Rev. Steve EdingtonGod and the Constitution

Sermon by Steve Edington
April 24, 2005

Reading:

The unchanging principles of life predate modern times. I worship Jesus Christ whom we Christians consider to be the Prince of Peace. As Jew, he taught us to cross religious boundaries, in service and in love. He repeatedly reached out and embraced Roman conquerors, other Gentiles, and even the more despised Samaritans.

Despite theological differences, all great religions share common commitments that define our ideal secular relationships. I am convinced that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and others can embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace.

But the present era is a challenging and disturbing time for those whose lives are shaped by religious faith based on kindness toward each other. We have been reminded that cruel and inhuman acts can be derived from distorted theological beliefs, as suicide bombers take the lives of innocent human beings, draped falsely in the cloak of God's will...

The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes - and we must.

The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 2002. By President Jimmy Carter

As I set about to prepare my mind and spirit for what I would offer by way of a sermon this Sunday, I read former President Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize address which he delivered upon receiving the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. I shared a few paragraphs of that address with you a few minutes ago. The thing that surprised me the most, as I got to those paragraphs was the profound sadness that came over me as I read them. Why sadness? At first I couldn't figure it out myself. Mr. Carter was putting forth a wonderfully positive vision of the role that religion can play in public, civic life. Listen to it again: "Despite theological differences, all great religions share common commitments that define our ideal secular relationships. I am convinced that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and others can embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace."

I could not agree more. I should rejoice that a former United States President, upon accepting the Nobel Prize, would give the world such a clearly stated ideal as to how religion, at it best, works within the workings of the world community, and in the lives of those who comprise it. I do rejoice in this, in fact. My sadness came with an awareness of just how far some of the more powerful leaders of this nation have strayed from, if not outright repudiated, this vision of a former President when it comes to the place of faith, and the role of persons of faith, in the life of a society such as ours. Rather than treating religion as a unifying force whereby persons of faith and good will can advance the common good - in the manner that Mr. Carter called for - what we are largely witnessing right now is its being used as a club to berate persons of a particular social or political persuasion as enemies of the faith. I well understand that this is standard operating practice in certain theocratic regimes in various other parts of the world, but I'm talking about the United States of America.

To get down to cases, and in case you missed it, today is Justice Sunday; so proclaimed by the Family Research Council of America. The so-called injustice, against which the Family Research Council is seeking to rally conservative or fundamentalist Christians across the nation by way of their extensive media outlets, are attempts by Senate Democrats to block the appointments, by means of a filibuster, of a small number of judicial appointments the President has put forth for nomination. These appointees espouse a very hard right social and political philosophy. I will not get into the details of the current nomination and appointment process, because a sermon is not supposed to be a political lecture, other than to point out the obvious; namely, that wrangling between the President and the Congress over Presidential nominees for appointive offices - judicial and otherwise - are as old as the workings of our democracy itself. And attempts by legislators of widely varying political persuasions to prevent certain nominations from being approved are also as old as our system of government itself.

It wasn't that long ago, as I recall, that former North Carolina Senator, Jesse Helms, single-handedly blocked the appointment of former Massachusetts Governor, William Weld, to be Ambassador to Mexico, mainly because the Senator just simply didn't like the Governor. So, what's new?

What is new is that this age-old process has now been turned into a holy, religious war. The rallying cry of the Family Research Council for their Justice Sunday efforts is "Stop the Filibuster against People of Faith." Against "people of faith" mind you. Any attempt, as these folk see it, to prevent certain judicial nominees from taking office constitutes an action being taken against People of Faith. Now, this is the usual kind of dishonest demonizing that the religious right in this country has engaged in for decades. It is part of their standard operating procedure. So why I am I getting so exercised at their taking yet another trip around the same old block?

The reason is because prominently marching in the parade around that same old block this time around is the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. Item (April 14 New York Times): "As the Senate heads toward a showdown over rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees. Fliers for the telecast... depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other."

This is where a line has been crossed - and in a very dishonest and dangerous manner. As just noted, the antics of an organization like the Family Research Council on this kind of issue are predictable to the point of being boring. But when the person, who is, quite arguably, the most powerful legislator in this country, makes himself a party to an effort to label persons of a particular political persuasion as "enemies of faith" then there is, as the song says, "trouble in River City."

Time out for a reality check here: Over 90% of the American people profess a belief in God. They don't all believe in God in the same way, of course, but at least 90% of us believe in a Being, Force, Power, or Presence greater than the self. A good 75% of us claim affiliation with a religious body, faith tradition, or faith communion. Again, these religions vary widely, as does the level of commitment to them by those claiming to adhere to them. But at least 75% of us do claim some religious affiliation. These numbers are markedly higher than, say, any European nation that operates under a secular constitution, which - I should point out - we do as well. Given these numbers, any attempt to take a piece of legislation, or a legislative process, and label those on one side of it "persons of faith" and those on the other side of it as "enemies of faith" is ridiculous. And when it is done by one of this country's most powerful political leaders then it moves from the ridiculous to the pernicious.

