Opening Words

As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great, durable curse of the race.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.

This expresses my idea of democracy.  Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Our reliance is in our love for liberty; our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all people in all lands everywhere.

Destroy the spirit, and we have planted the seeds of despotism at our own doors.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and cannot long retain it.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of other people?  Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

"The Idea of Democracy" Reading # 586
by President Abraham Lincoln
in the hymnal Singing the Living Tradition

Reading

Our reading this morning comes from an interview with the journalist Bill Moyers.  He is well known to many of us, but I'd like to share a little bit of his background.  We know Moyers most famously for his career in broadcast journalism.  A little less well known is his earlier political career: he had worked as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, and had served as Deputy Director of the Peace Corps for President Kennedy.  

New to me was the fact that Moyers, in addition, holds a Masters of Divinity degree, from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  He is an ordained Baptist minister. 

He's not the only one in his family with an interest in religion; I understand that Moyers' wife is an active Unitarian Universalist in the New York City area. 

All told, he has had deep and meaningful experiences in the fields of politics, religion, and journalism.  It is no doubt this eclectic combination that gives him the prophetic voice that many of us are familiar with.

In April of this year, Moyers gave an interview to the magazine The Christian Century, on the topic of democracy.  During this interview, he was asked the question, "Can you name a single issue that concerns you most these days?"  Here is his answer.  He responds:

Inequality. Nearly all the wealth created in America over the past 25 years was captured by the top 20 percent of households. Meanwhile, working families find it harder and harder to make ends meet. Young people without privilege and wealth struggle to get a footing. Seniors enjoy less and less security for a lifetime's labor. We are racially segregated in every meaningful sense except the letter of the law. And survivors of segregation and immigration toil for pennies on the dollar compared to those they serve.

None of this is the result of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" creating the greatest good for the greatest number. It's the result of invisible hands that write the checks to buy political protection for privilege. There's been a campaign to organize the world economy for the benefit of corporations. Whatever its benefits, political and corporate efforts to deregulate the international economy and promote globalization have been the most powerful force of political, economic, social and cultural destabilization the world has known since World War II.

The Nobel laureate Robert Solow is not a man given to extreme political statements. He characterizes what has been happening in America as nothing less than elite plunder: [He calls it] "The redistribution of wealth in favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful."

This wasn't meant to be a country where the winner takes all. Read the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address. We were going to be a society that maintained a healthy equilibrium in how power works—and for whom.

Although my parents were knocked down and almost out by the Depression and were poor all their lives, I went to good public schools. My brother made it to college on the GI bill. When I borrowed $450 to buy my first car, I drove to a public university on public highways and rested in public parks along the way. America was a shared project and I was just one of its beneficiaries. But a vast transformation has been occurring, documented in a series of recent studies. The American Political Science Association, for example, finds that "increasing inequalities threaten the American ideal of equal citizenship and that progress toward real democracy may have stalled . . . and even reversed."

So here is the deepest crisis as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policy solutions, but we don't talk about what democracy means—what it bestows on us, the power it gives us—the astonishing opportunity to shape our destiny. I mean the revolutionary idea that democracy isn't merely a means of government, it's a means of dignifying people so that they have a chance to become fully human. Every day I find myself asking, "Why is America forsaking its own revolution?"

"Newsworthy: Bill Moyers on Journalism and Democracy,"
The Christian Century, April 17, 2007.

Sermon

'Why is America forsaking its revolution?'

Bill Moyers is widely respected and because of  that it's difficult to hear him be so unequivocally critical of how we're doing as the world's most powerful democracy.  Have we really lost sight of our ideals?  Have we really screwed it up that bad?

Well, there are days that I agree with him -- wholeheartedly, in fact.  Then, I think of other places in the world, other places where I've lived.  Did you know that I lived in a kingdom?  Actually, it wasn't a kingdom - it was more exotic than that - it was a Sultanate.  A bit of information that will help you Trivial Pursuit fans:  there are precisely two Sultanates in the world, the Sultanate of Brunei, which is at the tip of Malaysia, and then there's the Sultanate of Oman, in the Persian Gulf.  Back in 1993, as a 22 year old newly minted American diplomat, I, with the wisdom that only a 22 year old could possess, thought it would be a great idea to go live in the Persian Gulf.  Yes, I volunteered to go live in the desert for two years; I thought it would be an adventure. 

