Dan Harper | Sermons

  • Giving Thanks

    Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading was from an interview: poet Ross Gay was interviewed by Barnes and Noble on the publication of his recent collection of essays titled “The Book of More Delights.”

    [Interviewer:] How do you maintain an appreciative mindset even in the harder moments of life?

    [Ross Gay:] I’m glad you used the world optimistic because I’m not. Nor am I pessimistic. I am cultivating the practice, and the ability, to describe things that I see. So when I see a guy in terrible shape stopped mid-stride and folded over on Market Street in Philadelphia in what I imagine was some kind of opioid stupor, and see a woman standing next to him for five minutes — five actual minutes — holding a five dollar bill out to him, waiting from him to emerge from wherever he went, I’m just describing what I’m seeing: profound suffering and profound care right next to each other. It’s not a proclivity or a bent, it’s just a description.

    The second reading was from the poem “Play” by William Carlos Williams

    Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,
    By what devious means do you contrive
    To remain idle? Teach me, O Master.

    Sermon: “Giving Thanks”

    We Unitarian Universalists are notorious for our use of reason in religion. We like to think about things. We like to doubt things. When someone talks about a religious belief, we ask ourselves: Does this religious belief sound reasonable? Does it conform to the rules of logic and reason? When someone talks about a religious narrative or myth, we ask the same questions: Does this myth sound reasonable? Does this myth conform to the rules of logic and reason?

    This attitude can get us into trouble. We get used to arguing among ourselves, questioning each other about religious beliefs and religious myths. Then when we talk to others who are not Unitarian Universalists, we may find ourselves arguing with someone’s deeply held and very personal religious belief or myth, and unintentionally causing offense. Sometimes our use of reason can get in the way of our commitment to religious tolerance.

    So with that in mind, I’d like to take a quick look at the myth of Thanksgiving, one of the core myths of the United States of America. Since we’re Unitarian Universalists, of course we’re going to doubt some key aspects of this myth. But instead of just doubting some of the details of the old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, I’m going to suggest a different interpretation of Thanksgiving, one which might serve to unite us rather than divide us.

    And the sad truth is that our current founding myth of Thanksgiving — that old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag sharing a harvest feast together — has become increasingly divisive. Since the 1970s, many of our Wampanoag neighbors here in southeastern Massachusetts have renamed Thanksgiving as the “Day of Mourning.” As a result, some people from other ethnic groups (that is, people who aren’t Native Americans) have come to feel uncomfortable about celebrating Thanksgiving. Not surprisingly, given how polarized our society has become, people on all sides of this debate have both given and taken offense.

    My feeling is that if you like the traditional myth of Thanksgiving, that old story of Thanksgiving that we heard during the Moment for All Ages, go ahead and use that myth as you celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday; continue to tell the old story of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians. At the same time, if you’re the typical doubting Unitarian Universalist, you’ll continue to ask questions about that myth, just as we did in the Moment for All Ages.

    For example, we Unitarian Universalists will want to ask, “Where were all the women in that first Thanksgiving?” Sixty years ago, when I was very young, the women mostly got left out of the Thanksgiving story. But we like to include the women. For example, we look at Thanksgiving from the women’s point of view and point out that there were only four Pilgrim women old enough to help with the cooking. And no Wampanoag women whatsoever attended that first Thanksgiving.

    In another example, we like to remember that not all the Europeans were actually Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were part of a specific religious community, perhaps more accurately called “Separatists.” Not all the English settlers were part of that religious group. Of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, about half were Separatists. About thirty of them were other people who had been recruited by the “London Merchant Adventurers” company. Myles Standish is the most famous member of this group; he was not a Separatist, though he was an integral part of the colony. About twenty of the people on the Mayflower were indentured servants, many of them under the age of twenty. On top of that, a few of the crewmembers of the Mayflower decided to stay on with the colony. So we like to increase the accuracy of the old story of Thanksgiving by saying that both Separatists and other English settlers ate dinner with the Wampanoag Indians.

    We also like to point out that descendants of both the English and the Wampanoags still live in the area. In other words, this old story lives on in actual flesh-and-blood people whom we might meet in our daily lives. I know a couple of people who are of Wampanoag descent, whose ancestors were part of the old story of Thanksgiving. And I know a few people who trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower passengers; I may even be one of them — Uncle Bob, our family genealogist, was pretty sure my mother was a Mayflower descendant. And not everyone who claims descent from those original participants feels the same way about that old myth: some embrace the myth; some disdain the myth; and some just aren’t all that interested.

