Liberal Politics in Religion

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

February 6, 2011

 

Reading

Rebecca Ann Parker, “Choose to Bless the World,” Blessing the World:  What Can Save Us Now, Robert Hardies, ed., Boston:  Skinner House, 2006, 151-152, 160-161.

I first met the process theologian Charles Hartshorne when I was a graduate student at the Claremont School of Theology. I was assigned to help Charles's wife, Dorothy, catalogue his papers….

One afternoon, Charles and I took a break from our cataloging to go bird watching. That is when I discovered that Charles did not drive. Thinking of my own grandfather who was deeply distressed when his failing reflexes resulted in the loss of his driver's license, I sympathetically asked the eighty-year-old Charles, "When did you have to give up driving?" He paused to think for a minute and, completing his mental calculations, said, "I'd say about forty-three years ago." He saw my surprise and explained, "I could see the envi­ronmental damage that would result from too many automobiles and resolved to use public transportation or walk.” ….

When Charles Hartshorne gave up driving his car, he was act­ing from a perspective of critical examination of cultural assump­tions and an analysis of how these assumptions would have consequences for future generations. He acted not just for himself but also out of social concern. He acted as if he were a part of a world: a world of extended social relations, a world that had intrinsic value and not just value for him. He took an action not just because it pleased him personally but also because it made a positive contribution toward all life, not only human life but also the lives of the red-winged blackbirds and the ruby finches….

We are not inherently self-interested individuals. We are connected to one another, and caring for others is fundamental to our existence. To deny this is to go against the character of reality. The purpose of life is not our own well-being in isolation from all others. We are subjects, the locus of intrinsic value, but this value is always fleeting and always relational. Our well-being enters into the well-being of others, adding a measure of health or joy. Our actions matter to us and also to all the world. We live both for ourselves and for one another, in a balance that is given in the nature of things.

The purpose of life, then, is to discover the joy or well-being that simultaneously pleases us and blesses our neighbor. Every act we commit is a contribution to the world; the question is whether our actions will be a blessing or a curse. The basic question of life is not, "What do I want?" but rather, "What do I want to give?"

During those brief spring days working with Charles and Dorothy Hartshorne, I would sometimes walk with Charles from his house out to his study, a converted tool shed in the backyard. On the walk, Charles would stop every few feet, cock his head, and listen to a bird's song or watch its movement in the trees. Sometimes he would bend over to examine the buds on an azalea bush to see how soon they might be bursting forth into full flower. To him, the world was no mere screen onto which he pro­jected his interests. The world was, and is, a real presence, full of its own value.

A few years later, on a spring evening, two of us were walking with Charles during a conference on process theology and aes­thetics. We paused along the way noticing the plants, the birds, the sweet spring air. At the threshold where we would part, Charles turned around, took our hands in his, looked us squarely in the eye, and said, "Be a blessing to the world."

One is rarely given such a direct instruction, and it went straight to our hearts. When all is said and done in my life, I hope that I will have been faithful to this charge.

Sermon

James Luther Adams, the leading Unitarian Universalist theologian of the 20^th Century, remembers this incident from the time he was teaching at Meadville/Lombard in Chicago:

In the First Unitarian Church of Chicago we started a program some of us called “aggressive love” to try to desegregate that Gothic cathedral.  We had two members of the Board objecting.  Unitarianism has no creed, they said, and we were making desegregation into a creed.  It was a gentle but firm disagreement and a couple of us kept pressing.  “Well, what do you say is the purpose of this church?” we asked, and we kept it up until about 1:30 in the morning.  We were all worn out, when finally this man made one of the great statements, for my money, in the history of religion.  “O.K., Jim.  The purpose of this church … well, the purpose of this church is to get hold of people like me and change them.[i]

I have to confess that I approach my assigned topic, “The Role of Liberal Religion In 21st Century Politics,” with some slight trepidation.  A recent poll shows that the percent of American who agree strongly that religious leaders should not try to exert political influence on government decisions has risen from 22% in 1991 to 38% in 2008; the percent agreeing strongly that religious leaders should not to try to influence how people vote has risen from 30% in 1991 to 45% in 2008.  I would like to believe that this increasing resistance to political influence from the pulpit has resulted in particular from the number of strident conservative voices that have been abroad in the land over the last forty years or so. In general religion is not about politics; it is about who we are and how we face the realities and opportunities of our lives.  At the same time, our religious faith and our spirituality cannot help but inform all of the many choices we face about how to lead our lives both in the private and public sphere, how we will be in the world and how we wish the world to be.  As Gandhi put it, “Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither religion nor politics.”

