Dan Harper | Sermons

  • After the Election

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained many extemporaneous remarks and improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading comes from the BBC Web site, from a piece titled “From Our Own Correspondent: The greatest political show on earth,” by Justin Webb, dated Saturday, 1 November 2008. Reflecting on the importance of this U.S. political campaign as Election Day approached, Webb told an anecdote from August when he was in Denver, at the Democratic national convention, and he saw a motorcade begin to form…

    “Suddenly, in front of me there is activity. Men in grey suits are talking into their sleeves. Huge, sleek cars are being revved. Motorbikes are getting into formation.

    “It is not [Barack Obama], it is his family.

    “As the SUVs pass — including several with the doors and back windows open, men with large automatic weapons looking out with keen hard glares — I catch just a glimpse of the children, of 10-year-old Malia and seven-year-old Sasha peering out. I think their mother was sitting in the middle.

    “This is the true revolution.

    “There have been, after all, prominent black politicians for decades now, men and women afforded the full protection and respect that the nation can muster.

    “But seeing little black children gathered up into the arms of the secret service, surrounded by people who would die rather than let them die, is to see something that must truly make the racists of Americas past revolve in their graves.

    “I do not think Barack Obama will win or lose [the election] because of his race, but if he does win, the real moment you will know that America has changed is not when he takes the oath, but when we see pictures of tiny people padding along the White House corridors — a black First Family — representing America and American-ness.”

    [Site accessed 8 November 2008.]

    The second reading was a responsive reading from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, #584 “A Network of Mutuality,” adapted from a passage by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which begins as follows:

    “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny….”

    Sermon

    I have been planning to do a sermon for the 300th anniversary of our church, a sermon on how our church has used covenants as the central principle of our religious community, but somehow it seems that every time I schedule such a sermon, the outside world intervenes. Last time I planned to preach a sermon on covenants in our church, there was a global financial crisis. And this week, there was a historic election which seemed to me to require extended reflection in a sermon. However, Fred Gifun pointed something out to me — even though we will end our official celebration of our church’s 300th anniversary at the end of this calendar year, really our church was established in June of 1708, which means that we can keep on talking about our 300th anniversary for a full year thereafter. After all, a 300th anniversary is a big event, and it seems a shame to stop the celebration early. So I promise I will get to that sermon on covenant before next June….

    But this morning I would like to speak with you about the recently concluded election. It feels as though this past week’s election represents something of a change in the popular consciousness or mythology of the United States. When I say it represents something of a change in the popular consciousness of the United States, I do not mean to imply that the election was some kind of “victory” for the Democratic party. I have no interest in preaching about how some political party has achieved some kind of “victory” over another political party, because from a religious point of view such partisan “victories” are pretty much meaningless; from a religious point of view, I don’t care about one party “winning” and another party “losing.” No, I’m not much interested in political parties, but I believe we are seeing a change in the American popular mythology, and this is a legitimate topic to contemplate in a sermon.

    I believe we are witnessing at least three changes in our collective popular mythology:– First, we now have a president-elect who is black and who is the son of an immigrant, and that is a big change in the evolving American mythology of who is a “real American.” Second, I believe we are witnessing a shift away from selfishness as the highest value, and that represents a change in the evolving mythology of American individualism. Third, I believe we have witnessed the ascendancy of pragmatism over eye ideology, that is, a change from the American mythology of the past few years that ignored facts if the facts weren’t matching up to one’s ideas.

    1. Let me begin by talking about Barack Obama. I’m not going to talk about his politics, nor am I going to talk about his political party. Even though the not-yet-official election of Obama to the presidency of this country has given great joy to the Democratic party faithful, as I said before I’m not particularly interested in partisan politics, so I don’t particularly care one way or the other that there will be a Democrat in the White House. But I do care that the president-elect is black, that he is the son of an immigrant; and I also care that he comes out of the non-profit world.

    I will begin with the fact the Barack Obama is black, and perhaps more importantly that his family is black. The family of the president has taken on a peculiar role in the popular consciousness of this country. Long before I was born, there was Franklin Roosevelt’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt, who with her prominent leadership in promoting the New Deal and her advocacy of civil rights for African Americans created a myth of a strong, altruistic American woman. Then in the early 1960s — I’m too young to remember it — I’ve seen the photographs of the glamourous wife and small children of John F. Kennedy, and I’ve read about how the White House of those days was referred to as the mythical Camelot. Then there Chelsea Clinton, who was twelve years old when her father was elected president, and who had to endure all the publicity surrounding her father’s much-publicized affair with a young White House intern, and made us think about what happens to children when their parents misbehave. And then, heaven help them, there were the poor teenaged twins Jenna and Barbara Bush, who had the misfortune to get busted for underage drinking when their father was president, which certainly played into all kinds of mythical ideas about American teenagers. For most of us, the mention of these things brings up powerful images in our mind’s eye; and I think these images we have reveal very little about the flesh-and-blood people who have lived in the White House, but a great deal about our myths surrounding American families.

    As of January 20, 2009, we’ll have another set of images to add to the popular mythology of the American family. I’ll bet we are going to be seeing a good many images of Mahlia and Sasha Obama. I don’t think Barack Obama is going to change people’s consciousnesses as much as Mahlia and Sasha Obama are going to change people’s consciousnesses. Mahlia and Sasha’s father said he is going to give them a puppy when they move into the White House, and if you don’t think that we’re going to be inundated with pictures of those two children playing with a puppy, then you’re crazy. And those super-cute pictures of two cute black children playing with a cute little puppy in the White House are going to work their mythical magic on our popular consciousness in ways that we can’t even imagine right now.