Now, if prior to this moment you didn't even know that the countries of Brunei and Oman existed, not to worry, you're in good company.  Most Americans have never heard of them.  In fact, at age 22, the only reason I knew that these countries existed was because, as an undergraduate at Georgetown, I had flunked World Geography.  This was not such a good thing.  The course was required in order to graduate.  And, my major was international affairs.  You would think that someone graduating with a degree in international affairs would at least know where France is.  Well, I'm kidding, it wasn't that bad, but it was ironic - given everything else I've achieved in life, apparently World Geography was to be my undoing. 

In the spirit of my former undergraduate self, I'll just point out that the year I failed World Geography over half my graduating class had failed the course.  Now, when half the class fails, was that our fault?  Or was it the Professor's?  I think you can guess where we students came out on that one. 

Anyway, I re-took the class, studied hard, and passed it the second time around.  So, I did finally learn where France is, along with places like the Sultanate of Oman. 

If you would, just imagine one of those CNN graphics that shows the Persian Gulf.  There's an entrance, a passage, that every ship entering the Gulf has to go through.  On one side of that passage is Iran, a not-so-friendly country, and, on the other side is Oman, our friend and ally. 

In terms of physical size, Oman is about double the size of Florida.  And, in terms of population, Florida has about 18 million people living in it, while Oman has 2.5 million people living in it.  So, it is a fairly big country, one that is mostly craggy desert, and one that, comparatively, doesn't have a lot of people.  It may even have more camels than people, but I've never really checked on that.  What I can tell you is that the country is ruled by a Sultan, a king. 

This king can do anything he wants.  Really.  Anything he wants.  All the decisions are ultimately his.  But the Sultan was educated in England, so it wouldn't look very nice to the world and his Western friends if they didn't at least have a little bit of democracy.  So, the country has this kind-of-sort-of Parliament.  The people who serve in this kind-of-sort-of Parliament are elected, and they can make policy recommendations, but the king doesn't have to do anything they advise him.  As a result, in order not to look stupid and irrelevant, this kind-of-sort-of Parliament almost never makes any recommendations that the king would strongly disagree with.  Why should they?  It would just confirm the fact that they are powerless. 

Oman, like many of its Arab neighbors, has created the facade of democracy, in a country that is actually undemocratic.  They have created just enough semblance of democracy, so that we in the West won't feel guilty or ashamed in calling them an ally. 

"Look!  They're on their way to becoming a democracy," we can claim. 

I remember when a close friend visited me there me, and we reflected on the complete absence of a free press.  Oman has one national newspaper, and they, too, almost never critique or disagree with the Sultan.  Here, again, why would they?  Their editors don't want to get fired, or worse yet, get the paper shut down.

Living in our country, we know that places like this exist all over the world: theocracies, monarchies, dictatorships, military governments.  But knowing this on an intellectual level, for me, was a very different experience from actually living day-to-day in such a place.  I had to experience the absence of democracy, in order to appreciate the beauty of what our country, and our religion, stands for.

As jarring as it was to arrive at that understanding, Oman is relatively benign.  There are countries that are so much worse, where people disappear in the middle of the night, never to be seen again; where political opponents are tortured and jailed; countries where warrants are not needed in order to invade your home; countries where everyone knows that phone calls are listened to, and postal mail is intercepted and read.  I can't even imagine the level of fear that must permeate the day-to-day lives of people in such places.

Given the great inequities that have existed and continue to exist on this planet, I think we can and should be proud to belong to a religion and country that are grounded in democratic principles.  Let's take a look at our own religious commitment to this.  If you turn to the back of your Orders of Service, you'll see that the fifth Unitarian Universalist principle pertains to democracy, it says that we affirm and promote "the right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and in society at large."  That implies at least two different manifestations of democracy - democracy in the sphere of religion and democracy in our civic and political lives. 

There are very specific historical reasons why our religion believes in democracy.  In fact, our commitment to the concept pre-dates the founding of our country.  It traces back to 1648 and a particular document called The Cambridge Platform.  Unitarian Universalism is not a democratic religion because the United States is a democracy.  That is not the case at all.  Our religious commitment to democracy existed before there even was a United States!  Our belief in democracy emerges, actually, as a rebellion against Calvinism. 

