The Washington Post recently featured an article by John Greer and Mary Catherine Sullivan entitled, How Politically Divided is the US? The June 7, 2022, column challenges the assumption America is more divided than it has ever been.
To develop a more objective measure of the nation’s common thinking, the Vanderbilt Unity Index (VUI) was created in 1981. It attempts to objectively measure how divided we are as a country.
The VUI tracks the country’s unity by examining national harmony in the following five categories: presidential disapproval, ideological extremism, social trust, congressional polarization and civil unrest. Each area is measured four times per year.
Using a scale of 0-100, America was most unified in the second quarter of 1991 when the VUI reached 71.3 as the nation stood solidly behind President George H. W. Bush in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. The VUI score was above 70 in 12 quarters since 1981. Surprisingly, the VUI fell below 50 just three times during that period. However, Vanderbilt acknowledges the nation’s trust in political institutions has eroded significantly during the last 40 years.
In the July 12, 2022, Our Daily Bread devotional, Bill Crowder observed, “It has become sadly ‘normal’ to attack not only the opinions of others but also the person holding the opinion.” Crowder related how he was surprised when theologian Richard B. Hays authored a paper in which he forcefully corrected something he himself had written earlier. In, Reading with the Grain of Scripture, Hays critique of himself demonstrated remarkable humility by acknowledging he too was still learning.