We Are All Values Voters
Sermon by Steve Edington
November 5, 2006
Part of the sport of political punditry seems to involve coming up with catchy names for certain supposed blocs of political voters. Just using the designations of gender or race or income level or education gets the eyes glazing over in a hurry. Something catchier always seems to be needed to appeal to our ever shortening attention spans. So we got "soccer moms," and then it was "NASCAR dads," neither of which applied to me in any way that I could see. These two seemed to begat all kinds of other categories; and again, I couldn't fit myself into any of them. Among the latest ones I've heard - and I kid you not on this - is "Sex and the City Women." And I ain't going nowhere near that one!
Then, an election or two back, I believe it was, another category got lobbed over our cultural transom called "Values Voters." The first time I heard that one I thought: Well, someone has finally come up with a category for me. In every election in which I've cast a ballot, since I was old enough to vote, I've registered my vote on the basis of certain values I hold. Those values have changed over the course of my adult life, but I've always remained a values voter.
Upon closer inspection, however, I came to see that I had been bypassed once again. The term "values voter," in the political lexicon of the day, refers to those whose votes are primarily driven by a very narrow set of moral issues and in very morally narrow ways. These issues include opposition to abortion under almost any circumstances, as well as opposition to the teaching of evolution, or to same-sex marriage, or to stem cell research. We're talking, that is, about the usual array of bogeymen that the political and religious right point to with righteous alarm, and crank up their outrage machine over, whenever a supposed "political base" needs to be mobilized.
How well such a tactic will work this time around remains to be seen, especially since this alleged "Values Voter" base does not appear to be as firm or cohesive as in the past. I guess we'll know the outcome soon enough. I will acknowledge a kernel of truth - it's more than just a kernel of truth actually - contained in the term "values voters." It's one I've just suggested. When we citizens go to the polls we vote our values. Every single last one of us do, in fact. Just because the expression "values voter" has been hijacked by a certain segment of the political spectrum, does not mean that that segment has an exclusive claim to it. We are all values voters. The real question, and the one I want to spend some time exploring with you on this Sunday before a national election, is which values, whose values, and what kind of values will be driving the votes you'll cast in a couple of days.
As often seems to be the case with me, I need a little room to back up and make a run at this thing before I actually get into it - some soup and salad before the main course, so to speak.. Here's your salad for this morning: In preparing this sermon I went on the web and downloaded and printed off the section from the IRS' Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations that deals with what kinds of political activity ministers and religious organizations may and may not engage in if they wish to maintain their tax exempt status. I've got all five small print pages right here and cannot see where I, or we, have violated anything. I am precluded from endorsing a candidate from this pulpit according to this directive. I have no intention of doing so, even as I know that my political views and philosophy, both within and beyond this congregation, are not exactly classified information. I will play by the rules, just as I always have.
But here's what I resent: While one agency of our government, the Internal Revenue Service, is issuing forth its prohibitions about what ministers may or may not say and do when it comes to their engagement in the political arena; another agency within the current administration of this same government - an agency called the Office of Faith Based Initiatives - has been awarding, ostensibly anyway, "good works grants," over the past five years. The bulk of these grants are going to the very religious organizations that primarily cater to these so-called values voters. That is to say, some of the monies the IRS gathers can are being used to curry the present administration's favor with mostly rightward leaning religious organizations, even as this same agency is telling me what I can and cannot say from this pulpit. Okay - I just had to get that out of my system. I feel so much better now.
I'm building my thoughts for this morning around a line in Bob Edgar's book Middle Church. I've referred to it several times already this fall. Mr. Edgar is an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church and the Executive Secretary of the National Council of Churches. He also served in the United States House of Representatives for six terms. His book is a call to mainline, mainstream persons of faith to not abandon the political arena to the far religious right. The line that jumped up at me as I read his book was the one that says, "What is politics if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people?"
I'll repeat that: "What is politics if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people?" After a political campaign that is leaving me in need of a good long shower, I appreciate Mr. Edgar's reminder - coming as it does from a prominent religious leader and a former 12 year member of the United States Congress - that politics is really supposed to be a call to, and an expression of, our better and higher selves; instead of an exercise in catering to our baser selves.
The basic premise of the democratic principle itself, coming as it did out of the 18th century Enlightenment, was that the 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. It has taken us, in this country, nearly 200 years to more fully extend that principle to all of our rank and file citizens. But we have come a good ways with it from where we were when our Constitution was drafted, at which time only white men who owned property could vote.
One of the primary purposes, then, of having a democracy is so that people like you and me can bring our values to bear in the public arena. I'm going to spend the remainder of my time here sharing with you some of the values I'll be bringing with me when I vote on Tuesday. I do so as a way of encouraging you to examine and vote your values as well.
To start close to home, I value my own personal well being, and the well being of my family. I see nothing wrong with a vote that is driven, at least in part, by self-interest. This, too, is part of the democratic principle - that citizens have a voice in the decisions and policies that directly affect them, including the taxes they pay and the services and benefits available to them. As the date for the arrival of my first Social Security check and my Medicare eligibility get a bit closer I do think on these things. Attending to one's personal well being, then, is not a value to be dismissed.
But neither is it a value to be held up to the exclusion or to the diminishment of a number of other values. I carry an identity with me as I go to vote, an identity as a citizen of this country we call the United States of America. I value that identity. For all of the issues and concerns I have with some of the actions and policies undertaken by the powers that be in this country, I can no more deny my identity with it than I can with my gender, or my race, or my religion, or any of the other many and varied components that go into the mix that is me. This is why the ways in which the power and the might and the wealth of my country are exercised in the larger world is a values issue for me.