I have to let one of my favorite religious guys (for lack of a better term) weigh in on this one. Dr. Martin Marty is generally regarded as America's foremost religious historian. You want to know anything about the history and development of religion in America, just ask him. Dr. Marty is a retired Professor of the University of Chicago's Divinity School and still writes a weekly column on Religion in America - called Sightings - through the University of Chicago's website. This is part of his Sightings column from last Monday, April 18:

"(An) outrageous, egregious, and dangerous affront (is the) attack by Senator Bill Frist, the Family Research Council, advocates of 'Justice Sunday' and some evangelical and Baptist notables who know better and usually do better. Tom DeLay is in this camp, having pioneered this kind of blunderbuss attack on fellow believers with whom they disagree politically... Most of the international religious stories these days have to do with theocratic suppressors of freedom, and would be monopolizers of religious expression. We have been spared such holy wars here. But (Senator) Frist and company, in the name of their interpretation of American freedom, sound more like jihadists than winsome believers. It would be healing to see them on their knees apologizing to the larger public of believers."

I consider myself among that larger public of believers to which Dr. Marty refers. For the sake of my health I'm not holding my breath waiting for the apology on bended knee from Senator Frist that Mr. Marty calls for.

Martin Marty is one of those genial, good-natured, good-humored religious academics who reminds me of some of my more grandfatherly, avuncular seminary professors from back when. He's a good Lutheran, and the kind of guy who can usually find something good to say about someone even when something good is pretty doggone hard to find. He's the kind of upper Mid-Western Lutheran, in other words, that Garrison Keillor loves to make jokes about. So when Martin Marty pops his cork about an incident or happening, I take notice. I also signed on to a e-mail petition to Senator Frist this past week - something I rarely do - circulated by People for the American Way, that read in part:

"We write as religious leaders who cherish America's distinctive tradition of religious respect, tolerance, and pluralism. We write as members of religious traditions that revere truth and are guided by prophetic calls to seek justice. We are gravely disappointed that you have lent your support to those who are trying to create confusion and sow division with false charges of religious discrimination... We emphatically reject claims that those who seek to uphold this country's tradition of checks and balances are forcing Christians to choose between their faith and public service Your participation in the Justice Sunday event gives your personal stamp of approval and legitimizes an event built on inflammatory falsehoods. We urge you to either withdraw your participation in this event, or, if you participate, to use that opportunity to repudiate the message of divisiveness and religious manipulation that is at the core of this gathering."

I have few illusions that my name on such a petition or letter will work to any great effect. As best I know the Senator's participation in this event is still a 'go' for later today. It will be of interest to me to see what he actually says. When it comes to television watching today I have my own religious obligation to attend to, namely watching the Red Sox game - so I don't know if I can work this Justice Sunday broadcast in or not.

Well, my original intent - to use a term that often gets invoked in judicial nominee debates - for this Sunday was to speak to the topic of "God and the Constitution." I was going to look at the current debate over whether or not there should be a reference to God in the new Constitution that is still being drafted for the European Union, and compare that debate to the absence of any such reference to a Deity in our own Constitution. While I've ended up taking a different tack, there actually is a tie-in to this topic with what I've said so far. To get to that tie-in, however, we need to swing down another road for a few minutes, and then we'll loop back on to the track I've been on.

I am quite convinced that one of the reasons the authors of our United States Constitution omitted any reference to God, or to religion at all, when they composed this document was because they did not want "matters of state", as it were, to be framed in partisan or sectarian religious terms. The thing that bothers me the most about the whole Justice Sunday matter is that it is really a back-door attempt on the part of some legislators to do just what the authors of the Constitution wanted to avoid.

The only place where religion is referred to in the Constitution proper, apart from its Amendments, is in what is called the "Religious Test" clause, which expressly prohibits the use of any religious test for a citizen to hold public office. The letter of this law is adhered to in that no candidate for any public office is required to profess allegiance to any religious faith or doctrine. I would submit, however, that the spirit of this clause has long been lost in that a candidate for office - practically any office - who does not show some fealty to some form of religion would probably not be elected. Furthermore, to characterize an opponent of a judicial nominee as being "against persons of faith" may not be a violation of the letter of this piece of our Constitution, but it is a gross violation of its spirit.

This does not mean, as I've pointed out on numerous other occasions, that the authors of our Constitution, were non-religious people. To the contrary, they were - practically all - persons of deep faith. For many of them - folk like Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison - their faith was a blend of Christianity and the principles of the European Enlightenment. They believed in a transcendent God, some as Theists and some as Deists; and they believed in the teachings and principles of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. But, when it came to writing a Constitution they adhered to the Enlightenment principles of the use of reason, deliberation, tolerance, and debate in the workings of civil government.

