Last Spring, barnstorming across America with my atheist college roommate and our dialogical documentary Purple State of Mind, we felt a bit like presidential candidates. We engaged in heated debates on college campuses. We stopped by churches and synagogues to rally the faithful. We answered phone calls on local radio shows. While Barack and Hillary were swiping at each other, John Marks and I were taking heat from animated audiences.

Skeptics wondered why John seemed so negative, almost acting like a bully. Christians wondered why I took so much abuse from John without punching back. Both sides were disappointed that their representative failed to defend their side with more authority. The crowds wanted a bloody boxing match. Instead, we offered a perverse bit of peace, love and understanding. Tired of the gridlock created by the culture wars, we offered a different way of being, advocating active listening, promoting a purple state of mind.

In an era of red states versus blue states, who proved the most popular and purple candidate? Obama’s conciliatory, bridge-building speeches pushed past the divisive politics that preceded him. Every previous election in my lifetime felt like a referendum on the past—the responsibilities of the 1950s versus the freedom of the 1960s. Your opinion of Vietnam and Woodstock was reflected in your voting record. But Barack came of age after that tumultuous era. His approach to governing felt pragmatic rather than ideological.

A series of challengers tried to rile him. Obama floated above the mire during the Democratic primary. But what about the presidential election? For a brief moment, Sarah Palin reignited her party’s faithful. She freshened up an old divide-and-conquer script, begun by Patrick Buchanan, polished by Lee Atwater, perfected by Karl Rove. Palin put a positive spin on negativism. Her candidacy was an entertaining sideshow to the main event: Obama vs. McCain.

Senator McCain garnered the Republican nomination by running toward the middle, building a coalition around unity rather than division. Yet, with Obama running ahead in the polls, McCain abandoned his centrist principles, incorporating some of the scare tactics and whispers that had been used against him in previous campaigns. Eventually, the depths of the economic depression trumped any attempts to prey upon voters’ fears.

Yet, even before the inauguration, the culture war reared its decidedly ugly head. By inviting Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the opening invocation, Obama stepped into the firestorm swirling around gay marriage and California’s Proposition 8. Reaching across the aisle only resulted in more flames coming his way. Those who viewed the Warren invocation as a political maneuver found equal calculation in the late addition of Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson to inauguration week. Robinson vowed to offer an inclusive invocation, crafting “a message that everyone in the nation can identify with” (although his prayer was not broadcast on HBO’s ‘We Are One’ concert.) You can read it here.

I am thrilled that Obama made room for pastors who not only disagree with each other, but possibly even with him. We desperately need a leader who can listen to his critics, who can bring people together across the ir/religious, political and cultural divide. I embarked on the Purple State project because I need a voice of dissent in my life. The doubts of John Marks make me a better believer. He keeps me honest, keeps me questioning, keeps me from getting comfortable. Can we continue to make room for the loyal opposition, even when it causes complications?

By swearing upon Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, Obama reaches back to an equally challenging era of American history. The specter of civil war caused Lincoln to ask, “Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?” He reminded his listeners, “We are not enemies, but friends. He closed his address with an appeal to “our bonds of affection,” “the mystic chords of memory,” and “the better angels of our nature.”