On February 5, Wisconsin came together in a euphoric celebration of the Packers’ victory in the Super Bowl. In bringing back their fourth Lombardi Trophy to Titletown, we anointed a new Savior (Aaron Rogers) and finally laid to rest the ghost of Brett Favre. With a young quarterback and many important players who had been lost to injury, the future looked bright indeed.

The celebration that united all of Wisconsin a little over two weeks ago is not even a distant memory. The spontaneous community created by a major athletic championship has been shattered, deep divisions within our polity have appeared and the promising future of a new Packers dynasty has given way to fear and despair.

The small Midwestern town in which I was raised was profoundly shaped by the order imposed on it by Jefferson’s vision. The square-mile grid of townships, each with a one-room schoolhouse created both civic community and a sense of common purpose. There was relatively little disparity in wealth and what there was could often be blamed on the luck of the draw—the fertility of the land on which a family had homesteaded—or individual effort and talent. To be sure, there was poverty, but most of it was found either among the migrant workers who came each year to harvest vegetable crops, or in the city.

It wasn’t until I went south for the first time to meet my soon-to-be wife’s family that I encountered enormous disparity of wealth in small-town America. I remember vividly visiting one of my father-in-law’s farms and being greeted by the children who lived in the ramshackle house on the property. It seemed more like the Third World than America.

I remember vividly as well the “Poverty Tours” Deacon Steve MacDonald would lead in Greenville. A Vietnam Vet and recovering alcoholic, Steve was an ordained Episcopal deacon and worked for United Ministries. He was an in-your-face advocate for the poor and homeless. He knew where the homeless lived. He also took us to those areas of Greenville where walls divided neighborhoods. On side of the wall were houses that sold for upwards of $1,000,000. On the other side were hovels that lacked central heat, water, and often even electricity.

The Republican Party came to power in the South by using race to divide poor and working class whites from African-Americans, whose economic interests they shared. Politicians in the South continue to play off of division, competing with other states and regions of the country to attract manufacturing and other businesses.

Apart from everything else that is going on, it seems to me that what we are seeing in Wisconsin this week is a similar tactic of division. Instead of bringing people together as a community to come up with solutions and cooperate on solving our state’s problems, Governor Walker and other Republicans are seeking to consolidate power by creating division among our populace. Union members are vilified as freeloaders and undeserving of the wages and benefits they receive from their jobs in the public sector. The code words and rhetoric remind me very much of the language used in an earlier time to attack “welfare queens” and the like.

Among the calls in yesterday’s Interfaith press conference was a vision of shared sacrifice. As religious communities, it is our responsibility to hold up a vision of a common good, in which people of good will come together to solve society’s problems. Whatever our differences—class, race, even political views—we are all created in God’s image. As Christians, we need to do Jesus Christ’s work in the world, breaking down the barriers that divide us, being Christ’s ambassadors, offering reconciliation where others sow division.