More than that, we are citizens in a democratic society; the story for all ages about the dog and the king goes back to a time like that told about in the Bible, when only the king or emperor had the power to make changes in a society for good or ill.  So when Jesus told his followers to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” most of the material world was administered by and for the emperor.  As citizens, though, we have not only the right but also the responsibility to apply our spiritual and religious values to choices we make at the ballot box, political and charitable groups we support, and issues on whose behalf we decide to take action.

One of the proudest moments in our denominational history was the strong support that Unitarian Universalist ministers and the association as a whole provided to the struggle for voting rights led by Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma, Alabama in 1965.  The struggle with the police and racist organizations was brutal, and already one African American man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, had been killed. King sent a telegram in which he said:

The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden.  I call therefore on clergy of all faiths to join me in Selma.[ii]

Unitarian Universalist clergy responded in great numbers; about one-third of all our ministers went to Selma, and the board of the Unitarian Universalist Association suspended their meeting so that the leaders of the denomination could also join the struggle in Selma.  Two Unitarian Universalists were killed in the ensuing days, James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo.  Many conservative denominations and ministers opposed these demonstrations, among them Jerry Falwell, arguing that civil and voting rights were political rather than religious issues.  I think there are few who Unitarian Universalists today who would disagree with the support given by our faith to that struggle, or who would disagree with ministers preaching in support of that action.

Forty-five years later, the issues of that conflict seem much clearer than those we face now.  The later Sixties became a time of great struggle and great violence, Black Power, riots in our cities, the Vietnam War and opposition to it, and a great deal of social change.  Now the issues seemed much less clear, and struggles arose within our congregations about which political issues were appropriately addressed from the pulpit and which were not; I know those issues came up both here at Second Parish and at Old Ship, and that this congregation chose a more religious than political identity.  The Seventies brought a reaction from more conservative religious leaders, and now Jerry Falwell and many other ministers decided that there was indeed a place for religion within the political life of our nation, founding the Moral Majority among many other such groups.

I want to be clear that there are many issues on which religious liberals and conservatives can agree and on which they can and should work together.  All of us in every religious tradition share a concern for those who are hungry, for those whom Jesus called “the least of these my brothers and sisters,” and all of us support efforts to provide direct help to those in need, for example from our Interfaith Food Pantry here at Second Parish.  Support for disaster relief for New Orleans or Haiti found strong support across all religious persuasions.  The differences between us begin to arise when we consider the causes of poverty and hunger.

You may recall the parable of the babies in the river:

In a certain village by a river, a fisherman noticed a baby floating by on day, and instantly jumped in and rescued it.  The next day two babies were found and rescued, the next four and so on.  The whole village became engaged in saving the babies as more and more came down every day.  Finally, one of the villagers proposed that someone go upstream to find out why these babies were all being thrown into the river.  Some objected that it would distract from the all-consuming effort to save the babies; but the argument to investigate won when one of the villagers said, “If we find out what is happening, we can stop the problem and no babies will drown. By going upstream we can begin to work together towards eliminating the cause of the problem.”[iii]

It’s when we begin to investigate the cause of the problem that religious conservatives and liberals begin to diverge. We are liberal in religion because we take broad view of our meaning and purpose in this world.  We believe in an open-ended religion where we don’t claim to have all of the answers, where we know that we need to be guided by principles rather than an exacting teaching which claims to know all of the answers.  Forrest Church offers this ground for our liberal religion to stand on in his book God and Other Famous Liberals:

Who is the most famous liberal of all time? It simply has to be God. No one is more generous, bounteous, or misunderstood. Not to mention profligate….

Every word I can conjure for God is a synonym for liberal. God is munificent and openhanded. The creation is exuberant, lavish, even prodigal. As the ground of our being, God is ample and plenteous. As healer and comforter, God is charitable and benevolent. As our redeemer, God is generous and forgiving. And … God has a bleeding heart that simply never stops. Liberal images such as these spring from every page of creation's text. They also characterize the spirit, if not always the letter, of the Bible, which teaches us that God is love.

