Moral Values and American Politics

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Julie Stoneberg

 

 

Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices - saying, in effect, that God is on our side.  Rather, we should pray and worry earnestly

whether we are on God's side.

                                                                                                                                    -Abraham Lincoln

 

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.  That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back.  It is the central point in my conception.

 I see it at the end of all of my reflections.

                                                                     -Alexis de Tocqueville                     Democracy in America

 

The social conscience sees that wherever man [sic] walks, there is the Holy Land.

                                                                                                                                  - Henry Demarest Lloyd

 

Radical change cannot and will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by…[a] public  who can link hands across…borders.

                                                                                                                                               - Arundhati Roy

 

Prelude                      Fantasia in G Major                 J.S. Bach

 

Chalice Lighting and Singing Together

As we begin our worship today, we hold our dear church secretary, Kathy Schmirler in our thoughts and prayers.  Kathy suffered a heart attack on Tuesday.  She is doing well, is at home, and against her dearest wishes, is not allowed to come back to work for a month.  As Rev. Paul said in an email earlier this week, this can be a wonderful opportunity for all of us to discover those perfect slots…where we can help out.  Things certainly won't run as smoothly as usual without her, but we may experience the power of the small contributions of many people.  It does indeed take a village.

Today, we step into the future with a hope that we discover what the great spiritual traditions have taught for centuries; simply that as we strengthen our faith and our inner life, we strengthen our capacity to bring all of who we are into our communities and our society and our politics.  Come, let us worship together.

 

Singing Together                            Sound Over All Waters                   #122

Children's Focus       The BigOrange Splot        by Daniel Manus Pinkwater

Mr. Plumbean lived on a neat street.  All the houses looked the same.  One day a seagull dropped a can of bright orange paint on Mr. Plumbean’s house.  (No one knows why.)  When he repainted his house to look like a rainbow explosion, the neighbors couldn’t believe their eyes.  “Plumbean has gone too far,” they said.  But Mr. Plumbean claimed that his house was him, and he was it.  His house looked like all his dreams.  One by one, the neighbors come to realize that living on a neat street is not all it’s cracked up to be.  

 

Children's Blessing            May Peace  Surround You

 

Community Focus Collection            We Bring The Sacrifice of Praise           Mark Hayes

(Unless otherwise indicated on your check or envelope, all proceeds from today's collection will benefit a Marathon County Jail Education Project.  Please make checks payable to Northcentral Technical College Foundation)

 

Reading    from Spiritual Politics by Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson

Activists Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson emphasize that our understanding of politics, like our view of service, needs to be broadened significantly.  This reading comes from their book, Spiritual Politics. 

Politics is the way we live our lives.  It is not just running for office.  It is the way we treat each other, as individuals, as groups, as government.  It is the way we treat our environment.  It is the way we treat ourselves.  Politics has to do with where we shop, what we eat, how we maintain our health.  It has to do with the kinds of schools we create, the energy we use, the neighborhood organizations we build, the work we do.  Politics involves our way of seeing the world, of developing our consciousness, of awakening our whole selves.  It has to do with our attitudes, our values, our innermost dimensions.

The old political paradigm assumed that events are cause solely by political leaders and public policies.  The new emerging paradigm could be called a "politics as if people mattered."  It addresses causes inherent in our own human psyche, our thoughts and feelings, as well as in the karma of groups and nations.

 

Choir                              Sing Me Home                Carl Nygard, Jr.

 

Reading             The Test of Religion            A. Powell Davies

A. Powell Davies gained national renown from the highly visible pulpit of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington D.C.  The following is an excerpt from a sermon delivered On November 25, 1956 titled "The Rights of Atheists". 

When it comes to religion, the basis of judgment must be competence and character.  And this is exactly what the founding fathers intended it to be. Some of them would not themselves have passed a "religious" test.  Jefferson, but cutting and pasting, had made his own "Bible" by reduction from the four gospels, adopting what thought credible and edifying, and omitting the rest.  He would have to be watched!  You would never know what he would cut and paste next, and, besides, think how often he might quote himself, especially on freedom of opinion in religion!

Franklin would, of course, be a useful member on a scientific faculty, but there were appalling gaps in his church attendance!  As to President Washington himself, nothing was more firmly fixed in his mind than that he would allow no inquiry into his religious opinions.  George Washington would now allow even amiable inquiries into his religious opinions.

            With Lincoln we would be in equal trouble.  For a while, in Illinois, he thought himself an atheist.  He was never able to make up his mind about his beliefs - not entirely.  He did not join a church.

