Rally on October 10, 2004 at Hofstra University

Speaker: Rev. Mark Lukens 

 Thank you all, so much for coming. I can’t tell you how wonderful or how important it is to see you here. Showing up and getting involved, after all, are what freedom is all about. And let me not forget to thank our wonderful speakers and, of course, the Shepherd singers. Thank you for your wisdom and your courage, and for the hope and the determination you inspire.

Speaking of showing up, this past Friday was the deadline for voter registration in this state, so I hope you are all registered. This might be your last chance if certain parties have their way. Of course, that’s what this time of decision is really all about. Make no mistake about it, this IS the most important election in a generation, maybe even in a lifetime. What is at stake is much greater than who will be our president for the next four years. Rather, on November 2^nd, we will be declaring who we really are, what we really believe, and what kind of a nation we will be for decades, even generations to come. I will admit that I don’t agree with our president on very much, but I do agree with him on this: freedom is not free. It must be defended; in the ballot box, in the courts and sometimes in the streets. It must be constantly strengthened by dialogue, dissent and the free exchange of ideas, and it must be protected. From attackers, those that hijack airplanes and plant truck bombs, but also from those who would tear it down with legislation like the USA Patriot Act, and the Houses of worship Free speech protection Act, with over empowered bureaucracies like the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, and with policies of unilateral militarism and endless, apocalyptic war. I think the President is quite right when he calls himself a war president, but I believe he and his administration are waging a war of terror, rather than a war on terror, in which nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake. And it will be up to us, to people like you and me and others like us all over this great country to seize the day, cut through the smoke and spin and steer our nation through the shoals and shallows of this over-hyped, over –financed, under-substanced electoral process, to a place where we can once again begin to build on the progress made in generations past and toward the realizations of our foundational aspirations of liberty, justice and peace for all people in America and all over the world.

            It is no easy task that is set before us. As Michael Moore said at his much criticized Oscar night appearance, we live in fictitious times. Times in which it is hard to tell what is real and what is reality TV: whether it comes from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, (does anyone remember Afghanistan?) or from the detention camp at Guantanamo, or from the white house itself. We live in fearful times; times in which the anxieties and the grief of our people have been cynically exploited. Times when the language and symbols of our nation and indeed for many of us, our religious faith, have been shamelessly appropriated in the service of agendas that seek to destroy the very foundational principles on which this nation is built. In a time eerily reminsicient of George Orwell’s 1984, “freedom” has become imperialism, “patriotism,” blind assent and God Almighty himself, a shill for a political agenda of intolerance, militarism and the corporate kleptocracy euphemistically referred to as the “free market.”

In such times, as truth becomes more rare and more precious, it also becomes more inconvenient . In such times, when the language of faith itself, particularly the great Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Islam and even Judaism have been pressed into the service of imperialism, terror and tyranny, not just in the Middle East, or in Afghanistan, but in the halls of Congress itself. In legislation that guts the constitution and the Bill of Rights, in public policies that persecute Muslims, scapegoat  gays and lesbians, and perhaps most alarming of all, in the person of a President who claims to be personally ordained by God to bring his version of “freedom” to the world, it is then, that women and men of good conscience are called to stand up and speak out as we are doing today.

            But time is growing short. The principles and assumptions that once governed our public and private lives have broken down. Thoughtful, nuanced dialogue has given way to the rancorous rhetoric of religio-political fundamentalism. We are no longer invited to have an opinion, there is no room for dissent in the apocalypse, after all , we are told, we are at war, compelled to choose sides: us or them, right or wrong, the evil-doers or God.  In such a time, we are led to believe, to disagree, to dissent, even to question is to be unpatriotic, anti-American, maybe even anti-God.

