Civic Dialogue: Hope for the Common Good

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, October 23, 2005

One of my favorite hymns is the African American National Anthem. The lyrics were written by James Weldon Johnson. The title in our hymnbook is “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty; let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.”

How do we use our voices to further the cause of liberty…of liberty and justice. This is the core question of my sermon today.

We, who have experienced both the blessings of liberal religion and liberal education…we who have sustained churches and fellowships of the free faith…We who gather here in comfort and privilege this morning- we have a responsibility. A pressing and particular responsibility in this time of political polarity.

How many of us have in our youth, or in our years of maturity spoken truth to power? Speaking truth to power, it’s a catchy phrase, but it’s also a weighty calling. What is truth? Who are the powerful?

There are many ways to speak truth to power. Some of us have taken democracy to the streets, some of us have organized and been advocates for the poor and oppressed, some of us have taught and inspired others to find their voice…some of us have served in elected office…some of us have parented the next generation of activists. Some of us have sustained UU churches so that freedom of thought and speech and religion would continue to have a home in our communities.

How many of us have spoken truth to power?
And how many of us have been among the silenced?

Many of us in this room have stood, at least for a time in our lives, among those marginalized by race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or age. Some of us have been poor, dislocated, in debilitating debt, mentally ill, physically disabled, addicted- or in some way invisible in our society.

Hopefully, compassion dwells in us, in part, because of these painful experiences.

Hopefully, we now try to be a witness or an ally for those who are still silenced.

There are also times when we are silenced because of our beliefs or our opinions. We are living at a time in American society when many of us feel silenced because of our position on issues. If we were against going to war in Iraq, we did not feel free to speak our truth. If we support, Women’s Right to Choose, we don’t always feel free to express this view. If we are against the death penalty or if we support President Bush, or if we think gays and lesbians should not be legally married…too often we do not feel free to speak our truth.

Hopefully none of us have given up our desire to exercise freedom of speech. Hopefully we still look for opportunities to speak truth to power…even if we find ourselves in positions of some power…even better, because they we can take it up the line. Those of us in positions of some power have an even greater responsibility. Those of us in moral and ethical communities have a great responsibility.

My models of speaking truth to power runs toward Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or the Rev. Jesse Jackson, or Gandhi, or Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela. I also look for and find witnessing truth in books, movies, and music. The poet, the playwright, the songwriter can be a powerful voice for liberty and justice.

Let me tell you why I think that we, as Unitarian Universalists, have a special obligation when it comes to speaking truth.

Because we are a pluralistic faith, because we hold to no creed or dogma, because our religious roots are in dissent and rebellion, because we hold democratic process and the right of conscience as foundational principles, because we are not literalists, because we are committed to work for peace and justice, because we encourage our children to doubt and to question authority….need I go on…

As congregations, we have resources in the public square, in New England the UU church is often right in the public square, as congregations and as an association, we UU’s have a tradition and a sacred calling to speak truth to power.

How do we do this?
Often we rely on the minister’s voice.
This is not inappropriate. When I arrived as a new, not so young, “woman” minister in Knoxville, TN. 14 years ago…the county council was considering passage of a resolution to exempt gays and lesbians from protection of the civil rights act.

This was not a good thing from our liberal religious point of view…and voices were needed to speak against the religious right position. I was asked to speak. I agreed without knowing much about East Tennessee politics and the power of the Southern Baptists.

It was an amazing experience. Twenty- five or so UU’s showed up that day at the county council assembly room….and bus loads of Baptists showed up…there was standing room only. And when it came my turn to speak…I began by saying that “not everyone in this room believes in God or Jesus, not everyone in this room, believes the same thing – not everyone in our county believes the same thing…and our lawmakers should take religious diversity into account.”

Well, this didn’t go over so well…there was heckling, there were rude sounds made behind me…it was pretty scary…but I knew without a doubt that my voice was needed, that my truth needed be heard.

It was a privilege to represent my congregation that day in that civic forum. And I knew that in that political forum, our liberal moral voice had a legitimate place. Our truth needed to be heard in the public arena. As our reading, from Bellah pointed out, separation of church and state was never meant to silence religious participation in debate.

That day in the Knox County assembly room, I also listened to several hours of witnessing from the conservative clergy. I could see that they too spoke from a sense of moral authority, that they too represented their congregations. That they too felt they were speaking truth to power.

The weeks after that event were interesting, it took me a while to realize that local cable television was playing the tape from that morning over and over in the subsequent weeks. I would go into a restaurant and the waitress would recognize me and thank me for speaking for her. I couldn’t figure it out. It happened over and over. Then someone told me they’d seen me on TV. We should never underestimate the power of our voice, the power of our moral truth.

And we should never stop listening to other voices…to others’ truths. We are not so different from the religious right, like them, we think we hold the wise and correct position on issues. And too often we close off debate, turn the channel, read only the New Yorker, fail to listen.

Alan Dershowitz, lawyer and author wrote an article titled; “Political Correctness, Speech Codes and Diversity”. He wrote: “I wonder if most of those who are pressing for diversity really want it. What many on the extreme left seem to want is simply more of their own; more people who think like they do, more people who vote like they do and speak like they do. The last thing they want is a truly diverse community with views that are broadly reflective of the multiplicity and attitudes in the world outside the ivory towers.”

