those of us with strong religious faith who seek peace and reconciliation have a common language of spirituality. Love is love, no matter what you call it. People of different faith communities speak in many languages, but we have a common experience that provides us a common vocabulary. Whether we are Christians, Muslims of Jews, we all battle with ego, and the battle with our lower selves is our common struggle.

In the Quran (3:113-115) we read that there are Jews and Christians who are sincere and devout, who compete in acts of goodness, and who will receive God's approval and salvation. So there are upright people of faith of whom God approves, whether they call themselves Christians or Jews or Muslims, and there are evildoers in all these religions as well.

The real divide is therefore not between Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists, but between godly believers and ungodly people--which includes religious hypocrites.

If you want to work for peace, you must have your own inner peace. That is what Pope Francis teaches us in his humility. He draws his strength not by jeering at "losers." He lifts the "losers" in a way that strengthens the entire community. How do we develop that kind of community and society that helps strengthen the individual to exalt our nation with our humanity?

That is what the pope will represent to the people chasing after the Popemobile in Washington, D.C. They want some of that strength that comes from inner peace and service to others. They want to believe that those who appeal to our higher angels are more powerful than those who pander to our base instincts.

They are looking for that kind of hope that peace and reconciliation are possible. The challenge for all of us is to seek political leaders who encourage us to embrace our better angels to make our nations great by making them good.