Rev. Linda Simmons

Politics & Religion

Nov. 2, 2014

Elections are on Tuesday and democratic control of the United States Senate hangs in the balance. With the Republicans already in the majority in the House of Representatives, for us as people of a liberal religion that support dignity, interconnection, justice, and compassion- preaching about politics and religion seemed necessary.

I started out wanting to say: Our voices as liberal religious people matter and should be spoken in the public square to draw back the tide of the ultra conservative agenda that is defining the terms of the moral debate right now.

And then I asked myself, What is it to be liberal? That seemed answerable but much more difficult and often unpleasant was, What does it mean to be a religious and am I religious? Are we?

Let’s begin with a picture of the US Senate on Friday, July 13, 2007 when an opening prayer given by a Hindu was disrupted by people screaming from the visitors’ gallery that one will honor no god but Christ. Invited by the Senate to offer Hindu prayers in place of the usual Christian invocation, Rajan Zed, a Hindu priest from Reno, Nevada, had just stepped up to the podium for the landmark occasion when three protesters, said to belong to the Christian Right Operation Save America, interrupted him by loudly asking for God’s forgiveness for allowing the ”false prayer” of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.

“Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight,” the first protester shouted. “This is an abomination. We shall have no other gods before You.” Democratic Senator Bob Casey, who was serving as the presiding officer for the morning, immediately asked the sergeant-at-arms to restore order. But they continued to protest as they were headed out the door by the marshals, shouting, “No Lord but Jesus Christ!” and “There’s only one true God!”

Religion is part of politics and it always has been.

President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair used their own faith understanding to suggest that a new "liberation" of Iraq from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was not only necessary but willed by God and the values of Western civilization.

Religion is part of politics.

In his inaugural address on January 20, 1961 John F. Kennedy begins:

“We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end as well as a beginning—signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and to abolish all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still our issues around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

Religion is part of politics.

Washington in his First Inaugural Address of 30 April 1789 said that "every step by which we have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency."

These covenants bind the people together in hope of social peace and economic prosperity, but more fundamentally, they bind the nation to the sovereign God who promises favor on the condition that the people manifest a spirit of fraternity and a love of righteousness.

Religion and politics have long been in bed together and the unspoken truth is that if a presidential candidate is not Christian, he or she is unworthy of making moral decisions. Note the press about President Obama being Muslim or Mitt Romney being Mormon.

The moral underpinnings of our society are based on religious constructs that some, like Robert Bellah in his book Broken Covenant, American Civil Religion Time of Trial, say are based on a universal Christianity that he calls a Civic Religion. This includes the precepts of the rightness of social welfare, the principles of simplicity, giving, advocating for those who cannot advocate for themselves.

But as we have seen time and time again in the issues of gay marriage, the sale of and access to birth control, health care access, prayer in schools, the blocking of building mosques in various neighborhoods, this so called Universal Christianity is more particular and sectarians than it ever was universal.

Some have suggested that we need to bring our voices as religious liberals to the public square, that our religiosity as dissenters, radicals, intellectuals, artists, and rabble rousers needs to be given air time.

Before I tackle this one, let’s look for a minute at the terms religious and political.

Thomas Helm in his article, The Warp of Piety the Woof of Politics: America Civil Religion suggests that the criteria for naming something as religious or not is whether or not there is an agreement in something that is transcendent.

Do we live as Unitarian Universalists within this definition? Transcendent from a theological perspective means: going beyond ordinary limits, time, space, place.

What transcendent reality do we all agree exists here, right now, between us? I think it is this something we name and lean into every time we come together. We know that when we are together, when we come together in covenanted community that there is something that happens between us that is bigger than anyone of us individually. Call that community, but it is more than community. It is committed community. Call that camaraderie but it is more than camaraderie, it is good feeling and fellowship and yet it stays with us when we disagree, when we want to walk out, when we feel our needs are no longer met here.

It is deeper than our reaction to the community. It is something that lives within the fibers of this committed community itself that gathers to know ourselves better, that gathers to know the world, to be part of the world and to yet not be convinced by it all. To keep our doubt healthy, our suspicion alive, our right to dissent awake.

In this way, in the way of our ancestors who fought for dignity and justice for those whose voices could not be heard, I call us today a liberal religious people even as my hackles go up and the rebel within me pushes against the word religious.

UU theologian Paul Rasor in his book, Reclaiming Prophetic Witness: Liberal Religion in the Public Square writes about why we struggle so much with the word religious as liberals :

Religious liberals today may also be reluctant to speak religiously in public contexts because they don’t want to seem “too religious.” Over the past quarter century, the most visible and vocal religious groups in the United States have been those of the religious right. Many of these groups aggressively link conservative or fundamentalist theologies to conservative political agendas that liberals rightly perceive as creating threats to basic liberties, including religious liberty. Religious liberals can all too easily buy into the widespread but erroneous assumption that if you’re religious, you must be conservative. Religious liberals understandably want to avoid being perceived as conservative, so they keep quiet about their faith...

