Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Religion in society

  • White Poverty

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Story: How To Feed Five Thousand People

    Once upon a time, Jesus and his disciples (that is, his closest followers) were trying to take a day off. Jesus had become very popular, and people just wouldn’t leave him alone. Jesus and the disciples wanted a little time away from the crowds that followed them everywhere, so they rented a boat and went to a lonely place, far from any village.

    But his fans figured out where they were going. By the time Jesus and his friends landed the boat, there were five thousand people waiting there for them. So Jesus started to teach them, and he talked to them for hours.

    It started getting late, and the disciples of Jesus pulled him aside and said, “We need to send these people to one of the nearby villages to get some food.”

    “No,” said Jesus. “The villages around here are too small to feed five thousand people. You will have to get them something to eat.”

    “What do you mean?” his disciples said. “We don’t have enough money to go buy enough bread for all these people, and even if we did, how would we bring it all back here?”

    “No, no,” said Jesus. “I don’t want you to go buy bread. Look, how many loaves of bread have we got right here?”

    The disciples looked at the food they had brought with them. “We’ve got five loaves of bread, and a couple of fried fish. That’s it.”

    “That’ll be enough,” said Jesus.

    His disciples looked at him as if he were crazy. There was no way that would be enough food for five thousand people!

    Now, Jesus had spent the whole day teaching people about the Kingdom of God, teaching them that everyone is dependent on someone else. And while he was sitting up in front of the crowd teaching, he looked out and saw that many of the five thousand people had brought their own food with them. He watched them as they surreptitiously nibbled away at their own food, ignoring the fact that many of the people around them had no food at all.

    Jesus brought out the five loaves of bread. Being a good Jew, he blessed the bread using the traditional Jewish blessing: “Blessed are you, O Holy One, Creator of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” Then he broke the bread, cut up the fish, and gave it to the disciples so they could hand it around.

    Everyone saw that even though Jesus and his disciples had barely enough food for themselves, they were going to share it with everyone. The truth began dawning in people’s eyes. All day long, Jesus had been teaching them that the Kingdom of Heaven existed here and now, if only people would recognize it. Now Jesus was giving them a chance to show they understood, and to act as if the Kingdom of Heaven truly existed.

    The disciples began to pass around the bread and the fried fish, shaking their heads because they knew there wasn’t going to be enough food for everyone. Yet, miracle of miracles, there was plenty of food to go around. People who had brought their own food put some of theat food into the baskets so it could be shared. People who hadn’t brought food with them took some food from the baskets. By the time the followers of Jesus had passed the baskets to all five thousand people, everyone had gotten enough to eat, and there was so much food left over that it filled twelve baskets.

    Today, many people tell this story differently. They believe that Jesus performed some kind of magic when he blessed the bread and fish, so that somehow Jesus and/or God turned a dozen loaves of bread and two fish into thousands of loaves of bread and thousands of fried fish. To my mind, that’s easier to believe than to believe that humans could perform the same miracle by simply sharing. Why is it easier to believe? Because if humans could perform this miracle back then, we could do the same thing today: to share with those who need it, and to live as if the Kingdom of Heaven existed here and now. (1)

    Readings

    The first reading was from an essay by Andrew Tait titled “Living in the Shadow of the American Dream,” published on August 1 on DailyYonder.com. The author is White.

    I live in Shenandoah County, Virginia. I’m a factory worker. A farmer. A father of two girls, one still in diapers. I get up before the sun, and most days I don’t sit down until after it’s gone. My partner Hannah and I raise our girls on a small farm in the Valley. She works full-time too — though nobody calls it that. She’s a caregiver, a homemaker, a livestock handler, and a mother. She doesn’t get a paycheck….

    …We heat with firewood I cut myself. We raise animals for milk, eggs, and meat because the grocery bill outpaces my paycheck. We’ve stayed unmarried — not because we don’t love each other, but because getting married would kick my partner and our daughters off the Medicaid that keeps them healthy. My employer offers insurance, sure — but only if I pay nearly as much as our mortgage. I can’t, so we stay as we are; in love but locked out.

    I’m not ashamed of our life. It’s honest work, and it’s full of love. However, I am ashamed that in a country as wealthy as ours, people like us are left out in the cold….

    I’m not writing this as a Democrat or a Republican. I’m writing this as a man watching families like mine wear themselves thin; working hard, doing the right things, and still falling behind. This isn’t about Red or Blue. It’s about the fact that we’re being divided against each other while both sides forget that real Americans bleed the same when the cost of insulin triples or the cost of groceries goes up again.

    The second reading was one of the most famous scenes in the book “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens.

    The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

    “Please, sir, I want some more.”

    The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

    “What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.

    “Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”

    The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

    The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,

    “Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!”

    There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.

    “For more!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?”

    “He did, sir,” replied Bumble.

    “That boy will be hung,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I know that boy will be hung.”

    Sermon

    I’d like to speak with you this morning about White poverty; that is, about poor people who happen to be White. This may sound like a political topic, but there’s a spiritual reason behind this. I’ve borrowed the phrase “White poverty” from another minister, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, who used this phrase in the title of a book he wrote last year: “White Poverty: How Exposing the Myths about Race and Class and Reconstruct American Democracy.”

