Soul Force

Election Sermon

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

November 2, 2008

Forrest Church, the minister of Public Theology at All Souls Unitarian in New York, offers this description of Election Sermons from our history:

There’s a noble tradition in the ministry, going back to the 17th Century.

One or two Sundays before an election, almost every preacher in the land devoted his sermon to the body politic.

It’s a great literary genre. Often, the brimstone was so hot that an Election Day sermon was the one sermon a minister might be remembered by.

There was a reason for that. No words were minced. He entered the pulpit and for the next two hours—count your blessings, folks—proclaimed a jeremiad. As in Jeremiah, the great Hebrew prophet.

Here’s how it went. The world has gone, or is about to go to Hell. The reason is simple. God is punishing you for your sins. Whatever is wrong in this world is wrong because you are wrong-headed, wrong-hearted, inattentive to God’s commandments, and God is watching and God is angry, and if you keep on messing up you will burn forever.

At least they burned for two long hours. Nonetheless, by the end of the pastor’s jeremiad, almost everyone who listened did in fact feel at least partially responsible for everything that was going wrong in the world. No more “throw the bums out”; the bums were us.

In passing judgment, the early Puritan preachers, in their demands for moral perfection, too often forgot the importance of forgiveness: of loving-kindness; of self-acceptance; of honest doubts. But they did remind us that, despite our failings, we are accountable. They didn’t let us pass the buck while complaining that somebody else was diminishing its value.[1]

The election sermon is an ancient and honorable but risky undertaking from our New England – and especially Massachusetts – heritage. As an annual opportunity to consider what was going well and what badly from a religious point of view, it allowed the preacher each year to reflect on the times and their meaning. Each year, one of the ministers in the area of Boston was chosen to deliver and election sermon to the assembly and the governor for the same purpose. The Rev. Dr. Daniel Shute, our first minister here at Second Parish, was chosen for this honor in 1768. He spoke briefly on the question of independence for the colonies, a question already agitating some of his listeners; his position was moderate, and he praised Great Britain and its benevolent rule highly in his election sermon. His moderation on the questions of the day enabled him after the Revolution to represent the town of Hingham in the Massachusetts Convention called to ratify the new Constitution of these United States, where he voted in favor of adoption. William Ellery Channing was invited to give the election sermon in 1830, when the colony had become a commonwealth; he focused on the need for the Commonwealth to promote the spiritual and educational health of its people; in this address he spoke the words which we still recite from time to time from our hymnal:

I call that mind free which masters the senses, and which recognizes its own reality and greatness:
which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness. [SLT #592]

Now, there is always a risk that a minister, in addressing the immediate concerns of the body politic, will fail to observe the proper separation between our faith and our political decisions. There are clearly important moral and ethical commitments which we take from our congregations into the voting booth, and yet religion occupies a different realm than does politics, and the lines of separation need to be clear to all of us. Beyond that, of course, our own tradition has a strong commitment to freedom of conscience and to the right of individuals to apply their faith as best they understand it to the decisions of the day.

This line of separation is also subject to supervision by the Internal Revenue Service. In return for being granted tax-exempt status by the state, congregations “may not participate in, or intervene in… any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”[2] Recently nine conservative ministers mounted a challenge to this stricture and gave sermons drawn from their interpretation of the Bible which endorsed the Republican candidate for the Presidency. They argued that freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment could not be abridged simply because they were in the pulpit of their churches.

I see two difficulties with their position. The first is that, by declaring their selection of a candidate to be Biblically mandated, they were effectively binding the consciences of their members to vote in a particular way; such direction from the pulpit is repugnant to our own traditions. The second and even more compelling difficulty with their action is that politics is an all-too-human enterprise. Aligning religion directly with any particular political candidate is bound to come to tears in the end because politicians inevitably disappoint; and when that happens, religion in turn is tarred by the failure. We have seen this during the recent past, and we don’t need to continue down that same path. Indeed, I believe that Christianity as a whole was severely compromised when it was adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire 300 years after Jesus was crucified; when the religion of the poor carpenter of Galilee was taken over to serve the political needs of the great Emperor whose predecessors had presided over the empire which crucified him.

That said, I believe there is much that can and must be said on the occasion of a great election such as we face this coming Tuesday. It is appropriate to take the time to remember here together what is important in making such decisions. It is important to get beyond the rhetoric of campaigns and chatter and try to apply fundamental principals of our faith to our responsibilities as citizens. As Daniel Shute put it 240 years ago:

In fine. To secure his own, and to promote the happiness of others, is the part of every one in this great assembly. To this end were we born, and for this cause came we into the world.[3]

“To secure his [or her] own, and to promote the happiness of others….” We see echoes of this imperative in our first principal, “Respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and also in our second, “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” We are in this life together, and we have responsibilities for one another. The hymn we just sang, “We’ll Build a Land,” is drawn from the words of the prophets Isaiah and Amos and expresses the obligations we have to work for and with each other, not just for ourselves. As Isaiah says,

Isa 58: ⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? ⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