            Such is the thinking that dominates our discourse today. Such is the thinking that cannot distinguish a secular dictatorship in Iraq, from an Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan or even from a Muslim chaplain at “Gitmo.” Such is the mind-set that set up the Dept of Homeland Security and pushed through the Patriot Act: the largest governmental re-organization and the most fundamental attack on liberty and the Bill of Rights in US history. An assault on democracy every bit as damaging as the terror attacks that were the pretext for its passage. Such is the viewpoint that powers the insidious assault on our nations’ hard won diversity, integrity and religious freedom by expanding and empowering the  Office of Faith Based Initiatives, directing desperately needed social service dollars away from both secular and faith based charities that abide by federal rules against discrimination in hiring and service provision and toward carefully chosen church run programs that do not. Such is the logic that drives church targeted political organizing campaigns such as the RNC’s Friendly Congregations campaign, not to mention such odious assaults on the very structures of our federal system as  the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would forever enshrine a particular understanding of marriage with all the rights and privileges thereof into the constitution itself while gutting core constitutional principle of equality before the law.

             It takes courage to speak truth to power, especially in times like these. It takes skill and dedication to get that truth out into the light of the day where it can be seen and heard. It takes real faith to hold fast to the truth, to keep putting it out there, to stand up and be counted, as you are doing here this after noon.            And that is why I am so awed and so honored to have the opportunity to speak to you today. You are the prophets of our time: the truth seekers and truth tellers.  That is why your voices are so needed. To provide the antidote to the virus of fear,the  dangerous myths and deceptions that are strangling the voices of dissent and  re-defining our civic and  political lives in terms of a religio-political fundamentalism that is the antithesis of every thing this nation has stood for since its very first day.

            The Sacred texts of my own faith tell us that a prophet is not without honor except in his (or her) own country, and we have only to pay attention to what is going on around us to see how true that is. From intelligence experts and former government officials, to activists and ordinary concerned citizens who dare to speak truth to power are discredited, ignored, even detained. Nonetheless, as believers in the principles and the aspirations that created from a collection of religious, political and economic refugees, heretics, misfits and former slaves a  nation based in the radical idea that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are  a sacred birthright of ALL PEOPLE, we are called to screw our courage to the sticking post and defend that nation against an attack potentially more deadly than any atrocity that can be hatched in the twisted mind of bin-Laden or any other terrorist, because it is aimed from within, right at the heart of our democracy and our country.

            A few years ago, the President of the National Rifle association was heard to say that the NRA could close its office in Washington because it now had an office right in the White House. I think we could say the same thing about the Christian Coalition as well. For in the same way that the current administration has tried to hijack our national symbols and the language of patriotism to stifle political dissent and garner support for its international campaign of unilateral  imperialism and economic exploitation, it has likewise exploited the very real and justified fear and outrage that followed the terror attacks of Sept 11 to launch its own attack on our civil liberties under the Patriot Act and related legislation. It has appropriated even the symbols and language of religious faith, particularly my own Christian faith, and capitalized on the fears of conservative religious people, to expand the Faith Based Initiative, undermining the very basis of our democracy and dare I say it,  her fundamental principles of justice, equality before the law, pluralism and a society in which freedom is not measured simply by the rule of the majority, but by its determination to protect the rights of racial, ethnic, political and religious minorities as well. In the guise of defending religious freedom, these policies and institutions are destroying it by using the power of the state to try to install their own brand of Christian fundamentalism as the new American civil religion.

            That is why we must let this opportunity pass us by.  That is why must stand up, speak out, seize the day, and vote! It is up to us to stand against the fictitiousness and the unreality of these times and stand for the principles on which this nation was founded and which have made it, despite its flaws and failings the most dynamic, free and religiously and intellectually vital country in the world. We in particular, as Americans, bear a special responsibility to stand tall for what American means: for the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people, not just the ones who look like us, think like us, love like us worship like us, but especially for those who do not. Because if the Right IS right. If we can have security only at the price of liberty, if we can have morality and order only under the domination of one religious or political understanding, if we really can have peace only with people who think like us, look like us, and worship like us, then this nation of ours, with her aspirations toward human liberty and human community in the midst of diversity is based on a fantasy and a lie. Then the teachings of our respective faiths and philosophies, religious and secular, are nothing more than comforting stories to tell our children when they are too young to face the awful, hopeless truth.

            But we know better than that. So it is up to us, while we still can, to share what we know, to speak truth to power in our homes, our houses of worship, in our schools, in the voting booth and out in the street. And to show the world, what it means to be truly democratic, faithful and free. God has blessed this great nation again and again. Let us strive, together, to make America a blessing to her people and the world!

Thanks!!!