And yet, what is lost when we as religious liberals do not name our voices as those steeped in our tradition of Unitarian Universalism, as those honed in the kiln of congregation and commitment, as those that insist on certain principles and visions being accessible and available to all? What is lost is the moral agenda to those that do not fear the term religious and who use it to deny access, rights, and accountability.

I think of our liberal religious ancestors and their work:

Theodore Parker who preached with a gun in the pulpit least someone come to take the fugitive slaves he was providing sanctuary for, John Haynes Holmes who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, and also the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920, which he later chaired. Horace Mann who started the public education system, Dorothea Dix who advocated for those labeled insane and created the first asylums to house and treat these folk, Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, all Unitarian or universalist.

All of these people brought the principles of Unitarian and/or Universalism: love, the mandate to help those who have less, the understanding that our principles lead us into not away from engagement, and culture. We are bound together by our principles and sources and by our historic commitment to uphold the rights of others less powerful or privileged than we. We have been prophets, stood in the face of persecution and torture and hypocrisy and protected others who did the same.

As UU minister Mitra Rahnema writes,

We as religious liberals who gather have a responsibility. There is no other institution that has the history and authority and is charged and empowered to give attention to humane and ethical demands. Science has struggled with the moral lines, academia tries to point out the areas of concern but spends more time informing than teaching how to chose wisely between actions. We are the place where the conscience and the common good can and must dialogue.

We must make religious commitments to each other that include what we think about the pressing social issues of our times, that include a commitment in all the incomplete and inadequate and yet relevant ways that we can to affirm to each other and the world that we as religious liberals still have a voice that must be reckoned with.

If we do not have a theological stance for our positions, why should we be taken seriously as a religious body fighting an unjust cause? We refuse to differentiate ourselves by using the language that gives us our very unique, open, non-creedal, humane and humanizing tenets that we all hold so dear.

I look at what is happening right now to the voting rights of our most vulnerable citizens. According the Huffington Post, in Texas this week,

A disabled woman in Travis County was turned away from voting because she couldn’t afford to pay her parking tickets. An IHOP dishwasher from Mercedes can’t afford the cost of getting a new birth certificate, which he would need to obtain the special photo ID card required for voting. A student at a historically black college in Marshall, who registered some of her fellow students to vote, won't be able to cast a ballot herself because her driver's license isn't from Texas and the state wouldn't accept her student identification card.

An estimated 700,000 young minority voters could be barred from voting in November because of photo ID laws passed across the country in recent years, according to a new study.

The number of minority voters under the age of 30 likely to be disenfranchised by these new voting laws -- passed overwhelmingly by Republican-led legislatures across the country -- is a conservative estimate, according to the study's authors. The actual number of voters in that category who could be disenfranchised is probably closer to 1 million, they said.

How do we respond to this?

What if when this subject came up at a dinner table, café, walk on the moors we were able to say:

As a Unitarian Universalist who affirms just communities, access, dignity, the right of representation for all, I find this behavior politically, morally and ethically unsound.

Religious liberalism has a deep grounding in political philosophy, constitutional law and international human rights. Our very history is a core presence in these disciplines. The public expression of this relationship adds moral weight to our arguments.

We need to speak up so that people know there is another religious perspective alive and well in our world.

I heard a story the other day about our island in the 1800s when an islander imported a two-seater horse and buggy to entice the folks here to change from their 1 seaters. The folk ran him out of town for the boastfulness and ostentatiousness of such a display. Quoted from In Search of a Simple Life by David E. Shi, “This piece of extravagant and unknown luxury almost caused schism, and set every tongue a-going; some predicted the approaching ruin of those families that had imported them: others feared the dangers of example; never since the foundation of the town had there happened any thing which so much alarmed this community....."

Another story I heard was about why so many of the homes here do not have entrance ways leading up to the front but rather those that come along the sides. It was thought to be presumptuous to enter a home straight on, sashaying right up to the front.

Our island roots of modesty, unwillingness to draw too much attention to ourselves, and our humble way of presenting ourselves to each other the world as islanders is one that I hold very dear.

But modesty does not mean that we cannot stand strong against exclusion, racism, homophobia and classism. I think it means that we stand there not as individuals,

not as self made people who do not name or claim our liberal religious roots but as people hewn in the fires of history, time, and resistance.

We trace Unitarianism back to 325 and the Council of Nicea when the Arians argues against the prevailing argument that Jesus and God were equal. They became the hunted.

To stand in our roots as Unitarian Universalists and say the words that connect us to justice making for all, to dare to stand inside of these religious bones at this time, is in keeping with our island modesty. To claim our historic consciousness, to claim ourselves within it, not here inside of these thoughts and responses because we are intelligent individuals but because we are connected members of a historical position, connected through those who fought before us and through each other here and now, is to refuse to come up the front walk as if we matter so much that someone must acknowledge us before others. It is to come quietly in the side, having arrived on our one-seater buggies, and enter the conversation as those who know that what we have to say and how we said it has come to and through us in part, in large part, by our commitment to this tradition, this faith, this religion.