    I’m one of the ones who have become less and less interested in the old myth of Thanksgiving. I’d like to tell you why, and that will led me into talking about that other, even older, story about Thanksgiving which might serve to unite us rather than divide us.

    I feel that by spending so much time talking about Pilgrims and Indians, we tend to obscure deeper truths about the holiday of Thanksgiving. The holiday of Thanksgiving is really all about giving thanks. We can trace its origins back to the age-old human tradition of communities gathering together to give thanks. We can also trace its origins back to the age-old tradition of humans holding harvest festivals. Indeed, the English settlers in 1621 would have called their celebration a harvest festival. The Wampanoag had their own harvest festivals, and when they chanced upon that English harvest festival in 1621 would have understood what was going on.

    Contemporary Wampanoag continue to celebrate harvest festivals. In fact, they celebrate frequent harvest celebrations, from the first harvest of strawberries in the spring, to late harvests such as cranberries. Interviewed by the National Museum of the American Indian, Gertrude Hendricks, a Mashpee Wampanaog, pointed out: “A lot of our [Wampanoag] festivals are called ‘thanksgivings,’ because we’re giving thanks for the best of the season. It’s really important to do that … to keep the tradition going, [because] a lot of people just think of thanksgiving as the one day all year when we give thanks for the bounties from the earth. But we do it daily.”

    The Pilgrims of 1621 would have understood Gertrude Hendricks’ point that thanks should be given daily. For the Pilgrims did give thanks daily: they would have said grace before meals, a religious ritual of offering thanks to their god for the food that they were about to eat. And in addition to giving thanks daily, they also gave thanks in special celebrations, like harvest festivals. So when we think about that autumn day in 1621, the most important thing to remember is that the English settlers and the Wampanoag Indians people were giving thanks.

    Today, we live in a world that’s dominated by bad news: political division, social unrest, ecological disaster, and so on. Many of us get obsessed by the bad news. We can get so obsessed with the bad news that we can neglect to give thanks for all that is good in our lives. This is where we supposedly advanced modern people could learn from the example of both the English settlers in Plymouth, and from the Wampanoag Indians. Both those peoples had far more bad news than good news in their lives, yet they remembered to give thanks.

    Remember that more than half the English settlers died in that first year. Remember that the Pilgrims among the English had been hounded out of England, and then felt they had to leave Holland. Their lives had been filled with uncertainty and fear and grief for years. Yet they took the time to stop and give thanks for what they did have.

    As for the Wampanoag, their lives were even more uncertain. From 1616 to 1619, an unknown disease killed as many as 90 percent of the people in many of their villages; yet that epidemic did not affect their traditional enemies, the Narragansett Indians, who lived just to the west. Not only were the Wampanoag grieving the loss of family members and friends — a grief so profound and overwhelming I don’t think we can even even imagine it — but they lived in fear of being invaded at any moment by the Narragansett. Yet they took the time to stop and give thanks for what they did have.

    These were both peoples who gave thanks even in the face of overwhelming adversity. They gave thanks despite all had gone wrong. They did not ignore the troubled side of life, but they gave thanks anyway.

    We could do the same. Ross Gay’s long poem “Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude” shows us how we might learn to give thanks more often. Ross Gay does not shy away from the difficult side of life, and yet he still gives thanks. So, for example, he writes:

    …and thank you
    for not taking my pal when the engine
    of his mind dragged him
    to swig fistfuls of Xanax and a bottle or two of booze,
    and thank you for taking my father
    a few years after his own father went down thank you
    mercy, mercy, thank you
    for not smoking meth with your mother…

    And Ross Gay also gives thanks for little trivial moments in life, that may not seem at first to be worthy of thanks — but which are worthy of thanks. So, for example, he writes:

    thank you the cockeyed [basketball] court
    on which in a half-court 3 vs. 3 we oldheads
    made of some runny-nosed kids
    a shambles, and the 61-year-old
    after flipping a reverse layup off a back door cut
    from my no-look pass to seal the game
    ripped off his shirt and threw punches at the gods
    and hollered at the kids to admire the pacemaker’s scar
    grinning across his chest…

    As a Black man living in America, Ross Gay has also written poems about injustice and his rage at injustice. Yet he knows that giving thanks is essential to our beings. In spite of all the bad things in the world, he does not forget to give thanks.

    May we too remember to give thanks. Yes, there is the sadness and injustice and trouble in this world. But there is also much to be thankful for. Yes, we must try to make the world a better place. But we can also give thanks for all that is good.

