Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Christian nationalism

  • Why democracy matters

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading was from Cornel West’s book Democracy Matters:

    “In America, we have tended to underplay the crucial role of the foundational motivation of democracy. From the time of that first experiment in democracy in Athen in the fifth century BC to the birth of the American democratic experiment in the eighteenth century, the consolidation of elite power was the primary object of democratic revolt. This will to transform corrupted forms of elite rule into more democratic ways of life is an extraordinary force, though each new democratic result of the exercise of this will [always] falls short of democratic ideals. This is why all democracies are complete and unfinished, and this is why American democracy is a work in progress.”

    The second reading was from the long poem “Freedom’s Plow” by Langston Hughes:

    …America is a dream.
    The poet says it was promises.
    The people say it is promises — that will come true.
    The people do not always say things out loud,
    Nor write them down on paper.
    The people often hold
    Great thoughts in their deepest thoughts
    And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
    Haltingly and stumbling say them,
    And faultily put them into practice.
    The people do not always understand each other.
    But there is, somewhere there,
    Always the trying to understand,
    And the trying to say,
    “You are human. Together we are building our land.”

    America!
    Land created in common,
    Dream nourished in common,
    Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
    If the house is not finished,
    Don’t be discouraged, builder!
    If the fight is not yet won,
    Don’t be weary, soldier!…

    (Excerpt of this poem included under copyright fair use: fewer than 500 words, less than half the poem.)

    Sermon

    This morning, I’m going try to give a couple of small reasons why democracy matters. The title I gave this sermon — “Why Democracy Matters” — uses a phrase I stole from Democracy Matters, which was the title of a book by philosopher Cornel West. When I first read that book a couple of decades ago, two things stood out for me. First, West made it clear that part of his commitment to democracy stemmed from his liberal Christian faith. Second, West thought that Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the people who was (to use West’s own words) “the life force behind the deeper individual and civic American commitment to democracy.”(1)

    Unfortunately, West isn’t an especially good writer, and he uses the book to settle personal grudges; so I don’t recommend it. But I appreciate the title of the book — “Democracy Matters.” Democracy does matter. And I appreciate the thought that those of us who are religious, yet neither fundamentalists nor evangelicals, have something important to contribute to American democracy.

    West tells us that a key contributor fo the American democratic tradition is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson served as a Unitarian minister for eight years before he embarked on his more famous career as an essayist and a public lecturer. As a minister and as a writer, his ideas and his ideals were shaped by the deep Unitarian conviction in the power of the individual, and by the related Unitarian conviction that each and every person can have a direct connection with the divine. His Unitarian convictions led him to reject hierarchies, to reject blindly following authority; as Cornel West phrased it, Emerson “refused to accept the conventional wisdom of leaders.” After saying this, West quotes from Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance”:

    “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

    After quoting Emerson, West comments that “Emerson offered the empowering insight that to be a democratic individual is to be flexible and fluid, revisionary and reformational in your dealing with your fellow citizens and the world, not adhering to comfortable dogmas or rigid party lines.”(2)

    Emerson was a Unitarian, and West was a liberal Black Baptist. We tend to think those two religious traditions are very different, but in one crucial way, they’re very similar. Both those religious traditions agree that it’s up to the individual to know the truth; and both those religious traditions agree that individuals can have a direct experience of divinity, goodness, and truth.

    These two religious traditions share these important beliefs because they both come from the same ancient religious tradition. They both owe a great deal to the religious tradition extending back thousands of years to the earliest books of the Hebrew Bible, a tradition that believes in equality and justice for all persons. Martin Luther King was another liberal Black Baptist, who famously quoted the prophet Amos, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (3). Nor is it just Unitarians and Black Baptists who emphasize the religious tradition of justice for all persons — liberal and moderate Jews, liberal and moderate Christians of all denominations, and liberal Muslims also affirm that there must be justice for all persons.