Democracy in religion emerges out of a particular understanding of human beings.  Calvinism does not share our Unitarian Universalist worldview, our belief that each person matters, that each person is worthy of basic dignity.  In Calvinism, some people are saved, and others are damned - and the damned are irredeemable; there is nothing they could do to change their status.  In this kind of worldview there is a hierarchy - some people are permanently better than others.  In contrast, our religious forbearers had faith in democracy, faith that everyone matters, that everyone has equal dignity and therefore should have an equal voice.   

Developing this idea further, The Cambridge Platform from 1648 goes on to talk about how members of a congregation should relate to their leadership: its ministers and lay leaders.  It acknowledges that those in leadership have a special role, but it goes on to say that the leaders and the members of the congregation work together in the governance of the church.  Democratic governance in church life does not mean the absence of leadership, but it does mean partnership.  Today we called that kind of partnership 'shared ministry.' 

This Platform also talks about how people within the congregation should relate to one another -- how they should care for each other and be responsible to one another.  It calls this commitment a 'covenant.'  That's still what we call it today. 

In preparation for this worship service I re-read The Cambridge Platform, to remind myself of its language and its message.  It is admittedly a document of its time - the gender language is not what we'd use today, and the religious language is entirely Christian.  But underneath that, the basic ideas of how a congregation should function are pretty much what we have today in our own congregation.  Over 350 years later -- an American Revolution, Civil War, two World Wars, and a moon landing later - our faith still subscribes to the concepts of democratic partnership and covenanted community.  I think this is remarkable; it speaks to the durability of the concepts that define our religion.

Let's turn for a moment to political democracy.  What about this notion, Bill Moyers' notion, that we're failing, that our commitment to democracy, as a culture has fallen short; that great inequities are undermining the notion that we each matter equally in the governance of our country?  Well, he states it in the extreme, but essentially he's right.  The rich have gotten richer, and continue to get richer.  Those in poverty are stuck with sub-standard schools, sub-standard health care, and frequently enough, violence around every corner.

All of this is true, but what if the point of democracy is not that we fall short, but that we can prophetically name and speak out about our shortcomings?  Unlike places like Oman, unlike theocracies, monarchies, dictatorships, and governments run by the military, we don't have to think twice about naming what is wrong, about disagreeing with our government, or even saying, as Bill Moyers does, that everything is going to hell in a hand basket.  What if the fact that we can do that is our strength?

By coincidence, I discovered a book recently that was reviewed in the New York Times.  It's a book by Greil Marcus called The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice.  In reading this book, I realized that I had stumbled upon one of the most interesting discussions of democracy that I'd ever encountered.

Griel discusses democracy in the context of covenant, and he draws parallels with the Jewish understanding of covenant.  He says that "the children of Israel made a covenant with God, to keep [God's] commandments [and] rules, and [to] follow the path of righteousness; [that] covenant, and nothing else, made them a nation."  This covenant helped define who the people of Israel were and what they were trying to achieve - it reflected their ideals and goals.  It was understood that the people of Israel would fall short of these promises on many occasions, and when they did, a prophet would step forward to remind the people of their covenant, of their values and ideals.  Through this process of covenant and re-covenanting, a nation was forged - a people with a specific identity, worldview, and experience.

Let's translate this to our national experience.  Do we, as a nation, have a covenant?  If so, what is it?  In response to this question, Greil asks, what if we take away the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, perhaps even the Gettysburg Address, who would we then be?  He says that without these key documents we'd be little more than "a collection of buildings and people who have no special reason to [even] speak to each other."  An exaggeration, of course, but he's trying to make an intriguing point. 

The Jewish people are a nation, and have a covenant, because of their scripture.  Griel says that we Americans have a scripture as well -- our key founding documents are our scripture, and our covenant is not with God, but with one another.  The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, these documents make promises to us, even as we make promises to live up to the ideals reflected in them.  And, implied in these promises is accountability: we are the ones that hold our country, and each other, accountable for living up to those promises.  Similar to the Jewish people, as all of this unfolds, we create a nation - one with a particular culture, values, and common experience.

