Rev. Steve EdingtonWhose Moral Values? A Post Election Reflection

Sermon by Steve Edington
November 14, 2004

Reading:

The biggest moral value of all was on display in a parking lot. Five cars, four of them SUVs, were clustered together. All of them had the yellow ribbon magnet in support of our troops in Iraq. Circled by fallen leaves, the hulks were an impenetrable metallic forest resting on asphalt soil. This forest spoke as powerfully about our moral values as the debate over gay marriage and Iraq... This is the moral value that most threatens America. It is consuming itself with consumption...

The great Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson said in his 2002 book The Future of Life that if the rest of the world were to actually live like we do, it would take four planet Earths... Do we not invite more terrorism against the United States by entities who will increasingly say we are stealing their energy, food, air, and water? We all participate in this... Republican, Democrat, and independent, rich, middle class, and even a fair number of the poor...

This is an unsustainable [set of circumstances] for an unsustainable society. The biggest test of America's moral values is whether we and our leaders find the courage to say that liberty for all means liberating ourselves from materialism before it drives us mad and makes us a target for the world's next madman.

Derrick Jackson. "Materialistic Madness." The Boston Globe, November 12, 2004.

Growing up at the time and in the place that I did has given me certain historical, cultural, and political perspectives that I've shared with you from time to time. With your forbearance I have another one for today. I remember what I'll call the "At Least You Don't Have to Live with Them" tactic that some politicians in my part of the world in the 1950s and early 60s put to pretty effective use. The "them" being referred to were African Americans. The polite company term then was "coloreds." The message in this tactic, which was primarily directed towards working class white folks who were usually struggling just to make ends meet, went something like this: Your lot in life may not be all that great, you're not sure how well you can provide for your kids, the house you live in is in disrepair and is too small for your family, and economically speaking all you have to look forward to is pretty much more of the same; but by gosh and by golly at least you're not going to have colored people living in your neighborhood or going to school with your kids - because that kind of thing, after all, would upset the moral order of things. The next thing you know they'll be marrying your sisters and daughters.

I witnessed political careers launched with this tactic. Interestingly enough, one of those careers was that of Robert C. Byrd, the Senior Senator from West Virginia and now senior member of the United States Senate itself. My one time Senator has come a long way since those days, and I admire him for that, and for his willingness to correct the errors of his earlier ways. But as much of a political liberal hero as he became in his opposition to the Iraqi War, I do remember his hard fought, but ultimately unsuccessful attempt, to defeat the 1964 Civil Rights Bill when it was before the United States Senate 40 years ago. The young, at that time, Senator knew his constituency, who were largely hard working, plain living, southern Appalachian white people who really felt that some kind of moral order would be upset if "race mixin'", as it was called, was allowed to happen. The young Senator played well to that constituency, who saw him as protecting them against some kind of moral decay in the body politic.

Those days may well be gone but there seems to be a 2004 version of that same sad and sorry game and tactic afoot. It goes something like this: My employment situation may be precarious, my health care benefits may be woefully inadequate, my elderly father or mother can't afford the prescription drugs they need unless they can somehow purchase them via Canada, and my son or daughter might end up getting killed in Iraq; but by gosh and by golly at least I don't have to live in a country where gay people can get married. That, after all, would upset the moral order of things.

No, I do not believe the recently completed Presidential election turned on any one particular issue, be it same-sex marriage or any other. I've seen some post-election vote analysis that does suggest that; and I've seen other analyses that refute the notion. That kind of dissection, interesting and useful as it may be to some, is not what I intend to do here this morning. We've had a very full service already today; and even if you're a political junkie you may be at the OD level when it comes to post-election commentary. But since the issue of moral values, and what they are and who can best uphold them did play an important role in the Presidential election, I did not want to let the matter pass by without at least some commentary on it.

I will acknowledge that in some sectors of our national electorate the term "moral values" did serve as a code phrase for mobilizing anti-same sex marriage and anti-abortion sentiment, but the issue itself is bigger than these matters. No society can operate by laws or by political processes alone. It cannot operate without such things, to be sure; but it also operates with an underlying sense of some commonly held moral values and precepts. And when it looks like that moral order is threatened, people get anxious. How realistic or rational the threat actually is comes to not even matter.

