“Making a Difference: Liberal Religion and Politics ”
Rev. Penny Rather
September 24, 2006
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie
Readings
This morning’s first reading is from an interview with Katherine Harris, US Congresswoman from Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
“The Bible says we are to be salt and light. And salt and light means not just in the church and not just as a teacher or as a pastor or a banker or a lawyer, but in government, and [people of faith] have to have elected officials in government, and we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers. And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women and if people aren’t involved in helping godly men in getting elected than we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that’s certainly isn’t what God intended. . . . .
If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. . . .and whenever we legislate sin . . . , then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong. ...
~ from “The Florida Baptist Witness” Published August 24, 2006
[T]he discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical - if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice. . . .
Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation
is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us
to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent
social problems. . . .
After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed,
are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They
are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the
imperfections of man. . . . .
[T]o say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into
public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a
codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
. . .
[But], given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of
sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer
just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a
Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. . . .
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns
into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their
proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to
abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the
practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's
will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible
to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all. . . .
So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge the
gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this debate. . .
. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing
faith used as a tool of attack.
~ From the Keynote Address, given at a conference of “Call to Renewal,” a faith-based movement to overcome poverty, June 28, 2006.
Sermon
I can remember watching election returns come in the night of November 2nd 2004. States on the network maps got filled in red or blue from east to west as results in the presidential race came in. Congressional and gubernatorial races and ballot initiatives from some states were highlighted. We had to wait until late in the night for Ohio’s crucial results.
I recall not being happy with many of the results. And happy with some of them. But I remember feeling most disheartened – no, I remember being angry – at the analysis that repeated over and over again that night, and in the days and weeks that followed, that people of faith had delivered the Presidency to George W. Bush. That it was “values voters” who came out in great numbers that decided the Presidential race, as well as other races and ballot initiatives.
The results of the election aside, the questions that rose in my mind as my blood pressure escalated were: “People of which faith?” and “What values?” The answers implicit in those election analyses were, of course, “The Christian faith” and “Christian values.” But not just any Christian faith and values. Ultra-conservative Christian faith and values. To that narrow definition of faith and values, I want to reply with a resounding plea that my faith and my values be understood as legitimate. And the faith and values of Jews, Muslims, pagans, Native Americans, humanists, atheists, and liberal Christians, as well.
The mixing of religion and politics arouses strong feelings. Some people think they should be totally separate. Others think they are inextricably linked. And apparently some think their religion should inform American law and politics, but other religions should not. My feeling, consistent with what Barak Obama declared in our second reading, is that, practically speaking, it is unreasonable to expect that people’s religious beliefs won’t be reflected in their political activity.
After all, the ways people envision the best society possible are based on their views of justice, their definitions of good and bad, their understanding of their responsibilities to their neighbors – even their definition of neighbor – and the relative importance they put on this life compared with any possible life beyond it. And these are religious issues. So of course our religious views inform our politics.
This morning I want to talk about two problems with the current _expression of religion in politics: The disproportionate influence of the Christian Right, and the ways that religious views are expressed in politics. I believe Unitarian Universalists can be instrumental in addressing both of these problems. I believe it is our responsibility to address both problems.
But before I take up the first problem – the disproportionate influence of the Christian Right – let me make one thing clear. There is a difference between being a religious liberal and a political liberal. In practice, these two orientations overlap to a great degree, but they are not identical.
I remember going to a Circle Supper when I was a new member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boulder. The conversation turned towards a local political mini-scandal, and before giving up a juicy tidbit of gossip to the UUs gathered, one man said in a mock whisper, “It’s okay to say this here. We’re all the same religion, right? Democrat.” I was too new and timid to say anything that night, but if that were to happen now I would protest vociferously. That statement was completely inconsistent with what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. While it is true that most UUs identify as Democrat or Independent, there are Republicans in our ranks, and there are political conservatives among us. Being a religious liberal means being open to and respectful of differing religious views and of the sincere political _expression of those views.
