Democracy as a Religious Principle

presented at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois
October 30, 2022

Opening words
“We no longer claim that a genuinely religious government can be democratic, but that it cannot be otherwise.” - Abdolkarim Soroush

Responsive reading 

#594 “Principles and Purposes for All of Us”

Readings
I thought I’d start by reading you some criticisms of democracy and party politics from other times and places.

The first known usage of the phrase “Vox populi, vox dei” (The voice of the people is the voice of God.) comes from a letter the Saxon scholar Alcuin of York wrote to the Emperor Charlemagne in 800 AD,

“And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness.’

In Gulliver’s Travels, which Jonathan Swift published in 1726, a Lilliputian explains local politics:

“for about seventy moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels of their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves.

“It is alleged, indeed, that the high heels are most agreeable to our ancient constitution; but, however this be, his majesty has determined to make use only of low heels in the administration of the government, and all offices in the gift of the crown, as you cannot but observe; and particularly that his majesty’s imperial heels are lower at least by a drurr than any of his court… The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other.”

Another Lilliputian political division could not be tolerated at all.

“It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger end; but his present majesty’s grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.

"The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown. These civil commotions were constantly fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire.

“It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments.”


Around the turn of the 20th century, journalist Lincoln Steffens toured America’s biggest cities and described the corruption of their political machines in articles that got reprinted in his 1904 book The Shame of the Cities.

“When I set out on my travels, an honest New Yorker told me honestly that I would find that the Irish, the Catholic Irish, were at the bottom of it all everywhere. The first city I went to was St. Louis, a German city. The next was Minneapolis, a Scandinavian city, with a leadership of New Englanders. Then came Pittsburg, Scotch Presbyterian, and that was what my New York friend was. ‘Ah, but they are all foreign populations,’ I heard. The next city was Philadelphia, the purest American community of all, and the most hopeless.”

Steffens found that he could not blame political corruption on any particular group, or even the politicians, who were just businessmen of a sort. The problem was the voters.

“If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in — then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it.”

But the electorate wouldn’t do that, leading Steffens to this conclusion: “The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.”

Message
An election is coming up, and I’m a political blogger. So you can imagine how much I’m tempted to launch into a rabble-rousing campaign speech. I have opinions, I have a podium 
— it just seems obvious.

But I’m going to try to restrain myself, not because there’s anything wrong with talking politics in church — I’ve certainly done it before —  but because I believe that religious institutions are at their best when they offer us a chance to step back from our habitual arguments and examine issues from a broader perspective. Not just “What are we going to do these next ten days?”, but “What are we doing with our lives and why?”

So today I want to talk not just about this election, but about democracy.

Unitarian Universalism has made a religious principle out of democracy. Our Fifth Principle commits us to “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” The responsive reading we did elaborated on that: “We believe that all people should have a voice and a vote about the things which concern them.”

Such a principle may not be unique among religions. You heard in the opening words that even some Muslims more-or-less agree. But it is unusual.

Most American Christian churches make at least some claim to patriotism, so around the Fourth of July their ministers may praise our democratic system of government. But they see democracy, at best, as a very human system far inferior to living under God’s direct supervision. So the Christians who long for Jesus’ earthly return expect him to rule a Kingdom of Heaven, not ask for your support in a Republic of Heaven. They say “Jesus is Lord”, not “Jesus for President”.

That’s in line with a view of government that goes back to the earliest empires, in which legitimate authority descends from Heaven like a lightning bolt, and hits the highest point: the King, who then transmits authority down the social pyramid.

St. Paul, a Roman citizen, wrote: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” European kings claimed to rule by the grace of God, and Chinese emperors by the will of heaven. Some rulers, like the Pharaohs, were gods themselves.

Churches have been similarly hierarchical, and many still are. God’s wisdom is revealed to a Pope or Prophet, who transmits it to bishops and priests, who pass it down to the people.

Then Gutenberg happened.

So yes, my local pastor might be one conduit for God’s wisdom to reach me. But if Bibles are cheap enough, and ordinary people can read, then we could also learn from Moses or read the words of Jesus himself. By meditating silently in my own home, I might ask God to inspire me directly, without any middleman.

Before long, Protestant sects were promoting personal communion with God as the ideal, and hearing God’s message from someone else as a second-best alternative. In time, many denominational bureaucracies have become more administrative than spiritual. They publish hymnals, vet ministers, and support missionaries in distant lands, but they don’t mediate between the individual and God.

Hierarchical political models were undermined as well. So the Declaration of Independence says that the Creator endows everyone with rights, and “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.

In other words, what comes down from Heaven isn’t like a lightning bolt that energizes one specially privileged point, but more like rain that falls everywhere. And from the fertile soil of the People, leadership springs up.

But the down-the-pyramid model of authority has never gone away, even in America, and there’s still one obvious exception to democracy: children. We don’t let children vote, and their parents are allowed to carry them kicking and screaming out of candy stores. The consent of the governed is not required.

That exception may make practical sense. But it also creates a loophole: You can justify ruling people without their consent by arguing that they are like children to you. So slavery and colonialism were justified by the claim that non-white races are childlike, and it is the white man’s burden to look after them. Women were also seen as childlike, requiring the oversight of their fathers or husbands. Monarchy styles itself as a father-and-children relationship, which is why kings are called “sire”.

Because of these competing impulses extending the franchise to new groups of people 
has always been contentious. On the one hand, men without property, or non-whites, or women were clearly being governed, so the government should be seeking their consent. But the powers-that-be always argued that the people in question were insufficiently wise or mature    or educated or committed to the nation or to the common good. So adding them to the decision-making class would produce worse outcomes for everyone.

