Rev. Mark Lukens
Sermon delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at
Shelter Rock on
July 20, 2003
Voices of Faith in the
Public Square
Let me thank you for
having me here this morning, though I have to admit that for a
Protestant preacher there are a number of challenges inherent in
preaching, or should I say speaking to a congregation of
Unitarians. A Unitarian Universalist colleague once told me that he just
had to get used to the fact that no matter what he said, a third of the
congregation was offended. My
first thought, of course was, “Only a 3rd? I can usually
offend a good half of my own congregation with a decent Sunday Sermon.
Still, bridging the gaps between traditions, even related ones, is never
a simple or easy task. It requires not only translation, but also a
careful examination of one’s own presuppositions and search for the
core truths and a language that will communicate them in ways that
transcend rather than reinforce the barriers that inevitably arise
between us as people of different religious traditions. Preparing to
speak here today required me to engage those core truths of my own
Christian faith in dialogue with what little I know about this faith
community. To recognize convergences and respect, even embrace
divergences, and to find a meeting place of shared values and hopefully,
shared commitment exemplified in my tradition in the Pentecost message
of truth that at once encompass and transcends language and culture,
doctrine and dogma, without pretending that they are not there, or are
not important and, which serves a the cause of a blessed community of
many languages, in the same voice, one spirit with many faces. It can be
a frustrating, even dangerous task, but it is an important and necessary
one if we are to live together, affirming by that common life, our hope,
and our trust in that Spirit that binds humanity as members of one
family; each of us unique in gifts but the same in worth and dignity.
And this, I dare say, is indeed a witness we are called, all of us, to
bear not just in private, or within our individual houses of worship but
in every aspect of our lives-public and private. What else, after all,
is faith about?
A faith that doesn’t challenge us, that doesn’t drive us out
into the world seeking communion, justice, reconciliation, new creation-
what sort of faith is that?” Faith works and strives, seeks community,
lifts up the value of human liberty and dignity, inspires us, impels us
out of our comfort zones, impels us to speak when others are silent, to
listen when others are turning away, or it is not a faith worth having
no matter what religious or philosophical tradition it claims.
Yet, an assault is underway on that kind of faith right here in
America
as well as on the ideas as well as the institutions it has brought
forth. The parameters of our public life that were once givens, the
aspirations that formed that the basis of our national community as
imperfect as they were, no longer seem to apply. The social contract as
we once knew it has broken down and consensus, even about the most basic
values, can no longer be assumed. Indeed, the pace of change itself has
become so rapid that we lack the ability to absorb it, let alone
evaluate it and the threat of violence and immanent destruction so
overwhelming, that faith and hope are giving way to a pandemic of fear,
tribalism and, ultimately, despair. Like disillusioned pre-adolescent
children faced with the reality of their parents’ all –too-human
feet of clay, we find ourselves feeling frightened, betrayed and angry.
There is a great temptation to wax nostalgically and perhaps a bit
self-righteously about our lost virtue and the days when we believed
that there were leaders who told the truth, institutions that were true
to their purpose. When the most important decisions in our collective
lives were based on something more than a 30 second commercial, and
orange alert, or an unquestioning allegiance to a special interest group
or tribe, be it religious, political or economic class. At times, I
confess, I find myself thinking wistfully and enviously of
by-gone times when it seemed that pastors were in the forefront in the
great struggles for civil rights, for peace and human dignity rather
than in the struggles for cultural domination, tribal privilege and
dogmatic conformity, or worse, frightened or indifferent silence as so
many of us are today. These are not the behavior of people of faith, but
rather of a culture of fear. We see it in the explosion of
fundamentalism in nearly every one of the world’s great religions from
Christianity, to Islam, to Judaism to Buddhism. In new institutions like
the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, the Bureau of Homeland Security,
and in legislations such as the Care Act, and other laws designed to
enshrine Christian fundamentalism as the American civil religion,
threatening the very liberties that have made this the most vitally
religious nation in the world. We see it in the movement toward
mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws that have made the freest
nation into the world, it leading jailor. And, perhaps most obviously,
we see it in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy of September 11th
, particularly with respect to the rush to passage of the Patriot
Act, and the Domestic Security Enhancement Act or Patriot II, which
authorize wholesale deportations, domestic survelliance without probable
cause and which effectively
eliminate not only the right to privacy, but also to due process, to
counsel, while allowing for indefinite imprisonment without charge even
for American citizens, the government at its own discretion, deems a
terrorist.
As the world hurtles
onward, seemingly without any input from us, as the alerts go from
orange to yellow and back again. As unspecified terrorist threats are
announced on the national media by the newly formed Bureau of Homeland
Security, a ministry of fear for this new age of terror. As soldiers
patrol our public places and our Muslim neighbors are taken away to who
know where for who knows how long, the fear level increases as does the
impulse is to strike out at these unknown and uncertain threats; to seek
some kind of control, some kind of safety; to retreat into our tribes
and perhaps to re-discover comforting myths and stereotypes that make them
the problem and us the victim.
We are told that there is no place for the luxury of liberty
anymore: it’s too scary, too dangerous. It requires us to risk the
punishment of the guilty, in favor of protection of the innocent. To
engage with those whose core truths are spoken in words we do not
understand, to risk a challenge to our own comfort intellectually,
spiritually, even physically, rather than send the children of the poor
to risk theirs on foreign battlefields in our stead. We no longer, it
seems, have the luxury of opinions, rather we are called to take sides.
Good and evil, us and them. The rhetorical overkill that has come to
substitute for public discourse allows no nuance, no subtlety, no shades
of gray, no neutrality- it’s all or nothing, for us or against us and
nothing in between. The apocalyptic religious language of the
president’s speeches since September 11th leaves no room
for doubt that we, just as surely as Al-Qaeda and their ilk, are engaged
in the religio-political battle of Armageddon. A battle in which even
God is required to choose sides; with the “enemies of freedom” or
Operation Enduring Freedom: with God’s own nation, or the evil-doers.