            Well, what is the end of the matter?  Simply this: It would be better to get back to American principles.  Our forbears thought we could afford freedom of belief, freedom of discussion, freedom of debate.  They thought these freedoms indispensable to the nation they had founded.  And they were forever right. It is time we listened to them.

God needs no protectors.  Anyone who suggested to me that my belief in God will not stand up unless it is sheltered from inquiry, I repulse with compassionate but very definite disdain.  Anyone who tells me that God is not safe unless defended from unbelievers, I must look upon with wonderment and pity.  In very simple words, if God is in as bad shape as that, the jig is up and there is no use in pretending.  What kind of God could it be who needed security measures for protection?

It is apostasy - all of it!  In a very deep sense, blasphemy.  For God lives in the open mind, the the power of its thought, the voice of its truth, the inner impulse of its honesty.  God needs no protection, no shelter, no defenses.  Just give God room.

 

Meditation and Prayer 

Singing Together            Voice Still and Small                     #391

                      

Sermon

            Polling after the 2004 election emphasized "moral values" as a deciding factor in the outcome, but the polls weren't clear on what "moral values" meant.[1]  How could the polls be clear when we are so unclear?  What does it mean to have moral values?  Based on dictionary definitions, a value is a principle or a quality that is considered worthwhile or desirable…and a moral is a rule of conduct with reference to standards of right and wrong.  So to have moral values might be defined as behaving in accordance with principles that one finds worthy.   Moral values are not about what we say… they are about what we do.  Buddhism would call this "right conduct".  I can't say that I see much "right conduct" happening in American politics. 

Jim Wallis is the founder and Executive Director of Sojourners, a ministry whose mission includes the statement, "In our lives and in our work, we seek to be guided by the biblical principles of justice, mercy, and humility."  He has recently published a book entitled God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, a book which has quickly found a place in the top five on the New York Times Best Seller List.  Apparently there are many people interested in this issue…the intersection of faith and politics, of values and culture, of religion and government.  

Certainly what drew me to this book was my utter frustration with this past election.  Maybe I could be more content with what for me was a loss if I had felt that the campaigns had been run based on where each party stood on the issues and what they were going to do about them.  Maybe my loss could be vindicated had I not felt that it had been an unfair game, as if a bag had been dropped over my head and my hands tied behind my back…pure frustration and no sense of how to fend for myself.  Under that frustration was a nagging feeling that I had some culpability in the situation…that I just didn't get it.

The subtitle…why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it…is provocative, isn't it?  Wallis believes that what the Right gets wrong is that they want to restrict religion to a short list of hot-button social issues and then to obstruct religion's application to matters that might threaten their agenda.[2]  For example, Joni Hahn told me of a conversation with a friend, who admitted that she felt she had to vote Republican because of their pro-life platform; for her to vote otherwise would imply that she was not a person of faith and values.  But, assuming this women is a Christian and believes in the Bible, we should note that the Bible makes no direct statement about abortion, yet makes thousands of direct statements about poverty and war.  The Right has done an incredible job of conflating faith and morality with a couple of controversial and divisive topics.  They have hijacked Christianity and reinterpreted it for their own purposes. 

Suffice it to say that Wallis makes a strong critique of the Right, but he doesn't stop there.  The Right might get it wrong, but the Left doesn't get it at all.  The Left wants to restrict religion to the private sphere, are very uncomfortable with the language of faith and values even when applied to their own agenda.[3]   Wallis believes that this shows that the Left does not appreciate the contributions of religion to American life.[4]  He believes that faith holds a meaning and a promise for politics, and that spirituality is keenly relevant to social change.  This is what the Left doesn't understand. 

Jim Wallis is an evangelical Christian, and I am in deep admiration of him.  He has made a place for himself at any table, nationally and internationally, where the purpose and future of religion in discussed.  Wallis has taught at Harvard Divinity School and at the Kennedy School of Government.   He claims among his friends Bishop Desmond Tutu and Rabbi Michael Lerner.  And, Jim Wallis is a liberal. 

I know, some of you might think that it is impossible to be an evangelical Christian and a liberal, but this is not true. It is true that I had to do a lot of translating to …from Christian language to UU language…to make this book more meaningful for me.  But ultimately, I think we should take an important lesson from Wallis on evangelism.  To be evangelical is to be characterized by ardent enthusiasm; to be zealous, and this is exactly what Jim Wallis is about…enthusiam for his faith, a strong belief and hope that his faith holds a key to making progress toward justice, and a willingness to work tirelessly to achieve it.

I sort of wish Jim Wallis were a Unitarian Universalist.  Or, maybe I wish we were more like Jim Wallis.

