On Democracy
Reading and sermon preached by Reverend Carolyn Patierno
February 26, 2006

From Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, by Jimmy Carter

There are obviously sincere differences of opinion within the religious and political life of our nation. … [T]his is to be expected. It is the unprecedented combined impact of fundamentalism in religion and politics that has helped to create the deep and increasingly disturbing divisions among our people. This is a basic challenge that the citizens of our country will have to meet and resolve in order to shape the future heart and soul of America.

As is the case with a human being, admirable characteristics of a nation are not defined by size and physical prowess. What are some of the other attributes of a superpower? … [T]hey might very well mirror those of a person. These would include a demonstrable commitment to truth, justice, peace, freedom, humility, human rights, generosity, and the upholding of other moral values.

I am convinced that our great nation could realize all reasonable dreams of global influence if we properly utilized the advantageous values of our religious faith and historic ideals of peace, economic and political freedom, democracy, and human rights.

Let’s start here. These are a few of the issues that have been freaking me out for the past several years:

The largely false justification used to war against a foreign country.

The Attorney General of the United States referring to international law, in this case, the Geneva Convention, as “quaint” and then the Justice Department declaring that the President could ignore such constraints. Newsweek 11/21

That as a result of decrying the war and calling for peace in a sermon, a California minister is threatened with an IRS investigation.

Simultaneous tax cuts, a mounting deficit, and reduced programs and services for the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters.

What is really going on in our beloved country and how in the world has it been allowed to happen? I have sensed that there is no way to know what we don’t know. And then the undercurrent of mistrust is ratcheted up when stories break such as the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spy program. As reported in the January 9th issue of Newsweek, the NSA’s mission was so secretive it was dubbed, “No Such Agency.”

My response has been typical of my one of my social location – if I just learned more, my sense of dread would surely lessen. More information and thus, understanding would certainly bring hope to light.

I had been collecting resources for this sermon for quite a while, one of which was the November 1st issue of The Christian Century. The cover story was “Religion by Region.” A book entitled, Off Center: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy was favorably reviewed in that issue. It seemed as though it would be just the resource I needed to better understand our lurch to the right. I bought it and read it and indeed, learned a great deal. In short, the news is not good, friends.

As a preacher, I have a responsibility to infuse hope into these weekly reflections so that when you leave this sanctuary, you will feel uplifted, challenged, inspired and prepared to consistently live our shared values. Let me tell you, Off Center... is 223 pages written by two political scientists. It’s not walk in the park. It wasn’t until page 206 that I came to the one glimmer of hope thus far. The second paragraph, again, of page 206 begins with these words, “And here at last is some good news …” It took 206 pages of pretty shocking and dismal news to wend my way to, “And here at last is some good news …” And there’s not a lot of it.

But here’s something hopeful: “We the people of the United States, in order to from a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” .

Yes, I also re-read the Constitution. It’s still a good read although sadly and increasingly a nostalgic kind of experience.

And then there’s this: “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote (among other things) the right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and in society at large”.

Which means, basically, that we believe that as our country’s governing system ensures that the people rule, democracy meaning, literally, rule of the people, so should our congregations be governed. We believe that this democratic process is so important that it is included in our purposes and principles with the added emphasis of democracy’s importance in society at large as well.

It is true that I’ve learned a great deal about “the erosion of American democracy” in the words of Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson. I’ve also learned a great deal about “our endangered values” in Jimmy Carter’s words. I’ve learned about executive power, gerrymandering, the economic programs hoisted upon the US citizenship by the ruling party, the torture of Iraqi prisoners and how we arrived at that tragic chapter of our recent history.

But, I’m not going to talk about any of that. Like I did, you can and will and no doubt have already made it your business to learn more in order to be the informed citizen a democracy requires.

As frequently happens in the evolution of a sermon, the message emerges in the ninth hour. For this sermon, here is the message that finally emerged: democracy is a deeply moral system. Therefore, in order to actually work, it demands of us a deeply moral character. And although through our history the United States has enforced a number of systems that reflect a depravity of character, democracy allows for change. Our effectiveness in achieving said change depends on our character and willingness to be involved in the system. At it’s best, democracy ensures the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness described in the Declaration of Independence through a balance of power between the branches of government.

How does our religious life and commitment intersect with these ideals? As Jimmy Carter wrote, admirable characteristics of a person AND a nation both “… would include a demonstrable commitment to truth, justice, peace, freedom, humility, human rights, generosity, and the upholding of other moral values.” These are, of course, some of the central values we share as Unitarian Universalists. And those values are being eclipsed by a concerted effort to abandon the centrist ideas the majority of Americans hold by religious and political fundamentalists given to secrecy unbecoming of a democratic nation.

As a person of faith who holds these values as essential within our congregations and in the society beyond, I am concerned about this push to the right, and even more so since I’ve learned more about the inner workings of this strategy. One of the most instructive readings was Jimmy Carter’s take on the evolution of fundamentalist Christian denominations and their intersection with the United States’ political system. Because there is a sermon on fundamentalism that is simmering, I’ll share just this one illustration for now. In his chapter on "The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism", President Carter begins with his 2002 Nobel speech in which he said, “The present era is a challenging and disturbing time for those whose lives are shaped by religious faith based on kindness towards each other.”