Their original document was a terribly flawed attempt at democracy - only white, male property owners were actually enfranchised, and African-Americans were counted as three-fifths of a person - but it was still a start in the right direction, and remains an outstanding piece of work. And the reason these persons of faith did not bring God or religion into the Constitution - other than to provide for Religious Freedom in its First Amendment - was precisely so that religion could freely play an active and positive role in the workings of the larger society. That may sound a little ironic, but when you think about it, it makes sense. By not identifying or incorporating religion into the workings of the secular government, it left the various religious communions in this land free to play their role as the conscience of this land when it came to attending to the well being of its citizens and in holding up a vision of the common good. It left religion free, in other words, to do just what Jimmy Carter talked about in his Nobel Prize speech: "(To) define our ideal secular relationships..." and to allow persons of a verity of faith to "embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace."

For all of the ways in which religion has been abused and used as a tool of repression in this country - repression of the mind as well as the body and soul - it is also true that practically every movement for social change and social justice over the course of this nation's history has had some kind of a religious impetus behind it.

To pull in a European comparison for just a minute now - so I don't completely abandon my topic for today - when it came to the place of religion in the life of a society, Europe and America took two different paths from the period of the Enlightenment. In Europe the Enlightenment had much more of an anti-religious flavor to it than it did in the newly developing nation of America. So while you have today great cathedrals all over Europe, as a visible sign of the presence of religion in that culture - or cultures - the actual force and power of religion in society, particularly in Western Europe is much less than it is here. I have to wonder if this debate over whether or not God, or some expression of religious faith, should be included in the new European Union Constitution represents an uneasiness with the extent to which Europe has become secularized. I personally fail to see how a largely symbolic reference to a Deity - however it might get worded - will significantly change that, but I think that's what is fueling the debate. In America, we chose to live instead with an attempted balance between the principles of freedom of thought, reason, tolerance, scientific inquiry and democratic principles, that is to say, the values of the Enlightenment - and the presence, power, and force of religion in our society. At times we've maintained that balance better than at other times. Fundamentalism took hold this country about 100 years after the Constitution was ratified, largely as a reaction against the modernism that grew out of those Enlightenment values, particularly when it came to things like Darwinism and a critical study of the Bible and comparative religion in an objective way. And that reaction continues in full sway - right down to this afternoon.

So, what does any of this have to do with any of us? I figure if I cannot answer that question in some fashion in any sermon I offer then I shouldn't be offering it. Very quickly, it's this: The founders of our respective faith traditions - Unitarianism and Universalism - also sought that same blend of Enlightenment values on the one hand, and religious conviction on the other, as did the authors of the Constitution. In some cases they were even the same people. Our forbearers wanted religion and faith to play a role in the workings of the larger society, with the understanding that such a role would be played in the absence of any semblance of a state religion. If there is one thing I'm grateful for about today's Justice Sunday, as well as the Terri Schiavo case which I'll address a few weeks hence, it is that the religious right in this country has finally shown its true hand. Its successful enlistment of some of the most powerful political figures in the nation, in both of these cases, is really a back-door, end-run-on-the-Constitution attempt for a de-facto state religion. It is an attempt that will, I believe, eventually fail. And it will fail precisely because persons of faith - and persons of many faiths - will not, in the end, stand for such an abuse of religion and faith.

The biggest mistake that religious moderates and liberals, of any faith tradition, could make right now would be to buy into the false dichotomy that such organizations as the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council are putting forth; namely, that there is a cultural war taking place between religious believers on the one side and hardened secularists on the other. That's not it. The fault line is between those who understand the role of faith in a society to be that suggested by former President Carter, namely: " (the sharing of)...common commitments that define our ideal secular relationships.." and a means by which persons of many faiths "can embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace." That is a far cry from the countervailing use of faith that has gained so much visibility right now, namely that of a divisive force that labels good Americans of a particular political persuasion as "enemies of faith."

All we can do, and we must do it well, is stand for and within our own faith tradition that combines freedom, reason, and tolerance with the imperatives of faith. I believe, as have religious progressives of all eras, that there is a larger voice in the workings of human history - a voice that transcends that dictates of any one religious faith or communion. It is a voice that calls humanity to its better self, to its healed self, to its compassionate self, and to its peace loving self. It is a voice, I believe, that will make itself heard above the din of divisive and destructive rhetoric. It will be heard so long as we lend our ears, our hands, our hearts, and our own voices to it. It sounds along the ages - may we be a part of its eternal chime.

Stephen D. Edington
April 24, 2005

Copyright © 2005 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.