    Barber is a minister, but he is probably best known for his “Moral Mondays,” which he started in his home state of North Carolina. Now we have to touch upon politics for just a moment. The state of North Carolina is dominated by Republican politicians, and because William Barber’s Moral Mondays were protests aimed at state government, it would be easy to assume that Barber is a Democrat. I know I assumed he was a Democrat. But reading his book, I realized that he is motivated not by partisan politics, but by religion and spirituality. I’ve come to feel that both the Democrats and the Republicans have lost their religion and spirituality, so while I may not agree with everything Barber says, I feel he is well worth listening to as we try to find a way out of the mess that partisan politics has gotten us into.

    Barber in fact claims that the battles between the two parties hide a basic fact that we should not ignore. He says: “While these same [political] fights are regularly recycled for our public consumption, nearly half of Americans — people of every race, creed, and region — are united by the experience of being poor. They share the hardship, but they do not share a name because our formal definition of poverty has left tens of millions of Americans in the shadows. Even when we hear reports about poverty, they are based on numbers that severely undercount Americans who are living with their backs against the wall, unsure of how they are going to make it.” So writes William Barber.

    We heard the story of one of those people in the first reading this morning, a White man named Andrew Tait living in the South. Tait and his family just about manage to keep their heads above water. But you can hear in his story that just one crisis — unforeseen medical expenses, for example, or getting laid off — could put his family over the edge.

    There are many families in this same situation right here on the South Shore. A year or so ago, the town social worker here in Cohasset asked to meet with the Cohasset clergy. The town social worker wanted to talk with us, because she kept encountering situations where people in crisis who needed immediate financial assistance. She was adept at finding sources of assistance for Cohasset residents with long term needs — home heating assistance, food assistance, and so on. But she had no source for immediate one-time crises — such as a landlord who doubled the rent for a family who just couldn’t move before the end of the month. We clergy had been helping such people in an ad hoc manner with one-time gifts; we tried to help out the town social worker when we could, but sometimes that involved one of us writing a personal check to the town social worker and getting reimbursed later. But there was no other source for these kinds of one-time grants here in Cohasset. There are groups that can provide grants to organizations, but not to individuals. The town social worker urged us to get together and start a fund similar to Scituate’s “Christmas Fund” (which actually has nothing to do with Christmas, it’s just the name of a fund that provides one-time financial assistance). So began the Cohasset Community Assistance Fund, a fund which grew out of the needs of a town that’s 96% White. Poverty exists in towns like Cohasset, it’s mostly White poverty, and it’s mostly invisible.

    To return to partisan politics for just a moment: Neither of the two major political parties is very good at addressing White poverty. The Democrats, for some very good reasons, have focused on the financial needs of historically marginalized groups, such as African Americans, Native Americans, and so on. The Republicans, for some very good reasons, have focused on fostering a pro-business environment that will in the long term create jobs. But what if you’re White and poor right now? Then it can feel as though both political parties have abandoned you, as Andrew Tait said in the first reading.

    We don’t have to go as far away as Andrew Tait in ?Virginia to find example of how White poverty I’m going to cite four figures on the Cohasset Community Assistance Fund website. One: 21% of Cohasset households are considered low income, because they earn less that 80% of the area’s median income of $187,060. Two: 34% of Cohasset households experience what’s known as housing cost burden, where the housing cost is too high for income; 15% of Cohasset households are severely cost burdened. Three: Nearly 1 in 5 town residents use public health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid). Four: 142 people in town get Snap benefits, or food stamps; and the Cohasset Food Pantry gives crucial support to 80 Cohasset families. These figures are for Cohasset, but nearby towns like Scituate and Hull and Hanover and Pembroke and Hingham all have similar figuresw.

    These are community portraits showing people, mostly White, who are more financially vulnerable than they should be. Most of these people would not be poor by standard political definitions of poverty. But as William Barber and others have pointed out, the political definition of poverty may be too restrictive. A better definition of poverty might be something like this — If your household had a sudden expense of $1200, such as a major car repair, could you pay it without a problem? Or would you have to choose between paying the rent, or buying food, and fixing the car? By this latter definition of poverty, nearly half of all Americans are poor or on the edge of being poor. If nearly half of all Americans are poor, we cannot avoid the issue of poverty. This also puts the lie to the myth that poverty just a Black issue; it’s an issue that all of us, no matter what race or political party, need to face head on.

    The prevalence of poverty in America today reminds me of the story I told this morning, about Jesus feeding the five thousand. This story comes from the Christian scriptures, the book of Mark, chapter 6, verses 32 through 44. This story is usually interpreted as recounting a miracle performed by Jesus with the help of God: after seeing the five loaves of bread and two pieces of fish that his disciples have, Jesus increases this meager store of food by supernatural means until there’s enough to feed everyone. However, from a religious perspective, I would say that this usual interpretation of the story completely underestimates divine power, turning a major miracle into a very meager miracle. If you magically produce enough bread and fish for everyone, that really doesn’t change anything, does it? A major miracle would be to actually change human hearts from selfishness to sharing. I interpret this as a story of a major miracle, not a meager miracle.