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 moral authority has been seriously eroded over the past three and a half years because of a needless war in which we've been engaged. I value, and I rejoice in, the hopes and the dreams and the promises of a life that's laid out before a young person coming into adulthood in America - a person like my 22 year old son, for example. This is why I am so deeply grieved and so deeply angered at the nearly 2800 lives of hopes and dreams and promises that have been forever lost due to this horribly ill-conceived enterprise. And I am deeply grieved and angered as well by all lives that have been lost or shattered in a war that never should have been.
I value the security of this nation. I value being able to peaceably live as a citizen in a safe and protected and well-respected country. And I will support any and all policies and persons whom I feel will truly promote these values. But I am of the opinion that our respect and our moral standing as a nation, which I deeply value, have been severely diminished rather than enhanced over the past three years. I will vote in ways that I believe, or at least hope, will in some measure restore these values.
Moving on, I said a few minutes ago that I value my own well being as well as that of my family. I'd like to expand upon that a bit now. Like many of you we in our household deal with our share of "middle-class squeeze" issues. Many of you know about them: Mortgage payments, tax bills, insurance premiums, college loans, gas in the tank - just go down the list - and then hopefully there's a little left over for a little enjoyment. I know it's challenging and frustrating trying to keep all those balls in the air.
I also know this: I know that when I wake up in the morning I'll be going back to bed that night in the same warm and comfortable place, unless I'm taking an extended trip on that day. I know I'll go to bed having probably eaten more than I should have or that's good for me in the course of the day. (My four food groups are chips, dip, ice cream, and cookies.) I know that if I get sick or have a serious accident or get a tooth-ache I can turn to a physician or a health care facility or a dentist who will take care of me. I've got all the proper cards in my wallet to guarantee me such care. I know that if a severe emergency should arise with any close member of my extended family anywhere in the country I could get there quickly enough if I had to.
I don't have to get up in the morning with any kind of anxiety about these things. I generally find I've got plenty enough other stuff to be anxious about on any given day, but it's not stuff that includes my basic survival needs. I can move through my day with the right kinds of props in place. I value those props, and I value even more the fact that I don't have to think much about them.
I also know that I'm a citizen of a nation where a number of my fellow citizens do get up every day with these kinds of survival issues right in their face because they do not have the props I often too easily assume. Realizing, as I do, that there is no single panacea for all of our social ills and failings - in either the public or private sectors - I nonetheless value being a citizen of a country that uses its resources in as wise and as best a way it can in attending to these basic kinds of human needs; and that provides the opportunities for any rightly motivated person to participate in the fullness and the blessings that a society such as ours can offer.
My vote will be driven in part by my choosing those whom I feel will best and most wisely use the bountiful resources of this nation to attend to the needs of those whom Jesus called "the least of these." Along this line, I've yet to encounter anyone - myself included - who likes to pay taxes, much less want them raised. But I also know that they are the price we pay for a civil, secure and compassionate society.
What it comes down to for me is pretty simple really. I value those things that make me proud to be a citizen of this country; and I seek ways of dealing with and mounting a challenge to those things that, as a citizen, disturb or anger me. I value, for example, being a part of a country where no stigma is attached or impediments presented to their full societal participation when it comes to a person's race or sexual orientation. I seek ways of confronting those stigmas and those impediments whenever and wherever they arise. I vote my values by supporting those persons whom I feel will keep striving to remove such stigmas and impediments. I value the many positive attributes and achievements of our country over the course of its history and into the present day; and I equally value the opportunity to speak to and attend to its still unfinished business and its still broken and unhealed places.
I know that when I get into my voting booth on Tuesday and see a list of names and party affiliations in front of me, that there will not be any one name or any single political party that will fully satisfy or fully embody the values I bring to the ballot I cast. I do not expect that. I will vote for those persons whose presence in office I believe will move us a little closer to those values, while also realizing that the work - in the language of our UU principles - of justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, and advancing the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all still remains in my hands and in your hands and in the hands of our like-minded fellow citizens.
As some of you know, I usually make one or two trips - by plane - back and forth across this country in the course of a year. Impatient person that I am, I do not enjoy sitting on a plane for any length of time at all. But I still get a kick out of just watching this vast land roll along - from sea to shining sea. I need to do this. However estranged I come to feel at times from how the wielders of power in our politically highest places act and behave, I need to see a land that can still touch me and reach me somewhere beyond the things that are done in its name that frustrate and alienate me. I still need to resonate with those familiar and often sung words of Woody Guthrie that "this land was made for you and me."
I do not expect anyone whom I might help elect to public office with my vote - however much I may like, admire, respect, and agree with that person - to provide me with a love of this land. I have to find that for myself. But I do expect of such persons, as I might help elect, that they at least do their part, even if it's only a small part, in giving me a country I can value and feel pride about.
"What is politics if not the highest expression of our moral feelings as a people?" I ask that you take these words of Mr. Edgar's to heart on Tuesday, and in all 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. It is because I like to look at the half full portion of the glass that I chose our closing hymn for today with its words that say,
"Our labor is our strength;
Our minds will win at length;
Our lives will find the ways
To live in peace and praise;
Our day is just beginning."
Stephen Edington
November 5, 2006
