Imposter Virtues

Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
February 19, 2006

First Reading:
from the Greek poet and philosopher, Lucretius, as quoted in Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff

When Agamemnon waited on the beach with his ships and chariots and with the men who hungered to capture Troy, the winds remained hostile, and he asked a diviner what he should do. He had faith in his diviner, and the diviner had faith in his power to speak for the gods. He said he knew what the gods desired—the life of the king’s daughter. And so Iphigenia came, summoned to her wedding in all the veiled finery of a bride. At the altar stood her father with the priest. But there was no young husband, only the great sharp knife poised to end her life. He ends with the strong line, tantum religiou potuit suadere malorum — “so great is the power of religion to lead us to evil.”

Second Reading:
from Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff

We have forgotten what [reverence] means. … [R]everence fosters leadership and education. Reverence kindles warmth in friendship and family life. Without reverence, things fall apart. People do not know how to respect each other and themselves. An army cannot tell the difference between what it is and a gang of bandits. Without reverence, we cannot explain why we should treat the natural world with respect. Without reverence, a house is not a home, a boss is not a leader, an instructor is not a teacher. Without reverence, we would not even know how to learn reverence. To teach reverence, you must find the seeds of reverence in each person and help them grow.

 

Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half forgotten patterns of civility, in moments of inarticulate awe, and in nostalgia for the lost ways of traditional cultures. We have the word “reverence” in our language, but we scarcely know how to use it. Right now it has no place in secular discussions of ethics or political theory. Even more surprisingly, reverence is missing from modern discussions of the ancient cultures that prized it.

Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control—God, truth, justice, nature, even death. The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all. This in turn fosters the ability to be ashamed when we show moral flaws exceeding the normal human allotment. The Greeks before Plato saw reverence as one of the bulwarks of society, and the immediate followers of Confucius in China thought much the same. Both groups wanted to see reverence in their leaders, because reverence is the virtue that keeps leaders from trying to take tight control of other people’s lives. Simply put, reverence is the virtue that keeps human beings from trying to act like gods.

Sermon:

 

One of my finest mentors, when I was growing up, was my scoutmaster. He was the father of my best friend in junior high and high school. I never did make it to Eagle Scout, in large part because academics took priority in my life. However, the Boy Scouts provided me with the first code of conduct that I sought to follow. I suspect at least a few of you could recite with me the Boy Scout Law: “A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.”

 

The only word on that list that I didn’t really understand as a Scout was what it meant to be reverent. My scoutmaster explained that it meant never to take God’s name in vain. Every now and then, people comment that I use the word “golly” and that it is both amusing and endearing that I do so. Well, you can thank my scoutmaster, Jay Craig, for that! However, those who know me well enough, know that when I get angry other utterances also come from my mouth!

 

The leadership of the Boy Scouts of America has come to define “reverent” as belief in God and being respectful of one’s religion. Among the badges that scouts can earn and wear on their uniforms, there is a religious merit badge that comes from engaging one’s own faith community. Eight years ago, several scout troops stopped honoring the Unitarian Universalist merit badge and not long after, the national Boy Scouts of America did the same.  The reasoning was that a Unitarian Universalist does not have to express belief in God to be a part of our community, and the Boy Scouts of America claimed that self-identified atheists who were a part of UU congregations were in violation of the code that a scout is reverent.

 

The Boy Scouts of America also have sought to exclude openly gay leaders and scouts. The Unitarian Universalist teachings about sexuality also led the UU merit badge to be deemed unfit to wear on the uniform. There is nothing in the Boy Scout code that forbids homosexuality, except for a narrow definition of what it means to be reverent.  With their case going to the Supreme Court nearly six years ago and their choice of discriminating against homosexuals as well as atheists, it became clear that the Boy Scouts had become a religious-based organization, and that given the exclusive nature of their membership, they should not receive government money.

 

A year ago, I learned that Donald Rumsfeld funnels support to the Boy Scouts of America by providing the space and equipment of military bases free of charge for Boy Scout Jamborees. A couple of concerned Unitarian Universalists have filed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld for using public resources to support an openly discriminatory organization. I was asked if I would sign on to an amicus brief, a court document that formally acknowledges the discriminatory practices. Not only have I signed on, but I am proud to report that the Board of Trustees of this congregation has done so as well, along with the minister and board of the First Unitarian Church of San Diego. Why our two congregations? This discrimination has taken place in our two regions.

 

It saddens me that an organization that played a formative role in my own life has twisted its understanding of reverence to mean holding a particular belief about God, a belief that judges gay people and people for whom the concept of God does not hold meaning. I’m sure the Boy Scouts would argue that reverence is their greatest virtue, but how they, as I believe, abuse and twist it, I would argue that their understanding of reverence is an imposter virtue.

 

Imposter virtues—that is what I want to preach on this morning. I first came across this provocative phrase from Barbara Brown Taylor who wrote a brief, thoughtful article in the Christian Century by this name.  She writes “If real virtues make one feel like doing good, then imposter virtues make one feel good about doing bad.” Imposter virtues—what a significant concept, something that people of faith ought to be called to reflect upon.