    We have an American myth that anyone can make it in America, that even a new immigrant can become rich and powerful. But we have had another, more complicated, myth about who it is we regard as a “real American,” and this second more complicated myth gives us different levels of American realness. The realest Americans (or is that the most real Americans? — what is the comparative of an absolute?) — the realest Americans are the white people who came over on the Mayflower. This group has shifting boundaries, though — I was allegedly a member of this group until a few years ago when the Society of Mayflower Descendants fortuitously decided that it was flawed genealogical evidence by which my family could have claimed a link to someone who came over on the Mayflower;– which means, I suppose, I am no longer quite as real an American as I once was. Curiously, Mayflower descendants somehow seem to have more American realness than descendants of the original Indian nations that have existed in America for thousands of years, but maybe that’s because the Indians fought and killed settlers and cowboys and weren’t white. No one said this is rational.

    There used to be many gradations of whiteness, with Mayflowerites and old Virginia families being the most white; and in the last presidential election, George W. Bush and John Kerry were both Mayflower descendants, and therefore tenth cousins. It gets progressively less white and less real from there, so that my Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors were not so white and therefore not so much “real Americans,” especially during the First World War when they had to stop speaking German. It’s so confusing, isn’t it? It’s not just the color of your skin, it’s what your name sounds like, it’s your accent and the language you or your parents speak or spoke, it’s your religion, and it’s the country where your parents or ancestors came from.

    This myth of who constitutes a “real American” keeps changing. That’s what myths do: they are a peculiar kind of truth that changes over time. And right now, the myth of American realness is changing real fast. Now that Barack Hussein Obama is president-elect, he’s clearly a real American, just as real as you can get. Yet he has this funny-sounding name, his father came from Kenya, he’s black, his wife and kids are black, he attended a somewhat questionable liberal church and his father was a Muslim, and when he was a kid he lived in places where they didn’t always speak English. Wait, didn’t all those things used to mean that you weren’t really a real American? But if Barack Obama is now president-elect, that means he’s a real American, which means the myth has changed.

    This is all about myth, so it has no relation to politics. But just because it’s myth and not politics, don’t think it’s any less real. When it comes to myths, it doesn’t matter what political views Obama holds or does not hold. It does matter that he is black, and that his family is black. It does matter that he is the son of an immigrant, and his grandmother still lives in Kenya. It does matter that he considers himself bi-racial and multicultural. And it does matter that he has two really cute daughters who will soon be photographed and videotaped playing with their new puppy in the White House — and those photographs will probably do more to change the myth of what constitutes a real American than anything else.

    So this is the first change we’re seeing in American mythology — a change in how we define a “real American.”

    2. Now let us turn to the myth of selfishness and self-interest, another myth which this election has shown to be changing.

    On October 23, Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve, appeared before Congress to answer questions about the financial meltdown. Here’s how the New York Times business section reported his appearance:

    “On Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.

    ”  ‘Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,’ he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.” [“Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation,” Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, October 24, 2008, p. B1]

    So wrote the New York Times.

    I don’t want to get into a long discussion of Alan Greenspan’s economic policies, nor am I qualified to do so. But I do want to spend a little bit of time analyzing that quote by Greenspan, where he talks about self-interest. We have had a persistent myth within United States mythology in which self-interest assumes the god-like status of a sacred creed that will solve all our problems. ((Again, no one said this is rational.) According to this persistent myth, the highest virtue is looking out for yourself, and the highest form of individual is the kind of person who is completely self-sufficient. This view is summed up in something written by Ayn Rand, who was one of Alan Greenspan’s idols — Rand wrote, “I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Remember, I said this is a myth, and obviously it’s not rational because it’s obviously utter nonsense. Biologically speaking, a young homo sapiens is utterly dependent on its parents for quite a number of years, which means at minimum the survival of the species requires us to live for the sake of babies and children (in this context, I find it significant that Ayn Rand never had children of her own). Evolutionally speaking, homo sapiens evolved not as solitary animals like tigers, but as social animals like monkeys. Ethically and morally speaking, the theory of radical self-interest has been never been a mainstream ethical or moral theory.

    I believe the recent election represents a partial repudiation of the virtue of selfishness in the American mythology. This partial repudiation was quite evident in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Question One was defeated. Only thirty percent of the electorate voted in favor of doing away with the state income tax; seventy percent of us realized that our self-interest is well-served by paying taxes to be administered by the Commonwealth.

    This myth of self-interest offers a challenge to us Unitarian Universalists. Because we aren’t tied up with creeds and dogmas, we make a virtue of freedom of thought. Some people, including some Unitarian Universalists, interpret our freedom of thought as a form of ultra-individualism. It goes like this: the lack of creeds and dogmas gets interpreted to mean that “we can believe anything we want,” and that in turn gets interpreted to mean each individual in one of our churches can do anything he or she wants. But this is a misinterpretation of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. The mistake comes when you start by saying we have no creed or dogma, which is a negative definition of who we are;– whereas what’s truly important about us comes out in a positive definition: we are a people bound together by covenant, that is, bound together by the promises we make to one another voluntarily; and we are a people who affirm the essential goodness of humanity, which includes the many supporting social structures which help us stay good in the face of temptation.