    May we remember to give thanks, not just on one day of the year, but every day. Giving thanks for all that is good should be one of our central spiritual practices. When we arise in the morning, we can offer thanks for all that is given to us. When we eat, we can give thanks for whatever it is that brings forth bread from the earth. We can give thanks when we see and hear and smell the wonders of the natural world.

    This is the deeper message of the Thanksgiving holiday: that we should give thanks, not just on one day, but every day.

  • After the Election

    Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading is an excerpt from the poem “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay:

    Friends, will you bear with me today,
    for I have awakened
    from a dream in which a robin
    made with its shabby wings a kind of veil
    behind which it shimmied and stomped something from the south
    of Spain, its breast aflare,
    looking me dead in the eye
    from the branch that grew into my window,
    coochie-cooing my chin,
    the bird shuffling its little talons left, then right,
    while the leaves bristled
    against the plaster wall, two of them drifting
    onto my blanket while the bird
    opened and closed its wings like a matador
    giving up on murder,
    jutting its beak, turning a circle,
    and flashing, again,
    the ruddy bombast of its breast
    by which I knew upon waking
    it was telling me
    in no uncertain terms
    to bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones,
    the whole rusty brass band of gratitude
    not quite dormant in my belly —
    it said so in a human voice,
    “Bellow forth” —
    and who among us could ignore such odd
    and precise counsel?

    The second reading was a poem titled “Over the Weather” by Naomi Shihab Nye (not available online due to copyright restrictions).

    The third reading was from the Talmud, Shabbat 31a, the William Davidson translation:

    “There was another incident involving a gentile who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He … said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”

    Sermon

    I’d like to begin this sermon by telling you a story from the Confucian tradition. If you’re my age or older and grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, you might remember this story from the old Sophia Fahs book “From Long Ago and Many Lands.” However, Fahs got some of the details of the story wrong. My version of the story closely follows the version given in “The Sacred Edict, Containing Sixteen Maxims of Emperor Kang-He [Kangxi],” which was translated in 1817 by William Milne (London: Black, Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, pp. 51-52).

    The story goes like this.

    The Kangxi Emperor was the fourth emperor of the Qing dynasty in China; he’s a historical figure who rules China from 1661 to 1722. Early in his reign, China had been torn apart by wars. During these internal rebellions, the people had to leave their farms to fight, and farms were destroyed in battles. Eventually the Kangxi Emperor restored peace throughout the land. The people could tend to their farms, and food once more became plentiful. By the end of his reign, the Chinese Empire was for the most part a land of peace an plenty.

    Towards the end of his reign, however, the Emperor grew concerned about what would happen to China after he died. His own children had proved to be incapable of ruling. What principles, what rules could he give to the next emperor so that China would continue to be a land of peace and plenty? As he began to write down his maxims for peaceful rule, he recalled an event from early in his reign.

    During his long reign, he had gone on many Inspection Tours, journeys through China allowed him to inspect for himself that the land was peaceful and the people were happy. On these inspection tours, he was of course accompanied by hundreds of people. Riders on horseback went out ahead on the road to let the people know that the Emperor was coming. Next came the many horses carrying the baggage, tended by more riders on horseback. Then came skilled warriors, with their bows and arrows slung over their shoulders, also riding horses. They were followed by more warriors walking just ahead of the emperor. The emperor himself rode in an open carriage drawn by magnificent white horses; a golden parasol protected the emperor from the sun. Behind him marched more warriors carrying long lances that pointed high in the air. At times, the Emperor traveled on rivers and canals, in which case all these people were on boats.

    In every village and town he passed through, the Emperor’s advisors asked questions to learn if the people were living happy and peaceful lives. In one place, the townspeople told the emperor and his advisors about a large family which was reputed to be the happiest and most peaceful family in all of China.

    Curious to see this renowned family, the Kangxi Emperor told his advisors, “We must go see this family, to find out what makes them special.”

    And so the Emperor’s entire retinue went to this family’s compound. A man named Chang-kung greeted them, bowing low, and asking them to partake of what humble food and drink he could offer such distinguished guests.

    “My dear Master Chang-kung,” said one of the advisors, “we do not need refreshments, but we would like to know about your family.”

    “There are nine generations of our family living here,” said Chang-kung. He pointed to an old woman sitting nearby, who was attended by two young men, and said, “This revered elder is of my great-grandmother’s generation.” He next pointed to a woman carrying a new-born baby. “That child is my brother’s great grandchild. That makes nine generations.