    One of the founding documents of American democracy, the Declaration of Independence, draws on this same tradition when it says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, who was a liberal Christian. In drafting the Declaration, Jefferson worked closely with John Adams, another liberal Christian (in fact, he was Unitarian). The Declaration of Independence was able to declare that all people are created equal, because it can draw from that long tradition of justice stretching back to the prophet Amos and beyond. We all know the limitations of the Declaration of Independence: it left out women, it ignored enslaved African Americans. But we are able to criticize the Declaration of Independence in this way precisely because we draw on the long tradition of justice originating in the Hebrew prophets.

    As a former Unitarian minister, Emerson knew this ancient tradition well. He knew it was not a dead, static tradition. The search for goodness and justice is not something that happens once, and then you’re done with it. Emerson said that when you think you’ve found goodness, you “must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if [what you’ve found actually] be goodness” or not. While Emerson never quite accepted that women were created equal to men, and although he never quite accepted that Black people were the equals of White people, even though he favored the abolition of slavery; nevertheless, he went further than many people of his day and age in saying that at least some justice might be extended to enslaved African Americans. Emerson’s disciple, Henry Thoreau, went further than Emerson did, and Martin Luther King took things further than either Emerson or Thoreau, advocating for complete equality of all Americans regardless of race.

    This is the way democracy works. It is not static. It is an evolving tradition. American democracy continues to evolve, continues to extend the basic principles of equality further than Jefferson or Adams were willing to take it. We have now extended equality to women, and to people who are not White. And it’s significant that many of the people who worked to extend equality have been able to draw on the ancient tradition of justice that extends back to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

    In the United States today, however, I am aware of at least two religious traditions that do not support equality, and that therefore act to undermine democracy.

    One religious tradition that seeks to restrict equality is conservative Christian nationalism. The Christian nationalists do not believe that women are equal; they believe that women should be subordinate to men; and while they may say that women should retain the right to vote, they also say that a wife should submit to her husband, perhaps to the point where she should vote the way he tells her to vote. Increasingly, the Christian nationalists also seem to be drifting into the belief that only White Christian nationalists deserve full equality, while non-White people are not as equal. Christian nationalism is a non-democratic religious tradition. While Emerson believed that people in a democracy must be flexible enough to seek out truth and goodness on their own, by contrast Christian nationalists want people to stick to comfortable dogmas and “rigid party lines.” Democracy requires that we think for our selves; Christian nationalists don’t want us to think for ourselves; they want to tell us what to think and what to do.

    The second religious tradition that seeks to restrict equality and to limit democracy is the religion of amoral capitalism. Capitalism has not always been a-moral. There was a time when the goal for businesspeople was to make a profit while providing things their community needed. My first full-time job was in a lumberyard, which made a tidy profit for the family that owned it, while at the same time supplying needed building materials, and providing much needed jobs to the community. The goal for business used to be stated like this: Do well by doing good. But a new religious belief emerged that has taken over the biggest businesses, a religious belief that the only goal is to maximize shareholder value. I consider this a religious belief because its believers cling to it with religious fervor. This religious belief even has a name: it’s called the Friedman Doctrine. The Friedman Doctrine shares Christian nationalism’s commitment to dogma and obedience to authority. Like Christian nationalism, the religion of the Friedman Doctrine is essentially hierarchical and non-democratic: there are no stakeholders except for CEOs and shareholders. The Friedman Doctrine stands in opposition to the long Biblical tradition of extending justice to all persons. Back in 2016, The Economist, a politically centrist periodical, pointed out that the moral result of the doctrine of maximizing shareholder value is “a license for bad conduct.”(4) Democracies must be rooted in a firm sense of justice; they depend for their existence on widely-shared morality that proclaims equality for all persons. Thus the Friedman Doctrine, with its license for bad conduct, is anti-democratic.

    How can we respond to these two anti-democratic religions? Recall that passage from Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” To paraphrase this in a more contemporary idiom: If you would be fully human, you must think for yourself. If you would be truly good, it is not enough to let someone else tell you how to be good; you must find goodness out for yourself. You must value your own personal integrity above all else.

