Bridging The Divide

Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
November 7, 2004

There is nowhere else I would like to be at this time than here with you. It is good to come together on this glorious day even though the winds of politics take many of us into uncharted waters. These are uncertain times. We are among a nation divided. Every four years, roughly half the nation is jubilant with success and half is disappointed and dismayed about the future. But this time around, the disappointment and dismay are so profound among many, that despair threatens to descend. During the past few days, so many of you asked me to address the election this morning. How can I not? The theme for today’s service, “Bridging the Divide,” refers to what I naively thought I could set out to do with this sermon.

This past July, The Christian Science Monitor ran a series of articles about the political divide in America, exploring the changing trends of Republican and Democrat strongholds. One article focused on Oak Park. It was about people who choose to live where others have similar viewpoints and worldviews. Oak Park is a good example of an inner-ring suburb where people with liberal politics converge. The article says Chicagoans think of this village as “The People’s Republic of Oak Park.” Here at Unity Temple, we are a liberal religious congregation in a liberal-leaning village. I trust that I will not offend many people if I assume the vast majority here today are upset, if not profoundly disturbed, about the presidential election. By no means is Oak Park, or even this congregation, all Democrats, but I believe we have an especially high proportion of largely left-leaning liberals. And so today, I want to address those among us who are blue.

This past Tuesday, I was, like many of you, filled with hope and anticipation. And, on Wednesday, I felt powerless and demoralized. Since then I have been passing through the stages of grief. The enormous outpouring of time, energy, and money by so many people to get out the vote fueled my faith about this election unlike any other. And then, as the results came in, I empathized with so many of you who feel like the world we live in is  totally alien from the one in which half of the voting public lives. After it was all over, Thomas Friedman opened his New York Times editorial, “As Grandma used to say, at least I have my health.” Then he said what many of us feel and fear: that Bush voters don’t just disagree with us about America’s policies, domestic and foreign, but they disagree about what America is.

Morris Fiorina, a political scientist from Stanford, takes issue with this view. In his new book, Culture Wars? The Myth of a Polarized America, he argues there is a strong and vital center that gets overshadowed in the ideological positioning of the two parties. He urges us to remember that at times of national election, the nation is supposed to appear polarized when two distinct ideological positions square off.

I agree with him up to a point. My greatest concern is how this country is becoming ever more divided between those who view the world through religious lenses and those who view it through secular lenses. This country was founded on enlightenment ideals. Gary Wills in another recent New York Times editorial asks, “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?” This depends on how the government governs.

Democracy is messy and yet it is an especially good political system to deal with a nation divided. In times like these, I find it helpful to re-acquaint myself with history. In 1796, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson vied for the presidency. It was a vicious election with the Federalists claiming that a Jefferson presidency would incite murder, rape, and incest. Although the two candidates didn’t get into the fray, the two sides heaped insults on the other that make current advertisements sound like lullabies. In that vitriolic election, the runner-up, Jefferson, was made vice president! The following election, in 1800, Adams and Jefferson again ran against each other, this time with their own vice-president running mates—and with even more vicious attacks. It was clear Adams lost, but a glitch in the electoral system gave both Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, the same number of electoral votes. The Federalist supporters of Adams sought to elect Burr as the lesser of two evils. And Burr, the self-opportunist he was, went with the scheme. The House of Representatives voted 35 times over three weeks without either Burr or Jefferson getting the necessary majority. Finally Jefferson was selected following the most acrimonious and uncertain election in our nation’s history.

Never was our nation more divided than in 1860 at the outset of the Civil War. The issue of slavery tore the nation apart. Brothers and friends took up arms against each other. Many believed it impossible to transcend a division so ferocious that it claimed the lives of well over a half-million lives. Yet this nation endured. It bridged its differences, albeit imperfectly, in the direction of justice.

The nation was divided time and again. In 1964, the divide was about civil rights to all people regardless of race. When Lyndon Johnson signed his controversial legislation into law, he knew the country would polarize in new ways. Until then, the south was a stronghold of the Democratic Party. Johnson correctly predicted that the civil rights platform would push the south into the Republican Party.

Now here we are in 2004, with nearly half of the nation shocked and the other half affirmed that more voters prefer what could be called the religiously-based leadership of George Bush to the reason-based approach of John Kerry. It apparently came down to fear of terrorism and “traditional moral values.”

On three separate occasions this past week, gay or lesbian members of our congregation shared with me how awful it is to hear that gay marriage played a determining role in the election’s outcome. To make matters worse, nine states voted to ban same-sex marriage, and the bans passed, in many cases by huge margins. Many voters in swing states cited “traditional moral values” as their reason for voting for the incumbent. A Senator from a state that has sanctioned civil unions was too much for middle America. Gay people are being made to feel either blamed or at the least their humanity sidestepped by folks who are grieving Kerry’s loss and wishing there was a way that could have prevented it. And so we hear from many different sources that liberals rushed too quickly on legalizing same-sex marriages.

I beg to differ. There is never a politically opportune time to move toward justice but when the opportunity presents itself. In 1964, when this country was divided, President Johnson acted from conscience, just as the Massachusetts Supreme Court did this past year legalizing civil unions. There was plenty of backlash and polarization then, just as there is now.