    The emperor’s advisor said, “We have been told that yours is the happiest and most peaceful family in all the land.”

    “I cannot say if ours is the happiest and most peaceful family anywhere,” said Chang-kung. “Yet we do live in peace and happiness.”

    Indeed, the advisors saw that everyone they could see appeared to be happy. The children played together, but there were no tears, no arguments, no shouting. The adults worked at various tasks, and again there were no arguments or raised voices.

    “The emperor would like to ask you this question,” said the advisor: “How it is that so many people live together so peacefully?”

    Chang-kung turned to a young man who stood near by, and asked him politely to go and fetch ink, paper, and a brush. The young man returned in an instant with the paper and brush, and a young woman followed him carrying a small table.

    On the paper, Chang-kung wrote the same word over and over again, the Chinese word rén.(1) This word can be translated into English by several different words, including benevolence, forbearance, patience, kindness, humanity, and humaneness. The Chinese character for this word is made up of two radicals: first, the character for “person,” and second the character for “two.” Thus, the character itself shows that rén is what is required whenever there are two or more people together.

    Chang-kung pointed to the word he had written. “This is why we live in peace and harmony,” he said.

    “But this is exactly what Master Kong said,” said one of the Emperor’s advisors. (English speakers say “Confucius,” but he is known in Chinese as Kongzi.) Quoting Kongzi, the advisor said, “‘To behave to every one as if you were receiving a great guest; …[and] not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself’ [Analects 12.2] — this is ren.”

    A second advisor said, “Kongzi also said: ‘when alone, to be sedately grave; in the management of business, to be reverently attentive; in intercourse with others, to be strictly sincere’ [Analects 13.19] — this too is ren.”

    A third advisor said, “Kongzi also said, ‘Kindness is not far off; the person who seeks for kindness has already found it.’ This, too, is ren.”

    “As to all that, I cannot say,” said Chang-kung, bowing low. “I do not know the classics as you do. I can only say that in our family we respect the humanity of each other.”

    The Kangxi Emperor heard all this, and saw how Chang-king’s family lived in peace and harmony. And this he remembered when, late in his life, he wrote down his maxims for maintaining peace and harmony in society.(2)

    So why do I tell you this story?

    First of all, I’m telling you this story as a reminder that through most of history, human society has been neither kind nor fair nor humane. Chang-kung’s family was remarkable precisely becuase it was so unusual to have so many people living in harmony with one another. We may have complaints about the United States — and there are many valid complaints to be made — but the many armed rebellions in southern China in the early years of the Kangxi Emperor’s rule made life far, far worse. Yes, it is true that the United States has seen brutal and vicious behavior, such as the epidemic of lynchings in the twentieth century, but from what I’ve read, those Chinese rebellions were even worse.

    A second reason I tell you this story is because we’ve just gone through a bruising election cycle. During this election cycle, I feel as though the best word to describe many Americans is “frantic.” Confucius understood that to be spiritually centered is to have some measure of calmness. When we are frantic, it often means we have drifted away from our spiritual center. I feel as though many of us in the United States have drifted from our spiritual centers. It has been my observation that when we human beings become frantic, when we drift from our spiritual centers, it is too easy to forget our ideals of human equality and liberty.

    If you are uncomfortable using the concept of spirituality, we can also describe this tendency using the model of the triune brain. We human beings all have the “lizard brain,” what some psychologist call the “reptilian brain,” that part of us which is in charge of more basic impulses such as fear, hunger, territoriality, and so on. We humans also have the “paleomammalian brain,” that is, the “old mammal brain,” which controls our emotions and motivations, as well as many everyday behaviors like parenting. The third part of the triune brain is the “neomammalian brain,” or “new mammal brain,” which is the seat of language, reasoning, planning ahead, and abstract thinking. By using the model of the triune brain, it’s easy to understand that when we are frantic, we are not using our neocortex, our neomammalian brain; we are probably using our reptilian brain. Thus when we are frantic, we can actually become incapable of reasoning and planning and higher thought. Andrew E. Budson, a cognitive behavioral neurologist, puts it this way:

    “Given that there have been 10 million years of evolution developing our neocortex — our neomammalian brain — why does it seem to fail so often in normal individuals? Why do we so often hear about politicians and celebrities acting on their primitive drives and urges and committing horrendous acts? The answer is one that any small child can give you: We all can make a choice, a choice as to whether we are going to give in to the primitive urges and desires of our reptilian brain or, instead, use our neocortex to control them.” (3)

    This lies behind the secret of Chang-kung’s family. Indeed, this lies behind the spiritual path of Confucianism. There is much to criticize about Confucianism (just as there is much to criticize about any human institution), but over and over again the teachings of Confucianism emphasize both that we can use our higher selves to control our actions; and also that remaining spiritually centered helps us to use our higher selves.