At times, even Americans have believed that we had taken democracy too far. Way back at the Constitutional Convention, Roger Sherman argued: “The people, immediately, should have as little to do as may be about the government. They lack information and are constantly liable to  be misled.”
Smithsonian curator Jon Grinspan’s recent book The Age of Acrimony describes the late 1800s as a time of crisis and self-doubt for American democracy, full of riots, assassinations, lynchings, corruption, and elections with dubious results. One author he cites from that era is Francis Parkman, a historian so distinguished that the Society of American Historians still awards the Parkman Prize for the best history book of the year. In 1878, not long after the disputed presidential election of 1876 had to be decided by a congressional commission, Parkman wrote an essay called “The Failure of Universal Suffrage”:

“When a man has not sense to comprehend the questions at issue, know a bad candidate from a good one, or see his own true interests — when he cares not a farthing for the general good, and will sell his vote for a dollar — when, by a native instinct, he throws up his cap at the claptrap declamation of some lying knave, and turns with indifference or dislike from the voice of honesty and reason — then his vote becomes a public pest. Somebody uses him, and profits by him.”

Present-day Americans say it with less flourish, but I often hear the same sentiments, sometimes coming out of my own mouth: “How can so many voters be taken in by such an obvious conman? How can they believe such ridiculous claims? Can we really trust our fellow citizens to make decisions that affect us?”

Someone is using them, and profiting by them.

So, understanding those concerns, how can we revere democracy as a religious principle?What does our principle even mean?

Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that we worship democracy. The voice of the people is not the voice of God. So no matter how big a majority a president or party assembles, those leaders are not infallible.

The Founders were not prophets, and the Constitution is not a holy document. We had to amend it  to abolish slavery and give women the vote. And there are parts I would still like to change.

In short, Democracy in general, and American democracy in particular, is a human institution subject to human failings.
 
Recognizing that fact is not an indictment of democracy, because the same is true of every form of government. A king or a dictator can be foolish — look at Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. An aristocracy can be corrupt, and is often oblivious to suffering in the lower classes. A board of the most qualified experts can get something wrong and refuse to acknowledge its mistakes.

Unitarians understand that every form of government is fallible. As Winston Churchill said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government — except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Democracy has religious significance not because it is perfect, but because the very idea of government presents a moral problem: If some of us are going to make decisions that are binding on the rest of us, that power has to be justified in some way. It’s not enough for the decision-makers to be stronger than everyone else, or to point to a divine command no one else can hear or verify. If government is going to be binding on all of us, then our own voices and our own judgment have to be engaged somehow. “All people should have a voice and a vote about the things which concern them.”

Now, I have to do an aside here, because libertarianism offers an alternative response to the moral problem of government: Maybe all government is immoral, so we should have as little as possible. Libertarians achieve that minimization by shrinking the mission of government to the protection of life and property. And they present that option as if agreeing to the current distribution of wealth and property were not such a big thing to ask.

I’ll just point out one thing: I own no beachfront property, so every beach in the world belongs to someone else. When did I consent to that?

More seriously: Every day, people are born into the world who have no claim on any part of this planet we supposedly share. And yet, they are supposed to respect whatever property the rest of us claim. Why should they?

I believe that if we expect people to respect the property system, we owe them some stake in that system. Many years ago I described that debt to you in more detail, in a talk called “Who Owns the World?” I still don’t see any way to make good on that debt without a government far more extensive than a libertarian would countenance.

So democracy remains the best solution we have to the moral problem of government. That’s how our religious movement has wound up committed to an institutional structure that we know has flaws.

Through our other principles, we’re also committed to the value of each person, to justice, equity, and compassion, and to truth. So we don’t get to deny democracy’s flaws, or to paper over the bad things that get done in the People’s name. When Japanese-Americans are sent to detention camps, or Jim Crow laws force Black children into inferior schools, we don’t get to ignore those injustices. We don’t get to say “All the boxes of democratic process were checked, so too bad for you.”
 
When confronted with all the ways that democracy can lead to immoral government, our response shouldn’t be “That can’t happen” or “Too bad if it does”, but “Let’s see that it doesn’t.”

In other words — and I consider this the single biggest thing I want you to remember from  this talk — our devotion to democracy commits us to a program far beyond elections and voting. Understanding the ways democracy can fail, we need to do everything we canto make sure that it does not fail.

Some safeguards are already built into the Constitution. Democracy can fail through the tyranny of the majority, when 51% of the people feel empowered to treat the other 49% however they like. The Founders anticipated that problem, so the Constitution limits the powers of government, and the Bill of Rights, at least on paper, protects the smallest minority of all, the individual.

Democracy also fails when the majority is thwarted, when people are prevented from voting or made to jump through unnecessary hoops. Or when their votes are gerrymandered into districts that produce predictable outcomes. Or when places like the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico are denied representation because their voters are the wrong color or speak the wrong language.
 
Those are not just political issues, they are moral issues.

Democracy fails when large numbers of people feel that they have no stake in the system and no chance to better their lot in life. So let’s see that everyone gets a stake and a chance.  

Democracy fails if the People are ignorant, the problem Francis Parkman pointed to. So let’s see that they aren’t. That’s how our commitment to democracy turns into a commitment to education.

And not just any kind of education. Imagine you lived in a monarchy, and someone had entrusted you with the education of the future king. Would you be content to fill his head with facts, so that he could pass a multiple-choice test? Or would you teach the future sovereign to think clearly, to understand what a fact is and what it really means to know something? To tell the difference between truths supported by evidence and shapes that someone points to in the clouds? Of course you would. And if the People are to be sovereign, then that’s the kind of education we should want for everyone. All of us.

Democracy fails when the People lose faith that their hopes and fears matter or that anything can be done to address them. We can see that now in our young people, who regularly see students just like themselves gunned down in school hallways and are told that nothing can be done. Or when they foresee the potentially devastating effect climate change will have on their future and are told that it’s not a priority.

So we must not be afraid to envision bold projects and we also must not be too proud to accept achievable compromises rather than do nothing. We need to take the steps we can while never losing sight of where we need to go.

