I learned something about eagles a short time ago. You see them a lot on car commercials, when the company wants to sell power or patriotism. The car zooms buy, probably on a majestic curve at high speeds, and then an eagle soars overhead, and you hear the majestic cry of the symbol of our nation.

The only problem is that the bird cry we hear is that of a hawk, not of an eagle. Hawks sound more like powerful predators to our ears, so all the voiceovers swap in a hawk sound. Eagles sound like most other birds — they have this high pitched, but cute range of sounds. They even make a noise that, to my ear, sounds almost like the laugh of a hyena. Cute, sure, but not powerful.

I totally get why companies would swap out the sounds to sell more cars; power and patriotism are strong motivators for our consumerist culture. But it’s so pervasive that it took me more than 40 years to learn what our national emblem sounds like — because of money. I’m not sure I can think of a better metaphor for our national crisis than this. We identify nationalism with patriotism, and patriotism with force and power, and we overlay that with our national emblem, the eagle.

The Rev. Jude Geiger

I remember as a kid learning that Benjamin Franklin wanted our national emblem to be the turkey — because wild turkeys are apparently one of the most intelligent birds. He lost out to an apex predator. And the eagle won’t do today, if it sounds like a laughing hyena, so we make it sound like what we value — power. It’s the modern trinity, our contemporary idolatry — power, patriotism, and purchasing power. We like power so much, we say it twice.

As we slip toward fascism — and I don’t use that word lightly. As reminder, fascism is a political ideology that seeks: 1) to centralize capital (make the rich richer); 2) demonize a racial, ethnic, religious or sexual or gender identity (think Muslims, Arabs or Latinos, and the LGBTQ communities); 3) usually uses protectionist economic policies to create the illusion of national self-sufficiency; 4) A disdain for democratic norms; and 5) the call for increasing militarism. But as we slip toward fascism, knowing our history, naming a thing for what it is — and a rigorous quest for facts — become more and more critical to our democracy. This is why learning that I’ve been taught a lie about what an eagle sounds like bothers me so — and why that lesson is so important as we enter into this post-fact era in our nation’s story.

Changing the voice of the eagle to match our need for power in our patriotism is the spirit of our times. In our post-fact era, we demand that reality conform to our opinions. This is most prevalent in the rise of white supremacy on our streets. Whites are beginning to shift into the minority in our nation. And as equal rights are gaining enough ground that folks who have historically enjoined privileges at the expense of others begin to have their privileges leveled — white folk and men — that leveling is experienced as oppression. With being treated more equally than before, white supremacy surfaces in the broad daylight again; never gone, always dangerous, but more obvious to White America these days. The clarion call of the commercialized patriotic bald eagle — always strident, never nuanced and speaking with someone else’s voice — in order to sell a set of goods could be the perfect emblem for this rise of white nationalism. I would mock it, if it weren’t so deadly dangerous to the fabric of our nation.

Religion today, at its best, needs to address the dangers of this post-fact era. It needs to do its part in staving off the worst excesses and inoculating our children from growing up believing in this dangerous nonsense that props up bellicose lone male figures as powerful, when they are merely petty; as charismatic rather than charlatans; as populist when they mean white nationalist; confusing opinion with reality — especially when those opinions are universally used to benefit some, at the expense of the majority of others.

What is faith to do in response to all this? In our post-fact era, knowing our own stories becomes even more critical, as the forces of oppression and hate continue to literally make everything up as they go. Whose stories get centered and whose stories get a forced make-over is the dominant challenge of faith in our post-fact era, because it has real repercussions in our everyday experiences. And right now, it appears that a white nationalist story is getting centered more and more.

One role of faith in our lives is to push against this. We are all healthier for learning from the range of human experiences. The more we are pushed to not center our own perspective as objective reality, we are spiritually more whole. It can be a spiritual practice to bear witness to the witness of others. Compassion, for the sake of compassion, is a religious expression. It’s also the path to building the beloved community — even and especially — within this troubling time.

Where white nationalism props up an individual racial group as superior and powerful — as sincere as the eagle dubbed over with a hawk’s cry — we should return to what Christian liberation theologians remind us is most critical: the everyday struggles for life and meaning to survive, rather than the stories of power and privilege we are too often raised to lift up. Faith in a post-fact era is being in relationship with — and bearing witness to — the pain caused upon those most impacted by the degradations of power and privilege.

The Rev. Jude Geiger is pastor of Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists.

https://www.dailypress.com/2025/09/07/faith-values-faith-in-a-post-fact-era/