    On a smaller scale, by the way, this is a miracle that preschool teachers perform on a regular basis: they teach children how to share. Alas, by the time most Americans reach adulthood, they seem to have forgotten what they learned in preschool. As a result, we have the Democrats saying that there’s nothing to worry about, because they passed a big infrastructure bill that’s going to provide jobs five years from now; and yet Andrew Tait struggles to make ends meet right now. Then we have the Republicans saying that there’s nothing to worry about, because they’re going to get rid of immigrants and slap tariffs on overseas manufacturers which will produce jobs five years from now; and yet Andrew Tait struggles to make ends meet right now.

    In the current political environment, it appears that divisive American politics have made our political leaders powerless to help people like Andrew Tait. But this was the same situation faced by Jesus in the Roman empire of two thousand years ago. Things were much worse in the ancient Roman empire than they are in America today, with even less political will to address the problem. Yet Jesus pointed out that the problem of poverty could be solved. A partial solution could come from a spiritual change emerging in the hearts of ordinary people. Of course that spiritual change would require a reduction in selfishness, and an increase in generosity; that is, it was a spiritual change which would require individual human beings to understand that they were connected to all other human beings.

    In my interpretation of the story, this is the real miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand. When those five thousand people were gathered in front of him, listening to him teach, he was teaching about how we are all interconnected. Yet he saw that some people had no food while others had brought their own food. So he performed a miracle: he helped people understand that because of their essential interconnectedness, sharing was the normal, natural thing to do. He was teaching them: do not separate yourself from community, and one way that you separate yourself from community was by not sharing. What a great miracle this was! — such a great miracle that we really cannot believe it happened. We would prefer to believe that God somehow magicked enough food for all five thousand people. If it was just magic, then we don’t have to change our hearts. But if it was not magic, then we ourselves must change.

    And in fact the early Christian community did change their hearts. One of the earliest Christian liturgies we have record of says that during communion services, the communion table would have on it not just bread and wine, but cheese and fruit and enough food to make a full meal. Thus the earliest Christian communion services provided not just some kind of spiritual food, but actual literal food so that if you were poor and hungry, you were fed; and if you were rich, you could give of what you had and thus grow spiritually. No wonder the early Christian church spread so quickly, across racial and national and class divisions: the earliest church fed body and soul, erasing divisions and hatred.

    I want to be clear that this same spiritual impulse appears in all the great religious traditions. One of my favorite ethical thinkers, Rabbi Hillel, gave voice to the same spiritual impulse from within the Jewish tradition. Hillel taught that we cannot blind ourselves to the suffering of others, saying, “Do not separate yourself from the community” [Avot 2:4]; that is, in your over-confidence, do not think that you can live your life solely on your own, without needing the wider human community. And this same spiritual impulse is present in the Sikh tradition. When American Sikh communities build a gurdwara, or temple, they include a commercial kitchen capable of cooking meals for dozens or hundreds of people; then each week they offer a free meal to all want to join them.

    Sadly, this spiritual impulse seems to have mostly disappeared among our allegedly Christian political leaders. Too many American Christians believe that Jesus said that we’d get pie in the sky when we die; that we’ll all have enough to eat, not now, but in the sweet bye-and-bye. These political leaders seem to have forgotten that Jesus was talking about the here and now when he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” Jesus united the spiritual with the physical: when there are people who are poor, then the Kingdom of God is not truly present; when if there are people who are hungry, then none of us can be spiritually filled.

    This ancient spiritual impulse does live on in many of today’s Christians, people like Rev. William Barber. And this ancient spiritual impulse lives on in many of today’s Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs and atheists — anyone who understands that true spirituality means recognizing that all human beings are interconnected. This deep knowledge of human interconnectedness is a kind of Enlightenment, arising from our hearts when we realize we can never be an isolated individual; the spiritual promptings of our hearts teach us that we are always connected to all other human beings. Then we can begin to see how artificial divisions keep us from working together to create a world where there is no hunger or poverty.

    We can let go of those artificial divisions, like the myth that poverty is a Black problem; and we can recognize that half of us in America, including a great many White people, are either in poverty or close to poverty. While we have come to think of this as a political problem, it is also a spiritual problem, and to solve that spiritual problem we have to remember how to work together in harmony; beginning in our immediate neighborhoods, then extending out into our towns and the South Shore region and maybe eventually through the rest of our country, and even the rest of the world. The more we can work together across borders and across divisions, the easier it will be to ignore those who promote division and hatred and violence; and if we persist, this spiritual revolution could wind up changing the world.

  • Changing Views of Motherhood

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below has typographical errors, missing words, etc.

    Readings

    The first reading was the poem “Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats,” by the Unitarian poet Sylvia Plath.

    The second reading was a poem titled “Mother’s Day” by Bruce Lansky, from his book If Pigs Could Fly and Other Deep Thoughts: A Collection of Funny Poems.

    Sermon

    The past decade or so in the United States has been an interesting time for those of us who consider ourselves to be feminists. Feminism has become a bad word, a pejorative term, so much so that now when I use the word I have to define what I mean. It actually has a very simple definition. A feminist is someone who believes that all genders are equally worthy as human beings. A feminist is someone who does not believe that there is one gender that is stronger, smarter, more authoritative than other genders. Or, as we used to say back in the 1990s, a feminist is someone who believes that women and girls are just as good as men and boys.

