democracy – Dan Harper

Freddie Green and Spiritual Leadership

For the reading this morning, we heard a poem [“Inward Music” by Everett Hoagland, 2014] that retold a story that happened to a fellow named Tom Stites. Tom Stites is a journalist, now retired, who served on the editorial staffs of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Kansas City Times. At the end of his career, Stites served as the president of The Banyan Project, a nonprofit devoted to starting new news outlets in so-called news deserts. Stites has described himself as a journalist who has “a passion for strengthening journalism, democracy and justice.”

Stites started his career editing a small magazine called “Jazz” that was (not surprisingly) devoted to coverage of jazz. So Tom Stites’s career path led from jazz, to strengthening democracy. You might keep that in mind while I talk with you about what Stites thought about Freddie Green, about the leadership style of jazz guitarist Freddie Green, and how Freddie Green might serve as a model for leadership in our currently polarized democracy.

Freddie Green played in Count Basie’s big band for fifty years, from 1937 until Green’s death in 1987. Count Basie’s big band was one of the most important jazz ensembles in the world through the mid-twentieth century. To better tell you about Freddie Green’s leadership style, let me describe what Count Basie’s big band looked like.

Let’s take for a representative example an online video of Basie’s big band performing the tune “Corner Pocket” in Stockholm in 1962. At stage right, Basie himself sat behind his concert grand piano, which was about eight feet long. The bassist, playing an upright bass, stood in curve of the piano, and the drummer sat on an elevated platform behind the bassist and to his left. Then to the drummer’s left sat the horn players: four trumpets in the back, another trumpet and two trombones in the middle rank, and then five saxophones — alto, tenor, and baritone — along the front. When a horn player took a solo, he would step out front and center and stand in the spotlight while he played.

And right in the middle of everything sat Freddie Green — right in front of the drummer and next to the middle rank of horns. He sat there playing his big acoustic archtop guitar, occasionally glancing at Count Basie at the piano. It’s hard to hear Green’s playing on this video, but given where he sat, every other band member would have been able to hear him.

As I sat there watching this online video, I asked myself, who kept this ensemble together? Who kept the rhythm going? Who transmitted the subtle harmonic shifts to everyone else? Count Basie, the ostensible band leader, sat at his piano at stage right. But the speed of sound is relatively slow, so if you’re way over on stage right, the musicians playing way over on stage left would have sounded as though they’re playing about a quarter of a beat behind you; which makes it hard to keep everyone in time. Nor did Basie do what many band leaders do, and conduct with his hands or a baton — his hands were busy on the piano.

Here’s what I think happened: Count Basie was playing the piano, setting the tempo, and sketching out the basic harmony. The drummer echoed Basie’s rhythm, mostly on his high hats (those little double cymbals that drummers operate with a foot pedal). The bass player rooted the most important notes of the harmony. But it was Freddie Green, sitting right there in the middle, who really picked up both the rhythm and harmony from Count Basie and communicates it to the dozen or so horn players. Count Basie was the band leader, but Freddie Green, sitting in the center, was the one who everyone together, was the one whom they called the heartbeat of the band.

Jazz is one of the most democratic of all musical forms. Theoretically, anyone in a jazz band can take a solo; thus there is equal opportunity for everyone in the band, depending solely on their individual abilities and talents. But unlike other guitarists of the swing era — Charlie Christian, for example — Freddie Green almost never took a solo. He found a different role for himself, the musically satisfying role of ensuring that all the other players stayed together. This is the other way in which jazz is one of the most democratic of musical forms — anyone can take a solo, yet at the same time musicians can choose to devote themselves solely to supporting the whole ensemble. Jazz balances individual achievement with the needs of the whole, coming down neither on the side of hyper-individualism nor faceless collectivism. This balance is exactly what we hope for in a democracy.

So far, I’ve mostly been talking about the mechanics of jazz, and by analogy about the mechanics of democracy. Now let me speak with you about the spiritual dimension to all of this.

In this morning’s reading, the poet has his fictional narrator ask himself, “What [or] who guides my riffs on the / arrangements life plays out for me? How do I harmonize with / my own Higher Power?” Part of the poet’s answer lies in the title to the poem, “Inward Music.” You can think of this inward music as a literal phenomenon, or as a metaphor for something else. But it is this inward music, which we may not consciously hear, but which keeps us in time and in tune with a greater purpose. It is this inward music that connects us with something larger and better than our individual selves.

The Transcendentalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau famously wrote: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” Thoreau wrote this passage in 1854, a decade before the Civil War, at a time when our democracy was facing perhaps the greatest threat to democracy we have yet faced, when we as a country faced up to the immorality of race-based chattel slavery. Although Thoreau’s image of the different drummer is often interpreted today to support a philosophy of hyper-individualism, in fact Thoreau was saying that in his time too many people did not listen to the inward music that comes from something larger than ourselves. Too many people in Thoreau’s day allowed chattel slavery to continue. By so doing they ignored the call of humanity, of ethics, of a love greater than individual gain. That is, the supporters of slavery listened to their own desire for personal gain, rather than an inward music which demanded an end to slavery.