So let’s look first at the disproportionate influence of the Christian Right in politics. To the situation reflected in the election analysis that claimed in 2004 that “people of faith” and “values voters” determined the presidential election as well as others. How did ultra-conservative Christians come to have a lock on those words and such a strong influence on partisan politics?
The unholy alliance between the Christian far-right and the political far-right developed and strengthened with the implicit blessings of political progressives and religious liberals. There exists a spiritual crisis in our society. People of all faiths and of all political persuasions have been asking for decades if the material prosperity that we enjoy for the most part in this country is all there is to life. People who bought in to the American Dream – and many of those who have realized it – are looking for a balance to the bottom-line mentality that is promoted in business and advertising.
Since the advent of television – yes, it’s been that long – we have been unable to ignore the suffering of the poor in our country and around the world. This, too, calls Americans to attempt to put material prosperity into perspective. The disproportionate political influence of the Christian Right came about because the political right recognized this spiritual crisis and addressed it in ways that appealed to conservative Christians and secured their loyalty. While political progressives ignored, and even discredited, the spiritual dimension of people’s lives, and religious liberals, under the banner of tolerance, let the Christian Right define and usurp religious language.
Religious liberals let the Christian Right define what it means to be a “person of faith” and a “values voter”. So much so that the media use those words without qualification, and we all know what they mean. In his book, The Left Hand of God, Rabbi Michael Lerner identifies several reasons why this has happened. One of the reasons is that religious liberals, people who identify themselves as “spiritual, but not religious,” and secularists have not taken the spiritual crisis seriously.
Lerner claims that the answer to the spiritual crisis that is offered by the Christian Right is based on just one of the many images of God that are in the Bible. He calls that image the “Right Hand of God,” and it represents the all-powerful, vengeful, punishing, and ultimately victorious. But there are many other images of the God a Abraham, and the image that Lerner calls the “Left Hand of God” is characterized as loving, forgiving, and healing. This is how Rabbi Lerner contrasts the two images:
The Left Hand of God stands in marked contrast to the vision of God as the powerful avenger, the Force that will overthrow evil through superior power, the Force that seeks to exterminate enemies and suppress dissent. The vision of the Right Hand of God imagines that evil can be wiped out by one more war or by imposing rigid commandments about how to live and enforcing them through violence and punishment. It imagines that people can be coerced into goodness.
The human race needs and yearns for the Left Hand of God. It longs to be part of a world in which kindness, generosity, nonviolence, humility, inner and outer peace, love and wonder at the grandeur of creation stand at the center of our political and economic systems and become the major realities of our daily life experience. (18)
The second half of Lerner’s book is his proposal for a “Spiritual Covenant With a America” that he argues can be adopted by religious liberals of all faiths, people who identify themselves as “spiritual, but not religious,” and secularists, and which can, he claims, be the basis for political progressives to address the spiritual crisis in twenty-first century America. I have some disagreements with Lerner’s “Covenant,” but I agree with him that the political and religious right have done a better job of dealing with, and exploiting, Americans’ search for meaning.
But there is another characteristic of political progressives that Lerner identifies as an obstacle to broad acceptance among Americans who are experiencing a crisis of meaning in their lives. And that is arrogance. Even if the left does find a way to address the spiritual crisis in America, he says:
it has to overcome the perception of many people that the Left is rife with elitist contempt for ordinary Americans. That contempt is expressed partly in the disdain the Left has for the voting behavior of Americans and partly in the ridicule and put-down it expresses toward the religious commitments that are central to the lives of so many Americans.