Admittedly, God's love is hard to approximate. To begin with, God created us in many colors; we come in many faiths, and two genders, with differing sexual preferences, a whole spectrum of political views, and widely varying tastes in food and dress. Such variety raises the level of difficulty as we try to live together in amity. It also requires that—created in the image of God—we cultivate the liberal spirit, especially as it enjoins open-mindedness and respect for those who differ from us, each a necessary virtue in our pluralistic world.[iv]

So I believe that we as religious liberals need to speak out and take action on those issues that most deeply affect the people and the world around us.  Let me suggest just three possible areas based on our own seven principles.

Our first principle calls on us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  A simple way to express this would be to say, “No othering” – that is, no treating others as though they matter less than we do, are less human than we are, or experience joys and sorrows the same way we do.  This principle clearly served as the underpinning for the support our ministers and congregations gave to the voting rights struggle in Selma in 1965, but it obviously applies in many other places as well.  Our immigration system has been in need of significant reform for a very long time.  Until reforms are made, undocumented immigrants are being taken from their families with no provision for their children who themselves may be citizens of the United States.  We must insist that, whatever the controversies over a final disposition of the broader issue, no immigrants should be harassed, denied emergency medical care, or forcibly separated from their families without recourse.  They, too, are humans, not others different than we are; and our hearts need to remind us that all of us come from immigrant stock.  On another front, we as a religious tradition need to do whatever we can to ensure equality for people of all sexual orientations.  Bullying, harassment and threats of violence in this country or in Uganda – where a leading gay rights activist was recently killed – or anywhere in the world need to be opposed.  We need to hold high our commitment to the proposition that our world is no place for hate.

Our sixth principle commits us to the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.  As we watch events in Egypt, our hearts go out to those who have died or been injured in the violence there, and we hope and pray that change can come peacefully.  We also can’t help but think that here are people who are asking for freedom after having been repressed for a very long time.  Now, clergy and congregants are not experts in foreign policy and it can be easy to say that we should leave these matters to specialists – they understand all the details and the nuances.  But what I think we can speak out about is the notion that we call American Exceptionalism, the idea that we as a country have rights that others are not entitled to, that we have been chosen as the leader of the world, for example.  We need to recognize that we as a nation have taken action over many years to support the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and that we therefore have a special responsibility to help ensure a peaceful transition to the kind of government the people of Egypt want – not what we think is best for them or preferred by the United States.  We have to remember, in the words of our responsive reading by Reinhold Niebuhr this morning, that “no virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own.”  We sometimes have things that we as a nation need to seek forgiveness for, and we as citizens, we as religious people, have a right and an obligation to raise our voice there.  We as a nation hold up ideals that we believe everyone can sure, so we need to be reminded to live up to those ideals, even when it is not most advantageous to us.

Finally, our Seventh principle commits us to “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”  We honor this in small ways, for example, by recycling and helping to reduce the colonization of the earth by vast expanses of waste piles.  We do what we can to conserve energy, partly because, as Yankees, we like to save money anyway, but partly because we recognize that the earth’s resources are not infinite, and that we need to reduce our use of them insofar as we can.  We stand on the side of truth and of science, and we believe that climate change is occurring as a result of human actions.  The science supports that conclusion, and we find that those who stand to lose if we convert to clean energy support much of the opposition to that scientific conclusion.  So we need to stand on the side of truth and know that, insofar as human behavior is contributing to climate change, human behavior needs to change to prevent further damage to our earth.  Our own behavior should be informed by this understanding, in the same manner that Charles Hartshorne decided he would not drive, to do his own little part in preserving our earth and its resources.  Such a choice is small, but each choice like that is like a pebble thrown in a pond whose ripples expand out far beyond the place where the pebble lands, an action whose influence can be felt far and wide.

This is the briefest of sketches of what I believe our faith calls us to think about and to act upon as individuals, as clergy, and as a denomination.  We are not here for ourselves alone, we are here for others.  As Rebecca Parker put it in our reading this morning,

Every act we commit is a contribution to the world; the question is whether our actions will be a blessing or a curse. The basic question of life is not, "What do I want?" but rather, "What do I want to give?"[v]

 

We are blessed with life, with wisdom and with freedom.  Let us use what we are given, in our personal and public lives, and choose to be a blessing.

Amen.

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