    One reason to stay spiritually centered is that it keeps us from being frantic. Imagine living with nine generations of your family in one family compound — this could be enough to make anyone frantic! Yet when we keep ourselves centered, keep ourselves from being frantic, then our higher brain — the neocortex, our neomammalian brain — can function.

    Remember, this is a choice we get to make. This is the choice that Chang-kung’s family made. When dealing with the needs of a couple of generations of elders, and also the needs of families with young children, it would have been easy for Chang-kung to let his reptilian brain take over. But he didn’t. He stayed focused on the teaching of Confucianism — we might say, he stayed spiritually centered — and so he was able to retain his higher brain functions.

    I suspect the reptilian brain lay behind behind the internal rebellions in the early years of the Kangxi Emperor’s reign. When we let the reptilian brain take over, we become frantic, we become susceptible to engaging in stupid actions. And there will always be those, like the unscrupulous leaders of the internal rebellions in the Kangxi Emperor’s rule, who want to tempt us into engaging in stupid actions so that they can take advantage of us.

    Indeed, we are seeing this right now in the United States in all the negative talk you can find on social media. Social media generally bypasses the neocortex, and goes straight for the lower brain functions. Social media directly engages our reptilian brains and our paleomammalian brains. We get frantic, we lose our spiritual centers, and we do stupid things. This benefits the owners of the social media companies, who are just like the leaders of the Qing dynasty rebellions.

    It’s not just social media, of course. Our society has so many ways to bypass our higher brain functions, and activate our reptilian brains and our paleomammalian brains. We even do this in our face-to-face interactions. When you hear someone demonizing a political opponent, that person is trying to bypass your higher brain functions. They may be doing it unwittingly, but the effect is the same.

    Now, it may seem wrong when I say that religion and spirituality can help us keep us from bypassing our higher brain functions. After all, isn’t religion nothing but superstition and false belief? Well, first of all, this is where we can learn from certain progressive Buddhists, who tell us that practices like meditation are simply technologies that we can choose to use for the highest purposes. Confucians adopted this technology for their own purposes, removing the Buddhist theology and calling it “quiet-sitting.” So religion and spirituality can provide us with technologies for calming ourselves, and keeping our neocortex engaged.

    Equally importantly, it depends on how you use religion and spirituality. Just about anything we humans do is capable of being misused, so that we bypass our higher brain functions. I’m a big supporter of education, but education can (and has) been misused to indoctrinate rather than to educate. I’m a big supporter of democracy, but demagogues can (and do) misuse democratic processes and institutions for their own manipulative purposes. Similarly, religion and spirituality can be misused to manipulate us, rather than to help us use our higher brain functions. But just because bad actors can misuse them doesn’t mean these human institutions are irredeemably broken. We can make a choice about how we use them.

    I have come to believe that the most useful technology that religion offers us is a values-based community. This may not sound like a technology, but it is. Religion and spirituality offers us the technology of intentional communities in which we come together specifically to keep from being frantic, to keep us engaged with our higher selves. (That’s one of the primary purposes of our First Parish community.) We know that human beings are susceptible to being sucked in to groups that appeal to our reptilian brains. We humans are social being, and we need to be in communities. So joining an intentional community designed to engage our higher selves can be a useful tool to keep us out of other communities that deliberately engage our destructive reptilian brains.

    We live in a time and place where we are incredibly divided. I’m watching otherwise good and kind people say things like, “I can no longer talk to anyone from the opposite political party.” That is the reptilian brain talking. That is not the higher brain talking. And this is an incredibly destructive trend. It erodes civil discourse. It leads to violence.

    Faced with this trend, it’s all too easy to say, “Well, everyone else is doing it, so I’m going to do it too!” But a little thought shows us this is illogical; this is in fact a case of bypassing our higher brain functions. Just because our political leaders and other celebrities are bypassing their higher brain functions doesn’t mean we should bypass our higher brain functions. On the contrary, we really want to keep our higher brain functions engaged. In times like these, we really want to be our best selves. Having spent twenty-five years in education, I think about it this way: somebody has to be the grown-ups in the room; it might as well be us.