    And here’s how this applies to democracy. In other forms of government, such as monarchies and autocracies, you simply accept that whatever the ruler of your country tells you is the right thing to do. Similarly, in a big impersonal business, the largest shareholders and the CEO determine what is right, and everyone else — both inside the business, and outside the business — simply has to accept what they are told to do.

    Why does democracy matter? Democracy matters because it does not dictate to us. In a democracy, we must think for ourselves. In a democracy, if we would strive for true goodness, it is not enough to let someone else tell us how to be good, we must find out goodness for ourselves. Above all, we must value our own personal integrity. In a democracy, we have to ask ourselves, “Have I been the best person I can possibly be?”

    Democracy matters because it continues the long tradition of justice going back to the Biblical prophet Amos, and beyond. We may not hold exactly the same notion of God that Amos does; we may be Buddhist or pagan or atheist or something else; but like Amos, we want justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Thomas Jefferson surely had the Biblical prophets in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence; and for all his many faults — that he was sexist, that he was a slaveholder — Jefferson did the best he could to uphold that long tradition of justice; and he made so that we could extend justice beyond what he could have imagined.

    Democracy matters because all people are created equal, with certain inalienable rights; and may justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

    Notes

    (1) Cornel West, Democracy Matters (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 68.
    (2) Ibid., p. 70.
    (3) Amos 5:24, KJV
    (4) “Analyse this,” The Economist, March 31, 2016.

  • Is It Religion? (part 2) — Christian Nationalism

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is an excerpt from a poem written in 2007 by Margaret Atwood:

    The Last Rational Man
    in the reign of Caligula

    The last rational man takes his old seat in the senate.
    He’s not sure why he’s still here.
    He must be on some list or other.
    Last year there were many more like him,
    but they’ve been picked off one by one.
    He bathes daily, and practises slow breathing
    and the doctrines of Stoicism.
    Lose your calm, he reminds himself,
    and you will lose everything.
    Nevertheless he’s getting tired.
    The effort of saying nothing is wearing him down….

    The second reading is from The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart. In this excerpt, the author has just attended a meeting of the Family Research Council, a Christian nationalist group, with Rev. Chris Liles, a Bible-believing Southern Baptist preacher. As they leave the meeting, Rev. Chris begins speaking:

    “‘It’s ten degrees hotter than normal, and these people don’t believe in climate science,’ he grumbles. Then his words start tumbling out like a waterfall.

    “‘Do we not owe people more than simply reducing “pro-life” to one issue?’ he says. ‘I mean, no one wants babies to die. No one is “pro-abortion.” That is a false dichotomy. Do we not owe people more than to force them into one box or another? As much as abortion is a pro-life issue, so is affordable health care, access to contraceptives, and real, comprehensive sex education. Minimum wage. Fighting poverty. These should all be part of the “pro-life” conversation.’

    “Chris falls into silence for a few minutes, then speaks again.

    “‘And shouldn’t we show compassion to people regardless of how they identify? They, too, are made in God’s image. We find in Scripture the imperative to love our neighbors and care for the least of these. That is by far one of the clearest messages we receive.’

    “I feel bad for Chris [says Katherine Stewart]; he seems dismayed by the event precisely because the Bible is his greatest source of comfort and moral direction….. Stopping at a red light, Chris picks up his Bible and turns to the Old Testament book of Amos.

    “‘Here, for instance, in chapter five, the prophet says, “You, Israel, you were supposed to take care of the poor and you’re not doing it,”’ Chris says. ‘“You’re using power and wealth to tilt the system in your favor.” For society to be just, it was necessary for everyone to be seen as equal.’ He falls silent for a few moments. ‘Sometimes,’ he adds, ‘it’s almost like people are reading a different Bible. That’s the trick with Scripture. You can make the Bible say just about anything you want it to.’”…

    Sermon: Is It Religion? (part 2) — Christian Nationalism

    So. Is Christian Nationalism a religion, or not?