Democracy fails when the People become cynical, when they see corruption in high places and think, “That’s just how things are. If we elected someone else it would be no different.” That’s what Lincoln Steffens was pointing to in The Shame of the Cities. Officials were corrupt because their voters aimed no higher, and thought the best they could hope for was to get a share of the spoils.

We see that today, when evidence of crimes is presented in prime time, but many voters shrug, because they have convinced themselves that the other side commits crimes too. So we must always aim high, refuse to spread accusations we know are false, and never be content to wink at wrong-doing because our side benefits. Whether or not our opponents trust us, we should be trustworthy.

And yes, I recognize the temptation to do unto others what we feel has been done to us. But we also need to appreciate that democracy is not a zero-sum game. Every time moral standards slip, the cynics are proven right, and democracy itself suffers.

Finally, and most difficult of all in today’s environment: Democracy fails when the people divide into tribes, when what matters is not “What is true?” or “Who has the best plan?” or “What is our best path forward together?”, but “What side are they on?” Are they white or black? Christian or Jew? Republican or Democrat? Do they wear their heels high or low? Break their eggs from the big or small end?

I don’t mean to trivialize the differences between our political parties, which are real and important. I voted before I left Massachusetts, and all for one party. But it’s also important that our parties not become like the parties of Lilliput, who “will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other”.

That doesn’t mean we have to compromise on what is true or false, right or wrong. It doesn’t mean saying “Maybe you’re right” when we don’t believe it, or ignoring crimes in high places simply to avoid riling the other side. But it does mean that we need to remember our Universalism, and refuse to write people off simply because they don’t see what we see. We need to hold onto our faith that no one is beyond redemption and that — no matter how stubborn they are or how many times they have been hoodwinked — no one is completely incapable of seeing Truth.

Leaders may act in bad faith, but many follow them in good faith, believing what they have been told. The solutions they ask for may be wrong, but the problems they see in their lives may still be real, and deserve our compassion.

I know how hard it can be to look past the name-calling, trolling, and bullying to try to understand the genuine disappointments and hurts fueling that behavior. I’m not always up to that task myself. We all have our limits and must protect ourselves from abuse. But when we close off those connections and harden our boundaries, democracy suffers.

In ten days, we’re going to have an election. It is an important election, and (as much as anyone) I hope that my side wins. But I also hope that we never lose sight of the longer view: that for democracy to succeed, ultimately the People must win.

All of us.

Closing words
“The greatest way to defend democracy is to make it work.” — Tommy Douglas

Where Christianity Went Wrong

 presented at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois
April 24, 2022

 Listen to the audio.

Opening words: Eugene Debs

Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both.

Wisdom story

This is a story Jesus told, modernized a little.

A king called some of his subjects to a meeting, and as they came in, the King’s people carefully directed some to one side of the room and some to the other. Then the King turned to the group on his right and said: “I wanted to bring you here to reward you for all the good things you’ve done for me.”

Now, these were ordinary people who seldom had interactions with the King, so one of them said, “Your majesty, it’s wonderful that you’re pleased with us, but what have we done for you?”

And the King said. “Many things. When I had no friends, you sat with me. When I had nothing, you shared with me. When I was being lied about and no one else would defend me, you did. And when bullies had made me afraid, you walked home with me.”

Of course no one interrupted the King while he was saying this. But all the while they were trading looks with each other that said: “Do you know what he’s talking about? I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

So one of them spoke up and said, “Your majesty, when were you ever friendless or poor or undefended or afraid, that we could have done these things for you?”

And the King answered: “Many people in this land are friendless or poor or undefended or afraid. Some of them are so beaten down that they may never be in a position to return the favors you do them. But they are my people, and when you are kind to them, I take it personally, as if you had been kind to me. So when you go through that door, my assistants will reward you in the ways that you deserve.”

While this was happening, the people on the other side of the room were looking at each and whispering, “The King’s in a good mood. This is great.”

But then the King turned to them with an angry expression, and he said, “I brought you here today to call you to account for the ways that you have mistreated me.”

One man was so surprised that he couldn’t restrain himself. So he said. “Your majesty, you’ve got me all wrong. I don’t know about the rest of these people, but I’ve never mistreated you. I’ve got an ‘I Heart the King’ bumpersticker on my truck. When people complain, I tell them that if they don’t appreciate living in the greatest kingdom in the world, they should move somewhere else. Nobody is as good a king’s man as me.”

But the King said, “When I had no friends, you treated me like I was invisible. When I had nothing, you made fun of me. When people spread lies about me, you retweeted them. And when bullies made me afraid, you egged them on.”

And the man said, “But you’re the King. You were never friendless or poor. You were never bullied or lacked for defenders. How could I possibly have done those things to you?”

And the King said, “Even the lowliest people in the kingdom are still my brothers and sisters. When you mistreat them, I take it personally, as if you had mistreated me. So when you go through that other door, my assistants will call you to account for what you have done.”

 

Like most of Jesus’ stories people interpret this one in different ways. Some think the King is Jesus himself, and that when he comes back to Earth he will be King of the World and deal out justice in exactly that way.

Others think the story is about the afterlife. The King is God, and the two doors are Heaven and Hell.

I also think the King represents God, but I give it a different spin. I think the story is telling us that even the people you least expect have a piece of God inside them. It may be easy to recognize God the King. But I think the story also wants us to recognize God the Immigrant, God the Invalid, and God the Beggar.

If we could do that, and if we could treat everyone accordingly, with respect and consideration, then maybe we wouldn’t have to wait for the end of the world or for the afterlife to experience the Kingdom of God. We could live in the Kingdom of God right here, right now.

Reading from “If God is Love, don’t be a Jerk” by John Pavlovitz

If you want a good laugh, google the phrase, “You had one job.” The results are a hilariously tragic parade of seemingly impossible fails, unfathomably poor planning, and facepalm-inducing human error: a piece of melted cheese on top of a fast-food burger bun, the word “STOP” misspelled on a street crossing, a “Keep to the Right” sign with its arrow facing left, a toilet lid inexplicably installed below the seat itself. …

As a long-time Christian by aspiration (if not always in practice), I often envision an exasperated Jesus coming back, and the first words out of this mouth to his followers as his feet hit the pavement being “You had one job: Love. So, what happened?”