    For us Unitarian Universalists, feminism also has a religious dimension. We are the inheritors of the Universalist tradition. The old-time Universalists decided that if God really was good, then God would extend God’s love to all persons everywhere. These days, not all Unitarian Universalists believe in God; but regardless of our belief or lack of belief in God, we still remain convinced that all persons are equally worthy as human beings. Because of this, Unitarian Universalists almost have to be feminists — because of our religious worldview, we will affirm your inherent worthiness and dignity no matter what your gender is.

    Those of us who are feminists have a perspective on motherhood that differs in some respects from non-feminists. If you’re a feminist, you tend to see each woman or girl as an individual, as a separate and unique human being with distinctive talents and abilities. Traditionally, there was a tendency to equate motherhood and womanhood — if you’re a woman, then you have to be a mother. But those of us who are feminists recognize that the universe is more complicated than that. Some women want to be mothers, some women don’t want to become mothers, some women are ambivalent about motherhood, some women cannot become mothers regardless of their wishes. Just because a person is a woman, it does not mean they must be a mother. Our feminist worldview has changed our understanding of motherhood.

    I became very aware that I’m a feminist during last year’s presidential election cycle. This awareness hit me especially hard during the childless cat lady kerfluffle. If you’ve forgotten the childless cat lady kerfluffle, let me remind you of how it played out. Back in 2021, J. D. Vance claimed that the United States is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”(1) That is a direct quote taken from a video clip. The video clip of Vance saying this was posted on Twitter, and caused a bit of a buzz across various social media outlets. Perhaps the most notable social media buzz occurred when Taylor Swift posted a reply on social media in which she openly proclaimed herself a childless cat lady.

    Now it turns out that the cat-lady trope is not a new invention. According to Dr. Corey Wrenn, lecturer in sociology at the University of Kent, Great Britain, there is a long history of stereotyping feminists as cat ladies. Over a hundred years ago, women were seeking the right to vote were portrayed as cats in anti-suffragette propaganda. According to Corey Wrenn, “anti-suffrage postcards often used [cats] to reference female activists. The intent was to portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement.”(2)

    Knowing this helps give us some more insight into the cat lady we heard about in the first reading this morning, in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats.” Before I talk about that poem, I have to tell you a little something about Sylvia Plath. First, of particular interest to us, Plath was a Unitarian: she grew up in Unitarian churches; in college, she described herself an “agnostic humanist”; and in her twenties, she called herself “a pagan Unitarian at best.”(3) Second, Plath was born in 1932, and based on what I’ve seen of that generation of Unitarian women (which includes what I saw of my Unitarian mother), I’d say many of those women were strong-minded feminists, even if they didn’t describe themselves using the term “feminist.” In short, Plath was both a Unitarian and a feminist; that is to say, in terms of her worldview, she was one of us.

    Plath’s short life — she died at age 30 — was not an easy life. While still a girl, she showed promise as a writer. But after a summer internship in college, she had a major depressive episode which culminated in a six month hospitalization. After recovering her health, she went to study in England on a Fulbright scholarship, where she met the poet Ted Hughes. They married, but Hughes turned out to be an abuser who physically assaulted her; he also conducted affairs with other women. After the birth of her second child, Plath separated from Hughes, only to die by suicide less than a year later.

    I know, this is a pretty grim story for a Mother’s Day sermon. I apologize.

    So on a more positive note, let’s consider Sylvia Plath’s poem “Ella Mason and her Eleven Cats.” This is a poem that’s both funny and serious. When the unnamed narrator of the poem was a girl, she and her friends used to go to spy on Ella Mason. They would peer into Ella Mason’s house, where they could see her eleven cats purring around her — this is the funny bit, with little girls peering in to Ella’s house to stare at all the happy cats. The little girls giggled when they saw the cats purring on antimacassars. The girls had heard that when Ella Mason was young, she had been a fashionable beauty, and so they make fun of her because by conventional standards Ella had thrown away her opportunity to get married. Now Ella is old, and she has to settle for the love and admiration of eleven cats. But in the final stanza of the poem, the girls have grown up, and as they begin to marry they look upon Ella Masson more kindly. They realize that they had misunderstood Ella Mason. Ella did not suffer from vanity, as the girls had assumed, but instead Ella possessed a sense of self-respect which allowed her to realize that in her case, her happiness did not require marriage.(4)

    The point of the poem is not that every woman should become a cat lady. Nor is the point of the poem that every woman should get married and have children. The point — as I see it — is that each of us has choices about how we’re going to live our lives. Many people make their life choices based on the expectations of society, while others among us make our choices based on knowing our deepest selves. Sometimes someone winds up making a choice that society disapproves of — when, for example, a woman chooses not to get married, causing little girls peer in her front door and giggle at her — but when they make that choice based on a deep knowledge of self, they are able to ignore the the disapproval of other people. In fact, given the diversity of opinion in human communities, no matter what choice you make, you can be fairly sure that someone is going to disapprove of it. Thus it is always best to make your choices based on a deep knowledge of who you really are.

