First Universalist Society of
Religion, Wright or Wrong
Andrea Abbott
May 18, 2008
One feature of
the contemporary landscape, which I think is a departure from the past is the
amount of attention given to religion.
Perhaps I simply wasn’t paying attention before, but it seems to me that
religion has become the new entertainment industry, the new hot button topic. Everywhere I look, which is, I grant you,
quite often on the shelves of the library or Barnes and Noble, or in the
headlines of the papers, or on NPR, some aspect of religion is big news. Of course, I’m old enough to remember
Kennedy’s run for the presidency and the firestorm of ant-Catholic feeling that
made public, but that seems a drop in the bucket compared to today’s news. Just think, in one week we could hear about
Jeremiah Wright, John Hagee, the indictment of
Mormon polygamists, and the latest threats from radical Muslim leaders,
not to mention the response from
I suppose the
first question is, is this religion? In
many ways it sounds more like politics by another name to me. Certainly the context in which the speeches
or opinions were either made or noticed was in the context of politics. Bill Moyers pointed out that Jeremiah Wright’s
sermons would never have come to national attention if he hadn’t had a
Presidential candidate in his congregation.
John Hagee had a similar issue.
Both men had been happily preaching to their respective choirs for quite
a while before the furor broke. But both
men are ministers, not politicians.
Jeremiah Wright has made this difference explicit. And, as different as both men are, they share
one belief, the belief that religion has a place in the world, in confronting
and bearing witness to the issues of the day.
We may not agree with either of them, we may be appalled by both of
them, but we, too, share this legacy.
When we speak of the need to address issues of social justice, we follow
in the footsteps of some of the leaders of the Reformation, who believed that
the Church must work in the world, must work to bring about what they saw as
the
Not so many years
ago, religion seemed to be a spent force.
It was a matter of private belief, a source of support, we hoped, in
times of individual sorrow, the good clothes and polite faces we put on each
Sunday morning and took off each Sunday afternoon. The increased public expression of faith,
even fanaticism, is new. I believe this is a contemporary phenomenon because we
are running out of ways to express our anxieties and despair over events around
us. They seem so big, these
problems. The political process seems so
impotent. We are looking for bigger
guns. We are looking for world wide
solutions. We are looking beyond
humanity.
Part of what we
are looking for is justification. The
problem with living in a bigger, more complex world, a world in which smaller,
more intimate, communities have been shattered, is that it’s harder and harder to
matter as a person. Not so long ago a
famous TV show promised a place where everybody knows your name. That place was a bar. We watch mythical communities such as these
in the media, but how many times do we feel we have such a place? Where do we go to be understood? Where do we go to belong?
As our world is
shattered, as we may feel shattered, we want answers to the injustice we see
around us. All too often we want
answers, mostly, to the injustice we feel in our own particular lives. This is where the statements of Jeremiah
Wright, of John Hagee, of the radical Muslim imams, the radically orthodox
rabbis, find willing ears. Many people
feel a deep sense of injustice, a deep sense of failure, in their personal
lives. But those lives are linked to
others by ethnicity, by poverty, by frustration.
I have heard
statements such as Reverend Wright made ever since I worked in prison. There is a strong, deep belief among
prisoners that the inner city has been deliberately and systematically flooded
with drugs and alcohol by “the government”, that AIDs was deliberately
introduced to decimate the African-American population, and that birth control
is offered free so that African-Americans will be eliminated. Are these all the beliefs of paranoid,
maladjusted, ignorant people? Will they
go away with some information and education? Or are they a way of expressing
fear and despair? Are there half-truths
that provide a platform for these beliefs?
I have tried, in
vain, to tell my clerks that the government doesn’t need to hatch elaborate
plots to do away with poor inner city residents. Poverty and neglect do the job just as well,
I say. They think I’m the ignorant, deluded fool. And maybe I am. Certainly there have been medical experiments
on African-Americans that were hidden.
Sterilization of poor women, often without their informed consent, has
occurred and was, for some doctors, routine.
The war on drugs became a cause only when drugs found their way to the
children of the white suburbs. These
explanations are more indicative of callousness and indifference than
conspiracy, but a more dramatic explanation captures attention and reassures
people that they are worthy of a plot or two, they are important enough to go
to elaborate lengths to eliminate.