Sermon

If you devote much of your time to trying to make the world a better place, you’ve probably noticed a paradox. On the one hand, some of your most dedicated co-workers are probably Christians. You may not have realized it right away, because they’re not the kind of Christians who say “Praise the Lord” whenever something good happens. Rather than ask you if you’re saved or try to lead the group in prayer, they just show up and share the work: ladle the soup, stuff the envelopes, hammer the nails, make the phone calls.

Only after you spend some down time talking do you start to understand what motivates them: They think some guy named Jesus had some pretty good ideas about healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and welcoming the stranger.

But at the same time, if you pay attention to the news, it’s hard to escape the idea that Christianity is your enemy. If someone is loudly and obnoxiously working to make the world 
harsher, crueler, and less forgiving, chances are they’re waving the cross. There’s nothing subtle about it. All their rhetoric is about what God wants, what God hates, and the “Christian values” that the law should impose on Christians and non-Christians alike.

And strangest of all, those “Christian values” seldom have anything to do with healing the sick, 
feeding the hungry, or welcoming the stranger. The name of Jesus shows up in every paragraph of their rhetoric; his teachings, not so much.

Now, this talk derives from a blog post I wrote a month or so ago, which goes into a lot of detail about the contrast between the Sermon on the Mount and the issues currently being pushed by the Religious Right. But I think most of you already see that. So I’ll just sum that part up by pointing back to the wisdom story: The King in that story wasn’t interested in people’s sexual activities, or which bathroom they used. He judged people according to who they helped, and especially, how they treated people who had nothing to offer in return.

So how did “Christian values” become a code phrase for being anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-immigrant, anti-public-health, and refusing to fix (or even talk about) the continuing racism in America? How did the teachings of a man who owned nothing, and who often told people to give their possessions away, turn into a “prosperity gospel”, where God is expected to make his followers rich? How did Christian churches become hotbeds of the most malicious and baseless conspiracy theories? How did those churches become the political base for one of the least Christlike leaders this country has ever had?

Now, those are great rhetorical questions. They stir the blood and make us feel righteous just by contrast. But this morning I’m going to try to answer them. How did this happen? What is it about Christian theology, Christian habits of thought, and how Christian history has played out, that has made that faith vulnerable to such a complete reversal?

I’m going to identify seven specific points of vulnerability. But before I do that, I want to give one example that can serve as a paradigm for everything that goes wrong. The Gospel of John quotes Jesus making a very enigmatic statement: “The Father and I are one.” He doesn’t elaborate, so it’s hard to be sure what he meant.

But theologians hate to say “I don’t know.” So that one line has led to centuries and centuries of theorizing about the nature of the Trinity. At times the arguments over those theories have been so bitter that they caused violence. For example, Unitarianism’s most famous martyr, Michael Servetus, was burned at the stake in 1553 for having written a book called “On the Errors of the Trinity”. In short, people got so lost in the mystery of that one line, that they completely lost sight of loving their neighbors.

More generally, Jesus did not leave us tomes of philosophy or political theory or sociology. He never laid out a worldview or a theology. Instead, he told stories. The imagery in those stories looks like it was designed to upend the way his disciples were thinking. But he never told them step-by-step how they should think.

Mustard, for example, was the scourge of Mediterranean gardeners, because once mustard got into your garden you never got rid of it. But in one of Jesus’ stories, the Kingdom of God is a mustard seed, a weed in other words. In another story, an employer paid everyone the same, 
no matter how many hours they worked. A priest and a Levite could be bad neighbors compared to some nameless Samaritan. It was all pretty confusing.

And Jesus hinted that he didn’t expect people to understand right away. The Kingdom of God, he said, is like yeast; it works on you invisibly. His images and stories are supposed to sit in the back of your mind and ferment, not proceed logically from principles to conclusions.

And while that is a fine one-on-one spiritual teaching technique, it leaves an opening for people who do lay out systematic theologies and worldviews, and do tell people what to think. Over the centuries that opening has been exploited. A conservative worldview has built up around Jesus’ teachings and has almost completely sealed them off.

“The Father and I are one” started out as a mystery to meditate on. But eventually it  led to a dogma that people killed for.

So here are my seven weaknesses of conservative Christian theology and practice that have left Christianity vulnerable to the corruption we see today.

The first weakness is the Devil. The Devil may seem Biblical, but he really isn’t. The Bible tells us about the serpent in the Garden, the adversary of Job, the rebel angel, the tempter of Jesus, the chief of the demons Jesus casts out, and the antiChrist of Revelation. But it calls them by different names. Much later, theologians following the dualistic example of the Zoroastrians, unified those diverse characters into one single Prince of Darkness, a being powerful enough to compete with God.

In the current era, that construction has an unfortunate side effect: It makes just about any conspiracy theory plausible. Reasonable people assess a conspiracy theory by asking a series of questions: How many conspirators does the theory require? What motivates them? How did they come together? What keeps them cooperating rather than ratting each other out?

Those questions sink most conspiracy theories. But not if you believe in the Devil. The Devil doesn’t need any ordinary motive; he conspires just for the evilness of it. And the Devil has minions whom he has beguiled into fervent loyalty. They also do evil for its own sake.

Once you’ve imagined a cast of characters like that, motivated by nothing more than the desire to do evil, there is no conspiracy theory that you can’t make work. And since a well-selected conspiracy theory can explain or explain away just about anything, you’ve given yourself license to believe whatever you want.

The second weakness is Hell. Universalism envisions a unitary afterlife: We’re all going to Heaven. Various Eastern religions picture a unique afterlife for each being: You might reincarnate as anything from an insect to a god.

