Values and Votes
Sermon by Steve Edington
November 2, 2008
Whenever I set out to prepare a pre-election sermon I'm drawn back to one of my favorite stories as told by ministers, as they reflect on certain incidents in their ministries. This one is from the Rev. David Rankin, now retired from the UU ministry, recalling the time when he was serving the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco. After delivering a sermon prior to the 1968 presidential election he received this letter a few days later:
"Dear Rev. Rankin: Politics has no place in the pulpit. When you said that in choosing between Nixon and Humphery we should vote for the best man - you were obviously attacking Mr. Nixon."
In addition to giving me a good chuckle, this story also leaves me wondering if there is indeed any value in even doing a sermon such as this one at this point. It's two days before a Presidential election. If I were to ask for a show of hands (which I won't) of any undecided voters in this room few, if any I feel safe in saying, would go up. Some of you, in fact, may have even voted already. And, picking up on Dave Rankin's story, however even-handed I try to make this thing it's quite likely that at least some of you who are listening to me will hear an endorsement of a sort or an attack of a sort, even though I do not plan on doing either.
But my "why bother?" thoughts are countered by a single line in a book by Robert Edgar called Middle Church that he came out with just over two years ago and which I've referred to on other occasions. At the time he wrote it Mr. Edgar, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, was the Executive Secretary of the National Council of Churches. The NCC is a consortium of mainline moderate-to-liberal Protestant denominations in the United States. Mr. Edgar is also a former member of Congress who served six terms in the US House of Representatives from a District in Pennsylvania. His book is a call to mainline, mainstream persons of faith to not abandon the political arena to the far religious right. The line in his book that jumped out at me was this one: "What is politics if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people?"
Ponder that for a moment: "What is politics if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people?" Recall that it's being said by a well placed religious leader who is also a former 12 year member of Congress. Consider it as well as you think of some of the lower roads that have been taken in this campaign in the competition for any number of offices. Politics is really supposed to be a call to, and an expression of, our better and higher and more hopeful selves instead of an exercise - as it unfortunately sometimes becomes - in catering to our baser and more fearful selves. Even as I recognize that, it is largely because I agree with Mr. Edgar that politics, at its best, is an expression of our highest moral feelings as a people, that I offer a sermon like this one.
The basic premise of the democratic principle itself, coming as it did out of the 18th century Enlightenment, was that rank and file citizens of a nation should be able to bring their needs, concerns, values, and principles to bear on the workings and policies of their country. Such a principle, noble sounding as it is, didn't just happen all at once, or come into full fruition in an instant. In this country alone it has taken over 200 years to truly extend the democratic ideal to the still unfinished place it now occupies. Thomas Jefferson may have written in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 that "all men are created equal" but when the Constitution written a decade or so later the right to vote was only extended to white males who owned property.
In order for a democracy to be truly democratic its boundaries and limitations have to be continually challenged and pushed back. Challenging and pushing at those boundaries has been in integral part of our country's history, and has provided us with some of our most noble as well as some of our most tragic chapters.
One of the primary reasons, then, for having a democracy, is so that people like you and me can bring our values to bear in the public arena. So all I'm going to do in my time here this morning is share with you some of the values I'll have in mind when I vote on Tuesday. I do this as a way of encouraging you to examine and vote your values as well.
To begin with the very personal, I value my personal well being as well as that of my family. There's nothing at all wrong with casting a vote that is driven - at least in part - by self-interest. This, too, is a part of the democratic ideal; that citizens have a voice in the decisions and the policies that directly affect them - including the taxes they pay, the services and benefits that are available to them, and the social and economic policies that impact upon their personal fortunes. These are pivotal issues in this campaign; and attending to one's personal well being is not a value to be looked down upon.
But neither is it a value to be help up to the exclusion or diminishment of a number of others. Like each of you, I carry an identity with me when I go to cast a vote - an identity as a citizen of the United States of America. I value that identity. For all the concerns I may have with some of the actions and policies taken by the powers that be in this country I can no more deny my national identity than I can my race or my gender. Even if some of the ways in which the power, might, and wealth of this country are used have no direct effect upon me, I still see them as a reflection of my identity. And sometimes I like the way my identity as an American is being reflected and other times I don't. To put it in an even more pointed way, there are actions and policies enacted in the name of America that make me a proud citizen of this nation, and others that at times leave me feeling deeply disappointed if not ashamed.
This gets me to another of my values. I value being a citizen of a country that is respected and that commands a certain kind of moral authority in the greater global community. That respect and authority, while still in evidence, have been greatly eroded in recent years, due in no small measure to our horribly ill-advised war in Iraq. I'm looking for a President who will not only seek and carry forth the quickest and most suitable end to our military involvement in that country, but who will also restore our moral standing as a nation, a standing that has been severely compromised and diminished rather than enhanced in the past 5-6 years.