    Probably everyone in this room wants to believe that Christian nationalism is NOT a religion. We want to be able to say that Christian Nationalism cannot be a religion because it so clearly violates the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. We want to be able to say that Christian Nationalism cannot be a religion because it so clearly violates the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. How can a movement that treats poor people as less than human be considered Christian? How can a movement that demonizes immigrants be part of the (to use their term) “Judeo-Christian tradition”? We would much prefer to say that Christian Nationalism is not a religion, but a political movement that uses religion as a cover.

    As much as I’d like to say that Christian Nationalism is just politics, I believe it is in fact a religion. Mind you, it is a very different religion from ours. Christian Nationalism is the kind of religion that relies on unquestioning acceptance of authority. Christian Nationalism values hierarchy and submission over individual conscience. Christian Nationalism does not welcome dissent, nor is it tolerant of other worldviews. When we list all these attributes, Christian Nationalism looks very much like one of those creepy cults we used to hear so much about — the cults that suck people in and modify their way of thinking so that converts cut ties to the rest of society. And like some of the worst of those creepy cults, the Christian Nationalists want to remake society in their image.

    Let’s not begin by calling it a creepy cult, though. At the end of the last century, scholars who study religions mostly stopped using the term “cult.” When you begin studying a religious movement by calling it a “cult,” that terminology tends to stop you from thinking clearly. When you call something a “cult,” you have already made a strong judgement about it, and often you feel like you don’t have to think any further about what it is you’re studying. Christian Nationalism may be a cult, but calling it a cult isn’t going to help us address the threat it poses to our democracy. Instead, we’ll use the appropriate term from religious studies and call it a New Religious Movement.

    Once we call Christian Nationalism as a New Religious Movement, we begin to think more clearly about it. First, we realize that it’s not all that new. In its current incarnation, its roots go back to the middle of the last century. A decade after the Civil Rights Act extended full rights to Black Americans, the Internal Revenue Service began threatening to take away the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University, an all-White college that was committed to segregation as a religious principle. The conservative Christians who ran Bob Jones University got together with other White conservative Christians and began to come up with strategies to maintain what they saw as their religious right to segregation. Journalist Katherine Stewart tells what happened to these conservative Christians:

    “…They had a problem…. Building a new [political] movement around the burning issue of defending the tax advantages of racist schools wasn’t going to be a viable strategy on the national stage. ‘Stop the tax on segregation’ just wasn’t going to inspire the kind of broad-based conservative counterrevolution that [they] envisioned. They needed an issue with a more acceptable appeal. What message would bring the movement together?… School prayer worked for some, but it tended to alienate the Catholics, who remembered…that for many years public schools had allowed only for Protestant prayers…. Bashing communists was fine, but even the Rockefeller Republicans could do that. Taking on ‘women’s liberation’ was attractive, but the Equal Rights Amendment was already going down in flames. At last they landed upon the one surprising [issue] that would supply the key to the political puzzle of the age: ‘abortion.’”

    So writes journalist Katherine Stewart.

    In other words, the core religious belief of these White conservative Christians was that White people should not be forced to mix with non-White people. They felt that U.S. society was changing such that they were unable to practice their religion properly. They felt there was another competing religious point of view that had come to dominate the United States, threatening their very existence. Those White conservative Christians called that other religious point of view as “secular humanism,” choosing what was to them the most pejorative term possible.

    But the true opponent of these conservative Christians was not secular humanism. The true opponent was actually a broad coalition of religious groups, including mainline Protestants, liberal Catholics, liberal Jews, and a smattering of other religious groups like the Unitarian Universalists. Back then, most presidents, senators, congressional representatives, and Federal judges belonged to one of the religious groups in this broad coalition. While this coalition of religious moderates and religious liberals included both political liberals and political conservatives, on the whole they mostly agreed that racial segregation was an evil that must be ended.

    The White conservative Christians who wanted to keep their schools and universities segregated did not want to fight the battle of re-segregating society. So they used the abortion issue as a political strategy to build support. And they took the battle beyond the political realm, into local congregations, where they helped their supporters turn abortion into a key theological question.