But the dualistic afterlife of Heaven and Hell is much more problematic than either of those alternatives for two main reasons: First, it encourages us-and-them thinking, Humanity isn’t all in the same boat. We’re in two boats one headed for Heaven and the other for Hell. 


And second, Hell makes punishment an end in itself. In the usual vision of Hell, the suffering of the damned serves no reforming purpose. Damnation is eternal, so no matter what you may learn, or how you might change, you’re never getting out. It’s punishment for punishment’s sake.  

No wonder, then, that conservative Christians offer the same solution for every social problem: Identify the bad people and punish them, preferably with extreme harshness.

The third weakness is the End Times. Polls have shown that 3/4ths of Evangelicals believe we’re living in the End Times, the period just before Jesus’ second coming at the end of the world.

Sometimes I wish the Romans had invented polling, because I suspect that if we had the data, it would show that some very large percentage of Christians have always believed they were living in the End Times. Two millennia ago, the Book of Revelation ended by quoting Jesus saying “Yes, I am coming soon.”

At its root, believing that we live in the End Times is a way of puffing ourselves up, of making our era seem uniquely important. Great stories are written about the days when the prophecies are finally fulfilled. Nobody wants to believe that they belong to one of those hundreds and hundreds of forgotten generations that pass between the prophecy and its fulfillment.

The big downside of belief in the End Times is that it justifies suspending normal reasoning processes. And this again feeds conspiracy theories. Most of us discount interpretations of events that depend on wild coincidences. But End Times believers approach the news the way the rest of us approach the final chapters of a novel. They expect diverse plot threads to start coming together. Wild coincidences are almost required.

What’s more, as the final battle of Good versus Evil approaches, the two sides should become easier to identify. So of course there’s an international conspiracy of blood-drinking pedophiles. How could there not be?

The fourth weakness is individual judgment. Supposedly, on Judgment Day, each of us will each stand alone, to meet our up or down fate according to our individual actions and beliefs. These individual rewards and punishments are supposed to right the scales of justice, once and for all.

It’s a short leap from that vision to the belief that evil is fundamentally individual. So an idea like systemic racism, or any kind of systemic injustice, has no place to take root. For believers in individual judgment, any discussion of injustice is always going to raise the question: Who is the bad person in this situation, and how should they be punished?

That’s why it’s almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion of racial justice or gender justice or oligarchy. Because the only thing Evangelicals will hear is that you want to punish White people or men or the rich. Similarly, discussions of the social roots of crime go astray, because all they hear is that you want rapists and murderers to escape punishment.

The fifth weakness is tradition. This one is not unique to Christianity. All over the world, 
traditional religion is more about tradition than about religion. Over time, the local religion (whatever it is) gets coopted to defend the privileges of the powerful, and to justify the local customs (whatever they are): We do what we do because God wants us to, and the people on top are there because God favors them. The old time religion inevitably becomes the religion that fights change.

In American history, slave owners quoted the Bible to protect their right to own other humans. Men used it to keep women in their traditional places. The lower-court judge who upheld Virginia’s law against interracial marriage wrote that the Lord God created the races and intended them to stay separate.

Today, people say “Christian values” when they really mean “traditional values”. White supremacy, male privilege, persecuting gays, insisting on binary gender roles — those are very traditional in America. But they’re not Christian, at least not if Christianity is defined by the teachings of Jesus.

The sixth weakness is autocracy. Jesus never wrote down his political theory, and we’re still arguing over what he meant by “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” But Christianity is full of royal imagery. God is King of the Universe, and when Jesus returns he will be King of the World. Jesus’ disciples imagined that he would restore the Kingdom of David, and they argued about who would get the top jobs.

Democracy and human rights are not part of that vision. They are human institutions that will be swept away in the next world. So why not sweep them away sooner? God knows better than any human being, so why shouldn’t we all be ruled by men who know what God wants?

The seventh weakness is denial. Christianity and science had been skirmishing for centuries. But by the beginning of the 20th century, many Christians thought the situation was dire. Geology had discovered that the world was far older than Genesis implied, and evolution directly contradicted the Genesis account of God shaping Adam from dust.

It was time to draw a line in the sand, and that line was fundamentalism: The Bible was literally true in every detail, and any evidence otherwise had to dismissed somehow.

But there’s a problem with that strategy: Genesis really is wrong, and the more you study the scientific evidence, the more obvious it becomes. There’s no way to defend Genesis as a literal account of scientific facts while maintaining your intellectual integrity.

So fundamentalism jettisoned its integrity. I saw this first-hand growing up at St. James and for years afterwards. I’m still seeing it today. The most absurd pseudo-scientific arguments have been written into pamphlets and textbooks, and if they come to the “right” conclusion — that Genesis is true — fundamentalists are supposed to believe them.

When people compromise their integrity, they rarely think they’re setting a precedent, but they usually are. Here, the precedent was that Christians could support each other in believing something blatantly false if they wanted to believe it badly enough. It’s OK to twist facts and logic any way you need to in order to reach the desired result.

Now, I want to point out that this kind of denial is different from having faith in events that don’t fit inside a scientific model, like Jesus walking on water. The problem here isn’t that fundamentalists believe in something that science can’t explain. It’s that science actually explains the situation quite well, but fundamentalists don’t want to believe it.

Once you make that OK, you’ve built a hole into your reasoning processes. And it’s naive to think that you’re going to control what passes through it.

A hundred years later, we can see the results. Intellectual and political hucksters and flim-flam artists of all sorts have taken advantage of fundamentalists, often in ways that have little to do with the Jesus or the Bible. Fundamentalist churches have become centers of climate-change denial and Covid denial, as well as hotbeds of Q-anon conspiracy thinking.

Right here in Quincy, over on Broadway, a billboard says that a fetus has a heartbeat at 18 days. No it doesn’t, and it’s not at all Christian to lie like that.
 