Reverend Wright
calls on the tradition of the black church, a tradition of confronting power, a
tradition of prophecy, a tradition that sees Christianity as the church of the
suffering Jesus, the Jesus who cares for all, who especially cares for the poor
and the forsaken. This is a tradition
that found inspiration in the Bible story of Exodus. He says that white
If we understand
the anger behind Reverend Wright’s statements, can we extend that understanding
to the anger that Reverent Hagee and others like him seem interested in
arousing? They seem to be addressing an
audience who have no reason to feel deprived, an audience composed of the
people who are a majority, the people who have been the definition of this
country. Why would they have cause to
feel anger and alienation? I suppose
every age has always seen itself as a society in flux, but I believe we are
truly that, in this rapidly changing world, many people are feeling a shift
under their feet. Some feel that to
withdraw from a society where they feel powerless, where they feel their vision
is denied, is the only solution. Some
turn on others, seeking in hatred to account for the loss of a past where they
felt they had some sort of control. Is
this something we can understand? Could
this be a place where we begin to find useable common ground? Is it possible to listen behind the anger for
the feelings that anyone can understand?
This society is divided. Some
have come to believe that they will never be able to measure up, will never
have a chance, will always be second class.
The bitterness of dreams deferred and denied are incendiary
feelings. To dismiss people as racists
or bigots deprives us of a chance to build bridges, to reach out, to hear what
is really being said.
If we try to hear
the feelings behind the anger we hear the sounds of deprivation, the discordant
music of those not understood, the blues sung by the cheated, the bewildered,
the cast-off. I fear this chorus is
growing and is composed of people who never thought they would sing in this
choir, as life becomes more competitive and harsher.
Where is religion
in all this? Aren’t these political
questions, the way in which society is structured? What are the limits of political action? We only have to look at
Religion has
always come with the sword of judgment and condemnation in one hand and the cup
of compassion and salvation in the other.
The discovery that Unitarian-Universalists made was that this didn’t
have to be so, that it was possible to construct a religion that had at its
basis that all are welcome, all are valued, all share in aspects of the
divine. It was a religion that did not
need to demonize some in order to sanctify others. This is sometimes hard to do. It is easy to find worth in those we like but
much harder to believe that all, everyone, people who say things we find
repugnant or offensive, still share aspects of divinity, or none of us do.
People sometimes
mistake our radical egalitarianism as an understatement of evil, or of the evil
people do. They mistake our desire to
see everyone as potentially good as the same as seeing everyone as always being
good. I was raised
Unitarian-Universalist and believe me, I knew that no matter how understanding
my parents might be, they did not see me as perpetually good. They felt there was room for
improvement. In the same way, to
understand is not to condone, but a commitment to reach beyond sound bites at
the complexity of a situation, the desire to see another’s point of view, is
essential if we are to avert the tragedies that unfold around us.
There are other
bedrock ideas of our denomination. One
is the belief in human endeavor, a belief that separates us from those who
believe that all is already predetermined.
We are able to act, our actions mean something and for this let us give
thanks and praise. As Ted Sorenson said
in his interview on NPR, this is man’s problem and man can solve it. He added, “That’s good Unitarian
philosophy.” Amen, brother.
But our belief in
our ability to act is not the same as a belief in divine powers. We cannot hold back the tides, shift the
earth, or raise the dead. We can’t even
cure those we most love, or keep those we try to shelter from harm. This is the lot of humanity and this is why
people sometimes find themselves in church.
Religion is the
place we try to make sense of suffering, in a way that transcends the cry for
justice. We make sense of it in
different ways. Sometimes we strike with
the sword of judgment, as if vengeance could make us grieve our losses
less. Sometimes, if we remember the
roots of all major religions, we say that suffering is something we cannot end
but suffering is something we can do together.
We have all suffered, or we will.
We hold out the cup of compassion.
This is why religion is not politics. Politics
can be informed by our religious vision.
Our best ethics and morality can guide our political choices. But there is always a horizon that is beyond
the political vision, which is, of necessity, concerned with what can be
done. We can go further. Religions, all religions, if they are true to
their primary precepts, bind us together, in our common humanity, on a small
planet, in the bonds of love.