    I’d say it was at this point where they became a New Religious Movement. Their earlier focus on racial segregation was nothing new, for segregation was part of American religion from the beginning. (Even our own First Parish was segregated during its first hundred years — African Americans and Native Americans were not allowed to sit on the main floor of our Meeting House, they had to sit in the gallery.) But to put such a strong emphasis on abortion — that was new. And, as we heard in the second reading, they emphasized abortion to the exclusion of other issues that formerly had been important to most American Christians — things like helping the poor, showing compassion to others, and recognizing that all persons were created in God’s image.

    This emphasis on abortion was a radical reworking of American religion. Prior to the 1970s, about the only religious group to explicitly ban abortion was the Roman Catholics — and the Catholic ban on abortion only dates to 1869. Even considering the Catholics, abortion simply wasn’t an important religious issue for most Americans. When religious Americans thought about social issues, they were most likely to focus on things like poverty, hunger, and so on. So it was a dramatic change when, in the space of just a few years, abortion became a central issue in American religious life.

    Since the 1970s, those conservative White Christians added other issues to abortion, such as opposition to LGBTQ rights and opposition to feminism. At last they came up with this notion that the United States should become a Christian nation (by which they seem to actually mean a White Christian nation). So now we have a name for this New Religious Movement — we can call them the Christian Nationalists, and indeed some of them have begun to use this very name to describe themselves. Just remember that they started out as a segregationist group, so a more accurate name for this New Religious Movement might be White Christian Nationalists. But for now, we’ll stick to the name they seem to prefer, and we’ll call this New Religious Movement the Christian Nationalists.

    Now, some New Religious Movements have no interest in seeking out money and power; I think of the Neo-Pagans, whose groups mostly seem to operate on a shoestring. Most other New Religious Movements have other priorities besides money and power. So, for example, many scholars consider the Unitarian Universalism and the Reform Jews to be New Religious Movements, and when I look at myself and my friend the Reform rabbi, we don’t spend much time seeking out money and power. So most New Religious Movements aren’t concerned with money and power. But a small minority of New Religious Movements make money and power one of their top priorities. One example is Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (sometimes called the “Moonies”) which has been in the news recently because it obtained unprecedented access to the halls of power in Japan. That’s the goal of the Christian Nationalists — like the Moonies, they want to obtain unprecedented access to the halls of power here in the United States.

    As you can see, we have learned quite a lot by thinking of the Christian Nationalists as a New Religious Movement.

    First, we have gotten some clarity about their core religious beliefs. They were founded to maintain racial segregation, to keep Black people out of their all-White institutions; while that original purpose is somewhat hidden today, that remains one of their core beliefs. We can also see that they believe a rigid hierarchy — most obviously the hierarchy of White people over Black people, but also the hierarchy of men over women, the hierarchy of heterosexual people over homosexual people, and so on. Because they believe in a rigid hierarchy, their support of democracy is going to be limited. They claim to be Christian, but as we heard in the second reading, people like Pastor Chris say that Christian Nationalists interpret the Bible very differently from more conventional Christians.

    Coupled with these core religious beliefs, we learned that they are extremely effective at organizing. In the political realm, they have begun to wield unprecedented power. In the religious realm, they have used wedge issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights to cause schisms in moderate religions like the United Methodist Church, and they have used this power to effectively immobilizing their primary religious opponents. They have even managed to fragment American Catholicism by converting several key bishops to their cause, bishops who have become emboldened enough to openly defy Pope Francis.

    Their organizational effectiveness extends to the individual level. They’re very good at spreading their religious message. They still mostly hide their core religious belief of racial segregation, and instead focus attention on issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights. At this level, they prefer to organize using diffuse networks; scholars call this strategy “network Christianity.” This clever organizational strategy allows them to have their people infiltrate other religious groups, without having to found new local congregations.

    Thinking of the Christian Nationalists as a New Religious Movement helps us to take them more seriously. I hear people talking about Christian Nationalists using terms like “crazy whackos” and “nut jobs” and “idiots.” These are inaccurate terms. The Christian Nationalists are smart, sane, and well organized. They’re quietly spreading their religion everywhere, and indeed they’re here on the South Shore. They’re here, and they’re not going to go away any time soon.

