ClergyLuncheon2005

        Dr. Martin Luther King once said “We shall have to repent in this generation not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” I believe that those words are as meaningful today as they were then. Perhaps more so, because while the road this nation traveled then was hard and bloody, it was a path to the light of liberty and hope and human dignity. It was a movement that empowered and affirmed the very best values and highest aspirations of this nation. It was rooted in the values of the many religious and secular leaders who walked with King: ministers, rabbis, imams, priests, theists and atheists, diverse in their beliefs but united in their commitment to the realization of those unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that our founders understood as absolute and inviolable.

I don’t think we can say that today. Not when the self-appointed spokesmen for faith and morality are cut from the same cloth as those who condemned Dr. King. Not when the Frists and the Falwells have usurped the place of the Kennedys and the Kings. Not when he constitutional guarantees King fought to realize are being undermined in the name of security; and certainly not when our national life and respective faiths, religious and secular, especially the great western religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, are being hijacked by purveyors of rigid religio-political-fundamentalisms and their creeds of blind allegiance to the agendas of those who twist them into weapons of intolerance, hatred and nihilism

            I read a quote recently from a best selling book in which the author claims that “moderate religious voices are no longer relevant...” because, the author opines, they have nothing important to say, and because no one is listening anymore. I hear otherwise thoughtful, intelligent people using words like “evangelical” and Christian, even “religious” as synonyms for intolerant, ignorant, bigoted. And we can look at any of our respective faiths, especially the Abrahamic faiths and hear similar things, at least to some degree. Though I don’t agree with these views, I am sorry to say I understand them. Not just because the language and the symbols of religious faith have been appropriated in support of cynical political agendas of cultural and even international domination, abuses of governmental power, and the gutting of the Bill of Rights, and not just because merchants of hate and fear have stepped up to claim the mantle of faith. But just as importantly, because too many of us have stood by in virtual silence, dithering among ourselves about what we can and cannot say, who might or might not be offended, all the while rendering ourselves irrelevant while the battle rages just outside our doors. And our faiths, as well as our national aspirations and founding principles are being re-defined in frightening and destructive new ways. I don’t agree with the right on very much, but I do agree with them on this: we are engaged on a moral and spiritual battle every bit as much as a political one. A fight for the soul of our nation as well as our faiths, for the unalienable rights outlined in our founding documents, to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for all people, citizens and non-citizens alike and for the spirit of diversity and free expression that has made this nation the vital and powerful and faithful country that it is.

And we’re losing that battle, by default. In part because we have taken so long to wake up and realize we are in it. But we ARE in it whether we like it or not, and we have to decide right now, whether we will lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.  I hope, that the decision will be to lead; because that is the role we are called to. I hope the decision with be to join us in turning the tide because as late as it is, it is not too late. We can still learn, as the Psalmist said,  “to sing the Lord’s son in this foreign land...” we can still speak truth to power. We can overcome and we will overcome. Because, when all is said is done, we are on the side of the angels. We hold the high ground because we represent the best aspirations, the most genuine expression of humanity’s divine Spirit. We, not the right, are true to the determinative values of our faiths and philosophies and of our nation itself. And because we know what the Right does not: that faith is more powerful than fear, love is more powerful than hate, that hope is more attractive than despair and that compassion and reason are more genuine, more compelling expressions of our shared humanity than selfishness and ignorance, we hold the truth that our people, and our nation yearns to hear and we need to get out and spread the word. Do what we were called to do: speak what we know with courage and conviction. Comfort the afflicted yes, but also afflict the comfortable from our pulpits, with our pens, in editorial and e-mail and when necessary, out in the street.

            And we are not alone in this effort. There is a movement underway to mobilize progressive voices, both religious and secular. It is manifested in such groups as The Interfaith Alliance, and People For The American Way. In the Clergy Leadership Network, The Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives, in Faithful America and many others nationally and on a local level who are committed, as we must be, to human rights and human dignity. And we, my friends, as clergy as people of faith and conscience, we need to be an active and visible part of this movement. We need to stay connected to it and to one another. We need to walk together so that the moral voices of this generation will be there, as they have been in the past, offering a vision of a free, pluralistic and humanistic America, a blessed community where that which makes us unique, is as celebrated as that which we hold in common. We need to be what we as clergy were called to be, leaders who teach the great truths on which our society was founded, with our deeds and our example as well as our words. We need to LEAD, starting here and starting now. We need to show that we can be, and we ARE unified in a common commitment to a just and moral society in which the unalienable rights that our founders aspired to are realized for all people, the minority as well as for the majority, the powerless as well as the powerful, the meek as well as the mighty.

            Easy to say, I know, harder to do. Such leadership requires hard work, courage and sacrifice. It means that sometimes we stand up in our pulpits, grit our teeth and take a chance. It means that we use our interpretive and hermeneutic skills to show the way through the maze of double-think and into the light of faith and reason even when the myths are more comforting and more popular than the truth. It means we need to learn to stand the gaff, the inevitable outrage of the comfortable suddenly afflicted, and that we walk shoulder to shoulder in solidarity and respect without pretending we agree on matters of faith and doctrine and philosophy. It means that we remind ourselves and all who would listen as often as we need to that our cause is liberty, not conformity and that a free nation is one that affirms and celebrates what it cannot agree on as well as what it can. It means that we need to re-capture and re-frame the debate to include meaningful consideration of the genuine moral issues facing our nation and our congregations. Issues such as equality before the law of religious, racial and political minorities, justice for the poor, and a government that lives up to its responsibility to represent all the people, tell the truth, and act ethically instead of throwing away the lives of our young men and women for political or corporate gain. A government and a people that respect the lives of all the world’s people whether they are Iraqi or Afghani or Italian or American. It means that we insist that our citizens and non-citizens be valued for the human beings that they are, that we not be shamed as a nation by policies of torture, detention without charge or trial. It means that we fight for a society in which teenaged girls are encouraged to express their opinions in public schools without worrying about being detained or deported if they do.

These are not mere political positions; they are expressions of the core values of a just and free society. And it is our task as moral leaders, as priests and prophets and pastors to assert those core values. To let our people and our politicians know that we will accept nothing less- not for us and ours, not for anyone else; and that we, as evangelicals will stand for the rights of Humanists. That we, as Jews we will not look the other way while Muslims are terrorized and detained. That we, the privileged and the powerful, we will not allow the powerless and vulnerable to be abandoned. That we, as the majority will stand for the rights and dignity of the minority. That we, as citizens will not tolerate the persecution of immigrants, whether documented or not and that we, as religious Americans, will not allow our nation to become a theocracy no matter which religion it favors. And perhaps most importantly, that we will show up and speak up, as much as we can. That we are willing to march in the streets if necessary to make sure that they know that REVEREND Smith and Rabbi Jones and Imam Johnson are NOT going to go along to get along or stand by in silence while their faiths are reduced to shills for any political agenda or party or cause, no matter how righteous or noble.

            And most importantly of all, that we will do what we do best, what we are called to do. We will lead our congregations, and our communities to the truth with the courage of our convictions. We will search our sacred texts, screw our courage to the sticking post and we will raise these vital moral issues as often as necessary. Insisting as we do, that hospitality, concern for the poor and the vulnerable, freedom for all people, human dignity, human reason and justice for stranger as well as for our “own”, are, and must be, the ground on which we stand as people of faith, as Americans and as human beings. Nothing less will do.