You may remember that President Carter and his wife left the Southern Baptist denomination because of the denomination's increasingly extreme stances on a wide range of issues. He can quit a denomination but quitting democracy is not an option. Instead, the former president strives to teach. He points out the similar and parallel fundamentalist movements in American religion and politics. It is this parallel development that we are behooved to better understand. Carter laments,

When there is an expression of favoritism, domination, or animosity within the religious community, it tends to authenticate the same attitudes among secular or even governmental groups who have personal prejudices. … The many differences among Christians create confusion, fragmentation, and even acrimony, and it is difficult for individual believers to comprehend and adhere to the fundamental elements of our faith.
(Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis: pages 44-45)

By inference, Carter suggests that when there is favoritism, domination, or animosity within the religious communities, those troubles are mirrored in our wider communities and political system. The heart of the ancient faith traditions that demand that our lives be shaped by values based on kindness towards each other as well as the heart of a democracy that ensures the pursuit of a more perfect union, justice, domestic tranquility, general welfare, and the blessings of liberty have sadly faded from our sense of identity and commitment.

So, when our values are endangered, so is democracy. The revelation that some American soldiers were torturing Iraqi prisoners demonstrated this endangerment. Of this failure, John McCain said the following:

Prisoner abuses exact a terrible toll on us in this war of ideas. They inevitably become public and when they do they threaten our moral standing and expose us to false but widely disseminated charges that democracies are no more inherently idealistic and moral than other regimes. To defeat [Islamic extremists] we must prevail in our defense of American political values as well.

What I … mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength – that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.

But our own brand of political fundamentalism is creating the kind of neglect and confusion that McCain fears. The prisoner abuse horror made that achingly clear. Although McCain is referring to fundamentalist adherents of Islam when he points out a “twisted interpretation of an ancient religion” we have also witnessed and suffered from the overtly fundamentalist and twisted interpretation of another ancient religion: Christianity. Case in point: several weeks ago I was at a grocery store with Josh Pawelek, the minister of our congregation in Manchester. We were having some animated shop talk at the check out counter and after a while the young man working the register asked Josh if he was a minister. Josh said that actually, he and I were both ministers. The implicit response to the revelation that the lady on the left was also a person of the cloth was basically, “Whatever.” With his focus on Josh and while sending my groceries down the belt he said that like Josh, he was also a “soldier of God.” I thought he must have been a deacon at his church or something. Characteristically, Josh said something like, “Hey! That’s great … good for you.” But this young man realized Josh wasn’t quite getting the right idea. He clarified, “No really. I was in uniform … a soldier for God. I just got back.”

There is so much to unpack in both Senator McCain’s writing as well as this story I just shared. So much to unpack and yet, what we’d find together is what each would surely conclude. The overarching concern I have is that if we criticize other cultures for laying claim to divine right, we best take stock of our own contradictions and collapse of values. One central value being the one that Jimmy Carter names as being based on kindness toward our fellow humanity.

Remember that reference to the good news found on page 206 of Off Center...? Here’s the meager but nevertheless good news:

There are some people within the fundamentalist political circle that have been willing to speak truth to power. They have frequently resigned or been ostracized but many of them, such as Christine Todd Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Paul O’Neill, former Treasury Secretary, and John DiIulio, former head of the Office for Faith-Based Initiatives have braved the wrath of their party. Besides the “former” moniker that precedes each of their titles, these three also have in common a moderate conservatism that is being banished from the political process. They’ve also mustered the courage to tell their stories.

The authors describe three steps of real reform and they are the following: Increase political resources dedicated to the folks in the middle of the road; make votes of the middle more important; and enhancing the ability of average voters to make informed judgments.

The August 8th cover story of US News & World Report was “God & Country: New thinking about the role of faith in America”. In that article, legal scholar Noah Feldman suggested that more concessions would be needed from both sides of the political spectrum. For starters, he proposes that religionists surrender faith-based initiatives and secularists allow religious symbolism in the public realm. This idea struck me as sweet, but also grossly oversimplified. For example, I would volunteer to personally place a tablet depicting the Ten Commandments in every courtroom in the land if the political, fundamentalist right were concede on programs like faith-based initiatives and economic policies that masquerade as support for the middle class as they throw the country into crippling debt, eliminate needed services not only for our most vulnerable citizens but for nearly all communities that fall anywhere between public housing and Beverly Hills. We can be sure that that isn’t going to happen.

Instead, if our democracy is to capture the character of our values, the effort, in the words of Hacker & Pierson, “will have to begin in living rooms and meeting halls across the nation. It will have to begin, as American democracy began, in the once-radical notion that ‘We the People’ are both the mapmakers and the navigators on the great voyage of discovery called democracy.”

All these reforms will require resourcefulness and tenacity. To quote scripture, we will need to be “Wise as a serpent, peaceful as a dove.” And all Americans must share this great voyage. So that we are ever-reminded of just how fractured this country has been in past generations, I’ll conclude with the words of Abraham Lincoln shared with those gathered at his second inaugural. Lincoln said,

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Hear this prayer: America! America! God shed grace on thee so that we, in the words of Jimmy Carter, “may properly utilize the advantageous values of our religious faith and historic ideals of peace, economic and political freedom, democracy, and human rights.”

Amen.

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