    And the thing is, if we manage to stay engaged with our higher selves, if we manage to keep our higher brain functions engaged, we will be calmer and happier. Remember the nine generations of Chang-kung’s family living together in one family compound. They ordered their lives with the Confucian value of rén — benevolence, forbearance, patience, kindness, humanity, humaneness, however you want to translate it. And perhaps the best way to translate it is in that phrase from the Confucian Analects: Do not to do to others as you would not wish done to yourself. This is almost identical to the wisdom of the rabbis in the Torah, who taught us: “That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.”

    May we study benevolence, forbearance, patience, kindness, humanity, and humaneness. May this spirit fill our hearts and minds, and fill us with a sense of peace. Then may that peace within spread outwards to our families, even unto nine generations. When our selves and our families are regulated by humaneness, patience, and kindness, then too will our nation be so regulated. And then perhaps peace will spread throughout our land.

    Notes

    (1) This word is also transliterated as “jen.”

    (2) For a brief summary of the story, see entry on Chang-kung in Herbert Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary (London, 1898). Lin Yutang tells the story differently in his essay “The Chinese People” (The China Critic, vol. IV, no. 15 [9 April 1931], 343-347): “There was once a Prime Minister, Chang Kung-ni, who was much envied for his earthly blessedness of having nine generations living together in one household. Once the Emperor, Tang Kao-chung, asked him the secret of his success, and the minister asked for pen and paper, on which he wrote over a hundred characters of the word ‘patience’ or ‘endurance’. Instead of taking that as a sad commentary on the family system, the Chinese people have ever after envied his example, and the phrase ‘hundred patience’ (po jen) has passed into current phraseology.”

    (3) Andrew E Budson, “Don’t Listen to Your Lizard Brain,” Psychology Today “Managing Your Memory” blog, 3 Dec. 2107, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/managing-your-memory/201712/don-t-listen-your-lizard-brain accessed 6 Nov. 2024.

  • The Importance of Democracy

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below may have typographical errors, missing words, etc., because I didn’t have time to make any corrections.

    Readings

    The first reading was the poem “Democracy,” written in 1949 by Langston Hughes (not available online due to copyright restrictions).

    The second reading was a transcript of a 1989 interview with novelist, poet, and jazz musician Gil Scott-Heron. The interviewer was documentary filmmaker Skip Blumberg.

    “I think that the Black Americans have been the only real die-hard Americans here, because we’re the only who have carried the process through…. Everyone else has sort of skipped stages. We’re the ones who marched, we’re the ones who carried the Bible, we’re the ones who carried the flag, we’re the ones who tried to go through the courts — and being born American didn’t seem to matter. Because we were born American but we still had to fight for what we were looking for.”

    The third reading is from “Haitian Migrants Who Found Safety at UUA Headquarters in Boston Share Their Stories,” a story in the most recent UU World magazine. In this story, the author interviews two refugees from Haiti.

    “In Chile Rodrick met Angela, who was studying to be a nurse in Haiti but, like he, left in search of a better life…. Rodrick found work, and they were able to afford a car. But someone tried to steal their car, and in the process of stopping the crime Rodrick was stabbed twice. At that point, they decided to head to the United States…. Asked why they chose the United States, Rodrick answered, ‘The reason we chose America is to get stability that’s missing in other countries.’”

    Sermon: “The Importance of Democracy”

    If you come here regularly on Sunday mornings, you may have noticed that for the past couple of months I’ve been mentioning democracy nearly every week. For us Unitarian Universalists, democracy has become an important religious principle.

    Placing religious importance on democracy may sound strange. Our society tends to assume that all religions are like Christianity, and because several branches of Christianity are hierarchical, our society tends to assume that all religions are hierarchical and non-democratic.

    We Unitarian Universalists, on the other hand, are devoted to democracy. Democracy is a core spiritual value for us Unitarian Universalists. We don’t have a hierarchy, and instead connect with other Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States through a democratically-run association, the Unitarian Universalist Association. Similarly, we connect with other Unitarians and Universalists throughout the world through a democratically-run organization called the International Unitarian/Universalist Collaboration.

    Operating under democratic principles helps our leaders to stay in close communication with those they are leading. And while we may trust our leaders, we are constantly evaluating them in our minds to make sure they are adhering to our shared goals and values. We want leaders to remain accountable to the people they’re leading, and we want leaders to be accountable to our highest values.