Those people who felt that some moral order would be undermined if the races were allowed to intermingle were not bad, or even irrational people, for the most part. They just had a view, however misguided and misinformed, of how the world was supposed to work; and they wanted to make sure it kept working that way. By the same token, there is no rational reason to believe, or any that can be demonstrated, that if persons of the same sex can enter into a legal marriage, then some moral order will come crashing down. But if enough people - good, clean living, hard working people - believe that it will, then perception becomes reality, regardless of how much, or little, reality such a perception actually has. And playing to perceptions, whether they have any reality behind them is not, is hardly a new tactic when it come to electoral politics. It has been around as long as their have been political orders of any kind.

To reiterate what I just said, no society operates by laws and governance processes alone. It also operates with an underlying sense of certain widely held moral values and precepts. It is how those moral values and precepts are determined, and who sets the tone for them, that are crucial when it comes to the larger health and stability of a society or culture itself. The fact that Jerry Falwell would fully agree with those last two sentences - even though he may dismiss everything else I may have to say - does not detract from their truth. My topic, then, is "Whose Moral Values?"

I'll begin by noting that I pose the question as a liberal religious minister, to a liberal religious congregation who extends to me both the privilege and the blessing of being its religious and spiritual leader. While many of us, myself included, have strong political opinions and convictions which we strongly act upon, we in this community are not - in our basic essence - a political action committee or organization. As a liberal religious community we do seek to uphold and live out, among ourselves, a set of moral values, articulated in our Purposes and Principles, that we also believe would well serve the needs and aspirations of the larger world community. Our calling is to embody, to incarnate if you will, the beloved community we envision for humanity itself. We cannot save the world in its entirety. We can live and act in accordance with how we believe a "saved world" would look and behave, and work towards that end.

In acting in such a way, we cannot, of course, ignore the workings of the political world, but our concern should not primarily be whether or not we're on the "right side" of a particular political agenda, but rather whether we are on the right side of history. To explain what I mean by this I want to revisit the guidance I take from the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which I shared a few weeks ago. The man had his personal moral shortcomings, but his example of what it means to exercise moral leadership, and bring moral issues to bear, in a society like ours is, I believe, unparalleled in our nation's history - certainly in the 20th century anyway.

Dr. King's theology, his way of believing in God, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, was that of God as a Spiritual Force who acts in human history, and through human agents, to call and bring humanity itself to greater levels of justice, compassion, wholeness, and peace. Rev. King believed that the ongoing human journey was ultimately in the hands of Something or Someone greater than himself; and that his role was to participate in the journey towards greater human wholeness - and to call others to participate with him. Dr. King was fond of quoting the line of a hymn from his own African American spiritual tradition that said, "I know not what the future holds, but I know who holds the future."

I'm not out to sell you on the finer points of Martin Luther King's theology this morning - some of you may resonate with it and some not - but I believe we would do well to cultivate the world view and the perspective that comes out of that theology. And that is to believe that the moral values and principles and stances we seek to uphold in the present - whether they happen to flow in something called the "political mainstream" or not - are part of a larger journey toward human wholeness. Had Dr. King decided to wait until those issues of racial justice that burned within him, and within those who looked to him for leadership, had widespread political acceptance and viability, there would have been no civil rights movement. We are called, then, to participate in that larger journey towards human wholeness whose final fruition and fulfillment we may not see in our lifetimes, but whose fruition and fulfillment will be accomplished nonetheless. This is what it means, indeed, to live by faith, and to live as a faith community.

In the nearly two weeks that have passed since the election, the President of our UU Association, Rev. William Sinkford, has issued two statements, each of which has bearing on what I've been trying to share today. I want to offer portions of both. The first came on November 3 - the day after. It said, in part: "Today while so many celebrate and so many grieve I hope that Unitarian Universalists will hold fast to our calling. Few votes were cast yesterday without reservations of the heart. Our congregations need to be religious homes where the reality of joy and grief, certainty and uncertainty, can be present. In 1964 the Rev. Jack Mendelsohn wrote a book called "Being Liberal in an Illiberal Age." Today Jack reminded me that all ages are illiberal. And thus, in every age, it is the role of liberal religion to offer a Gospel of openness, of healing, and of hope. Our profession of faith is that the arc of the universe is long, but, with our commitment, it bends toward justice."