This brings us back to the problem of leadership. It is dangerous to allow leadership to remain solely in the hands of the soloists who stand in the spotlight. If the only leaders are those soloists, we can get into trouble if they stop listening to the inward music, and instead start playing solely out of a desire for personal achievement, for personal recognition. The soloists may be the most prominent leaders in a big band, but it’s the musicians like Freddie Green who keep the band going through the changes in the soloists.

You can see where I’m going with this. Think about American democracy today as being a little like Count Basie’s big band. American democracy does in fact need the kind of leaders who can serve as soloists, using their unique talents to inspire and move the rest of us. But American democracy also need many more leaders who keep us working in harmony with each other. That is, we need leaders who help remind us of the inward music that holds everything together. Right now, American democracy has plenty of people who want to be soloists. There are many in our current crop of politicians who want to be soloists. They want to be the person who gets out in front of the rest of the band, with the spotlight shining on them, while they show off their chops. It’s not just politicians, it’s also a great many ordinary people who want to be the one who has the spotlight shining on them. We have plenty of soloists; now e need the leaders who will keep us all together.

Freddie Green’s leadership role in Count Basie’s band can serve as an analogy for other human institutions. Groups of humans do seem to need a few people as visible leaders, the people out in the spotlight. Just as important are those people who keep everything going without stepping out into the spotlight. Just so, Freddie Green connected the members of Count Basie’s band together, first by listening to those around him. The first step is always listening. Then based on what he heard, Green helped everyone else stay together by spinning out rhythms and harmonies the others could easily follow. The soloists are important, but it’s the rhythm section that really keeps the band together.

Why is it that in today’s American society we have so many soloists, and so few people in the rhythm section? Perhaps we of the American public are at fault. We, the American public, pay most attention to the handful of leaders, especially the most prominent elected leaders — the U.S. president, Supreme Court justices, congresspeople, and so on. But the president is only person, and as such can only do so much; far more important than the person of the president are cabinet members, aides, researchers, advisors, diplomats, civil servants, bureaucrats, and others who serve in the executive branch. Many of these people continue from one administration to the next, which is actually a good thing. Not only would it be too disruptive to bring in hundreds of new civil servants every four to eight years, but if we did so the rule of law and the stability of the country would be at risk.

Celebrity culture and social media have trained us to see the few people who live in the spotlight. We admire Taylor Swift, but ignore the other musicians she plays with, ignore the fashion designers and producers and technicians who make her performances possible. We forget that the person in the spotlight is merely one miniscule part of a vast interconnected web of humanity.

Yet it seems to have always been like this. The medieval Persian poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi took notice of this same phenomenon. In ghazal 1195, Rumi wrote about how we humans forget to listen to the inward music. A popular translation of this ghazal puts it this way: “We rarely hear the inward music, / but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless” [Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi, p. 106] But I prefer a more literal translation, which goes like this: “In every heart there is a different note and rhythm, all stamping feet outwardly, the musicians hidden like a secret.” [trans. A.J. Arberry, Mystical Poems of Rumi, p. 168] We are all individuals, yes. We all have our own notes and rhythms. And it is the “musicians hidden like a secret” who keep us connected. They may be hidden in plain sight, but it is those hidden musicians who tie us all together, we maintain our essential interconnection. Those hidden musicians — whatever Rumi means by that — they are the cosmic version of Freddie Green. Just as Freddie Green was the heartbeat of Count Basie’s band, those cosmic musicians are the heartbeat of humanity. From that musical heartbeat arises the concert of all being.

We have to listen to that which transcends our individual selves; listen to that music which is larger than our limited individual beings. We can hear this universal music inwardly, not through our ears, but through our souls, whatever we might mean by the words “souls.” And whatever we might mean by “universal music.” Perhaps it would be better to say that we hear this vast connective power, not as music, not through our physical ears, but as something we sense with our intuition. We can somehow feel it when we are moving in rhythm with that which is larger than our selves. And then when we are not moving in that cosmic rhythm, life feels discordant and unpleasant.

Like the young Tom Stites in the reading, maybe we could criticize the cosmic band leader for failing to sufficiently amplify the cosmic rhythm guitarist. Because it is actually quite difficult to listen to the cosmic musicians who are supposed to keep us in harmony and in rhythm. We are constantly distracted by the demands of daily life. This is the struggle our leaders face. They are supposed to stay in harmony with the universe, but how can you listen for that inward music when you are distracted by all the day-to-day tasks that simply must get done? This is true of all of us. How can we stay in harmony with the universe, when we are constantly distracted by the demands of our jobs, our families, our volunteer responsibilities, all the endless tasks that somehow seem to fill our days, leaving little time to listen?