Rose-colored views of American history — where the Founders are latter-day prophets, slavery wasn’t really so bad, and the Native American genocide shouldn’t be examined too closely — have become articles of faith among White Evangelicals. None of it stands up to scrutiny, but they want to believe it, so they do.

The last time I spoke to this group, I told you that Unitarians are precisely the people who can’t believe whatever they want. This is what I meant. Like all humans, we are tempted by motivated reasoning and fooled by confirmation bias. But we don’t get to deny science and logic outright, and we don’t get to patch the holes in our beliefs by making up conspiracy theories.

When you hear a list of vulnerabilities like the one I just gave, you might wonder why we’re talking about Christianity at all. What good can come from it? Maybe we should just write the whole religion off, and close our minds whenever someone mentions Jesus or the Bible.

But then I come back to the kinds of Christians I mentioned at the beginning, the ones who find in Christianity the motivation to keep doing the work, like Jimmy Carter still pounding nails for Habitat well into his 90s.

I’m not entirely sure how that motivation works, but I suspect it has little to do with Heaven and Hell, or the end of the world, or tradition, or the idea that Genesis teaches good science.

When I try to find something motivating or inspiring in the faith I was raised in, I keep coming back to that enigmatic phrase: the kingdom of God.

I don’t think all the odd things Jesus said about the kingdom of God explain anything, but they are evocative, at least to me. What they evoke is not hope for some future theocracy, or for a better life after death, but for a different kind of common sense here and now.

The metaphor I use is the sound barrier. Air flows differently on the other side of the sound barrier. There’s nothing magical about it, it’s just that the air-flow equations have a second solution, one we hadn’t known about before.

Maybe common sense also has a second solution, one that doesn’t revolve around scarcity, anxiety, and conflict. Maybe it could be common sense to treat each other with respect and kindness, to offer help freely, and to trust that help will be there when we need it. Maybe that second realm of common sense exists wherever two or more people decide to deal with each other according to its odd logic. Maybe that realm could become much, much larger.

And that possibility, I find, really is like yeast. If you let it sit in the back of your mind, who knows what might rise?

 

Renewing My Unitarian Universalism

 presented in a Zoom session of the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois
January 23, 2022

First Reading

In his 1915 novel Of Human Bondage, William Somerset Maugham wrote: 

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes. And he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn’t quite know what.

Second Reading

In 2012,  April Fools Day fell on a Sunday. So Rev. Erika Hewitt preached a sermon on UU jokes. She started out by telling a few:

Each religion has its own Holy Book: Judaism has the Torah, Islam has the Koran, Christianity has the Bible, and Unitarian Universalism has Roberts' Rules of Order.

But eventually she raises the same issue Maugham had poked at almost a century before:

Our tolerance – or penchant – for ambiguous theology intersects with what I believe is the most egregious UU stereotype: that we are a faith with no core religious message.

When it comes to defining who we are as an Association and what we believe as individuals, our answers rarely satisfy.

Question: What happens when you cross a UU with a Jehovah's Witness?
Answer: They knock on your door, but they have no idea why!

We’re even mocked on “The Simpsons.” On one episode, the Simpson family attends a church ice cream social, where Lisa is impressed by the choice of ice cream available. “Wow,” she raves, “look at all these flavors! Blessed Virgin Berry, Command-Mint, Bible Gum....”
 
“Or,” Reverend Lovejoy says, “if you prefer, we also have Unitarian ice cream.” He hands Lisa an empty bowl. “There’s nothing here,” says Lisa. “Exactly,” says Lovejoy.

But by the end of her sermon, Hewitt isn’t laughing any more:

There comes a point, for me, at which jokes like these cease to be funny by virtue of their volume and ubiquity — and the truth that they hold. Isn’t it so, after all, that we continue to define ourselves by who we aren’t rather than who we are? Isn’t it true we’re rendered tongue-tied when friends or co-workers ask us, “What do UU’s believe?” …

I don’t want our distinguished liberal religious movement to be portrayed as an empty bowl. … I don’t want to belong to a faith where you can believe anything you want, and change your mind anytime you need to. Our beliefs will change throughout our lives; we’re never “done” learning. But religious faith is not disposable. I don’t want to be laughed at; I want to co-create a faith that garners respect.

Third Reading

One sign of old age is when you start using your own writings as readings. It’s an admission that your past has become so distant that your own memory of it should no longer be trusted. If you wrote something down at the time, that’s probably more accurate.

This reading is taken from a column I wrote for UU World called “At My Mother’s Funeral”. My mother died in 2011. The funeral was at Hansen-Spear, and I came back to Quincy for it. Mom had chosen all the elements of the service herself, so it reflected her Christian belief that death is just the beginning of eternal life in Heaven. I had trouble relating to that.

Here’s what I wrote afterwards:

Whether anyone else in the room was harboring secret doubts or not, I felt alone in facing the possibility that death is final, that I will never see my mother again, that our interrupted conversations will never be finished, and that all the things we didn’t understand about each other will never be understood.

Somewhere in the middle of those reflections, I almost laughed at myself: “Wait a minute,” I thought. “I’m the Unitarian Universalist in the room. I’m supposed to be the one who can believe whatever he wants!”

Over the years I’ve probably heard a dozen UU ministers’ explanations of why the old saw “Unitarian Universalists can believe whatever they want” isn’t quite right. But until that moment at Mom’s funeral, I had never grasped how exactly backwards it is. Unitarian Universalists are precisely the people who can’t believe whatever they want.

The image of Mom in heaven — young and vibrant again, seeing everything, hearing everything, skipping gaily about on two perfect legs — how could anyone not want to believe that?

The vision of heaven itself — a perfect place where all loved ones will reunite, and all pains and doubts and disagreements will be revealed as the illusions they always were: I don’t want to reject it, I just can’t sustain it. Like a multistory house of cards, it always collapses before I can get it finished. …

The old religious authorities taught … [that] people needed someone or something to keep their beliefs in line. Otherwise they’d believe all kinds of frivolous, self-serving, and wish-fulfilling things.