    I see something of a parallel between Ella Mason and Taylor Swift. Swift, who is now 36 years old, has thus far chosen to focus on her career instead of marrying and/or having children. She knows that there are people who disapprove of her for not following a conventional path and putting aside her music to become a mother; but she also knows herself well enough to know that she is being true to her self. When Swift saw J. D. Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies,” because she knew who she was and why she had made the choices she had made, she was able to post a very measured response on Instagram (in which she urged her followers to register to vote). And she was secure enough in her own self that she could sign her post “Taylor Swift / Childless Cat lady.”(5)

    So why am I talking so much about childless cat ladies on Mother’s Day? The point I’m trying to make is that there are quite a few people in our country who feel that the single most important role for all women is to bear children and be mothers. People with this viewpoint seem to find it quite threatening when some women — like Taylor Swift — prioritize their careers, putting off motherhood, or maybe choosing not to become mothers at all. They say they have a good reason to feel threatened: they see that the birthrate is falling in the United States, and they worry that the future of the human race is threatened by women who don’t have children. But I suspect that they are really worried because the old gender norms to which they have grown accustomed seem to be fading out — those old gender norms that say the primary purpose of women is to bear children and be mothers. And so they grow anxious when they see women who prioritize something other than motherhood.

    By contrast, we Unitarian Universalists do not assume that just because someone is a woman, their primary duty is to bear children and become a mother. We are also quite aware that some women who might want to become mothers cannot do so, for a wide variety of reasons. We are also aware that there are many different ways to become a mother: there are mothers who give birth to a child, there are mothers who adopt a child, there a mothers who become a mother by marrying someone who already has children.

    And finally, we even understand that there can be many kinds of mothers. For example, there are people who serve as mothers to children who are not their biological children, adopted children, or step-children. Sylvia Plath had a biological mother, but she also had a literary mother. The Unitarian novelist Olive Higgins Prouty adopted Plath as a kind of literary child, paying for Plath’s college education and paying for Plath’s medical expenses during her first hospitalization for mental illness.(6) Or in another example, some decades ago I knew a teenaged girl who had a difficult home life and got her mothering from a woman in her church community who was not her biological mother; this girl spent as much time as she could in this other woman’s household (and sadly, this teenager’s biological mother was actually glad that the girl spent so many of her waking hours away from their home; not everyone enjoys motherhood).

    As feminists, we understand that men can also be mothers. I remember a gay couple I once knew who had adopted children, and both men in that couple served as both mothers and fathers to their children. But I also think of a co-worker of mine back in the 1980s whose mother had died when he was an infant; from the way he talked about his upbringing, it was clear that his father had been both a father and mother to him. Most non-feminists probably wouldn’t admit that men can be mothers; but the evidence of my own experience shows that men can indeed serve as mothers.

    Once you adopt a feminist viewpoint, the category of “mother” becomes a little bit broader than just a biological woman who has biological offspring. Mind you, we who are feminists acknowledge the great importance of those women who physically give birth to infants. Giving birth is crucially important, it can put a huge strain on a woman’s body, and we are grateful for women who choose to give birth. But we also understand that motherhood, broadly construed, means more than physically giving birth. Motherhood encompasses all of the intensive nurturing that a human being needs to grow from infancy into adulthood; and this includes both physical, emotional, and spiritual nurture.

    It is actually quite astonishing how much nurture human beings need to get from infancy to adulthood. In contemporary Western culture, we like to pretend that all that nurture can be provided by a nuclear family with one mother and one father, but that really isn’t true. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that it takes a much bigger community than that to provide the nurture that children and teens require. Lawrence Mbogoni, a retired professor from William Paterson University who was raised rural Tanzania, put it this way:

    “[The proverb] ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ reflects a social reality some of us who grew up in rural areas of Africa can easily relate to. As a child, my conduct was a concern of everybody, not just my parents, especially if it involved misconduct. Any adult had the right to rebuke and discipline me and would make my mischief known to my parents…. The concern of course was the moral well-being of the community.”(7)

    While Lawrence Mbogoni was speaking specifically of rural Africa, the same principle applies more generally to all human beings and all human communities. It does in fact take a whole village to raise a child. In rural Tanzania, that community was the village in which the Mbogoni family lived. In the industrialized West, where villages no longer exist except in fantasy, it is more difficult to find a community of adults who will help raise children and teens, who can help provide all the nurture that a child or teenager needs.

    But such communities do exist, and our First Parish congregation is one such intergenerational community. As a community, we know that a central part of our identity is to be the whole village that raises a child. We do not want to supplant a child’s own parents, but we are here to support and help parents. We see this happening at social hour, where there are many adults, not just parents, who know the names of First Parish children and who talk with the children. We see this in our Religious Education Committee, which includes two people who do not have children in the Sunday school, a grandparent-age person, and a high school student. We see this in programs like the current pen-pal program, where kids and adults get to know one another through exchanging weekly pen-pal letters. We are doing our best to be the kind of village that it takes to raise a child.

    This is how we help support motherhood. And our support of motherhood is firmly rooted in our feminist worldview. Our feminist worldview helps us understand that the rest of us can help take a little bit of pressure off the biological and adoptive mothers who are part of our community. Those biological and adoptive mothers know that they can come here to First Parish and for a couple of hours each week there will be a whole community of other adults who will help look after their children. Because if it takes a village to raise a child, that implies that motherhood is more than a full-time job for one person.

    Without denying the importance of biological and adoptive mothers (some of whom may be men), we recognize that entire communities also provide mothering. In such communities, the mothering provided by biological and adoptive mothers is supplemented by the mothering provided by elders who may be other people’s grandparents; by young adults who may still be thinking about whether or not to have children of their own; by child-free couples like my wife and I; and, yes, by childless cat ladies. We have embraced a changed definition of motherhood, where nurturing children is the responsibility — not just of two parents in a nuclear family — but rather of an entire village, and entire community,.