Yet we must try. We must remind ourselves constantly that there is something larger than our individual lives. We can remain part of the universal wholeness, if we would but listen: listen to the heartbeat of humanity; listen to one another.

Who Deserves Our Love?

Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. Once again this week, more than the usual number of typos and errors, but I didn’t have time to correct them — sorry!

Readings

The first reading was June Jordan’s poem “Alla Tha’s All Right, but”

The second reading was June Jordan’s poem “A Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades”

The final reading was from Jordan’s introduction to her book of poems titled “Passion.”

In the poetry of the New World, you meet with a reverence for the material world that begins with a reverence for human life, an intellectual trust in sensuality as a means of knowledge and unity… and a deliberate balancing … of sensory report with moral exhortation.

Sermon: “Who Deserves Our Love?”

The English language has some distinct limitations. For example, we only have one word for “love.” Contrast this with ancient Greek, which has half a dozen words that can be translated by the one English word “love.” This creates some problems for us English speakers, because we’re the inheritors of the Western intellectual tradition which extends back to ancient Greece. When you’re speaking English and you hear the word “love,” you have to automatically do some internal translation.

When this person says “love,” do they mean erotic or romantic love? Do they mean the love that can exist between good friends? What about the love that exists between parents and children, which is different than the love that exists between good friends, because where friends are more or less equal, there’s an imbalance of power between parent and child — at least there is when the child is young. Then there’s love of oneself, which is a virtue when it’s tied to ordinary self respect, but is a vice when it becomes self-obsession.

Finally, there’s a kind of selfless love, the kind of love where you continue to love even when you get nothing out of it. The early Christians picked up on this last kind of love — the ancient Greek name for it is “agape” — and integrated it into their conception of God, and their formulation of the Golden Rule. The story of the Good Samaritan is a story of agape-type love.

As English speakers, we have all these different kinds of love sort of mushed together into the one word. This can cause a certain amount of confusion. But I think it’s also useful for people like Unitarian Universalists, who spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how we can be the best people possible. We also spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to get through the day to day challenges that life throws at us, things like the death of people we love, or betrayals by people we thought we loved, and so on. Life rarely breaks down into neat, tidy categories. So I find it helpful to know that love doesn’t necessarily break down into neat tidy categories either.

And this brings me to the book of poetry that June Jordan published way back in 1980. The title of the book is “Passion.” The poems in the book cover a wide range. There are poems about passionate erotic and romantic love, as we heard in the first reading — and here I should point out that June Jordan was part of the LGBTQ+ community, so when she’s talking about passionate erotic and romantic love, she’s not restricting that love to opposite sex attraction. June Jordan also has a couple of poems in that book that are about rape. These particular poems are pretty graphic, and I find them very difficult to read — I’m giving you fair warning, in case you decide to pick up this book and read through it. But these poems are included for a reason. Jordan wants us to understand how for her as a woman, passionate erotic love can also become something twisted.

There are also poems about relationships between equals, the love of friendship between equals. That’s what we heard in the second reading, the poem titled “A Short Note to My Very Critical and Well-Beloved Friends and Comrades.” I’ll read you the last few lines of the poem again:

Make up your mind! They said. Are you militant
or sweet? Are you vegetarian or meat? Are you straight
or are you gay?
And I said, Hey! It’s not about my mind

I love this poem because I’ve had this sort of thing happen to me in my own friendships. And I’ve done this to others. We humans tend to put each other into boxes. We put people into boxes based on skin color, age, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, political party…. Let me pause here and focus on political party, because that’s where people are putting other people into boxes a lot right now. And it’s pretty ugly. I hear Republicans talking about “Sleepy Joe” Biden, and I hear Democrats talking about “Dementia Donald” Trump. There’s no love lost here — there’s no love present here, none at all, just rank stereotyping and sometimes naked hatred.

This is what we humans do. We strive for love. We want to create a world where all people are loved equally. But when reality confronts us with other people who are doing things which we find distasteful or reprehensible or misguided, we can switch from universal love to individual hatred pretty quickly.

I feel like this has become a spiritual crisis in our country. There is a lot of demonization going on all around us. Going back to June Jordan’s poem, we all find ourselves saying unpleasant things about other people — that other people are too racist or too anti-racist, that other people are too much of a nationalist, that other people are too stupid, or too angry, or too idealistic. This kind of thing tips over into demonization very quickly. We demonize people, imagining them as demons rather than humans, when we feel those other people are too angry, or too old, or too different. To which June Jordan replies — “Hey! it’s not about my mind.” She’s right. Demonization is always about the mind of the person who does the demonizing. I’ve done my share of demonizing recently, mostly aimed at politicians and public figures with whom I don’t agree, and that demonizing that I do is more about me than about the person at whom I direct it. When I demonize someone, it damages me, and it damages our public discourse.