But is frivolity, self-service, and wish fulfillment what Unitarian Universalism is about? Is that what I was doing at the funeral?

No, quite the opposite. Today’s Unitarian Universalists continue to be free of external discipline, but the point is to be self-disciplined, not un-disciplined. We’re the people who take responsibility for disciplining our own beliefs.

Like any other responsibility, religious responsibility is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, my beliefs feel more straightforward and authentic because I haven’t twisted them to fit some external authority’s template. But on the other, I am cut off from the comforts of frivolous, self-serving, and wish-fulfilling beliefs, because no one can authorize them for me.

Sermon

Coming of Age. Every year, if we have enough interested kids of the right ages, my church (First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts), offers a "Coming of Age" class. Starting in September, our teens explore what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. They learn UU history, do service projects, hear what famous UUs have said about the big questions, and interview members of the congregation. And then in May, the program culminates in a service that turns the traditional Protestant confirmation ritual upside-down.

When I was confirmed at St. James in 1970, my classmates and I had to demonstrate that we understood the teachings of the Lutheran church, and in the spring we solemnly affirmed to the whole congregation that we agreed with them.

A UU coming-of-age service, by contrast, focuses on the young people’s beliefs, not the congregation’s. One by one, they stand in the pulpit and present a personal credo. In other words, they preach to us about their deepest convictions.

It’s always an engaging service, largely because there’s no predicting what you’ll hear. One of the teens might believe in reincarnation, another is inspired by Zen, and a third is a hard-core rationalist. Some are optimists and others pessimists. Some think the purpose of life is to pursue happiness, while others focus on serving others. Some want to create beauty; others want to acquire knowledge and solve problems.

My Lutheran confirmation was about pledging to remain steadfast in the common faith, a promise that I was unable to keep. If anyone had realized at the time how much my beliefs would change in the next few years, and keep changing for decades after, I imagine that thought would have depressed them. It would have undermined the meaning of the whole ritual.

But the adults who attend our UU coming-of-age service look back on our own religious journeys, and anticipate that the beliefs we’re hearing will change. Ten years down the road, the young man who tells us about reincarnation may not remember why he said that. The young woman who intends to center her life on pursuing happiness may someday come to a place where happiness seems impossible. She may need to find inside herself a grit and determination that has little to do with happiness, but that will see her through to a time when happiness once again becomes a viable goal.

But anticipating those changes doesn’t make the service any less moving or inspiring, because we understand the commitment that the young people are really making. They aren’t pledging to believe these things for the rest of their lives, a promise they would almost certainly break. Rather, they’re committing to take responsibility for their beliefs.

Alone up there in the pulpit, they can’t hide behind their parents or the church or a creed or a holy book or even God. They are announcing: “At this moment, this is how I choose to approach my life. And if those choices have consequences, they’re on me.” 

It’s a brave thing to do.

Watching young people construct their own version of Unitarian Universalism always makes me want to reconstruct mine. And that’s what I want to talk about today: How my own beliefs have had to change, not just until I became a UU, but since I became a UU.

Freedom and responsibility. Probably the most significant thing I’ve had to reevaluate about my faith is the centrality of freedom. Our Fourth Principle affirms “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”. But when I was becoming a UU in the 1980s, freedom got way more emphasis than responsibility. The most important feature of UUism then wasn’t a presence, it was an absence: No one would tell you what you had to think. (That’s why we might have appeared from the outside to have a lively, sustaining faith in we know not what.)

That emphasis made sense for the kind of world I grew up in, where my family, my church, the teachers at St. James school, and American culture itself were all trying to imprint Christianity on me. To me, the outside world seemed like a unified oppressive force trying to squelch my capacity for independent thought.

Saying “no” to that, saying “I am going to live by the faith I actually have, rather than the faith everyone tells me I ought to have” was a revolutionary act. And I saw that revolution as a precondition for everything else. Until I had staked out and defended my spiritual and intellectual independence, it didn’t even matter what I believed in my heart of hearts. Because if I’m going to spend my life reciting the Apostles Creed, and pretending to believe it, who even cares what I really think?

But the kids in our coming of age classes don’t live in that world. And while some young people do still grow up in oppressive religious environments, that’s no longer the general experience of American society.

Yes, conservative Christians still aspire to dominance, and try to make laws that impose their faith on the rest of us. But that effort gets increasingly desperate every year. They need the power of government now, and especially the power of unelected judges, because they lost the battle for the larger culture long ago.

For most young Americans today, and particularly for those who have grown up UU, the outside world does not feel like a monolithic force trying to control their minds. It’s more like a desert or even a vacuum. The threat outside the walls of the church is not that some Eye of Sauron will dominate them, it’s that they will wander out there and get lost in the trackless waste where nothing is true and nothing is known and nothing is more important than anything else. When you find yourself in a trackless waste, no one needs to remind you that you are free to go any direction you want. What needs to be affirmed is that there are places worth going, and some hope of getting there.

In the current environment, it can actually be dangerous to tell people that they can believe whatever they want, because look around — lots of people are doing precisely that, to an extent that the UUs of the 1980s never imagined.

Do you want to believe that your candidate won the election when every method of counting the votes says that he lost? Go for it. Do you want to believe that Covid is a global conspiracy? Why not? Do you want to believe that your political opponents are blood-drinking, child-abusing Satanists? Or reptilian aliens? It’s up to you. There are no facts, just “I want to believe this and you want to believe that.”

That kind of freedom isn’t what Unitarian Universalism is about, or has ever been about. When our kids consider what they mean by the word “God”, and discuss whether such a God exists, they’re doing something very different from the QAnon folks who assure each other that JFK Jr. is going to return from his apparent death and lead them in a bloody counter-revolution.

The difference is in the responsible part of our free and responsible search. Our beliefs aren’t just for our own entertainment. If we hold our beliefs responsibly, they change how we live. And if we live actively, the effects of those beliefs go out into the world, benefiting some people and perhaps harming others. And we’re responsible for those benefits and harms. It’s on us.

