Faithful Democracy: Beyond Red and Blue

October 24, 2004

By Rob Keithan (rkeithan -at- uua.org)

Director, Washington Office for Advocacy (www.uua.org/uuawo)
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

ALSO SEE: www.faithfuldemocracy.org

In an open pastoral letter to all Unitarian Universalists released last week, the Rev. Bill Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, writes:

Since our congregations opened their doors for the new church year last month, they have been ministering in a deeply divided nation. The United States seems to have vanished beneath the battle lines drawn between blue states and red states, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans.

Most destructive and divisive in this political campaign is its tone of fear and fundamentalism--the notion that there is only one way to be religious, only one holy scripture worthy of being followed. Only one way to be patriotic. Only one way to be a family. And, sadly, only one way to be an American.

We religious liberals share our pews with those who do not share our theology. Liberal Christian, Jew, Humanist, Buddhist, Pagan -- all find a home in our UU congregations. We know pluralism as a blessing, and our lived experience, that our differences need not divide us, is a great gift that we can offer this campaign-scarred nation.

I do believe that we know this, in our hearts and souls: that pluralism is a blessing. That all people have inherent worth and dignity. But I'm not sure that we always think it or practice it, in our congregations or in our lives generally.

These days, in the midst of the elections, we are especially challenged by anger, anxiety, and fear. So what do we do? I have three suggestions that I hope will help us live better together.

First, I think that we, especially as Unitarian Universalists, need to be better equipped to think about people and ideas that we don't agree with. One of the things holding us back, at least theologically, is that the first principle of the Association--that every person has inherent worth and dignity--is oft understood to mean that every person is good.

There is a huge difference between believing that every person has inherent worth and dignity and believing that every person is good. The former is a status that has nothing to do with an individual's actions; it's a basic value that every person has, regardless of what they do--even the Hitlers and Husseins and Pinochets of the world. At least to me, believing that all people have inherent worth and dignity means believing that no person should be tortured or executed, regardless of their actions. It doesn't mean that they can't do horrible things, and it doesn't mean that we can't really dislike them. But if a person's life can be deemed unworthy based on their actions, than that person's worth is not inherent. It's a very serious word, so if we're going to use it we should take it seriously.

As such, saying that someone is inherently good leaves us with too little room to explain evil and wrongdoing; it's a sweeping statement that doesn't hold up to scrutiny and thus is not adequate for our living, liberal theology. I think that some of our anger and frustration--particularly in the political realm--stems from our lack of language and theology for dealing with evil and wrongdoing. If there is inherent goodness, I think that unconsciously we also believe in inherent badness, and thus our attitudes and reactions are between two extremes. When this happens, we replicate the polarization in media and politics, and do ourselves a disservice. 

I embrace the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn: that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. This notion embraces nuance. Rather than extremes, there is complexity. Rather than answers, there are questions, questions that take us to a much deeper level of understanding ourselves and others. What leads a person to do good, or evil? What family, economic, social, and other circumstances affect decision-making?

This kind of questioning is exactly what differentiates liberal religion from conservative religion: Context. Nuance. Scrutiny. This is our Unitarian legacy. When Universalism emerged in mid 1700s, the gospel of universal salvation stood in stark contrast to the theology of sin and depravity that ruled the day.

Now, I believe our contemporary challenge as liberal religious people is to go deeper into the complexity of the human condition. In this journey, personal growth and social justice are entwined, because you cannot understand yourself or others without understanding the conditions in which we and others live. The more we learn, the more we learn about injustice, the more we learn about how other's suffering is linked with our own. 

Take racism as an example. As a white person, I used to feel incredibly guilty about racism. I sometimes found it difficult to interact with African-Americans because of it. I felt like I wanted to help others but didn't know how. Guilt, as a friend once told me, is the gift that keeps on giving. But I wanted to be rid of it.

Thankfully, through programs and workshops provided by the Unitarian Universalist Association, and particularly within the youth and young adult movements, I came to realize how much this guilt was hurting me--how racism was hurting me--and how religiously important it was for me to deal with it. But it wouldn't be enough to deal with it on a personal level; that's not where the problem was coming from so that's not where the solution could be. My personal transformation had to be linked to social transformation. 

The reverse is also true: social transformation has to be grounded in personal transformation. And this brings me to my second observation on how we can live better together, which is that we need to be in deeper personal relationship with one another.

To quote the Quaker activist and writer, Parker Palmer, "the more you know about someone, the harder it is to hate them." I believe this is one of the essential truths that Bill Sinkford is alluding to: that what we have in common is far greater than our differences. Our task, then, is to make sure that we know each other. In our personal lives, it means asking deeper questions and being willing to truly listen to family and friends, congregants and colleagues. In our religious community, it means participating in a covenant group, or other form of small group ministry, where you get to know people in a much more profound way than through committees or coffee hour.

You don't, I don't, and even all of us here together don't have the power to determine how anger and fear play out on a national level. But we do have the power to determine how they play out in our own lives, and with intention and commitment I believe that our transformation does, at least a little, improve the state of the nation.