    This springs from our deeply held beliefs about the nature of human beings. We know that individual human beings are limited beings. Any human being is capable of making mistakes. That is to say, all human beings are fallible — I’m fallible, you’re fallible, our leaders are fallible. But when we come together in democratically-run groups and hold each other accountable for our actions and beliefs, we can help correct each other. Our dream is that if come together in community, together we can move toward a world of truth and goodness.

    That’s the basic theory of democracy: no one person has all the answers, but if we work together maybe we can move towards truth and goodness. In practice, democracy does not chart a direct path towards truth and goodness. The history of Black Americans provides an excellent case study of how American democracy has not followed a direct path straight to truth and goodness.

    This is what Langston Hughes was expressing in the first reading this morning, the poem titled “Democracy.” Hughes wrote that poem in 1949, at a difficult time for Black Americans. During the Second World War — which was ostensibly a war for democracy, and against fascism — Black American soldiers served with honor and distinction in both the European and the Pacific theatres. Here at home, Black women took jobs in war-related industries to help further the war effort. Yet once the Second World War was over, Black Americans continued to experience the same discrimination they had been subjected to prior to the war. When Black Americans pointed out this contradiction, some White Americans acknowledged this was true, but counseled Black Americans to wait a little longer and eventually they would gain the equality they felt they deserved in a democracy. When Hughes heard White Americans suggest that he wait for true equality, he wrote:

    I tire so of hearing people say,
    Let things take their course.
    Tomorrow is another day.
    I do not need my freedom when I’m dead….

    By 1949, Langston Hughes and many other Black Americans had grown tired of waiting for the equality promised by the Declaration of Independence. Nor did they take comfort in suggestions that they help vote in candidates who were sympathetic to their cause; especially since a great many Black Americans effectively weren’t able to vote at that time.

    However, Black Americans had long used other democratic methods to affect public policy. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, used the democratic right of freedom of the press. Elected political leaders were not addressing the epidemic of lynchings of Black Americans, so the NAACP sent journalists to investigate. We think disinformation is a new phenomenon, but disinformation about lynchings was incredibly widespread a hundred years ago. To counter disinformation, the NAACP published verifiable facts in their own periodicals, and presented those facts to elected leaders. It took decades, but gradually they were able to reduce the number of lynchings. And the NAACP was able to run their own news outlet because of another democratic right, the right of free association. By banding together and growing a large organization, Black Americans and their White allies were able fund their own journalists, and to make their views heard in the cacophony of a mass democracy.

    In the two decades after Langston Hughes wrote that poem, Black Americans continued to use a variety of democratic methods to make their views known. During the Civil Rights struggle of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, Black Americans used the right of free association to rally together to demand the rights that were legally due them. They used the free press to get the truth out the discrimination they faced, not just in the South, but here in the North as well. They used the courts to seek judicial redress, and while they lost many court battles, they also prevailed in such landmark cases as Brown vs. Board of Education.

    It is worth noting that all of this democratic activity was supported by voluntary associations like the NAACP. These were not lone individuals taking their individual case to the courts, but rather groups of people working together in concert. So, for example, there’s this myth that Rosa Parks acted on her own when she refused to give up her seat for a White woman on an Alabama bus. But she was not working alone. She was part of a much larger movement. She was helping the NAACP with a larger strategy when she refused to give up her seat. Because she was part of a local movement that, Black Americans were able to band together to boycott the Montgomery city buses for the year after her arrest, and this year-long organized boycott forced political leaders to end segregation on city buses.

    Democratic change does not come about though heroic individualism. Democratic change comes about as a result of people coming together, and working together. We are constantly told that the most important thing in a democracy is to vote, but this is false. Voting represents the absolute minimum effort an individual can make in a democracy. This is not to say the right to vote is unimportant — it is important, and everyone should have the right to vote. But if your only democratic effort is to spend fifteen minutes twice a year casting your vote, and maybe another couple of hours a year attending town meeting, you as an individual shouldn’t expect to have much of an impact.

    Yes, your vote matters — but it only matters when you exercise your other democratic rights and responsibilities. This is what Gil Scott-Heron was getting at in the second reading. I’m going to read that second reading for you again, in its entirety, because I think it’s so important. Gil Scott-Heron said: “I think that the Black Americans have been the only real die-hard Americans here, because we’re the only who have carried the process through…. Everyone else has sort of skipped stages. We’re the ones who marched, we’re the ones who carried the Bible, we’re the ones who carried the flag, we’re the ones who tried to go through the courts — and being born American didn’t seem to matter. Because we were born American but we still had to fight for what we were looking for.”