 

To talk about imposter virtues, I need to first talk about real virtues. Virtue isn’t a popular concept in our culture. To call someone virtuous sounds like that person is other-worldly and doesn’t have much in common with us all too fallible human beings. Paul Woodruff, from whom I took today’s readings, says that “Virtue is the source of the feelings that prompt us to behave well.” Virtues are not the same thing as rules or commandments. They don’t arise from the outside and tell us what to do. Instead they emerge from the inside, calling us to seek what is right.

 

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “We were not born virtuous, yet we can name the people who taught us mercy by taking us in their arms when we were at our worst, who taught us generosity by requiring us to give 10 percent of our allowances away, who taught us reverence by making us wait while they prayed before passing the pot roast around the supper table. If those habits of the heart rubbed off on us, then that is because we practiced them in community with people who brought the words to life. Some of those people talked about the virtues as well, but the talk alone was not redemptive. We needed to encounter the talk made flesh.”

 

Other virtues include courage, justice, and honesty. I suppose you could say that virtues are the Platonic forms of the psyche. Indeed, it was the Greek philosophers who suggested that ethics be pursued by identifying virtues as the foundation of moral character. Socrates believed that every lapse in virtue damages the soul. Virtue ethics focuses not on what people think but how we may best live our lives. In virtue ethics, a good person seeks what is right and what in a given situation is the right thing to do. I agree with Taylor that “this capacity is cultivated by experience and training, largely in community, where the habits that give rise to virtues are formed.”

 

Some of you may have read the extraordinary book, Schindler’s List. Even more of you likely have seen the movie. It is a true story of a man whom one would never expect to act virtuous in a life threatening situation. Schindler was a womanizer, a businessman who wasn’t always honorable, someone who most of us would not think of as a good person. Yet when he saw Jewish people rounded up and sent to concentration camps, he did everything in his power to protect as many Jewish people as he could. In the end, he sacrificed his business and went to such extreme measures that, if discovered, he would have been executed. What was it about Schindler that led him to go so much further than his peers and fellow countrymen to risk everything for the sake of saving human life?

 

It is perhaps easier to answer this question when focusing on a community that has fostered virtues among its members over time. Andre Trocme was a pastor in a rural French village when a poor, hungry Jewish woman knocked on the door of his church. Trocme took the woman in. He urged his parishioners to do likewise, even though they themselves had very little. And they did, until the village was hiding as many Jews as villagers. How is it that 5,000 French villagers sheltered 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust in this village where so many others simply did nothing as human beings around them were being rounded up to be killed? Chuck Campbell in a book on preaching called The Word Before the Powers, gives a thoughtful answer. These people had practiced in community virtues that were capable of resisting what he calls the powers and principalities. It was just this practice of communal virtue that enabled them to do what many other communities did not. When these truly heroic people were asked what characteristics made them into heroes, they had nothing to say except that their pastor had provided them with a moral compass, and they simply practiced the values that they held dear in worship. They didn’t see anything heroic about sheltering and caring for persecuted people because it was simply the right thing to do. 

 

There is an important lesson for us here. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Practicing courage, we become courageous. Practicing hospitality, we become hospitable. Practicing hope, we become hopeful, until such virtues become second nature to us.” Practicing love makes us more loving, and it is important to remember that these virtues are practiced and lived out most effectively in community.

 

I hadn’t realized until rereading Paul Woodruff’s book that he is who originally came up with the phrase “imposter virtues.” In response to the question, “How can we tell virtues from imposters?” Woodruff writes, “The short answer is that virtuous people will steer away from imposter virtues, whether they can fully account for their choices or not. The long answer is that we would be wise to consider the imposter virtues that are easily identified; if we do so, then we can aim to avoid whatever closely resembles them. The catch is that imposter virtues resemble real ones fairly closely, and that is why they are so tempting.”

 

The Greeks knew that the virtue of reverence is not the same thing as being religious; it isn’t even about belief in God. The poet Lucretius offers us Iphigenia to stand for all the unholy cost of blind faith in religion that comes from the self-righteous who believe they know what is  the will of god. So great is the power of religion to lead us to evil.

 

I agree with Woodruff that reverence is a virtue that emerges in all the world religions and has more to do with learning how to be human than following any one religion. His definition of reverence is the best I’ve encountered: Reverence is the capacity to have feelings of awe, respect, and shame when these are the right feelings to have. The opposite of reverence is hubris, believing in one’s own power and perspective such that one eschews that of others. In today’s world, there is no shortage of examples of leaders who believe that being heroic is to forge forth regardless of what others think, listening only to their own counsel. Such heroism is not a virtue, it is hubris, an imposter virtue.

 

Reverence shows up as an imposter virtue not only in the Boy Scouts, but also in the cultural insensitivity of those who publish demeaning cartoons of a religious minority or, much more ominously, in the call by several Muslim leaders for the execution of those who created and published the cartoons. I couldn’t have ever thought up a better example of the clash between two of our most cherished cultural values, respect for religion and the freedom of speech. This past week, universities here in Illinois have published some of the cartoons, and different news sources provide considerably different perspectives.

