My colleague at a nearby church, Rev. Vicki Carpenter of First Congregational Church, UCC in Amherst, MA, started a practice with her congregation in the last election cycle which I think people of any religious tradition should adopt:  pray for the country and whoever is elected to lead it, both before and after the election, because no matter who wins and who loses, we have a lot of work ahead.  This election cycle we may have more work ahead than ever.

Economically, we are supposedly “recovered” from the Great Recession, but too few people feel it.  A recent Federal Reserve survey found a disturbingly high percentage of American households that could not handle an unplanned expense of more than a few hundred dollars.   Google search “income inequality” to find a dizzying list of resources regarding a world and a nation that is increasingly characterized by haves and have nots. If elections are about “the economy, stupid,” is it any wonder this election is already among the angriest and nastiest?

But elections are not just about the economy. They are even more about national identity, shared values (or a fight for whose values will hold what seats in government for the next few years) and priorities. Students of American history know that in writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously edited the holy trinity of “life, liberty, and property” to become “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  What is less well known is that the “happiness” he meant is not individual gratification, but a civic-minded and other-regarding sense of well-being. As Carol Hamilton writes, Jefferson was invoking “the Greek and Roman philosophical tradition in which happiness is bound up with the civic virtues of courage, moderation, and justice…The pursuit of happiness, therefore, is not merely a matter of achieving individual pleasure.”

In an election in which the contest to become the next President is expected to set a new standard for how low one can go in negative campaigning, perhaps the prayers we say for the country and whoever wins should include prayers for broader and deeper pursuits of happiness by all of us. For if all of us actually cultivate the virtues of courage, moderation and justice with a view to contributing to society, we will already be making progress in recovering from the electoral process. It is an outcome for which we can work and pray.