    So how do we take back America from the Christian Nationalists? This is not a time for Stoicism; this is not a time to say nothing and to do nothing; this is a time to actively engage with other people. Remember that a core religious belief of Christian Nationalists is hierarchy. They are inherently anti-democratic. So one of the most important things we can do is to strengthen democracy.

    We can strengthen democracy by participating in democracy, and in democratic institutions. It may be more comfortable to sit at home and play video games, or watch NetFlix, or whatever you prefer — but we have to get out of the house and do things like attend meetings of local government bodies; volunteer at democratically-run nonprofits; and so on. When it comes to our online lives, we have to do more than post cute cat pictures or engage in flame wars with political opponents — we can build up our own networks to spread our own messages of inclusion and love.

    We already do this here at First Parish. We use democracy to run this congregation, and this congregation is a great place to learn how to do democracy, a great place to teach kids how to do democracy. In addition to running our congregation by democratic principles, we serve as a clearing house for information about democracy: we tell each other about what’s going on in our local governments, we raise up social issues that need to be addressed. We’re also quite good at building face-to-face networks, an essential skill for keeping democracy strong. And we’re not bad at building our online network to spread our messages of inclusion and love — and with that in mind, thank you to all of you who “like” the First Parish Facebook and Instagram posts, helping spread our message.

    The nice thing about all these efforts is that they feel good when you do them. We’re not just fighting the Christian Nationalist power grab. Doing democracy here at First Parish feels good. Building face-to-face networks feels good. Building positive online networks to spread positive messages feels good. And once we manage to restore manage to democracy to health once again — once we help it recover from diseases like Christian Nationalism — we just keep on doing democracy, which means we can keep on feeling good.

  • Religion 101

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. Delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon text may contain typographical errors. The sermon as preached included a significant amount of improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is from Introduction to World Religions, a college textbook on religion edited by Christopher Partridge.

    “The word ‘religion’ likely tells us more about the user of the word than it does about the thing being classified. For instance, a Freudian psychologist will not conclude that religion functions to oppress the masses, since the Freudian theory precludes this Marxist conclusion. … As for those who adopt an essentialist approach, it is likely no coincidence that only those institutions with which one agrees are thought to be expressions of some authentic inner experience … whereas the traditions of others are criticized as being shallow and derivative.”

    The second reading comes from the book The Ideology of Religious Studies by Timothy Fitzgerald.

    “It is sometimes claimed that there is a common-sense use of the word ‘religion’ that refers loosely to belief in gods or the supernatural. No doubt this use will remain with us in common parlance, for example in connection with churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. This is really an extension of the traditional European usage: religion was traditionally used to mean something like faith in God or faith in Jesus Christs and in the church and priesthood who serve him. However, … various writers such as the deists at least since the eighteenth century have self-consciously attempted to transform the meaning of religion, reduce its specifically Christian elements, and extend it as a cross-cultural category. This has stretched the meaning of ‘God’ and related biblical Jewish and Christian notions … to include a vast range of notions about unseen powers. This has given rise to intractable problems…. For example, are ghosts, witches, emperors, and ancestors gods? How about film stars? What is the difference between a superhuman being and a superior person? Why should Benares, Mount Fuji, or the Vatican be considered sacred places, and not the White House, the Koshien Baseball Stadium in Osaka, or the Bastille?”

    Sermon: “Religion 101”

    Everyone in the United States seems to think they know all there is to be known about religion. Many people like to make very definite pronouncements about religion: “The United States is a Christian nation!” “Religion is the cause of most of the evil in the United States!” — and so on.