 

The rush to show the cartoons without publishing a Muslim viewpoint is wrong. It isn’t at all the same as talking about the Holocaust and then publishing the views of someone who denies the Holocaust ever happened, as argued by students in Champaign-Urbana. But such cultural and moral insensitivity is nothing compared to acts of violence being called for by Muslim fundamentalists. Such actions are as far from virtuous as those young German youth who reverently followed a tyrant into creating the Holocaust. And in today’s clash of our cherished ideals of cultural sensitivity and freedom of speech, we cannot simply utter words of the relativist that everyone is right and that everyone has the truth. Instead, we need to clarify what values, indeed what virtues, call us to what is right.

 

It is always easier to identify the imposter virtues of others, but it is the truly reverent task to seek those imposter virtues within one’s own self and tradition. I am in complete agreement with Barbara Brown Taylor that the fraudulent virtue that has come up more than any other in my own life is busyness. As she writes, “Why don't we engage the [injustices and forces against goodness] crouched at our doorsteps? We are busy. Why don't we keep up with the friends who know us well enough to keep us honest? We are busy. Why don't we spend as much time with our families as we do with our computers? We are too busy. …Busyness keeps us from lingering on anything long enough to engage it at any depth. Busyness convinces us that there is always something else we need to be doing. Busyness exhausts, embitters, divides, and demoralizes.” If we have not exposed this imposter virtue for what it is, then the reason is because so many of our congregational practices depend upon it. Busyness too often masks what is going on, whether it is an evasion of feelings that we don’t want to feel, or worse, the evasion of responsibility or life-giving work that calls us from within our depths.

 

What are the imposter virtues of our own faith tradition? Of religious liberalism? One imposter virtue that stalks many religious liberals is what I call moral apathy, and which could be understood as the acceptance of moral relativism, that everyone has their own belief and values and that they are all equal. It implies that human beings can create truth and justice as they please on their own. This shoddy form of thinking leads to arrogance and an immunity from argument that doesn’t fit with human fallibility. An important part of accepting our humanity is to allow for the possibility that we may be wrong and acknowledging one’s vulnerability to refutation. Some relativists think that relativism leads to tolerance and kindness. I agree with Paul Woodruff: “Relativism has no moral advantages. In the world of ideas, relativism cultivates minds that are closed or lazy; in a world of ethical choices, relativism leaves human rights undefended by allowing no place for discussion or debate.” It was refreshing to hear Senator Tom Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, ask representatives of corporations doing business in China whether they have any shame for complying with China’s restrictive policies that lead to profound human rights abuses.

 

Now, I must issue a warning. Most people who assail moral relativism seek to assert their own moral absolutes, but that is no better than the moral relativism they decry. There is a middle road. If we can accept that our own truth will never be perfect truth and seek to practice reverence, that is, to cultivate our awareness of our awe, respect, and shame, we shall not slip down the slope of moral relativism nor take on the imposter virtue of moral certainty. Instead we can prioritize living out our values.

 

A kindred imposter virtue against which we religious liberals need to stand guard is the radical individualism that leads to excess and isolation. Radical individualism too often dismisses the importance of community, denies the value of sacrifice, and elevates individual rights and pleasures over the network of mutuality of which we are a part.

 

My stance on the Boy Scouts of America and their use of public resources, thus my support of the litigation against Donald Rumsfeld, is, for me, not a political stance but a moral stance. I believe that politics do not belong in the pulpit, but that doesn’t mean that moral issues should be avoided. I cannot with integrity shirk from moral stances. I have preached on my strong opposition to our country’s stance on torture, to the war in Iraq, and the narrow patriotism that has sought to squash dissent. I have preached on why we should support civil unions and gay adoption, the need to address issues of racism and multi-culturalism, and why fair trade is morally superior to free trade. For me these are not political stands, but moral ones.

 

I have been asked by members of this congregation whether I should address such topics if doing so may jeopardize our non-profit tax status. If in this country the taking of a moral stand ever becomes considered anti-American, then by God, I hope we will be among the leaders to dissent. We should not guide our conduct as a congregation as to what is most comfortable or convenient for us. We should navigate our future according to the moral compass that has for generations made our faith tradition a beacon for people who dedicate their lives to the search for truth and justice.

 

I find it difficult to end this sermon. I want to proclaim, “Be virtuous.” But such platitudes are unhelpful. Instead, I ask you to consider this: In what circumstances have you developed your capacity for awe; in what circumstances have you cultivated a deeper respect for others; in what circumstances have you experienced shame such that you turned your life toward your most cherished values? When and where have you experienced awe, respect, and shame that have called you to be a better person?

 

This morning I urge you to make more time to be in those places, so that you can practice the virtues that help you deal with the brokenness in the world and ourselves so that we can become ever more whole as individuals and as a community.

 

May it be so. Amen.

© Copyright 2006 Rev. Alan Taylor, All Rights Reserved.