    So on this Mother’s Day, we honor and support biological and adoptive mothers. We also honor communities that provide the additional nurture that children need; we embrace the proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child.”

    Notes

    (1) My transcription of a video clip of Tucker Carlson interviewing J. D. Vance in 2021, as posted on X / Twitter by Ron Filipowski @RonFilipkowski on 22 July 2024 https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1815503440983867598 accessed 9 May 2025.
    (2) Corey Wrenn, “Woman-as-Cat in Anti-Suffrage Propaganda,” posted on 4 December 2013 in the Sociological Images category on The Society Pages website https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/12/04/the-feminization-of-the-cat-in-anti-suffrage-propaganda/ accessed 9 May 2025.
    (3) Details of Plath’s Unitarianism and personal theology from Wesley Hromatko, “Plath, Syliva,” Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, Unitarian Universalist Study Network https://www.uudb.org/plath-sylvia/ accessed 10 May 2025.
    (4) I’m basing my interpretation of the poem’s last stanza on Valerie Doris Frazier, Battlemaids of Domesticity: Domestic Epic in the Works of Gwendolyn Brooks and Slyvia Plath (Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Georgia, 2002), pp. 119-120. Frazier writes: “When the speaker grasps at an answer for Miss Ella’s unmarried state, a sense of tension erupts in the last lines. Miss Ella’s flaw is apparently vanity, as the young women of the town have learned. But those in the town have misread the textual meaning, for there is a significant distinction between Narcissism and self-love. For narcissism means vanity or love for one’s physical body, but self-love which takes on a spiritual rather than physical quality means a concern for one’s happiness.”
    (5) Swift’s Instagram post, which includes a photo of her holding a cat, is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_wtAOKOW1z/
    (6) Hromatko; see also Lynn Gordon Hughes, “Prouty, Olive Higgins,” Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography, Unitarian Universalist Study Network https://www.uudb.org/prouty-olive-higgins/ accessed 10 May 2025.
    (7) Lawrence Mbogoni as quoted by Joel Goldberg, “It Takes A Village To Determine The Origins Of An African Proverb,” on the “Goats and Soda: Stories of Life in a Changing World” blog on the National Public Radio website, 30 July 2016 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/07/30/487925796/it-takes-a-village-to-determine-the-origins-of-an-african-proverb accessed 10 May 2025.

  • “WWWD”

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below has typographical errors, missing words, etc.

    Readings

    The first reading was from The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell:

    “Scientific technique requires the co-operation of a large number of individuals organized under a single direction. Its tendency, therefore, is against anarchism and even individualism, since it demands a well-knit social structure. Unlike religion, it is ethically neutral: it assures us that we can perform wonders, but does not tell us what wonders to perform. In this way it is incomplete. In practice, the purposes to which scientific skill will be devoted depend largely on chance. The men at the head of the vast organizations which it necessitates can, within limits, turn it this way or that as they please. The power impulse thuswahas a scope which it never had before. The philosophies that have been inspired by scientific technique [as opposed to scientific theory] are power philosophies…. Ends are no longer considered; only the skilfulness of the process is valued. This is a form of madness. It is, in our day, the most dangerous form [of madness].”

    The second reading is “Eagle Poem” by Joy Harjo.

    Sermon: “WWWD”

    When I start to think about ethical issues raised by immigration, my thoughts often turn to the earliest immigrants to southeastern Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, and how they were received by the Wampanaog Indians. That’s where the title of this sermon comes from: “WWWD” stands for “What Would the Wampanoags Do?” And I ask that question, not because I think the Wampanoags are some kind of special moral and ethical exemplars, but because the Wampanoags had to confront the challenging question of what to do when your society is faced by a wave of immigration. Looking past the myths that have grown up around the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags, it seems to me that in 1620, the Wampanoags dealt with the Pilgrims with a salutary mixture of common sense and compromise. And I think their actions offer an interesting insight into immigration.

    The story of the Wampanoags is often told like this: The Pilgrims show up in the middle of winter. That first winter, the Wampanoags kindly share food with them so they don’t all starve. In the spring, the Wampanoags show the Pilgrims how to grow corn. Then in the autumn, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags sit down together for the first Thanksgiving dinner.

    But that’s an oversimplified version of the story. The real story was a lot more complex. For one thing, the real story began well before 1620. Europeans had been landing on the coast of southeastern New England for a century or more before the Pilgrims arrived. Some of those first Europeans were decent people who treated the Wampanoags well. Others engaged in random acts of violence, like the Englishman who abducted a young Wampanoag named Tisquantum and sold him into slavery in Spain; Tisquantum eventually made it back to his homeland and became known to the Pilgrims as Squanto. So when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, the Wampanoags had good reason to distrust them, and even treat them as potential adversaries. Why then did the Wampanoags treat the Pilgrims as well as they did?

    Partly, it boils down to politics. Prior to 1619, the Wampanoag had been decimated by an epidemic — literally decimated, since in some areas 10% of the population survived the unknown disease.(3) As a result of their greatly reduced population, the Wampanoag grew worried about the military threat posed by their historical antagonists, the Narragansetts, who lived just to the west and who did not experience the same epidemic. From Tisquantum’s personal knowledge, and from other sources, the Wampanoags knew about the Europeans’ impressive military capabilities. Thus it may have made political sense for the Wampanoag to try to build a military alliance with the Europeans.(4) Even though the Wampanoags knew first-hand of the dangers posed by Europeans, the benefits of a military alliance seem to have have outweighed those dangers.