I value the security of this nation. I value being able to live in peace and security in a safe and well protected country. I will vote for a President whom I feel will best protect our national interest and national defense; and who also gets it that our national interest and our national defense are not advanced by a you're-with-us-or-against-us stance towards rest of the world. I believe that our national security is of one piece with our overall standing in the community of nations. I'll vote for a President whom I feel will best enhance that standing.
Returning for a moment to what I said about valuing my own well being and that of my family, I know that these are stressful times even for those of us who lead reasonably well protected lives. The last few weeks of high financial anxiety and uncertainty have certainly underscored that. But I also know this: I know I go to bed each night in a safe and warm bed and home; and on most evenings with a fuller stomach than - for the sake of my own health - I should have. I know if I get sick or have a serious accident I can get the care I need. I've got all the proper cards in my wallet to assure me of that. I don't have to get up in the morning with much anxiety about these basic kinds of things. I generally have enough other things to be anxious about, but not my basic survival needs.
I know, however, that I'm a citizen of a nation where a number of my fellow citizens arise each day with these very kinds of survival issues staring them in the face. Realizing, as I do, that there is no single one-size-fits-all cure for our many social ills and failings - in either the public or private sectors - I still value being a citizen of a nation that uses it's resources and its bounty is as wise and just a way as it can to attend to such basic human needs. I value being a citizen of a nation that provides the opportunity for any rightly motivated person to participate in the fullness and the blessings that a society such as ours can offer. When I look all up and down the ballot that will be in front of me on Tuesday I will vote for those persons - from President on down - whom I feel will best and most wisely use the bountiful resources of this nation in ways that will strengthen us all by attending to the needs of those whom Jesus called "the least of these."
What it comes down to is pretty simple really. I value those things that make me a proud citizen of this country. I desire leadership that will enhance that sense of pride. I vote my values by choosing persons whom I feel will continue the unfinished work of removing the barriers and stigmas - be they of race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnic background - that impede persons from their full and accepted participation in the life of our country.
I value and celebrate the many positive attributes and achievements in the course of our nation's history that have brought us closer to the "more perfect union" that our founders envisioned and wrote into the language of the Constitution. I equally value the opportunity and the challenge to attend to our still unfinished business and to our broken and unhealed places. I do not expect any one office holder - President or otherwise - to fix all that ails us. What I do look for is leadership that will call us to our better selves, to what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature," so that we will each and all feel we have a common stake, a common share, in the well being of this nation.
Leadership is not just about getting things done - necessary as that is. It's also about getting others to believe in how they can get things done that will ultimately promote and benefit the common good. I will vote for those whom I feel are best positioned and disposed to offer that kind of leadership.
I'll end with this. Come Wednesday morning I - like many of you - will be either joyful or disappointed. And I do not presume that joy or disappointment, come Wednesday, will be the same for each one of us. I just know that we'll all still be here, and this land of ours will still be here - with all of its beauty and all of its blemishes. When it comes to the bond I feel with this country, of which I've now been a citizen for over six decades, I'm aware that as much as I care, so very deeply, about who will lead us in the political arena, it is our writers and poets and troubadours that I primarily look to when I really need to feel that positive bond. (If I read enough of Larry McMurtry, for example, I can even develop nice warm feelings about Texas!)
The America I feel the closest to is the one Jack Kerouac, at the conclusion of On the Road, describes as the place where "the sun goes down and I sit on [an] old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies...and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it..." a land, as he goes on to describe it, where "the evening star is drooping and spreading her sparkler dims on the prairie which is just before the coming of the complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in..."
I feel a kinship with Woody Guthrie when he writes and sings, "This land I'll defend with my life if need be, but my pastures of plenty must always be free..." because, after all, "this land was made for you and me." And I resonate with the late Steve Goodman - by way of Arlo Guthrie - when he asks, "Good morning America, how are you? Don't you know me, I'm your native son?"
I do not expect anyone whom I might help elect to provide me with a love of this land. I have to find that for myself. But I do expect that such persons, as I might help elect, will at least do their part in giving me a country I can value and feel pride in.
"What is politics if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people?" I ask that you take these words of Bob Edgar's to heart on Tuesday, and in the days thereafter. Examine your values closely, and even though you know that their full realization does not fully lie in the realm of electoral politics, you can still vote in accordance with them.
And if we are not fully united in those for whom we will cast a ballot, we can here be united our voices as we sing, "We Would Be One."
Stephen Edington
November 2, 2008