I’ve become concerned by a catch-phrase both for some of the candidates and in support of the proposal to repeal the income tax in this state: “It’s your money; you earned it, you have the right to keep it.” This passionately-argued talking point creates an image of each of us, in our own families, gathering up all necessary means to our prosperity. One might almost believe that maintaining our roads, hiring police and fire fighters, providing for the national defense and for education, providing health care for those in need – as though all of that were simply theft from us as individuals. Of course, that isn’t the kind of world we live in. We are interdependent beings, and whatever prosperity we may enjoy has come to us in part because of those who have given to us – our parents and ancestors before them, the good fortune of the community in which we were born and raised, teachers who cared for us, opportunities which came to us because we live in community, not in isolation. In voting, then, consider when appeals are being made to selfishness and when to generosity; consider, as Daniel Shute put it, how to balance the pursuit of our own happiness with promoting the happiness of others. Or, as William Ellery Channing put it in his own time: “The passion for gain is everywhere sapping pure and generous feeling, and everywhere raises up bitter foes against any reform which may threaten to turn aside a stream of wealth.”[4]

In Deuteronomy 15:11 we read, “[T]here will never cease to be needy ones in your land; therefore I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kin in your land,” and this raises the second consideration. When we become prosperous, it is easy for us to believe that we have made it on our own and that those who require support from the community or the state are weak and deserve little at our hands. But there is a tide in the affairs of our lives, such that over time nations rise and fall and so do individuals. At one moment we can be on the top of the world and at the next moment bankrupt. We have seen this play out dramatically during the past few months as the housing market has imploded and roiled the stock market and the economy of this nation and the whole world. Security in this life is fragile, and it is well to consider not only our current state in society but also the state which we may once have occupied have or might someday occupy. The philosopher John Rawls proposes as a test for the fairness of decisions by a society that we should put ourselves outside of the society, not knowing what position we might occupy, and make our choices from that point of view. If I were the least of these, if I were at the bottom, would I think our decisions as a society were fair? That doesn’t, of course, mean that everyone must be equal or that wealth must be distributed. It does mean that there must be opportunity, that monopolies of power and wealth must not be maintained from generation to generation, and that those on the bottom must not live lives of misery and anxiety.

It seems to me that one of the critical issues we are facing in this election is to choose how best to provide health care for all our citizens. We are facing a crisis in the provision of care in this country, not only for those who lack insurance but for all of us; and that a system in which the loss of a job can mean the loss of access to good health care is a system which most of us would reject if we took a vantage point outside of our own current role in society and considered what would be best if we didn’t know what position in life we might gain. As Deuteronomy put it, there will always be needy among us; let us be generous when we are prosperous because we might ourselves be needy some day; I believe this is a criterion to apply when we vote, one way in which we decide what kind of nation we want to live in.

We must be responsible stewards of our earth. We are only beginning to see the consequences of change brought about in our atmosphere and on our earth from our own activities. In generations past, it was inconceivable that humans could affect changes to our fragile earth itself, but we are beginning to see the consequences of our actions around us. We must heed the findings of scientists and consider what changes we must make in our own behavior as individuals but even more as communities as we attempt to rein in actions which may be destruction of this interconnected web of life of which we are all a part. In this election, we hear some candidates calling for policies which will enable us to continue to use carbon-based fuels without careful consideration of their effect on our environment and on the future we give to our children and the generations which succeed them. Ought we, as Daniel Shute warned, “do nothing for our posterity when the first renowned settlers, here, did so much for theirs?” In making decisions, we need to adopt a perspective not only outside of contemporary society, but outside our own generation; we must consider what we pass on, whether the fruits of our own excesses or instead prudent care for this earth which we must all share. We must stand aside from our own immediate interests to apply wisdom in deciding which direction our country should take going forward.

Finally, we must consider great issues of war and peace. Channing reminds us, “War concentrates all the varieties of human misery, and a nation which can inflict these without sorrow, contracts deeper infamy than from cowardice. . . .”[5] There is no question that there is evil in the world and that we must have the courage to respond to evil around us. But it behooves us to be careful to distinguish between the actions of a few in some nations and of some religions who wish us ill and will do anything to do us harm; and the many in all nations and religious who would be willing, given the opportunity, to live at peace with their neighbors and with the world. In the same manner that a society is injured when individuals think only of their own interests, and the earth is harmed when we consider only our own generation, so also the peace of the world is harmed when we consider only the interests of our own nation. When we draw firm lines around our own interests and fail to consider those of other nations and other peoples, we injure the possibilities for peace in the world. Once again, careful discrimination is necessary in this election to determine which way lies peace for our nation, and which way more conflict. For myself, the words of Rabbi Natan written more than a 1500 years ago resonate: “Who is the leader of all leaders? One who can make an enemy into one's friend.”

In voting, consider our principals and the teachings of our religious heritage. Consider how we can offer a blessing to the poor, how we can comfort those who mourn, how we can be merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers. Consider how we can take a view wider than our own immediate interests, considering not just this great nation of ours but the other nations and peoples of the world; not just our prosperity and the strength of our economy, but the health of the earth; not just our own times but the times which will belong to those who come after us; not just ourselves but the least among us.

We are, as Daniel Shute put it, “moral agents, and accountable.” Consider as you exercise your rights and responsibilities as citizens how you may best answer to that account, and how you may carry out that which is best in the tradition of our faith.

Amen.