    I like to think that our religious ideals can lead (and sometimes do lead) to balance between, on the one hand, valuing each person, including ourselves, as an end in themselves, rather as means to someone else’s end; and on the other hand, recognizing the value of the community that supports each individual, recognizing the “inescapable network of mutuality” which binds us together. So it is that we balance individuals as ends in themselves, with the network of mutuality. And so it is that we hope that American mythology is moving away from the excessive selfishness of the past couple of decades towards something better

    3. Finally, let us turn to the myth that ideology should run our nation. In mythological terms, ideology is opposed to pragmatism. The general myth of tells people to stick to their ideas no matter what; don’t get confused by the facts; our country, right or wrong; if the facts contradict ideas, then ignore the facts.

    I’m not a political scientist; my area of expertise is philosophy and theology. I may not be qualified to speak on political matters, but when I look at the behavior of the executive branch of the federal government over the past few years, it is quite clear to me that the executive branch of the government has been dominated by ideologues who don’t want to be confused by facts. I say this knowing too that that the current administration holds weekly Bible studies in the White House,– and we’re not talking about the kind of Bible studies we have here in our church, we’re talking about conservative Christian Bible studies that don’t allow you to question what’s in the Bible. It seems to me that the two go hand in hand: unquestioning Bible study, and unquestioning adherence to certain political ideologies.

    And what is the political ideology that has been blindly followed by the executive branch of the federal government? It seems to me that the current Bush administration adheres to the ideology that government is essentially a bad thing, whereas selfishness is a good thing; this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, an ideology that proclaims the virtue of selfishness, in opposition to the notion that government is an exercise in selflessness. It also seems to me that the current Bush administration represents an attempt to impose the ideology of a certain brand of evangelical, conservative Christianity on an entire nation, a form of Christianity that is opposes abortion, that is anti-gay, and above all that doesn’t believe in providing help or charity to poor people.

    Let me expand on that last point. If you have been watching conservative Christianity over the past few decades, you will have noticed that something called “prosperity Christianity” has dominance. Prosperity Christianity teaches that God wants you to be prosperous, and that if you will just believe in the right kind of God and pray hard, you too will become rich. One scholar of religion defines it this way: “Prosperity Christianity may… be interpreted as a psychological reaction to theological pessimism combined with a willingness to embrace the benefits of rampant American capitalism.” [New Religions: A Guide ed. Christopher Partridge [Oxford, 2004], p. 91] It’s a very convenient kind of religion, because you don’t have to give any of your own money to poor people, you just have to tell them to come to your church, believe in your God, and then they will become rich — and if they don’t come to your church, well I suppose then they deserve their poverty. I’m sure you will notice that prosperity Christianity celebrates the virtue of selfishness.

    The opposite of rigid ideology is pragmatism. Whereas the ideologue believes in ignoring facts and sticking to ideology, the pragmatist believes that when facts contradict a hypothesis, you change the hypothesis in order to take into account the facts. In the world of religion, the ideologues include the fundamentalists who deny the fact of evolution because it doesn’t match their ideology, it doesn’t match their creed. In the world of religion, we Unitarian Universalists would count ourselves among the pragmatists; we were among the first religious movements to acknowledge that Charles Darwin’s theories were correct, and to modify our religious beliefs accordingly. In politics, the ideologues are the dogmatic ones who hold to their political beliefs the way the fundamentalists hold on to their religious beliefs. The political pragmatists, on the other hand, do have high ideals but they recognize the need to modify their behavior when circumstances dictate. From my vantage point, both major presidential candidates were more pragmatic than ideological. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have showed their willingness to change their opinions over time in the face of facts; and neither one of them seemed blind to the realities of the world around them.

    I have hopes that this means our country is moving away from the myth that a rigid ideology is good. We have not been served well by the ideologues. Our current failure in Iraq seems to me to have resulted from our country’s inability to face the facts. The current global financial meltdown seems to me to have resulted from our country’s insistence on a rigid ideology of self-interest and selfishness, in the face of lots of evidence that that ideology was not effective. The real strength of American thinking has always been our reliance on pragmatism; and I have hopes that we are now turning away from ideology and towards pragmatism.

    Thus, in conclusion, I believe this election has been a historic election — at least, it has been historic insofar as it represents a change in our national mythos. We have witnessed at least three changes in our collective popular mythology:–

    First, as of January 20, we will have a president who is black, a president who is the son of an immigrant; we will have a black family living in the White House, a family that has historically provided images that help to shape our image of what it means to be an American. This is the biggest and most immediate change, a positive change in the evolving American mythology of who is a “real American.”

    Second, I believe we are witnessing a shift away from selfishness as the highest value. While we Unitarian Universalists value individual freedom, we also know that selfishness isn’t necessary for freedom, and we have been skeptical of the ultimate virtue of selfishness. Thus we welcome what appears to be a change in the evolving mythology of American individualism — a change away from mere individualistic selfishness, and towards individualism within an inescapable network of mutuality.

    Third, I believe we have witnessed the triumph of pragmatism over ideology. This movement away from blind obedience to a set of ideas will return us to our great strength as Americans, the strength of pragmatism.

    May all three of these changes lead us all further along the path of goodness and justice.