    But the American Academy of Religion, a professional organization for scholars of religion, tells us that religious illiteracy is widespread in the United States today, adding: “There are several consequences that stem from this illiteracy, including the ways it fuels prejudice and antagonism, thereby hindering efforts aimed at promoting respect for diversity, peaceful coexistence, and cooperative endeavors in local, national, and global arenas.” They say this specifically about religious literacy in grades K-12. These scholars are telling us there are basic things that every high school graduate should know about religion, because to know these things will promote peaceful coexistence. They are telling us that these are things we need to know to participate effectively in democracy. I would add that a significant part of the intolerance and prejudice and antagonism we see in American politics today is a direct result of religious illiteracy. Thus, this become a topic of serious concern for those of us who would like to strengthen democracy, while reducing intolerance and prejudice and antagonism.

    There are three basic elements to religious literacy. First, someone who religiously literate has basic knowledge about the core values and practices of at least some of the world’s major religious traditions. Second, someone who is religiously literate knows that within any given religion, we will find diverse practices and beliefs and ways of expressing that religious tradition. Third, someone who is religiously literate recognizes how religion plays a “profound role” in the world’s cultures, in politics, and in human society in general.

    So the American Academy of Religion says a high school graduate can be considered religiously literate if you know something about the basics of half a dozen or so religious traditions, the practices and worldviews of those religious traditions today, and how those religious traditions have been shaped the wider human context in which they exist. Here at First Parish, religious literacy is one of our key educational goals for our children.

    I believe we adults also need basic religious literacy. Because religious literacy promotes tolerance and peaceful coexistence, it is actually an important part of democracy.

    For the purposes of maintaining our fragile democracy, we should know who our religious neighbors are, not just in our town, but in the surrounding region — the people we see at work, at the shopping mall, on the beach, and so on. Then we should know some basic facts about our religious neighbors, enough so that we can be good neighbors. And of course we need to understand that every religious tradition has a great deal of internal diversity, so our local religious neighbors may be different from whatever Wikipedia says about their broad religious tradition.

    I’ve been researching the religious diversity here in southeastern Massachusetts, and it is simply amazing the diversity we can find near us. Within an hour’s drive of here, we have Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim religious communities. Then if you drive a little further, say two hours, there are Daoist, Humanist, Jain, Sikh, and Zoroastrian religious communities. This means we are very likely to run into people, co-workers or acquaintances, who belong to one or more of these religious traditions.

    Mind you, these are just the religious groups that are willing to go public with their religion. There are other religious groups that prefer to stay out of the public eye, either because they like having a low profile, or because they are avoiding potential prejudice and discrimination. Thus there are also Santeria, Pagan, and Native or Indigenous religious groups within a forty-five minute drive of us. We may not see much evidence of them, but they’re here, too.

    For the sake of democracy, we should know something about our religious neighbors, just as a matter of politeness and basic intercultural competence. Learning about these religious groups, however, can be a challenge for those of us who grew up in the United States. Those of us who grew up in the United States have been shaped by Protestant Christianity. Because of this, we have some assumptions about religion, assumptions that work well for Protestantism, but that don’t work so well for other religious groups. For example, most people in the United states assume that religion is mostly about belief — because Protestant Christians believe that religion is about belief. When we meet someone from another religion, one of the first questions we’re likely to ask them is, “What do you believe?” (I find myself asking this question, even though as a Unitarian Universalist I should know better, since we Unitarian Universalists don’t have any required beliefs.)

    A less biased question would be to simply ask, “What is your religious (or spiritual) identity?” This is also a better question because there is diversity within every religious tradition. If you know someone who is Christian, and you ask them, “What do you believe?” they might reply, “I believe in God.” But while most Christians believe in God, there are major differences between different Christian groups. If we just look at the Christian groups within about an hour’s drive of us, we see evidence of this.