My charge today is to reflect on what Jim Wallis has to say in this new book.   A significant portion of it deals directly with social justice issues.  It contains multiple chapters on peacemaking, poverty, racism, capital punishment, family values, corporate fraud, and terrorism.  The first and only lens Wallis uses when discussing these issues is the lens of the Bible.  What does the Bible say; and more specifically, how can the words of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets guide us.  He directly confronts those Christian fundamentalists who would ignore or overlook the mandates the Bible contains to do justice.  (I do not have time today to talk with you about all of these specific issues…but I will be leading a book discussion on Wednesday, March 2, at 7pm here at the church.  All are welcome.)

I have struggled with how exactly I might present Wallis' arguments in this room.  There are some of you who cannot hear beyond the word God; there are some who are unwilling to see the validity of any form of Christianity; there are some here I imagine to be hungry for even a crumb of Jesus and God…I want to include all of you in this conversation.  All I can suggest is that you be open to hearing these words, to respect this particular Christian's commitment to justice, and to look for ways we might form bridges and collaborations.   Frankly, there are not very many of us UU's, and I suspect that we cannot change the world all by ourselves.  To my way of thinking, this kind of Christian, a Christian like Jim Wallis, is an important ally.  

            And here's what I think happened last fall, based in Wallis' characterizations of the three dominant political options in America.  One is conservative on everything - from cultural and family concerns to economic and foreign policy issues.  A second is liberal on everything.  A third is libertarian - liberal on cultural and moral issues and conservative on economic and foreign policy. 

            These three options were playing along, business as usual, when the conservative player pulled a trump card out of his sleeve and threw it on the table.  It said, "God is on my side".  The ultimate trump card.  The other two players bought into it.  It shut them down…conversation ended.  They apparently thought that the "God card" could not be challenged or questioned… after all, God's name had been spoken.   The liberal player sputtered and stammered and lost his breath.  The libertarian went off in a huff…refusing to play this game.  But neither the liberal nor the libertarian had the courage/grounding to make their own claim on God…well, until it was too late.   I completely understand.  I actually experienced both reactions…like the liberal….a feeling that the wind had been completely let out of my sails, and like the libertarian…I felt a mixture of indignation and resignation. 

            Do you know the story in the Hebrew Bible about Moses looking upon the face of God?  Moses had been chosen as an intermediary between God and the Israelites, but when God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, Moses hid his face.[5]  Myth had it that if anyone looked upon the face of God, he would die, a belief based in a fear of the wild, 'terrible", and awesome power of God.[6]  Moses didn't die, at least not from that experience, but just like the Israelites, many of us, deep down in our hearts, don't believe that we can have direct access to God.   What God?  Well, I liked the way A. Powell Davies put it…our god is a god who lives in the open mind, in the power of its thought, in the voice of its truth, and in the inner impulse of its honesty.  We affirm the worth of each person's search for truth and meaning.  Yet, we are reticent to claim our truth-findings, our gods, as viable, maybe for fear of imposing those beliefs on others.  God and God-talk trumps us, scares the bejeebers out of us and shuts us up.  But this is a conversation we must not abandon.  This conversation, about building a better world, about working for justice, about searching for truth, is one to which Unitarian Universalism can lend a unique and critical perspective. 

            The card played by the Right was at best unethical, at worst a calculated political scheme, and ultimately a baseless claim upon god, but it worked.  This trump card tricked the public into thinking that to choose another party was to make a choice against God.  Jim Wallis is trying to get us to see that no single party, and no single politician, owns God and, further, is encouraging each of us to turn to our 'bibles' for the answers.   That's right, our bibles…or, in UU language, the places where we each find wisdom, guidance and authority.  

            This is a place we UU's get stuck.  We don't claim we have a bible…well, not much of one, anyway.  Rightly so, we do not see The Bible (capital T) as a final or absolute authority.  It is just one source, a descriptive record of an historical people's religious development, though we can find in it much wisdom and guidance.  Our real bible, our UU bible, is much broader than what can be found in any one book…it can be found in prophets and saints worldwide, across all time.  Our authority is based in our ability to reason, to think for ourselves.  Many of our truths are found in scientific investigation. We find guidance in the experiences and teachings of all traditions.  We are comfortable quoting Ghandi, Mohammed, and Martin Luther King Jr and Jung and de Tocqueville.  And we are justified in doing so. 

I believe that until we are willing to look upon the face of God…to claim our own authority…to stand without apology in our diverse and living tradition…that we will continue to be trumped by the God card.   And, this means that we must be willing to bring our values, our principles, our god, into the public square. 