  • Election Day Sermon

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained more than the usual amount of extemporaneous remarks and improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading comes from the Election Day sermon of an early minister of this church. In May, 1776, Samuel West, then minister of our congregation, was invited to preach the Election Day sermon before the Massachusetts colonial legislature. West preached a carefully balanced and beautifully written justification for rebelling against King George. Before I read a fairly long extract from this sermon, I will only say that Samuel West uses the term “magistrate” in much the same way that we would use the term “elected official.”

    “If magistrates are no farther ministers of God than they promote the good of the community, then obedience to them neither is nor can be unlimited; for it would imply a gross absurdity to assert that, when magistrates are ordained by the people solely for the purpose of being beneficial to the state, they must be obeyed when they are seeking to ruin and destroy it. This would imply that men were bound to act against the great law of self-preservation, and to contribute their assistance to their own ruin and destruction, in order that they may please and gratify the greatest monsters in nature, who are violating the laws of God and destroying the rights of mankind. Unlimited submission and obedience is due to none but God alone. He has an absolute right to command; he alone has an uncontrollable sovereignty over us, because he alone is unchangeably good; he never will nor can require of us, consistent with his nature and attributes, anything that is not fit and reasonable; his commands are all just and good; and to suppose that he has given to any particular set of men a power to require obedience to that which is unreasonable, cruel, and unjust, is robbing the Deity of his justice and goodness, in which consists the peculiar glory of the divine character, and it is representing him under the horrid character of a tyrant.

    “If magistrates are ministers of God only because the law of God and reason points out the necessity of such an institution for the good of mankind, it follows, that whenever they pursue measures directly destructive of the public good they cease being God’s ministers, they forfeit their right to obedience from the subject, they become the pests of society, and the community is under the strongest obligation of duty, both to God and to its own members, to resist and oppose them, which will be so far from resisting the ordinance of God that it will be strictly obeying his commands. To suppose otherwise will imply that the Deity requires of us an obedience that is self-contradictory and absurd, and that one part of his law is directly contrary to the other; i.e., while he commands us to pursue virtue and the general good, he does at the same time require us to persecute virtue, and betray the general good, by enjoining us obedience to the wicked commands of tyrannical oppressors. Can any one not lost to the principles of humanity undertake to defend such absurd sentiments as these? As the public safety is the first and grand law of society, so no community can have a right to invest the magistrate with any power or authority that will enable him to act against the welfare of the state and the good of the whole. If men have at any time wickedly and foolishly given up their just rights into the hands of the magistrate, such acts are null and void, of course; to suppose otherwise will imply that we have a right to invest the magistrate with a power to act contrary to the law of God, — which is as much as to say that we are not the subjects of divine law and government.”

    (Full sermon online here.)

    The second reading is very brief, and it comes from Section C-2.1 of the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which we are a member congregation.

    “We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:…

    “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large….”

    Sermon

    It’s election day on Tuesday, a day when registered voters will be selecting national, state, and local candidates, and deciding on a number of ballot questions, and I want to talk with you this morning about the election. No, I’m not going to endorse any specific candidate because I don’t think that’s something a minister should do. No, I’m not going to talk much about the presidential election, because even though the presidential campaign has dominated the news, it is only a small part of this coming election.

    And since I’m a big supporter of the separation of church and state, I want to begin by telling you why I think it is appropriate for me to preach about election day. One of the peculiarities of Unitarian Universalism is that we, as a matter of religious principle, assert the value of the democratic process, and we have religious reasons for doing so. We are religious supporters of democracy. You may ask why this is so.

    To begin with, we value democratic process because we have found that the best form of church governance for us is centered in a democratic local congregation — this is known as congregational polity. We believe strongly in the use of reason and the importance of personal conscience, and so instead of giving primary importance to distant, faceless hierarchies, we have chosen to make the local church the center of religious authority. Of course we also make sure that we have strong connections to other Unitarian Universalist congregations, but those are connections between equals rather than hierarchical relationships.

    Then within the local congregation, we value democratic process because we think no one person has complete access to the truth. Over the last few centuries, we have discovered that it makes sense to listen to all people, not just the rich and powerful people; — no one person has all the answers, and just because someone is in a position of authority does not mean that their answers are better than ours. We have found that a good democratic process is the best way to take advantage of the insights of a wide range of people, so that we can gradually get closer to the truth.

    So because of this, and perhaps some other reasons, we value democratic process as a matter of religious principle. I trust you have noticed that, although we assert the value of the democratic process as a religious principle, that is not the same thing as asserting the value of democracy as it is practiced in local, state, and national levels here in the United States. We can support any democratic process that matches our religious standards for democracy; and so it is that Canadian Unitarian Universalists can be just as supportive of their parliamentary form of democracy as we are of democracy in the United States; and any Unitarian Universalist can be supportive of democracy as practiced by the United Nations. I say all this because I want to be clear that we Unitarian Universalists are not tied to any specific instance of democratic government;– indeed, we may find that our religious values require us to be critical of some democratic governments. Nor are we tied to any specific political party;– indeed, we often find that our religious values require us to be very critical of both major political parties here in the United States, and critical of all the minor political parties as well. Our ideal of democratic process is just that — an ideal, and we often find that reality does not measure up to our ideal.

    Given that we support democratic processes, I have three things I’d like to talk with you about in this election day sermon. I’d like to talk about whether it is your duty to vote; I’d like to talk about what role religion should play in politics; and I’d like to talk about several specific issues that confront us in the coming election.