Clearly, we religious liberals have work to do. There are three ways I urge you to be faithful to the values that we hold dear (borrowed from Rev. James Kubal-Komoto). First, have faith in yourselves and your ability to make a difference in the world, and acknowledge the necessity for all of us to do so. Some religious traditions teach that only God can save the world. Our tradition teaches that God saves the world through human beings. It is through our hearts and minds and hands that God makes a difference in the world.

So, as Miguel de Unamuno in today’s reading states, [condensed from “Throw Yourself Like Seed”]:

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the one who wants to live is the one in whom life is abundant
the only thing which lasts is the work; start then, turn to the work.
Throw yourself like seed as you walk,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Second, remember where we have influence. Presidential elections distort the perception of our own power by focusing our attention where we have the least control—on the national level. On the local level, most people grossly underestimate their influence. Writing letters to politicians and newspapers does make a difference. Even dialoging with people in your own community makes a difference. John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace, wrote his supporters this week, “When you feel like your government doesn’t represent you, savor that feeling. Before Gandhi, King, Lewis, Parks, Muir and Thoreau went on to do great things, they all felt that way. …  Now it’s our turn.”

Third, hold faith in democracy and in the American people. This isn’t easy, especially when the majority of the voting public appears to us as either ignorant or unwilling to think critically. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition challenges us to have faith in people and our ability to choose our own leaders. Unitarian minister Theodore Parker coined the phrase, later borrowed by Lincoln, “A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Vaclav Havel, the Czech dissident, speaks of the importance of hope. “The kind of hope I often think about,” he says, “(especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul; it's not essentially dependent of some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

“Hope,” he says, “in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

Havel suggests that even in countries where people are imprisoned for their political views and where human rights are trampled on left and right, there is still room for hope. Although a lot of people feel disenfranchised by the result of this election, there is plenty of reason to hold on to hope. There are individuals here among us who can remember when there were separate water fountains for blacks and whites in this country. There are people here in this room who remember when women had far fewer opportunities than they have today. Most of us in can remember when we didn't even talk about gays and lesbians, let alone gay marriage. When we look to the wider world, most of us can remember when there was still apartheid in South Africa and when there was no democracy in Eastern Europe.

A colleague helpfully reminded me this week of the history of social change in this country and around the world—the labor movement, the Civil Right's movement, the women's movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the disabled person's movement, the gay and lesbian movement. The history of social change teaches us that we can change the world. We just can't change it overnight. We may not even be able to change it within our lifetimes.  We should remember that Moses wasn't allowed to enter the promise land; Susan B. Anthony didn't live long enough to see women vote; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s life was cut tragically short so he did not live to see the fruits of his efforts.

If enough of us work together, we can eventually change the world. As the historian Howard Zinn says, "History…shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time." When those miraculous advances occur, any one presidential election will become a mere footnote in history.

I conclude this morning with a personal story. The theme of today’s sermon was meant to be bridging the divide. It may be more than we can do presently on a national level, but what about on the local level?

Last spring, Angie and I were invited to a St Patrick’s Day party. It was just days before the primary, and the house was covered with political signs, for Jack Ryan. As Angie and I had already met and contributed generously to Barack Obama and his primary bid, I turned to Angie and said, “This could be interesting.” She made me agree to refrain from initiating any political conversation.

We were among the early arrivers to what turned out to be a large family gathering. Angie and I were the honored guests, invited by the matriarch of the family. Every time someone came in, I was always introduced as Alan, the minister of Unity Temple. When asked by the host’s youngest daughter about my denomination, I told her Unitarian Universalism. She smiled really big, and made sure her parents heard her say, “Your church affirms gay marriage!” All eyes were suddenly on me. I stated as matter-of-factly as I could, “Not only do we believe gay people should be able to marry, we know gay people make good clergy—in fact, my predecessor is openly gay.”

I thought that would be the beginning of the end. I misjudged my hosts. It turned out this extended family is split between avid liberals and avid conservatives—who talk to one another and can’t resist an opportunity to rib other in good humor. They also engage in heated debate, as I witnessed that evening. And I left with an appreciation that they love and respect one another as they oblige each other to consider ideas from many different angles. The corned beef hash was excellent, and I must confess, I was never bored and felt warmly embraced. Over the last couple months, their house is one of those that displays an obnoxiously gigantic Bush-Cheney sign. Whenever I passed it, I would shake my head in wonder and then I would smile and say to myself, “I may disagree, even passionately, with their opinion, but I know they are thoughtful human beings who offer genuine hospitality and a willingness to dialog.” What more can we ask of ourselves and those who disagree with us than to be genuine and to throw ourselves like seed as our conscience dictates. As Thomas Jefferson said, “It is in our lives and not in our words that our religion must be read.”

May it be so. Blessed be. Amen.

 

Benediction:
Where do we go from here? This is a great question to ask. In his speech entitled, “Where Do We Go from Here?” Martin Luther King Jr. said, “When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

 

© Copyright 2004 Alan C. Taylor, All Rights Reserved.