But does our country, do we, live up to the promises we've made?  Here's what Greil has to say:

"The promises made in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - the promise that all would find themselves free to say what they had to say, the guarantee of equal justice under law, that governments were formed to respect and protect those rights, [and] that citizens owed governments no respect if they did not - [those promises] were so great that the betrayal [of those ideals] was part of the promise.  'We're living in this non-fiction culture, we're living in a world that comforts itself with what we believe to be fact,' the novelist A.M. Homes said to an interviewer in 2004. 'And yet, [Homes continued] the history of this country, the best parts of its history, from its founding to its best political campaigns, and so on, [were] built on fantasy - and on promise, and on hope, on [the] ideal of something rather than something [tangible] we could prove.' 

[Griel continues the discussion saying that] the betrayal of that ideal became the national drama, [those betrayals were] the engine of American history - the discovery that the promises one had been made were false, [led to] the [ensuing] attempts to make them true, [and subsequent] battles over slavery and suffrage, property and speech, [issues like this] for all time.  As it was inevitable that the promises the nation had made would be betrayed, it was inevitable that America would produce prophetic figures of its own...America's prophets prophesy one thing [alone]: as God once judged the children of Israel, America judge[s] itself."

The Shape of Things to Come:
Prophesy and the American Voice,
by Greil Marcus, pp. 11.

Humanity creates prophets - great voices like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. - precisely because we betray our covenant, we fall short of the ideals we claim.  The democratic freedom that gives Bill Moyers the ability to scathingly critique American society also ensures that we don't stay stagnant and self-satisfied.  Democracy repeatedly calls us to be our best selves; it continually calls us to covenant and re-covenant in affirmation of our ideals.

Let's bring this down to the level of our congregational life.  As Unitarian Universalists, we have our seven principles, the principles we've been reflecting on and examining together through worship this past year.  Those principles are, indeed, promises that our religion has made to us - they tell us the kind of religion we are joining, and what we can expect.  They are also promises that we make to one another; it is we who embody those values and bring them alive.

Our principles serve as one set of scripture, if you will, it is a scripture that is common to all the churches in our denomination.  But, aside from that, I'd like to pose the question, "What serves as our congregation's particular scripture?  What are our specific aspirational and foundational documents?"  We are not like every other Unitarian Universalist church.  We have a specific culture, we have a specific experience.  And rooted in that uniqueness is our commitment, both to one another and the world.

Where is that captured and expressed?  I would argue that it isn't in our by-laws.  By-laws are not scripture, they are an organizational tool, they are not an aspirational or idealistic expression.  Where else?  Well, we have a very brief covenant that we say together at the beginning worship.  That is an expression of how we aspire to be together.  But, it's cursory, it only skims the surface.  I believe there is more, more that we have not yet captured adequately.

When I chose to preach on this topic, on our UU commitment to democracy, I had not planned to do a plug for our church's current mission and vision work.  It was not my intention, but here I am, about to do exactly that.  (And if our Board President were here, I'm sure he'd be grinning ear to ear...) 

Think about what we've just reflected on...in order for democracy to work, in its best sense - the kind of democracy that holds us accountable and pushes us towards new and better understandings - in order to have that kind of democracy, we need to be clear about what we are promising one another.  Without a clearly articulated vision, there is nothing to aspire towards, nothing to reach towards.

By this time next year, it is likely that we will have completed a process that will clearly articulate who we are, who we are trying to be, and the type of world we are trying to create.  We are in the midst of defining our church's mission and vision.  It is prophetic work, and also the most basic work of any democratic community.  We will be creating our own versions of the Gettysburg Address and the Bill of Rights.  OK, nothing quite that grand, but you get the point.

I'd like to make an appeal, especially to those who are new to our community - new members and those on the verge of becoming members - I want to encourage you to join us in this work.  Once you are a member of this community you have an equal voice, an equal vote, on par with everyone else.  That equality is at the heart of our democratic principles.  So do join us in helping define our community's future. 

For those members who've been a part of the community for some time, please don't disenfranchise yourself.  Be a part of the dreaming and visioning that's currently underway.  Participation in the work of democracy helps ensure that no one is accidentally left behind.

About a third of the congregation has now participated in this mission and vision work, and there is no reason why, by the time we're done, it couldn't be 100 percent

It is exciting to be part of a religion that not only encourages us to grow as individuals, but to also grow as a community.  This is the work of stretching our souls, and making new discoveries.  It is the work of more deeply defining our covenant, and then living it into existence.  Let us join together in that work. 

With dedication and hope in our hearts, we are the builders of a democratic faith whose legacy will endure for another 350 years and more. 

May it be so.