    …

    Let’s start with the easiest bit first, whether or not it is your duty to vote. Of course we must remember that a fair number of our members and friends are not eligible to vote, whether due to their nationality or age or whatever. With those exceptions in mind, it is my firm conviction that Unitarian Universalism does NOT require us to vote in any election.

    I’ll bet you thought I was going to say that everyone had to vote. But remember the second reading this morning:– we affirm and promote “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large….” Thus, if voting violates your deeply-held principles such that is against your conscience to do vote, then as a religious principle, you should not vote. This is what we might call “principled non-voting.”

    Principled non-voting can mean that you refuse to vote at all, or it can mean that you refuse to choose between candidates whom you feel are unacceptable as a matter of principle. There have been times when I have refused to vote for a candidate for a particular office because I felt none of the candidates was morally acceptable.

    You might also engage in principled non-voting when you get into the voting booth and discover to your surprise that you have no idea how to choose between two candidates. My favorite example of are the elections for governor’s council here in Massachusetts — it’s almost impossible to find out what the candidates stand for, and more than once I have chosen to not vote for anyone for governor’s council as a matter of principled non-voting.

    There’s another possibility for principled non-voting, a possibility which I don’t think applies to anyone in this church. If someone gets into the voting booth and realize that they can’t vote for a particular candidate because of skin color, or gender, or anything else, then I suggest that it is best for them not to vote at all. We’ve been hearing about this in the current presidential campaign — there are people who will refuse to vote for Barack Obama because he’s black; and there were people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries because she’s a woman, or who will refuse to vote for Sarah Palin because she’s a woman. Here in our congressional district, no doubt there are people who will refuse to vote for Barney Frank because he’s gay. It should be obvious that if there’s someone who refuses to vote for a particular candidate because of skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or what-have-you — then that someone should engage in principled non-voting, and simply not vote for or against either candidate.

    None of this is news to anyone here, I’m sure. Out of religious conviction, we should take advantage of the right to vote, unless voting violates our conscience, in which case principled non-voting is perfectly acceptable.

    …

    Now let’s talk about what role religion should play in politics.

    In the first reading this morning, we heard from the 1776 Election Day sermon by Rev. Samuel West, the minister of our church back in the late 18th century. This is a fairly typical Revolutionary sermon that tries to justify rebellion against the British government, while acknowledging the necessity for maintaining civil order. It is a fairly typical 18th century sermon because West obviously believes that the universe runs according to rational and reasonable laws and principles; that God is a rational being; that human beings are generally rational beings but that we also need a government to keep us from acting wickedly towards one another; and that government is a necessary institution to promotes the general good of humankind. All this is pretty standard stuff out of your high school American history class.

    But I get something more out of what West has to say. He tells us that as long as magistrates “promote the good of the community,” then they are doing God’s work; but when magistrates do not promote the good of the community, they are no longer doing God’s work but instead are “pests of society.” Over the past few years, we have seen a number of American politicians claiming that God is on their side, but Samuel West puts the lie to such claims;– God isn’t on any politician’s side, God is on the side of goodness and justice. King George claimed that God was on his side, but Samuel West said that King George was wrong. Politicians can bring government into alignment with the law of God and the law of reason, says West — but politicians can not bring God into alignment with their political views.

    Whether or not we believe in God, I think Samuel West is onto something here. He is telling us that what’s most important about a politician is the results they achieve. Conversely, he tells us quite directly (and I quote), “whenever [magistrates] pursue measures directly destructive of the public good they cease being God’s ministers.” I interpret this to mean that we should pay very little attention to what politicians say about their religion — but we should pay a great deal of attention to what politicians do to make this world a better place. The proof is in the pudding.

    Given that principle, I believe that politicians should keep their religion out of their politics, and let the rest of us be the judge of whether or not they are acting in a moral and ethical manner. Of the four major-party presidential and vice-presidential candidates, I feel John McCain and Joe Biden have been pretty good at not talking about their personal religious beliefs. However, I have at times been uncomfortable with Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, both of whom at times have seemed to me to inject a little too much of their religion into their politics. Obama has been making a point of the fact that he’s a Christian, which is perhaps understandable considering the racial and religious slurs that have been thrown at him; but sometimes I feel he has talked too much about his Christian faith. Palin, for her part, has been a little too forthcoming about her Christian faith, and about her support for creationism. At the same time, I have also noticed that it’s the woman and the black man who feel they have to talk a lot about their religions, and it may be that both John McCain and Joe Biden have the luxury of being able to dodge questions about their religious faiths because they are white men.

    Maybe the real problem is that American voters push their politicians into talking about religion. It should not matter to us whether a politician is a Pentecostal, a Congregationalist, an Episcopalian, or a Roman Catholic — nor should it matter to the politician. Colin Powell was on the television program “Meet the Press” last week, and he said the following: “Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s, No, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim kid believing that he or she could be president?” We will answer that there’s nothing wrong with a Muslim kid believing that he or she could be president someday. We also know that too many people in America today would only accept a Christian as president. This is wrong — it should not matter what religion a politician adheres to, as long as they are moral and ethical in their actions. I don’t know what to do about this problem, except to point out that it exists — and to reaffirm that we don’t care what religion a politicians holds, as long as they try to keep their religion out of their politics.

