While the nation’s attention focused on the new president, the people of Memphis singularly focused on our elected Board of Education. On December 17, 2024, the chair of the board announced a special called meeting to vote on the superintendent’s termination. On January 21, 2025, six of the nine board members voted for her termination.

The move to terminate was surprising. The superintendent, Dr. Marie Feagins, was only eight months into her tenure when the resolution to terminate was proposed. Dr. Feagins is widely popular in Memphis. Parents and teachers all seem to love her. My experiences with her were positive as well. I’ve emailed with her a few different times and agreed to serve as a Parent Ambassador for the school system.

The community has been vocal about their support of Dr. Feagins. At one middle-school, students walked out of class to demonstrate their support. The state legislature has threatened to take over the Memphis-Shelby County School system. Parents and teachers lined up hours ahead of the board meetings to provide public comments, unanimously in support of retaining Dr. Feagins. I’ve written a few emails to board members. 

Instead of an orderly process, Memphis got a spectacle. One board member shouted down her colleague who raised a point of order during the proceedings. A private attorney retained by the board provided a made-for-TV courtroom argument of “the facts,” all the while refraining from presenting any actual evidence about the need for Dr. Feagin’s termination. A few moments after Dr. Feagin’s termination, the newly named interim-Superintendent engaged in a tense exchange with members of the public, on camera, appearing to say, “Be careful!” as spectators viewed. 

In my last few essays, I’ve pondered whether our society has the capacity to discern the common good, and if not, how the church can and should be part of the solution. The question of discerning the common good together was at the forefront of my mind as I watched our school board descend into chaos. 

Émile Durkheim, the father of sociology, once argued that public schools were the place where people were formed to be good citizens. In public schools, Durkheim argued, society fostered the development of “a certain number of physical, intellectual, and moral states which are demanded of [the student] by the political society” in which they will participate.[1]

In effect, the job of the public school was to prepare people who could be good, thoughtful citizens. As students grew into adulthood, the broader civil society—the volunteer agencies like scouts, Rotary, and social clubs, and the ever-present PTO— would reinforce that good citizenship. By the time someone ran for office, they would be well-formed to sit in tension to discern and promote the common good. 

It is telling that only three board members in Memphis were willing to sit in that necessary, deliberative tension. One board member, Amber Huett-Garcia, introduced a resolution that would necessitate difficult and tense work by the board: ongoing governance training for the board, routine evaluations of the superintendent. In an email, she told me that she would continue to push for that, though I am not confident that a majority of the board would support her.

All of this leaves me wondering, again, about the role of the church in our turbulent political society. If it is true that we are not all that capable of having meaningful discernment about the common good, then it seems that the church is the place where that ability needs to be inculcated. 

But discerning the common good is not simply a matter of learning how to have a conversation, a notion to agree to disagree, or a false moderation of our ideas. At its core, it is the ability to sit together and determine what is worth pursuing. 

Our temptation, I think, is to abstract that. If I ask the Memphis-Shelby County School Board what is worth pursuing, they’ll probably tell me that we need to pursue a world in which every child can read. We need to improve literacy and math test scores. We need to give kids the foundation of a successful future. If I ask most churches what is worth pursuing, I suspect I’ll hear something about the Great Commission, about loving our neighbors, about caring for others, and seeking justice. 

All of that is well and good. But it is not really a pursuable task, not without deeper thought. The ability to discern the common good together requires an additional depth. What helps us move to those end goals? What programs and initiatives should we be doing? What groups should we be talking to? Discerning the common good requires us to be rooted in what is local – to know how power is distributed locally, how individuals in our communities relate to others, and what will be best for our local place.[2]

After the presidential inauguration, I suspect a lot of preachers will be preaching a vague politic, anchored in justice. But in Memphis, an injustice has happened, and it is not unique to our community. I wonder how many preachers will be able to speak to those local injustices with specificity. I wonder how many preachers will invite their congregation into a tension-filled conversation to think deeply about our life together. 

It is increasingly clear that the structures that have fostered our ability to do public life together are no longer able to do that hard work. What happened at our Memphis-Shelby County Board is a symptom of that larger issue. If the church is to have a meaningful voice in our world today, we might start by learning to have the difficult discernment of what is good. The church, after all, might be the only space left where it is possible at all.