    But while politics were clearly involved, there was also an ethical side to the Wampanoag actions: they helped the Pilgrims because it was the right thing to do. This is a perfect example of what we New Englanders call “enlightened self-interest.” We take care of our self-interest, but we do it in such a way that we take into account the needs and concerns of other people. New Englanders talk about “doing well by doing good”: that’s enlightened self-interest. When New England small business owners pay their employees a decent wage, partly because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also self-interest because their employees are potential customers: this again is enlightened self-interest. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if the New England concept of enlightened self-interest has its roots in the way the Wampanoags treated the Pilgrims.

    While enlightened self-interest still exists here in New England, another pattern of behavior is also widespread. Today, our world is dominated by what Bertrand Russell calls “scientific technique,” or technical science as opposed to theoretical science. (This is what we heard about in the first reading this morning.) A society based on “scientific technique” — that is, on technology — requires large numbers of human beings cooperating together under the direction of a single authority. Both capitalism and communism arise from this same principle, the difference being that in capitalism, the coordination of a large group is mostly under the authority of the handful of persons who run large corporations; while in communism, the coordination of large groups is entirely under the authority of the handful of persons who control the Communist Party. These large groups, whether corporations or communists, are ethically neutral, which means that the handful of people in charge of these vast organizations can direct them to whatever ends they please. As a result, said Bertrand Russell, “The power impulse thus has a scope which it never had before.” To this he adds: “Ends are no longer considered; only the skilfulness of the process is valued. This is a form of madness.”(5)

    Russell wrote these words in 1943, while the Second World War was going on. Clearly he had the madness of fascism in mind while he was writing. But he was also aware of the dangers of the power impulse inherent in any society dominated by complex technology, because there are no widely-accepted ethical guidelines to determine societal goals.

    In today’s American society, quite a few people actually agree with Bertrand Russell that we lack ethical guidelines. Because of this, many right-wing Christians genuinely believe that they need to inject their own ethical principles into American society. I happen to disagree with the ethical principles of right-wing Christianity, and I have no use for those who use right-wing Christianity as a cover for naked grabs at power — but I respect the desire of the genuinely ethical right-wing Christians to attempt to articulate ethical principles which they sincerely believe would help direct the goals of our society. I can also respect the secular progressives who sincerely champion diversity, equity, and inclusion policies based on their ethical grounding in natural law and human rights. Again, I have no use for anyone who uses DEI as a way to grab power for themselves — but I respect the desire of the genuinely ethical political progressives to try to articulate ethical principles which they sincerely believe could help direct the goals of our society.

    Neither the right-wing Christians nor the proponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion have been able to convince a majority of Americans that their ethical framework should be central to our society. Nor has anyone else been able to propose an ethical framework that attracts broad-based support. This has left us vulnerable to persons with no firm ethical principles, who seek power simply for the sake of seeking power.

    In the middle of the last century, we did arrive at a consensus for an ethical framework. This framework was our ethical commitment to democracy, which included individual rights, the rule of law, and checks and balances in government. All this was derived from the political philosophy of John Locke, a political philosopher who inspired the founders of the United States. But the polarization of the United States in the past half century means we no longer have such a consensus, and so we have descended into an era of power politics.

    Contrast this with the situation in the days of the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims. Both Wampanoag society and Pilgrim society were founded on solid ethical principles. Four centuries on, it’s difficult to put ourselves in the worldview of either the Pilgrims or the Wampanoags. But it appears that the Wampanoag had a strong ethic based on kinship and community; and the concept of kinship probably extended beyond humans to non-human beings.(6) As for the Pilgrims, they believed in subordination: the subordination of the ordinary man to the magistrate, the subordination of woman to man, the subordination of child to father, and above all subordination of man to God.(7) While the ethical principles of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag had radical differences, nevertheless both groups felt the importance of connection between individual and family and community, and between individuals and the transcendent. Thus Pilgrims and Wampanoag had enough common ground in their ethics to be able to establish relations that remained mostly peaceful for four decades. Of course there were conflicts, sometimes violent ones. But for a long time, both groups managed to hold on to their higher ethical commitments. Forty years of peace is no small achievement.

    That was in the early 1600s. Now let’s return to the year 2025. The United States is now a technological society requiring the cooperation of large groups of people under the single direction of a very small number of persons. As the mid-twentieth century ethic of individual rights, the rule of law, and checks and balances has eroded, the power impulse has come to dominate our politics. Fewer and fewer political leaders or corporate leaders practice enlightened self-interest any more; fewer and fewer of our leaders have genuine ethical commitments.

    The lack of ethical commitment leads to a unfortunate result. Our political system is based on the political theories of John Locke. One of the flaws in Locke’s political philosophy is that in certain disputes, there is no good way to judge between the two sides of the dispute, with the result that in these cases decisions can only be made by fighting it out. In noting this weakness in Locke’s system, Bertrand Russell pointed out: “Where such a view is embodied in the Constitution, the only way to avoid occasional civil war is to practise compromise and common sense. But compromise and common sense are habits of the mind, and cannot be embodied in a written constitution.”(7)

    This helps explain what has been going on with immigration policy over the past few decades. Too many of our elected officials have lost the habits of mind of compromise and common sense. The inability to compromise, even when common sense indicates the necessity, is characteristic of power politics. This is not good for anyone.