. . . Because the Left has no categories to understand why Americans have not consistently rallied to its positions, it tends to belittle those who are not yet on its side. And because the political Left tends to be overwhelmingly secular, it often sees religion not merely as mistaken but as fundamentally irrational, and it gives the impression that one of the most important elements in the lives of ordinary Americans is actually deserving of ridicule. (115)
Rather than acknowledge that conservative religion fulfills a human need, we religious liberals have too often put it down as a reflection of ignorance. Rather than offer alternative understandings of religion and religious language, many on the Left have just derided religion as hypocritical and primitive. It is not helpful – and it is not a reflection of liberal religious principles – to claim that the people who voted differently than we did so because they were stupid or ignorant.
So if political progressives together with religious liberals can succeed in presenting a different _expression of religion in politics and in society – something akin to what Lerner calls the “Left Hand of God,” will we simply have set the stage for even greater quarrels among the various religious views than we have today? That could happen, but it doesn’t have to.
We also need to address the second problem with the current _expression of religion in politics that I identified: The ways that religious views are expressed in politics. Certainly getting rid of the elitism that Rabbi Lerner identified is part of this. Another way is to act in accordance with our religious beliefs rather than just quote them. Then, having acted, we can identify the source of our values as our religious tradition.
And in the second reading we heard this morning, Senator Barak Obama identified yet another effective way to connect religion and politics. “Democracy,” he said
demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.
I am proud to be a Unitarian Universalist because I believe that our religious tradition gives us the tools to address both of these challenges. We can balance the political influence of the Christian Right by voicing alternative approaches to the spiritual crisis in America. We don’t have to remain silent when it is clear that someone uses the phrases “people of faith” or “values voters,” means “the conservative Christian faith” and “conservative Christian values.” We can say, “I am a person of faith and my values lead to a different conclusion.”
And because Unitarian Universalists count among the sources of our living tradition wisdom from the world’s religions, Jewish and Christian and Humanist teachings, and spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions, we can advocate for the voices of those traditions as well. Being tolerant and appreciative of other religions does not mean being tolerant of every religious _expression or remaining silent in the presence of the intolerable. I might mean, for instance, saying to Congresswoman Harris, “It is not all right to claim that your God chooses our rulers, and that electing non-Christians is legislating sin.”
When we educate ourselves about the beliefs and the scriptures and the traditions of our many sources, we have a unique opportunity to do what Senator Obama called for – to express our concerns in ways that reflect the many ways of being religious; to translate our concerns into universal values; to subject our proposals, and those of others, to argument and reason.
Unitarian Universalists can increase our political influence as people of faith by first acting in the political process in ways that are consistent with our principles and then identifying our religious faith as one source of the values upon which we base our actions. And standing up for the legitimacy of multiple ways of being religious. Whenever I see a survey result that lists people by religious affiliation, and the categories are something like Christian, Jew, Muslim, and non-believer, I want to protest the marginalizing language that calls me a non-believer. I am not a non-believer; I just believe something different from the designer of the survey. And my beliefs are just as important to me as that person’s are to him or her.
And we can model our principles by the way we talk about religion in the political arena: by talking about our faith, not the faith of the people with whom we disagree; by challenging someone who claims to speak for an entire faith tradition; by deeply listening to other points of view; by acknowledging that we do not have all the answers; by challenging pejorative language and discriminatory policies.
We can partner with people of other faiths to make the world a better place. Even if we don’t agree with them on everything. We may be miles apart from the Roman Catholic Church regarding issues of theology and human sexuality, but there is no one better to partner with in efforts to serve the poor. I belong to The Interfaith Alliance, a non-partisan group representing over 75 faith traditions, whose mission is to “promote the positive and healing role of religion in public life by encouraging civic participation, facilitating community activism, and challenging religious political extremism.”
The First Amendment to our Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Upholding this law of the land is crucial to maintaining religious freedom in America. But it doesn’t mean that politics and religion should never mix. It is inevitable that they will. It is appropriate that they do. It is up to the people, and the government of the people, to make sure that the way they interact leads in the direction of justice, peace, equity, and compassion. As Unitarian Universalists we are uniquely situated to help this happen.
May it be so.