For Wallis, God is personal but never private, that is, relevant only to individual morality while oblivious to public issues.  As Brenda shared in the reading from Spiritual Politics, politics involves public issues in a way that transcends government.  Politics is the way we treat ourselves, each other and the environment.  Politics involves our way of seeing the world, and has to do with everything from where we shop to the work that we do.  It is unthinkable for people of faith not to bring their values into all of this, for it is our moral values that give us a compass by which to direct our actions. 

During the election season, Wallis' organization, Sojourners, began a campaign that proclaimed that "God isn't a republican…or a democrat."  But to say that "God" is not partisan is not the same thing as saying that religion should not be part of the political conversation. Historically Unitarians and Universalists have been key players in American civil society and politics, indeed many of this nation's founders were Unitarians, and they were not afraid of owning their unique religious beliefs. 

 A. Powell Davies was a powerful preacher in our nation's capital, a man who insisted that the pulpit must speak on matters of public policy and social reform.  In the sermon that Brenda quoted earlier, Davies asserted that religion is not measured by church attendance, or belief in the Bible, but rather is measured by competence and character…this is a religion that UU's can claim.   Davies unabashedly associated this kind of religion with Jefferson and Franklin and Washington and Lincoln.

I suppose that this kind of religion still involves a measuring stick…a comparison of who is competent and who has character…but such a measure is not of a person's inner life or spiritual path, or of whether or not they believe in a personal god, but rather is a measure of their deeds, the outward manifestation of their beliefs, their moral values.  In another essay, written in 1949 and entitled The Struggle for the Mind of America[7], Davies refuted an attack on General Eisenhower by a Catholic priest.  Eisenhower was coming under attack for the following public statement:

"I am the most intensely religious man I know.  Nobody goes through six years of war without faith.  That doesn't mean I adhere to any sect.  A democracy cannot exist without a religious base.  I believe in democracy." 

The priest in question had a very narrow view of what constitutes faith and apparently felt that Eisenhower had made a false god of democracy…making it in itself a kind of religion.  Davies seized this opportunity to claim the spirituality inherent in democracy… he believed that democracy is the social and political expression of the religious principle that all people are kindred, and that humankind is a family.  Davies believed that democracy is a religion which espouses a beloved community unrestricted by nation, race, or creed, and grounded in individual liberty.  A man of great vision, Davies predicted the possible loss of spiritual initiative which could end in our real religion, our democratic faith, losing the struggle.  He felt this would happen if people were not willing to assert their faith in democracy.

This is Wallis' point exactly.  Religious communities of the world could provide the "tipping point"[8], the can of orange paint that wakes us up and reminds us to listen to our true natures, and then to live those selves out into the world with gusto.  People of faith can provide the moral will power to make a difference. Here is our challenge…to craft a public, rational, compelling religious language.  Our political system should work to support democracy, not to control and silence.  Our political system should be one of an open mind…open to the conversation with dignity for all, and to the search for common purposes.   And, we need a political system that judges not on the basis of personal beliefs, but on the basis of competence and character, or ''right conduct".  These are the true litmus tests of moral values. 

There is difficult work to do.  It will take a new moral energy, a spiritual initiative, to create the political will to make important social changes…like addressing global poverty, like using nonviolent conflict resolution rather than war.  A mountain lies before us…a huge, seemingly entrenched accumulation of public opinion, business-as-usual, and calcified belief.  Ultimately, says Wallis, the big struggle of our time, the real battle, is the fundamental choice between cynicism and hope...to hope that things can be and will be changed.[9]

At the end of his book, Wallis shares a personal memory of Lisa Sullivan, a young African American street organizer in Washington DC who died at age 40 of a rare heart ailment.  When people would complain to her that we don't have any leaders today or would ask where the Martin Luther Kings are now, Lisa would get angry and declare, "We are the ones we have been waiting for."  Her statement is a commission to build movements of spiritual and social change.  It is a commission that can only be fulfilled by human beings, who because of faith and hope, believe that the world can be changed, a belief that in and of itself changes the world.  After all, we are the ones we have been waiting for.[10]

Blessed be and amen.

 

Singing Together      Forward Through the Ages                 #114

 

Benediction 

Hear these words of another great Unitarian Preacher, Stephen H. Fritchman, from a 1951 sermon entitled "For the Sake of Clarity"

"For four centuries the Unitarian has built his altar to truth-seeking, made his holy of holies the pursuit of brotherhood, and made his communion of saints the building of a city of love and justice.  This is faith enough - and to spare."

Go now in peace. 

 

Postlude