Then, this past Tuesday, as the "Moral Values" issue came to the fore, Rev. Sinkford had this to say, in his capacity as UUA President, in a statement to the National Press Club in Washington at a gathering of religious leaders:

"Moral values are not just particular opinions on 'hot button' topics in a divisive election year. Moral values grow out of our calling as religious people to work to create the Beloved Community. Moral values instruct us to 'love our neighbors as ourselves' and to always ask the question, 'Who is my neighbor?' They are fundamentally inclusive rather than exclusive, and they call on generosity of spirit rather than mean spiritedness. In this post election season let me express some of the moral values held dear by (many) in the Unitarian Universalist community:

Along with all that Bill Sinkford has to say, I want to go back to the piece by Derrick Jackson that I read earlier. The issue Mr. Jackson is raising is way too large to be contained within this sermon today. I will return to it at a later date. Briefly, however, I do believe, as he indicates, that the largest, and most overarching moral issue and question for Americans today is: Can we continue to live at the level of consumption we now occupy and still be a responsible member of the community of nations? If Harvard biologist, E.O. Wilson is correct (as cited by Mr. Jackson) that it would take the earthly resources of four planet Earths to sustain the livelihoods of the peoples of the world, if they were all living as we here do, then how long can such a situation remain tenable? This is a matter that will not be adequately resolved in any of our lifetimes. But if some of us do not begin to take that long view, again, then I feel Mr. Jackson is right in saying that the ultimate outcome of this set of circumstances will be "massive wars by humans over scarce resources."

Can we live as a human family over the span of human history? This, indeed, is the biggest human moral question and issue of them all. It is not one I expect any elected leader to solve in the course of an administration or two. But it is one for persons of faith to at least begin chipping away at. If this huge journey of a thousand, if not a million, miles begins with even the smallest of steps then let's take at least some of those small steps. We can help to see that Central American coffee growers get a fair price for their product. We can help to see that the persons in 32 mostly third world countries get a fair price for the work of their creative hands through the 10,000 Villages program. We can at least take these, and other, small steps - and inch that moral arc of the universe just a little further in the direction of the justice towards which it ultimately bends.

I'll move to a close with this: A few days after the election I was having some e-mail correspondence with an acquaintance of mine in London who edits a magazine I occasionally write for when I put on my "Beat Generation" writer/researcher/aficionado hat. After I'd dealt with some magazine business I needed to cover with him, I embarked upon an extended rant of my post-November 2nd sentiments. I guess I needed to work it out of my system, and I figured someone in another country some 3000 miles away would be as good a dumping ground as any. Given his own leanings and sentiments my friend was quite sympathetic, but at the end of his e-mail reply to me he said, "Look, just do good wherever you can."

It may be a bit of a stretch for me to extrapolate from these words from a British friend of mine what many of the people of the world are looking for, and wanting from, the American people; but I'll make the stretch anyway. Persons in various other parts of the world may not understand our political system and processes, and the outcomes they produce, but I still think they look to us - we rank and file citizens who care about our country and our world - to "do good where we can." Its not so much to ask of us, really, if we'll just do it.

It would be foolish and naïve to deny that there are serious social, cultural, and religious divisions amongst us as a nation right now because those divisions clearly exist. But it would also be a mistake to overplay those differences. We are not, to use the current color metaphor, a nation of starkly, and exclusively, red or blue states. If you break out, or break down, that color metaphor further throughout the cities, towns, communities, and counties that make up this land you see much more of a blend of the blue and the red going clear across this land. All we can do is be in that blend, seeking, and acting upon, ways to do good where we can. All we can do is be in that blend, living out the moral values we hold dear, in the faith and in the hope, that we are advancing that journey towards greater human justice and wholeness and not impeding or reversing it; and that we are being care-full rather than care-less with this fragile planet we've been given to live on. This is all we can do - and we can hope and pray that it will be enough.

I give thanks for a religious community like the one we have here, and to which we have welcomed new members this morning. It's imperfect, to be sure, as all human communities are; and yet it is one in which we seek to move our lives towards greater spiritual depth for ourselves, and towards a greater commitment to the common, human good for all. So let us re-commit and re-dedicate ourselves to the care of this community on this day and in our days ahead together. We need one another, and we need to be attending to a world that beckons us to do good where we can.

Stephen D. Edington
November 14, 2004

Copyright © 2004 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.