Dershowitz was speaking to academia, but sometimes I think UU churches also want to be ivory towers. We want to sit back- read, think and talk among ourselves. We want to welcome everyone, but we want them to be like-minded. We have a long way to go to become really diverse, to become truly tolerant of difference.

What I wish I had done in my Tennessee congregation after my television debut, was to organize civic dialogues around the important moral questions of the day. We should have taken the discussion a couple of steps further. We can’t rely just on the ministers’ voice or just on our social justice committees.

The minister can’t, after-all, speak for the entire congregation. We stopped at the feel-good place of having had a chance to speak to the powerful. But there should be many voices in the conversation. We might have hosted “Dialogues on Differences” for various faith groups in various venues throughout the city. We might have partnered with the Jewish Temple and the Episcopal Church. We might have invited our Baptist brothers and sisters to come and talk with us.

The fact that we didn’t is probably a measure of our privilege and our individualism. We welcomed gays and lesbians into our churches, we officiated gay and lesbians union services, we spoke up publically, isn’t that enough?

No, that’s pretty much staying within our ivory tower. Democratic principles demand more of us…Where is moral authority located in a democracy…it is, “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Sociologist, Robert Bellah speaks of the public church, of creating communities of authority. And so the people must converse.

There is a long tradition of this kind of moral conversation within our UU history. Our earliest Unitarian heretics debated in the public square in 16th century Transylvania. Their debates lasted days and weeks. Our New England Transcendentalists, Emerson, Thoreau, Beecher, Alcott and Margaret Fuller carried the Enlightenment literature and philosophy across the ocean from Europe and into their living room salons on a weekly basis, gathering to discuss the latest books, poems, philosophical ideas.

Today covenant groups or small group ministry programs carry on the tradition of bringing people together to talk about religious and moral ideas. Conversation can be radical, empowering and transformative. Making time to listen to one another is no small matter.

But we need to broaden the conversation. We need to talk with those whose beliefs and opinions are outside our comfort zone. We need to acknowledge that those we think of as “on the other side” of an issue are usually also speaking from the heart, from their own moral commitments. It’s not about being right, it’s about building, widening, connecting communities of good people. We need to learn, not only how to speak truth to power, we need to learn how to listen.

There’s a wisdom tale that points to the power of conversation, the power of listening to one another. It’s called, “The Two Champions”. Two kingdoms shared a border and they were always in conflict. One kingdom worshipped the sun, and the other worshipped the moon. Because of their religious differences, they went to war. Each gathered an army, but to avoid loss of too many young men, they agreed that each side would send their best warrior to fight in single combat. The two champions advanced toward each other, grim-faced , with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. On the chest of one was emblazoned an image of the sun, on the other the image of the moon.

They fought like demons. They fought all morning long. They fought through the mid-day heat. They fought on and on as the sun descended to the west. They were both such strong and skillful fighters that neither man could gain the advantage.

They were still fighting, nose to nose, locked in each other’s arms when at last, the sun went down. Both were exhausted and they collapsed on the ground, too feeble to even crawl back to camp.

“I hate you” groaned the Champion of the sun.

I hate you, replied the Champion of the moon.

“I have to kill you, said the Champion of the Sun. Back home I have a wife who loves me and a little boy who wants to be a warrior like me. I have to protect them from the likes of you.

I had a wife, said the Champion of the Moon, your people killed her in the last war. That’s why I have to kill you.

The moon rose. What was your wife like? The Champion of the sun asked.

She was lovely, we were childhood sweethearts. We used to play in this field.

It sounds like you had a happy childhood. Said the Champion of the Sun, not like mine. My father made us work in the fields all day and if we complained he beat us.

I’m sorry to hear that said the Champion of the moon.

The two men went on talking through the long night…finally falling asleep, side by side, just a few hours before daylight.

The warm sun woke them and they got wearily to their feet. They looked in each others eyes, then they embraced…and leaving their swords and shields behind, each man walked back to their respective armies.

They could not fight each other any more, for you cannot fight someone when you know their story.”

To keep our democracy vital and alive, the United States of America, needs every one of our viewpoints, ideas and passions, even those which differ from our own.

Dialogue in the civic square among people of different beliefs and opinions would be an act of democratic responsibility. It would build bridges, chip away at extreme individualism, break down ivory towers and create communities of authority reflecting a spectrum of opinion and actions of respect for differences. And in addition, we would begin to learn one another’s stories. We would uncover common bonds and concerns….and we might move closer to that more perfect union which we all desire.

As we move into our new building, we are thinking of how we might expand our service to the community. We are considering new ways to live our principles and purposes.

It is my hope that we might become a place of Civic Dialogue in the larger community of Rockville/Gaithersburg and surrounding communities. It is my hope that we might create a series of Civic Dialogues to bring together people of different views to discuss the important questions of the day.

Let us “lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty…let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea.” May our voices always be part of the harmonies of liberty.

So May It Be/Amen