    People say we’re facing a crisis in democracy. I feel that crisis has come about because too many people have reduced their participation in democracy to the absolute minimum of voting, and nothing more. Too many Americans like their comfort more than they like democracy. We Americans have kind of abandoned democracy. We are comfortable sitting at home, so we stay at home. Fewer and fewer Americans belong to groups where cooperate with other people.

    Now if you’re here in the Meetinghouse this morning, you get to pat yourself on the back because you made the effort to get out of the house, and schlep down here, and attend this service. But honestly, the service itself isn’t all that important; what’s actually important is that we came down here to meet with like-minded people and work on projects together. We’re here participating in a democratically run organization. We’re actually doing democracy, in a small way, just by being here.

    And those of you who are watching the livestream, you also get to pat yourself on the back. You made the effort to stay off social media for an hour, to not play video games for an hour, and participate in this community. That might not seem like it’s important, but it is. We count the number of people who log on to our livestream each week, and it makes a difference for First Parish to be able to say you’re another person who’s part of this democratically-run organization. Just as the NAACP relied on support from members at a distance, so do we.

    The NAACP offers a good example for us to follow in this crisis in democracy. The NAACP is a voluntary association; it consists of people who freely associate together in a democratically-run organization to support each other and to affect public policy. The NAACP is a specific type of voluntary association: it has a national coordinating body, and it has local face-to-face groups that meet regularly. That’s actually the same organizational structure we Unitarian Universalists have. This is an especially powerful way for individuals to join together to affect public policy. Other examples of federated voluntary membership associations include the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Rifle Association, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and so on. You might not agree with the politics of these example organizations, but you have to admit that each of them has been effective in its own unique way. And each of these organizations actually serves to strengthen democracy, by amplifying the voice of individuals in a mass democracy where they might otherwise be lost in the noise.

    (Obviously, there are also ways to participate more directly in government. Some of us have the necessary skills to serve on town boards, run for elected office, and so on. But not everyone can fill these roles, which is why I’m emphasizing participating in voluntary associations.)

    Two days from now, we’re facing an especially divisive presidential election. (Our congregation is divided, by the way; we have both Republicans and Democrats.) The way the polls are running, no matter who wins, roughly half the electorate will be unhappy with the results of the election.

    So what should you do if your side loses on Tuesday?

    Well, I’ve heard people say all kinds of things. But I suggest we listen to the opinion of a recent Haitian immigrant, as we heard it in the third reading this morning:

    “Asked why they chose the United States, Rodrick [the recent immigrant] answered, ‘The reason we chose America is to get stability that’s missing in other countries.’”

    Remember, this is a Black man speaking, someone who knows full well that there continues to be racial discrimination against Black men here in the United States. But Rodrick also understands that there is a stability here in the United States. Our democracy that may be in crisis, but our democracy remains surprisingly robust. Much of that robustness comes from our freedom to associate, from our ability to create vibrant organizations that help affect public policy.

    If your preferred candidate loses in the coming week, rather than ranting and raving on social media (or in person), I suggest that you exercise your democratic right to participate in a voluntary association. Instead of ranting and raving, go join the local branch of the League of Women Voters — there’s a branch in Hingham, and a branch in Plymouth. Go join the Brockton branch of the NAACP. Or if you already belong to some group that influences politics locally and nationally, rededicate yourself to that group, and then go join another group. Mourning the loss is a waste of time; get organized instead.

    If your preferred candidate wins in the coming week, once again, please stay off social media. Beyond that, even if your candidate wins, you still need to exercise your democratic right to participate in a voluntary association that influences politics locally and nationally. Our problems are not going to go away just because your one presidential candidate wins this one election. Celebrating victory is a waste of time; get organized instead.

    Gil Scott-Heron said of his fellow Black Americans, “we were born American but we still had to fight for what we were looking for.” That has actually been true of all Americans. Democracy is never a finished product. We have always had to fight to keep our democracy. Human beings have always been fallible beings, and because we constantly make mistakes, we constantly have to fight for our ideals. Democracy is hard work, and it is never-ending work. The outcome of the upcoming election isn’t going to change that, no matter who wins.

    I hope you can hold on to that thought during this anxious time. Don’t let the anxiety get you down. Hold on to the thought that you can freely associate with others, and you can continue to work for accountability and democratic change no matter what the outcome of the election. Remember Rodrick who came here because it’s so much better here than in his country. Hold on to our highest democratic ideals. Continue to work for those high democratic ideals.