Wanting to believe. Think about climate change. Do I want to believe that the planet is getting warmer, and that rising temperatures will have devastating effects unless we all make serious changes? Of course not. If I could snap my fingers and make that not be true, I would. You all would.

Am I free to deny global warming? I suppose so. If I say it’s all a hoax, and start living as if burning fossil fuels isn’t a problem, nobody’s going to punish me. But I’m not just free, I’m responsible. Living that way has consequences, and I have to take those consequences seriously.

Or think about privilege. I benefit from a long list of privileges. I’m White, male, heterosexual, cisgender, native born, neurotypical, English speaking, and professional class. I’m not just educated, I got my education at a time when it was cheaper, so I didn’t have to pile up student debt.

Do I want to acknowledge all those unearned advantages? Not at all. I want to say that everything I have comes entirely from my own talent and hard work. And I’m free to say that. But to the extent that I promote the myth that the world is already just, the continuing injustice becomes my responsibility.

In a world dominated by oppressive belief systems, the most important thing about Unitarian Universalism is the freedom it offers to develop your own conscience and pursue your own goals. But in American society as I see it today, the most important thing to emphasize is the responsibility of our search.

By contrast, much of what passes for religion in America today enables irresponsibility. Too many churches are like money-laundering banks. They shield their members from the ugly consequences of self-serving beliefs.

Imagine, for example, that I am a young man looking for a wife. If I tell the women I meet that I intend to dominate, and that after we are married, I will decide what she can and can’t do with her life, I sound like a jerk.

But suppose I say instead that my church believes in the traditional family. God has a plan for us all, and that plan has separate lanes for men and women. The content and consequence of those beliefs are exactly the same, but my responsibility for them vanishes. Now I’m not a jerk, I’m a man of faith. And if being dominated doesn’t make you happy, don’t blame me, blame God.

Or suppose that I want to persecute gays and lesbians, or maintain White supremacy. I don’t have to account for damage those ideas do. I can find a church that holds those beliefs for me, one that emphasizes the parts of the Bible I like, and interprets them in ways that please me. And suddenly I am no longer hateful, I’m just devout. I make the choices, but God bears the responsibility.

Unitarian Universalism doesn’t provide that service. It won’t launder the dirty consequences of your ideas and leave you spotless. If your beliefs cause harm in the world, that’s on you. It’s not the church or some prophet or priest. It’s not a creed or a holy book, and it’s certainly not God. It’s you. This is a faith for people who take responsibility.

On the elevator. One of the exercises we always have the coming-of-age students do is to write an elevator speech. The idea is that you’re on an elevator when someone asks you what your religion is all about. What can you manage to say about UUism before the doors open and you go your separate ways?

UUs are particularly bad at this exercise, because we always want to include a few more caveats and nuances. In all the times I’ve been involved with coming of age, I’ve never come up with an elevator speech I liked.

Until now. Here it is: 

Unitarian Universalists take responsibility for disciplining our own beliefs so that they are factual, reasonable, just, and kind. We will not stop learning, growing, and changing until we become the people the world needs.

Credo. Having come this far, I might as well close by completing the coming-of-age exercises and presenting my credo. So far I’ve mainly talked about how UUs believe, and haven’t said much about the content of my personal beliefs.

So here it goes: This what I believe.

I believe that the Universe is far bigger and more intricate than human minds can grasp, and that we deal with that deficiency by telling stories. But the Universe is not a story, so we will never get it completely right. Nonetheless, I constantly try to improve my stories by testing them against observable facts, and changing them when they conflict.

I judge right and wrong by human standards. Things are good or bad according to how they affect people and other conscious beings, and not because some book or institution says so.

I give precedence to the things I know, rather than the things I merely imagine. So while I sometimes have intuitions about higher intelligences or what might happen after death, I hold those beliefs so lightly that they have little effect on my actions.   

I believe meaning is something that stories have, and so I look for a meaningful life by striving to tell a meaningful life story. A meaningful story has to be credible, which is why integrity is so important; I believe in trying to be the person I say I am.

A good story evokes awe and wonder, so it is important that I find and create beauty in my life. The variety of beauty I personally resonate with most is the beauty of knowledge and ideas, which is why I put so much effort into understanding what is happening around me. Other people resonate primarily with other forms of beauty, and that’s fine. We don’t all need to be the same.

A story is more convincing when it is shared, when many people tell similar stories about similar things. And so it is important that I not be the only significant character in my story. I want to share my life with others, and to live in a community of people who care about and appreciate each other. 

Nothing undoes the beauty of a story quite so effectively as a sense of hidden evil, of questions that we dare not ask and doors that we dare not open, lest all that hidden ugliness spill out. And so I believe in justice. I believe in looking squarely at the evil in the world and trying to fix it, rather than hiding it away and pretending it’s not there.

And finally, I believe I’m going to die, probably at some unpredictable moment, and that everyone I care about will die someday as well. Any organizations I might join will someday fail. Cultures will change. Civilizations will collapse. And ultimately the Universe itself will go cold. So the satisfaction invoked by my life story can’t depend on a happy ending.

Fortunately, it doesn’t need to. I don’t need a story that lasts forever, I only need one I that stays meaningful until I die, and that is not undone by the prospect of my death. In other words, I need my story to be part of a larger story that will continue past my death in the stories of others, in the story of my community, and in the larger story of the struggle to understand the world and achieve justice. That is the kind of life I am trying to live and the story I am trying to tell.

And you? That’s me. But this is Unitarian Universalism, so you are free to disagree with any of that. Nonetheless I invite and encourage all of you to examine your own lives, your own stories, and your own beliefs.

Deciding who you’re going to be is not just a job for teen-agers. Periodically throughout our lives, I think, we need to renew our sense of who we are, how we’re going to live, and what we think about the world we live in.

I wish you well in your free and responsible search for truth and meaning.