We need to find a way out of this — a way out of these demonizing behaviors that dominate our public discourse right now. To do so, I’m going to go back to one of our great spiritual resources, our Universalist tradition.

The early Universalists were Christians, of course, and not all of us now are Christians. But those early Universalists got at some universal truths through their liberal Christian tradition. One of those truths is encapsulated in the phrase, “God is love.” If you’re a Christian, this phrase might focus you on the Christian God. From that perspective, this phrase defines God as being all about love. If you’re not a Christian, though, this phrase can still make sense. Here in the West, the term “God” serves as a philosophical placeholder for the object of our ultimate concern. So this phrase need not be taken literally. It can be understood quite simply as saying that love is our ultimate concern.

The old Universalists wanted everyone to see the truth of that phrase, “God is love.” They understood that if God is love, there can be no such thing as eternal damnation, because love must eventually overpower hatred and evil. Instead, hell is something that happens here on earth, during our lifetimes, when we forget that love is supposed to be our ultimate concern. In particular, hell can arise here on earth when one group of people demonizes another group of people. Of course it feels hellish to be on the receiving end of the hatred that comes with racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ageism, and so on. But hell also arises in the hearts of those who demonize others. When we demonize others we throw ourselves into hell, into a place where hatred is more important than human connection.

So the old Universalists wanted us to get ourselves out of any hell that is here and now. They wanted everyone to truly feel in their bones that love is the most powerful force in the universe. They wanted to build their religious communities centered on love. The early Universalist Hosea Ballou put it like this: “If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, and if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.”

Over the next century or so, the Universalists pulled back from that early trust in the power of love. The power of evil seemed so strong that they returned to the old idea that there must be some kind of punishment after death. They decided that God would in fact condemn some people to hell, it just wouldn’t be forever. In other words, they decided that God might be love, but that God’s love had limits to it.

But in my view, they weren’t really thinking about God, they were thinking about themselves. They weren’t asking: Who deserves God’s love? Or to put it in non-theistic terms: Who deserves to be included in our ultimate concern? Instead, they were asking: Who deserves my love? IThey were saying: ’m not so concerned with ultimate concerns, I’m narrowly concerned with whom do I love? And whom do I not love? Even: whom do I hate?

Now remember the different meanings that the word “love” has in the English language. Of course we limit our romantic love to our romantic partners. Of course we limit parent-child love to our own families. Of course we limit the kind of love that exists in friendships to our friends. But there is also that larger love, that unconditional love, which extends to all of humanity.

It takes a truly great person to be able to extend universal unconditional love to all persons. Martin Luther King, Jr., was able to extend a universal unconditional love even to the White racists who beat him and jailed him and reviled him, the people who hated him and did everything they could to keep him in the little box they constructed for him. When I say he extended a universal love to the White racists, I don’t mean that he wanted to become best friends with them. I don’t mean that he liked them. I don’t even mean that he loved them personally. What he did was to see that even those White racists had an inherent worthiness, they had an inherent human dignity. From within his progressive Christian world view, he saw that God loved those White racists, and he respected that universal love.

By doing this, Martin Luther King, Jr., set an example for the rest of the world. In fact, he changed the world. His understanding of universal love changed the world. It might not have seemed like it at the time, but his unconditional love for all humanity, expressed through nonviolent action, changed even those White racists permanently.

Universal love is a real spiritual challenges right now. I don’t know about you, but I’m not as good a person as Martin Luther King, Jr. I find it quite difficult to turn the other cheek. Yet when I think about it, it’s pretty clear that responding to hatred and demonization with more hatred and demonization is probably just going to make things worse. I’m not as good as Martin Luther King, Jr., so I’m not sure that I can rise to the level of feeling that universal love.

What I can do — what all of us can do — is to do a little less demonizing. Asking ourselves to stop demonizing certain very public figures, such as the leading politicians of the other political party, is probably too much to ask. If you’re a member of one political party, you don’t have to love politicians in the other political party. Start small. Start with people you know here on the South Shore who are of a different political persuasion than you. When we see people who are different from us face to face, we can disagree with them, but we can also try to remember that they, too, are deserving of universal love.

This is going to be difficult in this election year — and this is an election cycle that promises to be especially rancorous. But here’s what I’ve found. Every time I manage to stop myself from demonizing some political figure, I feel a tiny sense of relief. I feel better about myself, too; I like myself better. I find that I’m also just a little bit nicer to my spouse. It’s not a huge effect, but I can notice the difference. I’m a little bit happier, I’m a little more at peace with myself and with the world.

Perhaps this is part of what Martin Luther King, Jr., was trying to tell us with his theory of nonviolent action. Real change begins within our hearts and minds, and then spreads outwards to affect others.

Religion 101

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.