My third recommendation is more focused on the big picture, but is still firmly grounded in personal and religious experience. I suggest that we make a commitment to faithful democracy.

Take a moment to reflect on how you learned about voting and civic participation. For many of you I suspect it was your parents. Perhaps you remember accompanying them to the voting booth, and getting to push the button or pull the lever.

I cherish those memories, and in some ways long for the days when I didn't know the consequences of what was happening. As I learned more about why voting mattered, I also learned more about why it didn't.  In my introduction to US politics course in college, for example, I learned about the rational actor model of politics, and why it isn't rational for most people to vote because they don't directly get anything out of it. I knew there was more to it that strict rationality, but my secular arguments were too shallow to leave me feeling inspired or motivated.

What changed for me was being with a group of religious colleagues, and coming to understand voting from a faith perspective.

But before I go into that, I want to talk about the concept of faith. I like the word and choose to use it, but my definition is different from the prevailing stereotype. I agree with the Rev. Barbara Wells, a minister at the Paint Branch UU congregation, who says, "We can't let the religious right have all the good words."

By letting religious conservatives define faith for us, or by defining it in purely reactionary terms, we deny ourselves a powerful tool for defining us and our theology. When, as a response to bad experiences with Christianity, or contempt for the religious right, we turned our backs on faith we also turned our backs on mainstream and liberals Christians who like us rejected a narrow, judgmental interpretation of faith. This is one of the primary reasons the religious right has been so successful in appearing to be the only religious voice on issues like abortion, the family, and civil rights for bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people.  We let them define all the good words.

While my personal journey has led me to readily identify as a person of faith, I still don't consider myself to be any more Christian or deist than I was before--although I do understand and appreciate those perspectives. If I had to, I would label myself a spiritual humanist. I firmly believe in the religious and moral authority of individual experience, but feel that without community it is incomplete. Faith to me is the willingness to be vulnerable, to open yourself up to learning and transformation, because you believe that you will be better off because of it. I believe that through working together, as we get to know other people--and ourselves--we more fully realize the spiritual truth that were are one human family. William Ellery Channing, the first person to publicly articulate Unitarianism in this country, embodied this understanding when he declared himself to be "A living member of the great family of all souls."

It is through this lens of faith that I have come to appreciate voting and civic participation as religious issues, and ones that need to be addressed from a religious perspective. Apathy and cynicism are bad for democracy and bad for the soul. Many people don't vote because they feel that their vote doesn't make a difference--that they don't make a difference. Lacking this sense of worth and power, people's sense of community and responsibility are diminished. So not voting or participating in civic life perpetuates alienated individualism, and when writ on a grand scale this translates into a very sad state of affairs for democracy in the United States. 

To counter this alienation, I believe that civic participation must be grounded in something larger and more transcendent than the particulars of a given issue, party, or election. It must be grounded in a deeper set of core values, and backed by a community of people that recognize voting as an act of faith; an act of hope that represents our belief in the value of community. And let me perfectly clear: this is not a partisan issue. This is a small "d" democracy issue. This is an issue of governance happening with the consent of only a small portion of the governed. I firmly believe that even if voter participation increased proportionally to current party lines, politics would still be radically different. It would drive the campaign strategists crazy, because they wouldn't be able to immediately discount the 40, 50 or 60% of the population that doesn't vote. They'd have to target everybody, and everybody would matter.

Which brings me to a very important connection: Unitarian Universalist history and theology on this issue. Many of the founding fathers were Unitarian or strongly influenced by Unitarian thought, and the Declaration of Independence and Constitution reflect this. Similarly, the democratic method of governance adopted by our congregations mirrors a rebellion against centralized authority, not of monarchs and despots but popes and bishops. Early Unitarian thinkers knew well what we tend to take for granted today, which is that the process of making decisions can be as important as the decision itself. The same is true, I believe, of civic participation generally.

Let me give you some concrete suggestions.

First, I encourage all of you to make a personal commitment to voting as an act of faith and hope, based on both civic and religious values. As a matter of religious commitment, covenant to be an active participant in democracy. Have faith and vote!

Second, I encourage you to make discussions and affirmations of voting a part of your congregational life, including through worship. Let this be a place that explicitly inspires and motivates voting and civic participation.

Third, I encourage you as a congregation to get active in the community. Terri Barr will say a little more about that in a few minutes.

I want to close with the words of Rev. Bill Sinkford, a prayer UU congregations across the country are using in worships between now and the election.

Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us now in prayer.
We seek the blessing and wholeness that come
From knowing we are bound to one another.

Let faith, hope and love abide with us.
May we open our hearts, finding there the discipline
To avoid stridency,
Which deepens not understanding
But widens the chasms between us.

May we open our hearts, finding there the courage
To join our hands with other people of faith
With whom we do not always agree,
Knowing that to clasp hands with others is to extend our reach farther
Than we ever could alone.

May we open our hearts, finding there humility,
Knowing that many who disagree with us
Are grounded in a faith
As deep as our own.

May we always acknowledge and honor the humanity
of those with whom we disagree.
May we remember what religion is:
a binding together of that which has been sundered.
For in this remembering, we lay wide the possibilities for reconciliation and healing.

Amen.