    …

    I’d like to end this sermon by alerting you to five issues that I think we Unitarian Universalists should pay close attention to as we evaluate the various candidates for state and national offices.

    First, as Unitarian Universalists, we trace our religious heritage back to the great teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. If what was written about him is even a little bit accurate, Jesus was deeply concerned with the fate of poor and disadvantaged people. He taught that the first should be last, and the last should be first — which I take to mean that we should take care of the poor before we take care of the rich. Thus, when evaluating any political candidate, I suggest we ask ourselves how this candidate will care for poor and disadvantaged people.

    The second issue is also drawn from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was quite firm that we should work for peace; indeed, he is reported to have said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” There are many different ideas of how to achieve peace, and I have talked with people in the military and people who are peace activists whom I would call peacemakers. Also, peace goes beyond international affairs and includes peace in our local communities as well. While we might disagree about how to achieve peace, I suggest that when evaluating any political candidate we ask ourselves if this candidate is committed to peace.

    The third issue also comes from the teachings of Jesus. You may remember that Jesus told us to love our neighbors. And Jesus was quite clear that every human being is our neighbor, that human love must cross race, ethnic group, class, and gender. Based on this principle, we Unitarian Universalists fight racism and sexism and all forms of prejudice. Therefore, I suggest that when evaluating any political candidate, we should ask ourselves whether this candidate sees all persons as their neighbor, and ask ourselves whether this candidate will fight racism, sexism, and all forms of discrimination.

    The fourth issue I’d like to mention is the principle of ecojustice. As Unitarian Universalists, we are affirm the importance of the web of all existence of which we are a part, and we are committed to maintaining human and non-human communities in a sustainable fashion. The word “ecojustice” implies that economic justice and ecological justice cannot be separated and are of equal importance. With this in mind, I suggest that when we evaluate any political candidate, we will want to consider whether this candidate is committed to ecojustice and to sustainability.

    Finally, as Unitarian Universalists we are committed to the use of reason. We are in favor of extending human knowledge through science, and we believe it is good to be an intellectual. Thus I would suggest that when we evaluate a political candidate, we spend some time considering whether the candidate supports science and scientific research, supports the use of reason in making decisions, and supports being an intellectual.

    …

    We Unitarian Universalists cherish freedom of thought. We don’t hold with religious dogma, and I’d like to believe that we don’t hold with political dogma either. What I have tried to outline in this election day sermon is (I hope) not dogma, but rather matters of principle:–

    As a matter of principle, we should either vote on Tuesday; either that, or we may choose to engage in principled non-voting. Forgetting to vote, however, or being to lazy to vote, are not valid options for us.

    As a further matter of principle, we should resist the temptation to mix religion and politics. We should pretty much ignore what politicians say about their religion — but we should pay a great deal of attention to what politicians do to make this world a better place. We don’t care if a presidential candidate is Muslim or Christian or atheist; what matters to us is whether that politician will provide principled and ethical leadership.

    Finally, there are five issues that, as a matter of principle, I feel should be of concern to every Unitarian Universalist:– caring for the poor people in the world; peacemaking; opposing discrimination in all its forms; sustainability or ecojustice; and the importance of reason, science, and the intellect.

    I will close by reminding you that these are only suggestions. I expect that you are a reasonable, thoughtful human being; I expect that you will listen to your conscience; and I expect that you will participate in democracy based on your own deeply-held principles.

    May we each live out our highest principles, according to conscience, on election day.

  • Glory Days, or, Hit by a Fish

    On this Sunday, we recognized a Unitarian church which, like First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, is also celebrating its three hundredth birthday this year. Thus, the readings did not relate to the sermon, but instead celebrated the birthday of All Souls Unitarian Church in Belfast, Ireland. These readings are included here:

    Greetings to All Souls Belfast

    Whereas All Souls Church in Belfast, Ireland, affiliated with the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland and with the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, will celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of their founding this week;

    Whereas First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, was established three hundred years ago this year when Rev. Samuel Hunt was settled as minister in what was then called the town of Dartmouth;

    Whereas both congregations are a part of the worldwide Unitarian fellowship, sharing in the values of liberal religion;

    Whereas we feel a special connection with All Souls because Maggi Kerr Peirce has been a member of both congregations;

    Therefore, we do extend our warmest greetings to the congregation of All Souls Church, wishing that their congregation may thrive and continue to uphold the values of liberal religion for at least another three centuries.

    Given under our hands this fourteenth day of October in the two thousand and eighth year of the common era…

    [Signed by members of the Board of Trustees of First Unitarian Church in New Bedford.]

    A short history of All Souls Unitarian Church in Belfast, Ireland

    Read by Maggi Kerr Peirce

    John Abernethy, called “the father of non-subscription”, was a prominent Irish Presbyterian minister who led many ministers and congregations out of the Synod of Ulster into a separate liberal-minded denomination, known today as the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and affiliated with the worldwide Unitarian movement.

    In 1705 Abernethy founded a meeting, subsequently known as the Belfast Society, of ministers and lay people who gathered to discuss the Bible and recent theological scholarship. Members pooled their resources to buy new books and prepared papers on the latest publications. They trained themselves to engage in theological disputation and gradually began to challenge accepted religious notions of their day. A nineteenth-century Presbyterian historian described the Belfast Society as a “seed-plot of error”.