You see, there is no place for a loyal opposition at Armageddon. There
is only the sword of righteousness and the deranged devotees of an
anti-human, malevolent god who must be ruthlessly stamped out in order
to preserve virtue, prosperity and freedom. Absolute unity is demanded
in purpose and in viewpoint. You must be for us, or you are against us.
Any concession, any notion of shared responsibility, even the most basic
elements of the faith the President and his staff purport to observe,
mercy, compassion, hospitality are compromises with absolute evil, and a
betrayal of the tribe….and if when the President speaks in such
terms…. Rest assured that there are millions of people, in this
country and abroad… who understand exactly what he is talking
about…
And they rejoice
in his words as well as his deeds, and understandably so, because they
speak directly to our feelings of powerlessness, our anger and our fear.
They affirm us in our way of life and relieve us of responsibility for
the consequences of our own behavior, as well as of the ethical and
social obligations of our respective faiths. We are in a war, we are
told, with an unspeakable, unappeasable evil. Critical introspection, an
insistence on such things as due process and civil liberties, especially
with respect for those who look like them, worship like them, speak with
and for them is tantamount to treason, a deal with the devil. Fear is
like that, give it a chance and it demands ultimate allegiance. It
allows the president to speak not only for the nation, but for God as
well. Fear crowds out responsibility and principles. It crowds out
community, and compassion; faith and ultimately, hope. In its voracious
urgency fear crowds out our humanity itself as it pulls us in to a cult
of patriotism and triumphalism not unlike that seen in fundamental
religio-political states of the so-called “Axis of Evil.” All in our
name, as Americans, and as people of faith.
And so we must decide, if
we are to hold fast to the core values & ideals of freedom and human
community whatever our religion or political affiliation, we are called
by who we are and what we believe, to take a stand. A stand that
recognizes that the greatest threat to our cherished beliefs and
traditions of a blessed and free society are not from those crashing
airplanes into buildings, as unspeakable as those acts were and are, but
rather, it is our own fear, made public policy and even law in an
assault on the foundational principles of this nation, the rights to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, suspendable now, for
citizens and non-citizens alike in the ubiquitous and insidious name of
national security. How soon we forget the words of Ben Franklin who said
that “those who were willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a
little bit of security, deserve neither liberty nor security.”
Freedom, you see, is not one thing, or a good thing; it is everything.
Without freedom there can be no
America
; and frankly, there can be no genuine faith, religious or otherwise.
It is in the face of these
realities that our principles and our beliefs are put to the ultimate
test. As People of reconciling and hopeful faith, whether it be liberal
or evangelical, religious or philosophical, whether we be true
conservatives or true progressives, theists or atheists, all of us who
seek to remain true to the vision of faith, hope and redemptive
possibilities that are integral to our lives as a community of free
people must make our voices heard. For our voices and our message of
human liberation are needed now, perhaps more than ever. As the
existentialist Jean Paul Sartre once said, we are ultimately responsible
for our freedom- and indeed we are. It is our sins, by
omission or commission that have brought us to this place, our
acquiescence to the politics of the tribe, our silent complicity that
has allowed the purveyors of fear to appropriate our civil and religious
language and life and twist them into banners for their own agendas,
turned religious faith into a synonym for narrow-mindedness and hate,
our national flag into a banner of economic exploitation and imperialism
and our love of our country into political conformity and even blind
obedience. For too long we have kept our silence for fear of upsetting
our neighbors or our congregations, afraid of being labeled
anti-religious or un-American or worse yet, “liberal.” Now is the
time. Now is the time for religious leaders who have maintained a
deafening silence from our pulpits to stop hiding behind a misguided and
convenient justification of respecting all opinions by challenging none.
Now is the time for all of us, as people of faith and conscience to
raise our voices in challenge to those who would claim that we can have
community only if we all agree, brotherhood only with those who are like
us, security only if we sacrifice our freedom. Now is the time, now,
even as those who have surrendered conscience and morality to the will
of the tribe continue to trumpet their message of endless war. Now more
than ever, we need to re-commit, with renewed vigor to the task of
separating the rhetoric of fear from the core truths, the pillars of
every one of the world’s great traditions, religious and secular,
including, our course, our own, and to stand tall in the public square,
speaking from those principles and insisting on a society that can
respect what is not shared, even as it affirms a common commitment to
what is: the dignity and the intrinsic value of every and all human life
and the inalienable rights integral to that dignity and value, the
brotherhood of humanity and the redemptive possibilities for the future
that are its promise. Without civil liberties, there can be no justice,
no civic life, without freedom of conscience there can be no real faith,
no creativity, no community, no future. e must decide what we really
believe, what our country and our world will be about, faith or fear.
Unitarians have long recognized the common community of all humanity and
the redemptive possibilities of human freedom. Your voice and your moral
courage are needed now, perhaps as much as they have ever been.
We can do it- together. We
can and we must join with people of faith and conscience from every
tradition, to confront the attack on civil liberties because it is an
outright assault at the heart and soul of our faith, our community and
our nation. We can and we must be voices of hope; courageous in our
certainty that love and the hunger for freedom are ultimately stronger
than hatred and fear.
Liberty
and dignity cannot be taken from us, not by terrorists, by any other
external boogey man- only our fear and our passivity can destroy them,
if we allow it. Let us then, bear witness for faith rather than fear.
This is our community, our nation -still a place of possibility, a
beacon of hope. This place, this community, this country, this world are
our responsibility- the home of our hearts and the temple of our
spirits. They need us now with all of our languages, and all of our
faith. If not us- then who? If not now, when?
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