    How can we return to the habits of compromise and common sense? How can we get back to enlightened self-interest? I found one possible answer coming from a source I had not expected. In his book “White Poverty,” published last year, William J. Barber suggests that confronting White poverty could help Americans of all political persuasions to work together.

    This makes sense to me because I’ve long felt that the most important problem facing America today is the problem of poverty. In 2018, the Federal Reserve — a body that tries to remain non-partisan — issued a report stating that “Four in 10 adults, if faced with an unexpected expense of $400, would either not be able to cover it or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money.”(8) Given what I’ve seen over my years as a minister, this sounds about right. And from what I’ve seen, poverty cuts across racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, whether you’re able-bodied, and so on. Even here in Cohasset, despite our picture-postcard-perfect image, too many households are just one medical emergency away from economic disaster. Nor has either political party been able to make much of an impact on poverty. From what I’ve seen as a minister, both the Democrats and the Republicans need to acknowledge that they have not done enough to address the fact that too many people live so close to economic disaster.

    So Barber’s book caught my attention because of his focus on poverty. In addition, Barber is a Black man, yet he says we must deal with White poverty. This shows his common sense, because he’s trying to get past polarization and divisiveness by focusing on an issue where he believes people of all political persuasions can find common cause. This also shows his willingness to compromise, because even though he’s Black he’s willing to focus on White poverty, knowing that if we address White poverty, we will have to address all poverty.(9)

    While it may seem as though I’ve diverged from the topic of immigration, I haven’t. Think about it this way. Four in ten Americans could not cover an emergency expense of $400. One in four Americans skipped necessary medical care in 2017 because they felt they couldn’t afford it. Three out of five non-retired adults say their retirement savings are on track.(10) It is true that compared to the developing world, we Americans have a very comfortable lifestyle; nevertheless, a great many of us do not feel economically secure. If you do not feel economically secure, it would not be surprising if you wondered whether immigrants were going to have an impact on your economic well-being.

    In other words, perhaps we can begin to address the immigration crisis by invoking enlightened self-interest. The “enlightened” part of “enlightened self-interest” recognizes that we do have some degree of ethical responsibility for people from elsewhere in the world who show up on our doorstep. The “self-interest” part of “enlightened self-interest” makes sure that we ourselves get taken care of, and also that we’re taking care of people already in America; this includes attending to already existing poverty in this country.

    What would the Wampanoags do? Back in 1620, they followed enlightened self-interest. They were enlightened when they extended a helping hand to the strangers who showed up in their land without invitation. This was also an act of self-interest, since these newcomers were potential allies and supporters. And as is always the case with enlightened self-interest, the Wampanoag used both compromise and by common sense to achieve their ends.

    As for those of us sitting here in the Meetinghouse, I think we can set an example of enlightened self-interest for others; and we can exemplify the habits of compromise and common sense that go along with it. How can we do this? I’ve heard from quite a few of you that you make a real effort to listen respectfully to those with differing political opinions. This is an example of enlightened self-interest; these days, no one wants to listen to opposing political viewpoints, but it is in our self-interest to do so; for by doing so, we set an example of how to restore democracy. This is a small example, but it is something that one person can accomplish by themselves.

    Beyond that, common sense indicates that it makes sense to find some issue that people of many different political affiliations can work on together. Perhaps that issue could be White poverty, although I’m open to compromise and willing to listen to other common sense ideas. However, I would point out that our congregation is already addressing White poverty. The South Shore where we live is roughly 95% White, and we are staunch supporters of anti-poverty initiatives such as the Cohasset Food Pantry, Habitat for Humanity, and the new Cohasset Community Aid Fund. It is true that addressing White poverty doesn’t directly address the issue of immigration. But it does address the underlying issue of needing to strengthen our democracy.

    And with that in mind, I’ll close with a short common sense poem by Unitarian minister Everett Edward Hale:

    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    Notes

    (3) Scholars still debate what the disease was. For the most recent hypothesis, see J. S. Marr and J. T. Cathey, “New Hypothesis for Cause of Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616–1619,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 16, no. 2, 2016, pp. 281–286 — this paper reviews some of the earlier hypotheses, and concludes, “The causes of most historical epidemics may never be proven.”
    (4) Many of the historical facts come from Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1650–1775 (University of Oklahoma, Press, 1996). However, the interpretation of the historical record is mine.
    (5) Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Simon & Schuster, 1945/1972.
    (6) Bragdon, chapter 6, “Kinship as Ideology.”
    (7) For a good discussion of this worldview, see Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (Knopf Doubleday, 1997). Norton cites the political philosophy of Sir Robert Filmer as exemplifying this, which she calls a “Filmerian” worldview. (Filmer was one of the thinkers against whom John Locke was arguing.)
    (8) Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017 (Washington, DC, Federal Reserve Board), p. 2.
    (9) For an overview of Barber’s argument, see chapter one in William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, White Poverty: How Exposing the Myths about Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy (W. W. Norton, 2024).
    (10) Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, pp. 2-3.