    James Kirkpatrick, an Irish Presbyterian minister, was the first minister in Belfast to argue for the principles of non-subscription. He was a founding member of the Belfast Society. In common with Abernethy and others he adopted an increasingly critical attitude towards humanly formulated creeds, particularly the Westminster Confession of Faith.

    In 1706 he accepted a call from the Belfast congregation as colleague to the Reverend John McBride. The Belfast congregation, which had grown rapidly, numbered more than three thousand members. At the time of Kirkpatrick’s call McBride had fled to Scotland to avoid arrest for refusing to take the oath abjuring the claims to the throne of James II’s son. McBride had suggested that the original Belfast congregation should be divided and a second meeting house built. Eventually, after complicated negotiations, the Belfast church did just that. A new meeting house was built immediately behind the first as the home of Kirkpatrick’s Second congregation. This was the beginning of unitarianism in Belfast.

    [From material written by David Steers, minister of All Souls’ Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Belfast from 1989 to 2000.]

    Sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. About half the sermon as preached was extemporaneous, and the text below is a rough reconstruction of the actual sermon. Additionally, the text below has been slightly corrected based on further historical research. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

    Sermon — “Richard Huff, Quiet Revolutionary”

    Years ago, I was watching some stupid television show, and I saw a comedy routine in which, much to his surprise, a man got slapped in the face with a fish. I said it was a “comedy routine,” although if you think about it, getting hit in the face with a fish is not really that funny. In fact, I don’t remember anything else about that comedy routine, so it couldn’t have been very funny. But I have retained this image of a very surprised man, and since then I’ve sometimes thought that that image of getting hit in the face with a fish is a good image for the way life can surprise us in very unpleasant ways.

    So I tell you this, and it occurs to me that it’s possible that when you go home, you’ll be sitting down to eat lunch and ask yourself, “Now what did Dan talk about today? Something about a fish?” — and that’s all you’ll remember about this sermon. If you remember nothing else about this sermon, please also remember this:– when life slaps you in the face with a fish, you don’t have to blame yourself. It can be tempting to blame yourself when life is hard — but please don’t. You don’t have to blame yourself when life is hard on you.

    Because that’s what happens in real life sometimes. Even when everything is going astonishingly well, even when you’re doing everything right, suddenly the rules of the game can change on you. This is what has happened to many of us, financially speaking, over the past few weeks:– We thought we were doing everything right, when suddenly the stock market falls apart, retirement plans lose a third of their value, the state can’t borrow money so it makes major cuts, unemployment rises, and so on. We thought we were doing all right when this financial crisis slapped us in the face with a fish, metaphorically speaking.

    As Unitarian Universalists, we already know that we have to be always ready to change and grow and transform. That’s why we don’t like creeds or doctrines:– the creed that we adopt today may strangulate growth tomorrow. Therefore, out of religious principle, we like to remain ready to change and grow and transform ourselves. And yet even with our openness to change, even with our willingness to transform ourselves to meet new realities, sometimes we too get surprised by events.

    This morning, I’d like to tell you about one such event that happened here in our own church some fifty-three years ago. Back in 1954, our church seemed poised for explosive growth; but the very next year Sunday morning adult attendance began to decline rapidly, the Sunday school began to decline more slowly, and that decline continued pretty much right through the quarter century. So here’s the story:

    …

    Like every church, our church has always had ups and downs. In the 1920s there were years when this church had more than a hundred children and teenagers in the Sunday school each week, and more than a hundred adults sitting in the pews for the morning service, and even more adults at church for the Sunday evening vespers service (yes, we used to have a vespers service here). And there have always been times when we weren’t so successful. In the 1930s, adult attendance dropped, and the Sunday school shrank in size. Fortunately, during the 1930s, most of the membership of First Universalist Church transferred to First Unitarian, and those folks kept us from declining even further.

    In 1938, when Duncan Howlett became our minister, our attendance shot up, and stayed high the entire time he was here. After Howlett left in 1946, on the surface it seemed as though our church declined in energy and numbers for a half a dozen years. But growth and change and transformation were happening underneath the surface: the old pew rental system finally disappeared; the minister was integrated back in to the governance of the church and was allowed to address the annual meeting without having to ask permission first; the Sunday school stayed strong and large; and many groups and organizations within the church remained strong and vibrant, including the Women’s Alliance, the Sewing Circle, the Murray Club organized by the old Universalists, and other groups. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, this church may have looked a little sleepy on the surface, but good healthy activity was taking place below the surface.

    The society around the church was changing rapidly at this time. Even though New Bedford slowly continued to lose manufacturing jobs, the economy finally emerged from the Great Depression. After the Second World War, lots of young couples got married and had babies, and this was the beginning of the famous Baby Boom. There was a resurgence of civic engagement; that is, people were eager to become active in community groups; the 1950s were the high point of civic engagement in the twentieth century. With the rise in civic engagement, lots of people started going to church.

    In the midst of all this societal growth and change and transformation, our church called a new minister, Richard Huff. He seemed exactly the right man to be minister at our church in that time. He was a former Navy chaplain, so he could relate to all the returning soldiers. After the war he became the minister at the Unitarian church in Stoneham; when he arrived there, they were a dying church, but when he left they were thriving and growing. He was a “kind man,” a man of “great charm” and a “good preacher” (here I’m quoting what people have said to me about him); he was just the right kind of personality to be the minister of this church. All these characteristics were evident when he arrived here in 1953. But I think he had another, less obvious, characteristic that perfectly suited him to be the minister of this church at that moment in time: he was the kind of man who knew that both people and churches have to constantly change and grow and transform themselves in order to continue to thrive.