    Take, for example, the difference between Roman Catholics on the one hand, and the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. Roman Catholics typically have daily and weekly meetings where they have a ritual known as the eucharist, or holy communion; they have dedicated clergy who wear special clothing and who officiate at their rituals; they meet in buildings that typically feature sculpture and paintings with subjects taken from their religion. By contrast, Mormons typically meet weekly (but not daily) with a worship service that features communion; Mormons do not have paid clergy, they have volunteers who rotate clergy duties among them; local Mormon buildings are typically fairly simple inside. So you can see that Roman Catholics differ quite substantially from the Latter Day Saints. There are other significant differences, too: the Latter Day Saints have an additional book of scripture, called the book of Mormon, which they venerate along with the Hebrew Bible and Christian scriptures they share with Roman Catholics; nearly all Latter Day Saints wear special clothing; they have a prophet named Joseph Smith who is not recognized by other Christians; and so on. In fact, the Church of the Latter Day Saints are so different from Catholics and Protestants, that some Catholics in the United States insist that Mormons aren’t really Christians.

    Catholics and Latter Day Saints are just two of hundreds of Christian groups n the United States. These two groups differ significantly from each other, but they also differ significantly from other Christians: from Ethiopian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses — to name just a few of the Christian groups with established groups not too far from Cohasset. How do they differ from these other groups? Ethiopian Orthodox churches divided from the rest of Christianity in the fifth century of the common era, so both their beliefs and practices differ significantly from both Catholics and Mormons. Russian Orthodox services last up to three hours, and you stand up the whole time. Pentecostal services may feature things like speaking in tongues or faith healing or other workings of the Holy Spirit. Seventh day Adventists say that Saturday is the correct sabbath day, not Sunday. Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the doctrine of the Trinity and the concept of hell, and are well-known for their door-to-door proselytizing. There is an astonish amount of diversity within Christianity.

    There are other religious traditions that also contain a wide range of internal diversity. As one example, take the other great proselytizing religious tradition in our area, Buddhism. Like Christianity, Buddhism has adapted itself to a wide range of cultures. Like Christianity, Buddhism has divided into many different sub-groups. If we just look at the Buddhists near us, we find Insight Meditation groups and Zen practice groups and a Buddhist humanist group, all types of Buddhism which have adapted in various ways to Western culture. We also find Cantonese speaking Pure Land Buddhists in the Mahayana tradition in the Thousand Buddhas Temple that our religious education program visited a few weeks ago. We find both Thai and Vietnamese Therevada Buddhist temples near us; Therevada Buddhists interest me because they are not theists, they have almost no supernatural element in their tradition. We find Tibetan Buddhists nearby, and there’s even a Sokka Gokai group outside Boston; just as the Latter Day Saints differ greatly from other Christian groups, Sokka Gokai differs so much from traditional types of Buddhism that it is sometimes called a new religious movement. In short, there is a great diversity among Buddhist groups near us.

    So you can see, we have all this amazing religious diversity right here in eastern Massachusetts. We have all these different religious traditions living in close proximity. This is why we need religious literacy. We need people to know that “religion” means more than just Protestant Christianity and Catholic Christianity. We need people to stop defining religion in terms of Protestant or Catholic Christianity. We need people to know just how diverse our religious landscape is.

    The religious illiteracy in our country has led directly to the rise of Christian nationalism. A lack of religious literacy allows people to define “religion” any way they want, which means they can use “religion” to promote their own destructive ideology. Many of the people who promote Christian nationalism have no clue about the wild diversity within Christianity; in their lack of knowledge, they mistakenly believe that “Christian” means “white Protestant evangelical Christian,” and maybe includes anti-abortion Catholics. They also have little accurate knowledge about non-Christian traditions, so some of them attack Sikh men wearing turbans in the mistaken belief that Sikhs are Muslim. Religious illiteracy fosters the growth of intolerance and hatred.

    To become religiously literate, on the other hand, means opening ourselves to learning about the religions and the cultures and the worldviews of neighbors who are different from us. In fact, to become religiously literate is to further develop your intercultural competence. In our increasingly multicultural democracy, we all need to work on our intercultural competence; we need to improve our skill at talking with people who have very different worldviews from ours; we need to learn how to understand each other better so we can work together towards common goals.

    I suppose the Christian nationalists would way that we define religion to promote our own ideology. We define religion as being a part of the cultural identity of an individual or a group. This definition promotes our ideology of tolerance and mutual respect. This promotes our worldview in which we remain always open to and curious about the people around us.