    When Richard Huff arrived in 1953, attendance skyrocketed. Our church had gotten up to an average attendance of 130 adults on Sundays when Duncan Howlett had been here, probably the highest attendance our church had seen for most of the twentieth century. After Howlett left, attendance dropped down to about a hundred adults, but when Richard Huff arrived attendance shot up to 167 — that is, attendance increased more than fifty percent in his first year here! And the next year, attendance remained just about as high.

    The number of children in the Sunday school did not shoot up, however. On the surface, the reason appeared obvious: we didn’t have adequate space to accommodate all the children. On Sunday morning, I have been told that there were groups of children everywhere; one Sunday school class even had to meet in the balcony of the Tryworks Auditorium upstairs in the Parish House (if you’ve seen that space, it’s hard to imagine how you’d have a Sunday school class up there). So our church began to build additional Sunday school space: part of the basement was renovated in the early 1950s, and the lower basement was renovated a few years later.

    But Richard Huff and a few other forward-thinking lay leaders in the church began to realize that it wouldn’t be enough to simply build more classrooms. They began to realize that if the church were going to be serious about the Sunday school, it was time to hire a paid director of religious education. However, these were the years when many Unitarian and Universalist churches were hiring their very first paid directors of religious education; many churches were looking for qualified people to fill those jobs, and there just weren’t enough qualified people to go around. Our church tried to hire one of those qualified people, but at the very last moment she decided she did not want to leave the place where she had been living. The lay leaders and the old Sunday school superintendent tried to keep things going, but Sunday school attendance slowly began to drop.

    The number of adults on Sunday mornings dropped even faster. By 1958, when our church celebrated its 250th birthday, adult attendance had dropped down to just over 100 adults on a Sunday.

    In the midst of all this, Richard Huff and his family were going through a serious and major family crisis, that apparently involved all of his immediate family. He resigned as minister, and apparently left the ministry for a number of years. Eventually, though, he returned to the Unitarian ministry, and wound up as the minister in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

    Our church’s attendance continued to decline after all this happened. The Baby Boom was slowing down, so there weren’t as many families bringing children to church. Then in the 1960s the social and economic situation in New Bedford grew more difficult, with urban riots and growing unemployment. And all across the nation, people just stopped going to church as much. The net result was that, like many Unitarian Universalist churches across the country, we kept shrinking right through the 1960s and 1970s.

    …

    So our church started shrinking around 1956. It would be easy for us to blame this on the changes in the society around us, the changes in New Bedford. But if it were the changes in the society around us which stopped our growth, I think the decline would have been more gradual, and I think it would have come five years later. Instead, we stopped growing so suddenly, it was as if someone smacked us in the face with a fish. I’d like to briefly explain to you what I think happened here in our church around 1956.

    When Richard Huff arrived, the minister of this church was the central node through which all church communication passed. The minister was the only one who really knew everyone: the shut-ins, the staff, the people who never came to church, the children and the Sunday school teachers, as well as the people in the pews on Sunday morning. There’s even a name for this kind of church: it’s called a “pastoral-size church,” a name which tells us that the pastor, or minister, is the central communication node for the whole church. If you have a really good minister, you can take a pastoral-size church up to an average attendance of about two hundred men, women, and children; but if you get above that, one minister simply can’t manage all the communications that need to happen. Yet from 1953 through 1955, our church had an average of about two hundred and fifty people on Sunday morning: we went over that magic number of two hundred, and then we dropped right back down.

    Over the past thirty years, church experts have done a lot of research on how to make the transition past an average attendance of two hundred — it can be done, but it requires a church to change the way they do just about everything. Indeed, this is the current crisis of the liberal churches. Most of our liberal churches, of whatever denomination, never get above that magic number of an average Sunday attendance of two hundred. Sometimes a really skilled minister will keep a church above that level for a few years or a couple of decades, but when that person leaves, attendance declines back down.

    …

    There’s a moral to this story. Of course, there’s a moral to this story, but it’s not the moral you expect. In fact, there are two morals to this story.

    This first moral is very simple: If things don’t work out the way you expect, you don’t have to automatically blame yourself. Sometimes life slaps you in the face with a fish, and when that happens, it’s not your fault. When life is hard, please go easy on yourself.

    The other moral of this story has to do with our church. It turns out that the evangelical Christians are having a similar problem, but in reverse. Brian McLaren, an evangelical Christian who has been working hard on church growth from the evangelical side of things, has said that the Christian “conservatives tend to be rigid theologically and promiscuous pragmatically and liberals tend to be rigid methodologically and a lot more free theologically.” In other words, the Christian conservatives stick rigidly to their doctrine and dogmas, but they’ll try all kinds of new organizational strategies; whereas us religious liberals are pretty free and open about what we believe, but we are pretty rigid when it comes to the way we do church. Then McLaren goes on to say: “Maybe we could trade.”

    And that’s the other moral of the story. As religious liberals, we are already free in our thinking; we are already quiet revolutionaries in our religion. And perhaps we can now free up our organizational thinking so that we are just as free. Perhaps now we can become quiet revolutionaries in the way we do the business of the church, in the same way that we have long been quiet revolutionaries in the way we do theology.